I'm Back! 

Ok, that was fun. Read the title.  I'm back.

What did you do on your summer vacation Rob?

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero. But enough about me, let's talk about me.

Where's the fanfare and the hullaballoo?  And just what the hell is a hullaballoo?  Is that an empty skin from a Disney Jungle Book character?

"Mom, I think I found his bare necessities!"

"Cover your eyes, Timmy, and don't touch those berries!"

Wikipedia says it was a musical variety show from the 60s.  Yeah I'll just take the Wiki word on that one. The part of the 60s I saw was from the inside of a crib and not worth much in the way of music.

Pop goes the weasel...

I recently heard a song telling me that sometimes goodbye is a second chance.  In my experience goodbye is a second chance to be alone, and that's about it.  Still, one of the great goodbye mysteries is that sometimes they aren't forever. Oh sure, there are some goodbyes you only wish would last forever, but that didn't stop me. here I am, and I'm back.

So what happened with you while I was gone?  You look like you've lost some weight--you're lookin' healthy too!  Good for you.

Me, well, all kinds of things happened. Yeah, I know I said nothing earlier. I was setting the pace. Nothing makes a better summer story like a surprise ending.

"I thought Rob did nothing?"

"Well apparently he did something."

"What kind of something?"

"Nothing really."

"Well that's just odd. He's just weird that way isn't he?"

"Oh in that way and so many others…"

 Pour some coffee, grab a Paczki, I'll catch you up.  I'm still wrestling with a 2500 mile away pirate.  I feel like Brandy from that 70s song.   Even from this distance, it's clear that her eyes could steal a sailor from the sea; so Robby does his best to understand (Dooda-dit-dooda Dit-dooda-dit-dooda-dit).

What else? Let's see...I lost my job.  Yeah, funny thing, I think it's the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. See, even though I'm unemployed, I received a really nice severance package, and although I need to eat one more package of mac n' cheese a week, I don't have to scramble to find a job just to get by.

Right now I'm working on a manuscript I started before my divorce.  It's funny what a divorce will do.  I had all these big plans for these great characters and when MyEx said, "I quit," they all fell apart. 

You know how you can be a whiz in abstract mathematics, but the second Betty-Sue Carmichael wraps her arms around your neck and whispers, "So, where you gonna take me tonight," in your ear, you can't even put one and one together unless it's got her name written all over it. 

Divorce is the same way. And try as hard as I could all my characters flushed out of my head, and into a box of ashes. Well time and unemployment have given me a chance to reinvestigate that box.

They've also given me the chance to reinvestigate a lot of things.   I now have time to clean my house, do some projects--hell, yesterday I washed the car.

It's weird.  This is the first time I haven't had a paying job since I was 15.  Still, I'm not worried. I have a plan, and succeed or fail, I'm happy with what I'm doing. I'm not going to lie, a lot of it lies in my faith.  The same God who saw me through my divorce and mortgage payments is the same God who's with me now. That doesn't mean that I can't fall on my face, but it does mean that there's somebody there to pick me up.

Then there's the pirate, and I'm not gonna lie. She makes me believe in myself more than I thought possible. I have hope.

That's the hardest thing to find when you're going through a divorce. It's bleak, it's dark, it's lonely. There's the sense of betrayal, that if the person you trusted to stand by you forever has chosen a point in their life to say, "I don't."   That used to eat me up. It threw off my people gyroscope for the longest time, but now I'm good, and I'm confident. 

Somebody emailed me recently; they said that it was nice to see that there was hope down the line.  There is.  In the early days it was the best I could do to get up. Each morning I remembered to ask God, "why?" and then I'd go back to bed for the next day. 

He never answered the "why." But after time I understood that there was more to me than MyEx, and I started reestablishing roots in my own life.  I no longer need to know why. The answer may not be more than "Because."  I'm ok with that. I'm ok with me.

Somebody recently blogged that they'd "graduated." I think that's a great analogy, because it's not like we're passengers on a train, admiring the scenery. We're students. We participate. We learn. What we take with us, we'll carry forever, and it will make us stronger. It's lessons, good and bad, and how we study and contribute, will shape how we progress.

But even in school, we all need a break. So I've taken one. Now I have some time again; I'm back. The school of Rob is now in session. 

Please put your spitwads down.  Thank You.