floorpie

Not really on either count, but it’s got a catchy melody and the lyrics have a ring to them. I will, however, be another year older in a week. I find this terrifying, yet inevitable. Like Weekend At Bernies, IV.

See what I did there? I made a bad joke to cover my anxiety about entering the later half of my mid-30’s.

I wonder if I’ll have my act together by next year? I wonder if I already have my act together, I just don’t realize it.

I’m haunted a lot. Not in the ephemeral casper kind of way, but in the actual gnawing raw emotions, jaws clenched at night, permanent scowl lines kind of way. What this has to do with my birthday, I’m not entirely sure, but I believe it ties in to the “do I have my shit together, yet?” thing. I’m haunted by the past and the potential for the future. Should I have done this, might I had done that, why did I do those things?

etc

As I get older I begin to realize that you never really lose any of those same things that got to you as a kid…the only difference now being that you better know how to handle the situation through a vast array of experiences to draw from. It has very little to do with capabilities or skills or maturity, and a hell of a lot more to do with sheer rote memorization. When I was younger, writing a check was terrifying. I’d never done it before and it was so unequivocally adult that the anxiety over it was trebled jut by parental association alone.

Now though, of course, writing a check is not only not terrifying, but positively boring and annoying. Because I’m better equipped to “handle” it? No, because I’ve done it a billion times. Are adults more capable in surviving the “real” world? Sure, but only because they practiced for it.

The point? I don’t have one. I’m getting older, I miss a bunch of people, and I wish I had more time on the tail end of my life. Otherwise, I’m feelin’. fine.

Here’s what I’ve decided, and I’m pretty excited about it. The paper companies (aka “The Conglomerate”) has entered into an evil cabal with the pharmaceuticals (in conjunction with the FDA, obviously), to purposely infect the populace with the common cold.

It’s all so very clear to me, now.

Your Flintstone multivitamin is laced with at least one, possibly two, time-release viruses that give a normal human being a mild to severe cold every 6 months to a year. Then, corporations like Kleenex and Charmin come in on the backend, soaking up that sweet sweet mucus money; their aloe-infused tissues and toilet paper containing the antidote to the aforementioned virus(es). But see, you’re taking even more vitamins in hope of combating your illness, spending ever more, and setting yourself up for your next scheduled cold.

It’s brilliant!

What evidence do I have of this theory? It’s as plain as the throbbing red nose on my face. In the last 4 days of my cold, I’ve gone through 4 boxes of tissues…and 2 rolls of toilet paper. Just in nose blowing. 4 boxes! 2 rolls! These kleenex were supposed to last me for months; and toilet paper, which I already go through quickly for, uh, other reasons is already running dangerously low a couple of weeks after picking up the multipack.

I’m on to you paper companies. If they find my body with “multiple shallow lacerations, not unlike paper cuts,” you’ll know why. Spread the word!

A friend is leaving LA today. It’s odd, when I was younger and being moved from place to place by the Air Force that wanted my Dad in different parts of the country every few years, I didn’t really get that sad. I knew in my heart that I had made these good friends but would never see or hear from them again…we just didn’t have the technology or patience to do so back then.

There was on notable exception on both counts, though: our last move as a family from Wichita Falls, TX to Redlands, CA. We’d been in Wichita Falls for maybe 4 years straight and I had convinced myself that I was now, and forever would be, a Texan. I would always hang out with my next door neighbor, Bubba and Jay and Josh down the street. I’d dropped my fake “howdy y’all” and now actually succeeded in blending in because I was no longer trying to. And now we were leaving.

I cried, to my recollection, pretty much non-stop for the 3 days it took us to make the trip west. I pleaded and bargained. I pulled on their sentiment for their nerdy son, “but I have real friends!”…but it was all to no avail.

Ironically, I can’t ever imagine leaving California now…especially for Texas.

At any rate, a friend is leaving LA today to first go across the country, and then? I’m sick and can’t meet her to say goodbye, and the frustration of that eats at me. Try to pull myself together and meet her in my misery? Or get the rest I so desperately need and promise to see her again soon, somehow?

The thing is, I’m scared. Scared of the emotions and the sadness that I don’n know that I can bear right now. By not saying goodbye I can pretend that it didn’t really happen, though the feelings of loss are already beginning to creep in. By not saying goodbye, I CAN keep in touch through email and etc, and maybe even meet for a drink when out that way. That is my hope, anyway.

As I get older, though I see them less and less, my friends become ever more important to me. In many ways, they are my family. Now we are all so busy, never having the time to hang out literally every weekend like we used to. And this sort of thing, where one slips away; this sort of thing hurts most of all.

It’s funny how big our tiny existences can seem sometimes. I have so many things that I want/need to do, so many people that I want/need to interact with, so many places that I want/need to go to. Yet, in the grand scheme of things will it matter to history if I don’t?

Probably not.

And even if it did would that history be of any import to the greater fabric of existence?

Definitely not.

So why do anything, one wonders? And, though there have been whole religions built around this question, philosophies killed and died for, and all when the simple answer is “why not?”. Bad form of answering a question with a question notwithstanding.

Why NOT?

OK, back to the warm loving glow of my xbox….

I need to be the guy that sews his own shirts. The one with the ill-fitting pants with frayed edges and the wrong button to button-hole ratio. That would be better than purchasing, say, a $250 shirt with a cardigan ironically printed on it.

See? It’s a cardigan, 80’s-style, worn over a white t-shirt! Except, it’s not really, it’s really actually a white t-shirt with a screen print of a cardigan, 80’s-style. Ironic! The kinds of people that are purchasing this type of shirt are the same people who would shoo away my observation that if they spent $20 in a thrift store to get exactly the same look, only in a real cardigan, it would be a hell of a lot cooler.

That is why I do not associate with those people.

It has recently occurred to me how odd bars are. I spend a lot of time in them, more than the average, but for whatever reason I never realized the truth of them.

People drink there.

Sometimes there’s food, though generally not very good. Sometimes there are pool tables, and dart boards, and tv’s, and karaoke; but those are all minor diversions to the reality of the situation:

People drink there.

I was on my second double when I reached that introspection stage where you kind of fade back from the conversations around you and spend a little time with your inner thoughts. This time, it was kind of like that time-lapse effect you see on tv shows where the protagonist stands perfectly still and the world moves around him in double-time. I saw little knots of people, drinks in hand, swaying back and forth, moving in small circles as a group, caught in the tidal flow of an invisible ocean. Others went up stairs then back down them minutes later, then up again. Lines at the bar got shorter then longer and back again; the one constant being the addition of glasses in the hands of all those who stepped up to the rail. And the tinkling of laughter and glass touching glass settled lightly on the entire scene.

Poetic hyperbole aside, what more were they (or I) actually doing? Nothing more than all gathering in the same place to drink something, enough of which would cause them to forget that they had in the first place. There’s no judgement associated with this observation; I’m just as guilty, if not more so, than the people around me. It just struck me interesting…you know, like a plastic bag caught in an updraft.*

*poetic hyperbole!

I need to brainstorm on a number of action items on a go-forward basis. I’ll have to put some of the end-user insights into the parking lot and table their milestones…but I’ll circle-back with the key stakeholders to make sure that we achieve our deliverables.

M’kayyyyy?