Also: Nice people

Look, Nice Person. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want all your friendly.

I realize I'm engaging and hilarious and if you strike up a conversation with me there's every chance I'll make a sweet baby-eating joke or show you a picture of an awesome turd I snapped in the Target restroom. Clearly, this is why you're lurking on the periphery of my conversations with actual people I know and tolerate, leering, waiting for your chance to interject. I need you further away from me, sharing your keen insight into the Brett Favre situation with someone who gives a shit what you think. Like your mommy or your cat.

I just don't need to know any more people right now.

Hey. Asshole.

The bill of that baseball cap should be bent. Not flat. How is that comfortable? Shouldn't it be conforming to the skull as opposed to pressing against it? And why is it shading your goddamned ear? How is that comfortable?? And for ball's sake, take the tags off. You. Are. Not. Fifty. Cent.

I hope you all get sun poisoning on your face.

Fingering my shit

So the company that is moving us is one of those 'full-service' moving companies. They move your stuff and they also pack your stuff. This is a great thing. Not only do they frown upon you packing anything, they pretty much insist that you leave it all to them. Most people would kill for this service, especially if it was free. Most people.

Newsflash: I'm not 'most people'.

I understand the company's stance. They want to pack EVERYTHING to cover their own asses. Makes perfect sense. If they leave some of it to you, who's to say what got packed safely and what didn't? These folks ask that you leave everything, from the dishes to the shoes to the double-ended-D-battery 'back massagers' out and ready for them to seal into their own boxes. I understand the policy completely. But that don't mean I like it.

There are 25 days until we hit the road. I should be DOING things. If I have a spare seven minutes, I should be packing a box. There are books to be packed. CDs. DVDs. They're all sitting on their shelves, taunting me. They should be tucked away. Bubble-wrapped. I should be taping crates. Clearing shelves. Cleaning newly cleared shelves. But I can't. And not only can't I do anything, I'm not allowed to do anything.

I must be the only person in the world who is driven crazy by a lack of work.

Untouchable

So this not-having-a-job thing is getting to me a little. I haven't been unemployed since I was, er, ever. Hell, for the majority of my legally-employable life, I've held down multiples. And now, here I am, no job...and no prospects. What a weird feeling. I've sent resumes all over The Great White Nowhere and...nothing. It's still early, but all this nothing is killing me.

Ok, 'no prospects' isn't entirely accurate. There are prospects. I'm totally eyeballing a local casino. Treasure Island Resort has an ad posted for blackjack dealers. On one hand, this seems like a fucking awesome job. On the other hand, I can't imagine the degenerates and goofballs I'd have to be nice to on a daily basis. Plus, I'm not sure I want to move into another job that I clearly won't be doing forver. This next job may have to be The One or I may have to ingest The Bullet. On the other other hand, those same degenerates would make incredible characters in, say, a novel. Could I deal and take notes at the same time?

Cold and alone

The subject of friendship has been on my mind lately, mostly because in less than a month, my friend count plummets faster than Minnesota bridgework. El-zilcho, to exact the count.

I don’t make friends easily. I know that comes as a shocker to anyone who’s ever witnessed my curmudgeonly ass avoid eye-contact with entire rooms of strange people. However, despite my Harvey Pekar-ness, I seem to have quite a large circle of close friends. I’ve never been the kind of guy who has those friends who will just pop over for a beer or to watch the game or just to hang out, but I do have plenty of people I can confide in and rely on. The problem is, each and everyone of these friendships has materialized through A)work or B)school. Every single person I’m friends has either been a coworker or a classmate or someone I met because of school or work.

I’m not that guy who’s gonna go to a bar or a party and leave with two new friends. If I don’t already know you, I don’t want to talk to you. Sorry. It never even occurs to me even try to make friends with people I don’t know. For instance, last week the moving company sent a dude over to check out the house for an estimate. Pretty cool cat. We bullshat for a good hour while he scoped my stuff and made notes in his palm pilot. He liked my dogs, was disgusted with the Tribe. This was a guy I could have easily been friends with. But I wasn’t ALREADY friends with him, so it never even occurred to me to try.

