So I'm sitting here at Cafe Coco, not because I want to be social but because it's the only way I can access the Net. Chuck, the owner of the cafe, has set up a wireless Internet router here which enables customers to access the Net for free via a wireless card (on laptops, but I suppose if someone is willing to haul out their desktop PC just to log on, it'd technically be possible). Toastido was kind enough to loan me his wireless card for a day or two so that I could check my email and whatnot. This is a good thing because, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do diddly-squat. You see, my Net access has been cut off.
It's been quite some time since I last did anything remotely useful online. Last month I was beset by some seriously hard financial difficulties and other pressing matters. I also got evicted from my home- nothing I did wrong, my landlord just wanted the space back for her own reasons. The last month has been spent worriedly looking for a job closer to Nashville and a new place to live. I'm still not gainfully employed (unless you consider working for $6/hr as a projectionist "gainful"), but finding new digs is a priority I no longer have to trouble myself over. I've got a new place, a new roommate and some up-coming freelance design work. Rent is due on the first, which will pretty much leave me penniless unless some good fortune comes my way, but at least I'll have a roof over my head while I starve.
I turn 29 on Wednesday, the 29th. Turning 29 on the 29th... they call that the "Golden Birthday", when a person's birthdate corresponds with their age, like it's some sort of magical thing, like the alignment of the planets. I'm not a superstitious person by nature. I'm sure for some people these coincidental events truly are "golden". For me, it shall be yet another exercise in survival and using my wits. I don't like it that I'm getting older, I've realized. I think the gray hairs are already getting on my nerves.
My friends say that the gray hair is a sign of distinction. I'm a bit dubious about that. If I get any more "distinction" I fear that I might snap.
I am a hair's breadth away from just bitching about all kinds of things- but I don't want to do that. I can't. It wouldn't be fair to everyone else around me to just "go off". But, God, do I want to. I want to complain and gripe and moan like a little kid, get all the tears out, as it were.
"...and when I became a man, I put away childish things..."
I recently had a discussion with someone, a misguided youth (my former landlord's youngest son), about the notion of freedom. He seemed to be under the impression that freedom is a right, that it's something that comes to us as freely as air. In true Heinlein fashion, I tried to set him straight, even yanking out that old yarn "TANSTAAFL": freedom is earned, not given. When he seemed to "get it" he asked me if I was free. God, I don't think I've ever felt so old as when I said, "No. And what really worries me is that I don't think I ever will be."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because," I answered, "I am a slave to my desires and will be until I die."
It shut him up, but stirred something in me, an inner voice, and it won't be still no matter how much I try to placate it.
*sigh*
"The things you own end up owning you." - Tyler Durden