01: Minutes beome meaningless

A hand turns a doorknob, a man enters a darkened room. He runs his hands along the table, which he knows is to his left, and feels on his fingertips a palpable layer of dirt.

Am I back?

I haven't missed blogging this blog per se. But a lot has happened in the four years (!!) since I last checked in here. And lately, for whatever reason, I've had occasion to think what I might say if I happened to check in here. For what it's worth, I don't not-exist. I can be found around the internet, on Twitter and Tumblr at the same places I could be found back in 2013 or 2010. I've been writing music reviews at a few different (mostly self-started) blogs, and other kinds of projects too. I'm out there. I'm being me. But not like this. I don't primally scream into the void anymore, perhaps because my mind has expanded over the past few years and I didn't see the point in the grand scheme of things. I mean, I think I always sensed the pointlessness of this endeavour, but I had to confront it within myself at some point after 2013 and while I never made the decision to not blog anymore it seemed less and less like a thing I had to do. I got a little woke and decided that my problems were very small - which is still true.

I tried journaling on paper for a while, but that seemed even more pointless. It's strange. I hate the idea of anyone ever reading this and yet if I am going to let my feelings out I need to feel like I am writing to someone, an audience, a listener.

Cheaper than therapy, I always said.

I've also done a bit of it on Tumblr every now and again, but I feel icky about leaving my detritus in the river of content that is that website - put on the dashboard of people who follow you... I feel like when you're on a website where your content is supposed to exist side by side with that of other sources, where people are choosing to read it all at once, you have a bit more responsibility to be interesting or good or worthwhile. Here, you've come to me (for whatever reason) here I make the rules. I do promise to be benevolent though.

There's no reason why now, though, except that now is a moment where I have a great awareness that things have changed a lot since I left off. I think the person who was writing this blog as late as 2013 (and I would have thought for sure I had quit much sooner than that!) would be happy with where I have ended up and probably cheer me on to go further.

So here's what happened.

HMV closed in September 2014. We found out in... I want to say July? Really early. Being in a closing store was a depressing but liberating experience. Earlier that year I had been caught having too much fun on the job by my boss' boss' boss and he was none too pleased and after that I felt very disillusioned that the company I was working for didn't suck. But I got a little severance out of the deal. For a while I still texted Meg every now and then about the Walking Dead and how are things, but that has died off. The company announced earlier this year they are done in April. I still know people who work there, so that's a drag. But what lasts forever?

I'm glad not to be working there at this time. A crisis like that brings out the smugness in a lot of people.

I started at Cole's not long after. It was always my happy thought, when I was bitter about the company, that I could walk upstairs and get a job there if I wanted it. For the first year there weren't too many hours, which should have been a sign that this is only a detour on the way to bigger things, but somehow I managed to fritter that away and now I'm embedded. Nobody to blame for that but myself and my lack of drive. I'm trying though... I have a phone interview next week for a head office position (only a 2.5 month contract but it's a start.)

I learned to drive. That is a trip, let me tell you, trying to fit in time to learn to drive when you are not a teenager. I have done it so gradually it would blow your mind. As detailed below, I got my G1 in summer 2013, the first of many planks of Scotto that have been replaced since. I took Driver's Ed in November of that year, didn't get behind the wheel until the following June, finished my in-car course in October after HMV closed, failed the G2 Road Test twice due to an inability to park well, took another year and finally passed after paying the driver's ed company to use their car - I suspect collusion. As of today I am in need of practice time on the highway before I can confidently go for my G. I have until May 2018.

I moved. That was a big one. My brothers and I moved into a place together a year ago in early March 2016 and though yes there are issues - cleanliness and the occasional concern over, well, money - I don't really regret it. The factors that led to us all moving out, all at once and together, were fairly unavoidable but we needed that push.

But the biggest thing has been the relationship. Not long after my previous post, in fact, I met a girl online. It didn't end up happening but we stayed friends and a year and a half later - right when I was getting settled in my new job and about to take my second failed G2 test - introduced me to a friend of hers. And while I won't sugarcoat the record by saying it was an easy start, going from being an eternally single guy to someone who was expected to be around a lot and share lots of his world, I knew I could transition and become that, and I have. I have become a relationship guy. A "they're always together" guy. A guy with a future.

That's probably the biggest reason why I haven't even thought much about blogging here in years. Am I sharing everything with her? Perhaps not always, but I know I can if I choose to do so. But the main reason I did this blog isn't that I had oh so many feelings inside me that needed to get out. It was because I didn't trust myself.

I never trusted myself to remember.

I was living a life that was passing me by, day by day, and it all blurred. I had a few landmark memories, but the rest of the landscape just became hazy. Blogging constantly, or infrequently as the years went on, became a good record of things that would be - and functionally are - gone from my memory, because they were irrelevant and the need to remember them was little. But I wanted them anyway, so I wrote them down. I am famous for not actually paying that much attention to life, knowing facts but being unable to put myself in a former time and place.

Now I have a partner who shares all of my best memories, and that helps me latch onto the other ones. My memory is still shit, of course, but it's easy to remember when there's a whole other human being walking that path with you, because you will remember them and what they did and how it turned out.

It's all different now, although I'm still the same. But I've learned a lot. And it's a bit of a shame that all the experiences of the past four years or so are not on this blog, but I'm satisfied that I have them for myself. All the love and fights and breakfasts and outings and late nights and early nights and late starts to the day and Sudokus and kisses and headaches and compromises and gatherings. I have it all.

So that's good.

So why am I here, now? Perhaps because the story needs an ending. But truth be told, this is life, not a story, and so it doesn't end. Not ever. Perhaps I'll be back in another three years, vaguely alluding to everything that's happened since now. Perhaps I'll check in more regularly again because truth be told this feels good too.

I don't know. Life is long and this blog may not end until I do. And I have a lot left to do.

And miles to go before I sleep.

What was it we used to say? Keep on rockin'
-Scotto