Structural problems

I wake in the morning hoping the news is good, but it never is. I think I wrote that last year or the year before or the year before.

I can’t decide if I feel like a train wreck. Or maybe it’s the feeling of being marooned or of having no moorings and no anchor to keep from drifting. Or of being on the railroad tracks and seeing the light of the train get closer, and closer, and closer.

Structure is a very important thing for me and I believe it is for most people. My work hours have been temporarily reduced and I find myself trying to fill the day with something. I would rather not feel like I’m just trying to fill the day.

A key part of my structure is my work. It makes me feel valuable, it gives me an outlet to speak to the world and it brings in some money, not much. Work gives me an identity. Without work I find myself re-examining what I am and what I am worth.

I would like to think that I am not defined by my work. But work gives me feedback, colleagues, and it reinforces my need to be appreciated.

I have many hats. I am a journalist, a husband, a father, a friend. They seem to be all contingent on each role and when one changes, they all do.

Are there many people who are so self-satisfied and certain that they do not need the approval of others? When you find them, let me know and I’ll pay them for the secret.

So how to create structure when the house has fallen down. It seems to create itself. I get up in the morning, get cleaned up, dressed, check my emails, write a few paragraphs of blather, and then take my daughter to Dunkin Donuts.

I’m rolling now. Back home, I read the Times and get absolutely no relief. There’s chit chat with my son, who is essentially laid off from work. Maybe have a bit of breakfast.

By now, it’s late morning and there is work outside, a large pile of branches that I have slowly been burning. It’s a long project but I have the time. In the late afternoon, I work out a bit by taking a long walk up the hilly roads of my neighborhood and then doing eight minutes of planking. At night, my wife returns from work and we talk about our days but I don’t have a lot to say. She makes dinner, I have a few beers and we watch NetFlix.

I’m thinking of taking a free on-line course. Maybe something light and breezy like existential threats through the millennium.

So often I have felt like the character in W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge.” I’ll climb the Himalayas to find the truth and the reason. Seems I’ve looking my whole life and still looking. I didn’t think that after turning 70 I wold still be looking. But I am.