March 1st marks the halfway point of my time in Chicago. (Yeah, I know it’s the 2nd.  Busy day.)

It’s too early to say much about my time in this city.  Halfway through Charlotte, I was moving into a new apartment and attempting to greatly distance myself from 2 recently ended relationships (one more substantial than the other).  Halfway through Philadelphia, I was still learning my new job (after having ditched my hellish first job) and settling into a solitary existence.  Halfway through Costa Mesa… I was probably drunk.  There was a lot of drinking that year.  It’s a bit hazy.  Anyway.  Halfway through San Francisco, I had just recently started working at a new job and was breathing a sigh of relief that I was actually going to be able to pay rent (though, whether or not I would have enough money to move again was questionable at this particular junction.)

And now, halfway through Chicago… well, money is, as always, the big question mark.  For all my ability to plan ahead and save money, the unexpected and unfortunate tend to deplete funds right when I begin to think I’m set.  Will I have enough money to move this next time?  I’d like to think that I’ve overcome greater odds to make it thus far, but… who knows?

Anybody want to sponsor me?  Think of it as supporting an Olympic athlete, but with 66% less six-pack abs and no chance of me becoming Subway’s next spokesperson.

So far, Chicago hasn’t seemed to produce the kind of memorable moments as Philly’s drunken walks home at 3 a.m. or San Francisco’s New Years Eve groping by a middle aged queer, but really, how can we say what will stick in our memories?

I have one very vivid memory of my friend Mike and I, lounging in my ‘porn movie’ loft apartment in Charlotte, drinking beers and listening raptly to our friend and co-worker, Chase, recount an apparently eventful night he spent in Florida, except almost every vital detail of the story was reduced to, “So and so and so and so.”  The black version of “Yada yada yada”?  Who knows, but when the story ended, Mike and I had no idea what had happened, yet we intuitively understood that we had just vicariously lived a momentous moment in Chase’s life.  Or maybe not.  It’s hard to say.

The point, if I have one, is that it’s nigh impossible in the moment to see what memories will stick out 5 years down the line.  I know if I could sit down with my old Charlotte friends and rehash the past, their memories would fill in large holes in my own recollections (regardless if those holes are the product of selective memory or tall glasses of cheap vodka).  I would be foolish to think I could do a fair job of recounting the past 4 and a 1/2 years, and when these 10 years are up, it’ll be an even more unrealistic notion.  (My memoirs are going to be half guess work, half complete bullshit and half bad math.)

Which, I suppose, is why I started this blog (4 years late).  I rarely write about my day to day on here (I don’t think you care about my weekend spent without power/heat in my apartment, or about the stupid customers at work), but I am using this to document the evolution of my own personal thoughts and beliefs.  What I knew and believed when I started this journey will not be what I know and believe at the end of this.  Will I be a Bible-thumping true-believer at the end of this?  Well, no, don’t be silly.  But the valley between a 22-year-old freshly minted college graduate and a 32-year-old grizzled, alcoholic shut-in is certainly deep and wide (like yo’ mama!).

Indirectly, these recorded thoughts and beliefs will retell the events of my life, both minor and major.  I imagine when I look back on these blog entries, besides for cringing at my oafish attempts at humor, I will be thrown back into unexpected memories, moments long forgotten and perhaps overshadowed by seemingly monumental happenings.  This site exists more-so for my future self than for anyone who may read it now (but feel free to read along, even if you’re a stranger; thanks StumbleUpon).

I’m halfway through halfway through.  4 and 1/2 years from now I will be packing up my shit and moving to my last city, New York City (presumably; though, I’m becoming more and more certain that there will never be a truly ‘last’ city for me).

What have I achieved so far?  I’m not sure it’s my job to answer that question.

This is just my life.