This year, Daniel Day-Lewis starred in a musical with Fergie and Bob Dylan released a Christmas album. That's a crap year.

 Oh - I think I have the smell in my apartment narrowed down. I don't know what's causing it and I can't say exactly what it is but the epicenter seems to be in the bathroom.

Nobody in real life sing talks so that's what's wrong with musicals. You have to listen to the Bob Dylan album to hear what's wrong with it. 

The Recession's Over?

Economically, 2009 was crap and 2010 doesn't look too good. I've been searching for any and all types of employment in this area. I've applied for professional jobs that I have lots of experience in as well as general labour positions. Recently I've found about six weeks of work resurfacing some clay tennis courts. Even though this type of work doesn't pay a lot I really enjoy it. I've spent the last ten years as an IT admin and I don't miss frantic calls from users at all hours of the night telling me they can't get email. Resurfacing a clay tennis court is hard and tiring work but it doesn't crash at two in the morning.

Recently I applied to be a substitute teacher in the county that I'm living in. They have manadatory orientation meetings at which all potential candidates must attend once a month. I figured there'd be about twenty to thrity people at this meeting and we'd spend a congenial day joking with one another until we were put in the system and in a few days all of us would be called out to cushy sub jobs in which every student would find us fascinating and ecclectic  if not semi-nomadic Jack Kerouac-like characters who they'd like to emulate when they stretch into middle age.  Instead I was in a line with 150 other would be substitute teachers applying for the slim hope of some employed teacher taking maternity or sick leave. I looked around at the other business casually dressed folks crowded into the Okaloosa School Board County general assembly room and thought, 'Where's the soup line?'

Even the Superintendent of the Okaloosa school board could give us only a half hearted pep talk. She thanked us but told us to be realistic and to keep plugging away even if we don't find employment with the school board in the next few months. After my substitute teacher orientation I grabbed a quick word with the HR lady for support services. She's in charge of hiring custodians (what we called janitors when I  was a kid), bus drivers, maintenance, etc. I told her I'm looking for any type of work and she informed me that once I pass the background check she could probably get me work since I didn't think I was too fancy to drive a bus or push a mop.

2010 - the Road to Excellence

But it's a new decade. Let's not dwell on the past or even the slightly unencouraging present. I want to kiss this year good bye and map how I got here.

The year started out in LA. While running 50 miles on the island of Catalina I had an epiphany. I don't know if it was the fatigue of running in eighty degree heat but at around mile 45  I could no longer suppress the fact that I was not in love with my wife. Instead I was in love with a woman whom I met twenty years ago and had only seen once in the past ten years. That one meeting - a dinner we had a year and a half previous to this break down made me realize I was screwed. Before that dinner I had tried to convince myself that I wasn't in love with her and that my marriage could continue on it's same sexless nagging course until I died a completely unfulfilled person that had at least not gotten divorced. But when she answered the door every Elvis Costello song crammed into my earballs at once and for the first time in my life, emotions had the ability to make me feel ill for the next two days.

Still....I played my hand slowly. After the 50 mile run I stewed, planned, pondered but remained motionless. In April of 2009 I did a marathon with my sister in England. She was the first living human being whom I told my tale of longing and unhappiness. Of course, she knew of this years previous by the way I'd go on about my fiance and the complete and utter lack of affection or chemistry that my ex-wife and I seemed to have for one another. Over a pasta loading dinner the night before the marathon I told my sister that I was in love with my present fiance and had to get out of my marriage. Even though I was physically sick after dinner I felt great. In fact, I felt better than I had in years. I was in such a great mood that I slept little that night and was happy to have the job of helping my sister through a marathon so I didn't have to think about divorce.

Tear in my beer

Coming back to LA was difficult. I've never liked LA. It's not a city. It's a collection of strip malls and muffler shops interspersed with the odd palm tree. The city planners at the beginning of the last century who made the city what it now is should be dug up and forced to live in its present dog shit lined streets where a public park is not to be found and you don't walk anywhere unless you really want to see what a tranny prostitute is up to with some dude in a parked Lexus.

The divorce announcement was difficult but not a surprise to either one of us.

That brought me to the Emerald Coast where for the first few weeks I felt like I was living in a Hank Williams song all the time. Once here and my head was somewhat together, I told my fiance how I truly felt. How for twenty years I'd thought about her every single day and even when I didn't know where she was on the face of the earth or who she was with, I knew she was still really with me. 

We agreed that a trip to France was in order. A month was initially planned and that spread into as much time as international law would allow.

On the second day there I asked her to marry me.

And I felt like France and I got off to a great start. It's not a shangri-la but I love the lifestyle there. I love the slightly run down feeling that Nice has. I love the Old Port and the view from Mont Boron. I love the surrounding towns. And the food....

So now the New Year has begun. I know there will be frustrations this year. There's going to be lots of paperwork. There will be times when both my fiance and I will believe we've filled out and notarized the same form five times previously. Many meetings at embassies, consulates and Prefrectures. I'm also middle aged and jobless in the worst economy since the Great Depression but I don't care. I should... I guess but I don't. I'm finally with the person I'm supposed to be with. I'll work on the other things in 2011.