Hell Yeah!

Work Lessons

My boss has a bottle of Jack Daniels that he keeps in his desk drawer. Next to the bottle is a hammer. Every time I see the two together I have to fight the temptation to snatch the hammer and take a big swing at that pristine glass. I think it’s the blend of fragility and destructiveness in such close proximity that brings about this urge, but it could just be that I hate whiskey…not sure which. Regardless of where this desire is rooted, I can’t help but think how satisfying it would be to crush the glass and watch it give way like an ice pond in Spring holding up a nearing-death-individual. Good times.

Anyway, I came to that inevitable question today… the question that had always been there but was never paid any attention. You know, like the middle child. I found myself harboring a little extra time and—what better way to use it—I decided to stop and really consider this eclectic combo. Hammer. Jack. Jack Hammer? I got a nice private chuckle out of this, but was still unsatisfied. Could be that The Boss just needed a place to put the hammer and the size and dimensions fit well against his whiskey. That just wasn’t fun enough though and severely lacked creativity such that I was accustomed to bringing to the table at a puzzler like this.

So here is what I came up with. Bossman, with his great foresight and wisdom, must have known that when the time came to ‘crack’ this bottle open, it would be a get-this-in-my-system-NOW sort of situation. Everything that could possibly go wrong, will have gone wrong. If he could shoot the stuff, he would. He will need escape quickly and without hindrance. He won’t have time to fiddle with petty devices that keep things in bottles. No, a hammer is what he’ll need. Take that metal to the neck of the glass and you have an instant, handy, wide mouthed opening ready to drain out all contents. Just pound it back and watch reality do a fade to black. Now THAT is setting up your environment for success.

I’m learning a lot at work.

Trashy Photos

Tonight is trash night, which means that tomorrow will enter in by way of a thundering, rumbling garbage truck. When I was a kid I always envied the garbage men that got to ride the side of that truck, jumping off at each house to heave another tin can of excess and waste. Not the highest of career aspirations, mine. Now, of course, they have that handy mechanical arm that I swear is almost a spot on replica of the arm that is constantly dropping stuffed animals at Chuck E Cheese’s. Luckily Mr. Garbage Truck’s arm is a little more efficient.

The recycling people have also become quite efficient in their processes. Eerily efficient in fact… Not too long ago Ty and I got notice that we were being charged $75 for putting Styrofoam in our recycling bin (a bold faced lie, of course…). Beyond that, however, they went on to state that there was photographic evidence of this infringement. Yes, the recycling folks are now taking pictures of your trash. I’m thinking it must be some sort of job creation strategy—after all, someone had to take in all of the unemployed garbage men once the mechanical arm came into play. But still—photos? Really? Someone is taking their job way too seriously. I’m just betting there is someone praying for the day that someone contests an item found in their recycling…

Sweat traces a trail down the female’s face, pooling at her jaw and dropping on the stainless steel table. Her new highlights are dulled in this gritty, cold room, and even her ruby red nail polish looks dull and lifeless on her numb fingers laid out before her. It is the perfect size for an interrogation room, confining as if to squeeze the truth from your inner most self. Stick to the story. Stick to the story.

A door opens and a figure enters, smoke swirls and twists from his hand and he raises his cigarette to his lips for one last drag. The burning ember of the butt bursts through the grey of the smoke, of the room, for a split second before it is stamped out at his heel. He drags the wooden chair at the corner over to the table and sits down on it backwards, with his chest leaning on the back. She shifts her hands nervously to her lap, wiping the sweat from her palms as she watches her hands evaporate from the table. A hanging light bulb barely swings above them, waiting for the scene to unveil. He eyes her, trying to weigh the strength of her resolve. She stares back; expectant and dreading.

“Do you know why you’ve been called here Ms. Fisher?”

“Not really, no. I have done nothing wrong to warrant this sort of treatment. And it is Mrs. Fisher.” Her voice shakes despite her willing it otherwise.

“So you deny the charges?” He says, putting another cigarette to his lips and pulling out his lighter.

“That I put Styrofoam in with my recycling? Yes! I absolutely have no idea what you are talking about. I haven’t even bought anything in the last six months with Styrofoam packaging!” She turns down his offer of a cigarette with only the slightest bit of hesitation.

He lights his Winston and takes a drag, never taking his eyes off her. The smoke drifts up toward the light bulb and envelopes it.

“So, you deny it then. That’s curious.” He rises from his chair. He begins to pace. “That is very interesting Ms. Fisher, you know why?” He stops pacing for a second. She contemplates correcting him again, but does not trust her voice.
“How many children do you have Ms. Fisher?”

“Three.”

“Three children. Do you love your children Ms. Fisher?”

