A friend either doesn’t know or forgot that I blogged once-upon-a-time. We weren’t acquainted when I blogged “for real”, a time period that ranged roughly from 2004 to 2014 (I’m completely pulling that date range from vague recollections, when the research would take just a minute). When I adopted bullcitydave.com and didn’t attempt to obfuscate my identity, my blogging became severely curtailed. Self-censorship increased manyfold. I think, for years, my blogging had already been on the decline due to Facebook and social media. For many years, everyone thought all of their thoughts warranted sharing, so I put increased scrutiny on the question of whether my thoughts were worthy of an audience (not less scrutiny, as might be the conventional wisdom). I didn’t mean to devolve into yet-another-meta-blogging post as my first post in nearly two years.

My idea, my ad-hoc idea, was to use this friend’s recent comments to me as a springboard to a very cursory update, a wading-back-in, sort-of. (I have to tell myself not to spend any time scrutinizing my verbiage and sentence structure, lest I’ll never post this).

Ok, let’s do this:

As I was reading your email (and I have thought this many times before when reading your emails), it occurred to me that you write in a very articulate and relatable way about things that other people must struggle with too.

This was a kind compliment. Yes, once-upon-a-time, back in the LiveJournal days, and perhaps beyond, a few people here and there had a positive response to what I wrote. I think I’ve become increasingly less articulate as I’ve gotten older. I probably peaked as a writer back in high school, when all journaling was still private, and the only writing anyone saw was the occasional English paper.

Not that you are looking to get into writing or anything, but I was thinking that you have had a lot of difficult and unique experiences that other people in comparable circumstances might take comfort in reading about.

Maybe. I think their comments were in response to my frequent thought that there is a mighty relatability gap between me and everyone else. In short, I feel isolated from everyone, constantly. (Perhaps I’ll elaborate if I ever post again).

Like your struggle with depression and anxiety, with bisexuality, with physical health issues (your kidney transplant and health issues that may or may not be spurred by that, such as your increased susceptibility to BCC), with complicated family issues (divorce, losing your mom, your relationship with your dad, etc.).

• Depression – yup, still got it
• Anxiety – yup, still got it
• Bisexuality – yup, still am. Oops, was that a surprise to anyone?  The most understated coming-out in the history of blogging. How ridiculously anti-climactic. You didn’t know? Well, now you do. Again, perhaps I’ll elaborate if I ever post anything again. It’s amazing how I went some may years contemplating some lengthy cathartic post about this, and now, I’m just throwing it out there as a footnote, like, by the way, I’m drinking a large cold brew at the moment…
• Kidney transplant – eight years on; it still works
• Health issues – I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my scalp about ten days ago. Immunosuppressants–keep my kidney healthy, give me cancer, but not a cancer I should actually refer to as “cancer”. I’m also extra-susceptible to real cancers. All good for now.
• Divorce – my parents got divorced 36 years ago. Yes, that still sucks.
• Losing my mom – my mother passed away on September 18, 2018 rather unexpectedly. Yes, that sucks.
• Relationship with my dad – he’s probably reading this, so this topic might fall into the category of “unfair to write about without first consulting with the party to be discussed”. Then again, my Facebook posts are the primary way he knows what’s happening in my life (to the extent I share on Facebook these days, which isn’t much other than pet photos). Again, who knows if I’ll ever blog again.
• Etc. – oh, and there’s so much more!

All of those experiences, combined with your writing style/ability and your wry sense of humor would make you a fantastic blogger of sorts.

My writing style/ability…only works, for me, when it’s extemporaneous, and I self-edit and self-censor as infrequently as possible. To the extent that it is ever amusing or of interest to anyone doesn’t make much sense to me. But I often used to say that it was therapeutic to throw thoughts out into the world, even if only one or two people saw them, rather than keeping them hidden in a void, so…

…so, I think my friend was just being nice to me with compliments, because I was so damn depressed in my previous email. But that’s awfully dismissive of their opinions, is it not? I tend to do that. Give me a compliment, and what the fuck is wrong with you?

Do people still do that? I feel like that’s a way of establishing a sense of community with like-minded people who have been through similar things or have similar feelings.

I don’t know. I suppose I tried this many years ago with mixed-results. Is it worth trying again? I don’t know.

11:42AM Bull Street Gourmet & Market

I was engaged in a fairly typical Saturday mid-day activity, settled at a coffee shop (though this place has real food, not just impossible-to-resist quiches and pies), ready to catch up in my “private” blog about whatever I felt the need to catch up on. And then it occurred to me. Bull City Dave (this site) remains stuck in time. It’s been mostly devoid of content since it became Bull City Dave three years, when I began The Iron Yard and thought I needed a real public social presence. My public writing was always too personal, too raw, too potentially alienating, too potentially offensive. I stick to the Toastie pseudonym. And then, suddenly, I move everything Bull City Dave and put my name on it.

