i've decided to give up on any outside
interests.

thanks for all your kinds those of
you who visit here. but it is all
distraction. i was never meant to be
happy and fulfilled. it is not my lot
in life and i realize that now.

all there is is work

What it does to people....

When I was a kid, still living back in Bridgetown,
that's in Nova Scotia by the way, the train still
came through town. Sometime in my early teens
they yanked it out and the old railroad ties sat
around in rotting piles for years. My father salvaged
some of the spikes and painted them for me. I still
have them in the bottom of a box somewhere.

Anyway, the train would come through twice a day.
We used to live six houses up the street from the
tracks so you could hear it no problem. I used to
go down and watch occasionally as kids tended to do.
Trains always fascinate boys for some reason.

There was a guy there almost all the time. I thought
he was old, but in retrospect he was probably just in
his 40s. But he looked old in the eyes of a ten year
old. He also had the far-away stare that people get
when they got something wrong with them in the head.
Vacant. And he had a grey-peppered beard, not bushy
but medium length. I can still hear this gentle quiet
voice of his. He would ramble on about trains and how
he liked them. He would just talk and talk, not really
caring if you listened, but the way he looked at you
and talked to you, you felt as if you had to pay
attention to him because nobody else would. In the
city, there's one on almost every street corner.

He seemed to always be there. Until he wasn't. I don't
remember if he disappeared first or the trains. It made
sense that he disappeared after the trains as it seemed
to be the only important thing in his life. The only
thing that kept him going.

I was later told that he had been a mathematics professor.
I don't know where he had been though. People in small
towns, like my hometown, don't really know those kind of
things. All universities are about equal. They're all
"away". Apparently, he had been brilliant. And then
he cracked up. Cracked up and moved back to his parents,
although I don't know who they were either. He had been
one of those "smart" people that had made good, got out,
and then just lost it. Went "simple" as would have
been said in a small town. I may have been told that he
overdid it on acid, but I might be misremembering that.

Being the "smart" kid growing, that's always haunted me.
To this day, especially more so since I've started
this job, everytime work or school stresses me, pushes me
further and further, to the edge of what my mind can take,
I think about that guy. That guy watching the trains come
in, all by himself on the train platform.

And, now more than ever, I'm frightened to become that guy.
And I'm closer to it now than I have ever been. The "smart"
guy that made good, got out, and then just lost it.
Watching trains roll in, day after day, until there are no
more trains.

FINAL POST

there will be no more posts....
i don't have time and i do nothing
but complain ....

FINAL POST?

i had said a bunch of stuff here a few
minutes ago. forget it, i deleted it.
i'm tired of complaining all the time
so i won't post here anymore.

i don't know what will happen next.
the options are: to struggle on until i find
a better job back home, or struggle on until
i have a psychotic break, or just quit and
move back to bridgetown. i'm not sure
yet waht i'm going to do. but either
choices scare me to death.

i'm close to something big though....