The Trashing, Part II

First day of fall semester...for everyone else, that is.

I have found that throwing things away, recycling other things, and doing heavy cleaning gives me some sort of catharsis, to be honest with all of you. It's a way I can keep moving forward in life at a continual speed when everything else seems to have come to a virtual standstill -- home as well as social life included. As you know, in order to keep from feeling lonely or bored, I've been trying to stay as productive as possible -- if I don't, I start thinking about things, and when that happens it always leads to trouble.

This morning I got up just the same as I have for the past three mornings, and started working (after my routine of cigarettes and coffee, of course). Due to the sheer amount of, well, trash I had produced from "the trashing" as well as routine cleaning, I had opted not to take the garbage out last night, but instead wait until this morning when I could actually see what I was doing. In addition to the normal trash, I had two very heavy bags of cleaning trash to heave into the dumpster can, as well as two very overflowing recycle bins -- and that's not even counting the first part of the leftover cardboard moving boxes that I'll be moving in a piecemeal fashion down to the curb every week, as well.

When that was done, I checked on my book. It wasn't "live" on the Amazon site yet. Which was fine, I didn't expect it to be. It went "live" earlier tonight, but due to the last-second edits I had to make to the manuscript, I had to re-upload it, and it is now processing yet again. I'm guessing it will be finally live and on sale by this time tomorrow night, and when it is, I will post the direct link to it here (as well as in many other places all over the web, such as my Google+ page and Twitter). Brittany said the actual item page for it is up now (or at least it was this morning), though I haven't looked for it myself.

After that, I did indeed have a list of errands to run for the day, my last day of real, true freedom before I have to return to campus at least three days a week for the next four months. I mailed off my first volley of thank-you packages to friends (Amber, Brittany, Mere, and Shanna) this afternoon, which was about $25 in shipping altogether. Then I bought stamps, which bumped the total cost to something in the thirties. I put almost seven gallons of gas in the car (it was right around/below the half-tank mark, but if I didn't do it now I'd have to do it on Thursday around 11PM) to fill it up completely, and I then made the trek to Walmart.

As you know, while I've been taking care of "the trashing," I've also been making that perennial list of stuff I still need around the house. That list a week or so ago was about thirty items long. In my shopping trips since, it whittled down to about ten things, then ballooned back up to about twenty by this afternoon. Now, this evening, there are but six things on it.

Amongst the things I bought today was a box of the huge, thick Hefty "Steel-Sac" garbage bags contractors and construction workers use, so that I can continue "the trashing" over the next few weeks without a) going through a bunch of the actual garbage bags for the kitchen, and b) so that when I have these hundred-pound-bags of trash and other throwaway items, they won't rip apart and tear when I have to lug them out to the trash can and heft them in.

I also (finally) got some other essentials for around the house, like a panel curtain for the upstairs window. A single one. They only had one in that style and I really liked it, so I'll have to check back later to see if I can get a second one (and thus be able to draw the windows completely closed). Pete found the curtain intriguing, despite knowing what curtains are and how they function. He's just not used to it. I also bought two new pillows for the bed, as the former girlfriend took every pillow in the house -- even the throw pillows we'd had on the futon, that she hated -- when she moved. I brought my old pillows upstairs, and they'll now be used on the couch, which has since been draped with a very long, thick and heavy blue velveted fabric remnant that she'd left in her room for throwaway/donation.

There were other various little things as well -- picture hangers, a potato peeler, a standing slicer/grater, new scratch pads for the cats, an incense burner for the living room, sugar, and a needle and thread set, to name a few -- that I needed and purchased as well. There is but one item that the former girlfriend took with her that I have had an incredibly hard time being able to replace, and that's what one would refer to as a "hall table." It's a long, narrow table that's really high off the ground (like three feet or more). She had one sitting in front of our picture window in the living room, and took it with her because apparently her father had built it. That is something that's near impossible to replace because I can't find one in any retail establishment, online or otherwise, that's over 30 inches tall.

30 inches comes up to about my mid-thigh area. I want one that comes up to my waist, at least, as the bottom of the windowpane comes up about that high. This table was important because without it, there's no other piece of furniture in the house that's tall enough for the cats to sit on and look out the window. All of the bookcases she left behind are too short, and while the sewing desk she left me is tall enough, I'm going to leave that in the spare room so that I can use it as a "work desk" this fall. It's also heavier than hell.

So, I suppose I'm on the lookout for hall tables now. If I can find a really tall, moderately-sized one (read: big enough for three cats to sit on at the same time and watch the birds) then I'll probably get it, price be damned.

In other news, it's interesting to see how the new folks at school interact with one another as well as us older students. From what I've seen both in person and via Facebook, they've started to integrate fairly well, make friends, and make plans to go out together and socialize, with few exceptions -- if any.

And then there's me.

I am a second-year, granted, but even at this early stage of the semester year (after all, it's only the first day today) I'm already starting to realize that, yeah, none of these new people are going to get to know me very well. That's not to say that they won't try, of course, and that's not to say that I won't try myself or be receptive if they do, but even during orientation week and the activity I observed on Facebook over the weekend, I could tell that those new recruits who are good at making friends and/or wanted to buddy up with the second-and-third-year students have already started doing so, and were forming their own little friend groups much like I did at this time last year.

