Loneliness and Boredom

Dear Pluto,

Thirty-five years ago I was in college. I was a full-time student and worked two jobs. I worked all day on Saturdays as a yardman. On Saturday evenings I was so exhausted that I rarely went out. I did a little homework and went to bed early. I laid in bed with my lamp on, as if that would change things. I laid there and stared at the ceiling. The boredom and loneliness were crushing.

In the morning would come boring church. Then, on Monday morning I would be back in school. In the afternoon I worked at the school newspaper, Monday through Thursday. On Friday and Saturday I did maintenance and yard work for a city newspaper.

Now, several decades later, I am divorced and unemployed. I'm laying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, and the same loneliness and boredom are crushing me. I see friends and family members who have the same struggle. I envy those happy couples who are doing activities with friends and out having fun. I had little of that.

Pluto, you are a lonely planet in the far reaches of the solar system. You understand me. They humiliated you by downgrading your status from a planet to a dwarf. I protested, but to no avail.

I've had girlfriends and a wife for 32 years. I'm a pretty normal guy. But nothing seems to fill the holes in my life. Maybe I'm eternally depressed. Watching TV bores me. Sometimes I'm just too tired to do anything. So, I open my laptop and type.

The pain never leaves, but I don't even know what causes it. Other than existing in this world.

Todd

A Reminder That I Am Someone

Well, here I am again, 10 months later. I just lost my job of 26 years, so now I have time to blog. In reading my last post from September 2016, I can say that my attitude and outlook have changed tremendously.

I'm 57 years old now. Divorced, jobless. I'm trying to find where my passion is for my next career, but haven't found it yet.

I do like to write, so now I blog. A friend just told me, "Think about what you loved doing as a child and pursue that as a career." Well, I wrote my first short story at age 8. I took every creative writing class that I could during school, and took independent studies writing classes. I loved my English classes.

Also in junior high school I started working on the yearbook and newspaper staffs, and continued that through high school and college. During my sophomore year in college I also started working at the local newspaper. I started out as a yardman and worked in various departments until I ended up in the newsroom as a reporter. A year later I became editor of a small town newspaper. After a short stint in the security business, I became a trade magazine editor. From there I joined a publishing house and was an executive editor by age 31, with 20 people reporting to me. I then jumped to another job where I was editor of an industry trade magazine. There, I worked for many years and had a good life. I was able to raise my kids and enjoyed a secure job. The work week was only 37.5 hours, so I had time to devote to volunteer work. I was the cofounder of a computer club in 1988, and became president in 1994. Also in 1994 I cofounded a church, and was ordained as a lay minister in January 1996. In 2013 I became president of another computer user group. In 2014 I became director of a statewide professional society.

In 1997, I joined the Sierra Club and became a passionate activist. During my years with the Club I've received 10 awards. I worked my way up to chair of my local group and then vice chair of the state chapter. I also served as state secretary and state and local newsletter editor. I was on a national committee. I worked on various committees, including fundraising, political, and conservation. I set up an adopt-a-mile program for my local group. I cleaned trash out of creeks. I became a speaker for the Club's population and urban sprawl campaigns. And much more. My proudest accomplishments in life are the successful political and conservation campaigns that I took a part in.

Now, fast forward to 2017. Here I am, just laid off from work, along with my staff. The nonprofit I was working for was taken over by a management company. I sort of feel lost now. I've only been unemployed once in my career, for 2-1/2 months. That was 34 years ago.

I'm not sure what to do now. After all my accomplishments in life I now feel like a discarded piece of trash. I'm now in my third week of unemployment. I'm trying to stay busy to keep away the depression. I have dreams of starting my own business, but the time investment is massive and the profit is small. Or maybe I will try a career change.

Not sure. But, anyway, I write to you, the planet Pluto because I know you are out there in cold, deep space. You are my friend, as corny as that sounds. Goodbye for now.

Reflections

skeeze / Pixabay

If I could summarize my life I would say it’s been this meandering search for happiness. This is probably everyone’s ultimate goal. I’ve invested a lot of time trying to find happiness in relationships, and that form of happiness appears to be fleeting and temporary. Apparently, you must find your happiness and contentment from within. It’s now occurring to me that maybe I’m simply not a happy person. For one thing, I’m way too idealistic. I actually care about the state of our environment and human civilization. Our dying environment and the collapse of American democracy keeps me constantly sad.

My search for love is equally elusive. What may seem like a perfect, ideal relationship always appears to have fatal flaws. I’m a nice, loving guy, but something must be wrong with me somewhere inside. I’m beginning to ask, “What’s wrong with me?"

