I have made some bad decisions in my life. Once, I quit a job that raised my pay 50% in eight months with an offer of additional money and the use of a car if I’d stay. I left them for another gig at a 20% pay cut and no vacation where I was fired after 90 days while lying in a hospital bed.
That was a damned bad decision. The aftermath of that decision was a six month unemployment vacation, barely scraping by and gaining fifty pounds by sitting around all day, every day, drinking Red Dog and surfing the intarnetweb.
Last year I decided something had to give, so I moved. I told a beautiful woman that I couldn’t be around her any more. I packed my stuff into storage in the middle of a blazing hot summer. I gave up my apartment of seven years, abandoned my friends and drove to Nashville arriving in the middle of the night with no knowledge of the city or the people.
That was a good decision. Granted, in 8 1/2 months I was only in town one third of the time. I effectively missed October and entirely missed all of February, April and May. From Mach 26 until May 25 I only went back for three days over Easter and that only because a friend had made arrangements to visit. I didn’t know anyone in my neighborhood. Hell, the barmaids generally recognized me but we never on a first-name basis. I spent my time alone, keeping to a schedule of drinking, movie watching and aimless wandering. I was responsible to none but myself. The telephone never rang. Nobody pestered me just to shoot the shit. Nobody expected me to come to events or parties or anything other than meaningful, one time, life changing occurrences. I loved it.
At the end of April things were looking bleak, I was stranded up north with no end in sight. I could continue to maintain the apartment that – based on my spring occupancy – was costing something like $850 a day – or I could knuckle under to the ugly reality of the situation and move back north.
That is proving to be the worst decision ever. If the general annoyances associated with this rotten place weren’t bad enough it costs $200 a week just to live in this godforsaken state and this crooked little town.
I often consider the idea that God hates me. That I’m stuck on some kind of bizarre Groundhog Day-esque hamster wheel. Seven weeks here has weighed as heavily as seven years prior. The blissful eight months away fades like a particularly delightful dream cut short by some great Satanic alarm clock. But as a waitress reminded me during a late-night, post-drunk cholesterol fest, “God doesn’t hate you. He hates everybody.”