One is always considered mad, when one discovers something that others cannot grasp.~~ Ed Wood

I, too, like a nice Angora sweater.

I like the quote because I do have moments lately where I am looking at life and thinking it is because I grasp something that others do not, that I do not fit in so well.  Or at least, it makes me feel better for a few seconds.

I have mentioned my feelings of failure, and I really do need to explain that for clarity's sake. It's not a despondent, no gratitude sort of thing. Sigh. Okay, when I am hanging out with my kid's or in some small pocket of goodness, I am distracted from all that is wrong. And it is wrong, I am no longer willing to entertain the thought that THIS is part of some divine plan. It's bullshit, complete and total bullshit.

All the conventional wisdom and all that sort of jazz streams a steady message of workin' hard and havin' faith and tightening your bootstrap and being rewarded. My experience over the past 12 or so months is so far to the contrary. Everything is really just one big lie, one big illusion.

I shouldn't be sitting here wondering if sending my kid to preschool is a good idea because I am not sure we can swing the tuition. It's dirt cheap, it really is, but short of it coming out of my ass I am not confident about enrolling him. I have been trying for a long time to find a job. I have been trying to build up a little bit of direct sales to make ends meet. I have been applying at places that hardly require a high school diploma.

I can't tell you how many times in the past several months I have heard people speak on the idea of service. Be of service. Karma to burn. Volunteer. I have never really been opposed to lending a hand. When I was working it was a lot harder to do but I would always try to pitch in in someway. I'd say a little more than a year ago I opened myself up to sort of go with the flow more. Honestly, think "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey. So, if something presented itself and it appealed to me I'd say okay. It never really gave me the warm fuzzy feeling that everyone claims that it would. I didn't hate it. Well, except these past few summer months. Ever been in a situation where someone ASKED you to do something, but then never gave you any ownership of the project. I let it slide with the picnic. But yeah, it is really demoralizing to be pumped up to make calls and be told that this other person already talked to them about it. So WTF did you need me for? I saw things differently, but it wasn't enough of a negative experience to turn me totally off. Then, there was this other project. We had had a brief meeting and that ended with some action items. I took care of them THAT DAY, and emailed everyone the results. Imagine my frustration to be emailed back a response that indicated to me that a)this person who had asked me to do this had ABSOLUTELY ZERO faith in my spearheading this and b)that they hadn't even read what I had written, like they were on some sort of weird autopilot that caused them to micromanage everything. Sigh... Anyhow, I missed a Sunday and sent out another email. One that no one responded to, ah, what a vote of confidence. I'll come back to all of this in a minute.

This summer has been very trying. I say a lot in these post BUT I don't say everything. I know that most of yinz are intelligent enough to read the in-between stuff. Life is messy. I have always known this.  What ever all of this is these days is taking a tremendous toll on my marriage. So much has changed in the past year. We moved here. We lost a job. We stayed afloat on our savings. We were stuck in the house together all winter. We have worked endlessly to keep things together. I don't know if it made us stronger because some days there is just so much distance I'm not even sure I know who this guy is.

Anyway, we were talking one night. I don't remember the details but the subject lead to the revelation that neither of us were really "feeling" our church lately. He commented about his comfortability these past few weeks. I told him about what was going on with the project. One of us makes and offhanded comment that leads to us inventorying who isn't there anymore. We added ourselves to the list.

Faith. Not sure what that is anymore, if I have ever had, if I have lost it, if it's even something I need. We had considered checking out the church around the corner, but I'm just not that inclined to do so. There's too many variables, too many loose ends, too many possible outcomes, and far too many crazy people in organized religious settings. I'm going to stick to my weekly viewing of "Closer to Truth" and the occasional indulgence in channel 43. I'm tired of trying to prove my spirituality. It's not a pissing contest, and anyone who thinks that way needs to re-examine their materials.

I don't think that I could ever really find a church that I believe in whole-heartedly...unless I started it myself. Then, I think that is called a cult and I'm just not that charismatic!

I know what I am grasping, I just don't know how to pull it through.