Old Is the New New

Tonight I’ll be helping out Marisa at the Oaktree.

Next Sunday Tom and I will be somewhere in Gembrook

Epiblogue: Can you spot the person who’s better organised?

Thinking I might make some tentative explorations into the world of unbridled promiscuity that awaits, I decided to register on a couple of the less salubrious online dating sites.

There were lots of very horny women around my age (with photos) in every city except Melbourne -  who also indicated they were somewhat horny and didn’t post photos.  “Wow,” I thought, “this is really great.  I can’t help but get lucky.” 

I placed my ad with a nice photo or two and waited – and by nice I mean just my face.  

I sent around a few emails and winks and waited.

So far I’ve had a couple of nice encouraging emails from Massachusetts and California – “you seem like a really nice guy good luck” kind of emails, an offer of sexy cheese (!) from somebody in India and what appeared to be some kind of marriage proposal from Africa.

I nearly did my head in wondering what was wrong with me until I realised the simple truth: online dating sucks.  Maybe the young, attractive and supple succeed where I failed or maybe … actually, in the total absence of any feedback I don’t have a clue and I no longer care to guess. 

Internet dating just sucks.

Epiblogue: I mean, it really, really sucks.

One of the things that’s been keeping me in limbo has been deciding whether or not to buy out L’s share of the house or, more to the point, if I could afford it.

Both the kids, particularly D Minor, don’t want to see the house they were born in sold to somebody else but the true practicality is I just can’t afford to borrow half of what we’ve decided it’s worth. I mean I might, with a bit of wheeling and dealing, borrow enough but it’d mean paying out half my fairly meagre salary to just to keep it; and if interest rates went up and the housing market contracted i’d be more or less knackered.

I have thought about hitting the jobs market again to see if something is on offer at my last place of employment but they’ve been through one re-org since I left there two years ago and are currently in the midst of another. Neither restructure has meant an increase in the number of jobs on offer.  Having been relentlessly binding, scraping and sanding guitars for the past two years I reckon the work expectations I once found stressful would be quite manageable. But I like my job and I’m just about to start a different role so I don’t feel much inclined towards going back to the uncertainties of a badly managed university, besides which our GM told me yesterday they’d like to see me retire with them so you don’t get much better than an employer who actually Wants you.

Epiblogue: So I guess it’s all about quality of life – a modestly crappy house that’s affordable enough to allow me more Life than watching TV and sleeping plus a job I enjoy.

If you’re living where I am it’s just Too Warm for comfort at the moment.

Well, I completely lost interest in blogging for a while but I just might be getting it back.  I’ve held off posting to this new one because I wanted it to be just a bit more positive than Nocturnal Emissions. I certainly didn’t want to sully my new blog with a blow-by-blow journal of my marriage breakup, but I guess some, if not a lot of it will just gravitate to this. Certainly there’ll be guitar and music stuff and a bit of navel gazing, but hopefully less of this than in the past.

So that’s it really … and I might start spelling epiblog differently.

Epiblogue: breakup vs. breakdown – I guess breakup is where you crash and burn like a large satellite re-entering the atmosphere and breakdown is where you both sit despondently by the roadside waiting for the RACV to arrive and maybe patch things up or tow you home.