My typical morning

I wake up, it’s around 8. I used to sleep in, but with my work schedule I have become more jealous of my time. I have begun to view everything in terms of time. Sitting here staring into the mirror thinking that each dollar I spend represents a portion of my life bartered. If I had more money I think it wouldn’t be so clearly defined as such. But in a handful of hours I will trade a small but significant portion of my life for a few bucks. Each soda I buy for a dollar fifty represents twenty minutes of my life given away, makes that slurpee all the more precious doesn’t it. But even as I am stumbling into the bathroom I know my wife would decry such a suggestion as the worst kind of melodrama. It’s a vice. Melancholy, melodrama, and apathy are the vices that characterize my life. Turn on the shower and step in, steam rising across the window pane, today will be a scorcher. I wonder why Oregon is associated with rain. It’s as if all the travel reporters came out for the winter under some delusion that they’d get a white Christmas. They came out and Christmas morning came grey and wet with a metrological depressiveness on usually associates with Britain and then they went home to condemn the state as a land of rain. I don’t think they ever saw the summer here. The summer was when I always felt the most alive; windows down, music loud. I just try to let me mind go blank as the water washes over my shoulders. The water is unreasonably hot; I turn the temperature up to the point just before it would start to hurt. For some reason I am thinking about travel reporters and Christmas again. I understand why it can be a let down. Let’s face it our perceptions of Christmas are shaped by TV and movies and Dickens novels. But here we are in a fragmented society celebrating our holidays alone or with people we don’t even know. Even our family members orbit around each other without even really touching. When we were kids we made lists and expected less. But now we are adults and the only things left to care about are people. We placed all our faith in the commercialism and glitz and we grew up without ever giving the underlying religious significance of the holiday its due and now we can’t feel a thing. I am out of the shower and toweling off and I can’t help but think of my dad. Talk about orbiting bodies with no overlap. Neither of us was ever much for self-expression. I learned from his stoicism and now we both can’t speak. When I have a child I want him to be the first to hold my child outside of myself and my wife, I was never good with words but symbolism…now that’s easy. I put on my crappy khakis that go back to freshman year of high school, vintage 1996. Getting dressed in as much of a rush as I can, work is coming on fast. I still need to make a lunch and get over to the library to look for jobs and blog. In the kitchen and there is nothing easy to make. I am such a bachelor when it comes to making myself food; what’s here, what’s easy, what can I make with the least amount of effort. Awhile back we had the Baileys staying with us Jared and I were at my place alone responsible for our own lunch. It went like this.

Bryon walks in the front door and sniffs the air.
Bryon: “hmm…burnt grilled cheese right?”
Me and Jared look at each other in surprise
Bryon: “Batching it today eh?”
Jeff: “Yeah, how did you know what we made?”
Bryon: “I lived alone for awhile. I recognize the smell.”

I am out the door and as I walk down to my car I already feel whatever blogs I have composed evaporating. It like the counting crows said:

“She said "everybody loves you,"
She says, "everybody cares"
But all the things I keep inside myself
They vanish in the air”

Why did I make this blog anyway?