Splashdown

  Everyone belongs to a statistical club.

  Of course, the statistic is never the full measure of a person - I still consider most math and numbers part of the Axis of Evil - but if I were a statistician, I'd almost like to think a person's numbers is like a membership in one exclusive club or another.  Sorta like the Yacht Club. Or the Stonecutters.

  For instance, I'm part of the "Young Author" club, very exclusive, as only one in ten people will ever write a book in their lives, let alone two.  I'm part of the "Divorced by 30" club, a little more populous, as four in ten first marriages will end in divorce in Canada.  You can also throw me in for the Canadians of Trinidadian and Tobagonian ancestry, 50,000 people and counting, representing 0.15 of the Canadian population.  Of that, I'm one of only two authors in this group - Neil Bissoondath being the other - and may in fact be the next Ian Hanomansing if my acting and TV work progresses well. 

  And, within a few months, I'll be joining another growing club, one which includes 41% of the population aged 18 to 36 in its membership: the Boomerang Club. 

   Friends, Romans, Countrymen...I am moving home.

   (And yes, I'm aware I didn't provide accurate citation format for those numbers.  Citations are for Democrats.)
  
   This is a tough decision, but it's a necessary next step to accomplish some of my bigger life goals. 

   Normally, this is the point that I spend a ton of time and wordspace justifying my decision.  Strangely, I could give a crap what people think about this today.  My one year lease is up at the end of February, and while I could leave it alone and go "month to month" on my apartment, there is a window of opportunity to walk away.  And walking away is what I'm going to do.

   I've been living away from home for a decade now.  I moved out to live on residence in 2000, moving back home for the summer of 2001 only to head back out to my apartment with my ex for our third year at McMaster.  I've been away from home ever since. And, of course, for the past year, I've been living completely on my own. 

   It was all time well spent, and with a few tiny exceptions, I have no regrets about my independent living.  At this point in my personal development, it's hard to go back and say it was for nothing.  It all served a purpose, and just like other parts of life that have fulfilled what they were meant to fulfill, it's time to let it go....

  Okay, I can see this won't get much further than flowery New Age affirmations without some more concrete explanations.  And there are two: I need more spending cash now on things other than renting a place where I spend most of my time sleeping; and freeing up my apartment enables me to not feel like I'm held hostage by my current day job.  Now to explain the explanations.

   The advantages are clear: more money means debts paid, savings boosted, vacations - the type of travel I spent all my twenties fantasizing about but never actually got to do - and more of the material "stuff" that I've gone too long without. 

   Moving home with the 'rents and my sisters isn't a permanent thing. Frankly, our egos are all too big and our lifestyles too different for that to be sustainable for too long. It will also involve some commuting to work for a while. The disadvantages are clear. But whether I go home for four months and return to a cheaper rent, or whether I stay there a year, I'm still going to have to take this first step regardless. This simply happens to be the time that the opportunity has presented itself.

   Then there's the matter of my work anxiety.

 I suppose this is mostly my fault.  After all, I've been trying to find my niche in the economy for the past five years, ever since I got my first full time job.  Each time, I found something to complain about, and in two such cases, it was enough for me to leave the position altogether.  However, just as the Boy Who Cried Wolf learned to his regret, I'm now being serious when I tell you that this position is starting to undermine my self-confidence.  I simply am not a "fit" where I am, and everyone senses it. It really is only a matter of time before my bosses turn their full attention to replacing me.  The wolf is gonna get me sooner or later. Serious this time.

  Moving home provides immunity against my fear of losing everything in the event that they go for the "sooner" option. It gives me flexibility and a sense of freedom that I'm not risking everything by speaking up and speaking out. It will remove the feeling that I must stay put in a job, give me the feeling of freedom to pursue other opportunities.  There's nothing worse than feeling trapped.

   Moving home also lets me interact with more people in my day-to-day who aren't work colleagues.  Much of the time, the only people I interact with are the ones who are busting my butt.  I get chewed up, spat out, and made to feel like an idiot all day, and then I go home to an empty apartment, stressed out with no one to talk to.  Hanging out with friends helps, but it's not enough.

   My family, for our differences, is my tribe, my community.  I can at least go home and interact with a group of people who I know love me unconditionally, who believe in me, who appreciate my abilities, and who have much the same living conditions I do: very clean, no big parties, no drugs or alcohol floating around, no debauchery.  Some guys can feel at home in a party house: I'm not one of them. 

   And yes, moving home gives me the freedom to quit, if it comes to it, and still have a place to sleep. Some of my former in-laws and friends somehow managed to take the two instances in my otherwise uninterrupted 14 year work history where I quit jobs that were making me unhappy and declared me "unable to hold a job".  As such, I've had an axe to grind in putting up with the crap in my current workplace.  But it's making me miserable and the concerns of former in-laws and former friends are pretty low down on my priority list.  Moving home opens up the possibility of a rest period while I pursue other opportunities.

