I'm on a Rudderless Ship

… and I don’t know how to swim.

That’s the feeling I can’t shake of late (late = last ten years, give or take a decade).  Watching the news, paying the bills, shuffling papers at work, praying in the pews.  Feels like I’m marking time.  Oh, I know I’m not.  I have probably the most important job in the world – raising two young ladies and keeping a successful marriage successful – and I know I’ll be rewarded for it, provided I do my best at it, when I find myself at the light at the end of that tunnel.

But that still doesn’t shake the … drifting … feeling.

I’m going to chalk it up to “Dark Night of the Soul” syndrome.  Which reminds me, one day I should buy and read Dark Night of the Soul.  But – shockingly enough – I’m starting to even get dissatisfied with reading.  At least my current reading … or not finding something to read that fire’s me up.  I have an oppressive image of a clock winding down, a weight on my chest (no, it’s not my heart acting up), a balance sheet out of balance.  An image that creeps into my internal teleprompter when I’m trying to hide from life in the pages of whatever book I’m currently traversing.  Maybe it’s the much vaunted midlife crisis, has to be, but I don’t even have the spare money to buy an electric guitar, much less a Corvette convertible.

I state this as a partial excuse for not blogging much of late.  Also, way too busy at work, with a couple of hours of stressful overtime already.  Plus, I’ve been super-absorbed in Stephen King’s JFK assassination book, reading nearly 75 pages a night once everyone’s abed and asleep.  Extracurricularly, we got the overlap of the girls soccer practices and soccer games, though that’s winding down after this weekend, with Little One’s basketball practices and games starting up, so I never quite know where I’m going to be on any given night, and for a creature of habit like me, that’s a little stressful and unnerving in itself.

But …

There are posts on the horizon, half-formed and blobulous in my mind.

Something about the Fathers of the Church.

Something about various weirdities I’ve been pursuing.

Something about possible resolutions to the whole rudderless theme I’ve written about above.

Something about a desire to read new stuff: old stuff.

And something about Stephen King’s book, and a review when I finish it.

All on the horizon, if I can but coax them closer …