What a long, strange trip…

As Rochelle said: the very qualities that made me a quirky, eccentric, different human being converged to make me a very unworkable same over the past year. 

She considers it a breakdown.

 I am more wont to call it a breakthrough, or breakout, or break along, myself.  But whatever you call it, life has been weird since May. I believe the worst is over now. Or, rather, the worst of whats made available, knowledgewise, to standard issue humans.  As it should be.  But whatever comes after this life, well, might be much different for me than previously expected.

Okay, cryptic crap aside: I had serious troubles in December,  trying to get over the fact everything in my life was dropping like a row of dominoes. 

Bill now has Gab. Rightly so.

 I now have a space to live in my brother’s home. 

 Yes, the yeller. This may prove to be WORSE than a breakdown, living with him. Hopefully, it will not last long.  He was the only person going out on a limb to save me during what can only be called my self-destructive three month bender. 

So, yeah. There’s that.

 Weird, how things work out.

So, I’m still alive and will see 42 perhaps, this Sunday. Not because I was trying, really. More like the opposite. But what happens on earth has never really been that important to me, compared to what happens in our collective eternal afterlife.

Half saint, half sinner my whole life, I’ve spent lots of time trying to figure out where I’d land in the hereafter. 

Perhaps I was not as alone wondering that as previously thought.  Nevertheless, I’m no closer to knowing than I was a year ago.  But I made some really good friends in some really strange places over the past three months, and since people are my species, I’ve grown to love these folks muchly. Don’t judge until you’ve walked a few feet in another’s moccasins, right?

The film festival begins March 19. I’m actively and excitedly preparing. If my brain and heart are much changed since covering it last year, it must be muscle memory that propels me along, as I am as happy as ever, today, to be writing for About.com and cover events as they unfold at Tower City’s CIFF.

Amidst a sea of loss and coming off a truly horrible, wonderous year, my spirit is sparked by reading the huge film guide like I do every year since I was seven and prayed for someone with a car to drive me to the far-off, exotic sounding Cedar Lee for the festival.

Ohio’s got a lot of interesting film offerings, including one about a nun murdered in the Amazon and another on the state of family farming in our state.  I circled a whole bunch of movies and then copied them to another guide that will be dropped off at my brother’s neighbor’s house. He’s a film buff and new friend. We’re set to watch “Choke” together tonight.

My media pass is en route via the USPS, I’m planning on sweet-talking someone into tickets for the Opening Night Gala, and life does indeed go on, as perfectly imperfect as ever.