“You’ll sit alone forever / If you wait for the right time…”

“…What are you hoping for? / I’m here I'm now I’m ready / Holding on tight / Don’t give away the end / The one thing that stays mine” – Jimmy Eat World, “23”

Jimmy Eat World's "23" is one of my all-time favourite songs, and it seems more poignant than ever to me now. The song as a whole is not really about what I am personally going through, but the lyrics, especially the chorus as quoted above, still hit me where it hurts.

As this is my first blog post (on this blog, anyway), I should do a little introduction. My name is Scott, I'm a 32-year-old professional engineer from Regina, SK, Canada, and my rather excellent life was recently thrown into turmoil when my wife of four years decided to leave me and move to Calgary, AB. It's amazing how quickly you can go from completely content with life to disconnected and depressed. This is not a blog to discuss the reasons that my ex-wife decided to move on with her life without me, but rather a blog about how I am trying to move on and start over without her. And it will probably also be a blog about what I am watching, listening to, reading, playing, eating, drinking, etc.

The last five years were the best five years of my life. Not only did I meet someone special for the first time and experience five wonderful / comfortable (terrible word, according to the ex) years cohabitating together, I met most of my current best friends. I take whatever small comfort I can in the fact that I still have these friends at least. And my ex-wife is also still a good friend, albeit a long-distance friend, which is a situation that confounds some people. I also have a nice house, a well-paying job, and a supportive family (as well as a surprisingly supportive ex-family-in-law).

If the next few years are anything like the years between university and before cohabitation, I have some shitty times to survive through, which will possibly make for an interesting blog. (Probably not.) At some point, I will have to dive back into the pit of hell that is online dating. I'm not good at meeting people any other way. But that doesn't mean I won't try other terrible ideas like joining clubs and letting friends try to matchmake. I am hopeful that the personal development I went through in the last five years, in a large part because of my ex-wife, will help me to at least maintain a better standard of life than I had five years ago.

Some people ignore and/or deal with problems at home by throwing themselves into their work. As someone that has never enjoyed his work, only the people I work with and the money earned from work, I am finding it harder than ever to concentrate on work projects. It is somewhat comforting to know that as bad as my job performance is becoming, you don't need good job performance to maintain an acceptable level of achievement in this workplace. That might be depressing, if I cared, but I really don't. Work was always the place I had to go to for 8 hours a day (and no more, unless I'm paid extra) to fund the rest of my life. And so it shall remain, even if the home life has a lot less to offer than it used to.

It's tough to come home to an empty house after another lousy day at work. There's now a dog waiting for me, depending on me, and there are four cats as well, not quite so dependent, but always hungry. But caring for animals can not and will not fill the giant hole that has been left (getting a little cheese-ball here) in my heart. Even spending time with friends, while a welcome diversion, is temporary. My wife was supposed to be permanent. Eternal. Or, to borrow some "Lost" time-travel terminology, my constant. Losing my constant has left me feeling completely disconnected with the world. I guess it's the ol' "You complete me" concept in reverse.

I used to get a lot of joy out of playing video games for hours, or marathoning favourite TV series, or sitting outside reading a book for a day, but now I struggle to do any of these things for more than an hour at a time without getting distracted by depressing thoughts. Obviously time will remedy this problem. As I once sung, a long time ago (2001), "Time and dreams will always fade." But how much time? Stay tuned / subscribed to find out!

And so I come to the end of this first blog post. This was a lot of "poor me" nonsense (because, hey, I'm not starving and/or infected with AIDS in Africa, so what's my fucking problem?), which I promise will not be the regular content, but was necessary to lay out the blog's vision, values, and mission.

"I won't always love what I'll never have / I won't always live in my regret" – Jimmy Eat World, “23”