Weekend Open Bar: il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux, Hawkguy

This is Weekend Open Bar. Where we get together and share what we are up to during a given weekend. What we are going to watch, eat, play, contemplate. Here, let me share.

I have felt like a Man Unmoored this year. Not Billy Pilgrim levels, but close. Ian Omega has come unstuck in Existence. I am a man of routine, I find comfort in it. Every day I stop at the same convenience store on the way to work. I buy the same exact thing. Every weekend morning I take the same car ride, before going to the gym. I enjoy doing the same exact thing every Saturday with Bateman. I like familiarity. I like the banal. I am a boring man, but it works for me.

However, comfort and familiarity and routine have been in short supply this year. Beginning around the more direct lead-up to my wedding in May, my existence has been an Admittedly Blessed Maelstrom of Change and Unpredictability. A wedding, a house, a dog. A new neighborhood, a new martial status, a sickly dog, and an unsteady job. Every weekend some seemingly new task adding itself to the endless list of Things I Don’t Want To Do.

It’s been difficult.

No routine, no familiarity, no comfort.

But as the semester comes to a close, I feel what Closely Resembles Sanity (or as close to sanity as I believe myself capable of getting) beginning to coalesce out of the tattered rags of my psyche. Routines are emerging. I don’t feel like a squatter. The neighbors don’t intimidate me.

It’s nice. It feels good.

I’m happy to have a wife, and a house, and a job.

I’m accustomed to the house, the dog is wonderful, I can make my weekly weekend car rides again.

It’s nice. It feels good.

I’m happy to write this column and have a weekend I’m genuinely looking forward to.

It’s the weekend.

This is Weekend Open Bar. Let’s hang out.