(Baby Bat pic circa 1995)
Here I am setting up another blog post from my "Ray Bradbury" wonderland apartment. This will be something of a free form blog post, I have no plan here other than just to put my thoughts down as I put my apartment back in order. I've recently been forced to go on a cleaning spree of the the cluttered playground because the unit apparently needed to have all of the plugs changed and the wiring for the bathroom brought up to proper code. Why? I don't know for certain, but apparently EVERY unit needed to be changed and mine was the last in the line of units in my area. Now it's all downstairs from here.
At any rate, not to feel to terribly embarrassed by the mess in my apartment, I quickly jumped to cleaning what needed to be cleaned. I've lived in this apartment for five years and one does tend to pile up a lot of papers and trinkets in that time.
In one corner, a stack of old clothes I'll eventually "fit into" was translated into a donation to Value Village where someone else can fit into them. In other, a collection of old loves notes promising "I'll never leave you for any reason..." The net result of having my current girlfriend proved that statement to be a falsehood. Opening a manilla envelope and finding a series of pamphlets of information from Sexual Assault Support Services opened an old would I thought long since closed.
All of it... ALL OF IT... In the garbage it went.
I needed a good solid cleanse...
Five years I've lived alone in this apartment. Either paying for it via my Trade Act assistance, my unemployment via Trade Act, Student Loans, or Jobs in order to keep me in a place where I can stow my stuff and have a place to lay my head.
It's an accomplishment I'm proud of.
As I look around, I'm remarking on the collected trinkets of a forty year old man. This year, this amazing 2015 year, I turn forty.
I'm pondering slowly just what Forty means to me.
When I was Eighteen, Forty seemed eons away from where I was. At Eighteen, I was flying high on the idea that I wasn't going to rush off into college. I was going to take a moment to find myself and who I was.
In retrospect... I wish I hadn't...
There are a lot of things I wished I hadn't done.
I wished I hadn't rushed into marriage with a women who wasn't right for me.
I wished I had carefully thought out my choice of future mate.
I wished I had gotten my degree earlier.
I wish... I wish a lot of things.
People try to tell me that when you get to Forty, you're not supposed to have regrets. The weird thing I find is that more and more forty year olds I talk to, have a ton of regrets. By this time in our lives, we've lived to a point where we've experience so much. We've also done so many dumb things.
I wish I could say that by this point in my life, all the dumb things I've done were BEFORE there was such a thing as Youtube, or Facebook... But I can't...
For example:
(Belly Dancing Circa 2008)
Well okay, I don't entirely regret it, because fact is that it was hilarious.
I could fill a whole blog with four decades worth of silly regrets. None quite as funny as me in a sheesha skirt and bikini top.
What I'm finding in life and in particular this year is that I am growing too old...
I'm too old to date for purely sexual attraction...
I'm too old to put up with someones "Daddy Issues"...
I'm too old to play "High School" games of popularity with people...
I'm too old for drama...
I'm just in general, too grown up to be the guy I was at 35.
And yet... Here I am surrounded by a collection of toys. Transformers, Go-Bots, Roboforce... Some toy lines that unless you are a hardcore vintage collector like me, you won't probably even recognize.
I'm not officially a hoarder until you can't see my floor anymore. Until then, I'm just an avid fan of old vintage toys.
I've been accused of being a big kid, being immature, being worthless for surrounding myself with plastic garbage when I a grown man should be concentrating on better.
And then I look at a mans Firearm collection, or his fishing tackle collection, or even his football jersey collection, and I'm left to ask... What's the difference?
(My vote is always for Slytherin for the Quidditch cup)
And after forty years, I do have A LOT of toys.
Cleaning out this apartment has proven to be introspective. I'm sorting through a lot of old garbage things and really and genuinely wondering, do I really need all of this?
I'm realizing I'm rambling...
Thank you for reading my mind droppings tonight. I hope someone got some joy out of it.
Getting older, must mean I'm getting closer to God right?
Music in my head:
Knocking on Heavens Door (Cover) by Sisters of Mercy
No comments:
Post a Comment