The Bostonian Abroad

Wow! I am still here! Yikes! Who knows how long?? Maybe 8 more seconds, or maybe 100 more years!!

Life in middle management has been an oft-times bitter pill to swallow. Increased responsibility, longer hours, and dealing with more headaches--all while not getting a raise in salary ("lateral move," they said)--all contribute to a serious sense of unease, bordering on despair. Suffice't to say that the past year has been more stressful than I have had to deal with in over a decade, and it has left me feeling increasingly unhappy, angst-ridden, outraged, and just plain demoralized. Lately, and on an increasingly more emphatic scale, I have been looking towards my one and only real outlet for my frustrations: riding my motorcycle. I've ridden more than in years, I have formed an ad hock group of riders/motovloggers for a yearly meetup, I've bought a new motorcycle, and I've wrapped the "biker lifestyle" around myself like a blanket to defend me from the cold. After the bike purchase, I got myself a new jacket, new boots, a Harley biker wallet, c...

I first learned about Dr. Martens in 1992, when my friend Matt, who was cool as all get-out, was wearing a pair on campus at the small college I was attending in New Hampshire. The shoes were Docs, the 1460s, kind of shiny, and not the boots. When I got the chance, I had a pair of my own. Wearing Docs fit in with my developing darker persona in the early-to-mid '90s. I wore mostly black, listened to the Sisters of Mercy, wore an old Army-Surplus field coat, and was pissed off at the world. Living in Boston, and living without a car, I walked everywhere. The city streets are rough on footwear, and my jobs always required a lot of time on my feet, so the Docs were great! --Once I had them broken in. As a teacher, I liked that they were tough and comfortable and fit well with my lifestyle as a young ESL teacher on the make (if an ESL teacher can ever be said to be "on the make"). Then I moved to Fiji, and Docs did not work in that environment at all. They quickly molde...

As I lie here in bed with my dogs, I write this to maintain my active statusand not lose this page. Life has been great! Bike running great! Dogs cute! House tended to. Happiness in new friends. I am 45, chubby, limping, in pain, working, growing, and eager to continue living life to the best extent possible.

I recently discovered my father's brothers and sisters, and this discovery has brought into sharp relief the difficult fact that of my split Catholic/Protestant heritage. My Dad grew up the son of a Catholic woman, but he hated the Catholic Church. He married my mother, who was a Catholic, and I was baptized a Catholic as a baby. I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, but I have always identified with the Catholic Irish cause for self-governance. Ironic, since JW is a form of Protestantism. Now I find out that my biological grandfather was English, very Protestant, and went on to marry a Protestant lady in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. So let us recap: I grew up JW/Protestant, though I was baptised Catholic, and I am an Agnostic, but I am in favor of a free Ireland and ambivalent about Northern Ireland. My Mom was a Catholic, her dad was one, and her mom was one. As a matter of fact, my Grandfather came from a background of French Heugenots! Anyway, my Dad's mom was a cat...

Now begins the true middle age, the time period when I thicken and huff and puff climbing stairs and feel the creep of time on my very bones, the time when I rail against the loss of virility, and the time when I come to accept my own inevitable exit from existence. And so I seek to find my comfort, my purpose, and my motivation in this new period where the old attitudes no longer fit, kind of like my clothes. Shall I proceed to purchase a fast car or find a fetus girlfriend to "prove" my continued relevance in a youthful frame of mind, a kind of existential masturbation beneath people of my age but all too often fallen into. Time was when I thought of my job as not self-defining; I'd be aghast at the mere thought of my going corporate, middle class, GENERIC. I wanted to be the unique one, the one who bucked all trends and led the world to new heights -- a legend in my own time, a Hemingway wrapped in a Roosevelt, wrapped in a Ghandi. Ahhh, the dreams of youth. . . ...