“Well, yes of course. And it’s Mrs—“

“And you want them to grow up in a clean world, right Ms. Fisher?”

“Yes, of course.”

“See, now THAT is interesting. You want them to inherit a clean Earth and yet you try to dodge around laws designed to do just that! Amazing.” He goes to his shirt pocket and pulls out a photo.

“Ms. Fisher, what is the number on your recycling bin?”

“Well, I’m not sure..” She says, looking nervously toward the photo in his hands. He looks at her, annoyed and obviously feeling she should know this information.

“Your recycling bin number is 15473. Check when you get home if you want. Ms. Fisher, can you describe the contents in this photograph?” He sets the photo in front of her like a man presenting a royal flush. Despair floods through her.

“Styrofoam.” A meek reply.

“And what is the number on this recycling bin Ms. Fisher?” But the pressure has overwhelmed her and she cannot reply. Tears form as she lowers her head to the table.

He looks up knowingly at the double paned mirror on the wall. “We’re done here.”

“Fine her.”

High Hopes

I think I have overestimated the power of Microsoft Excel.

Snugly faceted in between various megabites and an Intel chip or two lies an excel sheet proudly titled “Kristie’s Schedule.” It is a newer creation relative to the other Excel grids and Word documents between which it is sandwiched. So new to be forgotten, so young to be labeled a failure. But there it lies on the virtual shelves of my hard drive—a week old without a chance. It’s a bleak picture and a bleak future is included—no additional purchase necessary.

Here was the reasoning that led to its birth; ‘They say that if you write your goals down you have a 15% higher chance of achieving them than if pen never went to paper. If that is the stat for old fashioned paper, just think of how much more successful I would be if I set up my intended schedule on an Excel sheet! That must bump my chances for success by at least another 50-60%, and if I add in some color coding, I am essentially sealing my victory!’

Nice huh. No wonder the schedule didn’t work. The person who made it is a moron.

Fine. Here.

At the behest of a certain nagging commenter I am pulling out a blog from the vault. This was written in July on the first night of Annual Meeting. Annual Meeting is the Wood Stock of Northwestern Mutual.


I’m writing this from Milwaukee, Wisconsin—home of Miller Beer and Northwestern Mutual. Though slightly buzzed, I thought it appropriate to attempt a blog even though I have no flights of fancy as to its quality. My assumption is that it will be low. A full on headache will be coming on soon-I can feel its rumblings squeezing my temple like some huge alcohol derived vice. If I don’t ingest water soon this sensation will upgrade from vice to hammer and all fun will be lost.

A couple questions: Why when I drink do I get the sensation that I’m moving at an incredible speed? Everything is so sped up that the act of bending down to pick something up almost ends up in a front flip. Weird. My second question has to do with the word; blog. Why is that not a dictionary word yet? Some of the best blogs do the dictionary a huge service in using big words, which then prompts readers to access the almighty dictionary for understanding. And yet the dictionary won’t even afford the medium a proper place within its pages. Heresy. Not to mention that I am forced to look at a stupid red underlining line every time I use the word.

This trip will mark the longest time Ty and I have been apart since our marriage. Four nights away folks—that is a long ass time. I actually cried at the airport today when I was saying goodbye. To be honest I wasn’t expecting that—I didn’t even cry at our wedding! Since the separation I have been dealing ok—I’m not a total blubbering buffoon after all. I think drinking is helping with the distance although I am not entirely convinced that drinking should be my main channel with which to blanket my sadness. Probably that is the first step to alcoholism.

Right now I am waiting for my work crew to call me when they have finished dinner. Most likely they will be trashed. I had dinner with these two ladies that I didn’t know, talking about the reps that we work for (who are all in the same study group). It was minimally informative, mildly amusing and sprinkled with hints of depression. I’m not sure why, but I would be much more inclined to get drunk with someone and then discuss work than to try and discuss it sober. For one, the truth will come out a lot more freely and you will actually learn a lot more that way, for another, you’re bound to feel closer to the person after a few drinks and therefore awkwardness is reduced. It’s like that episode from The Office when Michael gets trashed with that one potential client and they end up sealing the deal once they’ve bonded. Then Mike gets some action with Jan and thus starts that whole dysfunctional fiasco. Anyway, I think its fair to say that Michael and I see eye to eye on this point.

So I’m waiting for them to call and actually wondering if they may have forgotten about me. That wouldn’t be so bad I suppose—sleep will be sounding good in about an hour (or now) and I really don’t want to bother with a taxi to where ever they are anyway. Not to mention I’ll have three more opportunities before this trip is over to hang out with them. No tears shed over missing one night.

I think I’m going to stop writing now. Getting a little tired and since I’m producing only petty babbling I don’t think stopping is going to cause too much of an uproar.


