Ups & Downs
I have been asked a couple of times in the last week or two how come I had stopped blogging. Honestly, I did not realize I had. Matter of fact, I only thought it had been a couple of weeks since my last blog entry here in the back of my mind all along. Imagine my surprise when I got on here and realized that today actually marks a full thirty days since my last blog entry. I realize the truth of the song that just played, “Some people would say there is a woman to blame, but I realize it is my own damn fault.”
A bunch of long stories short and then on to better blogging, because as I noted late last night sometime, “Life is Beautiful!”
My first thought comes back to the fact that July is just out to kill me and I am figuring based on the last several that I will probably pass one of these fine summer July days. I guess I am kind of owed that. I am sure that I like fall the best in regards to seasons and from there, while I do enjoy outside days in the summer, I really split mostly between winter and spring as my other favorite seasons. The only thing that I do find enjoyable about summer is being outside and having the ability to put in a good hard days work. Unfortunately I get far to little opportunity to do that these days. And besides that, excepting digging fence post holes, everything is still doable in all but the coldest of winter and so much more enjoyable when done.
Maybe that is why the month has it in for me, maybe it something else. Regardless I can truthfully say that the last three July’s have been some of the most miserable. I think this one was not supposed to be and probably was not as bad. However, the lingering expectations carried over from the last couple of them has done a nice mental job of building the little things from this month into major issues anyway.
Of the first order is all the prep work that I did for getting ready for the big jousting event two weekends ago now. Several hours getting things ready. Several more getting Jack ready. Several hundred dollars spent on equipment, items, and other arrangements for the big event. And on the way, fairly quickly, for which I am oddly thankful, the truck blew out seals on the transmission. Apparently, based on some casual looking at a repair shop the transmission was about done for to begin with and the slippage that occurred once it dropped most of the fluid pretty much finished cooking it – at least as I understand it. (Side note: While I can completely explain how an internal combustion engine works and even a manual transmission, I have no concept of automatic transmissions. Think about it, you put in an industrial grade lubricate to keep the dang thing from slipping?!?!) Regardless I ended up spending a day getting horses back home followed by a girl back home – yeah, I just said that.
Speaking of girls, or ladies if you will, I had a pretty good thing going with one girl. After a few dates and such though I got really busy and communication waned a little bit. We did get together one more time, with several of her friends. During that eve, it was with a grimace that I realized the idea of what she wants out of life is not at all in line with what I want. I was still willing to keep in touch and when I got less busy I tried to resume conversation, but my attempts, belated as they probably were seemed to have fallen on def ears. Kind of okay, as at that point, we had agreed that we were going to get know one another before getting serious. And actually I guess this was back in June, but still seems more like July. Guess it has just been an ugly summer over all.
Slightly a reminder of last year and strictly against my new rules regarding such things, I did decide to take a much younger female friend along for the jousting trip. After that got canceled, the horses were returned home and so was she – at her request. I ended up feeling a bit used out of that whole thing. Kind of odd, as it were. After all, if that had been the plan going into things I would have probably been okay with it, but since that was not a previous discussion it just left me feeling a bit odd about things.
Somewhere in all of these, it was suggested by more than one friend that the girl who was pregnant may have been fooling me about things with the miscarriage. I kept saying no way would she do that. After all, no one would dare to stoop to such a vile thing. But then again, there was no question that we were on a rocky path at best during the entire ordeal and friends kept saying with the distance involved it would just make sense for her to do that to get me out the picture. That did start to bother me just a little bit, but I mostly dismissed it. That is until another, slightly distant friend, who had been made aware of things, happened through that area of Tennessee. I am not sure if they even saw things or not, but they reported back to me that she was still pregnant. I mentioned this to the former mom to be and she of course immediately denied and even pointed out the drinks that I know she had after the fact. I have to believe that she would not do that – but that little seed of doubt is still there and even a day or two ago she said she can not wait until the 1st of October.
Add to these the workload that never seems to shrink, rather it constantly expands. Every time one project is scratched off the to do list, two more things of seeming even greater scope jump up to occupy the same space. Everything needed to be done yesterday for optimal ROI of the initial purchase. And of course in all three of the last weeks a major system has basically imploded in on itself, leaving me long stretches of sleep deprived work toward resolving the issues to get things back on an even keel. Some these things are, in my opinion, a direct result of putting off some the regular maintenance and monitoring that needs to be done on these systems in the regular routine of things that should be included in a the job of managing such systems.
In light of all that I think I am feeling a bit older. Well, at least I am having a few more aches and pains. I am sure that a good part of that can written off as general stress and another part of that can be written off as being so active at times with getting ready for jousting and hard riding that at times will jump to a full speed ahead from a stand still. I know deep down though that probably a larger portion is coming from not having eaten particularly healthy of late and especially the gaining back of most of the weight that I have lost on the two major pushes over the last two years. Face it, if you are moving around an extra thirty to forty pounds, it just a lot harder on the body that is moving it around.
Enough of all the negative and down though. I realize that a lot of what is going above is hinging to much of my expected happiness on one aspect of life and focusing in way to much on it. Further, to many of those things are focusing on other people assisting in the making some of that happen. Moving forward, I plan to have a great focus on what makes me, or will make me, happy. I realize some of the things will still require the involvement of others and not all things completely depend on others. However, I am done, completely, for the time being of the mindset that I should hold off on whatever else is around the turn and spend money, time, and effort to get the other side of that turn. Instead, I am going to focus on what I know I want and pursue it. Do not get me wrong, I love other people. I will continue to go out of my way to do things for other people, perhaps even more so than has been done in the past. Time moving forward will be the answer to that I suppose. Enough semi-aimless rambling for one blog, eh?
Really quickly – thanks to the many who have kept the page views going on the blog while I was away. strangely it has stayed way up there. Also a special thanks to someone who shall remain completely nameless for a conversation not long ago – hope things are going well with you in your current version of what life is throwing at you!
