A Trapdoor In The Sun

"Lights will guide you home...and ignite your bones... and I will try... to fix you" Sometimes in life, I have to take a step back and remind myself that I cannot fix some things in life, as much as I really want to. This is an especially difficult lesson to understand when someone I love greatly is suffering, whether it be physical pain or mental. What makes things worse is that I am 300 miles away from even being able to hug her and tell her that everything is going to be alright. Somehow, I have got to learn to accept that life isn't perfect and I cannot fix this thing about her.... it is part of who she is, like her nose or her little toe. I have to learn to help her cope and give her reassurance that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I know for a fact that she would do the same for me .

One thing that we have in common as human beings, something that is definitely absent among the ranks of the lower mammalian, is the unique and beautiful ability to dream. I'm not talking about the random (and sometimes scary) visions that roam about our heads at night while we are in that deep R.E.M. state. What I am referring to is the way we can imagine and produce a mental road map or itinerary of what we want to do, see or accomplish in life. Some call it a plan. Some call it their bucket list. I refer to it as my Wishlist. "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mohandas Gandhi   As babes, we enter life being asked by the grown ups, what exactly do we wish for. I remember in kindergarten, in between the naps and learning the letters of the alphabet, my teacher asking me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most of us replied with the grade school standard 'fireman', 'policeman' or 'astronaut'. An enterpr...

These two guys have been rearing their ugly heads in my life the last week or so and I've been trying to decide how best to handle them. You see, I believe that I've really battled fear and insecurity since I was young. It's almost as if I expect bad things to happen and I'm trying to mentally prepare for the shock. For instance, when I was 21, I worked myself sick during college. I got so bent out of shape that I couldn't work anymore. I spent almost a month broke and feeling sorry for myself, lying in bed trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I was achy, felt awful, and my head was spacey. I ended up going to the hospital and having a battery of tests ran on me... nothing abnormal being discovered. Finally, I had my sister come pick me up and I spent the next two months recovering at home with my family. That moment seemed like such an utter failure to me. I had to drop out of school. I had to leave my best friends and our awesome apartment that had really ...

It's Wednesday, September 7th and I'm three days removed from the Pearl Jam weekend. I think post-PJ depression is starting to set in finally. I would gladly take that over the post-Rochelle depression I've been experiencing since watching her walk into security yesterday at Port Columbus. The weekend itself was quite the experience that it had been billed as. We left in my little Mazda 3 at six in the morning, hell bent for Wisconsin. I hadn't anticipated driving Snowball on this trip, but she was somehow up for the task. Drama ensued as we had to hunt down a mechanic in a small know-nothing town in Indiana to fix random noises that were coming from the engine block. It turned out to be a loose piece of plastic and was fixed quickly with a plastic tie and a few holes drilled into the chassis. Still, it was a very stressful morning for the both of us. The thought of being stranded in Indiana was not a pleasant one, despite the nice things that John Mellencamp says abou...

I'm back at work today after an exhausting and extemely out-of-this-world weekend. I will be updating Trapdoor tonight with a full account of the PJ20 weekend. Peace and love. Drew