Painted Desert

Painted Desert

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Nothing is happening


I am writing to you from downtown Denver to tell you that nothing is happening. Today I just sent off a signed lease for the next six months to my landlord. This date had hung in the air before me for half a year; I'd originally asked for a six-month lease at the end of last summer, rather than a year, because I was hoping to find a job that would allow me to move downtown. And I got one. And so I told myself, I will wait and make sure the job is a good fit, and that I can afford it, and then I will move. In February.

But the job was too strenuous and too hard on my back, and so I went down to part-time, and now I cannot afford to move. So I have signed another six-month lease and we will see where I am in August. It was hard sending out the papers as it was the tangible evidence that my goal hadn't worked out. But soon I'll have forgotten.

Nothing is happening. I now work a paltry 2-3 days a week (long shifts, often on weekends, so that I am gone from 5 in the morning till 7 at night), and the sudden onslaught of loose time has left me confused in the same way that going from unemployed to full-time at a high-pressure job had also left me in some shock. Unfortunately it's difficult to take a volunteer job right now, as I work different days each week. I often need to be going to bed about the time my friends are free. I have been left in the clutches of the demon of free time, a commodity I only ever want when I'm unhappy with whatever is making me busy. Whenever I have it I seem to be trying to get rid of it.

I have coped with this situation by working out at the gym a couple hours a day, which I am sure is going to make me a stunning physical specimen, but my usual time-killer--hiking--has been made less appealing by the fact that it's freezing out.

Still, I have gone out on a couple adventures. So here is what has been happening when nothing has not been happening. A hike around Barr Lake state park, which hosts a great deal of avian life:


Ice in the foreground, mountains in the background.

One of several bald eagles I saw.

The west side of the lake was very calm at dusk.

My brother, who is now a truck driver, made a stop in Denver and I went to see him at the truck stop.


One day I went snowshoeing at Berthoud Pass. I went up to a ridge. It started snowing.


So then I came down.

On Valentine's Day a friend of mine got me flowers because I'd been talking about never having spent a Valentine's Day with a significant other--I was always either single, or they weren't around.


This was very nice.

That is all that has happened since my last post.