I work. Pretty much all the time. When I’m not on the streets thwarting natural selection saving lives and stamping out disease, I’m either writing, or lecturing, or teaching a class somewhere.
When I’m not doing that, I have KatyBeth. I try to do things with her like camping, or father-daughter dates at the movies, or playing on the water. And God help me, sometimes I work when I should be playing with my daughter.
I don’t socialize much. Before I started this blog, I moved to the other end of the state in order to be closer to KatyBeth. The people I used to call friends live three hours away now. With some of them, we drifted apart. Others, I discovered just how tenuous their loyalty was, and I ended the friendship.
That isn’t to say I have no friends, however. Far from it. They just live in cities and small towns far away, too far away to, say, grab a beer with after work or pop over to their house to watch a football game.
Nonetheless, we manage to keep in touch through this wonderful invention called the Internet, and occasionally we manage to get together in person. Like last weekend, for example.
Phlegm Fatale was gracious enough to host a party for a select group of bloggers, and several of us were able to get together the next day for a little shooting. I met a ton of people who read my blog, and whose writing I admire in return. Most of us share common beliefs. In between hilarious stories, passionate arguments, great food and better fellowship, and more than a few rounds flung downrange, I came to realize a few things:
It’s a satisfying thing, finding your tribe. I know I found mine, and it was immensely pleasurable spending time with them.
I can still shoot. Once upon a time, that was a pastime that brought me no small amount of peace and pleasure, and was a source of more than a little pride. I was good at it. After close to eight years spent without firing a shot, I had forgotten just how much fun it was to hear the clang of a round hitting the backplate. I’m not the pistol shot Johnny or Matt is, but I acquitted myself well nonetheless. With a rifle, I more than held my own. And any golf ball within 100 yards is in serious danger.
I need to laugh more. I chuckle a lot at work, because if you can’t laugh, you won’t last. And God knows EMS provides me with more than enough absurdity to laugh at. But to share a good, old-fashioned rollicking belly laugh with good friends… I need to do more of that. It’s healing.
Everything is better wrapped in bacon. I don’t care if it’s filet mignon or fudge brownies, bacon makes it better. Heck, I put a few rounds through my old Hi Point 9mm truck gun, and it even shot better because I still had bacon grease on my hands. One day I’m going to meet my dream girl, and she’ll be wearing a teddy made entirely of bacon, with a little bacon grease dabbed behind each ear, and maybe a dab between her sweet, bacon-flavored breasteses, and together we will raise my serum cholesterol to obscene levels.
And I will love her all the more for it.
Over there on my left sidebar, you will see a new link list of Bloggers I’ve Met. Give ‘em all a read, and see if they’re not worthy members of your tribe, as well.
Here’s to adding more to the list very soon.
