IRL

After high school, I took a trip across the country. On this trip I forsook almost all modern amenities, as a friend and I cancelled our cell phones, borrowed a cheap old junked-out Ford Explorer, and spent three months working odd jobs for cold hard illicit cash everywhere from Regina to Lake Louise. It was my first experience of living on the rough, and on the way I met many dubious characters far more underground than myself. It was a thrilling experience, and I strove from that point forward to aim for a more off-the-radar existence. The computer addiction that has marked my life seemed an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one, and I thought I could do it.

Of course, I was off to university, where I would be borrowing thousands of dollars from the government, but I brashly plowed through the irony. I saw the obligations to the government as an extension of my obligations to my parents (i.e. to get a bachelor's degree), after which point I could disappear forever.

But the paper trail has a habit of kicking your ass. On Canada Day three years ago, I spent two hours in the lobby of a Quality Inn in Seattle, reservation and fistful of cash in hand, but lacking the credit card required to cover extras I had absolutely zero intention of indulging. Later, after I had gone ahead and ordered said Visa, I discovered that my balance was insufficient to buy a plane ticket, and had to apply for a larger limit.

I graduated from school in April and considered my options: cancel everything and live the life I craved, laying my loans squarely on the shoulders of my parents, or suck it up and legitimize myself. Of course, after three years or expired sublets and evictions amounting to eleven-and-a-half moves in four years, you start to realize that eternal transience can create just as much of an existential quandary as the restrictions of our modern world. I decided to take a deep breath, hold my nose, and take the plunge.

And so it began. There was a lease. Full-time hours. A new iPhone with the requisite 3 year term. Cable, internet, hydro. All of a sudden, there are more bills with my name on them than there are items of furniture in my house.

Anyways, this transition - to real life, motherfuckers - has left my baseball fanhood in the lurch. Another mediocre Blue Jays season limps to its inevitable conclusion. There is hope, despair and designations for assignment. There is talk of next year that seems stale in its redundancy, even in spite of all the positive adjectives reserved for Brett Lawrie and Jose Bautista. At the end of the day, this might as well be 2005, another surprisingly competitive team that couldn't hold onto .500 at the end of the day.

Of course, I've been keeping half an eye out. There was a Luis Perez post that never materialized (Summary: six months ago, would you have voted Luis Perez for "best pitching performance of 2011"? Would you have even known what organization he played for?). There was an Aaron Hill trade post that was a little slow on the uptake (summary: shrug). There was also a comment or two on my firsthand experience of the Jared Weaver shitshow on August 13 (summary: I thought his pregame looked rusty, but assumed I was projecting...until he gave up 8 earnies).

Baseball is awesome, but it's a little scary at times to realize that you can spend your whole life devoted to a thing and still feel like you didn't know the first thing about it, and never is this truer than the internet.

Anyways, I'll do my best to continue to essay through September as I attempt to get my bank account in order and my writing career on track. I've been reading some William Gibson lately, and feeling a little like I'm in that first-novel purgatory (albeit with none of the brilliance, only the obfuscation). Time to build this thing up for a future that much more glorious than the present. Sound like any Candian-based baseball team you know?