Ordinary Life
Sunday, January 18th, 2004| Pay the bills, watch TV, day in, day out the same routine Mow the grass, fix the leak, just to fix it again We go to church, go to work, so picture perfect that it hurts I feel like I’m trapped inside this ordinary life |
I was just sitting here listening to Chad Brock’s “Ordinary Life.” For those of you who don’t know the song, it starts out with the husband leaving his family because he wanted more than the ordinary, everyday type of life. Later it has family carrying on with their ordinary life, and he calls back yet again missing his ordinary life.
You know what? I never wanted to do this. I simply wanted to do the whole American dream thing. I felt I was making decent progress, but it suddenly fell apart. All I ever wanted was to be some ordinary average person, just like everyone else. I wanted to be loved. Wife, family, a little house just big enough, grass I have to mow all too often. Let’s throw in a vehicle or two that isn’t fancy but generally works. Just another day in paradise. So close.
But instead here I am in Uzbekistan? How the fuck does that happen? Now I get to be world traveller, with more money than I thought I’d ever have. I can do whatever I want. I don’t have much in the way of freedom here in Karshi, but I’m looking for something to change that. I may have the opportunity to go to Kuwait for a spell before coming back here and wandering Afghanistan migrating some servers. Of course, Evil Dwarf may get in the way of that, that micromanaging shithead, but we’re trying to work around him. More places on the list to say “yeah, I been there” I guess.
It works out that I can’t have my dream while I am here. Maybe I can see other dreams but they all have attendant problems, more so than the old dream. I wonder after a few more years, what will I want then? I certainly don’t want to live this life forever, where I look back and find I have nothing to show for the unconventional choice. I think a lot of these guys go back to their families, try to remember who everyone is, and get frustrated and leave again. Of course, there’s a threshhold of years before that happens, but it’s easy to see what I don’t want to do, even if I don’t know what I do want.
Definitely I need to move out from the prison camp to have any idea of these things. I think you can put up with it for a year, but after that it just wears too much. I’m looking for something in Tashkent, maybe one of the other NIS republics, or even Mother Russia herself. Making the network of contacts is the difficult part.
It’s also like another song:
| …you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. |
Speaking of Closing Time, I guess this here post is over.
