It's Christmas Eve.
Thankfully I'm not with my family. My car showed mercy upon me and died. I'm thinking it's most likely a blown head gasket. I say it's a mercy because it snowed today and my tires are bald.
Better stuck at home than in a ditch with broken bones sticking out of my skin as my car burns with me trapped inside. I say that's my luck but the truth is The Powers That Be would never do that to me. They'd never let me out of this rotten manure pit hurling through the cold dark of space so easily. I'm fucking immortal.
That's a bitter thing to say but honest depending on your perspective. But that's all about what life is supposed to be, right? Perspective? How we frame something is supposed to make it a reality, they say.
I've been getting better at framing things in a more positive light. I hate it, though. I feel like Karl Rove standing behind Rupert Murdoch with a hand on his shoulder, whispering in his ear. It feels like self-propaganda as if I'm somehow spinning reality to fit the narrative.
It feels false to me to say this Christmas Eve is somehow not bad at all. After how rough these past few weeks have been and all, to say simply that things aren't all that bad feels disingenuine but it's the healthy choice. It's the healthy path.
Self-deception can go both ways, I guess. You can lie to yourself and tell yourself all kinds of stories about how you've gotten a lot of positive things done despite the harsh terrain. Or you can totally discount your progress as inconsequential because you're not this enough or that enough. For some reason I am perfectly content to discount myself but even remotely being positive is about as comfortable as shoving a cactus up my arse.
Tonight I walked up and down a flight of stairs without issue. I even carried laundry baskets full of wet clothes without having to stop and take each step one at a time, or keep the basket on the steps while I repeated the tedious trek. Put the basket on the highest step you can reach, put both hands on the walls, take one step at a time until you catch up to where you set the basket, then repeat.
That's how I used to go up the stairs leading out of my basement where the washing machine is located. It was a rough journey, too. My knees would feel like they were about to blow out and I wasn't nearly as stable as a toddler just learning how to walk. I was terrified of falling.
That's a reality when you're too big to move around much. You know if you fall down you're fucked. Proper fucked. Because you're not getting up that easily and when you're a loner like me, that means you might be on the floor for a while.
When I was a kid, my grandma's sister, Naoma, fell down and was pinned between the couch and the radiator in her apartment. She was horribly burned because she was stuck there for over a day. She was in the hospital for almost a month. That's not going to be me. I'm careful. I'd much rather learn from the tragedy of others than from my own mistakes, miscues, and missteps.
The Frank Capra classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is on television right now. It's an annual thing I haven't watched since I was in college. I always found it a hard movie to watch. Capra was a genius in his day for making the audience sympathize with his main characters.
Just like George Bailey, we've all made choice we thought were best for other people.
Something's been bugging me lately. Well, okay, a lot has been bugging me. I try to reframe it but it's still there. It's the self-destructive thing again. The things I have ruined.
I've bitched and complained about relationships I've tanked plenty but I've never mentioned how I've done the same with jobs and other aspects of my life. Right now I'm faced with some decisions about my employment and I'm wondering if I'm going to repeat those mistakes over and over again. It's bad enough I can't be happy for more than 24 hours with a woman but I'm almost as bad with jobs.
If the job is utter shit, I stay. If the job is really bad, I'll apply twice and stop by once a day until they give me the damned job. Usually it's something horrible like shoving a cactus up my arse for minimum wage and a bonus for extra needles they take away routinely because sometimes the cacti are too smooth. That's my dream job and I've done that job with a dozen employers over the past 20 years.
I wouldn't know what to do with a good job that paid well. I'd just blow that extra money on all the bills I've neglected for the past 30 years anyways.
But this is the season of re-framing things and being positive. I have no idea how to reframe this one. I don't have a fucking clue how to spin this shitty story into something positive.
But on this Christmas Eve, while I sit alone and monitor a quiet internet because everybody is with family and people who care about them, I can say I've done more this holiday season to rise above the darkness that always consumes me. I have done more positive things for myself than ever before and I have made more progress than I thought possible. I might not be hitting any home runs in my life but I've made positive steps in the right direction.
That's not bullshit spin control, either. That's truth. So sure, a year ago I was a basket case, and my brain spun around like a centrifuge, while I lined up another kamikaze ran into the dirt, but that's not happening this year. This year, I've gone full Bill O'Reilly and Wolfe Blitzer, and I'm telling a positive story--truth be damned.
