A Ramble on Milestones

I feel like I'm hitting a couple of significant milestones this year, so I kinda feel like talking about that for a moment.

We all gauge the progress of our lives in different ways, on that much I think most people can agree. Some of us think of the passing of time in terms of what job we were working or which woman we were with at any given point on the time line, and I can only imagine that many people find a multitude of different, sometimes odd ways, to delineate the passage of time.

I have a few different means for measuring time that are significant to me today. The first is the measure of my marriage, which, in August, will reach eight years into my past. Reaching two years further would be the date when I met my wife. Yes, she and I have been together an entire decade. Another significant measure of time for me would be my son's lifespan, currently six years. So, in a four year period, I met my wife, married her, and had our first child.

In the six years proceeding, there are only a few other noteworthy milestones, but they're pretty big...

First, our move to Cincinnati (and the employment changes that came with it). Moving was a big change for me, going from the small-town mentality to managing my time in perspective of the larger city. That, and my employment change was massive – warehouse work is a huge culture shock to someone having worked a IT help desk for nine years previous. While I see the move as having been a very positive thing for my family, it was not a good change for me singularly, and it has brought about a number of various issues in my life that I have dealt with over time.

While dealing with the stress of preparing to move, and subsequently dealing with the new job and seemingly insane people I had to get used to working with, I note for the record that I quickly became “that guy” that drinks every night without a reason. Today, this milestone I see is a bit more approximate, but significant none the less... Accounting for days when I was ill, I can safely estimate that I have consumed an average of four alcoholic beverages every night over the past 2,000 nights. That's over one-million calories for anyone keeping score, meaning I could possibly weight in about 125 pounds lighter today had I never drank a drop of it.

And that isn't said in an effort to suggest that I intend to quit drinking... I'm simply too analytical to not see it for what it is, and it is a systematic change that has affected my life dramatically over the years.

So the fact is that I've effectively become a “functional alcoholic” in the last five or so years while adapting to a giant home and family change that then became an ugly, and belated fiscal policy change – another milestone, if you will. In many ways, our choice to move to Cincinnati forced us into bankruptcy, albeit not because of the move itself but my own estimation that we would at least make income equal to 70% of what we had made prior to the move.

We didn't, and still don't.

It took a few years, but we finally realized that we were going bankrupt two years ago and made a series of changes to our financial policy that have kept our main bills paid while discharging all the ones we couldn't afford anymore, including two cars, a house, and over $20,000 in credit card debt.

It also included a personal loan to my dad, which to this day I am frustrated at not having been able to repay...

So now I start to move into familiar territory...

Aside from my Dad's recent diagnosis with cancer (which I don't feel like discussing today), I also had a significant event among my circle of friends.  Four months ago I made a drive northward to visit two of them, the only two from my high school days that I have retained any concern for over the years. That said, I have come to recognize this event as a bit of a closure, in that I seem immensely less likely to see two friends again in the near future... and in a way, while we are still friends in the sense that matters, we are no longer friends in the manner such as we were 11-12 years ago...

Sure, it is common for friends to sort of move on after high school, but I guess I only realized it had happened to us after this one particular get-together. Both of these friends and I have had but a few actual conversations since that day, and one has been so far aloof as to post on Twitter that he has a new phone number but he has not bothered to tell me what it is – which kind of feels like a slap in the face to me, but in an odd sort of way I'm okay with it, if maybe a little irritated, because I figure I'm easy enough to reach that anyone that really wants to will call when they want.

Fact is, I grew tired of being ignored and forgotten when I need a friend around that same time, and I have since given up on the idea that anyone really wants to listen to me talk about my troubles.

So I guess the odd thing is that most days I feel happy when I go to sleep and happy (if maybe a litltle groggy) when I wake up. That is pretty damned amazing considering how much I complain about nearly every person and everything that irritates me throughout every day... I kinda wonder if there will eventually be a day when I will look into the past and say that 2,000 days have passed since I started feeling happy inside again.