So we are in a state of massive flux in El Casa D' Ass Menagerie. It really has been that way for the better part of 6 months, but I think we have hit the crescendo this week.

First up, I am changing jobs again. I was in this job for barely 6 months when I received an opportunity I couldn't pass up, which is a bit counter-intuitive since it is at the job I just left this spring. This is one of those things where I feel bad leaving one job because I like my coworkers, but I also like my old coworkers, and the situation I would be returning to feels much advanced from the one I left. I learned a lot in the job that brought me to Chicago, and feel I can apply it by getting back into the game. I don't want to sell the wheelbarrows, I want to mine the gold - to use an old metaphor.

Naturally, I'd rather live a life of idle leisure than either sell wheelbarrows or mine gold, but that wasn't one of the options available to me when I was born. It may yet - and if it does, I will certainly scope it out fully - but until it does, I need to follow the Yellow Brick Road. I have had a very interesting run career-wise. Where I am at I would have never been able to foresee when I was younger. The work didn't even exist until a few scant years before I started doing it. In the broadest sense, I don't have a master plan. I almost always operate on instinct. My instinct is usually driven by people more than anything, and so I go where I find the people to be of like mind. This has mostly served me well. Even in my current situation, I feel like many of the people I work with will remain in my orbit one way or another. I am always surprised at how often people flit in and out of my life, and I am always grateful to have been taught to treat people well enough that these flittings usually turn out to be pleasant.

Now - with all that nicey-nice said - I have to say, I am finally doubting my instincts. The whole move to Chicago may prove to be a disaster. I have many reasons for doing it, but the primary ones were to get my financial life in order, to get myself as healthy as I can, get my material life tamed and proper, to try to find a lifemate, and to try to get my spiritual self settled. I can't say these things won't happen, but I am not sure why I expected life to be any easier here in Illinois. It isn't.

As it turns out, this no longer feels like home to me at all. This is a tough thing to digest. No matter where I have gone, I have always thought of myself as a Midwesterner On Walkabout. I don't have this feeling anymore. It has dawned on me that I am never going to find a place where I fit in. I don't say that with even a tiny amount of self-pity either. I would love to find a place where I have an 'us' which pleases me, but I feel more and more like I won't be able to put that together. The good news is, I am starting to see the folly in even attempting it. I am starting to question why it has mattered to me so much. I can't answer why I need to feel comfortable beyond the end of my nose, but I don't think it is any sort of evil impulse. In my case anyway, I think it comes from a genuine desire to believe that we're all good, and that in anyone it is possible to find something attractive. That may or may not all be true, but you can't take it to the bank, if you know what I mean. I may just have to accept that if I go out in the world and just live as I am, there will always be a kind of distance or unavailability operating.

It is dangerous to be so comfortable with one's own company as I have become. It isn't normal to be okay with so much solitude. At some level, this wasn't my choice, but was a side-effect of being sick. The sickness has sufficiently passed that I intended to be out and about in Chicago, and to make up for the loss of the prime years of my life. Now that I am here, I realize that this too is gonna be work. It was totally stupid not to expect that I guess, but to be totally honest, up until now, my weird brand of being social did well for me "back home". I just don't feel it anymore. I feel like odd man out. I can enjoy an occasional meathead-mode visit to a sports bar to watch "THE GAME", but I think of that as being fun once or twice a year - not every freakin' night!

That is a bit unfair I guess. Chicago really is a great great city. I chose the right neighborhood for me. I am having no trouble at all living without a car - in fact significantly easier than things were in Oakland by the time I left (it had been awesome, but there were so many transit service cuts, it got hellish.) I will eventually put to pixel my list of gripes with the state of Illinois, but for now, I must say, I find it the worst run state in the country. I pay CA and NYC taxes, but don't get the quality of life that NYC and CA offer (even cash-strapped CA!)

Going back to my old job does mean going back to Cali eventually. That will be quite ok with me. I think my return to NorCal will be for good when it eventually comes. I still plan on going hermit here in Chicago and getting my life in order as planned, but it the endgame needs to be getting settled for good somewhere in NorCal. I probably could have just stayed there, but I am not sure I would have made the progress I have already made. I would still be on 24.7 dope, I would still be buried in possessions I don't need, I would still be treading water career-wise, and I would still be telling myself that I need to "go back home". I could go into great detail about how much progress I have made in reversing my hoarding instinct, but it wouldn't be very exciting; yet, finally breaking that packrat instinct has been a very positive benefit of this upheaval too.

Upheaval is the operative word here. I am subjecting myself (and the pets) to upheaval. This sucks, but it sucks less if it is purposeful and tethered to something bigger and important. So far, I think it is, but this is one wild bronc I am riding. I am mostly experiencing "good problems" in that much of this upheaval is demonstrably for improvements with immediate rewards. Every day the dope load is this low, I feel my brain function returning. I am changing jobs because I have great opportunities available to me at a time when many folks are feeling that heavy squeeze of tough times. My nephews are an endless source of pride and happiness for me, and I have the freedom and means to see them often enough to keep them from being strangers. All good things.

