A month

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of my arrival to Irving.

What has changed in that month?  A question answered in 3 parts - work, interpersonal, and self.

Work
Of the pieces of my life, work is the one with a positive trajectory.  I took over a team of good people who had suffered from not having leadership or direction.  I provided both, and we accomplished more than expected.  I have carved out a distinct place for myself in the new office, and I am doing very well.

Without going into details, which would make no sense without some training in my position, I am content to say that work is in a great spot.  It's work, so that can change on a dime; but lacking any control of those changes I will continue on the present track.

Interpersonal
Going as expected, which is to say horribly.  I have no contact with people outside of employees of business I visit, people on my team at work, and people at work who are trying to get something out of me.  That's it.

I speak to the kids on the phone, and Rick online, and occasionally a text with a sister or somebody in Arizona.  But I got nothing.  And I don't know how to change that.  It drags on me, but I am at a loss how to improve it.

Self
I should be exercising daily.  Walking daily.  I am not.  The motivation eludes me and the longer I go the worse my back is, the more my joints ache, the worse I eat.  I have done a good job on weekends at going out and doing some urban exploration.  I am learning the town but to what end I do not know.

I am stuck in neutral.

Or reverse.

But this is life.  2018 has been rough.  I made a choice and now try to adjust.

Or give up!

Haircut

Haircuts have had a funny place in my adult life.

Let me first say that I don't particularly care much for longer hair.  The more I have to take care of it, the higher my irritation level.  However, the act of getting my hair cut is something that combines a bunch of the things I dislike and makes me pay for them.  Talking to strangers, being touched by strangers, staring at myself in a mirror, and the choice between inane conversation or awkward silence.  So I end up in a place where I am bothered by the increasing length of my hair until that bother overcomes my natural aversion to getting it cut.

But that's not the funny place haircuts have had.

Haircuts have occasionally aligned with a significant life change over the years.  The first time I really remember this is when I lost my first adult job.  I had taken a day off to get a tire changed and get my haircut when I got a call from my boss.  Our office had been shut down by the parent company, and we were all immediately unemployed.  I was quite unhappy with this news, and then made it worse by getting a haircut.

Second time was the day my first wife moved out.  We were separated and I was living in an apartment close to work, suffice it to say that things were not well between us.  I had planned a visit with the kids and......a haircut before heading home.  I showed up at our house, and it was empty.  She had packed up most of our stuff and disappeared with the kids.  I sat in an empty room for about an hour not sure what to do.  I did not get a haircut that day, it was postponed until about 10 days later when I found out where my kids were.

This most recent time was almost exactly a year ago, on a Friday evening in August 2017.  I went out dinner with some work colleagues who in town from Kentucky.  At dinner, I joked that my hair was really bothering me and Saturday I would be getting a haircut.  While my hair was relatively short at the time, it WAS August in Arizona and any hair was miserable in the heat.  On the way home I called my wife, as usual.  She told me that during the day she had moved out of our house and lied to the kids about where she was going.

This one hurt.  The reasons why and how that developed is a story for another time.  But this event cascaded on me.  I had to leave my house and move into an apartment.  My youngest daughter moved in with her mom.  I accepted a job offer in Texas I honestly would not have had I still been married.  I had to get rid of my dogs.  And I ended up in Texas with my family not in Texas.

And during all of that, I did not cut my hair.

So it got long.  My bangs could be pulled to my chin.  The back was somewhere on or below my shoulders.  And I didn't want to get a haircut.  Honestly, it felt like getting a haircut was somehow accepting or approving of the spiral I was on.

So haircuts.  Boo.

A couple of days ago I went and did my hair cut.  This probably isn't very interesting to anybody but me - but getting it done ended up a catharsis for some of the negativity I've been holding on to.  Not the way I feel about being here, or not being with my kids.  But certainly of the unfairness of how this started.  And I didn't expect that.  Somehow in my brain, the haircut had gotten all tied up with my ex-wife leaving, and the collapse of my stability that went with it.

Here's a picture of some of my cut hair.  Maybe I can find a way forward after all.  Only problem is - I'm out of hair to cut.

Exile

One week ago today I got in a U-Haul and started driving from Arizona to Texas.  The decision to do so was easily the most difficult choice I have ever made, because it meant I left three of my kids behind.  And now I live in Irving, Texas.  A city in which I have no friends, no family, no acquaintances.  For the first time in over 20 years, I am alone.

I wake up in a strange city, get dressed in a quiet apartment, drive to work on unfamiliar roads, work with strangers, return to an empty apartment, sometimes eat a solitary meal, then go bed.  As far as lives go, I should not complain.  Each time the urge to whine rises, something in my mind reminds me of the truly bad lives I've seen.  Gypsies in Spain living in squalor, homeless men and women squatting in shade under the Arizona summer sun, third world countries where being left alone would be a blessing.  So this is not a complaint.  I am grateful for what I have.  But I am also gray.

Gray is a term I heard somebody use to describe her life.  She defined it as "not happy, not sad, and not fulfilled".  And that is how I feel, empty and flat.

How do you establish anchors when you find yourself in this situation?  Once upon a disappointing past, I would rely on my religion to give me the door to human connection.  Today that is not an option that I will take, as the cost is too high.  How do you make friends from scratch?  How do you develop a social circle?

I write here, in a blog I signed up for years ago and never used as a way of communicating how I feel.  Maybe I can figure myself out through the written word.

Nothing else has worked to this point.