Rainsounds

I've slept well recently, but the damn dog woke me up.

We're trying to keep her out of the bed because, as she's gotten older, she's started pissing in an ever increasing number of places, and the bed is one of them. When we woke up this morning, we found she had left a frothy stain on the comforter that went all the way down to the mattress.

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I missed both a UFC and a friend's fight tonight. Mostly this was for financial reasons, but it also gave J and me a night to ourselves. Since moving to our new home, we haven't had a single night alone, just to relax. We've both been so busy that we still went to bed early.

In general, I'm moving away from jiu-jitsu. I wanted to make at least a part-time career out of it, but I had some major disappointments this year when I was forced to the practical reality of making a clean dollar in that world. Training so much, at my age, means both constantly being injured in small ways and giving up nights.

Jess was getting tired of being alone night after night -- we're both early risers so that by the time I get home, she was already asleep.

I had invested myself so much in training that other aspects of my life suffered, particularly work, where I've continued to get paid very little at the warehouse. I have yet to solve the riddle of a career for myself.

Reordering that part of me involves reordering a sense of who I am, and it's not easy. No one can deny that the life of a lawyer, or a warehouse worker, or of a teacher, or of a writer, are all of a different order. By freeing up time, I also wanted to lubricate the wheel of fate a little, because it appeared that I was stuck.

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When I wrote on the farm, I was able to get away with a near total honesty. When I returned to Massachusetts, I couldn't do that anymore. This seemed hard for people to understand when I explained it to them, but I suppose it's because most people don't understand the nature of trying to write openly in that manner. They also might have been goading me into giving them the dirty. Fat chance, suckas.

There remain arenas where I can be open. I haven't told anyone at the bjj school I'm writing again, so I have leeway there. The guys in the warehouse are computer illiterate and probably illiterate in the classic sense as well, at least to some degree. So there's dirt to be found.

I didn't tell J at first about this because I wanted to generate some energy but she saw me reading an email from Howard and caught the line about me blogging again. I don't think she's read it yet, but that's because we were busy today buying shower heads and batteries and other odds and ends.

I managed to increase my own prospects today by buying a reading lamp at Big Lots. Up until now, I had to change places with J if I wanted to get reading done at night, since the lamp was on her side. Fortunately, she is a deep sleeper, and is quietly lying next to me now as I write.

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It's good that my biggest problem is not having enough time: not enough time to write, to train, to be with J, to read, to drink coffee. I like this hunger, or this feeling that despite whatever has happened, I'm still in a position where I would be happy with a few more hours a day.