My problem is that I'm alive. Being dead is easy compared to this — you just lie there and rot. Anyone can do that. Even I, I think.
Probably. I may try it some day, but not quite yet.
Which leaves me wondering. Wondering "Why am I here?". Which is what I began thinking at the Cuenca, Ecuador airport (Mariscal Lamar), waiting for dark, and then waiting for my plane on Tuesday, October 1 of this year. Why. Why?
In other words, what am I doing, if anything? And why?
Still don't know, and now it's October 16 and I've been back in the U.S. for a whole two weeks. Two weeks and I still know not.
I have been busy though. That's a change. I might not know why I'm here or what I'm supposedly doing, I've been pretty busy doing it. Because doing it is better than doing nothing, which is not an option at this point. Not now, and definitely not here.
I spent the first few days fretting about missing my tidy and simple life in Ecuador, wherein I arose at about daylight and had coffee and read the news and sent a peevish reply to the local idiot gringa food blogger, a Mediterranean Diet™ proponent. (And also a low-process proponent, and a strident no-added-sugar campaigner. Who loved to sing the benefits of chocolate candy as a healthy food. And also wine, though it contains alcohol, a proven human carcinogen. And so on.)
Anyway, a quiet life, full of fine coffee (one cup a day), and going out for lunch, and walking five big ones a day, and not being responsible for anything else, all while saving up gobs of money because I didn't need to spend it on anything. Quiet, boring, safe, well-defined, predictable. Yeah.
Not much to do, and no schedule, and every day a day of fine weather.
Not the same weather every day, but fine. Agreeable. Mildly interesting, and then home by dark, because I had nothing to do after dark and a single (sane) person would not be found alone on the streets after dark. Or more likely would be found, but only by someone best never met. So I was always locked in by dark.
Well, that was my life and is not my life now, and I am still wondering "Why am I here?", but a little less than last week.
I've been busy.
First with buying a car, and then with buying lots of outdoor things that I need to re-buy because I dumped everything I had a year and a half back and have to replace all of it, and then with searching all the stores for things I need to customize and cozy-up the car, and things to wear and so on. Busy.
Been busy but not with importances. Busy with many little things requiring lots of thought and much careful shopping. They kill time.
What I'm really waiting for is my car's license, registration, and title. Should be here by November 18 at the latest, the last day I can legally operate with the temporary documents. Meanwhile the rain is closing in.
The last two weeks were good. Lots of sun after a little rain. Monday afternoon was even uncomfortably warm, given the layers of insulation I've been wearing. Rained last night. More this morning. Eighty percent chance for tomorrow, and so on for another week, after which it might let up for a day or two, but winter, you know. The Big Inevitable.
Lovely weather in its own way, this wet stuff, but I am living in a car. Living in a car means that your space is always over-populated. There are fights. Swearing. Spills. Lost goods. All kinds of things. And you are always in public. Always, even while parked out in the woods. Because you never know. Really. You never do. People come out of nowhere, at all hours, doing every variety of odd thing. Though usually, in the woods, it's quiet, if a long drive from town, and I don't have my car fixed up so I can sleep in it unobtrusively while in town. Not yet.
I am working on it. It's a thing. One of many things. One of the many things that are keeping be busy and not wondering "Why am I here?", which I still do anyway, in every odd moment.
Well, it will either get better or it will get worse, or it will stay the same. Pretty much like the price of real estate, so there's no real progress on that front, is there?
Maybe I'll know more later.
Currently making the transition from old creepy guy to creepy old guy.
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