The Aimless Drifter. That's me.

"Who Matt? Well he's... he's a little bit... lost."

"It's just that you've got so much unrealised potential!"

I've heard this sort of stuff all my life. Thing is - the folks saying it are not wrong. It's always saddened me - frustrated me - more than I can put into words, but it's also the Truth.

I'm a forty year old man who has absolutely no idea what I want to be when I grow up. What's worse - when I try to focus on something and figure out if that's what I should go after, it's like trying to find details in the dark. The closer I look, the less I see clearly. That is, at least until I'm distracted by my desire to help someone else with something that they're doing or working on. Then whatever I was trying to see gets completely lost. Call it ADHD of the soul.

I've lived my life in a reactionary fashion. Never with anything resembling a plan. Just stimulus - response.

The Aimless Drifter.

While it may not be a wholly bad way to live, it's also not really a good way to live. In fact, one can begin to feel like their life is not really their own, but rather just a response to the musings of the Norns.

You need to make decisions, grasp opportunities, and maybe even plan things out once in a while to feel real ownership of your life. It gets you (for lack of a better term) invested in a way that simply responding does not.

It's time.

I fear that leaving my life on its current path won't change things much. It's too easy for me to simply keep on reacting to things and to the people in my life. I have too many good and interesting people in my life. (I know - good problems to have - right?) It's time to knock the train off its tracks. Blow up the bridge. Create a little chaos.

Change.

My last day at work will be this Friday. My lease on my apartment ends on the 31st. Mark has graciously allowed me to couch surf for a short while as I get some things together, and I get rid of damn near all my worldly possessions in preparation for what comes next:

I'm going to ride off into the sunset with nothing more than what I can fit in my saddlebags.

I'm headed west. I'm hitting the reset button and starting fresh. I'm going to make a decision and live with the consequences. I'm going to stop reacting to my life and start taking charge of it.

And it will all start with an Adventure.

Made it to Vickery, OH so far. Stopped for fuel and a cup of coffee. Significantly colder today. Just put the thermal on under my t-shirt to help with that. According to Weather Bug, it's a balmy 51 degrees out.

Seeing some impressive colors in Ohio's fall folliage. They do seem to be further into the season though- more bare trees than Wilmington. More bare trees means more wind. Wind is not my friend today.

The weekend thus far (rather than the weekend in review- for a change):

Friday:
Immediately following work, I rode to drop off a movie and pick up (rent) the DVD collection of Brisco County Jr.. I remember it being a fun series and Bruce Campbell s kinda a personal hero. What's more, it makes better sense than full blown movies for 'workout entertainment' as they're only one hour shows each episode, so I'm not working out for a half hour or an hour and then sitting for another hour to an hour and a half.

After picking up Bruce's misadventures, I headed back to the house where I met up with lotusanddragon  . We headed over to shellefly  's place to pick her up and than to Philly to assist in the celebrating of jeremym  's birthday at North Bowl. The place rocks - there's just no two ways about it. Great music, the drinks flow, and the lanes are clean and well maintained. That's one hell of a combination.

After bowling, the rest of the gang which included ms_violet  , boutell  , and many more (whose lj names I can't recall because I suck) headed somewhere for a drink, but lotusanddragon   and I headed back to the house since he still had to pack for his trip to Japan. We did that (I kept him company while he did it really) and got a chance for the first time in a long time to just shoot the shit. It was a grand time. We even had a mini-adventure taking a quick trip to his office for some forgotten info while K-T (who doesn't have LJ) read some of the end of the last Harry Potter book to us via my cell phone's speakerphone function. Then a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, a moment where I broke his world a little by introducing him to the 'omg shoes' video, some chill time up on the deck, and the limo service was there to take him to the airport. It really kinda felt like the perfect way to send my bro off to another country. I sacked out afterward to some long overdue sleep.

