How the Grateful Dead Ruined (and saved) My Life

The Grateful Dead, God bless 'em, enjoyed a career that spanned 30 plus years. I enjoyed them for perhaps 25 of those, although not as devotedly as others who built a lifestyle around the band and their pantheon of counterculture icons. I was too young to be part of that San Francisco scene, and too far east, but I caught the bus when it went by and I stayed on the bus in various ways for a long time.

I can safely say that I got to enjoy an extended young adulthood. Long after I saw age 35 and even after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, when I turned 40, I made my place in this world with other Deadheads, enjoying a sort of idyllic life and yet trying not to fall into the "hipper than thou" trap. It made for interesting times, sometimes incredible fun, and a social safety net that could catch me, with all my eccentricities, when I fell. In retrospect, and I say this because I now find myself on the margins of this hippie caste, it was indeed a long, strange, trip that has culminated in a clearer understanding of what went wrong with the counter culture.

My own story is nothing special. I grew up in a nice suburb in a nice "medium sized manufacturing city" as an old friend used to call it. I knew that I heard that different drummer early in my life when I got wind of rock and roll and The Beatles. When the Summer of Love happened I was barely out of grade school. When Woodstock happened I was fourteen years old. I wanted to be a part of rock and roll and the music scene and was rabid about reading everything I could get my hands on. I had the first issue of Rolling Stone. In later years, when Cameron Crowe wrote his screenplay for "Almost Famous," he was writing what I dreamed of. What would eventually be diagnosed as a crippling case of clinical depression and imposter syndrome as well as social anxiety would keep me from realizing those dreams. For the most part I dropped out. I was never in danger of addiction, however, since I had a low tolerance for alcohol and most drugs. I wasn't a drinker. I did inhale.

The difference between then, or life up until May, 2000 and now, is that I have been away. The past decade has been a crash course in focus and determination. More to the point, coming home made things stand out in much sharper focus. There is the old song from the world wars that goes, "how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" (pronounced in true American hick: pair - EE). Well, I have been to the academic Paris. I did what most every red-blooded American single mother does when faced with a child starting Kindergarten: I went back to college. It was the best of both worlds decision in that it kept my child from being a latchkey kid.

Going back to college was my first clue. My friends were incredulous, my family dubious. I had a checkered employment past (I feel that I was doing "research" for "life skills"). I had started college once, but wandered off, never really quitting, just "putting it off for a year or twenty."



... continued

Oh and by the way ...

I did end up taking that job after all. I actually like my job and the people with whom I work. I still refuse to dangle prepositions.

Bad Blogger

I'm a bad blogger. Not only have I not posted in here in a year, but I have multiple blogs, none of which get any attention. For me to consider myself a writer, this does not bode well. I was just playing a fascinating game of Bejeweled Blitz which is mildly meditative and thinking about how I blow off my writing all the time, as if it were a red-headed stepchild and then I admonished myself for having more than one blogging spot. It is foolhardy to try to keep them all fed with blistering social insight and so it is easier to simply do nothing.

I also keep two blogs for one main reason and that is because I have a few readers who are on the same site. I consider one of those readers to be a dear friend, a kindred-spirited, menopausal reinvention of her former self, who braved the tempestuous ride through graduate school along with me but we will manage to keep communication.

I have been toying with the idea of going completely Google-based on my home computer. I already use most of their plugins, my opening brower page is my iGoogle page, my resume is online courtesy of Google, and I have all my photos uploaded with Picasa and hosted online by Google. It's really one-click fun despite all the people who bitch about Google. I have been assimilated by Googleness. That and Facebook. And Twitter. But those are other stories.

So I'm paring down to two blogs now, both on Blogger. My Motime account, Yankee in a Red State, will languish but really, that was my Florida blog. I'm still a Yankee but I no longer live in a red state and not because Florida went blue this past presidential election. I've changed latitudes and attitudes (apologies to Jimmy Buffett). You can catch me here most days, and sometimes on Where's Chindo?