Rock Kills Kid

My cousin Ryan is a freshman at the University of Mississippi. Unlike most 18-year-olds, he doesn't think I'm clueless. Unlike most 34-year-olds, I'm willing to edit his essays that he has to write for English Composition. It's a real mountaintop moment for me as an editor. Some essays are more interesting to work on than others. I almost got excited yesterday when Ryan sent a text: "Have you ever seen Shawshank Redemption? I have to write an essay about it." Um, yes. I watched it twice in December. I read the original short story by Stephen King last summer. It's my favorite movie of all-time and I still think it got screwed in the Oscars. So when Ryan said his essay was about the theme of hope in the movie, the only challenge for me was to avoid writing the essay for him. I certainly have the time on my hands to do so. There's always hope, I just don't have an abundance of it of late. It's not that I'm jobless. That'd be too easy. It turns out I'm an achiever. I like to hear attaboys at work. I liked building a career in an extremely challenging industry. I liked doing cool things at work, such as covering the Super Bowl or NBA games. I probably liked it too much. Without anything to work toward, I've been in neutral. TW calls it the donut hole. We're not sure where we're going to be living in six months. We don't know what she'll be doing for work. We don't know how we're going to pay off her student loans. We're not where we want to be. Daisy and I were taking our daily hour-and-a-half hike at the Fore River Sanctuary today when I heard my new themesong on my iPod. It's a song called "Paralyzed" by the band Rock Kills Kid. I'm terrible with song lyrics, so it's possible the song has nothing to do with this spot I find myself in, but it seems pretty appropriate. Before my mother suggests therapy, let's back up a few paragraphs. There IS hope. There's just not a lot of it. The job market here is almost nonexistant. But that's OK. We can move. That's pretty damn exciting, especially when we start talking about Boston. And there will be blogs. I've been storing up information for future blogs. Ideas. Photos of goofy signs I see. It's just that this blog is frivolous and I haven't been feeling very frivol. But you're as miserable as you make yourself, and I'm refusing to start mourning. I have the dog (who has lyme disease). We have hiking. There's exercising. And maybe I'll finally get around to starting a band. Life is fine and it will only get better from here. Get busy living or get busy dieing. That's goddamn right.