Insomnia

Not sure when sleep became so hard for me, but it did. I think it was about the time my first wife threw me out, back then I didnt even maintain a pretence of normality, once home from work I would crack open a bottle of poor quality scotch and drink until I lost consciousness..... I suppose it wasnt really sleep, but it seemed to work for a while. Nowadays I can sleep without the need for chemical anesthesia, well mostly, but from time to time when sleep becomes elusive I will still resort to an etoh adjunct, last night was one of those occasions.
Well it's really early and I am blogging which is fast becoming a hobby for me, thing is I dont often have anything useful to say so I will probably just ramble for a while....bear with me, occasionally I have flashes of insight.

Perchance to dream

It has been one of those days. It started well enough with a fond farewell, but went downhill pretty rapidly. I have been tired a lot recently, dunno why, maybe it is the stress, the uncertainty,my job,my home scene, the urge to start drinking again which thus far I am successfully resisting, but no I know what it is, it is the foreknowledge of the unpleasantness ahead.
I hate to hurt people, I suppose that's why I do the job I do.... I will go out of my way to avoid hurting them, even at the expense of my own happiness. Right now I have to hurt someone....I am not looking forward to it. The only comfort I have is that I am hurting them for something I really believe in and something I feel really matters and means something. I just hope it doesnt all end in tears, I am getting too old for this and as my father once said to me, "you are fast running out of last chances".

An appreciation of the sparklies

Life is a journey, many people set themselves a goal and rush headlong towards it. That's fine, but in doing so they miss so much. Imagine driving from one city to the next your sole focus being the arrival at the destination. Between those two cities there are a plethora of sights and experiences that you'll miss in your haste to get to where you think you really want to be. These sights and experiences are what I call the sparklies, I call them that in honor of my own discovery of them one spring morning in New England. I was parked in an ambulance on the side of Rt 135 overlooking a pond and I noticed the sunlight reflecting from the surface of the water, the beauty of this moment would have been lost on me were I rushing to get someplace else, but for that moment there was just me, my work partner who has since become my life partner and the sparklies.....the world was rushing by, ignorant of the beauty they were missing it was almost like those sparklies belonged to her and I alone. I suppose that was when I began to fall in love with her...of course I didnt realise it then.
The sparklies arent neccessarily just a moment of natural beauty, but they can be a feeling or an experience , a moment of tranquility or the arrival in your life of a person that seems to make everything fall into place.
My partner has become the very brightest of my sparklies and I truly love her.

Synchronicity

One of the things about being around for 42 years is that you begin to notice trends in life in general. For example, I have noted that things tend to happen at the most inopportune moments. Right now my partner is entering one of the most difficult times in her life, she has begun medical school and is finding the workload in the first year to be really heavy.... Up until this point her life has been relatively simple, but as is so often the way, just when you need simplicity and focus the most, events conspire to deny it to you. That's where I come into the picture. I didnt come into her life to make it complicated, nor did I ever intend for our relationship to develop the way it did, but it did and now in addition to her intense workload, she has a brand new relationship to work on. For my part I am doing my utmost not to be too demanding and to be supportive yet unobtrusive.....I hope I am doing a reasonable job of it.
The path she has chosen to follow is a tough one, she is far more courageous than I am, that's for sure.

No longer Jumbo

Well I am now out in the open, and the anticipated criticisms of me and my past have begun.
I cant say that I blame anyone for being dubious given my history and the age difference between her and I. I suppose I just have to prove myself to them.

Taxi!

Well it's Thursday and I am coming to the end of a particularly tough week. I mean it wasnt *that* tough really, I mean no one I knew got beheaded, neither did I but still things havent been great in my households. I guess some background is in order, I'm an EMT, what most people would call either an ambulance driver or a paramedic, technically I am neither but whatever. Up until recently I loved my job, sure it's tough at times, but every now and again I get the chance to make a real difference in somebody's life on odd occasions I actually get to save one....but that rarely happens, most of the time I just transport people from hospital to rehab or from home to dialysis...many of these people are only too able to make their own way to places, but instead they either get their insurance company to pay for the ride or more often medicare gets stuck with the bill....and people wonder why there is no prescription drug benefit?

The elephant in the corner?

My very first weblog... in the coming days,weeks etc. I am planning to jot down some of my thoughts and observations, I don`t expect anyone to read them but I hope by putting them on the web, they will stop bugging me internally the way they do right now.
Ok so why the elephant in the corner?
Right now my life is a period of change, things havent been stable with me for quite some time but now the volatility has gone thru the roof.
I have begun a new relationship with someone I used to work with, and well she is significantly younger than I am, her parents strongly suspect the relationship is happening, but will not talk about it....so that leaves me, the elephant in the corner, everyone can see it, but no one will talk about it.
I love this girl, but I hate being ignored...you know what I mean?