Needless to say my work crew did call and thus began a series of gregarious late nights sandwiched in between breakout sessions and dowsed in Miller Light.

Death Duo

I was taunted by a fly today. He ended up dead.

The conditions were perfect to write which is not to say that that is an odd thing. There are many times conditions have been perfect it’s just that they are not always pounced upon by yours truly. Often I end up getting distracted by internet searches leading to further internet searches leading to even further searches and suddenly what had started out as a search for DMV locations has inexplicably driven me into a bog of random facts about tracheotomies and how to perform them. I’m licensed now, by the way.

So the conditions were perfect. Ty was out riding, Thea was flopped on the cool kitchen tile, and I had officially recovered from my hangover. I opened my laptop on the kitchen table and settled myself on the chair. Okay, time to write. But no—some peon of a creature, which I’m sure serves no other purpose than to incite madness and butcher peace, had decided that I would not be writing that night. I don’t normally feel this strongly about flies, just so you know. Normally I find them only mildly annoying and thoroughly ignorable. In fact there is a fly by me right now that is not even close to igniting the amount of incredulous rage brought about by the first. (You must all be wondering at this point, just what sort of sty I inhabit. It’s summertime folks. Doors stay open, flies fly in—manure or not.)

Anyway, back to the waste of space transient that decided to my push buttons. I was being circled. Around and around and around. Soft buzz, loud buzz, soft buzz, loud buzz, soft buzz, loud buzz. There was no way I could do anything other than try to dispose of this distraction. Swatting wildly around my head anytime the fly zipped by only made me look like a comical lunatic. Trying to chart its trajectory in hopes of a surprise ambush also proved unsuccessful, and getting Thea to chase it was out of the question. This dog don’t hunt.

For my next trick I tried opening the garage door and gently wafting it out of the kitchen. Thea went, the fly stayed. I was going bonkers, getting desperate and only inches away from busting out the chopsticks and blindfold. The whole fly-in-my-ear canal bit was getting reeeaaallly old. Then, in a last ditch little tweak of my opened door attempt, I turned off the kitchen light and turned on the garage light, hoping that the fly would be attracted to the glorious yellow hue reaching out to it. But no, I had to get the fly that likes white light which I soon discovered when the buzzing stopped and I looked back from my perch at the door. There was the fly all stretched out on my hot white Mac, probably flipping me off from the very tool that he was keeping me from using.

Maybe it was the image of my defiled laptop, maybe it was the smugness with which he sat there, maybe it was the both, but something inside of me burst out quicker than Neo’s bullet limbo and bitch slapped that fly right off my computer. Down it went, wriggling on the ground and at the complete and utter mercy of Thea the dog. This is something she could hunt. There was no mercy for this fly; the last thing its eyes probably saw was a big bubble gum tongue flipping it straight down the throat. Good-bye fly—hello fly guts on my LCD screen. Yeah, there was that. A small price to pay, I suppose, for a little freakin peace and quiet

So that’s how the demon fly died—a tag team effort by my dog and me. With my quickness and her appetite, the fly community better stay clear. This is one duo that doesn’t just kill you. We kill you and write about it.

Why I Am Insane

The definition of insanity is a person who keeps doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. The reason I know I am insane is because I keep getting manicures with the expectation of fun and beauty. The fact that past manicures have only brought about one titanic nuisance after another does not seem to faze me in this belief.

The whole process starts out innocently enough. Some Asian lady who doesn’t speak a lick of English takes your hands and begins to lather you up, plying and pulling at your fingers. The movement brings about a looming sense that milk is going to start secreting out from your cuticles. (Okay, so maybe it doesn’t start out so innocent. Lets continue anyway). Those cuticles—milk or not—are then cut and disposed of, instantly vaporizing the barrier between your nail and skin. It’s so sudden—so revealing. You’re left with a nail standing in front of a barrage of skin, asking only to be loved.

Next there is some sort of buffing process at which time your smooth pearly nail gets transformed into Shredded Wheat courtesy of The File. It is an odd undoing, but not to worry, renovation comes in the form of a freakishly small finger spa located at each nail station which offers an anecdotal soak to any weary traveler within its vicinity.

A quick dry and you’re ready for the polish—pick out some paint and hope to God the color on the outside of the bottle is a true mirror of what is about to grace your nails. With any luck it will be close and you’ll only be marginally unsatisfied. Soon the polish is draping over the ends of your fingers while your Asian lady continues to chat foreignly on about who knows what. Probably she hates the color you picked out.

You are almost done when she finishes the last stroke—now comes the waiting process when your nails are placed under strange purple lights which I assume help them dry faster. Skate world for nails—I hope they have fun. After a stretch of twenty hours or so you decide to prod ever so slightly at your coating just to test. The surface feels slightly Gumby-ish, but close enough. Besides, people are waiting for their turn and its couples skate in purple light land.

