Putting the broom handle down

There is a sheen on the ocean today, almost like a slick. There is a long stream of foam that can't help but make me think of the BP oil spill and wonder what the beaches of Louisiana look like compared to

this and why people are so goddamned complacent to no longer even be talking about it.

I was gently reminded by a dear friend last night that I need to write another blog entry. It has been a week since my last entry. (Why do I suddenly feel like I am at confession?) Originally I planned on writing each day, but to be honest, I just haven't been quite up to  it. I managed to do the thing I came here to learn not to do, and that is devote myself to something other than myself; to devote myself to a job.  To clarify, a minimum wage, back-breaking job.

I have come to the grips with the fact that I am a workaholic, or at least I have admitted it.  Increasingly, I am not okay with it. I work harder at a job than I ever work for myself.  At the end of the day, I have nothing left to give because I have already given my all to my job. I know this is a problem, but I do not know how to put the broom handle down.  Sometimes, literally.  I do not find pleasure on scrubbing bathroom floors, but I do it.  Because it needs done. Why can't I do this in my own apartment?  It needs scrubbed as well. Oh yea, I spent the whole morning doing it somewhere else and now I'm tired. Exhausted.

So what do I do?

I tell you what's easiest to do because it's what I always managed to do: entrench myself in leadership positions merely because I have a workaholic's work ethic which at times may be mistaken as my giving a proverbial shit (and sometimes I do) or makes me seem like a do-gooder.  That's what's easiest to do. I am still haunted with this plague that has overtaken me with every phone call I receive from Washington, DC that has come to make me avoid phone calls with the area code 202; every media call asking my reaction to the chemical industry's lastest wrong-doing; every email alerting me to the auto-bill pay for an organization I took on as my own and for which I paid bills out of an nearly empty pocketbook or on credit hoping I would get compensated somehow when someone decided to care as much as I did to keep the "organization" running.

Was that a run-on sentence? Welcome to my short-wired brain. I blame it on toxic chemicals; a lifetime full of bioaccumulation.

I have only ever taken jobs that I care about. I could say I have been fortunate in that regard but it's not like I've really profitted in any other way than karma points because my bank account sure
doesn't have any rainy day funds available, much less any funds for tomorrow. When I found a job down here, I was hoping I would find one where I wouldn't give a hoot and could try working for a
living instead of living to work.  Unfortunately I somehow manage to at least theoretically dig the cute little iconoclastic bakery where I work and I have much respect for (most of) the people for whom or with whom I work, so again, I bust my ass during ungodly hours and make only slightly over minimum wage.  What is this getting me besides broke and exhausted?  I haven't spent any time learning to surf as I have hoped my entire life moving to a beach would make me do.  I haven't spent any time writing music much less even playing music because I'm either too exhausted or too pre-occupied with another downfall pasttime: TV.  

The whole purpose of this blog was to tell the tale of my great adventure, and it was intended to be great.  Interesting encounters, epiphanies, revolutions of the mind, body and spirit, or perhaps even political revolutions and revolutionaries would be among the stories told. Instead, I bore myself by my writing which must mean that this blog must be boring to anyone who may care to read.  (Yes, I understand that I am my own worst critic.)  That makes me know that my adventure has gone array, as it revered the same purpose as my blog. And I can trace it back to fear. Fear of not knowing how I was going to eat next month when instarted running out of money, fear of the storm, fear of solitude, fear of self-reflection. I let these fears and a series of obstacles, some big and some minor ones, overcome me. So I fell into what was comfortable. Comfortable is boring. It's worse than that, in fact. It's uninspiring. I came on this trip to be inspired. I came on this trip to be inspired, mostly, by...myself.

I quit writing around the time I quit being inspired.  I should have quit even before that, but I felt this obligation, this promise I had made to myself and others about writing.  I could write about more of the people I've met because they are interesting people and I have been inspired in their abilities to overcome tragedy, but somehow their tragic stories full of resiliency seem off-limits. So I am left speechless. Or blogless in this case. I could give you a great rundown on the state of Carlo's bakery and what kind of cakes the Cake Boss is making in Hoboken, NJ this week. Unfortunately, that's about it. I haven't even seen a cute surfer boy to literal drool over.

So, that's it. I've decided to come home at the end of the month. If there's one thing that inspires me, it's West Virginia in the Fall. Don't get me wrong, I miss my family and my friends, but right now, above all else, I really miss the leaves. They inspire me. Next to work and obsessing over my flaws, it consumes my thoughts. Don't worry, this doesn't mean my journey is coming to an end...in fact, it's just beginning. Or starting over.  Or continuing.  It's taking a different direction.  I do not plan on staying home for long, but then again, I threw planning out the window when I made the decision to venture out of my comfort zone, so who knows what the future holds.

So give me my ten hail Mary's and let me be on my merry way. Once you confess and repent, you're through, right? Isn't that how it works?

Anybody know how to hail Mary?  

Crap. There's another roadblock.

Hey wait, is that a hottie surfer boy I see?  :-)

(Rhetorical PS to self:  Why do all the surfers have to be white boys?)