Eight: I'll See You Tonight

It's been snowing all day, at one point big, thick, wet flakes that I could see coming from a great distance, which is unusual, although by now it's just a little flutter. It's warm out though so this snow lands on the ground in a bit of slush. I'm done work -- there's always more I could do but I ended my day around 5 -- but Mel will still be upstairs on calls for a while, and she didn't even eat her lunch until after 5. Who's to say when we'll be having dinner. Often, I could use this time to write, and I guess right now I am, but normally I'd elect to try to write something important. You know, like recapping old X-Men comics, or a story in which... ahem ahem, not to tip my hand. I already think I've said too much over the years.

I've been really enjoying sleep lately. That sounds really depressing on the face of it, like I'm depressed, which is why I'm liking sleep, but you've got to understand, I had years when my anxiety about getting up in the morning and going to the office -- even though that office was only a short trip from my apartment -- kept me from truly enjoying sleep, and I would go in tired and sullen and miserable. Hell, it was only a few weeks before the WFH era that I literally took a day off from work because I hadn't slept. And school was a lot like that too (working in the store was mostly okay.) So we've now come through two full years of Pandemic, two full years of Work From Home, and two full years of honestly getting a pretty good night's sleep. Nights when I don't, still happen but are by far the exception. I'm finding it easy to fall asleep, easy to stay asleep or get back to sleep when I have woken up in the middle of the night, and have developed a strange habit of frequently waking up before my alarm (although usually this is later than, say, my alarm would have been 3.5 years ago.) I'm having the kind of dreams that are amusing and fun but fade quick and just leave you with a good feeling to start your day, although I'm told that dreaming represents the lighter phase of sleep. Perhaps I am only dreaming as my body prepares to wake me up.

Maybe it's because I'm not drinking much coffee in the afternoons (although it was decaf usually) and I'm not drinking as much beer either.

Another thing that kind of sounds sad to say but that brings me joy is what Mel and I are mostly doing with our time, all the nights we spend on the couch watching TV. It sounds like such a sad cliche, a married couple dulling their brains with reality TV. But why not? You knew me back in my 20's, when I spent most nights watching narrative TV from my computer chair, whilst simultaneously being on Twitter and Tumblr looking for something to happen. Maybe writing, possibly doing online dating. And all that time I was looking desperately for my person to watch bad TV with. The bad TV bonds us. We examine, we remark, we riff, we judge. With the search for someone who loves and appreciates me over with, I am free largely from self-consciousness about those things, especially because of all the other ways I am pursuing my interests and dreams. (Is it a perfect life? Of course not. But to I appreciate what I have? Yes. Let me write this down for you. Yes.) 

I was thinking about memory today and how this blog is my personal time tunnel. Now, I could have set it up years earlier, but I did it when I did it and I know what I have from there on. Perhaps knowing that my baggage is safely in storage here -- for me to visit whenever I like -- keeps me from carrying it around with me. Although I did carry much of it for a long time.

Today I visited June of 2005, the end of high school. Man, highs and lows. There were a lot of good things, I remember it clearly, and I did note some of them, but it was colored by a lot of stress and anxiety and fear and insecurity and all the usual characteristics I have exhibited throughout this blog. The kid uses the phrase "high strung" to refer to himself in the present, then says he was really high strung back in February. And the truth is, I was in the moment, as any of us ever is. And there were good things, and there were the possibilities of good things that never ended up materializing, and it was all part of the mix of being newly turned 18. That last six months, man, I wished I could have had that for all of high school, or at least the last two years, but I didn't find it until I did, and I wasn't going to, and even if the next couple of years were hit and miss it left me with some long term friendships and alliances.

All of that's faded away, though, you know. I don't talk to anyone from high school anymore. Cary has occasionally appeared on Twitter -- we shared thoughts on Wordle -- but mostly the fellowship has long since ended. They aren't even the people who haunt Facebook these days, those are mostly the ones who were strangers, or close to, that got me on FB. They all have better things to do. Huh. Wonder what that's like.

I mean, my Facebook account was long abandoned before the pandemic, and then it became more and more of a thing.

Generally speaking, wherever I've been, the people haven't -- Chris Ferg, CB, Pat, Ryan, Lauren, Robyn, Anisah, Alyssa, Ryan W., Doug, Becky, Ana, whomever else. Scott C. Kyle and even Josh. No idea whatever became of any of them, except I know Josh had a baby sometime ago. I wonder and I hope they're well. Whatever they're up to, if it keeps them off social media, good for them, so much the better.

I don't live in the past. If I was desperate to reconnect perhaps I would and I do think about it from time to time but....... hmm, I wonder if the same crippling anxiety about people not wanting to be friends with me is still in the back of my head preventing me from that.

I would like a few of them to know I turned out okay, although it took a while to get there (and I've been there for a while.)

I don't know. I'm the Scotto of 2022. I have my own thing going on. But as always, if you wanted me, I'd be there.

This has been a happy, if wistful post. A rare occurrence since the beginning of this blog. (Incidentally, as of May 15 2021 -- a day I spent literally clearing out my storage unit -- this blog had existed for half my life on Earth. Interesting!)

I've got a kitchen to clean.

Keep on rockin'

-Scotto