But that was never a comfortable exercise. I was in an intensive coding bootcamp in order to reboot my career. If potential employers were going to see this, I’d need to steer clear of anything too personal. It would be a blog about Javascript problems I’d solved, happens around Durham, NC, and pet photos and vines. It would be a fractionally authentic blog. But I’ve never had much desire to blog unless that fraction comes close to 1/1.

Each time I’ve contemplated a return to my old-school blogging style, I’ve mindful that my career-in-transition might require a new job search in the near-term. In fact, unfortunately, it has, a few times. I had quite sincerely hoped to go from The Iron Yard to a the Next Job that would be The Job for years to come. I had moved around enough in my career. But most people in start-up/code school sphere advised that any first job after a career change would likely be a means to another job. I truly did hate that. But that was my reality. In fact, I’ll bluntly lay out here, it was one job which led to another job which lead to another job…which led to my current job.

As I recently posted on Facebook, which has bene my de-facto blogging platform for years, I say with mixed emotions:

The Iron Yard is shutting down nationwide. I’m not entirely shocked. I’m glad it helped some folks. Personally, I wish I had found a different path from A to B that didn’t involve going through TIY. It was what it was, and that’s I’ll I’m saying. (I hate that expression, too). I’m grateful I will never again be asked if I recommend it, since I always felt like I had to do contortions to provide an honest answer and remaining objective with regard to what might be best for someone else’s circumstances.

(For years, I think I had a lengthy Iron Yard post at hand, ready to get it all out of my system. But I kept it to myself, for the same reasons I keep most blogging to myself, but for even more compelling reasons. Every company in the Triangle knows of and has some opinion of The Iron Yard. I doubt anything I could write, as objectively as I might try, could avoid some variation of the “bashing your former employer” taboo that one looking for employee is supposed to refrain from).

But I digress… (as is the norm for my blogging…digressions, tangents, non seqiturs…)

I told myself in Private Blog that I only had time for a bullet-list catch-up. I’ll attempt that here, though, in here, the a lack of context is going to confound. Private Blog doesn’t care about lack of context. Private Blog somewhat akin to a higher power, is omniscient. I don’t need to provide context there. I can skip a week or two, a Private Blog just knows what the heck I’m talking about.

• The Murray Ave Era – First, yes, I know it’s not widely viewed as the safest thing to blog your name and the street on which you live. But there are only two people with my name in Durham, and I can’t afford the other house. So anyone who wants to harass me (or send me gifts) can easily figure out where I live.
  • I closed on the house yesterday, and it’s a huge relief, but perhaps not as much as you’d think, for a few reasons.  A couple of months out of work plus paying a little more than I could afford plus some flat-out dumb financial decisions means I am in somewhat of an analogous place to where was almost exactly a decade ago when i closed on Lancaster St. Back then, a construction loan that would’ve fixed the house up to what I wanted it to be fell through at the last minute. This time, a laundry list of fixes and nice-to-haves has to be put on the back-burner, because I’m out of home improvement funds for now. So I’m a little frustrated that there are some things I’d love to take care of now that I simply can’t.
  • The difference between the Lancaster house and the Murray House is that, with the former, people who’d say, “oh, you can do a little at a time” didn’t realize that there was really ridiculous about to do, and I was in no position to afford to do any of it. With the latter, the improvements needed are less drastic, and, knock-on-wood, if I can kick-ass at my new job, I should be able to take care of these things in due time.
  • I’m not moved in yet. Too much going on to plan anything. Job requires focus. I have three weeks left on the short-term apartment lease. I’m torn between hiring someone and just doing a little at a time, asking for a few favors of help. I already asked for help to move things from Lancaster to storage and from an Extended Stay to the temp apartment. But I didn’t ask everyone I know. I hate asking for help. Always have. Whether it’s in my personal or professional life, I am so reluctant to ask for help. I’ve tried to get better over time. It’s all tied together, really. Not asking for help in one area or another adversely impacts the other.
• So, in Private Blog, this would be a very quick bullet list, but, since I haven’t done this in awhile, actually blog, I’m rambling on in detail and breakneck pace. (If I were to stop for even 30 seconds to contemplate what I’m writing, I’d freeze up, and there’d be no blog post).
• Non-profit blog work. I have to fairly simple tasks I need to do. I want to continually apologize for falling behind, but the time spent on apologies could be spent doing the simple tasks (which often aren’t all that simple, because they involve some edge case using a WordPress plugin that has no documentation, and perhaps that’s why I procrastinate…I don’t know what I’m getting into once I start). Anyway, if you’re reading, I owe you some work. Soon. Today, I hope!  I really means a lot to me that,, when I may do work day-to-day that isn’t all that inspiring (quick shout-out to my current job, which I’m really enjoying; I swear; it’s nice that different projects have to duke it out over who gets my time; it will be even nicer once I’m moved into the house and the dust storm around me calms down).
• Work work. I need to put in some time this weekend because I know I didn’t put in enough time Monday through Thursday. I just need to do it. I wouldn’t mention it here if these were tasks I loathed and people I didn’t care about helping. There are people counting on me, and I want to do right by them.
  • Brief tangent, as what I just wrote reminded me of my last job. I should not write about my last job in any specific terms at all, but I want to say something for the record. I felt like, at every turn, I was doing my absolute best to do right by my employer. And wanted to stay there for the long-term. I hate that the relationship didn’t work out. Such are the perils of working for a very small company. There is no room for unresolved conflict. There’s no one to mediate. There’s no space to take a break and come back to the conflict later.
  • I’ve thought for a long time that finding a company of perhaps 100-200 people would be ideal. I hate disappearing into bureaucracy in a job of questionable value to the organization. I hate being the one individual with a particular job role at a very small company, where I know very well what I don’t know and expertise is needed in the role.
• I’ve to take a look at my finances (the old Money spreadsheet, which I still prefer to a service like Mint). It’s an odd, discomforting feeling to live your live for a few months where thousands and thousands of dollars are received and spent in a fairly arbitrary way. For instance, the range of potential selling prices for the old house was in the tens of thousands of dollars. So, too, was the amount of money I was willing to spend on a new home. I chose to live fairly comfortably for three months on a three-month lease, even though it was ridiculously expensive compared to a standard lease. The air compressor on my car broke. I need AC working in my car. I was going to pay whatever it was going to cost.  But now that the dust is settling, I must return to a practice of looking at every dollar. I must return to caring if the Halo Top is on sale for $3.99 or if the supermarket has jacked it up to $6.49. I must return to caring that 20% at Bed Bath and Beyond still render most items more expensive than getting them on on Amazon. I must returnto (or really start as a regular practice) of considering if what I’m looking for at Amazon is available on Craigslist or The Scrap Exchange.

