All Over the Place

It is Labor Day and I am working on me these days after decades of working on others. In many ways, it is much more difficult work.

Over the years I had assumed many postures and positions that weren’t really me but I used them to accomplish or to cope and now I am stripping them away to get back to just me. It’s like scraping barnacles from the bottom of a boat. It hurts like hell but is necessary for smooth sailing.

One of my weekend traditions is to review all of the things that I wrote that week. I read them bask-to-back-to-back, sort of taking an inventory of me. Recently a friend of mine told me that I was all over the place so I started looking at it from that perspective.

It is true. I am all over the place.

Everything from bicycles that drink too much to 91 year old men who forsake their numbered days for my benefit; from my adopted son Charles to making out with my High School girl friend at the Drive Inn on Sunday nights; and, of course, to the family all agreeing that my baby sister Angi would enjoy a Sunday Drive better from the trunk.

I’ve written 8 books (one self-published as a fund raiser for Union Mission) and one of the things that kept getting me in trouble as an author is that I would never stick to a particular subject line. My books are all over the place too! So I had to keep finding new publishers because the old ones didn’t like the new subject matter. They wanted me to write the same stuff. I wasn’t interested in that. I wrote about what I WAS interested in.

It may very well be that being all over the place is the way that I’ve always lived my life and not just recently because of the trials and traumas of relationships that fall apart and work that comes to an end.

Union Mission is as diverse and as complex as it is, in many ways, because I was always interested in moving on to the next thing.

My 91 year old friend Ben told me the other day, “I’ve watched you a long time now. You like to create. Then at the ribbon cutting you smile and pat someone on the back, hand them the keys and move on to the next thing.”

As soon as the words hung in the air at Johnny Harris’ restaurant, I knew that they were as true as any that have ever been spoken.

For decades I survived work by carving out this schizophrenic lifestyle where in Savannah, I was one person --- public, driven, relentless; but on Tybee I was another --- laid back, beach bum, picking up crab grass in the yard. It worked great. Until it went to hell!

A few years ago work started invading Tybee and my home. It became all consuming and so it consumed all.

Today I sit here looking at Fran’s thousand shades of green in the bright sunshine and for the first time in my life appreciate Labor Day. Most every one has the day off. The government of all things created a holiday to say to us, thanks for the hard work. You did good! Take a little time for yourself and your family. They are more important anyway.

And I’m coming to realize that I’ve always been all over the place. It is who I am. For Christ’s sake my friends range from Johnny O, Conner, Roma, O Johnny and Trolley Joe to Will Campbell (Southern Baptist prophet) , Jack Pegrim (does street medicine in Calcutta), Lucy Hall (Amazon woman in Atlanta saving addicts on the streets), and Dr. Jim Withers (founder of the Street Medicine movement). Talk about a schizophrenic collection of people! And I love them all in equal proportions.

So, on this Labor Day, I am going to celebrate me and the work that I am doing to get back to just me.

It’s all over the place.