Now comes the acrobatic feat of taking out your keys and starting the car without smudging the sacred colors. This is a very fragile time. I hate this part. Being so careful with every little move you make is like a heightened game of Operation only instead of a heart stopping zap you get a ruined manicure and 25 bucks down the drain.

If all goes well you end up with what seems like beautiful colored glass at the end of each finger. This effect lasts for about three or four days, at which time you begin to see cracks appearing in your polish like a frozen pond thawing in spring, returning to its natural state. These cracks are the birthing pains for what will be a good month of chipping and scraping. It signifies the end of your classy fingers, the end of your put togetherness. Say goodbye to peace and say hello to a stack of days wrought with nimieties of tiny paint chips bouncing off your fingertips every second of every minute. Not by nature’s intent does this happen, but rather by your own accord because you will not be able to stop chipping until every last infinitesimal spot of color is gone. I promise.

And so it is that after all this, I still will wake up on some random morning and decide that a manicure sounds fun. That a manicure is worth it. That is why I am insane.

Life on Powerpoint

This is not the beginning. The beginning was last October. This is merely a continuation of the beginning. It’s not quite a middle, but like I said, it is not the beginning.

Is there a word for the space between beginning and middle or is it simply a nameless existence in which something is transformed into something else? And if so, is there a precise moment when the beginning of something turns into the middle or does it depend on the situation, or does it maybe sometimes never happen? And if it sometimes never happens does it stay a beginning forever or does it just skip the middle altogether and catapult straight toward the end?

I could see how that could happen. You start at the beginning and are told that the middle will be coming up next. You wait for it. Waiting, waiting. But who tells you how to get to the middle? Is it merely a passing of time and then you’re there or is there some rite of passage that has to be performed? The instructions are in bullet points but that isn’t how we read. Bullet points are used when there will be a speaker to explain them to you in greater detail. In order to understand. But we just have freaking bullet points with no speaker.

• Beginning
• Middle
• End

The end must be easier to determine than the middle. There is generally a finishing of something which marks the end. What you were doing, you now are not. It is impossible to not know that you have ended something. Same for the beginning. You start something which you were not doing previously. It would be a hard thing in which to claim ignorance.

The idea that the middle could be so easily missed is troubling though. It seems so important, what with the bullet point and all, that I would hate for it to simply pass me by with out some sort of acknowledgement.

But I do know that I’m not at the middle. The beginning was in October. If I knew when the end would be I might be able to determine the middle. Seems like an wildly important thing to miss. I could miss it though. After all, look where we are.

End

A Subject of Sorts

Today could be described as lovely if one were talking about the weather. I am not talking about the weather however. No, my subject is impervious to weather and all of its fickle indiscretions. There is no rain that can dampen my subject's extremities or even bead up upon its surface. Sun cannot warm it and wind cannot bring about a chill. When the weatherman predicts a chance of showers my subject does not consider to bring a jacket. When he predicts snow my subject feels no fear of driving. When a blanket of gray coats the sky for what seems an eternity, my subject does not let a sigh escape before rising from bed. As the weather continues to dictate and direct the course of a day's activities, its power is lost on my subject. What a beautiful happening. Weather sans power or importance. An elite existence with an attitude sailing by nonchalant and diving right into utter apathy toward weather.

What is my subject? An abstract idea perhaps? A virtue lost beneath generations of compromise? I'm wondering if at this point it really even matters. Could you walk away from this with just the simple knowledge that something out there is outside the realm of Weather's power and be satisfied? It seems a satisfying thought. A sweet secret that you keep with you as tiny wet bullets spring from the sky and scatter across your face. No, Rain, you are not limitless, yes Wind you have bounds. While we may fall victim to all of Weather's air streams and storm fronts, there is something out there free from it all. And in that freedom can we find our own?

Maybe if we knew what is was.

But honestly, its not that hard--pick an idea, or god or metaphor and relish in the fact that it has no thought toward weather. Take the knowledge and may it make you laugh at the wind as it whips by you and may it give you the courage to flip off the falling sleet.

This is the way to survive Portland's Winter and Spring. A little perspective and ornery as hell.

Love Me Do

I love my husband. Can I just take a moment to say that? And its not just because he bought me a super silver car and a super silver laptop that came with a super silver iPod. Although that helped, I'll admit.

Kidding.

I just love the guy. He delights in seeing me happy but not to the point where he is compromising who he is and what he believes. He believes in Macintosh and Subaru lucky for me. He's not a rug I can walk all over thank the heavens, but he also isn't some overly macho jackass who feels as though sharing consideration and love for someone is the equivalent to donning a pair of tight Gap jeans and living in the Pearl.

