My Mini Autobiography

I have found myself stuck in a rut. I feel mentally overloaded. I don’t like it.

I finally graduated college in the spring of 2008. It took me an extra year because I spent my first semester of my freshman year screwing around. For some reason I seemed to think that college would be like my high school senior year; easy as pie. Turned out I was wrong. I finished my first semester with a GPA of 1.28. Oops. I nearly failed two of my classes and ended up repeating one of them the following semester, dropping another course to ease my workload and hopefully help transition myself into college. Just after my freshman year, I was already two credits behind. After that year, I withdrew from a class just about every-other semester.

Majoring in English, I had a bit of a mental breakdown in my second-to-last year of college, because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I would do after I graduated. Because of that, I made the hasty choice of switching into the education program—Secondary Education—so that I would be able to become a high school English teacher. Immediately after I made that switch, we had a winter break in which I applied to be a substitute teacher for my old school system. They called me up the day after I applied and I went in and taught a class. It figures; I hated it. I loved the days when I was called in for a teacher that forgot to leave a lesson plan; it was like hanging out with friends. Connecting with the kids was amazing. Teaching them was not. As soon as I got back to school for my last year of college, I returned to being a simple English major.

In my penultimate semester of college, I discovered that in my last semester I was going to have only one more class to take. I really didn’t mind that except for the fact that I couldn’t live on campus if I didn’t have at least three courses. My roommate was awesome, the friends I had made in the dorm were amazing, so I really had no choice but to take two electives to fill out my schedule. One of my electives was an art class, the other was a writing course, and that final class that I had needed was in Romantic literature. The only work I had to do was in my favorite things: drawing, writing, and reading. And as the icing on the cake, one of my classmates, who was also the editor-in-chief on the school newspaper, asked me if I would be their comics editor. I agreed, making sure that he knew I was graduating after that semester. It was a great way to finish off my college career; surrounded by friends and completely lax when it came to homework and responsibilities.

When I was living at home again, I had been moved to the basement. I knew it had to happen, because my room had been torn out the year before to make way for a new kitchen and dining room. I don’t mind the basement, beside the dust and the occasional bug crawling across the floor. It’s a wide-open living space, the floor is tiled and is routinely swept, and, with the exception of the rare overhead thump, is generally a pleasantly solitary apartment.

My grandparents live in town. They have lived in the same house for about sixty years. But around two years ago, while my room was being converted into a cooking and dining area in our house, my grandmother had been severely ill with pneumonia and was hospitalized for about a month. She had lost quite a bit of muscle-mass while at the hospital and spent another several weeks at a rehabilitation facility to try and get her strength back up before she was sent back home. She’s home now, but she hasn’t been the same since she was hospitalized. Her mind was always as sharp as a tack, but now her mind seems to wander and her memory is muddled. She always seemed fragile, but now she seems even more so, as though talking too loudly would shatter her. The poor woman gets frustrated so easily now; I’m sure she’s frustrated mainly with herself and how feeble she’s become, but she takes it out on my grandfather. Although I feel bad for my grandmother, I feel worse for my grandfather. He has always been a hearty man, as patient as even, cool and quick to make a joke or to spout off some terrible pun that ends up becoming funnier than it ever should be. My grandfather, afflicted with arthritis, is forced to care for my grandmother; a woman who seems to become less and less appreciative for my grandfather’s perpetual emotional and physical support. People have openly expressed their concern for my grandfather. They have all said that he looks more tired and weary than he ever has before. I’ve seen it too.

For those reasons, just about as soon as I had gotten home from school, my parents have been discussing an addition to our house; a suite for my grandparents. Theirs would be a rather large space, complete with their own bathroom, a small kitchen-like area, and a large bedroom and living space. Above them, we’re putting in another full bathroom and a new bedroom for my parents. Of course, I’m still in the basement.

Late in the summer, they excavated. Then they put up the moldings for the foundation. Then the foundation was cast. And then they put a floor on top of the foundation. Then they framed in around the floor. And then they put on the second floor. During that process, they had to cut into the side of the house so that they could join the addition to the headers of the current house. The cuts that they had made were right at the level of each of the floors. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that it decided to downpour one night while these cuts in the side of the house were uncovered and completely open to the elements.

