Creativity, Reading, Love, Life

When Things are in Flux (Movement in Life)

Photo by Alexey Malakhov on Unsplash

Man: Things are BUSY right now. In a good way. A very good way. Most importantly: I’m getting married to a wonderful woman (and my very best friend). That’s October 14^th, 10am. That evening we’re flying on a redeye to Morocco for two weeks. We’ve been running around—she’s been doing the bulk of the work, honestly, but still; it’s a lot for me—creating and then sending out wedding reception invitations (11/19), discussing things with the wedding coordinator, preparing vows, organizing the ceremony with the officiant, who, and this is perfect, is my high school senior-year English teacher from the private Catholic college-prep high school I attended from 1999-2002 in Ojai, California, my hometown. (Still can’t believe I graduated high school over 20 years ago.)

Not to mention Britney did a four-day girls’ bachelorette vacation thing a few weeks ago; we went backpacking recently; I had to take care of my mom for a week in her house in Santa Barbara due to her second full revision knee replacement; our three cats and one dog are driving us crazy; and I have a 9-day trip to South America planned for three days after Thanksgiving; we have a trip together with my mother planned for Chicago just after that in early December; we just (insanely) got tickets for Thailand for February (mutual birthday gift); and we’re planning on moving out of Lompoc come summer (so in like 9-10 months) and it was going to be Chicago but now, due to the rabid crime, we’re considering leaving America [temporarily] altogether; thinking Spain or Portugal but honestly who knows.

And somehow between all of this she’s working fulltime and I’m trying to post regularly on Substack as well as work on a novel about my father’s cancer journey, while also voraciously reading multiple books. I feel like, your teens are just chaotic, wild and fun; out of control. Your twenties are a more self-aware, slightly watered-down yet simultaneously wilder version of that. Your thirties are—for my generation; read millennials—The Beginning of Real Responsibility, but also still wild and fun, yet less intense than your teens and twenties.

I’m 40.

At my age now it’s all about plans and discipline and regularity, and yet Britney and I both feel incredibly free. And why shouldn’t we? I’m coming off three years of Covid, Harlem NYC anarchy, depression, inner struggle, family struggle, and two years of on and off fulltime caretaking for my father culminating in his death at 77, far too young.

Britney has lived her entire life in Lompoc and she raised a son (now almost 18) as a single mother. Her family is here. Her son. She’s “of Lompoc” in the same way I am “of Ojai” and we’re all “of Place Where We Were Raised.” But she’s ready to go, take off, be free, feel unchained. It’s perfect, really. She’s 37. Many of her friends have little kids. She got a head start. Just like my mom, who had my older half sister in 1969, when my mom was just 19. She, too, was a single mother for a while. Britney’s son is living with his dad. He drives now and has a truck. He has a girlfriend. He’s in his last year of high school. He even got a job. Not bad. So there’s nothing holding Britney here anymore. Not that she won’t ever come back to visit. Her family’s here: Of course she will. (We will.) But there’s nothing holding her down here specifically anymore.

My mom is hesitant for us to go live abroad, for obvious reasons. She’s alone now, after 47 years with my father. It’s just her in that two-story house in Santa Barbara with the glorious view. My sister and brother-in-law are seriously considering moving to North Carolina in less than two years after my nephew flies the coop. He’s a junior in high school now. My niece is already in college up north.

I want to be there for my mom, of course, but she’s only 73 (next month) and now has two brand-new knees. She’s perfectly capable on her own, for now. She can visit. We can visit. The way Britney and I see it: We’ll go live abroad somewhere for 3-5 years, maybe, and then come back and live in Santa Barbara so we can take care of my mom. She’ll be in her later 70s by then. Perhaps 80.

But who knows. Man makes plans and God laughs, right? So much in life is totally unpredictable. We can make general plans but you always have to be open to change, because change is the one constant in life.

It’s challenging trying to be a novelist with all this stuff going on. And this is all stuff I’m happy about. This is the ultimate nature of life, at least for me: It’s all about dualities; binaries; that spiritual inner conflict. I want, on one hand, peace and quiet and the ability to just sit down and write. And read. I’ve been reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (challenging and enlightening); The Denial of Death by Dr. Ernest Becker (absolutely fascinating and totalizing); London Fields by Martin Amis (novel, 1989); Trollope’s autobiography (the man can tell his own life story brilliantly).