I see myself slowly slipping into my old habits I used to have in undergrad at WVU, and for many similar reasons. In undergrad, I lived at home with my parents, I had no car, and I was single for a good 90% of my undergrad career. Because I didn't live in Morgantown, but about 20 miles away, I didn't spend any "extra" time there with friends, and rarely socialized or did anything of the true "college life" sort unless I did it between classes or on days when I didn't have to work and only had one class (which was frequent). I still didn't enjoy much nightlife, because when my parents' day ended at work and my day of classes was over, I went back home with them.

This isn't to say I didn't have any college fun or hijinks; believe me, there was still plenty of time for sex, drinking beer for breakfast in the student union, and doing all sorts of other things that would probably curdle the blood of most of my family members if they knew (which is why they don't, and never will if I have any say in it). But, my point is, when my day was over, I went home and was alone in my room, with my computer, with long unruly hair and comic-book character t-shirts.

I started my college education ten years ago this month. Ten years ago. Where am I now?

Well, aside from being 1,000 miles away from West Virginia, I'm in much the same situation I was then. I still live 20 miles out of town, away from the school (24, actually), I still leave campus when I'm done for the day with little to no fanfare involved, and though I now have a car and no longer live with my parents, I do come home alone and spend more time in my room than I probably should, but now I do it with a newer computer and longer, more unruly hair, and right now I'm wearing a twenty-year-old Batman Returns t-shirt.

It's thoughts like this that keep me up in the middle of the night, like now, when I should be asleep.

I do not see this scenario changing much for the foreseeable future, either. I'm much too cautious and overall high-strung to go out and have fun socializing or drinking with my fellow graduate students, because I know that regardless of the outcome, I'll still have to drive home...twenty-four miles home. Strike one. Once I start drinking, if I'm having fun, I usually don't/can't stop until I get sick. Strike two. I don't want to know what strike three is, because it's probably yet another sign of alcoholism.

I also think I'm getting to the stage where I feel like I'm getting too old for this shit. I'm not the same person anymore that I was when I was an undergrad. I was, if you'll believe it, a pretty huge dick when I was in college. I didn't care about anything or anyone but myself, I screwed around, and I was an overall mean-spirited, loathsome person (with a heavy dose of mental instability to boot) to everyone but my friends. Yeah. There's a reason that my "exile" of sorts is more self-imposed than anything else. Unless I'm already in the process of doing so, I have no desire to get drunk and/or trashed anymore, and my personality has changed so drastically over the years that I don't even recognize the person I used to be anymore.

I'll turn 30 next year. I'm old. I get hangovers now. I'm done with the parties, the wild stuff, the wandering, the screwing around. It all just wears me out. I'm ready to settle down, do my job, finish my degree, and start a family -- leaving all of my wilder days in the past. Deep down, this is all I've ever wanted out of my life, and all I knew I'd want out of life at this point -- stability, security, and a family.

Most of these kids in the program, however, are fresh out of undergrad -- 22-24 at most. Some of them have been terribly sheltered (after all, this is Kansas), some of them are just moving here from out of state and want to continue the party, and some of them were born to be the life of that party. Most of them wouldn't understand my perspective if I tried to explain it to them, and certainly wouldn't understand the perspective I've gained from taking five years off between undergrad and graduate school -- five years that were spent in a stable, committed relationship -- without any debauchery involved in my life. I grew up, I matured, I went to work and paid the bills, and then came back to school. So, generally, even though I'd like to think that I'm fairly well-liked within the department (whether I truly am or not, I'll probably never know), I'm also seen as a sort of killjoy when I don't want to go out and do these college activities, even when invited to do so. In the worst-case scenario, I'm looked upon as being gruff, standoffish, and antisocial, which is far from the truth. I can be social. I can be very social. But trying to be social in those sorts of situations does not usually work out well for me. I'm just not that person anymore.

Realistically, I've found that slowly but surely, I've been giving up trying. Without the actual need to be on campus every day, I'm not there. Without the need to be there to wait on the former girlfriend to get out of class -- or, conversely, have her wait on me to get out of mine -- I'm not there. Not being there eliminates anything extra that I may be asked to do, and places I may be asked to go to with friends. So, you see, "the trashing" doesn't just refer to things around the house that need to be thrown away or otherwise removed from my life -- it's also a metaphor for my viewpoint on life now. Out with the old, in with the new -- even if the "new" is really the "old" me of being single, getting older, and dangerously skirting hermit territory. I'd like to think it's an evolution; I'd like to think I've grown up and finally become an independent man who is ready to leave his teens and twenties behind him for his responsible thirties, but even I'm not sure that's completely what it is.

Does any of that make sense?

Anyway. It's 12:30. I have to get up at 5 to start my day, get a shower, and teach my first two classes of the semester. In twelve hours, I will be done and should be able to come back home shortly thereafter, where -- if I don't pass out quickly after getting through the door -- I will update you here on the status of the book and tell you how those classes went.