Thankfully I'm not with my family. My car showed mercy upon me and died. I'm thinking it's most likely a blown head gasket. I say it's a mercy because it snowed today and my tires are bald.
Better stuck at home than in a ditch with broken bones sticking out of my skin as my car burns with me trapped inside. I say that's my luck but the truth is The Powers That Be would never do that to me. They'd never let me out of this rotten manure pit hurling through the cold dark of space so easily. I'm fucking immortal.
That's a bitter thing to say but honest depending on your perspective. But that's all about what life is supposed to be, right? Perspective? How we frame something is supposed to make it a reality, they say.
I've been getting better at framing things in a more positive light. I hate it, though. I feel like Karl Rove standing behind Rupert Murdoch with a hand on his shoulder, whispering in his ear. It feels like self-propaganda as if I'm somehow spinning reality to fit the narrative.
It feels false to me to say this Christmas Eve is somehow not bad at all. After how rough these past few weeks have been and all, to say simply that things aren't all that bad feels disingenuine but it's the healthy choice. It's the healthy path.
Self-deception can go both ways, I guess. You can lie to yourself and tell yourself all kinds of stories about how you've gotten a lot of positive things done despite the harsh terrain. Or you can totally discount your progress as inconsequential because you're not this enough or that enough. For some reason I am perfectly content to discount myself but even remotely being positive is about as comfortable as shoving a cactus up my arse.
Tonight I walked up and down a flight of stairs without issue. I even carried laundry baskets full of wet clothes without having to stop and take each step one at a time, or keep the basket on the steps while I repeated the tedious trek. Put the basket on the highest step you can reach, put both hands on the walls, take one step at a time until you catch up to where you set the basket, then repeat.
That's how I used to go up the stairs leading out of my basement where the washing machine is located. It was a rough journey, too. My knees would feel like they were about to blow out and I wasn't nearly as stable as a toddler just learning how to walk. I was terrified of falling.
That's a reality when you're too big to move around much. You know if you fall down you're fucked. Proper fucked. Because you're not getting up that easily and when you're a loner like me, that means you might be on the floor for a while.
When I was a kid, my grandma's sister, Naoma, fell down and was pinned between the couch and the radiator in her apartment. She was horribly burned because she was stuck there for over a day. She was in the hospital for almost a month. That's not going to be me. I'm careful. I'd much rather learn from the tragedy of others than from my own mistakes, miscues, and missteps.
The Frank Capra classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is on television right now. It's an annual thing I haven't watched since I was in college. I always found it a hard movie to watch. Capra was a genius in his day for making the audience sympathize with his main characters.
Just like George Bailey, we've all made choice we thought were best for other people.
Something's been bugging me lately. Well, okay, a lot has been bugging me. I try to reframe it but it's still there. It's the self-destructive thing again. The things I have ruined.
I've bitched and complained about relationships I've tanked plenty but I've never mentioned how I've done the same with jobs and other aspects of my life. Right now I'm faced with some decisions about my employment and I'm wondering if I'm going to repeat those mistakes over and over again. It's bad enough I can't be happy for more than 24 hours with a woman but I'm almost as bad with jobs.
If the job is utter shit, I stay. If the job is really bad, I'll apply twice and stop by once a day until they give me the damned job. Usually it's something horrible like shoving a cactus up my arse for minimum wage and a bonus for extra needles they take away routinely because sometimes the cacti are too smooth. That's my dream job and I've done that job with a dozen employers over the past 20 years.
I wouldn't know what to do with a good job that paid well. I'd just blow that extra money on all the bills I've neglected for the past 30 years anyways.
But this is the season of re-framing things and being positive. I have no idea how to reframe this one. I don't have a fucking clue how to spin this shitty story into something positive.
But on this Christmas Eve, while I sit alone and monitor a quiet internet because everybody is with family and people who care about them, I can say I've done more this holiday season to rise above the darkness that always consumes me. I have done more positive things for myself than ever before and I have made more progress than I thought possible. I might not be hitting any home runs in my life but I've made positive steps in the right direction.
That's not bullshit spin control, either. That's truth. So sure, a year ago I was a basket case, and my brain spun around like a centrifuge, while I lined up another kamikaze ran into the dirt, but that's not happening this year. This year, I've gone full Bill O'Reilly and Wolfe Blitzer, and I'm telling a positive story--truth be damned.
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