It seems like I am constantly finding myself disconnected from the people I love and the community I am supposed to be a part of. I know that I disconnect myself, that I don’t naturally find myself fitting into groups and feeling drawn to community. This includes family, friends and the congregation… all places where I have consistently had problems being consistent. A lot of people feel a void when they are alone, something they want to fill with a lot of human interaction. I can honestly say that however much I feel love for, and enjoy interacting with, other people, I rarely feel the need to do it. I am usually happiest when pursuing my own ideas and goals. I wish I was different somehow when it comes to that because I really do love my family and friends in the congregation and I feel like they don’t realize how much because I just never think to reach out to them.
There are so many things to write about right now but I have to start with the discovery I made today that some of the aforementioned family and friends read this journal. I guess I kinda knew that, but I had completely let it slip my mind because I never read it. I generally write my entries disconnected from the Internet on my laptop on bus. (I used to use my trusty ancient 12 year old Powerbook 170 but I have recently moved up to a slightly newer Titanium G4 Powerbook… grin…). After writing an entry, I eventually get to an Internet connection and I publish it out onto LiveJournal. I almost never go to my journal and read it. So, if you’ve left comments before and I never responding to said comments, it’s because I didn’t know they were there. Case in point, recent comments made by Reed and Hiromi. Hey guys. Sorry I missed your remarks… but here is what I have to say… Reed, I miss you too. I want to get together soon. Very soon. Let’s play a little Madden on the Gamecube, go fishing, drink beer, maybe record some music together. My garage is becoming my new studio and maybe we should do some work in it as soon as I get an audio interface for my TiBook… Hiromi, hiya! I didn’t know you didn’t know about my journal but I’m glad you found it and all that good stuff. I read yours and now you can return the favor. You and me and Rob and Manda need to see each other soon. I miss you guys too… And, no, I wouldn’t have probably struck up a conversation with Romeo if he had a PC keyboard sticking out of his bag. Still, I’m not bigoted against PC users, I just gently try to steer them towards the truth. The condition of Windows-PC-itis is not irreversible.
About the bees and the job interview mentioned in a previous entry… I got the job and I’m working in downtown Minneapolis now. I’m right on Nicollet Mall across the street from Let It Be and Big Brain Comics. I went into Let It Be the other day and found Kloey and was very excited. Today I discovered that the Rock Bottom Brewery on Lasalle has free wireless Internet access so I’ll probably lunch there every day from now on or at least close enough to there to leech off their Internet connection. I was there today and I wanted a Rueben but it was the one item on the menu they were out of. Grrr…
OK, so if you’ve ever gone and read the last two years worth of journal entries on this thing you’ve probably found that I have felt for years that I have lots of messes to clean up. Like my entire past is just one big oil spill and my entire present is just a huge attempt to save the baby seals and ducks of my future… (now that was some bad writing). My garage has been a metaphor for the mess for a long time and a fitting one it is because it literally is a mess filled with various things I’ve accumulated over the last 10 years. Photographs, a raft, lots of cables, old electric bills, candles, crayons, notebooks full of grocery lists, meeting notes, song lyrics and stories, drawings, old furniture, divorce papers, completely unquantifiable objects that I have no recollection of purchasing, Mason Thatcher’s childhood guitar, sports equipment, books, videos, CDs, tapes, diskettes, computers, computer parts, clothes, toys, reciepts, flyers from old shows I’ve seen, flyers from old shows I’ve played and lots more. I spent 8 hours cleaning in there on Monday. I found boxes that hadn’t been opened in 5 years and went through their contents. I filled the trash can and three cardboard boxes and barely made a dent. I took an old matress I’ve got down there and bent it into an L against the wall and covered it with pillows and blankets for Amanda to hang out on while I worked in there. Yesterday morning, I found myself drawn to the garage before work. I just wanted to be in there. It was 7:00 in the morning and I went down there and laid down on the mattress and just soaked the place up. There were piles of things everywhere, things representing who I was and things I lived through. There were guitars and other musical equipment there, in preparation for when it becomes a true studio. There was a feeling… a musty, disheveled feeling, that I had hadn’t felt since I moved out of my house when I was 19. It was the feeling that my basement room had growing up. Disorganized, impractical and ridiculous but also comforting and more like a nest than a room. I just laid there for 10 minutes and felt wonderful being down in that messy garage and I realized that there are a lot of things I miss. I miss my family, my childhood, the life I grew up with (as opposed to the life I made myself). I missed seemingly random people then… like Carolyn Kopecky and Sean Gavin and Lon Helland and Chad Astleford and Rachel Ruedy… I didn’t know why, but I just missed them (BTW, if anybody has Carolyn’s email address and they read this, please lemme know what it is… write me at ryan@ryansutter.net, thanks). I think I’ve needed to have my space and now I’m making it, out of my garage and the thought of that makes me very happy indeed.
Well, I’m at the bus depot. I’m going to get off the bus soon. I’ll go home, get on the Internet and send this little posting out into the wires. Maybe in some small way it’ll help me do a little of the connecting I need to do… And BTW Reed… I taught “Skol Vikings” to Sydney…. hee hee hee
More From Ryan Sutter
- God As I Knew Him – Part 4
- God As I Knew Him – Part 3
- God As I Knew Him – Part 1
- an actual personal entry…
- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog
