Reflection in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

Yesterday, I got a lot of comments about finding meaning or creating meaning in my life. I ruminated on this for a while. Finally, this morning… I realized something.

Through my life until I left high school my life’s meaning was fairly easily seen.
(1) Entertain others via comedy, theater, improvisation, and mime
(2) Get the best grades that I can to please my parents
(3) Get as fast as I could in swimming to please my father
(4) Explore and build a romantic profile in an attempt to find a wife
(5) Save my friends that were succumbing to underage alcoholism and drug addiction.

After High School and going through college my meanings remained and altered
(1) Entertain others via comedy, theater, improvisation, and mime… until I couldn’t get cast in anything. Then it became select a new major.
(2) Get the best grades that I can to please my parents… until my body shut down on me. Then it became discover what is wrong with my body.
(3) My physical goals started as dance focused… I wanted to continue dancing and learning new dances. But as my body shut down from pain, that became impossible. The goal became survive, never surrender to disability.
(4) Explore and build a romantic profile persisted but with the underlying push of find a wife.
(5) Try to meet new friends without being drawn in to drugs, alcohol, or sex.

After I left college (then quickly left my horrid job as a telemarketer), I wound up at Best Buy Full Time while studying for the LSAT. My goals remained… but slightly changed.
(1) Study for the LSAT
(2) Get in to Law School
(3) Prove to yourself and others that you have what it takes to survive on your own
(4) Entertain others through comedy and jokes
(5) Make new friends
(6) Never surrender to disability
(7) Find a wife and/or make g/f your wife

Four years later, I would be getting married (July 2011) and starting law school (August 2011). Through Law School… the goals… got a bit murky.

(1) Learn as much as you can about the law
(2) Get good grades to assure a position out of law school
(3) Compete in as many practical application contests as possible to assure a position out of law school
(4) Make new friends
(5) Keep Wife Happy. After about a year, this turned into “Discover why Wife refuses to have sex with me.” After two years of that, it turned into “Work on getting Wife some help.” After three years of that, it turned into “Strongly consider divorce.” But ultimately, due to her insistence, this goal shaped into “Leave Omaha by any means necessary.”

After graduating from Law School, the real test began. And that isn’t a metaphor. The Bar Exam. But along with the bar exam:
(1) Study for the Bar Exam
(2) Pass the Bar Exam (which happened in Feb 2015)
(3) Earn some money (however little) to help supplement income
(4) Wife Issues (“strongly consider divorce” was still strong; after 3 years of refusal, Wife finally had sex with me again during September of 2014, I think.)
(5) Find a job, any legal job, in Iowa to begin my career and make good on getting Wife out of Omaha. (This process would, eventually, happen after 2 years of searching. Wife considers it a worse 2 years than the entire 3 years of law school… but that is from her perspective. She was waiting, hoping, holding her breath, desperately hoping that our large financial investment and our move would pay off… especially as, during those 2 years, she was the Primary Breadwinner at a job she despised).

Finally, as many of you know, I was offered a job in Tiny Town in my preferred field. I was… hesitant to accept the job. But after discussing things with my wife and my father; it seemed like a no brainer. Better to have experience and a paycheck than nothing at all. Life became a bit more… streamlined.

(1) Find a place to live… became the all encompassing goal.
Until we found a place that would be “finished by May” and they’d let me live in a little hard-to-rent hovel while they finished construction. Of course… Wife would stay in Omaha working the job she hated for a few months. Which meant my first two months in Tiny Town were tough. Thus…
(2) Survive the abject loneliness. What with it being such a small area and so insular; I had no idea how I was going to do this. Really. I was jovial and friendly with whomever I met; but all of the people I met were older and had no interest in “making a new friend” with the possible exception of my neighbors who were young, had a brood of children and pets, and showed up on the Juvenile Docket every now and again. So, I resolved to…
(3) Learn the job. I had high hopes, originally. I figured… smaller town, we’d have enough time for me to learn the job and get things done properly.