Finding the time to sit down and actually work on the novel is tough. I’m about 48,000 words in. More than halfway. And I’ve also gone through my 190,000-words of journaling from the period my father was sick. I read through the whole thing and sliced and revised and edited and cut it down to 146,000. I’m going to slice some more in a few months, after all this moving around. And revise so as not to piss off my entire family (haha; but seriously). It’ll have to get self-published or published on my Substack as two volumes.

All of this makes me sigh, not necessarily in a negative way, but in a tired way. Life is draining. For everyone, obviously, but especially for “people like me,” meaning sensitive artist-types. And alcoholics, even sober ones like myself. (Thirteen years Sept 24.) I remember hearing a woman in an AA meeting in Oakland years ago once say something like, Life is just harder for people like us. Meaning sober drunks. It’s true, in my experience. Add the artist-thing and it’s even worse. Britney works a regular 8-5 job. An 8-5 job!!! At this point in my life I can’t even imagine doing that. I’ve been a freelance writer/book editor for over a decade now. Before that I was living for a few years on savings I acquired from a bad car crash. So the last time I worked a “normal” job was in my twenties. (So many dead-end jobs I worked.)

So that’s my conundrum in life: How to do both; the yin and the yang; the good and the bad; the light and the dark. Jung wrote about the Shadow Side. This is healthy, normal, human. We all have it. In my current life all the stuff I mentioned above—marriage, travel, moving, writing, books, animals—is good, positive. But I feel like the other side of those things is wanting to be living in a cave somewhere in rural India, with only a computer which never dies, no internet, enough water and rice to survive, totally alone, away from mankind, and just writing The Great International [and/or American] novel.

But of course that’s a) just a pipe dream; and b) Not really what I want. I want a partner, which is why I’m getting married. Being in love is a wonderful thing. Britney and I do clash sometimes, of course. We’re both strong personalities. We both have egos and arguing skills. We both sometimes want to “prove we’re right.” Most of the time—but not all!—the fights start because of me. Either I start the fight literally or I do/say something dumb/mean/insensitive and it causes a reaction (understandably) in her. I know I’m a lot of work. I have some narcissistic tendencies. (Artist here, right?!) I can be pretty self-absorbed. I’m emotionally needy and constantly feel like I’m not getting all my needs met.

But there are positive qualities I bring to the table as well. Adventure, for one. We’re good for each other precisely because of how similar we are in certain ways and yet profoundly different we are in other ways. We both want to travel the world. We both have roughly more or less similar [basically centrist] political instincts. We both have pasts of hard-drinking, partying, punk rock, anarchy. We’re both hyper-independent with a small group of close friends. We both love books and reading and podcasts.

On the flip side: I’m an Artist, not very great with money; freelance and home a lot; bad at cleaning the house; comfortable wearing the same T-shirt for 3-4 days straight. Britney is much more practical, especially with money. She likes to plan our trips. She’s clean and precise. Clothing should be changed out every day. She drives half an hour to work and back each day. She’s really close with her large family; I’m mixed but not that close with my tiny one.

In these ways we compliment each other well. She drags me away from the edges of inherent wildness, and I pull her back from the edges of domestic life. The push/pull brings us basically to some sort of mutual center we both live together in. It works. It’s not perfect but what is? The idea isn’t perfection but fitting well and committing to each other no matter what. We both come from some significant trauma. We’re in couples therapy and it’s been helping. I’m not an easy person. I think with anyone I’d be difficult. Kind of just comes with the territory. If you want to know what I’m like look no further than my mother, who, predictably, I battle with on the regular and have since I had self-conscious awareness.

This is all what we call A Life. I’m grateful for it. And happy. Or: As happy as someone like myself can be. Through the rocky roads and twisting curves of existence it's incredible to have someone walking alongside me. I was alone before. And now I'm not. That is a celebration. And not just anyone. Britney.