2008: A Shit Odyssey

As I sit here at my desk, drowning my sorrows in Teddy Grahams and Reese’s Pieces (two great tastes that taste great together), it occurs to me that I haven’t updated my blog since New Year’s Eve. Well, there’s a reason. To be blunt, 2008 has sucked balls so far. I can’t recall a worse month in my entire life.

2008 started off with a bang on New Year’s Eve. My 14 year-old son Isaac and I had a fight, and he moved out. I should mention that he was living with me half the time, and with his mother half the time. He’s now living with her full time. Christ, I never thought something like this would happen. I mean, you go through your life, and you take certain things for granted. I always assumed my kids would stay with me (in fact, I kinda thought they’d end up living with ME full time at some point). Isaac and I have had our clashes here and there, but I didn’t expect this. It’s been almost a month, and I still don’t quite believe it. I’ve talked to him a few times since, and he’s now expressing an interest in visiting me on weekends. Visiting! I’ll now be the “weekend dad” I swore I’d never be. It’s been a paramount goal of mine to always be there for my kids, and to be a good dad. Well, I’m clearly not the great dad I thought I was if my son only wants to “visit” me. This has been heartbreaking, to say the least. Nothing in my life has been worse.

And then there was the Amazon writing contest. Note that I said “was.” Yeah, my novel was rejected in the second round. So much for that. Seems inconsequential next to the Isaac situation. Everything does, actually.

So let’s recap: I’m not the great dad I thought I was, and I’m a failure as a writer. I’d drink to forget, but my goddamn gout acts up whenever I drink too much (I spent most of last week limping around like a fucking gimp). I put in 8 hours a day at a job in which I literally have twenty minutes worth of work to do each day (which therefore results in intolerable levels of chronic boredom). My convertible leaks, and it’s been raining like crazy. 2008: A Shit Odyssey, in spectacular Technicolor 3-D, now playing exclusively inside my head, over and over, darkening my moods, invading my thoughts, depressing the hell out of me. All I want to do is sleep, but I can’t even do that for more than a few hours at a time.

And hey, this is only the first MONTH of 2008. What other horrors await me over the next eleven months?

My 20-year high school reunion is this year. Oh Christ.