Rust Belt Ramblings

 I HATE Neapolitan ice cream.  Whoever decided to put my chocolate between vanilla and of all things, STRAWBERRY, you suck. But it works better for culture.  I've often tried to figure out what part of America I'm in, with very mixed results.  I realized this while describing myself and my area to someone who is most decidedly not "from here," by pointing out that "us Midwesterners" are the Canadians of America, and I enjoyed that.  But I got to thinking about it.  Pittsburgh, sure it's got some Midwest in it, similar basis in industry and manufacturing, with a smattering of agriculture and such. We're in the "rust belt," running up through Ohio on its way toward Detroit, and that's a pretty midwestern situation right there, mentioning those two places alongside us here.  We share a certain begrudging camaraderie with our neighbors. There's always room at our table, even if we may grumble a bit about the extra "comp'ny....

But honestly, I cannot help it. I'm not gonna make this a political space, but I'm an American in an election year, and these days that's become so much more than it once was. I am a Lyft driver. I have just recently surpassed 1000 rides. That's a thousand strangers in my car. For anyone who doesn't know, my car is my sanctuary. It's one of the few places I'm alone. It's where I hear the most music, where I can be with my thoughts. The times I've spent with friends in my car probably get overlooked by the friends but it's what I remember the most. (There's a reason for this, the politics come, but bear with me.)  I have shared one of my intimate spaces with a thousand strangers. A lot of them are just like me. But the majority are not. Some don't even speak my language, but most do. They haven't lived my life. They don't know my experience. And I in return know little about them. But sometimes I get the chance to connect. Many peo...

It's been quiet lately in the chaos. I've hit the cooling down period, after I had a revelation and was lit up like a fuckin' rocket. The revelations that got me all excited and hopeful haven't gone anywhere, and I'm not trying to shoo them out the door, either. But I've started working on my consistency, getting back to actual work, and learning to even out these ups and downs I face so frequently. And I have made some major progress. But friend, I am TIRED. I don't know what I expected... Well, okay, I know exactly what I expected. I was going to hit the ground running and do nothing but accelerate until I literally rewrote the laws of physics... But I knew that was just a little bit lofty of an expectation. What I did not know, however, was how tiring it is to just... Abide. I like to be one of those people that looks to "The Big Lebowski" for some inspiration on riding out the chaos. The Dude is the epitome of rolling with the punches, and ...

... That led to my new door. I've been spending an exorbitant amount of time reflecting on my last, well... Probably four years or so specifically, lately. It broke me. Completely and utterly... the Greg Bodack that is here now is not the person that wore that name in the past. I haven't even begun to understand it all. So many things have changed, and I can't possibly unpack everything at once. But I gotta start somewhere, so let's start in West Tarentum, sometime in 2021. I was living large, sucking in pandemic funds and just being a mid-30s adolescent with zero worries about anything at all. I was becoming a Twitter darling, meeting new people, finding out so many things about myself... While I sat around in a roach-infested shit hole doing nothing to improve my actual reality. I was drowning and chose to ignore it. Drowning in the feeling that I had no direction, no goals. Depressed because there was no "outside." Broken because my disabled and immunocompr...

If you know me, you know I'm a dad. It's simultaneously the most pride and terror inducing name I've ever been called, and it's probably both the reason I'm still alive, and the reason I feel like that's constantly only a truth hanging on by a thread. My son and daughter are my life, and they're so widely different from one another. It's beautiful, but man, it can also cause some major headaches. The Boy-Child (10yo), he's so sensitive, and sweet. It's infuriating because everything upsets him, but it's also so goddamn endearing, because he legitimately cares about everyone and everything that much. I don't want to call him Boy-Child, but this is the public Internet and shit, so pseudonyms it is. We'll call him Jude, for reasons some people who know him and us will get. The Girl-Child (6yo) is a firestarter. She cannot be contained or controlled, has the defiant spirit of anyone who's ever risen up against their masters. She's...

 And it's a "here" that made sense eternally. Been reading blogs of a couple friends of mine, and it had me thinking. It's a nice way to keep up with people when we can't "keep up" with them, when we're unable to share our moments in private conversation and close contact. And it's nice, to have that little window to the people who matter to us. For me, it's some of that that brings me to this, but it's another bit. I'm coming out of a real bad stretch of life, and everything is a struggle. Existence is being re-learned, after having been in survival mode for years, and then a medication carousel that I'm still on. And I've been encouraged to write down my thoughts. Some are only for me, by necessity, but I also want to store these ramblings, somewhere, for posterity.  Maybe it'll help someone, sometime. But that's not really the point. It's a little window in, for when I can't quite explain it, and need to jus...