No keepers anymore

The first day I was here, back in April of 2010, I drank my last Lone Star beer to celebrate. That beer had been picked up by me when my buddy John and I drove across country to take his wife and his old dog to his parent’s house.

I held on to that beer for quite a while, saving it for a celebration. That celebration would only come when I got a job.

Well, I got a job, I moved to the beach, and I drank that beer. Up until a couple hours ago, I still had that bottle. But, I chucked it in the garbage as I was moving my stuff from that house to yet another moving van.

I’ve moved a lot over the years. Less frequently over the last decade than the decade before, but still a lot by most folk’s standards. Since 2002, I’ve lived in Greenville, New Bern, Greenville again, and Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. I also had a year-long stint in Richmond, Virginia. There was also the move of almost all of my stuff to Gainesville, Florida, where I stayed for about the amount of two months, maybe three, over the next three years. Then, I had to move all of my stuff back. That took three trips. That was pretty fucking awful.

Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving the beach. Well, my stuff will be. I’ll have to come back to get my car and to clean up the place. I may just hang out on the beach those few days. I won’t have anything else to do. All my stuff will be in Raleigh, North Carolina.

For the third time in my life, I’m moving in with my girlfriend. My lover. You get the point. Technically, it’s the fourth time, but she moved in with me the other time.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this move.

I hated my job, and I no longer have it. That’s a good thing.

Not having a steady income, that’s a bad thing. But I’m working on it. Already got some freelance stuff lined up, which is more than I had the last time I got shown the door.

It’s raining outside. It’s pretty much rained every day since I got canned. I think that’s a sign. That even the beach isn’t worth what you went through to live the life.

Driving 100 miles a day. Killing your old car, then putting 70,000 miles on a new one in less than 2 ½ years. Looking at mediocrity being rewarded, hard work not. It was enough to make me quit. And I did, without leaving the job.

I regret that. It was a mistake hanging on “just because I have bills”.  That’s been my excuse for so many wrong decisions in my life. Hanging on to a job, hoping things would work themselves out on the other end.

Well, it never fucking works. Unless you win the lottery. The, of course, you get introduced to a entirely different set of problems and concerns. Ones that, honestly, I wouldn’t mind facing.

So, I’m going into this new chapter of my life – fuck, I’m 41 years old – with my eyes wide open. I am not going to take a job working for slave wages “just because it’s in the business” ever again. And I mean ever.

Yeah, I may get a job in the biz again. But only if it’s one I want. And know that I’ll enjoy.

Hell, one of the ones I turned down I would have loved. But, the place would have made me miserable. So I chose destination over substance. And for a little over a year, I knew I’d made the right decision. Then things changed.

I don’t regret the decision. I just wish I could have that chance again. Right now, not then. I’d go now. I’d kick ass and enjoy myself.

That’s what I’m hoping for wherever I end up. It could take days, weeks, months to find a job. I have no idea. I just know that I want something I enjoy.

Maybe I’ll bag groceries? That Whole Foods looked like an interesting place to be. A hell of a lot more interesting than a newsroom with no reporters, no editors and no one giving a damn at 6 p.m.

I’ve been bitter. Way too many times and for way too long of periods of time in my life. I’m not bitter right now. At all.

The random pop ups of the past still happen. But I smile at them now. I talk to people about them more often. And when I do, I don’t cry. I don’t squirm. I don’t try to change the subject. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure it out, but I did.

I haven’t lived in a ‘city’ other than my little journey into Richmond for a long time. I guess Arlington was it. I didn’t see Manassas as a “city”. It was a suburb.

New Orleans? I didn’t live there very long.

Ditto Birmingham.

Although I loved both of them, for very different reasons.

Tempe/Phoenix was certainly the last I lived in for an extended period of time. Not living on couches or on someone else’s dime, or even on a Murphy bed while one-legged women tried to get me to drink cheap beer with them. Damn, I should have drank beer with her.

Today, I’ll grill up some food and wait for my girlfriend to get here. None of my friends could help me move on this end. I’ll take that as another sign. Two people said they’d be here, both waited until yesterday to tell me they wouldn’t.

On the other end, at least a dozen people are going to be there. Lifting boxes and drinking beer brewed in my new home city of Raleigh. I’ll take that as another sign.

I’ve never been one to be into being positive about things. It’s a flaw, not a badge of honor. It’s taken me a long time to believe that too. Yeah, I’m still a pessimist. Yeah, I think it’s going to be amazingly hard to find employment. But, I don’t want to let it get me down. Not yet. It’s too damn early. And hell, I’ve actually networked some and shown some signs of it actually working. When newspaper guys email me, asking if I can work, that’s a hell of a good thing.

