Friday, November 19, 2021

Work Smarter, Not Harder


 It's done. 
No more strings.
No more excuses.
No more needling reasons
To consider further communication. 
There was one last thing.
One last financially shared task
Thanks to the IRS and Covid-19.
Two names on the checks,
Hers and mine.
I avoided her for months.
1200 dollars not enough
To make me want to
Be in her presence,
But...
Time was ticking by...
The Jeep was scheduled for maintenance 
A couple weeks before today,
For tomorrow...
Might be expensive...
So, I unblocked her from messenger...
Dragged my feet on "reaching out,"
Lots of inner dialog 
About the pros and cons,
A conditioned fear response
Still clinging to my resolve, 
But I had a feeling
She'd magically realize
She was no longer blocked...
Humans are nothing
If not predictable...
Sure enough...
She did...
Almost like clockwork 
Just a few days in...
Work smarter, not harder... 
We set up a meeting that very day...
On the drive to the bank, 
I threw up in an empty drink cup
That was set aside
For just such emergencies...
[Anxiety is a bitch...]
Even if the mind can forget,
The body remembers...
Grey rocked the interaction...
No emotion...
Just business...
Squaring up our very last 
Financial entanglement...
Left as soon as the cashier
Handed me the receipt
For my half
Of the interaction...
"Thank you..."
Is all I said...
Then put her back to blocked...
She had served her purpose...
Does that sound sociopathic? 
Sometimes survival comes first,
Before feelings...
If you tap the keg,
Some people will drain it in minutes,
And then blame you
For their thirst
When everything is gone...
When there's nothing left to give...

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

52


 Going on 52 years...
Just a few weeks away...
Just a month away from a one year anniversary...
A separation...
An ending...
I'm making progress,
But it still feels like...
Well, I can still feel it...
I haven't quite made it to indifference...
It still affects me...
I still catch myself ruminating on done deeds...
Picking at scabs...
Healing is happening...
I'm working hard,
Putting my back into it,
And still taking the time to do things that I enjoy...
Taking care of business,
After a fashion...
Bills are paid...
Roof over my head...
Two crazy cute ferrets sharing my room...
Yeah, modern world, one job can't rent a house or an apartment...
So roommates it is (Human ones...)
Too wrapped up in time management to socialize much
(At all...)
Still socially shell-shocked from 2020's Covid World 
And other more personally relevant disasters...
Quarantine plus trust issues was a great way to ring in 2021...
As always,
I deal with it,
Soldier on...
The Dude abides...
 I'm neither a good person,
Nor a bad person...
Like most everyone else, I'm a bit of both...
Just another human being born into this world
With little direction given on how to navigate our inner worlds...
We just wake up one day,
Suddenly a human,
Confused and naked,
With no understanding of the local language and customs...
It's hard enough learning how to navigate the physical world in that condition...
But navigating our own consciousness? 
Our emotions versus our intellect?
What's inside is more daunting than what's outside,
For some of us...
So,
The past year...
Back to that...
Longest period in thirty years that I have not been with a woman...
Longest amount of time that I haven't wound up in a relationship...
This is a conscious choice...
I've never really allowed myself to get to know me...
I've studied me, and analyzed me,
Applied cold scientific logic to every single one of my emotions...
Scrutiny under the microscope...
My intellect striving for supremacy over emotions for decades...
Messy things, emotions...
Often painful, and illogical...
And so, I never took the time to appreciate my own company...
There was always a significant other
Since I guess I felt like I didn't exist
If I weren't validated by belonging to someone else,
Or some bull shit like that...
I never really took ownership of myself...
I'm doing that now...
I'm taking advantage of the opportunity...
Taking time...
Exploring what I feel...
Getting out of the house for more than just work...
Exploring...
Just driving...
And chilling with ferrets...

Colosseum

There's a school of thought Concerning our ultimate end Positing that we don't experience our own death... That there are branching ...