On being "stuck" in SEK.

Despite the sunlight that is criss-crossing in beams off the blanket of snow in this February noonday sun, today is a shitty day.  As the melancholy of no cigarettes and no coffee creeped into my mental environs, around 10 AM this morning I realized that this town offers me very little incentive to stick around.  An inventory:  my best friend is dead, my marriage is over 7 months, the strange "it's complicated" relationship with my roommate ended when I asked him to move out a week ago.  My parents are moving four hours away (if you're not familiar with Mid-West speak, we judge distance by the time it takes to drive there.)  I have 1 zen job with a fantastic friend for a boss, my sister and her family, and 14 years of history to keep me rooted.  

I should be basking in the bright light and being happy to be human and alive but instead I feel more like the puddles of snow I tromped in, melting into non-existence on the rug.  I tried to quit buying cigarettes this weekend and I even watched this comedic expose of the fuckery that Big Tobacco is visiting upon places like Indonesia and Togo but my head is too unhappy with all the changes going on, all the goings of people in my life, and cigarettes are too dear a friend to mourn today.  So here's 3.42$ toward the lawyers needed to manpower your trumped-up litigation, Phillip Morris.  

So what's keeping me here?  I have a theory that the only way humanity is going to progress at this stage in our existence is not if we all congregate in the awesome places in the world but rather if we start making the awesome wherever we're planted.  Eschew the Horatio Algers "grass is always greener" bullshit behavior of our evolutionary biology and actually try to come to terms with and maintain a resilient approach to this native century.  Do something worthwhile one little step at a time.  

You can't just say we're gonna progress as a species, then sit back and wait for others to take up the banner.  That's faith, and my faith in modern America is limited.  My hope for a better tomorrow is not, and my confidence in myself?  

Well, bloom where you're planted.