The Blahs
Well, it’s been a while since my last post. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered to write anything. I’ve been hit with a case of the blahs. Write code? Blah. Write fiction? Blah. Go to work? Blah. Well, I have to force myself to do that last one, but you get the idea.
I’m not quite sure what the cause is. I took the family back up to North Conway, NH for a long weekend last weekend, but it wasn’t as relaxing as vacations should be. The weather was mixed, as were everyone’s emotions. Blah.
The best decision I made last week was to take the rest of the week off. This is allowing me to start/finish some household projects. Unfortunately, my cable service decided to go on vacation and I have to spend some time trying to get it back. (It’s not the cable company, as far as I can tell. My mother-in-law lives in an attached apartment and her cable service is excellent. I swapped tuner boxes with her to no avail. My cable box works in her apartment and hers doesn’t work here. I hope it’s not a cabling problem.)
Maybe I’m hitting some sort of mid-life crisis. I turn 40 next month. The recent hike up Pierce wasn’t as successful, personally, as I would have liked. I felt it, every painful step. The muscle behind my knee, in fact, is still sore, which doesn’t bode well for the hike up Washington planned for the 9th. Also, the bathroom at the hotel in N. Conway had a plethora of mirrors, which only served to show my somewhat bloated body in all its lumenescent, white form. After 39 years of life, I find that I’m becoming a human light bulb, and this doesn’t make me happy at all. The only cool thing I noticed on my body is that the long gash I suffered while sliding into 2nd base during a softball game has turned into a nice scar on my upper thigh and buttock. Apart from that, though, blah.
I was invited last week to attend a company gathering tonight. All the engineers and managers who worked on the “big project” were being treated to a dinner cruise in Boston Harbor. I didn’t go. There was too much to do here at home what with unpacking from vacation and making sure that the house was in decent shape for the in-home therapy provider’s visit. I would’ve liked to go, but my duties here came first.
And there’s the rub. These days I am feeling the drag of all the duties required of me. My duties as husband, father, software engineer, web services provider… they hang on me like so very many ghostly chains. I have extremely limited opportunities to redress the imbalance between seeing to my duties and seeing to myself. And so, when I look into the future, to my impending 40th birthday and beyond, all I see is a road of duties to be dispatched and dreams that will remain unfulfilled.
Blah.