Bang The Doldrums

Yawn.

Hey it's fall. It was like 26 degrees yesterday, and it really doesn't feel like fall.

My team has had the start of the season pushed back two weeks, and we finally start this sunday in Victoria. The boys are pretty amped up for the start of the campaign. I have to admit that I am too. In the past, I've only ever begun training a month before a season starts. We've been preparing formally for 8 weeks. So we're more than antsy to get going. I have absolutely no concept of our opposition, which kind of hinders our preparation. Doesn't really matter. I expect that we'll do reasonably well this year, even though we are very young and inexperienced. In 7 exhibition games we went 4 wins, 1 loss, and 2 ties. Which, like NHL preseason, means nothing.

My weeks are really structured now. It's kind of weird getting back into the idea of looking forward to weekends as the reward for my week. Sunday's are when we play our games, and that's going to be the day I look most forward to every week. It's interesting to change from this summer, when day to day plans were really unstructured, and I never really looked forward to anything. Here we go though. Tomorrow's going to be a good friday.

I have an interesting dilemma. Well, dilemma might be a bad word. I want to move to Victoria. Not like next month or anything. But next year, like apr/may/june 2010. I have no problems walking away from any job(s) that I'll have then. But I don't know how tough it'll be to move away from my parents and friends. To be fair to my friends, I don't see them very often, and think that moving away from the same city as my parents will be kinda tough.

How do I balance this situation?

I guess I have to weigh the reasons why I want to move. In my opinion, I have more reasons to leave than to stay. This city is too small for me to continue to deal with what I've created in the last 5 years that I've lived here. That sounds bad. Ex girlfriends, people I don't like, places I don't like, trends I need to escape, and an atmosphere that I find choking are good reasons to leave. Not 'deal-maker' reasons, but contributing factors. I'm just plain old sick and tired of running around the same old town. That's allowed to be good enough for me.

Victoria seems like the perfect sized city for me. I couldn't handle a city as big as Vancouver, nevermind somewhere like LA. I'm not major city material. The greater Vic area has 300K people, like 4x's the size of nanaimo. I don't need to live in a 1M plus population.

Anyway, that's a ways away. Somehow I already miss my friends, like I'm already moved. Oh well.

'If you want to get out alive, run for your life'

Growing Old Is Getting Old

I'm back in the busy swing of things. I'm working two jobs pretty regular now, and soccer is taking up 3-4 pm's a week.

I have started 3 of my 4 kids programs at the community center. It's pretty neat, and the kids are completely awesome in their innocence. All they want to do is play and play and play. I am required to structure two of my programs, and I'm kind of disappointed that they haven't been received well. Some kids are two shy to step out of their shell, while others are too rambunctious to cooperate. My programs go until April, giving me ample time to figure shit out. I am meeting a ton of new people, which is nice.

I sometimes see people as potential cogs in my machine. Maybe they have opportunities for me. Maybe they know people. I think that meeting 100 new people in a month is going to do wonders for me.

I had a 'what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-with-your-life?' moment last week. It hit me at 1am last friday night when I was drunk and maybe high, and it kind of wrecked my night. I like running around with the boys sometimes, doing guys stuff. I asked myself the same question the next morning as I hunted around for the tylenol. I came to the conclusion that I don't really care what I'm doing with my life right now. It doesn't bother me that I'm not saving for a mortgage. It doesn't bother me that I'm not doing things that are life-productive. I'm not exactly being counter productive, I just like to spin my wheels sometimes.

I remember last september really well. I was living out the last of the small summer fortune I had made, and I was kind of puttering around on fumes for a few months until I finally got my shit together late October. I am super stoked to not be in that position this year. God damn. I am busy, I am banking, and I am not puttering. I'm really excited about 25 being a good year. 24 was more or less forgettable for me, with a few exceptions. It doesn't really matter why. But I'm optimistic about 25.

Thanks for reading.

'I've been now sauntering

Out and down the path sometime

Come on, it takes me nowhere, which I knew'

The Road

09/09/09. Spooky.

Wow I haven't blogged in a while. I'm not going to dwell on that. I'm probably going to continue to post fairly infrequently. I'm pretty busy these days, and I don't feel the need to write as much anymore.

I just wrapped up my summer with a roadtrip to DMB at the Gorge in Washington. It was an interesting trip. I made the same trip last year, and I felt it was more fun than this year. There were plenty of good times and crazy memories from this year though. Me, Jen and Amanda saw DMB play both saturday and sunday night. I was kind of skeptical about hearing DMB's new stuff live, but I actually was blown away at how awesome it sounded. The concerts themselves were definitely the best part of the trip for me. The first act on Saturday night took the stage at 6pm, and DMB played past 11pm. It was pretty sick.

I had my birthday over the weekend, and I'm officially mid-20's. Awesome. I managed to get everything I wanted from my family and friends. I feel like I'm too old to be asking for things for my birthday, plus I'm not really needy.

I have my soccer team picked for the year. We are finally practicing alone, after 6 weeks of painful practices with 25-50 guys. The season officially starts in a week and a half, and I'm very excited and confident with my team. It's kind of fulfilling to create and guide something, and see success in it. That's talking ahead of things, because we haven't found much success yet as the season hasn't started. But I am pretty certain that we're going to do fairly well. I have a very talented team, and I feel like even a rookie coach like me can steer them into title contention.

Well that's basically it for my summer. Bookended by the two camping trips I took on May long and September long, I had an eventful and busy summer. I attended an amazing wedding, took in 4 insane concerts, and played endlessly with my friends at tennis courts, golf courses, volleyball courts, and the disc golf course. I worked very little, and managed to live within my means. I lived well, worked when I had to, and enjoyed the bulk of my time off. I began to learn how to coach, and met tons of great new people on the turf field. 17 of those great people are now under my leadership for the year, and I'm proud to call myself their coach. I drank too much sometimes, I ate too much others, and I usually overdid each thing I did to the point of exhaustion. In the name of having as much fun as possible. I think I'll look back on this summer as a memorable one. I'm happy that so many friends could be a big part of it.

Now that the weather is turning, and summer feels done, I'm going to grind out some work for a while. My roommates are both back in school, so things around the house will have a little more focus. Although fall will bring a few really fun activities - quadding, and the return of landon and court - I foresee a lot of hardworking days that start with me riding the bus, and end with me at the soccer field. I will be at the conference center a pile, and my community center programs start this coming monday (bring on the 0-4 year olds!).

I'm going to go think about sleeping. I'm in love with stephen king again, but I have a meeting early tomorrow. Dangerous balance to find...

'Oh and when the kids are old enough

We gonna teach them to fly'