chalk one up for reason
i’m living in Tell City now, the land of the "Nothing-Exciting-Ever-Happens-To-Us" people. which could be considered a welcome change after the helter-skelter kill-me-now of the BG CMA, but the novelty does wear off. it’s hard enough to peel Grandma away from the TV so i can practice; i am at this point convinced that there are no people my age in this village. not that i’ve gone out looking for them. i’d have to say, i really don’t care.
i’m in the midst of trying to set myself up with a working "Finale" station in the basement. i have the keyboard, i have the MIDI cable, i even have the software; i just don’t have the XP platform to run it on. 98 is a very stable environment for that little laptop, but it has seen its last day. as soon as the new OS comes in the mail, it and i will say a fond farewell. and then i need to get the extra RAM. and a USB key. and then i’ll be done. until i think of something else i need.
(on a side note, i do 95% of my shopping via USPS these days. Grandma comments on a fairly regular basis, "i’ve never seen someone get so many packages….")
i think my psuedo-isolation here has negatively affected my social skills. while e-messaging a friend this afternoon, i stepped on a nerve with what i considered playful banter. okay, it was heavily sarcastic witticism, that he was not even close to a match for, which was probably part of the reason i enjoyed it. in a second e-mail, i snapped at another friend for something completely unnecessary due to my propensity for over-reading and over-defending myself.
i think, in the intervening years between the present and my pre-BG acquaintance, that time has passed a little differently for me than for most of my old friends and family. of course, i realize that i’ve basically dropped out of communication with the general populace for about three years, and that’s a long time; however, it seems to me not nearly as long, and that so many things should not have happened, because i haven’t been away long enough. i was busy trying to keep my head above water (at which task i was almost successful), and the weeks, months, then years flew by without any notice from me. and suddenly i’m 26 years old, on the downward slope of my third decade, in a living situation into which i couldn’t have dreamed myself in a thousand years. finally having time to re-establish and mend the neglected lines of communication that were my erstwhile life-essentials, i find that many are changed beyond recognition….
with as few real connections as i have left, it’s only slightly ironic that i seem to be alienating people right and left these days.
