I don’t know how to be a father.  I’m just winging it. 

I don’t know how to be a husband.  Winging that too. 

The days seem to come and go as battles – aggressions of chores, complaints, arguments, and insults.  It sometimes feels like I’m watching the world go by- its sunshine, interactions, and energy, from the inside of a storm cloud, with a little sliver for a window.  Motivation comes in brief, unexpected spurts, from time to time.  I do my damndest to harvest them, in hopeful pursuit of some creative energy, some feeling alive. 

My business helps.  Although spending long periods at a time focused on it feels impossible, it is at least a familiar place, that at this point is capable of sustaining life with only some nudging from me.  

My children help. They are innocent and have no idea.  But their smiles are like prophets for me, the sounds of their laughter a form of enlightenment.  They have no idea, I hope, of the fog I am lost in.  And I hope it stays that way. 

The world around spins at lightning speed, it’s inhabitants wielding an insatiable appetite for innovation, for power, for validation, for competition, for winning something, anything, whatever it may be, at all costs.  It’s dizzying.  Many voices inside me tell me to jump in, to join, to participate in this malaise.   And often the thought invigorates me, if only as a form of caving.  But usually I just stare, eyes wide open to the point of watering, until it all becomes even blurrier than it already is.  My mind jumps from desire to fog, to a gravity induced paralysis, the implications of not participating being pounded upon my temples with a mallet, clear as day, completely uninhibited.   The snowballing irrelevance of my own life, the smallness getting smaller still, mocking my unyielding and perverse ego with the grace of an Olympic diver.  Impressive. 

So this is what gravity feels like.  Am I on Jupiter? Or was 10th grade astronomy just omitting certain tid bits about the possibilities on Earth?  Hard to say. 

In the meantime, the sun set last night and rose up this morning.  So what do I know from a trunk of opaque feelings, a bunch of misguided attempts to move my robotic muscles, and a gray fog lost in its traversal of its endless shades.  

Tata for now …