Depressing times and he's off the planet again!

This time of the year is never good for me, it marks one of the dangerous crisis points where my chances for suicide are higher than many other times (the other is my birthday).

My period of ennui continues.  I cannot find the spark I have had in painting or modelling.  I look, I get excited, then reality sinks in and I realise I just can't do it.  I cannot place my finger on why I can't do what I once enjoyed with a passion.  Perhaps it's my adult self finally realising it's time to grow up. Nah that won't happen, if I did that then I would be very dead indeed.

Much has happened in my personal life this year.

My wife is suffering from a malady which doctors can't quite pin down.  This has placed a stress on our relationship, but we both know that after 29 years of marriage we won't be divorcing.  Besides I would be worrying too much about her if I did, which I won't.  So all I can do is take her to her appointments and hope that a cure can be found.

My eldest child has flown the nest under rather strained circumstances.  It is now going on two weeks and I've not heard from him, neither has anyone else in the family.  This situation has depressed me significantly and makes we worry about the concept of family even more.  I understand that all children leave the nest eventually, but it's almost as though as a parent I failed to educate and bring him up with values a loving family would appreciate. I don't know where he's living or with whom.

My youngest has now finished compulsory education.  So a new chapter in her life is about to begin.

I'm having to get used to the new paradigm.  No drop off and pick up from schools, taking children to places and work (though that does happen to a lesser degree).  Still can't sleep in, not that I can with my mind in constant flux from 3-4am.  All I can do is plug in my iPod and listen to an audio book to drive out the perplexing thought processes that fill my rampant mind.

For those in Brisbane it has so far been a season of storms, and my residence as usual suffers from water incursions.  Being a pensioner with no savings, it is next to impossible to maintain my residence.  The roof leaks, my lower level leaks (built into the side of a slope), my drains are cracked, lights are broken or faulty.  It's all I can do to feed my family and pay the ever increasing utility bills.

I find it so aggravating that this world is now so driven by greed and selfishness.  Employers don't want full time employees (they want contractual slaves who worry constantly about whether they will have their job renewed), casualisation of the work force where a business will employ juniors rather than employ a mature/older worker.  Employers and managers in their late 20/30's thinking they know better than everyone else, and cover their asses rather than solving problems.  Where being over 50 is a death sentence for employment.  Oh I could go on and on, but what's the point.  This world is on the course of the Titanic, people can make a difference, but as long as they think they will be the one on the lifeboats they don't and won't make the difference to improve the world and society.

My wife and I were brought up Roman Catholics, we did the same for our children.  Yet the so called fine institutions I sent my children too preferred to view Catholicism as an elitist association, where anyone who's parents weren't somebody (and I'll leave you to define that category) were not worthy of knowing, certainly not encouraging a disadvantaged child to associate with them in fear that the disease of poverty might rub off on them and they become losers.  As I stated I am a Roman Catholic, I will remain one until the day I die.  I have a problem with my Church, not in its doctrine, but in the people who now populate its hierarchy.  I was once asked by a parish member why my family have not been to church, my reply was "when god returns to the church, so will I".

So my ramble is almost over.  I am a bitter and angry man these days.  Wishing my somewhat immortal life was over and that the oblivion of the afterlife would hurry up and embrace me.  While some may think heaven is my ultimate destination, I am inclined to believe purgatory is where I will end up, suffering is all I can expect.  Just as long as I don't have to return to this benighted and godless world.  Hell exists both in the afterlife as well as in the here and now.

Here ends my sermon.