I'm going to stop trying to explain myself at this point because I have realized that if I continue you will all be subject to a mishmash of cliche thoughts on Love which I direly wish to rescue you from. And so I shall. You're welcome.

Love is really not complicated at all but it is so hard to write about without everything sounding as though it belongs in a Hallmark card. Find someone who can describe the feeling of a summer evening slipping away to tunes of old twenties music, or the silhouette of blue mountain ranges just as the sun is dropping under the earth--they may have a slight chance of being able to describe Love with utter tear jerking truth. I certainly cannot. You may also be able to find some five year old who can relay Love in just a sentence--the simplicity and honesty shockingly precise. Again, not me. Actually as I think about it, I seem to be hovering between two groups who can capture love's essence and slap it on paper without any nauseating effects on the reader. And here I am hovering like a idiot--censored to the topic of Love all for the sake of the reader--may a gag reflex never find you because of me. There. Now that is love.

The Bottom Row of My Teeth

The bottom row of my teeth is aching. Each tooth feels like its trying to wriggle out of my gums. I don’t know where they think they’re going to go. Another more frequently flossed mouth perhaps? A larger mouth that doesn’t require them to be pressed up against each other—public transit style? Ugh. I wish they would just make a run for it already and cease this throbbing that is terrorizing me with rhythmic constancy. Flee on those two little white-rooted legs, that’s all I ask.

Truth is—I know exactly why the bottom row of my teeth is aching. I caught myself doing it the other day—clenching my teeth together out of the sheer inability to express an emotion both new and exciting. My puppy, Thea is to blame. She is so unthinkably cute that my mind cannot adequately react to her furry matter. The inquisitive, olive eyes, the downey-soft, floppy ears, the oversized paws that look like they were photo-shopped in from some other animal—I can’t handle it. And so in a complete loss of socially acceptable ways to express myself, I have begun clenching my teeth together. Apparently hard. Freakish, I know, but it’s really not much different from what a stress ball does for someone who is angry or……stressed. Squeeze a ball really hard and somehow you don’t feel like throwing yourself off a building at the end of it. And if you do—squeeze again. And if you still do—chain yourself to your desk or quit your job. The same principle applies here only there are no stress balls for teeth. Except for dogs, which have chew toys. I’ll have to try that.

The pain continues. I am trying to coax my teeth into staying,--promising change, blah blah blah. I’m not sure if they’re buying it and apparently they’ve decided to make my life hell in the meantime.
Time to pop some pills. Which means this blog is finished.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

Corners seem to be my lot in life. My desk at my last job was tucked away in the farthest corner of the farthest wall—far, far away from all things close. I didn’t mind it at all because it was a great place for me to concentrate and avoid distractions which many times…distract. Not that I can’t still be distracted even when I have hermitized (new word—jot that down) myself from the outside. My mind spits out unfinished tasks and spontaneous curiosities like a broken Uno card dispenser. But the corner helps. There is less temptation to chat in person… and more temptation to chat online. That’s okay though because it is way easier to end an online chat than it is to end a chat in person. Online you can either just stop writing (which, even for online is a little rude) or you simply write a ‘gotta go!’ and be done with it. If I were to joyously shout ‘gotta go!’ to someone I was talking to face-to-face, and then simply turn and tune them out completely while I continue sitting at my desk, facing my computer—well, that simply would not be the end of the conversation. They would think me strange. And I would be because everyone knows you only do things like that online. Voila. My point.
Okay, so now I have a new job and I have again found myself in a corner. This still works fine for me—I have no qualms. Almost. There is one annoying thing about this arrangement that did not haunt me in my old corner. I am now facing a wall in such a way that I have to turn completely around to talk to anyone going by. This is only temporary as we have all agreed that it simply won’t do—we being my neck and back and general sense of convenience. I have plans. Big plans. Soon my computer will be moved to the other wall so that I need only look to the left to see who is talking to me, passing by, waving, banging their head against their desk etc. The only thing I need to put this heaven on my earth is a longer telephone and computer cable. Soon….

