Friday, April 18, 2008

That Person Who Never Did Show Up

Perhaps I was born in the wrong place or the wrong time. I was probably supposed to be born at a time when the closest neighbor was miles away so you didn't have to actually see them very often. The invention Most days all I want is to be alone...a great distance from everyone and every intrusion. I long for something that doesn't exist anymore in today's connected world. We're all intertwined in our self-made webs of communication with others while we leave no time to communicate with ourselves.

A desire to spend my life completely alone haunts me these days. I want to go away discover myself so badly that a wave of aching fills me with the intense pressure of my need. I long for solitude...for the quiet that comes with being truly alone with oneself. There are days when it takes superhuman strength to keep me here in my real life. I'm listening more and more to the voice inside my head that's telling me to Just Go And Be Alone. I get so into it that I think I could just get up and go wherever the world takes me. I want to just close the door on my old life and walk into the unknown and see what happens...see what I haven't had the opportunity to see before. See who I was supposed to be when I grew up, that person who never did show up.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The World Is Waiting For Us To Be Different



Will today be any different than yesterday? Will it? Would you know it if it was?

We tell lies so the world we live in and the life we live are not as ugly or as unkind as we know them to be....

We keep learning and rising higher, building bigger and moving faster, but so many are left behind to suffer our false ignorance...

We need not be ashamed to accept a helping hand nothing bad will happen...only shamed by our inability to give it...

So I ask:

"Will today be any different than yesterday?"
"Will it?"
"Would you know it if it was?"

Who Needs A Job Anyways?

A job interview in the hands of the wrong company is the most torturous thing a human being can endure.

Last week I received a call from Asinine Unlimited asking me to come in for an interview. I only applied for the job like six months ago! Six whole months ago! Only 180 days have passed since I actually applied for the job. But cicumstances being what they are, I accepted an invite to meet with the recruiter for an exciting new position within the company. Yeah, whatever that means...

I should have known it would all end badly when I couldn't find the building. The recruiter gave me the wrong address - or more specifically, the wrong building number. Because I'm such a paranoid freak, I decided it was my fault that I couldn't find the building and then proceeded to spend an hour trying to locate them. I checked both the west and the east sides of the street they were supposed to be on but it didn't work. I broke down and called Asinine Unlimited and explained what happened. The secretary gave me the right building number and I raced over there only to be fifteen minutes late. I was politely asked to wait for an hour and fifteen minutes as I had "missed my interview". So like an idiot, I agreed to wait and the whole time I'm seething because I know I didn't get the building number wrong so the recruiter must have made a mistake that has now botched things up. I should probably have checked their address online before I left, but hindsight is 20/20.

After an eternity, the recruiter comes out and invites me into the boardroom and to my surprise and barely-concealed shock, there's two other interviewers in there waiting for us. There should be some law or some rule or just some common courtesy that makes potential employers disclose the fact that you will be interviewed by three people instead of one. I'm informed that I will be interviewed by all three of them (no, really?) and then I will be required to do some tests. Tests? What tests? So they ask their questions and to be honest, I don't remember any of them or what I answered and then they slide over the three tests to be done while they are watching me. Are you freaking kidding me? I should have refused. I should have walked out. Instead I did their tests with shaking hands, while they did indeed watch me. I was then free to go home completely disillusioned and feeling tired and stupid. I don't expect them to be calling back and that's okay because who needs that kind of BS anyways?

Proving The Cookie Wrong

"It is possible to be happy all of the time....."

That's what the fortune cookie said. Words of wisdom doled out with every lunch special advising that anyone who eats take-out for lunch must need some extra guidance. It never says anything like "Tonight's lotto numbers are...." or "The cook never washes his hands...". No, instead the cookie tells me that I can "be happy" and I get to be that way "all of the time". No instructions, no other truths revealed, just a completely pointless sentence in the middle of my day. It would have been better had it said:

"It is impossible to be happy all of the time...."

That simple turn of phrase becomes a challenge to it's new and unassuming owner (me). It advises that I must now put forth a reasonable amount of effort trying to prove the cookie wrong before giving up and giving in to that simple truth. But since the cookie says I can be happy all of the time, it's too much to decide until after lunch....it's best to eat slowly today.....


Nothing Bad Will Happen

I would like to have been something more..........

I say it to myself all the time. Every time I fall short, every time I fail. When I take the time to truly see myself, to really stare and not just a quick glance - I can't trust what I see right there in front of me. "Is this really me?" "This is it, nothing more?"

I never wanted my life to turn out this way, but one wrong turn or perhaps a series of them has led me to my very own "Middle-Of-Nowhere". Now that I'm here, it doesn't really matter much which way I go, it all seems to end up in the same place. The thing about being in the Middle-Of-Nowhere is that it appears it's endless, there's no boundaries, no borders, no rules, no change, no way out......

Make a change and nothing happens turn over a new page and nothing happens get it together and try to get out but nothing happens.

In all fairness though, here in the Middle-Of-Nowhere Nothing Bad Will Happen because it already has........