Wednesday, December 24, 2014

I Have a Bad Feeling About This...

I should be happy. I not only have a job, but I got a promotion of sorts that will send me to Boston at the end of January, for more money than I've made my entire life.

I should be happy because I got a little bit of a bonus that will help me move and get a few necessities, like a better computer. Believe me, that's a necessity!

I should be happy because I'll be living close enough to my daughter to see her on some weekends and will be close to baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams that can actually win sometimes.

I should be happy because I'm leaving Raleigh, where I've lived for almost 10 years, and, frankly, I'm sick of it.

But I'm not entirely happy. For the last few weeks a feeling of doom has been hanging over me that has nothing to do with me directly or my change in jobs and location. Some might call it precognition, but I can't specify what it is exactly that I dread, just that SOMETHING is going to happen. I'm waiting for the shoe to drop and it makes me lose sleep at night trying to figure it out.

I've had bad feelings before. The day of 9/11, I woke before the planes hit with that same bad feeling, turned on the news to find nothing happening, then went back to bed. I woke a few hours later to the horror, somewhat grateful I didn't have to see it live.

The morning my mother died I heard her voice calling my name and another bad feeling. I didn't hear that she'd died for another 3 days.

I've created characters that have similar traits. I'd consider them to be somewhat autobiographical. I even created a character that knows what's coming in the future and works to prevent it. In an unpublished part of that series, the hero tries to prevent 9/11. He only makes more trouble.

And that's just it. Maybe it's my imagination runneth over. I've tried to imagine my life better than it is, and while things start out great, something always happens to ruin the happiness. Mind you, I never imagined myself homeless before I actually was. But I did imagine myself being hit by a car, with worse results that actually occurred.

So maybe this is just my imagination in need of being emptied, by writing that story down. I don't know.

But I care. I don't want a world war to break out. I don't want a city destroyed by terrorism. I don't want tens of thousands to die. I doubt anyone with real power over events reads my blog, but if by some coincidence you do, please do everything in your power to avoid my imagined catastrophe.

Please make it all in my head and not a reality.