Barefoot in Portland

Shoes do not excite me. They do not call to me from their stair-stepping perches, which hug at store windows as I glide past. They do not whisper irresistible promises of sexiness and beauty, all to be mine with the purchase of one pair or five.
This happens to be one of the areas in which I part ways from the vast sea of females who daily fuel our economy with purchases of these fancy foot-coverings. I am pretty certain that when I look at a shoe, I am seeing a completely different image than what these women might see. Symbolically anyway. When I see an open-toed shoe, I am reminded of the ugliness of my toes and the lengths I will go to hide them from the world. When I see high heels I am reminded of my intense lack of coordination on anything taller than a sugar ant. And when I see a ‘dainty’ shoe I am reminded of how oddly-shaped my feet are and the vice that it would take to get my foot into something so narrow. All of this adds to my loathing of shoe shopping and is in direct correlation with why I care nothing for this particular accessory.
Despite these strong feelings, and at my own behest, I visited various shoe stores today, spending no more than about five minutes in each. This was just enough time to do the aisle walk-through with a periodic stop now and then to study a semi-promising shoe. Upon realizing that all of my sizes had already been lapped up in that promising shoe area, I would continue down the remainder of the aisle and walk out the door. Shoeless and apathetic.
Why did I subject myself to the strong scent of leather and rubber and rows of boredom and disappointment? There is a hole forming on the top of one of my work shoes. Not at the front of my shoe, mind you, the top of my shoe. How someone wears down the top of a shoe I will never know, but I have achieved the feat (or nearly) and am now forced to find my feet a new home. For years I have skated by as these Dr. Martens became more and more scuffed—until the black turned grey and the traction wore down to a smooth shine. But a hole on top? That is too much. Regardless of how comfortable these shoes are (slippers are not as comfortable) I cannot get away with that. Especially at a bank. I am actually surprised (and a little relieved) that I was not ‘talked to’ about my footwear at some point during their dilapidation.
So that was my goal today and it was firmly not realized.
Tomorrow I am going to suggest that flip-flops be added to our ‘acceptable clothing’ list. Everyone would see my ugly toes, but they wouldn’t be crammed into a point, so I think they would look decent enough. Especially if I splashed some paint on them. We’ll see how that goes. Wish me luck.

Blog for the Ordinary

I have never done anything in my life that would be classified as extraordinary. So far the whole arrangement has worked out swimmingly.
Who wants to be extra-ordinary anyway? Being plain-Jane ordinary is bad enough, but extra-ordinary? I might as well disappear. I know that I am now coming across as a confused exchange student trying to grapple with the English language, but I had to frolic down that trail for just a moment as I pondered on the interesting sum of those two words. Some English words are so enigmatic in their confusion that they cease to confuse. Such is the case with the word extraordinary.
I digress.
I have never done anything in my life that would be classified as extraordinary. Truthfully I don’t feel a need to, nor do I feel my life lacking in anything as a result of my apparent flippancy with the issue. I go about my days trouncing from work to home, swinging my lunch bag full of food in one direction, and swinging its empty vessel a little higher in the other direction. In between these events fall the workings of a banking center, conversations with those I like and those I do not, laughter, unexpected sneezes, bathroom trips, the cracking of knuckles, text messages, cross-word puzzles, and a MAX trip or two. I can’t say that I have ever been handed a gold statue for most exciting life, and if I ever did I would be the first to cry foul play, but I would say that I have a satisfactory amount of unplanned events that’s keep my life popping. There is at least an occasional pop.
Extraordinary people intrigue me. What is it like to have their schedule and submit to the self discipline that they must endure in order to rise to their level of greatness? It seems like an impossible feat—like trying to hold your self underwater in an attempt at drowning. Eventually your weakness overrules your desire to die. But I am not extraordinary, so of course I would not understand. People like JRR Tolkein, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Batman—they all embodied some sort of crazy drive that I simply don’t possess. They are jet engines in a world full of four cylinders.
The thing about being extraordinary, however, is that there soon ceases to be any balance in life. These people have a drive, but it is a concentrated drive, which leaves little room for relationships, hobbies, deeper probing of human thought… Unless, of course, those things are the objects of their extraordinary nature. Suicide is indicative of this common thread in The Extraordinary. I am not taking anything away from how amazing these people can be, I am still truly spellbound by the product of their dedication. It merely solidifies my desire to be ordinary. Hold that extra.
This topic was fluttering around in my head because I have been thinking about writing a book. Thinking—keyword—we can all share a chuckle now. The thought of being an extraordinary writer, one that would take captive the souls of readers and refuse to render them until the very last word, whose images would bead up above the surface and then soak deep into the pores, like a glistening sweat when the sun beats down—that’s an author I would love to be. But. I have since discovered that the drive which places those at an extraordinary level, that tilts back the heads of those who stare—it asks too much. So I will write a book, on that I am determined, but a dream is not enough to sacrifice life and love.
To have a gold statue at the end of life and then have no one to thank save the Academy? Let’s just say a gold statue is a poor conversationalist.
I’ll stick with just being nominated.

Token Motivational Tool

Negotiations

My mind has proven itself a formidable enemy and I am currently attempting peace talks.

