So, I'm happy to report that I took almost two weeks off over Christmas/New Years to visit my family. I spent an entire week there, which was great because it's the longest I've been home in ... probably 5-7 years. Plus, I really needed the time off work. I won't go too much into that, except to say that I'm a manager, and kinda feeling like I'm on shaky ground with the higher-ups, because I'm "not like other managers", so to speak. And as far as it goes, they're right ... I have a very informal, non-disciplinary attitude, and clearly that's not being all that effective with my staff. So thus, the stress. I am quite good at the other aspects of my job however, which is how I got myself into this situation in the first place.

Anyway, none of that is the bit that nobody can relate to. And I'll try to spare giving way too many details here, because I know I'm a longwinded sonofabitch on my best days.

Basically, on Christmas night I went and hung out with my oldest brother ... this is something I've done maybe 2-3 times in my adult life, as I've not lived in the same town with him since I was 18. And we've always been fairly different in personality. He was always kind of rebellious, in trouble, really kind of an angry guy. I was far more mellow and willing to follow rules. At least, I'd follow rules enough to not get caught at the ones I was breaking, and he never had such concerns.

Despite all this, our thinking has become more similar as we've gotten older ... he's definitely mellowed out, himself. And I do think I understand more of where he was coming from. So this Christmas night, we were supposed to hang with some cousins and hopefully our rather estranged third brother, but none of that panned out. So instead, he took me to hang with his homies ... these are the guys he apparently hangs with most weekends, and the place *where* they hang out is the home of a man who knew me from back when I wore diapers. (Yes, I mean as a *baby*, darn it!)

As a matter of fact, *all* of the people there knew me. At least, they had -- this was a neighborhood my family had moved away from when I was about eight years old. What's remarkable is that they all remembered me so clearly ... I think my memory was kind of blurred by my having left so long ago, and gone on to other places and done other things. These were folks who'd stayed in the same neighborhood all their lives.

And that's where the weirdness came in. The father-figure of the group, the guy who's probably pushing 70 these days ... he starts in on me at some point. I didn't feel particularly singled out, because everyone fucked with everyone, there. Nonetheless, I got a particularly long ridiculing/lecturing.

The gist of this guy's beef was me was that I didn't remember where I came from. No, that's not it, exactly ... I was there, and I did at least vaguely remember all of them. It was more that I didn't *act like* I knew I was from there.

Now, while it was all in fun, the truth is that this was rather bad timing in my life for such a pseudo-lecture. As this journal undoubtedly testifies, I'm feeling rather anchorless these days. In an individual sense, I am sure of myself -- I know who I am because I know what I want, what I believe in, what I am capable of. But in another sense I am quite lost, because I don't really feel like I know where I belong.

That's why his little tirade didn't help. Somewhere in my teen years I switched school systems, and in those years and my early twenties I kind of evolved a second family. K. and M. from my previous post were a part of that. I still consider them a family, though our little group of friends has long since dissolved, because they most surely affected the man I would become as much as my birth family did.

Ah, but note the use of the word "dissolved". The worldview/mindset of my late teens/early twenties was a fleeting thing for most of the rest of my crowd. At some point in their lives, each of them more or less began living the lives their parents always wanted them to. I found that I couldn't live the life my family wanted for me, because I had changed too much. And I continued to change, more or less forging a rather unique path into my adulthood ... one that my second family could not relate to, either.

So on Christmas night of 2007, I find myself hanging with my oldest brother, and many people who've known me for longer than I can accurately remember -- and more or less, I find myself being asked, "Who are you?!"

Well, good question, old man. Good question.

I guess there's a reason I called this diary Passing Strange. I am a weird one, mostly because I can't really relate to folks from my old neighborhood, and I can't relate to folks from my adoptive family. I have a big gaggle of friends today ... and what a shocker, I don't really relate to any of them, either.

I don't actually mean this as a pity party though, believe it or not. As the man said, "I am in a world of shit, true. But I am alive. And I am not afraid."

Because, as the woman said:

"... It was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free...

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.