This is going to be a problem in Minnesota. I don’t know anyone there, so there’s no one to even lube the way, force me to be social. I could easily see myself housebound for months at a time, emerging twice a year to squint at the sun and bleach the food crusted in my Unabomber beard. Oh well, maybe I’ll get some writing done. It was nice knowing you, world.

The clock, it is a-ticking

Just under one month until The Big Shift, and it's finally starting to sink in that I'm counting down my last days in Ohio. I'm starting to notice little things I'll miss, starting to do certain things, see certain places for the last time.

Like my mulberry trees. We have four or five mulberry trees around our yard, and in the summer, when the mulberries are ripe, the branches bend toward the ground, heavy with fruit. Tilly the Dog LOVES mulberries. First she scours the ground for the fallen, then she'll stand on her back legs and stretch her neck like a damn giraffe. Or maybe a brontosaurus. Of course, she'll shit red and blue for the next two days, but whatever. Anyway, I'll miss those trees, and the way the older berries smell like wine. Which is basically the smell of rotting fruit, but distinct nonetheless. I don't even know if there are mulberry trees in Minnesota. Just one of about a billion things I'll have to learn over the next few months.

Other things. I've likely written my last column for the paper. Turned in my last order form at the comic shop. Made my last journey to see a show at The Beachland. Hell, possibly made my last journey to Cleveland, period. I wonder what kind of critters will hang around the yard wherever we end up living initially. I love my squirrels. I love my woodchuck and the occasional duck in the in the morning. I love sitting in the backyard at dusk, watching the bats play tag. Will I have bats in Minnesota?

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited as a fat kid at Sizzler to get out of here. But I've never actually experienced a whole lot of 'lasts'. Now I'm looking at a month of them. This is gonna be a weird mix of melancholy and elation.

The world. My oyster.

So now that Airika's going to be raking in the money I suddenly find myself staring at limitless possibilities. Once we get to Minnesota, I really can do whatever the hell I want. The freedom is a weird feeling, and kind of disheartening because I've just come across a terrible realization: I have no idea what the fuck I want to do.

I always thought I had it down. Work at a newspaper, get my name out there, write a book, make a ton of money, basically turn into Larry David on Curb. This has been The Plan. Well, The Plan got sidetracked by five years of the trucking industry. I took the job at Yellow out of necessity. When I took it, I was working part time at the comic shop and full time at the newspaper. I loved, LOVED those jobs, but I the money I was making barely covered the gas I was using. So I did what every good northeast Ohioan does and took a job I hated to make ends meet. "Just for a year or two to pay off some bills." Four years, two giant televisions, two new cars, a computer or two, etc, here I sit, miserable and really no better off.

And now that I can see the cover of this latest book closing, I'm not sure I want to go back to newspapers. Hell, I'm not sure the newspapers will have me back. The longer you stay in trucking, the harder it is to do anything but trucking. The rate at which your vocab shrinks while yelling at Teamsters is amazing. My writing has clearly suffered, as has my tolerance for...anything.

So do I really want to go back to the world of police blotters and high school football and small business openings? Sigh. Maybe I do. It was an easy gig, and I was kind of a rock star around the communities I covered.

In Minnesota, I'll have three options: Get a job at some newspaper or magazine, which may be hard or even impossible. Go back to school. Or find something else entirely. School is strangely appealing, but I have no idea what I'd go back for. A masters in creative writing seems logical, but gee, is that really going to get me anywhere? And I've just spent five years in the 'something else' field. I'm a little too old and weary to be taking another wrong turn, I think.

So here I am. So happy about starting new, but already fucking exhausted with figuring out what I'm going to do with the opportunity. I can't wait to get started, but I'm scared of what I'm going to find. Because I think I'm going to find that I'm not qualified for shit.

Nnnggg. Who'd have thought freedom would be so constricting?