Now I am actively engaged in the process of selecting the best reason to go back to sleep and not wake up for a very long time.
I don't know my future career.
My dog might die.
My car broke down and stole all my money in the fixing.
My grandparents got a divorce.
I ran out of bagels this morning.
But wait. All of these have a hidden reason for waking up and jumping around in joy.
I don't have to get a job yet.
I have had a dog for fourteen years.
I have a car that works.
My grandparents are still alive.
I can eat toast.
I might as well get up and dance and sing in joy and yell at the hills that I am alive, because I have so many reasons to be happy.
Except I have enough room to roll over, because she left.
Hello, sleep. It's been too long.
Golly, I am just depressing with the bait-and-switch.
ReplyDeletedude, that was awesome. I liked it so very much. favorite line: "I can eat toast".
ReplyDeleteThis post feels like a game of Rook. I don't exactly love Rook, but I'll play it, so . . . well done?
ReplyDeleteYes. I thought he would get out of bed and this would be all happy and I would be inspired to finish my packing and all would be a big mound of joy! But, no. She had to go and leave, didn't she? Had to go steal all the motivation and happiness and leave room for the one thing I don't need to do right now (roll over, that is). Ach, rectangles!!
ReplyDelete(Sorry, I may be a bit mad (as in crazy [like the Hatter or Cheshire Cat]) right now. And I've been listening/watching too many British things the past few days and everything I read/say/write/think is in a slightly British accent! Agggh!)
(Ok, I'm done. Sorry.)
(Sorry.)
Rook? Huh.
ReplyDeleteBrooke: Your comment, especially after talking with you tonight, was incredibly entertaining. Don't worry; I'll come help you tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteRobby: Do you see it? Shall I explain it to you?
I shall.
In Rook, the card with the highest points takes round, but it can always be trumped (unless it was trump to begin with or everyone's out of trump or something)-- but then there can be a higher trump later that beats that trump card, and so on and so forth.
That's what this post feels like. First, there's a round of negativity in which our side loses, but then in the next round, our side looks like it's going to get a bunch of points only to be trumped.
Yeah . . . congratulations, Janelle. You are certifiably insane (yes, Brooke, I can hear your cackling. Shush! :-P).
I can see it, Janelle, but I don't like it. It's too simple, obviously. Humans are never so clean as a numerical scale would suggest. Obviously not; he scaled the items in a list like this:
ReplyDelete7 I don't know my future career.
5 My dog might die.
4 My car broke down and stole all my money in the fixing.
6 My grandparents got a divorce.
1 I ran out of bagels this morning.
9 My wife (or whatever, if you're into that sort of thing) left me
It makes me believe I didn't have a list in mind when I wrote it.
These do not comprise a concise list of his hurts. These are instead the things going through his head as he thinks them. They are all associated by pain, but not scaled by magnitude. As a matter of fact, they are all probably bothering him very little right now and all of them might be at a scale of one in comparison to the very real fact that half of his bed is cold.
Obviously it's too simple; analogies/metaphors/what have you always are. The reason I thought it was worth mentioning is that while I understand why people think the way he does above (no, really, I think that way sometimes, too), I'm tired of people letting the negatives trump the positives or the positives trump the negatives. Both the positives and the negatives are important.
ReplyDeleteBecause life isn't a Rook game, even though we play it that way. There is no trump that cancels out everything. I hate when people treat God as a trump card, and I also hate when people take the one big hurt in their lives and invoke it over and over and over again.
I used to do that (and quite frankly, I think doing that is the big problem with both the Classicists and the Romanticists), and it made me ignore the difficult things in my life rather than fix them when I could have fixed them, and it made me miserable when I could have been happy (or at least content).
I'm not saying that people should assign numerical values to each thing in their lives and then act happy or sad depending on whether the sum of those things is positive or negative. I'm saying that people should try to look at their lives realistically.
Okay, I think I'm done saying useless things for a while.