This involves getting outside the characters characterized characteristically on this here blog -- the ones you have grown to laugh with (hopefully). Yes, let's leave the slightly Costanza-esque Herbiberous and the always cantankerous Oil Can behind for a just a few paragraphs and let us traverse into parts unknown.
It's presently November 14 and I can't think of a more depressing day of the year (other than the literal darkest day - Dec. 21). Winter has finally settled in, every day gets shorter and the mercury won't rise again for six more months.
Earlier this evening, over wings and a beer, I couldn't kick the restless feeling. It doesn't feel like I'm doing anything new or else I've just sunken into the predictable work-afterwork activity-home routine and can't break from it.
And I think it may be evident to you from this blog -- my life and the things I'm writing can't be as interesting as they used to be a couple months ago... I mean, Burton Cummings for fuck sakes. What is that all about?
In Iqaluit, I was encountering something new with every venture out the door, with every conversation at a coffee shop, with every bite of food. New thoughts and entertaining stories bursted out from nothing, from mundanity. A drive from the river to Apex filled me with excitement. That's why I started this thing, because I had so much to write about and many of the people I wanted to share it with in Yellowknife.
Now I'm back and the feeling of adventure is definitely not something I'm getting in Yellowknife right now. Call it fatigue from familiarity. But I find that even while I'm learning new and interesting things at work every day -- like how tuberculosis is more a social disease than medical, due to its higher rates of infection in poorer populations that tend to have overcrowded and poorly ventilated housing; or how this kooky thing we call government works -- I'm still finding myself at home at the end of the night and my days kind of just look like blah. I'm coming home tired with no funny stories to tell.
It feels like if someone I don't know comes up and starts talking to me, I don't have the patience to oblige in conversation and I kind of kindly just walk away. It's as if I don't need to know this person, because I already know enough persons here. But then I'll have nights at the Monkey Tree where I'll shake hands all night but not talk to anybody for more than 30 seconds.
Tonight at the Elks, this old guy walked over to me and the Lion and started telling a story about working for the city in Prince Rupert and how they made him work outside the liquor store landscaping and on hot days people would say "Hey, so-and-so, you're working hard. Here, have a drink." and he'd say "Okay." and so he'd punch in sober in the morning and clock out drunk at the end of the day, and when his superiors found out, they moved him to somewhere he wouldn't be able to get a drink: the graveyard. The story was great, and he laughed big time after the punch-line, and I laughed too. And it's not something I do enough here. I don't listen to peoples' stories. I get too cozy doing the same-old same-old because it's so easy and I gravitate toward laziness. But I've had way too many shitty walk homes from the Monkey Tree cursing myself for not being creative enough to find challenging or new ways to spend my Friday nights.
I do not have the attitude I have when I'm traveling when I'm home. If I meet someone from out of town, I say hey and tell them where to go and that's it. When I'm traveling, I have time for anyone.
I love this place but...
This attitude has to change.
Or I think it's time to leave.
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