Category: Growing Up
Under Pressure
After a long day at work last week, I picked up my purse, shut down my computer, and turned the lights out in my office. When I say it had been a long day, I mean it had been one tiny fragment of a streak of long days in bunch of long weeks that have made up the many long months of one long year.
I patted my pockets down in the hallway and realized I’d left my phone on my desk. So I turned back to the office and immediately panicked. I could not see anything. I had gone completely blind.
As soon as it happened, I knew there was no coming back from this. I was instantly, permanently without sight and I knew exactly why. I once read that while Terry Gilliam was directing Brazil, he got so stressed out that one morning he just couldn’t move from his bed, and that must have been what happened to me, too. Stress had taken my vision. I tried not to scream while I flailed around. No need to increase anyone else’s stress by causing a scene over my sudden and irrevocable blindness, I thought.
I’ll just feel my way home now. Don’t mind me.
Let Me Get What I Want This Time
Some children know what they want to be when they grow up, and then grow up and become that thing and enjoy it. If you are one of those people, please never talk to me or look at me. I don’t understand you and I don’t want to see your gross contentment.
Not only do I still not know what I want to do when I grow up as a grownup, I don’t even know what I want to eat for breakfast or what kind of toilet paper I want to buy. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to tell. How on earth are you going to decide what you want to do for a career, or who you want to spend the rest of your life with, or where you want to live that life? How does anyone know what they want?
When I was a kid, everyone said it was important to have goals. “Yes,” I agreed. “I want to be an astronaut. And a writer. And a turtle. And a princess. I want to be an astronaut writer turtle princess.”
“But you can’t be all of those things,” people said. “You have to pick one.”
That’s where they lost me. And I was never seen again. To this day, you can see my ghost wandering the hills, asking itself, “What exactly am I doing here with my ghost self and is it the right thing and have I adequately explored all the options? Boo-oooo-oo!”
Sorry. That got weird.
Wake Me up Before You Go-Go
I firmly believe that every single person has one incredible talent. Every individual has one thing they can do that blows all the competition out of the water. Some people are natural theoretical physicists. Others create awe-inspiring works of art. Still others are always able to find primo parking spots wherever they go.
I defy you to find a spot that’s any closer to that house.
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide, Except for Me and My Monkey
Remember that time I was mad at every single person and object on the entire planet for no reason at all? I figured out what my problem was.
I had way too many monkeys.
Not, like, actual monkeys. I should back up.
Last week I asked my boss, Ike, if it was alright for me to stop going to a meeting that always leaves me with a feeling similar to the kind one might experience after repeatedly slamming one’s head into a brick wall.
A brick wall that won’t listen to any of your ideas and gets really upset when you question it.
Tried to Make Me Go to Rehab
You’re a quick-witted bunch so I imagine you’ve already picked up on this, but I like lists. I like the way they highlight important things. I like the way they bring order to this crazy world. I like how nice and clean they look. (I’m sorry if you’ve heard all this before. I like talking about them, too.) I especially like lists because they’re helpful in almost every situation. If you’re going shopping, what should you bring? A list! If you’re writing demands in a ransom note, how should you arrange them? In a list! If you’re trying to win Trivial Pursuit and you need the name of a 19th-century Hungarian composer, what should you say? Liszt! See? So handy.
I AM NOT SORRY FOR MAKING THAT PUN.
Listful Thinking 