How wrong I was. And how all of those ridiculous goals evaporated so quickly into despair. The goals were/became
(1) After Wife moved in, there is/was an epic long list of things the house still needed taken care of. Things we expected would be taken care of before moving in… like plumbing and air conditioning. Things that were not taken care of for months… truth be told… several things that (to this day) have not been taken care of and Wife and I have just given up trying to get resolved.
(2) Survive the abject loneliness. I really thought that Wife arriving would help. We’d have each other, at least, and we could work together on ways to feel less lonely. Except… that hasn’t happened. Don’t get me wrong; obviously she and I are better with each other than we have been in a while (off and on, at least)… but… she isn’t exactly invested in fighting the loneliness as much as she is invested in encouraging me to leave this area.
(3) Learn the job. This still hangs in my heart like a dead weight. Even speaking with the defense attorneys, I get more sympathy and pity than assistance. It is commonly known around here how crap my boss is. It is also commonly known around here how few attorneys there are. It is why most of our attorneys come to us via appointment (and from two counties away). Thus making my learning process largely a private, solo affair filled with frustration and soul-draining wasted efforts.

So… the “meaning” I was trying for here… originally… was start a career, get back into local theater, reconnect with friends and make new ones, help Wife find whatever it is she wants to do with her life. That was the meaning I was excited for.

Start a career? Maybe. I mean… provided what I learn here doesn’t create bad habits that frustrate my career objectives in the future. Or worse, something I’m strongly worried about… hopefully how devoid of lawyers and sense this area is doesn’t stain my record permanently in such a way as to bar me from having a career away from this area.

Get back into local theater? Not an option around here at all. They have no local theater, no local symphony. They have machine auctions and a junior rodeo. I have no reason or resources to buy farm equipment; and a junior rodeo may be interesting but going out of my way to watch children compete (when I have no children of my own) still feels a bit… pervy.

Reconnect with friends and make new ones? Reconnecting has sure been complicated. Some of my friends were good enough to come for a visit when I lived in Omaha… it was a two hour drive one-way; but it was all I-80 so it wasn’t bad. Here? The round about, county road, twelve towns, slow winding way to get here prevents even my parents from visiting. And while I can certainly go down to Des Moines if I wish… there are complications. (1) Going to Des Moines means staying with my parents who get miffed if I don’t spend a dinner with them… complicating time spent with friends. (2) Wife typically gets unhappy when I visit Des Moines without her; and she works most Saturdays… complicating the available opportunities to travel. (3) I really can’t financially justify frequent long drives to Des Moines. So reconnecting with friends is complicated. As to making new ones? That has been… more than a chore. Frankly, it has been rather embarrassing as well.

Help wife find whatever it is she wants to do with her life? Unless her lifelong dreams involve Stay At Home Wife, Drug Dealer, Shoppe Owner, Tyson Chicken Factory Worker, or Machine Repair… this isn’t a place of opportunity. Even as far as mental health goes… the best we have available is a therapist who comes from two counties over to hold appointments once a month. So… for Wife’s career hopes and mental health (hell, for my mental health)… there just aren’t any options.

So… that’s likely why all the gloom and despair. And how it connects to meaning. The most down years I’ve had have been my married years. First because home was unsupportive and frigid. Then after law school, because my goals to start a career were continually frustrated while I become more isolated (as my friends were leaving to start their careers). And now here. Where my goals were… fairly straightforward… and yet, even they seem hollow and frustrated. Which is why the overriding goal is to GET SOMEWHERE ELSE. Because… my career is important to me… and I need to know that being “trained” via being ignored by a woman with a horrible professional reputation won’t kill my career before it starts. Because… I desperately need to return to a place with (what you are welcome to call) “Snob Culture.” I may not have written about it much but even in Omaha… I attended plays, concerts, musicals, operas. There is none of that here. Imagine a season of Frasier where they forced Niles and Frasier to live on a Bean Farm in Iowa. That is what this place is for me culturally. And of course, of course, I desperately want to be in a place where I can make friends or reconnect with the friends I already have… and a place where Wife can either deal with her depression and/or find the career path she claims to be looking for. That… more than anything… is why the despair about this place. Because I do have clear, passionate goals. And I honestly don’t know if even a one can be achieved in this place.