I enjoyed all my time here. Yeah, I cried some. I was sad some. But I also had a couple of kick-ass get-togethers, a few latenight drunken stumbles on the beach – both alone and with friends – and hell, I got to live at the beach for two and a half years. Another life’s goal met.

So, tonight I’ll drink the last of another batch of Lone Star beers. This one brought to me in Arkansas by a friend who lives in San Antonio. And I’ll smile when I throw the bottle away.

No keepers anymore.

World Wide Web, get Kraken

AC/DC’s “If You Want Blood … You Got It” screamed out of the speakers. He took a swig of Shiner Blonde as his girlfriend’s dog warily eyed him. She had left just seconds before, taking back an expired package of Stir Fry sauce back to the local Food Lion. He would have gone ahead and made the food, but she was a stickler for such things. It was one of the things that made them compatible – having the differences be in such little things.

Of course, their taste in music differed slightly as well. She still listened to a lot of heavy metal and garage music. The stuff he liked in college, but had gravitated away from to enjoying more alt-country music.

But who gives a damn.

They were good in bed together. They made each other laugh. They knew when it was OK to cry.

He didn’t like turning the air conditioning on. Only in hotel rooms. “It’s free there,” he said, justifying his sweaty existence that most folks would deem “eccentric.” He deemed it frugal. And hell, with the coming economic apocalypse, he’d be used to not having air conditioning a lot more so than most of the people he knew. It was a bit of a hipster badge of honor. Like his flip phone and reading “Writer” magazine. Ha. How is that hipster. It’s not.

Getting drunk tonight was a priority. He had to drive to Richmond tomorrow night. Had a job interview set up. Didn’t know if he wanted the job, but figured what the fuck. It was a newspaper job. It was a work from home – mostly – job. Something a lot closer to the General Assignment Sports Writer job he supposedly had in Greenville, North Carolina, about three years prior. Only problem with that job was the sports editor was such a control freak he didn’t allow it to be a free-for-all reporting job – as advertised by him in luring him away from a very comfortable sports editor job of his own – and he ended up sitting on his ass designing the agate pages too many nights.

Photography and video shooting, not so much editing, skills were honed during the time. He won a couple more writing awards. Then he was laid off.

Oh well, he thought when the phone call came to his desk. Everyone else was sitting around on pins and needles. He figured he’d be the one. Newest hire, highest salary. It was a no-brainer, really.

He took it in stride. Even the next day when he was on a list of people not allowed back in the newsroom on the new secretary’s desk. Her eyes bugged out when he said he wanted to go there, and she didn’t quite know what to do. Before long the H.R. lady was there, taking his paperwork and shooing him back out the door.

Thinking about that right now made him chuckle. And take a couple extra sips of beer.

Her dogs stared at the door. Wondering where his girlfriend went. “Did she leave us here?” had to be going through their minds.

Bon Scott says “Shazbot, Nanu-Nanu,” it makes him laugh. Then he gets a bit sad. Bon Scott is dead. Damn. It makes him think of his other heroes, and how so many of them are dead. Joe Strummer. Johnny Thunders. Stiv Bators. Freddie Mercury. All dead. Bill Hicks. Dead. Johnny Carson, Marlon Brando. Brian Jones.

And yet Jay Leno lives.

Yes, God has a very wicked sense of humor. He wants all the good guys with him sooner. The rest have to stay longer. I’m sure they get the same great welcome, but it’s later. Much later. Then he thinks about himself. He almost died once while driving. Twice while contemplating just leaving. Would he have been greeted by God? Or by Keanu Reeves?

Thoughts are a dangerous things.

He doesn’t like thinking as much as he used to.

Nor reading. Books he still buys quite often. Sometimes he starts them. But usually then end up in a pile of others. Or they start a new pile. They get dirty. The salt air here really wreaks havoc on books. Paperbacks especially. He had to write wreaks havoc in a headline at work this past week. It is one of the laziest phrases he thinks, because really, how often is havoc really wreaked?

He wants to buy a book about the author John Kennedy Toole. But he knows he won’t read it. It’ll just sit in a pile, dusty eventually. Much like the Warren Oates biography he got for Christmas last December. His uncle gave it to him. Asked “why Warren Oates?” He replied “because he kicks ass.” They both laughed. The book has sat in a pile ever since. Kind of like Warren Oates in most people’s memories. He’s that guy in a lot of movies. But he’ll always be Sgt. Hulka to most. And he really still wants to see “92 in the Shade.” Why can’t it be legal to get ahold of movies that aren’t digital yet? And why isn’t that one digital.

He wished the internet world would just send it to him.

It worked with Johnny Thunders’ documentary, why not a Warren Oates flick?

Get busy getting busy.