The Pen Dictates I Write

The trouble that begins when the summer ends is simply that the days of the sun are shorter and shorter.  What does amaze me after so many of these hot spells that come and go, is that I never tire of them. It continues to mark the ever approaching day of my demise, however as I welcome each new day, they never seems to be without a new challenge or a new opportunity to feel more self esteem than ever before.  

My self esteem is dependent on what I think not what others think.  In the past I would let the dictation of others scribe on my wall what exactly went on when I read my own mind. The penmanship of those I held in the least regard assigned my self worth when I opened my eyes. It is in my dreams I see the brilliance the shadow people used to occlude. No longer will I be pushed about no matter what footprints another man leaves in my path, because it is always in my shoes they can never walk.  

The Compact Mirror

I love listening to these young women in front of me in the next seat as they spout their logic about how to drink and how their friends don’t know how to drink. Amazing how their limited sight distance is a continuum in their minds.  Their friendship is based on how much  they agree with each other.  There is nothing cerebral that they are exchanging only what their five senses are telling them. The guide dog inside themselves is purely visceral, it has no empathic connection to the world at large. They can only see what the loom of the light before them reveals. And their compact mirror gives them the license to paint whatever image they choose. 

Rant

Can I please stop hearing about “the gap” between the train and the platform please? Also please shut off those voices that tell us how to navigate an escalator. The same track has been playing for ten years in Penn Station, we got it okay?  What about the warnings on commercials about “Don’t try this or the latest one about two guys riding their RV’s on sand covered hills and having us being told that it was an approved riding  area. Who is this for some zealot with an agenda? American advertisers focus on the lamest of details. And speaking of advertisers, will you please stop telling us in every car commercial that it’s an EVENT?  It’s not an event, it’s a sale that’s it. Also stop with the word introducing, a car is not a person.  And you lease guys stop with the stupid monthly price that you back into by playing with the down payment. Such nonsense. 199 a month with 4,000 dollars down. Are we that dumb? Or is it that you are?  Moreover stop using 99 when pricing something. Advertisers should have to use numbers no higher than 5. Just like gas prices that have persisted in measuring prices  in mills. There is no such thing as 9 tenths of a penny. We are not in colonial times anymore.  Here’s one, how about we start a serious campaign by telling people to signal when changing lanes? Yes, signal when changing lanes and let’s make it clear that buses (any type bus even those sawed off ones) and trucks do not belong on the parkway. Also you truck drivers have you forgot that you are not to drive in the left lane? What’s the matter DTI forgot that one? Stepping off my soapbox. 

Wake Up Jack My Boy

Today’s inspiration comes from someone I have never spoken to only read. I will leave it at that.  She says that our assets are also our defects. So true, because our healthiest habits  can be our own undoing. I think of the spinning obsession I currently am driven by, because it has had the positive effect of my losing weight, lowering my blood pressure (100/70) and relieving my knee and lower back pain. All seemingly glorious facets of better health. However, the same can be held that I am neglecting my work, focused too much on writing that pays no stipend and is keeping me isolated in the gregarious lifestyle I exhibit to the world at large. Today was a great example, I was going to spin at the expense of being late at an interview with a firm that is determined to have my professional services, yet I was readily prepared to be late on a fallacious excuse that I was running late on a previous appointment. 

It was indeed a close friend that said simply, not only did I not have to spin but that I couldn’t spin.  Thank you for my reality check. I was erroneously hitching my wagon to a star that has not shown itself from behind the clouds yet. I know the brilliance is there but I am not going to clear the sky just so he can appear in the heavens. 

The Maiden Name

You know whenever I heard someone with three names and she was a woman I wondered if she was doing her impression of Women’s Liberation.  That’s fine, women want to hold onto their identity and not merge into the man they marry, I understand that, well hardly. But, I am an old school guy from the 20th Century and I just never got it with this maiden name and married name on the same bill.  After all that maiden name is her father’s name also  a man’s name,  so there really is no escape ladies sorry.  A little off track Jack? And maybe I have alienated some of you women but let me say this my two stepdaughters both successful in business had no problem switching their name to their spouse's family name. Even in my spell check they don’t want me to get gender specific. Phooey. 

Overwhelm

I am not used to being in the overwhelm state as so many of my friends and acquaintances have shared with me. I liken it to shin splints I didn’t have a clue what they were like until I was inflicted with them, and then I knew the feeling intimately as no book could describe.

Taking psychology online has intimated this “state of being” as part of the human condition and I just thought it was just psychobabble or worse yet an invention of the mind of liberals that had to have an explanation of every feeling real or imagined. I still think that it is not a real condition and that it is indeed a manufactured malady but it does seem to move me to a degree of paralysis. However, I think I have found the cure. It is simply a matter of asking myself questions as to what it is that is keeping me up at night or in the pre dawn hours the werewolves gathering at my bed chamber.
Today I enumerated two things that are on my mind and with that revelatory admission my suspended animation of fear if you will was brought down to the size of a very small monster that I can leash and if not tame then take the legs out from underneath it so as to make it immobile.
Overwhelm, one might even revel in its charm like it was a legal excuse to be pardoned for inactivity, procrastination and sloth. Although I don’t think the pharmacology industry has invented a pill for such a condition although I may be wrong on that account. If you just mention it in mixed company you will get nods of recognition of those that have felt this way even though the condition for each individual must have had different affects on their psyche.
Although as a sober man this state is conquerable simply by putting one foot in front of the other. No guarantee of results but the deleterious affects of foreboding will disappear.