With a View

That header image at the top of the screen?  It is not a stock image.  That's a view of the top of the hill behind my back yard.  It's a large stretch of what we understand to be protected grassland, special to the area for a particular combination of flora that is unique to this area of the country and rare in these modern times.  It's one of the main reasons we bought the house that we did.  We don't feel like we live in the sardine suburbia that we do because of the view that we have.  In the summer we have sat on the deck and enjoyed the sounds of an owl calling in the fading dusk.  In the winter, we have watched an ocean of snow howl and thrash its way across the barren stretch of field as it was whipped by the wind.  And that all might change if the local power company is allowed to complete their proposed project of building a power park on the land.

We got the notice for an open house meeting on the subject scheduled for next week.  I'm really torn up about this.  I feel as though another weight has been added to my shoulders, another yoke to my burden.  It's not that I won't fight.  I will if I can, if I'm given the opportunity.  It's that I'm tired.  I'm already fighting on other fronts.  I feel as though my creativity is stalling.  I'm wondering what the point of it all might be.  I can pour my heart and soul into what I do yet it still falls on so many disinterested ears.  In addition, my career is stalled and I don't know how to proceed or where to turn next.  I have yet to figure that out.  When it all came crashing down around my ears last summer, I could look out my back window and know that I was not leaving this wonderful view.  It was one of the few things that made me happy that I was not leaving.  But now that view, that one thing that made me happy, might change anyway.

As I'm writing this, I'm trying to figure out why this potential situation with losing a beautiful view to towering power lines is affecting me the way it is.  I believe it's because I see this as a metaphor for my current state of mind.  I'm wondering exactly how far down is down?  How many times can life kick me when I'm already on the ground?  Why can't I have and keep something that I love, something as sublime and simple as a view from my window?  I haven't been able to keep friends, haven't been able to keep jobs or a career, haven't been able to turn the corner on finding a way to use my skills and talents in any useful way.  I feel trapped in a prison of my own design and that view has at least been available through the bars of my venetian blinds for the past year and a half, the one ray of hope I've held on to since things turned bad.

I don't know what will happen with that view.  I don't know what will happen with a lot of things.  But I do know that I'm tired things happening right now.  The past three years has seen a lot of change in my life and I'm ready for some stability.  I just want to feel like I'm home.  Is that too much to ask?

Friendly Robin

My parents will never believe this, but after work today I was doing some more yard work in the tiny garden space we have in the back pulling weeds and turning over the dirt so that Amy might have a chance to plant something there. While I was doing all this, I was sharing time with a robin in search of grubs and worms. The smell must have attracted it because as soon as I had turned the first shovel of earth, it was hanging around waiting for me to stop digging. Whenever I stopped to take a break, it would run around near my feet where I was working pulling out the easy pickings.

Browsers, Decks, and a Cool Surprise

I know I've been quiet for a while and I apologize. Honestly, I can admit that I usually update when I'm not very busy at work or when I get there early, but it's become a real pain in the butt to post from there because I'm still running Mac OS 9.2. The only browsers that will run on that OS are IE 5.5 and Netscape 7.2, neither of which support all of the code here at Blogger. I can't log in via Netscape because the javascript for the login procedure isn't supported. I can't look at my blog in IE because the formatting scripts aren't supported. I have to log in and write the post with IE and then check any formatting or layout errors with Netscape. It's just kind of a pain.

Anyway, one of the coolest things happened this past week: Jen contacted me via my MySpace page. You know, the one I dated in high school. I haven't talked to her in almost 15 years. She might not know it, but I was totally bummed out the morning when I got her message and her short note totally lifted my spirits. I didn't even care that I had to go to work. That's a good day. I wrote her a super long message back which I hope she can forgive me for. I probably went a little overboard. I was just so excited to hear from her that I freaked out and wrote a thesis. I hope she can spare a few cycles to write me back at some point. I'm not a scary freak, Jen, really!!

In other news, Amy and I have started our deck project. We're in the process of tearing the dead bushes out from around the old deck. The hard part has actually been all the stones that are around the deck. They have to be raked up and carted away so for now we've just been putting them around the side of the house. After we get all the roots from the bushes out of the ground, we'll demolish the old deck, clear out the rest of the stones, and have the new deck built.