Thanks for the welcome, brothers. If you knew me personally, you’d know I hate goodbyes, preferring the ol’ “Irish Fade”. I never meant to vanish without a trace from the forum. I apologize for that, but things moved fairly quickly and communication was difficult. For anyone interested in “The Adventures of George Kaplan, Man of Mystery”, here ya go. Fair warning: this story is a long one and only funny in an absurdly tragic, Russian comedy sort of way.
Ever since that spear gun incident, my sanity has been in question here on this forum. All joking aside, I have needed professional help before, namely during my divorce a few years ago. When the stress and remorse of that time began affecting my health, I went on a number of meds for anxiety and depression. They only seemed to make things worse. Therapy was another failure. Did I ever mention my ex-wife was cheating on me with her therapist? I hear they’re married now, living on the east coast somewhere. I don’t place a lot of trust in therapists.
I only mention this because of what I learned from it at the time. I learned my limits, and the warning signs of when they were drawing near. I can see the patterns now. When crap starts piling up on me, I tend to bury myself in distractions. I take on responsibilities I can’t handle, and set myself up for failure. Around May of last year things came to a head and I finally broke the cycle.
Want the gory details? Fine then. For a big chunk of the spring, I was doing back-flips at work in an attempt to dodge the latest round of downsizing. All the things they promised I wouldn’t have to do any more, (the travel, the swing-shifts, etc) I was actually doing more of. Notice I said “attempt to dodge”? In May they basically said “Thanks for all the hard work. Here’s your final paycheck.” During the final month of my employment, I was also helping my girlfriend and her two kids move. To Wisconsin. So in the span of about 3 days I lost my job and my girlfriend, and both had sort-of taken advantage of me in the process. As I was thinking about this on my drive home from a disastrous job interview, I blew the transmission out of my only car. After a long, expensive tow -truck ride home, I found my house had been broken into and, among other things, my computer stolen. The cat was long gone. You guys remember Talullah the Cob Cat? I assumed she had run off when the robbers broke in, but after a day with no sign of her I started looking. I found her dead, under a neighbor’s porch. She was an old cat. It was bound to happen eventually, but the timing was just awful.
In a moment of clarity I took a good look at what the universe was handing me and saw the common theme. My ties to the world I knew were being cut, one by one. For most of my life, I’ve had a deep-seated belief that things would be better if I could just pack up and leave; put the world I knew behind me. Blame it on reading too much Thoreau, Abbey, and Steinbeck as a kid. For the first time in my adult life I had no responsibilities holding me back. I said to myself, “Why the hell not? If I don’t do it now, I’ll never know.” So I bugged out. I packed a bag, sublet my apartment to a gal-pal and caught the next bus north. I’ve got some family and old friends in Michigan’s U.P. (that place on the map that looks like Wisconsin’s silly hat) and hat’s where I went.
I actually lived in the woods for quite a few weeks. A Dutch oven, a .22 and a bag of rice and beans were the only company I could tolerate. It’s strange to think of that as my comfort zone, but there I was. No mountain top for meditation, but a nice limestone gully and plenty of old cedar trees to listen to my troubles.
Once I deemed myself fit for human contact, I paid my mother a visit. She’s willingly lived alone on the north end of Green Bay since my step father passed in the summer of 2012. He had left quite a bit of unfinished work on their lakeside house, so I dusted off his tools and returned to my roots as a carpenter. I moved into a 1960 Airstream trailer in the woods down the road from her house, and split my time between that and working part time on a commercial fishing vessel netting Lake Michigan Whitefish. I’ve always found carpentry to be very therapeutic work. Fishing, on the other hand, is just hard, but in a good way. I actually enjoyed living in the camper. No amenities to speak of, but it was lakefront property with no neighbors save a flock of pelicans that hung around most of the summer.
Now I’ve shifted my view to Lake Superior. I’m staying with old friends in Marquette, on the other side of the peninsula. Nice town. Metropolitan by UP standards. So now I’ve got indoor plumbing, a borrowed computer, and a library card. I’m getting soft. Even got a date with a schoolteacher tomorrow night. I’m looking for work here, but the pickings are slim. Whether I stay up here or not, I’ll need to head back downstate soon. I’ve still got an apartment full of my stuff and a dead car in Kalamazoo. It’s cold up here right now, with ice capping most of the lake. I’m driving a ragtop Jeep (courtesy of my late stepdad) with a dodgy heater core, so an eight-hour trip on the highway isn’t really appealing to me. I suppose I should have left with the pelicans, but my mom’s house wasn’t finished until October. Neither was whitefish season, and then there was hunting season, and then the holidays. This is my life now. I’ll be here until I have a better reason to be elsewhere. Most guy just buy a sports car for their mid-life crisis.
I’m not the man I used to be, but then again I haven’t been for a long time now. I think I’ll just take it easy and work toward being the man I’m gonna be.
Thanks for indulging me. It feels good to voice all of this.
George of the North
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