I’ve been feeling a bit pissy lately. I’ve been snapping at friends. I’m not sleeping as well as I was just a few months ago. I’m always tired.

The job search is not going well at all. Every day I spruce up the resume for the particular position I’m applying for and send out a few. Cover letters are particularly trying, but I feel that I’m a pretty good writer, so that part isn’t so bad. The endless pages of the boring applications are what really get to me.

I’ve got that “I’m rotting here” feeling again. The same feeling I get after I’ve lived in a place for longer than six months. I don’t know what it is about me, but I really, really like to move. Most people hate it. They get all stressed out and complain endlessly, but not me. I love to move every six months or so. If I stay longer than that in place I get fidgety. I hate to come home. I hate to be in the apartment or room. I’ve been back in Hayward for almost six months now, and this is how I’m starting to feel.

I haven’t liked Hayward since my senior year of high school, when all I wanted to do was the fuck out of here. In my first year of the Navy I’d come home, sometimes reluctantly, and stay for a few days. It never felt the same, not like when I was a kid, when Hayward felt like home. Hayward hasn’t felt like home since I was 17.

I really need to quit my bitching, I’m starting to sound like a woman…

I don’t like it here. Hayward sucks. The Bay Area, in general, sucks. I do not belong here. I was so happy in Chico, why did I leave again? When I was bored in Chico there was so much for me to do that I enjoyed doing.

I walked EVERYWHERE. I walked to my pubs, I walked to coffee, I walked to school, I walked downtown, I walked across the street to buy beer, I walked around the corner to have breakfast, I walked home from Kelly’s house at 4am, I walked to my friend’s houses… I walked everywhere. Here in Hayward I don’t walk. Here in the Bay Area I do not walk. The very few things I like to do here–play golf, go to Dave’s house, have a beer at The Bistro–I have to drive. Everything is so spread out you can’t really walk anywhere.

I miss hiking in Bidwell Park, up and down the trails next to the creek filled with trout and sometimes salmon. I miss hiking in the Sierra foothills, thousands of feet above sea-level. I miss my beautiful sweeping views and the crisp pine-tree smell of the forest. I miss my fly fishing creeks and streams. I miss the cheap golf and cheap booze. I miss Chico.

I gotta get out of this place. I feel like I’m rotting here in Hayward. The East Bay is a cesspool of filth. This place sucks. I gotta make a move, and I need to do it quick.

Maybe I’ll just get up and walk out of here? I’ll just pack a little bag and start walking, I don’t know, north or something. I’ll walk until I get tired and then I’ll find a place to rest. I’ll be like Caine in Kung Fu, like Jules in Pulp Fiction wanted to be. I understand now what he was talking about, how he felt. So much of my life has been spent rooted in one place or another. I want to wander. I want to experience a new kind of life.

I gotta get outta here…