For Those Of You Keeping Score At Home

Because I know you just hang on the teetering scales of karmic retribution that passes for my life.

But just in case I haven't expressed this adequately, since I've been told repeatedly how bad I am at coummincating, here goes:

It's been a helluva few years. The last 18 months seems to have made it a personal mission to age me decades. And I still really haven't gotten a break.

Now, I know lots of people don't get breaks, that's life, right? You have to keep trudging forward. But by the 8lb 9 oz babby jebus, it can be vexatious.

Last May I made the difficult decision to quit the only steady employment I'd had. It was literally making me sick, physically. Anyways, after two weeks of unemployed bliss, wherein I decided to overhaul my room, I got a call about a loved one.

So June found me headed east. They reckoned he had cancer and was dropping dead soon. The truth turned out to be far more complicated and every bit as scary. I became one of a two-man primary care-taking team. We had help from Hospice (an amazing organization) and it still took everything we had.

While everyone did admirably, the emotional tolls exacted on the participants were difficult to deal with, for each person and for each other. I think maybe everybody might need a little therapy. Seriously. It was some stressful shite. Twere not dull times, is what I'm saying.

And there were additional lovelies along the way--another loved one has inoperable cancer. He is tucked away somewhere dying and I can't help him and I really don't want to talk about it much more than that.

Life continues. Money is ever so scarce. The future is uncertain. Everyone struggles. Donald Drumpf. It's bleak, is what I'm saying.

In mid winter we decided we had plateaued, and I headed back West. After three weeks our Charge took a serious dip and I got a call from a Hospice nurse telling me that he was dying in a room in th ER as we spake.

SO, flew back to family, lived in ICU with my Number 1 Patient for a few weeks of a coma, and then we slowly got him out of there, into PT, and off the drugs and through the condition that was making him nutsy fagin.

Fair to say, was an emotionally challenging Spring. Perhaps this is where I began to feel frayed.

Everything has leveled out to an acceptable state, and I returned West once again in June, almost an exact year after I'd first left.

I have little money. I have no income. I have no real networking. I'm working on a side/dream project and trying to make an honest effort at it because HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME and it's easy to play Prufrock but maybe I could make on stage as even a Guildenstern, if not Hamlet himself.

And it's fine if you don't understand any of that. Because here's what it means: I GOT STRESS. liekwhoa.

I visited some friends, but I haven't had a break. Bad news, real life, responsibility, have dogged me every step of the way. I can't relax. It's me--I think I need 30 days of intensive Netflix/Deserted Island therapy.

Whatever the case, including that I'm in some kind of PTSD meltdown or just a mid life crisis, I haven't gotten a break. The beat goes on. I'd like a nappy break. Can I tag out?

I'm exhausted. And I'm my primary resource. This corporate structure sucks.

I know you peeps out there are feeling it, too. John Irving called it weltzenhammer and said it was German for "world hurt."

Kinda like Sorrow.