Death, Babies, Stress, and Mind Running

Buckle up. This was three separate blog posts at one point, but I felt there was a common subject. That subject is, "Everything stresses me out."

As I've written before, Death Scares the Hell Out of Me.

I've been thinking about the subject a lot lately. There's been a lot of anniversaries of important losses in my life, people I care about dealing with deadly disease, and generally the world seems like it's falling apart.

It's just a feeling of helplessness. Like we're spinning on this globe with no say of how fast.

I think I worry about macro things too much. (Or, maybe not enough.) The world issues that I feel like I have no control over scare me the most. It has to be my imagination. There's an issue and then I connect the dots until it kills me.

• We're running out of fresh water. I've read things that say, at the current rate, we'll be out of fresh water sources in 40-50 years. And then there are plague like things happening to some of our larger fresh water sources:
• Toledo was dealing with a toxin in Lake Erie
• British Columbia Tailings-pond is filling with mining waste
• We've got to be on the verge of a major war right?
• Russia wants to invade the Ukraine. 
• Israel wants to bomb and is bombing everyone in the middle-east. 
• ISIS is running a terrifying lightning war across Iraq and Lebanon, while Indonesia steps up and banned support of ISIS.
• The freaking Ebola virus is running rampant and some of those infected are outside of Africa.
• And then there are the normal things of possible recession in Europe again, gas shortages, climate change, overpopulation, etc. 

All of these things equate to a Mad Max like scenario where I eventually starve to death, while fighting a plague, until I am executed over the lack of drinking water.

The subject of children has come up often lately. I think the first wave of married folk from 4-6 years ago have started having kids and Sal and I are finding that kids love the crap out of us generally. We get a lot of those, "You know you would be great parents" sort of comments. 

And then I see some people on my Facebook feed having their 4th or 5th kid. And I see them post really ignorant, racist and homophobic updates, and I see them ringing up credit card debt, and buying houses and cars they can't afford, and I think, "maybe we should have kids to balance out the idiots."

I guess this is a sentiment that has been true forever. I shouldn't be surprised. Harvey Danger even sang about it with Flagpole Sitta back in 1997. 

Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding

And of course we would be good parents, great even. If (and it's a big IF) we could have kids, we're just not sure it would be healthy for us.

We've barely been able to travel or complete any of the bucket list items we had in college. We're still playing catch up from losing our jobs back in 2009. Sallie just now is being paid what she should have been when we graduated. There are too many marriages that fail and it seems like a large cause/symptom is having kids when you're not prepared.

Basically, kids aren't in the near-future-cards because of this forced arrested development we both feel.

And also, we just don't know if we could have kids. Adoption might be the only option.

Generally, I think I'm just too stressed. Sal and I have been driving up and down the country for seemingly months now. I think we are just running ourselves ragged.

I know this seems to be my post every 8-10 weeks or so, but it really has felt like that. 

It's been another year full of weddings, and this year almost all of them have been out of town. With out of town weddings, come gifts, hotel rooms, full weekend filled with travel. Just generally tiring. 

Then a few weeks back a freak storm came through and ripped our roof off. I'm not exaggerating. Our flat roof was lifted up like a blanket and thrown over itself. We also had two windows, two doors, and some leaking damage. So every time it gets cloudy, I get stressed again. The new roof can't be put on until there are three solid days with no chance of rain. I'm hoping that's by the end of this week.

And we did that dumb thing where we over commit to things. Yeah, LouFest sounds like a blast back in April when we bought tickets, but by the time it comes around in September, we've been non-stop busy for 8 weeks. 

I guess not using any PTO for the first 5 months of the year really sets a bad precedent. I just feel stressed, rushed, and tired. Even when I've taken time off for just a long weekend to reset, somehow I end up filling that too. 

I'm not complaining that there's not fun things. It's not like every weekend I'm out digging ditches or doing match. Usually the stuff we have is fun. I'm just a guy that likes some alone time. I really only feel reset if I get to wake up, sip some coffee, play some video games, dunce around on the internet, and ease into the day. I need that at least once a week and it just hasn't happened. 

Basically, this is what life feels like lately if I had to sum it up in one picture.