Day 6: I Think It’s Day 6 Anyway

So beckon’s another morning... <sigh> Today is the first day where I have absolutely nothing to do but sit back and watch re-runs of Oprah... If I were any less motivated, I’d be a toadstool. 


It is time to set some goals.

The important thing is to strive towards a goal which is not immediately visible.  That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.  

                                                                                                - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Bah... the spirit eh, I’ve got news for my little friend spirit... You’re BROKEN! Well, maybe just cracked...

It’s tougher day today than expected. I think this is mostly because of the goals I listed last week, I’ve procrastinated  and haven’t completed them all.... That and in looking for a reason to get up in the morning I made up new ones along the way, i.e., giving our kitchen a facelift. The other things like laundry, cleaning and getting organized for the months ahead of fallen by the wayside like a well-loved teddybear when a snot-nosed brat enters adolescence.


Clearly, I can currently related to said well-loved, yet tossed away teddybear.  The opportunity remains to take a completely different direction. The hardest thing to overcome, is that it’s not you directly. It’s not what you did or did not do. It’s looking at the holistic situation and understanding that it was the situation, not you that brought you down the current path. 


This brings us to today’s life lesson, brought to you by the Empire Strikes Back:

Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try. 

                                                         - Yoda 



You have to put these things behind you. There is no try, it’s a must-do. If you don’t that piece by piece you lose yourself  and the person you were and forget what you learned along the way.  


Not that I am an Oh poor me type person, I choose to live in reality. Reality is a place that I have found not very many people live. That is sad...really.  Bull-shit only baffles brains for a short period of time. When the truth comes out, and it’s sure to, the poop always hits the fan. The only thing is, those of us who live in reality, already expect it to happen, because we’re more in-tune and have a deeper understanding of what lies beneath the BS.


Anyway--off to continue procrastinating on the goals... Perhaps I’ll paint the bedroom. 


Ciao

Day 3: Weekends Shouldn't Count Should They?

A bit late, but it’s been a busy day!


Who would have known that it was so much work to sleep in and do nothing... quite honestly I am exhausted! In the spirit of working around the house, I’ve covered the decks and now have decided to paint the kitchen cabinets... yes stupid, but keeps me busy.


Speaking of stupid, of late I seem to seeing a lot of stupid people running around without a clear sense of what the Hell they’re doing. I find this bothersome... When did the stupid epidemic hit Toronto? Why does it take someone 10 minutes to rifle through their purse for subway fare, when clearly they have $5 in their hand... two dollars more then they need! 


Argh...


Maybe it’s the heat, but my mind is elsewhere today, so I’ll keep it brief... Today’s life lesson is brought to you by Adlai Stevenson...”There is nothing more frightening than stupidity in action."

Day 2: Grip Loosening: Spiralling into a pit of Mailerism

So here we are... Day 2... First Life Lesson Learned in the past 24 hours.... Proofread before posting to a blog... hahaha... Wow! What a grammatical horror-show that was.  So instead of publishing another gong show of grammatical injustice, I'll kick this puppy off with a pithy and meaningful quote for lost souls everywhere:

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit - Norman Mailer

Until this morning, I didn't realize how many people have the summer off... Either I chose the wrong profession, or the number of "Ladies of Leisure" far exceeded my expectations.... Yoga and book clubs all-day, everyday; is that a  life worth living? Or is a means to prevent oneself from dying a little more everyday? Does it provide purpose to life?  I'm not exactly sure that  morning yoga followed by a martini for lunch is an appropriate course of action. While I respect the right to choose, I'd prefer not to actually end up a skinny 40-something with sunken bones closely resembling good ol' Normie. To whom let's face it, brilliant guy, but in no way was he going to win any beauty pageant. 


I guess if I did more align to the "intellectual" aesthetic, I would have been able to come up with this little ditty in some drunken anti-establishment  rant: "With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance." Granted it's a quote from the '60s but  with today's technology trade in your small trumpet for a strategically placed dictaphone and a satellite uplink to CNBC.


I think instead I'll find some purpose in preparing to greet a new addition to the family--somewhere around the 40-day mark. This allows me to participate in the two things I enjoy most, bi-coastal travel and shopping for other people. This fortunate revelation provides both. 


Those who know me well know that I normally have a pretty strong aversion to anything that can't buy its own alcohol. But I figure, given the much needed expansion of our family gene-pool I am willing to make an exception. I do feel sorry for the fetus of unknown sex, as it is going to be stuck with my rotten astrological chart. Why is it that we don't believe our bodies are forced to obey  the moon and stars? 


I know, I know, most modern people would consider astrology somewhere in the realm of post-hippie bullshit, but isn't astrology just the incarnation of some form of celestial obedience? Is it just another way that we are  sub-conciously obedient by a force of nature that we are unable to control or disconnect? Let's face it, as Normie once said we are "obedient little bitches." We are told from birth that we must be obedient to our parents, our teachers, our bosses, our chosen deity and our spouses. As a free thinking-society, who can say that they are able obey these forces all the time? Hmmm... I digress, because a good husband does as he is asked and after yesterday's successful painting of the back deck, I'm off to paint the front... 


Perhaps I'll even celebrate the completion of the task with a martini,  re-reading The Naked and the Dead, and taking a trip to BabyGap to see if I can find something appropriate for a fetus of unknown sex.  Sounds like a plan. 

Day 1: Coming to Grips

First, I'll take the opportunity to explain why you should read my slightly insightful and perhaps borderline useless ramblings... Essentially, they are about what I've learned about life and at times how down right shitty it is to learn them.

But perhaps even  more specifically it's a way to release the tension and creative juices that might otherwise go unnoticed during a spat of what I would like to call a period of "forced relaxation." This is my diary of what happens after you celebrate your  downsizing, restructuring, lay-off mid-life-crisis or whatever brought you to happy world of joblessness  with a bottle of cheap wine and perhaps a pack of cigarettes too many.

So about me.

Until recently--read yesterday--I was a relatively successful early-mid-30s corporate communications and PR professional at one of Canada's largest companies. I swear if I hear "At least you have the summer off..." one more time, I'll but the hiss back in hissy fit. I haven't had the full summer off since I was 13, so I find the whole thing a bit foreign and  just not right.  So in trying to answer the question... What does one do, in the summer, when everyone else is working and you're sitting back burning through your severance package like the Human Torch at a Hallmark?

Well, seeing I have time to kill, I pledge to learn one new thing each day about me and about the city I live in... Toronto, as well as what brought me to this point.

Today--I paint the deck. This may seem like a fairly easy task... But I warn you, I have never been one for manual labour. And by manual labour, I mean anything that requires the I need to wear rubber gloves (i.e., cleaning the toilet),  or has the remotest change of me getting dirty.  To me, there is no crime more heinous than a dirty fingernail... probably the reason my career path has taken me down mid-level-management in an air-conditioned office route, rather than someone who is actually talented and I don't know building stuff with a hammer and tools and stuff.

 I'll have to see how this goes...but let's face it, it's 10:45 and I need a reason to get out of bed.

Oh ya,  I fully admit that there is probably no earth-shattering revelation in what I've written above, that's live lesson number one... there doesn't always have to be a reason for things... sometimes it is what it is, because, it just is what it is.