To write a book one must find oneself writing. Specifically a story. This is my battle. I have not begun what I fear I will never venture. It is this fear that, strangely, binds my fingers—puppets—and henceforth my mind—puppet master. The strings have become tangled and they wind around and around, twisting and knotting until only a noose for dreams is visible in the circus of twine and flesh. Will this be where I see my dream buried? Will it prove itself to have been always smoke and mirrors which for a moment flashed at me a desire and a will? I cannot wait for the bindings to fall lamely at my feet—their strength unwound in the presence of some miraculous energy. No, if I truly want to take on this feat I must fight against my restraints and transform a mirror into a canvas. I know that writing a book is not something that comes about merely on a few boring Sunday afternoons or a night or two of inspired ideas. Word by word it comes, and most of those words will have to be erased and rewritten, shuffled and recalculated. But I cannot even write one sentence. I have no words to even critique or muse upon. What story waits to be written, eagerly pressing up against a stained glass prison for which there is no door save the one that has been barred with a sign labeled ‘Fear?’ It is this silenced prisoner which I long to know, that I force myself not to know as I would never want to paint its story on a canvas with ripped, jagged corners and colors of coffee stains speckling the surface. That is my problem. I see an empty, imperfect canvas and I think there is no right color to cover over its blemishes. This is how I fail.

Peace talks continue. Bindings weakened.

Dreams at Auction

Insurance salespeople. An occupation which brings to mind those who have push-broomed their dreams into a scraggly yard of dirt and weeds in the name of money and stability. Images of cheap briefcases and personas that of George McFly come to mind. A knock at the door and a cheesy smile lets them slink into your kitchen and unclick their arsenal of brochures and diagrams. Their products may be worthwhile; it’s just that the process and the people seem so nauseatingly lame.
I have no basis whatsoever to make these broad-brushed claims. In fact I know one insurance salesman who does not wear glasses or have greasy hair—although I do not know the quality of his briefcase—so I honestly do not know where this occupational distaste originated. I only know that it is there and it tastes a bit like earwax.
If I was to pose a guess, I would say that insurance salespeople symbolize, to me, the ultimate sellout. I have never met anyone who wanted to grow up and sell insurance and thus I do not believe that people in the profession are saying to themselves; “I can’t believe I finally made it! I am LOVING this!”
Most likely what happened to the poor souls in this industry was that they majored in marketing, all set to become the next dreadlocked, flip-flop-wearing protégé at Wyden Kennedy, when WHACK! Rejection. All of a sudden they realize they are not quite as chicly creative as they had troubled themselves to be. Next they will pitter around for a while, trying to cling on to some corner of the dream that they had wrapped so tightly around themselves. At the funeral of this effort, however, many will begin looking for jobs in sales—not marketing—sales. This is the Big Compromise—the number four ‘safety school’ if you will. This is when Big Insurance scoops up the ragged, hungry, soot-smudged young graduate and tells him he’s going to be a star. ‘You’re not so bad—hell you’re even handsome! A shower and a shave is all you need and you’ll be dancin’ in a barrel-full of money in no time, son!’ Soon the monkey suit is donned, insurance licenses acquired and the dreads sacrificed. All to the tune of rehearsed sales pitches and babbling middle management. Ugh.
It is this profession which causes my most violent occupational recoil mainly because I too am a marketing major with no chance at Wyden fame. Not that I envisioned working for the advertising agency which throws out award winning Nike commercials like a Vegas dealer on crack—my sights were never that high. But I certainly do not foresee a career which entails selling anything to anyone. I would like to assist sales. Assist.
As irony would have it, however, I have recently interviewed for a position at an insurance company. How much is the soul going for these days, you ask? Well, wait. The sole reason that I am not standing on a tottering stool with a noose around my neck is because the position is for an operations director—not sales. I handle operations at the bank and I actually like it, so this would not be a half-bad opportunity.
I have two hesitations. The first being that I would be working for an insurance company and just the thought of that makes me wince. How boring. I would forever hate the question, ‘So what do you do for a living?’ The plus side, however, would be that I would get to know some insurance salespeople and maybe, just maybe, they would prove all of my biases wrong. I would realize that they are not sleazy, slimy, boring people and that I had been ignorant and stupid for having assumed so. Hah. Right.
My second hesitation roots in my desire to enter into some sort of communications job somewhere. That would be my career ideal. I can see myself taking the operation job, however, and doing nothing but just that for the extent of my working life. I don’t mind operations, but I’m not quite ready to give up on a more challenging and interesting career. In a fight between writing and filing, writing still wins. In the first round.
This seems like a weighty and difficult decision regardless of my ideals, however. This choice could potentially determine whether I will become some wondrously unimpressive insurance worker with a huge phone attached to my belt and desperate skittish eyes, or a neurotic chain-smoking writer who has five cats and a gun.