I realize I am now just rambling. That is a sign to stop. Before I can do that, I must say, I am starting to feel sorry for the pets. The kitties has much bigger stomping grounds out west (I mean Cali and Belvidere!), and now they are cooped up in a small apartment looking out on an alley and the El. Boom Boom has felt his first blast of arctic from the lake, and he looked at me literally like he was receiving an alien probe. Poor boy. His grief hasn't even started and he looks wind-weary! The Windy Kitty is a hell of a lot of fun - even Boom Boom plays with her (he actually attempts to hump her, and receives a face full of claws in return most times - though I must say I have seen him succeed briefly, and miraculously.) Zyzzy is kept on his toes by her, and definitely against his will, but all the activity has served him well too by helping him lose a little weight (which he needed.)

The worst part of the pet story is with Ms. Chiquita. I took her knowing she was a geriatric dog with a horrible abuse story of recent vintage, as well as numerous health concerns. I knew I was setting myself up for heartbreak; I knew I would have to deal with her end-of-life narrative in the role of god - a role I am happy to leave to the actual God. As one who has endured chronic pain, I am probably over-sensitive to her pain. I know she is plagued with many sources of pain, but at this point, you can't touch her without prompting a cry. Her teeth are hurting her and basically need to come completely out. She has many fast-growing tumors all over her. She has severe nerve damage in her spine and neck - a direct byproduct of abuse. All in all, she is in a hell of sorts 24 hours a day. On one hand, it is an easy call - put her to sleep. No surgery or procedure holds any hope of solving her problems. She has had cancer surgery twice and oral surgery once already in the last 18 months. It helps very little. It merely delays the inevitable. I even brought her to the vet believing it was a one-way ride. Instead, we took home a significant medicine program in attempt to help her regain some quality of life. Numbing her and loading her up with antibiotics has produced just enough results to make daily life tolerable no less than 51% of the time. Is that enough?

It wouldn't be for me. In her shoes, I'd be ready to go. However, that simply is not her. There is no plague to her which has yet broken her spirit. The spirit and will to live in that animal is the strongest organic force I have ever run into. I know what her vote would be - ride it all the way down. Easy for her to say.

She is basically blind and immobile. She can't get herself in or out of the house, and must be picked up both in and out. Each picking up creates a shriek of pain that is absolutely terrifying and soul-sucking to endure. The stress of knowing you are hurting a creature you love many times a day simply by enabling normal functioning is not a burden I can long carry. This is the hard part. Why should it be about me (or my p's for that matter? She is still in Rockford.) Is the stress of dealing with her agony more agonizing than her pain? How could it possibly be? Must I wait to see her spirit and will broken before acting? That would be humiliating for us both. For her to be helpless and unable to will herself forward would take from her the dignity which literally defines her. To be helpless in aiding her, and to only be able to offer agony in attempts to simply make her life possible is to reduce one to a permanent red zone of fear and stress.

In practice, she really wants little. She simply wants to be with her people. She loves sleeping with granny. She loves watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua II in the front room with the gp's. She still loves to sniff the bunny trail through the back yard when she can get to it. She loves her life. She simply wishes to be, and no trial has yet broken this. How can I snuff out such a force without being forced to face what an act of selfishness that is? The choice is to play the role of a selfish god and to put her down so that I no longer have to feel agony at the pain of her life, or to simply allow her to fade away with as much medication as she can ingest, knowing that no amount really provides enough relief for her to think of anything but how bad she feels. It is a horrible horrible feeling.

The longer it goes on, the worse I feel, and the more pain she endures. I really should just get myself together an end it, but there is something cosmic in play here. I am toying with life essence. Life is not to be trifled with. The karmic order of the universe will never favor those who are cavalier in their treatment of any kind of life. It is simply too hard to swim against the cosmic tide to shorten any leap from the stream. That brief moment above the rolling tide is precious. There is so much aligned against it that one can only be for it. It is enough to manage one's own struggle. To even think of managing the struggle of another is to toy with things so much bigger than me that I am straining to rationalize ANY such attempts.

I can only do it out of mercy. Real mercy. I can't do it just to make myself feel better. It has to better more than me, and that is a very very high bar. Something has to give.

Oy. Again, I am wondering all over the place. Another long, incoherent rambling manic entry from me. Why I document this stuff, I don't know. It is reverse voyeurism. It is a neediness I am not proud of, yet also, I can't put to a full stop. Sigh.

This is all over the place, but in a way, it accurately represents where my mind is. I am all over the place. I am trying to use this time to have my own great calming down of the fulfillment of my cosmic honey-do list. One needs to be organized and strong to get down to it, and as you can see, I ain't there. I have a humdinger of a headache myself today, so the drugs are scrambling my melon. Usually, that is not a good time for me to be writing, but here it is anyhoo. I have lots of hard processing to undertake to get my mind right, and to make it public doesn't feel like it is going to produce benefit for any of us, so I will give it a rest for now. If I can get things to come around - to find the order - and to get the big push to start things to rolling the right way, I will get back to you.

Until then, assume my melon is on full boil.