I had been sleeping when I suddenly heard a noise that didn’t belong. It was a drip, drip. That snapped me out of my dreaming and I heard the same continuous drip. I could hear the rain pounding down on the bulkhead as it does when it rains. But the drip wasn’t in the bulkhead. It was inside the house. So I switched on my lamp and turned it toward the dripping noise. I didn’t see anything. I put on my glasses and there it was drip, drip, dripping onto the floor in a cool puddle. Running upstairs, I grabbed a few towels and headed back downstairs. While I had been getting the towels, the rain started coming down even harder. I tried mopping up what I could with the towels I had gotten, but now the rainwater was literally streaming down the basement wall, collecting at a rate that I couldn’t stop up or dam up by myself. I ran upstairs and turned on the lights, waking my dad, who was sleeping out on the porch (he likes sleeping out there when my mom is either snoring horrendously or on cool, rainy evenings when you can hear the rain pattering down onto the porch roof), and scooping up some more towels, and running back down the stairs without shutting off the lights. If I had shut off the lights, my dad would have gone back to sleep, thus ensuring that he would get up and help. I threw down the towels, cussing until my face was blue, while my dad made his way downstairs asking me what was wrong. I told him of the stream, which had turned into more of a river, running down the basement walls. It created quite the lake, which crept its way across the basement floor, soaking into one of the rugs, encroaching upon my stuff which was at the back of the room.

To make a long story short, my dad went out in the rain, stapling a tarp to the side of the house to keep the rain from coming in, while my mother and I cleaned up the brownish rainwater that was threatening to damage half of my belongings. The first things I made safe were my computers; one of my CPUs was sitting on the floor. The rest of the stuff we put into plastic bins or up on tables or onto the futon just to get it off the floor. We went through about twenty towels… twice. About halfway through our cleanup effort, my mom had to run the dryer. After all was said and done, nothing was ruined except for a thirty dollar rug that had grown mold. I was tired and frustrated after all that hubbub, and, although the problem had been rectified, I didn’t want to sleep in the basement; it was 3:45 in the morning. I was going to have to move my things out of the basement anyway, for when they cut through from the new foundation into our present foundation, so I decided to move my things onto the porch for the time being. All I really relocated were my computers and my Xbox and a bit of bedding. Our porch is equipped with a futon. I slept in a sleeping bag on the porch, and covered myself over with blankets to keep the heat in. Although the porch is insulated, it isn’t heated, so the nights could get pretty cold.

I think this is when I really slipped into my rut. I started sleeping out on the porch about a month and a half ago. I had moved my desk out there to house my computers, and I haven’t really had a living space of my own ever since that flood. After about two weeks out on the porch, I hadn’t been sleeping well, I had no internet connection, and even during the days it was cold out there. So I decided to pack up my computers and move them back indoors. My brother moved out of the house about two years ago. He’s been living in Gloucester with his college roommate. His roommate bought a condo right after he graduated and up until two years ago, Trav didn’t really care to move out, but something eventually persuaded him and out he went. He works in Gloucester, so it’s not a bad arrangement. In any case, his room has been vacant. I didn’t move my own stuff up to his room because I knew that I would have to evacuate that area before too long, so why go through all the effort? All the same, I decided to set up a workspace in Travis’s old room while I was sleeping out on the porch. At least then I could write and still feel my fingers after finishing a chapter. On one particularly cold night, I was feeling hopeful and crawled into my bed in the basement, but my plans were thwarted as I was up half the night sneezing and coughing—probably due to the mold and dust and the fact that few people had been down there for very long after it flooded—and so I had to sleep out on the porch again.

During this time, the construction has gotten along on the addition: the roof is now on, the walls are all up, and the windows have been put in. They’re getting ready to break through from the addition into the house and, again, I had to move my things. I decided that sleeping out on the porch wasn’t working out that well, so I have relocated everything down to the basement again. At least the addition has its roof so that I know it won’t leak down here again… and if it did, there were some serious problems with the addition. I took the mattress from my old bed and put it down on the futon and have been sleeping there ever since.

The problem I’m having with all of this is that I’ve been displaced for a month or more, getting bounced around from room to room, trying to find some place that I can call my own. Of course, my parents have had to clean out their room as well, seeing as the workers will have to break into their room very soon, but they’ve only been out of their room for a few days. Besides, they’re already established adults, so a displaced room probably means very little to them. And what I mean by “established adults” is that they’ve found what they’re good at and their sticking to their guns. I, on the other hand, have only recently graduated from college. I have no job, I have no car, this isn’t my house (it’s their house), and I haven’t found my niche in life. My dad, he’s a provider and an engineer. My mom, she’s the housekeeper and one hell of a cook. But me? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be. My brother graduated college and went straight to a job as an engineer. He and my dad are mechanically-minded people. I’m not. I’m a creative individual. I can’t be pegged. I try to figure out what to do with myself on a regular basis, but come up with no answers.

My dad was giving me a hard time today about the fact that I don’t have a job and that I don’t seem to be even trying to find one. [For the record, I do have a job. It’s part-time, but it’s better than nothing. I work at the town library and put books back on the shelves for them. I found that job pretty much immediately after my summer job ended, I submitted an application, but I didn’t hear from them for a while and I only started in October. But as I said, it’s better than nothing.] He’s right. I haven’t been looking for a job ever since that stupid deluge flushed me out of my living space. I’ve been having a hard enough time sleeping, let alone finding a full-time job. I can’t sleep because my mind seems to be just as cluttered and jumbled as all of my belongings are. I have plastic bins filled with this-and-that, things stored in plastic bags and piled up nearly to the ceiling. I’m sleeping in a partially dismantled basement. There are ceiling tiles removed and cables hanging down (some of the tiles were damaged or moved during the flood). Being in such a state of disorder for so long has given very similar qualities to my state of mind.

