A Wanderer No More... so how does property tax work?

So I think I might be ready to do this thing. I’ll admit from the start that I’m going to be pretty selfish about it. I guess I had to do it for me. Jason’s been bugging the hell out of me about using this site, and I get told repeatedly that I should blog or podcast my ridiculous life – so maybe this is an acceptable middle ground. So I guess what I’ll try to do is just really introduce me. You fill out this block in job applications, social media “bio” sections, and stuff like that and you’re always kind of bullshitting someone.
The older you get the easier it is to learn how to automatically cherry pick parts of yourself in order to get what you are after. “I’m Doug, I was in the Navy, I need a job, I have reliable transportation” sounds way more marketable than “I’m freaking broke, my car blew up, I borrowed my dad’s truck, please don’t make me go back to that boat!”. I’m going to try and find the happy middle ground and just be honest with myself for perhaps the first time ever.

The logical start would be an explanation of the past. The only reason I am going to be so honest here is because this is a forum where there are random passersby, but there are also a lot of people who can call foul if I’m full of shit. For those people (you know who you are) this level of honesty of me might fill in some gaps. I’m not going to get too hung up on the past, but I’ll try to get the high notes right as succinctly as possible, then expand from there as I see fit.

I was born. I remember pretty much everything from 1991 onward. Unathletic as hell. Pretty smart. Nerdy as shit. Parents split when I was like ten. Underachieved in school and still did just fine. Got caught up in music and stuff but I never was any good. Partied my ass off like a good Midwesterner does. Took four years to get a two-year degree. Traveled the whole country on greyhound buses. Had a love affair with Vancouver and Canada in general. Worked at Wal Mart for 7 years. Racked up bills. Joined the Navy at 25. Married the wrong one and paid off the bills. Split with wrong one, got out of the Navy. Found the right one then ran like a chickenshit. Fixed an old truck. Got 2 classes from my bachelors … Drowned amongst wronger ones and racked up the bills. Woke up, bought half a house. Got into wrestling. Crawled back to right one, put a ring on it, shoved a baby in it. And I guess here we are.

For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Doug. I am thirty-one years old, and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.

I think, however, that I finally realize what I’m really going through. I think that I am transitioning out of being a wanderer. Some people never wander – they’re the weird ones. You know a few of them – either they never really left a 20 mile radius of the farm, or the neighborhood, or whatever. They’re the people that just walk everywhere and its cool. Most of us strike out at least occasionally. “Oh hey lets go to MYRTYL BEACH and pretend it’s the Bahamas”. That’s probably not fair – because there is a cost barrier to actually going to exotic places. But even then, we’re talking about people who see vacationing simply living as lavishly as they can afford to in a place that isn’t like their home.

This establishes some things to me. One is that these people have a sense of home somewhere. That’s where they are. When they can afford to get away from that, they go somewhere as far away as they can. These places they go must be better, so why don’t they live there? This always bothered me. How could I be expected to buy a house when I hadn’t seen every place where there was a house to be had yet? I was always restless, I suppose. So I decided I would shop around.

If I have to be totally honest, I really didn’t like where I was from. Southern Missouri drove me up the wall. I was always fairly progressive minded and, while not super-political, and least always overtly left-leaning in my thinking and opinions. This was not usually the norm in small town life, and you might think that flew up a flag and a small band of friends would form around it. You wouldn’t be wrong necessarily … but the strange thing is that you just end up with an odd niche of friends with varying beliefs and convictions, and the only thing that you have in common at the end is this inexplicable level of trust. When you’re a weirdo in the middle of nowhere, it helps to know who has your back if anyone decides to go all HEE HAW on you at the gas station.

I suppose music was a catalyst for forming such a group of friends for me. We proved time and again that we couldn’t agree on shit, but we did all enjoy forcing everyone to hear our opinions on music. And hey, a couple of the people were already great musicians. So the rest of us picked up guitars and we all sucked. They say “Just keep doing it you’ll stop sucking eventually” and a funny thing happens, they’re right! Every one of us gets better. Some of us get REALLY crazy STUPID good. Others of us get a lot better but also weird. Others get noticeably better but three times as creative to make up for it. Even one of us was simply always phenomenal whether we always told her enough or not…

BUT not me. I just didn’t get better. I don’t know why. I guess it just never clicked. I got more capable, but I just never got any better. So I decided to learn how the computer worked. I spent years learning recording software and techniques and gathering the little doo dads that actually creative people didn’t have time to bother with, and I contributed by being a gear monkey that tried to make them sound better than they would sound without me. It was something that distracted me from my constant haze of existential crisis, and I made a lot of good friends while pretending to play guitar. I was in some crap bands that turned into killer bands when I left, and I was in some better bands that repeated the service for. But, for the first time exclusively and honestly people – lets be honest, I never had any business touching the instruments. 

After high school something strange happened though. I left, and I went somewhere that nobody else went. So I became a stranger to the place that felt closest to being “home”. A prolonged absence is a strange thing in the world of social media. It was born as I entered adulthood, so I guess I am the first generation that wasn’t allowed to lose touch with people. Nowadays you have to actively participate in non-communications with people who you don’t want to keep up with. So naturally, people I genuinely considered friends I kept up with. But then most of them started having kids and it was like they were still them, but this way weird version of them that had a layer of responsibility and just felt weird. I couldn’t relate to whatever changed in them and I just stopped visiting, and started traveling. They’re wandering spirit seemed to have flickered out to me, and I was gonna be damned if I fell into that family horse-shit. 

Eventually, my financial recklessness caught up with me and it was either time to try and climb the ladder in something I knew I would hate, or just dice headfirst into something completely insane that had some sense of drama to it. Anybody who knows me knows what I am always bound to pick in that very situation. I guess that is what has always defined me. Its what makes me extremely unlikable but … inexpiably endearing? If you’re reading this, odds are I have pissed you off. But at least you knew I meant it, right?

Anyway, the Navy adventure was more or less a dud. I did get to cross the ocean and experience different cultures, but to equate that statement to mean that it was a great experience would be to ignore roughly 80-90% of what modern military life is like. If being in the navy were a lunchable, the “see the world” part is the tiny Crunch bar, the rest is moldy, and you have to eat the whole damn thing.  So I got tired of that shit and decided to live off that for awhile after I got out. I got caught up in a crisis of identity, blew through it all, and FINALLY put a stop to it and begged the only girl that ever really treated me right to give me one last chance to make it right. And wouldn’t you know it? Nothing but net the very first time! 

So I’m thinking “Cool – a kid, never thought of that one!” and I’m excited… but then I see the ultrasound. And then I see the tiny (SO GODAMN TINY) clothes… and I realize this does change things. And now I’m driving slow and I’m thinking about crazy shit and the list goes on and on. You parents know this slope of “getting real”. This guy is gonna be here in like four paychecks! Now I worry about things like insulation in the walls and strollers. 

I am no longer a wanderer, and this is a hell of a transition.

I’m excited about it, but I am completely lost. I had a lot of friends who totally changed when they had kids – I’m trying to not be that. I think that at the very least I’m going to be able to maintain and if not enhance my humor. On top of it all, I am becoming more and more involved in the local wrestling scene. Aside from training in the ring (yes, I’m completely insane and its as bad as you’d think) I am extensively involved backstage and behind the camera of an incredibly popular local promotion. So for now, I think this might be my venue for telling some oddball stories about that kind of stuff, and just generally sharing my startling realizations as I make the transition from wanderer to dad.

Sorry – I’m late to the party guys.