Another year come and gone. This year, I got a job at the local library – actually, that was last year, but considering I got the job in December, couldn’t we just peg it as this year’s achievements? Even so, this year is my first year at the library. And while I have some qualms about the way they run the joint (namely the 1984-esque vibe in our department), I’m still grateful I have a job. This year I saw the birth of my son, Shaun Damien. A new experience that will never become old, I am told. Fatherhood. It’s a scary thought. Me. A father. A role model. Dare I say – responsible. A friend told me it’s something that has to happen in a man’s life. I beg to differ, as so many guys I’ve met should never have become fathers. But me? It’s out of my character, yet something I always longed for.
This year, I saw the collapse of my old job. It depresses me that a mayor would get on his knees to please the local UT system, even more so when his council follows suit. I often wonder how much money now lines their pockets in making deals with the devil. The funny thing is, I wouldn’t be so against this if it had an impact on the students (it doesn’t, it never will, despite what lies they spin).
I made a few new companions at work. In and out of our department. And I’m remembering old acquaintances. I started writing again this year. I started editing old pieces. I’m becoming more myself again.
There are a few things I managed to fuck up this year, one that I cannot dive into. Not here. Even though I treat this as my personal journal left opened upon the coffee table, there are some things I’m not allowed to share with the general masses.
I have no expectations for 2013, other than celebrating Shaun’s 1st birthday. And no matter where this road leads me, it will never stray me from him.
The other day, I threw an idea at my coworker. “I think I’m gonna write trashy, terrible erotica and see if I sell anything.” “Do it.” Today we came up with a pen name. Tomorrow the world.
Yeah. That’s about all I have going on for me. I’ve been attempting to write about the school shooting. It seems my leitmotif fits into it. More on that later.
Yesterday marked the end of my first year at the library, making me a year old. Those who were hired along with me weren’t so fortunate. Or more fortunate. Bigger and better things, I bet. And it’s some getting used to, but I think I enjoy it here. Especially with the new hires that followed. Well, one of them. Revolutionizing the reference department, namely the young adult section. More on her later. If I feel like it.
I’m uncertain about what I want to write about. There are words, but nothing’s coming out. I have an idea brewing in my head, but I look at the pen and paper y nada. I type words on the screen and everything’s all wrong. Here I thought I was getting better, but I’m only becoming worse.
Today we had a “safety meeting” at work dealing with mental health/mental illness. Apparently there’s a difference, but I’m not able to tell you because my mind was elsewhere. In bed, perhaps. With my son, maybe. I don’t know. I just know that there isn’t much I wanna talk about and so much to tell.
Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s the fact that sleep has been eluding me the last few weeks. I should really start sleeping a lot earlier, but I always find some reason to ditch sleep. Not tonight. No books. No computer. No TV. Just me, my bed, and my thoughts. Let’s see how that goes.
A little over a week ago, Edinburg had its Night of Lights festival. This year, compared to the years I worked it with Sigma Tau Delta, was drab. Boring, if you will. The booths were smooshed together and pretty much nothing was interesting. But let’s face it, I was only doing this for the parade.
We got there a little late, mid-parade, and found an empty spot near the railroad tracks. I carried Shaun while Jeanna, Isabel, and Justin shouted out at the passers-by in jubilation. Haven’t never been to a Night of Lights parade, I didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t too exciting, but at least we got to do something as a family. And it might have been a tad more enjoyable if a certain woman hadn’t made a bigger fuss than necessary. I’ve left out a part when I said we found an empty spot. What I meant to say was, we found an empty spot just just to the right, but in front, of a family sitting down. I know. Who the fuck sits down at a parade? If you’re not a child under the age of five, an elderly person, a veteran, a person with some physical set back, etc., you shouldn’t be sitting down at a fucking parade. This family didn’t get that memo.
Because I’m standing and carrying Shaun, I found myself moving a lot. Well, not majorly moving, because the drift was unnoticeable. For me, anyway. I get a tap on the back and there’s this circle of a man asking me to please step out of the way. He’s pretty polite about it, so I side step and smile not realizing that I was being an asshole. And only after he asks nicely, and only after I apologize, does his wife perk up as if suddenly there’s some form of conflict that us men have no idea has come about. She makes a bigger scene than necessary, claiming that since they were there since four-thirty that they have some right to this public place and we best be asteppin’ before she opens a can of whoop-ass on us. Jeanna retorts that it wasn’t intentional and she should go fuck herself (my words, not hers, and I’m only coming to that conclusion based on tone alone). Apparently, I was blocking their son’s view, who, by the way, wasn’t even watching the fucking parade because he was dicking around on his cell phone. After we step aside, two women take our place (karma’s a bitch, I’ve been told), and the woman doesn’t mouth off at them. Instead, there’s a silent resignation because she knows there’s no unwritten rule about a woman getting up in another woman’s face.
And it’s knackering to think that someone can ruin her family’s fun, and that of strangers, because she feels she was entitled to something that wasn’t even hers. I get it, it’s basic politeness to not be a jerk, but that wasn’t even the case. I bet she’s the type of person who buys concert tickets and sits down at the show. No one does that. Not at most concerts, anyway.
And she isn’t the first, either. There have been a few times at the stadium where the woman decides to be aggressive when her boyfriend/husband/whatever is passive and polite. There might be a rule that states a guy can’t be physically aggressive towards a woman, but there is not rule that states a woman cannot be told off if she’s being a bitch. However, I wasn’t about to hock venom at this piece of trash because I wasn’t there to argue. Unlike her, I was there to show my son a good time.
After pondering why such women exist, I think the answer is simple (and this all goes to Luna’s credit because she’s the one that clarified it for me). She’s probably the type of person who sits around all day watching “reality” TV and figures that life must have serious amounts of drama in order to be considered a life. So to you people out there, turn off the fucking TV and stand up at parades.
A disaster is coming and you need to start hoarding children. Well, at least one of them. You don’t really know the real number unless you click the ad, and I was too nervous to do so, despite the obvious humor that might lie in wait for me. Seriously, people behind “37 Items You Should Hoard,” did you not look at the copy image before you said okay? Because I know–logically–children isn’t on the list of things to hoard, and the image is supposed to convey the hopelessness that one may feel during the coming disaster–whatever that may be–but it doesn’t feel that way. Catch my drift?
Samantha Koenig, the barista abducted and killed in Anchorage, Alaska.
Read the news–a piece of advice given to me by a creative writing professor some time ago. So now and then, I’ll crack open the newspaper or scroll through Yahoo! and MSN to see what the world has to offer me.
A man is pushed onto the subway tracks and no one helps him, not even the photographer that snaps away pictures. The oldest person alive is now dead. The tallest woman alive is also dead. And Samantha Koenig of Anchorage, Alaska is abducted from Common Grounds, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death. Her killer then shoves her in his shed, went on a cruise, returned to the body, made her look alive, snapped pictures, wrote a note demanding a ransom, sent a text message to Koenig’s boyfriend with directions to find the note, dismembered her, and threw her bits into a frozen lake. He later committed suicide in his jail cell after being caught.
Earlier this year, my boss’s daughter asked me if monsters were real. I bit back my words because I didn’t have the heart to tell her they were. And they are not as scary as they look in the books.