Making It Up As I Go Along #236

MONDAY…
--- Pretty busy day at work… a little post work nap… and squash tonight. I’m not in great shape but things will improve as the games go on… I hope.

TUESDAY…
--- Not too busy a day. Lunch with Leslie and Melissa is good today. Get a few groceries after work.
--- An evening walk has me avoiding the frogs around the pond. Fairly nice though.

WEDNESDAY…
--- A few things going on at work take me from the daily routine… which is good. I’m not feeling great today though… sort of run down and a little out of sorts.

THURSDAY…
--- Not a great day at work… busy and some people stuff to deal with.
--- Squash is good tonight though… I’m starting to get my share of wins.

FRIDAY...
--- Another not super day at work but it’s largely the same as yesterday minus the busy. I leave at 11:00 and head home for a bike ride, some e-mails, and lunch.
--- Supper is Subway and I see the Deer Hunter for the first time tonight. It’s long but good.

SATURDAY…
--- Up a bit early… for a Saturday anyway… and watch The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe on the movie network. It’s alright.
--- Talk to the folks and Melissa on the phone… spend most of the day in and around the sofa… decompressing.


Why Hibernate
Would I like to write funny today? Sure I would. I get a kick out of writing things that I think may make someone smile or laugh… and I get another kick out of being told such things have happened.

But sometimes it seems that the only things I’m inspired to write about are serious matters… or things that just bog a spirit down.

These days I’m tired. I’m tired of all the useless things that surround the world I live in and, for some bizarre reason, are seen as important.

I’m tired of the fact that the internet is one of the most useful tools ever created for society but that the most common e-mails I receive are advertisements from strangers for such things as online university degrees, banking, and ways to improve my sex life. I swear, when 90% of the e-mails I receive are of this manner, I openly wonder if I even want to continue getting e-mail.

I’m tired of the telephone and mail. Both of these methods of communication are following directly in the path of the e-mails I have already mentioned. More than half of the phone calls I receive are from strangers wanting to get money from my for charity, sell me some product, or ask my opinion about something. Too often I hang up a phone before ever hearing a sound on the other end of the line. And postal carriers have become little more than flyer deliverers. The current state of the postal service has made a mockery of the proud slogan of how neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow shall interrupt the mail. This is a group that needed communal boxes to deposit letters in (rather than bringing them to my door) and, to tell you the truth, I’d be much happier if the mail were interrupted from time to time if 80% of what I pull out of that box is a menu for the pizza joint a few blocks away.

I’m tired of chest thumpers and loud talkers. Of the people who feel they must win every discussion as if it were some War on Opinions. Too many people that I have dealt with feel like if they can say the most in the most definite terms, they must also be right. They see listening and pondering of ideas as weakness and I get to a point where I can barely tolerate dealing with it anymore.

I’m tired of not knowing what goes through the minds of my friends. I should qualify this… I have several good friends who I feel I know inside and out. I think they know me and they are willing to tell me their actual feelings on a matter. But I also know people who I think are friends, but I can never be totally sure. One day things seem totally fine between me and them… I feel like I know where I stand in their world and things are solid. And the next day it feels as though I was just through a major fight with them… a fight where you make up and agree things are fine but there remains an awkwardness in your dealings with each other. I just don’t want to deal with friends after our imaginary fights. Friendships aren’t supposed to be this way. This ties in to another thing I’m tired of…

When did open communication become a wrong thing? I’m tired of dealing with people who seem to get offended by openness. You’ve crossed some line of decency if you say what you really feel. I deal with too many people who feel we must hide truth from each other and share niceties that mean nothing.

I’m tired of catchphrase politics. Where complex issues are boiled down to “you’re with us or against us”. Where speaking against the WAR ON TERROR is like speaking against God Almighty. Where “support our troops” is said in a tone that’s meant to suggest there should be no more discussion on the matter.

I’m tired of having to include everyone I know in every event that goes on. I can no longer go to supper with a friend at work because that will insult other people… so a group of ten have to go in order for everybody to be happy. Workplace suppers have become such a production that I just find myself refusing to be a part of them. The last time pizza was ordered in my office, I was told I could be in on it as long as I went together with a group of others who were getting a deluxe. My desires for a Hawaiian pizza meant nothing… it would screw up life for the greater good in the complex world of food ordering… so I just threw up my hands and said “I’ll just eat my sandwich.”

I mean just think about it… we live in a world where people over simplify the justification of going to war and make the ordering of a pizza incredibly complex. Now that’s backwards.

I’m tired of TV commercials. Like with the phone, mail and e-mail, we are constantly bombarded on TV with pitches to sell us junk. The most important issue in too many lives is getting a good deal on something.

I’m tired of the drama created to sell news. Reporting a story isn’t enough… newscasters don’t want to give us a story, they want to give us emotion. They’d rather show footage of an angry and crying parent being quoted as saying they want the murderer of their child to die and burn in hell than actually try to understand the events of a story and inform people objectively. And why the public needs to know that the girl, who was killed in Montreal this week, was shot nine times is beyond me.

Needless to say, it’s been a tiring week. I’ve dealt with too much silliness and let my mind be too occupied with some of that silliness. Times like these are why I give myself weekends of hibernation. Weekends when I don’t make any plans to do anything with anybody. I went for a bike ride after work on Friday and that helped. I had some real e-mails with friends and that helped too. And a phone call or two with people who are grounded and know what really matters is welcome… cause at least then I know that it isn’t the whole world that has gone insane.