I lay awake at night, unable to sleep because of my constantly scattered thoughts. I try to wipe the thoughts from my mind, but I can’t. I’ve come to the conclusion that my sleeplessness and my wandering mind are largely due to the fact that my life for the past month or so hasn’t had any physical order or structure. A part of it is my living space. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been bouncing around from room to room with no consistent place to call my own ever since the flooding in the basement. Because of my being stuck in limbo, I have no place to really sit and settle my things, much less my mind. Besides that, I don’t have a daily job and therefore don’t keep regular hours. I work for two and a half hours on Tuesday and Friday mornings, but that’s really all the work I have, except when they call me in to do janitorial sub work at the schools. I think [and hope] that once I have a room to call my own again, I’ll be able to settle all of my things and then I can settle my mind enough so that I can actually sit and do a real job search without getting distracted and restless. This is the rut I find myself in. Unfortunately I won’t have a room of my own for another few weeks at least. Next week, I plan on relocating the rest of my once-room, and then the following week I’ll be in Florida. The main reason why I have to move my things out of the basement is because they’re doing a lot of plumbing and electrical work. And it figures that the space above my bed is right where all the plumbing and wires will be running through. I don’t expect that they’ll be done with any of that until at least the week after Florida, if not the week following. So as for now, I’m going to have to stay in this rut until further notice. I just wish I had a few definite dates that I could go by. I think that might help me sleep at night; just knowing exactly when things were going to be done or exactly when I need to be out of the way. It’s awfully exhausting. Let’s hope I can keep it together until this whole damn mess is settled.

On a more positive note, due to my sleeplessness and restlessness, I read Arthur Millers play, “Death of a Salesman” last night all in one sitting. I didn’t expect it to be uplifting… but at the same time, I really didn’t expect it to be just as depressing as it actually was. Note to self: don’t become a salesman.

Speaking of that, I really have no idea what I want to do as a job. What does a person do with a degree in English and a concentration in creative writing? To be perfectly honest, I enjoy working the night shift at Penn Brook. Being the only person there is extremely relaxing. There’s nobody there to tell you that you missed a spot or tell you that something else needs doing while you’re busy at work elsewhere. Maybe I’ll just be a janitor. But at the same time, that’s lots of work with little recognition. And the biggest drawback to the job is that it’s a night shift. It starts at 2 pm and goes until 10 pm. If I ever had that shift full time, I would have no life outside of work whatsoever. But at least it provides monotonous structure. Most people think that janitorial work is boring, but I actually find it fulfilling and relaxing. It’s fulfilling because you get to do something productive. At the end of the shift, you can look back at all the stuff you did and marvel at the cleanliness. I spend my time there working at my own pace, and due to the fact that it is monotonous, it gives me time to think. There seem to be few jobs out there where you can be working on something else while you’re doing your job. I mop the floors and think about my writing; the roadblocks I’ve come up against, new ideas, details that should be added here or there, and so on. I also really like working at the library. It’s a pretty laid-back environment, which suits me nicely. And you get to be around books all day. Books are pretty much my favorite thing of all time. The only real drawback of that job is that you have to deal with customers. Some of whom can be complete jerks, as most people, at least those of us who have worked in retail, can attest to. But as a whole, it’s really not such a bad profession.

Those are my most recent of working experiences. But when I talk to people and discuss what I would like to do with my life, I really don’t know what to tell them. Once they find out that I majored in English, they usually take a pause and then say, “You could always teach.” But as I have mentioned previously, I’ve been there. I’ve done that. No thanks. The other of the more obvious options is publishing. From what I hear, it can be a pretty high-pressure field once you’re in it and it can also be very competitive. If you know me at all, you know that I’m not the competitive sort. And in any case, I’d much rather get published than be in publishing. It seems to me that it would sort of be a conflict of interests if I were working in publishing while trying to get published for myself.

To be perfectly honest, what I want to do with my life is to publish my books and to be a stay-at-home dad. I know working a house can be hard work, especially when it comes to juggling children as well, but it’s really what I want to do. I want to raise my children the right way. I want to read them stories, tell them my own, go exploring out in the woods or out in a field. I want to play pretend and play dress-up and teach my kids how to swing a bat and throw a ball. I want to build forts out in the woods and build forts with cushions in the living room when it’s raining outside. I want to share their childhoods and revisit my own. Honestly, that’s all I really want.

And for now, that’s going to have to be enough.