So battery power is at 6%. I’ve got my charger, but I don’t think there’s an outlet nearby. Good time to conclude this entry.

I’n going to feel uncomfortably exposed in a few minutes, when I post this and share the link on Facebook.  But I’ll also feel a sense of relief.  Writing into the void just contributes to an overall sense of isolation that I need to chip away at

12:54PM On a typical 89-degree, sunny, humid July day, there’d be 40 people eating their lunches out on this courtyard. Today, it’s gray, cool, and breezy. Chairs and tables are dry. It’s abandoned. I don’t get it.

To me, this is ideal weather for sitting outside. I’m not sweating a lick. Not a spot on me is cold. The rustling of the leaves is calming. This is my normal. The rest of you, you think it’s gorgeous on those July days. I don’t know what is wrong with you.

I know, from years of experience, that no one takes me seriously when I say I actually prefer this weather to that weather.

My problems with the weather are a microcosm of my difficulty finding my place in this sphere. I can’t even present myself authentically during the most banal small talk about the weather without presenting a disconcerting contrary view. To put everyone at ease, I have to lie. Or pretend that the rain is such a downer or that I can’t wait to get outside on a warm, sun-soaked day.

How I experience the weather isn’t merely a point-of-view or a quaint preference. It’s me. But looking around, there is no one else out here. Everyone traversing the courtyard is going from inside one building to inside another building. No one is lingering. It’s…what is It? 60 degrees. It’s not 30.

Since I never blog, I’m very aware that a post like this might play better if I spent time to thoroughly think through what I’m saying, to actually spend some time crafting this. But I haven’t been making the time for that. And I’d be afraid to do that, anyway, because I’d still be unhappy with the result.

Why blog today? Now? Why not the thousands of other times I have something to say, something far more important to say than something about the weather?

Same reason I never do anything I’d like to do. Fear. What if I’m judged? What if I’m dismissed? What if I don’t receive any validation? What if I’m typing into a void?

I am so behind. On everything.

It’s difficult to just start and write when there’s no context for anything I’m writing. You’ve got no context here.

Quick story:

I needed a career change.

I took a couple of grad school classes. Not a bad decision. Didn’t work out like I’d hoped.

Quit job to go to code school. Immense risk taken. But not a bad decision. Hasn’t worked out like I’d hoped.

Got a job doing web development. Some interesting work with good people. I think I was quite productive and learned a lot. But not a good fit. (I am making a conscious decision to be sparse on details but still be authentic).

Got another job doing web development. So far, not a good fit. Learning a lot. Productive? I’ll measure productive like this–what have I done to help anyone else’s job, health, or general well-being?  Nothing yet. And that’s the worst feeling for me. I need to be useful. Shouldn’t this be a conversation I should be having with the people I work with? Yes, and I will. Of course I’m being vague here.

Ok, that’s enough damage for one lunch break.