Le sigh..

It must be some flaw in human nature to become blind to someone's faults when you care for them. I don't mean being aware of them and caring for them in spite of it, I mean flat out just not seeing it. After the shit hits the fan and after everything's settled, and ya look back at it in hindsight, it's easy to say, "Ah hah!" It all becomes so clear.. of course it does. Viewing the same events from the perspective of a smitten lover is quite different than that of an outside observer.. and once your emotions are out of the way, it becomes pretty simple to become the observer. Simply but absolutely not painless. All the clues and hints were there.. and I think, honestly, I saw them even then and just chose to ignore it. As if it'd get better on it's own.. and that's pretty naive on my part.

So.

I've got a lot going on in my head.. it's probably for the best that I am single since I'm coming to the time when I'll be occupied all the time. Any spare time I might've had is going to be eaten up by the extra hours I'll be pulling at work and the part-time work I'm going to start searchin' for. Nothing's more important to me at this point in my life than preparing to move, making it as smooth of a transition as possible. Even prior to the emotional shit, the move was foremost in my mind, not the woman in my life.. I knew it and she knew it. Moving is expensive business and since I don't take hand-outs.. not that any are being given.. I can rely only on myself to scrounge up the money to get this done and get it done right.

There's probably some people that think I have a romanticized idea of what it's going to be like in New Orleans.. and if I was a few years younger and didn't have a clue, then yea, it'd be true probably. I have few doubts that I'll be workin' my ass off more there than I did here, that I'll have more stress. I'll be back on my own, paying everything on my own.. but it'll all be mine. I'll be in a region far more suited to me, with a hell of a lot more goin' on than where I am now.. with a lot more history to it. I've said it before and I'll say it many more times, New Orleans has always felt like home. It's where my family's from. It's almost like there's something in the blood that draws ya to it.. you either love New Orleans or you hate it. There isn't much of an in-between.

Some people tell me about the high crime there.. and yes, that's true. According to the studies, most of it's in the fuckin' 'hood. Tell ya what, one of you crackas should go hang out on Duval Street and see how long ya last. It's irrelevant of the city, if you're in the wrong part of town doing the wrong shit, you're going to end up dead eventually.

Not that too many people read this but I bet ya'll are gonna get tired of readin' me praise the glory of New Orleans before I even get there