Author: Matthew Groff

  • Evacuation

    (*Note: This was written on 11/1/19)

    I have been through a few natural disasters. The first one was an ice storm that hit Birmingham, Alabama when I was a kid. My mother was trying to get me, my brothers, and some other kids from the neighborhood home from school when the storm hit, and we got trapped on the highway. I was five years old, and for me, it just seemed like we were on an adventure. I found out years later that is was a terrifying experience for my mother, who was afraid that she would cause the death of her and these other kids. We had to abandon the car, and my mother was able to get a ride home for all of us with a big rig tow truck driver.

    Then, the next major disaster was sitting through two hurricanes that sideswiped New York City. Sandy was the worse of the two, and I clearly remember the wind howling as the gusts cause our five-story walk up to sway. There was a fast second of thinking that our building would collapse. In the end, our life was back to normal in two days, and we never lost power.

    Then the Kincade fire started, and it was only 20 miles from our apartment in Santa Rosa. There was a twinge of nervousness about it, but honestly, it was far enough away that it couldn’t get to us quickly.

    Then PG&E cut our power in the evening after we had been notified that we wouldn’t lose power.

    Not good.

    Next the wife and I had an awful night of sleep of getting a notice, of what seemed like every hour, notifying us that neighborhood after neighborhood was being ordered evacuated. It was like watching dominos slowly falling in succession, leading to the investable notice that it was our turn to pick up and run.

    It came at 6am.

    We packed in the dark, and woke the kid up, telling her that we were going to be on an adventure to see our friends in Los Angeles. (All my life is a circle, as one might say)

    The feeling of adventure, and excitement of the challenge of survival was completely gone, as now my only thought was about trying to get the kid out of danger, and also not scare her.

    She’s been rolling with all of it, but I know that it might be several years before I will know what affect this has had.

  • Honest Realization

    (*Note: This was written on 11/1/19)

    This has been a very difficult week for us.

    I had no idea how paralyzing the feeling of helplessness would be when it looked like we might lose everything in a wildfire.

    The move to California, which happed a year ago now, has been a huge challenge for us, and I think we are both coming to the conclusion that it might not be the right fit.

    I have contemplated, and I keep wondering if it is the passing of Ma, and the depression that has followed, which is making it hard for me to accept the new situation we are in? I don’t feel happy, and I am just sad all the time. Is that her death affecting me, or is it that we live in a place where I cannot accomplish the things that I want to do?

    Deb coming home every night, just vomiting the hate that she has for her place of work, hasn’t help anyone. We both hate our jobs, but seemed to be trapped in them. We got into so much debt on the move out here, and with me being unemployed for three months, only made everything worse. We went from $40k in debt, to $80k in the space of 6 months. There is such a burden on us, that we can’t really see a way out of it.

    And then the fires hit, and luckily, we had a place to go, even though it was all the way down in Los Angeles. As we tried to land for a few days and plot our recovery, we started wondering if maybe, just maybe, if the fires went through town and torched our jobs and home, that we could pick up and return to New York. Wouldn’t that be funny?

    What was funny, was how excited it made us to think that we could return to New York.

    That’s when we knew we really were in trouble.

    We weren’t enjoying living in California. The move hadn’t made us happy, and now we were half a world away from our friends and family. But we also had to admit to ourselves that we were stuck, and couldn’t pick up and go.

    Yet, that is exactly what we want to do.

  • The Little Things that Make the Difference

    It is closing in on a year that I have lived in California. Specifically, in the North Bay area. It is pretty here, and the people are nice, but I am still getting used to the differences.

    Air Conditioning: Mainly, not a lot of people have it, and don’t get me wrong, I understand why. It’s only three months out of the year that you might need it, and that would be about half of the days. What makes it weird is that Summer is July, August and September. October started to feel like fall, but even this week, we got hit with a heat wave in the 90’s. As I have been told, this is not normal, need A/C in late October, but as you will see, that phrase has been a theme.

    Rain: It’s pretty much all or nothing around here. We are in late October, and it should be raining, but it’s not. We should average 5 days of rain… We’ve had one. The rain makes everything green, and washes away the dirt and the pollen. But this is not a normal year.

    Power outages/Wildfires: So, the power company cuts off the power when it gets too windy. I understand why. It’s just that I feel like that as a modern society, we should be able to better handle fires, other than a blanket power shut off. As I write this, the Kincade Fire is burning 20 miles north of us, and I can smell the smoke. What makes this weirder is that where the fire started, that area didn’t have power. Shutting off power is new, and not normal.

    Now, I am 30 minutes from the beach, and 20 minutes from a huge Redwood rainforest. That’s pretty cool. I’m just getting used to it all.

  • The Fanboys and Movies

    Fanboys have broken me.

    I was watching the Star Wars Final Trailer, and it was fine, and made me a little excited to see the movie, too. I will be taking my daughter to see it at Christmas time, and for that reason alone, I know I will have a great time with the movie.

    And then the thought of the fanboys came into my head, and the continuous shitting on the movie that will happen the second the movie starts playing. It’s just draining to hear constant nitpicking.

    I am fully aware I can ignore people, but sadly, I am good friends with some fanboys, though they figured out they are fanboys.

    What bothers me is that fanboy culture has changed the way we now think about criticizing movies. I know this is an event movie that lots of stuff will ‘slpode in. But whatever inconstancy or error that some fanboy discovers will then be blown up into the greatest of all transgressions, and thus the movie is shit, and you are shit for liking it.

    The outrage! “How could they do this to us, they most loyal of loyal fans! We deserve better!”

    How did we get here, again?

    Sure, you can blame the internet for creating an arms race of outrage and offense that must be expressed to the highest degree…

    But the other side of it, that some of these movies really are very good, but there is no context for constructive criticism.

    I think this was a part of the point that Scorsese and Coppola were trying to make; Star Wars and Marvel movies right now are just telling the same story repeatedly. With all these two-dimensional characters that are tumbling towards a third act in the movie where everything will explode, and the heroes are protected by plot armor, and in the back of your mind, you know that in six months you are about to do this same thing all over again, just with a different cast and setting.

    This is what the fanboy beast wants to be fed, and the billions of dollars prove that right now, its still a winning formula. And that outrage is also part of that formula now.

  • Still Posting

    It’s getting late in the day, but damn it, I’m posting something.

    This will be one of the worst things I have written and put up on the internet, but I promised myself that I would blog once a day for this whole week.

    And I have too often made a promise to myself, and then when things got tough, or annoying, or something good was on tv, that I just gave up, and gave in to the easy way of things. The easy way out.

    Not today, Satan. Not today.

    I will just put up about 250 words trying to gin up my resolve to get write, something, anything, right now.

    I need to make some time for my journal, and I d have a short story I want to keep working on, but as the hours are drawing to a close, I must make some choices.

    And I choose this blog!

    And the 35 readers that I have for it.

    Yes, you.

    One of the points of doing this blog was to get back to the idea that I was writing for an audience, and that I was free to try different tactics to reach that audience.

    This will go up as one of the new approaches.

    I feel like the guy that crawled across the finish line of a race. Wow, what a terrible showing, but he finished the race. I followed through, and I am trying to make this mean a bit more than it might.