Saturday:
Saturday morning I woke late (figured I earned it) and headed to jafosmite  's concert with X-Fusion at the 100th Annual Arden Fair. I took the Yamaha, and it was a damn good thing - the place was mobbed. I managed to find a completely illegal convenient parking space, locked up the scoot, and headed straight for where I hear the boys getting ready. The show rocked hard, though there's little surprise there. It was fun watching an all new batch of folks rockin out to X-Fusion's music. I was a little disappointed by the fact that the fair closed supah early, so I only had time to do a quick 'fly through' after the show, but I'm betting that's a good thing in the long run as I need to keep all the cash I can these days.

After the fair, I headed to good ol' Barnes and Noble for some time to do some writing, screw around, and browse the newest batch of 'how to draw' books and magazines. This is something that I haven't done in a while, and I missed it. It's something that I enjoy both with friends or alone. When I'm by myself, it's almost like meditation. I can people watch, get my thoughts in order, and often be inspired. I was impressed by my ability to not buy any of the new art books/magazines. Almost, but I managed to put them back. Really, it's not like I would use them - not in any real way. Most art books are great, but they wind up being more or less inspiration sources and that's about it. While I was sitting and parusing my latest batch of books and magazines, I got a phone call from xtingu  . Being a spaz, I went instantly into high alert mode - she was supposed to be out on the playa, and that would mean without cell phone reception of any kind at all. She assured me that nothing was wrong but that she 'just wasn't feeling it' this year and that she was homeward bound and would keep me posted on her travel plans. She said she missed me. I'm a lucky bastard like that. I stayed at B&N pretty late and went home. Once back at the house, I started working on one of the images that I got stuck in my head while at the bookstore and when I realized that it was almost 2am I hit the sack - I had a big day coming up.

Sunday:
Woke up fairly early, but not early enough. I had planned to ride with burningkirby  , Lee (sans lj), and Ballz (also sans lj). However, as I am the planning master, I didn't have any of their phone numbers and I was having net connectivity issues (I had Ballz's street address in my email account). I did finally get connected, but the whole process delayed me enough that I got to Ballz's place about 15 minutes later than planned and I hate being the limiting factor. We made our way via back roads to burningkirby  's compound where we gathered up burningkirby   and Lee and after some very minor repairs to burningkirby  's bike, we headed out. It was the perfect morning for a ride. Cool but not cold. Bright and sunny and just... frickin... gorgeous. miles melted past under our wheels as we rolled west into PA. If I can convince Ballz to send me a copy of our route, maybe I'll post it later. What a great run. I broke the 600 mile mark since buying the Yamaha with ease.

After our ride we stopped back at burningkirby  's place and had some snackages. Then off to Lee's and then I headed back to B&N. Yes, back to B&N. I've decided that I'm a creature of habit. Once I find something I like, I tend to stick with it until I find the next thing that I like. While there I got some more stuff done both in the writing and the creativity departments.

While I was at B&N, xtingu   called to let me know that she had landed and asked if I could meet her at her apartment. I said sure, packed up my gear, and headed over. We arrived at almost identical times, and commenced a good old fashioned 're-connect' kind of night. We were visited albeit briefly by theseitz   who showed us his supah sexy new iPhone. We sacked out shortly thereafter.

Monday:
We woke up a bit late and had some more really amazing reconnect time. It had been a while since xtingu   and I had the chance to talk more than "Hi - how's the weather?" Okay - I'm exagerating, but you get the point. We'd let our 'life stuff' kinda keep us so focussed that we hadn't spent much time just talking. We'd both missed it terribly and this time (Sunday night and Monday morning) really scratched that itch.

Next, we hopped on the bike and headed up to swingchickie  's place for the afternoon and got some more hang time with the good peeps. swingchickie   and Jack, jeremym   (and the always awesome JD), boutell   and Jenny, opadit   and Steve, ms_violet   and Vince, and of course xtingu   and myself. Jack manned the grill and xtingu   brought some corn salsa that was muy muy yummy.

Then, of course, there were donuts.

Now, xtingu   and I have come back to her place, she's on the phone with her folks and I'm wrapping up what was started as a "weekend up to this post" but has become a "weekend in review".

Hope you had a weekend as awesome as mine!

It's a great morning.