Too many question . . . no answers

So, it seems like lately, there are lots of things that are making me unhappy.

Well, unhappy is maybe too strong a word. Annoyances, frustrations, uncertainties; I'm not sure if these are better terms either.

I haven't been blogging, because I'm not sure that anyone else wants to hear about these nagging doubts, these incessant gadflies, the little things that add up to a general sense of discontentment in my daily life. But, since I don't really have anything else I feel like talking about this night, I guess you're stuck with it.

I guess the problem is that I feel, just, locked in. Like I've settled in to a life and it would be just too much trouble to try and break out. And then there's the fear. Frankly, it's not fear for myself. But I feel like I have to maintain this lifestyle for Michelle's sake. She says that she doesn't care, that all of these things we enjoy and spend money on are not that important, but she seems happy. Or maybe that's a front as well...

Take, for instance, our house. Now, it's a lovely house. And I like it. When we first moved in, I LOVED it. But over the last few years, the polish has worn off a little, and I see all the little things that I was too inexperienced to realize at the time would drive me nuts. Like the slope of the yard that makes it impossible to sit in a chair on the grass. Not that you would want to, because it faces the west and heats up to a thousand degrees every afternoon as soon as the weather warms up. Or the multi-story thing. Which I thought would be super fun, not having grown up in a house with multiple stories. But it's impossible to control the temperature correctly between the upstairs and downstairs.

Or the fact that, now that I have to live in it, I realize that a blind chimpanzee was responsible for designing the layout of the living room. And then there's the neighborhood.

It's a great neighborhood, don't get me wrong. And I thought it would be great to live there. In fact, when I was a kid, this is exactly the kind of neighborhood that I dreamed about living in. But I'm not a kid anymore. I don't have any friends to ride my bike down the street and hang out with. Everyone here is either much older than us, or they have little kids, and we have nothing in common with them. I dream of having a cool couple move in next door who are looking for another couple to hang out with on the weekends. That's a whole 'nother post, though...

The point is, here I am living in the suburbs, like I dreamed about as a kid. I grew up in the sticks, and couldn't hang out with any of my friends, because they all lived in town and during the summer I was mostly isolated. It wasn't until I was a teenager and got a car, that I could really got out and do stuff with friends.

Okay, so I should get to the point before you all completely abandon this post.
Except, I don't think I have a point.

Well, okay, here's the point. I hate living in the suburbs. I feel like such a tool living here. I come home and pull into my cul-de-sac after a 45 minute commute, and I have to weave around all the cars, because everybody here has, like, three cars in parked around their house. I feel closed in, with my tiny yard, my tiny garage, my tiny driveway. I just long to fell open space around me.

And that's my first conundrum. What do I do about it? Part of me thinks it would be cool to sell the house and buy a really overpriced apartment downtown. Would it be open spaces? No. But at least then, I would feel like I was more connected to the city. I could walk to the grocery store. Take the bus to work. Walk down to the clubs and hip restaurants, and not have to worry about driving home. And perhaps we could afford a little honeycomb up in the sky, where we felt like we could look down on the world and just take it all in.

Or we could look for a place far outside of town. Fifty or sixty acres, full of trees , with a couple of ponds, maybe a creek. Someplace I could raise some horses, or maybe some little burros. Or even goats. I could really have a reason to drive a pickup. I could buy a tractor. I could go out on my porch in the evening and smell the dew coming up on the grass; feel like I could really put down roots and make a life. Build something.

But instead of either of those, I am stuck in the middle. Stuck in suburban hell. Stuck in mediocrity. And that's the way I feel about my whole life right now. And I don't know what the frak to do about it.

Perhaps this is not the right place to vent these issues. I'm not sure you guys really want to listen to my shit. But there it is. It's what's going on in my brain right now.

Thanks for listening.