The Final Stretch

Half of me wants to just say “done” and give up on women, career aspirations, social life. That half just wants to focus on house projects, my family, and holding onto my job. I tried to be an environmental and political activist. I tried to be a Christian church leader. I tried to be a corporate warrior. But there’s always some demon inside of me that keeps me frustrated and cynical.

The other half wants to find the woman of my dreams, get married, travel, and enjoy the sunset years. But relationships are so complicated and there is a certain stress to them that eventually wears me out.

Love

When I was in college I fell in love with a girl and loved her so intensely. She dropped me for another guy, and she did not handle it well at all. She simply disappeared. Little did I know the amount of lifetime damage that would have on me, and how it would affect me in my future relationships. If your heart is broken bad enough, and if you are a dreamy, romantic poet at heart like me, then that is it. That’s it for me.

Pain

It’s all around me and it’s there every day, and I can never escape it. First, there is the pain of human violence — the mass shootings and terrorism. Second, there is the pain of all the broken relationships all around me. Some of these involved me, and I try to fix them, and others are beyond my control. The whole human experience is about relationships, breaking them, building new ones, etc… I suppose it’s part of being human.

The Point of This

I could just be a hermit, rarely leaving my house. I can just sit around, supporting my children, maintaining my health, caring for my pets, but mainly just watching the clock as I get old and fade away. I fought the good fight and I am tired. I wouldn’t mind just living in a rented room and just blogging and reading books. I know few people will ever read my blog posts, and even fewer will ever care. Writing is simply a form of therapy. I actually ever even read my own posts. Once written, they just sit there in the darkness of cyberspace. There, they will sit until the Internet crashes.

The End

The Selective, Confused God

So, I'm talking to this guy at a social event and he's telling me how God helps him put all his business deals together. Are you kidding?

There's a group of people who think that God micromanages their lives and they have no idea how stupid they sound when they ramble on about, "God told me this" and "God told me that." Are you fucking kidding???

That same evening, someone pointed to a neighboring house and said, "Sad story. The 8-year-old boy who lives there has just been diagnosed with cancer, and it's all in his spine. The prognosis is not good."

So, I'm thinking, hmmm, so God is helping a successful, entrepreneur put business deals together, but he can't stop a moment to help a little boy dying of cancer?

You have no idea how angry this makes me. A note to all Christian: I will gladly burn in Hell for eternity rather than live in Heaven with such a fuck like God. It's a matter of principle.

Of course, I do not believe in Heaven or Hell for a microsecond, and doubt that there's even an afterlife. I realize that here in Georgia it's normal to say "the Lord led me," "God told me," and other religious jargon. The idea is that if you throw in a lot of Jesus talk, people will think you are "more Holy," "really spiritual," or something else stupid. I admit, I did go through that stage during one of my Jesus stages as a teenager, but it didn't feel right so I quit.

One of the main reasons I QUIT believing in God is the whole coincidence thing. No matter if I prayed or not, whether I was a goodie goodie or a hellion, good things and bad things happened to me in a perfectly random way. In my early 20s I realized that there is not a Godman up above pulling the strings. Things just happen and coincidences happen all the time. This crap about, "Oh, Jesus allowed this to happen in my life to teach me this or that" just makes me want to scream.

Rant 2

I'm tired of hearing Christians say that God is going to remove His blessing on America because of the Supreme Court decision and abortions. Or, that all the recent mass shootings is the wrath of God. NO, the mass shootings are because the disgusting NRA fights to ensure that anyone can easily get a gun, including mentally disturbed wackos. The cruelness of this is that most conservative Christians, at least here in Georgia, are also pro-gun. So, with their little stupid gun lobby they are creating the problem, and then say that GOD IS PUNISHING US. How fucking stupid can you get?

For all those people saying that America is being punished for gay marriage, I can only ask, "So, what did Greece do to be punished?" And why are those Muslim Saudis all rich? WHY IS GOD BLESSING THEM????

So, if you want to be stupid and ignorant and say ridiculous things, like Pat Robertson, go ahead. Well, you really know what, I don't care enough to say anything anyway. And I'm never going to have a debate with a religious person because that's a total waste of time. But it really does bother people when everyone doesn't agree like they do, and well, my job is to just be a bee in the bonnet. Hopefully, I can woo some fence sitters and put some cracks in the walls of the faithful. That's the least I can do for the poor boy dying of cancer, the thousands of starving babies, and everyone else that God doesn't have time to deal with (because he's helping wealthy guys put business deals together). I mean, really, what the fuck?

Hello, Pluto

Honest, really, it wasn't my idea to send a probe past Pluto. Honestly, I'm sorry if we awakened you from your sleep. There you were, all alone for several billion years. We exposed you to our consciousness. But there's plenty more stuff out there to explore. We are just beginning. But, we as a species are ending as well. Not sure how things will end.