  Of course, my apartment is lovely.  It's in a great neighbourhood that I love, with good, friendly neighbours, and I do love where I currently live.  Most importantly, it is mine.  But I get the sense that this place has served its purpose in the greater scheme of my own life.

   Had I decided to move home a year ago, when my marriage ended, I would have felt all the more the failure.  I had another axe to grind: I had to show to myself that I could survive completely on my own.  Now that axe is pretty sharp, and I don't need to worry about proving my ability to live independently to others, or myself.  I can go home knowing that I'm able to come back out here again when I choose to.

  Had I not moved here, I doubt my book would have been finished, or turned out the way that it did. Burlington is a nexus of prosperity and a high quality of living, and the downtown around Brant and Lakeshore provided me with prime inspiration for my protagonist's own life, even if it's not by name.  An artist needs a vibe of prosperity, and that's what I got while I was here.

 Had I not moved here, I never would have taken that walk through the vendors at Ribfest and gotten involved with Film/Comm Talent, starting this new journey.  Had I not moved here, I never would have dated that girl who lived around the corner, and had that kiss that really renewed my own feeling of worth as a good partner. 

  Make no mistake.  This place helped manifest the best case scenario in a transformative year.

  But now, I am here, and the things I want to accomplish require me to say goodbye to Burlington, with thanks.  This will be the first time I'm leaving a place that I'm still in love with, heart and soul.  As I said, one of the toughest decisions I've made in recent years, and those years have had their moments, that's for sure.

  Too often, we hold onto things that served us in the past when they're well beyond their expiration date.  That doesn't invalidate their previous benefits: just means you need to get a new carton of milk is all.  

  Ironically, by choosing to pack it in for a while and go home, I feel even more empowered than I thought I would be, because it's a clear choice that I am making for myself.  In so doing, I avoid joining other statistical clubs: the Society of Working Poor; the I've Never Seen Europe Support Group; not to mention the Ancient Mystic Society of Unhappy Office Workers. 

  This isn't a failure to launch.  This is a deliberate de-orbit, a time to come back to earth for a while for a refit, so that I can land among the stars the next time I head up there.  And reach them I will.

  Splashdown's in two months.  Time to get ready.

Ordinary Stories

   More entries coming soon, but I've been mulling some things, and that I'd like to mull about out loud to the Internets.

   Inspired by a recent entry on Julius' blog, I've been doing a lot of thinking about this blog's many autobiographical qualities.  As a rather direct chronicle of the past year, Dispatches and its previous incarnation, Jody's Quarter Life Adventure, tells the story of my renaissance, my new start in life after my divorce, and the new experiences I've had since.  Really, though, even the past year, the past decade, is but a part of my life overall. And I've had some interesting episodes to say the least.

   Like Julius, I'm fascinated and baffled by the motivation that inspires ordinary people to want to share their life stories with those who would listen, even those who could care less. Then again, some of the most interesting people I've learned about in the past year include Allie Brosh, who I've only learned about through her blog and who has really made me feel more all right with my own eccentricities (she has them too, and so do most of her 30,000 readers).  Though I only have 13 "official" followers, I know many people read my entries, and take something away from them that helps them.  That's my hope, anyway.

   Every person's story has to have some value outside of that person's own life.  You can't break everything down into objective, quantitative terms: do we all have to be John Nash to deserve to have our stories told? Howard Hughes? Temple Grandin? Out of six billion lives on the planet, does no one else have value? 

   If life has no inherent meaning - which I believe it doesn't - and if it's thus contingent upon us to assign meaning to it, then ultimately there are no ordinary stories. Very few boring stories: just maybe boring storytellers.


  Poignancy exists, and joy, in the words of obscure writers, of which I'm still one, though I hope it changes.  In the meantime, interesting, ordinary stories are everywhere.  And though they're each unique, they are also shared human experiences.

  A 21 year old woman in Britain is diagnosed with terminal cancer, so she moves up her wedding to her fiance in the hope of creating "the best day of her life".  But it's such a common tale - touching, heartbreaking, deeply rich in human experience - that when I google "terminally-ill bride" to get the link for the story, I find numerous other entries for different people touched by this same kind of transformative experience.  I first see the story on Yahoo! News one day, and I remember it.

   A few days later, I hear this song on the radio, and the vision of one such dying bride falling into the arms of her new husband and choosing this song for their first dance plays out in a cinematic high definition in my mind's eye.  And it's so poignant it hurts.  Imagine a moment of such...honesty, to be among those teary-eyed guests in the presence of two people, savouring each instant of time with each other before an end that could come anytime. 

   I just made that moment up, true.  But these real-life human experiences happen all the time.  And many of us never hear about it, save for those who are witnesses, and those who choose to share.

  How many of us have failed to be transformed by stories worth hearing because we never heard them?

  My experiences aren't, for the most part, all that dramatic, but they are notable, and over the next few weeks, you'll start seeing more accounts of my 29th year.  This has been so transformative for me, someone has to benefit from my story, even if it's just me telling it, and knowing someone else is reading it.

  That's the hope, anyway