Not a bright future either way. Good thing life is not that dark. Just this blog.

Trains and Tumbleweed

Motivation is like one of those trains that you sometimes see in old western movies. It chugs along fueled by the coal of its own existence, passing young and old through sooty urban industrial areas and scratchy deserts speckled with tumbleweed and cacti. It doesn’t stop, but sometimes it slows down just enough to allow a dozing bystander the opportunity to swing up into one of its abandoned boxcars and start going somewhere.
Over the last month I’ve seen this train go by a few times and I have seen that abandoned boxcar slide past my vision until it was only a sliver of an image and then gone. Every time I knew what it was offering and I knew what I was turning down. Motivation. The conditions had been right on several occasions to get back into writing blogs or searching for jobs, but I was simply not ready to jump. Maybe it was due to frustrations pertaining to those areas. Bruised egos and nauseating disappointments tend to prod some (namely, me) to leave their motivated state and settle on land for awhile, where the ground isn’t moving so quickly below your feet and the wind doesn’t sting at your eyes with the same ferocity.
Eventually I wanted to get back on, but when I hit this stage there was another obstacle I had to first combat. Comfort. It’s like I had been waiting at the train station so long that the thought of a tin, cold, echoing boxcar, although appealing in its destination, was not springing me from my cushioned chair. After all, I had constructed a nice little area for myself at the station. I had made a footstool out of someone’s forgotten luggage and a coffee holder out of little Tommy’s play dough. I had a great system which consisted of me slowly give a pinch of the play dough back into Tommy’s eager, waiting hands in exchange for coffee from his father’s coffee shop. Then I would give the coffee to old Mr. Edwards in exchange for cigarettes and porn.
Okay, that’s going a little zany even for a metaphor, but you get the point. Comfort is a strong motivator in itself.
My purpose in all this is simply to headline that I am now the proud inhabitant of my very own abandoned boxcar. It was only a halfhearted jump in so I was dragged a couple miles and swallowed a shovel or two of chalky dust, but it’s all worth it! I am now back on track, so to speak, and I feel that I am finally moving forward again. I know the wind will come and piss me off, the train whistle will occasionally disrupt my sleep, and the dizzying ground will induce cold sweats from time to time. That is life though. No one said it was not going to occasionally bring on a gag reflex or two.
And we all know, even now, that I am occasionally going to jump off the train. It’s a pattern I have noticed and it is biased towards no one. Everyone loses that motivation. When you’re getting everything you want, you lose motivation because it is all too easy. When you’re getting nothing you want, you lose motivation because it is all too hard. Life’s irony never rests.
Just don’t get too comfortable with life on pause as you rock in the hammock of stagnant indulgence. You may melt into such a deep sleep that not even a train whistle can wake you up. I say this to myself too—my hammock sings a sultry lullaby.

Seeing Red

I glance to my right at the small glass cup holding the remains of my vodka tonic. It looks just like water and I am really thirsty. Foremost on my mind, however, is not the liquefied ice and diluted alcohol tempting me from it arms-length away perch, but the burning, itchy sensation which has leeched onto my eyes with Kong-sized tenacity.
You see, somewhere there is a small child gleefully smashing glue and sand into a thick paste and cramming it all over my eyes while I sleep. I’ve been battling with this grainy sealant for the last few mornings and quite frankly, its time for that kid to go down. The lovely AM challenge of pulling my eye lashes apart in hopes of seeing what the world has to offer has yielded nothing but eyes which resemble those of a crack addict. Or someone who has been hot boxing since the Y2K scare. Either way, drugs are involved—thanks a lot World.
Eye drops are usually a magnetic draw in situations like this, but I have the God-engrained inability to consciously put anything in my eyes. Many people have been able to evolve past this instinct and stick all sorts of things into their visionary globes; hard contacts, soft contacts, liquids of various sorts, gum for later etc. I am sad to say, however that I am still very much in the Neanderthal stage of that eye protrusion mentality. The only way I can get eye drops into my eye is by having Ty drop them in as I hold my eye open. Even with that, I am nervously laughing the entire time and have to psyche myself up for the experience.
I would never make it as a pot-head.
The reason for my misery, according to the docs, is simply that I have a cold in my eye. The cold that I was experiencing apparently decided that it was bored with my lungs and throat and consequently packed up its things and headed for the big blue globes that they had seen in so many postcards. The Promised Land, where water flows from rocks sans speech or rod. Well, I hope they are having a fabulous time popping all of my eye veins or whatever they’re doing, because it will be the last time. I’ve got homeland security on them. Phone calls are being tapped and 'random' baggage searches are being executed. This evil must be purged!

For now though terror level is at red. Bloodshot red. Be advised.