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Loving the Questions

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For as long as I can remember, I have been an impatient person… and a worrier. Such endearing qualities, I know. Oh… And I am also a ruminator… with a capital “R,” I can chew on a thought like nobody’s business. Seriously. You can ask anyone.

In fact, anyone reading this who knows me very well, is probably at this moment, smiling, laughing or at the very least nodding their heads in enthusiastic agreement. I’m not sure why I am like this. I wish I could blame it on someone or something… like my parents or older sister, a sadistic teacher, a traumatic childhood event, an evil playground bully. But none of that would be accurate. See, I’m fairly certain that I came straight out of the womb, hard-wired to be like this.

I ask a million questions it seems… all the time. What am I doing? Where am I going? How is THIS going to turn out? What is (insert name of just about anyone here) thinking right now? When will that happen? What if this happens? What if that other thing happens? How am I going to pull THIS off? How’s THAT going to work? What if? How come? What for? Why me?

I also rush ahead (in my mind) wondering about the future, rather than living fully in the present. I mean, do I ACTUALLY think that by dwelling on or worrying about the future I am going to miraculously get to any of the answers any sooner? The thing is… I know that this kind of thinking is not only an exercise in futility… but it is harmful. It’s harmful because it robs me of any joy that I am capable of feeling right now… in the present.

So, for all my fellow worriers, ruminators and commiserative comrades out there… I want to share one of my favorite quotes with you. The reason it is one of my all-time favorites, is because it does such an amazing job of bringing into focus exactly how we ought to see our current realities as well as our futures.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are written in a foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

It’s so important to remember that Time will… in time… pull back the curtain and reveal the answers to us one day, but until then we need to enjoy whatever TODAY has to offer because the Present is the Future of the Past.

The Back of the Closet

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Have you ever, in desperation, looked in the very back of your closet to search for something to wear because nothing you own seems good enough and you HATE all of your clothes? You push aside the tees you wore this past weekend, the blouse you wore yesterday and the top you’re saving for “Casual Friday,” all in the vain attempt to reach the bowels of your wardrobe hoping against hope that therein hangs some incredible unforeseen garment that you’ve forgotten you own and can therefore resurrect!

Aha! You find something! How in the world have you missed it in all this time?!?! This is wonderful! This is going to open you up to endless, interchangeable fashion possibilities! This is going to double, no TRIPLE your number of available ensemble choices! This textile, could perhaps… transform your entire world.

Now, of course, as you stand there… hanger in hand… arm outstretched… admiring the aforementioned “Savior Garment”… there is one thing you know you must check first. And it is absolutely imperative. It is the biggest hurdle you will have to overcome, but you MUST find out before you get too excited and mentally begin pairing things up and creating outfits that will undoubtedly turn heads. I am referring to the all important question: Does it still fit?

<gulp>

Quickly, you consider everything you ate THAT day as a peremptory justification for any minor snugness, should it exist. You try to recall the last time you’ve broken a sweat (not including this one), pushed play on that dusty Denise Austin DVD or even laid eyes on the inside of the gym. Then you begin thinking about all the morning lattes, the mayo on your sandwiches, the bleu cheese dressing on your salads, the 3 p.m. sugar binges, the weekend baseball beers, the weekly-Lifetime-movie-cookie-dough binges… and the fear begins to build.

<double gulp>

Somehow you gather the courage to slide the first appropriate appendage into said clothing item… then the second. So far, so good. Now comes the true confirmation of your intestinal fortitude: Will it button, latch, zip or close without the surgical removal of any vital organs? With your eyes squeezed shut, muttering prayers, you try it. Praise God!! It STILL fits!!! The clouds part, rays of sunshine pour into your room and in the distance you can hear the faintest sound of angels singing The Hallelujah Chorus!

Ah… now the real fun begins. What to pair with this “new” former frock for it’s reintroduction into the rotation. After trying various color and texture combinations, taking into consideration this particular item’s unique strengths and weaknesses… you finally select just the right piece with which to pair it.

You’ll wear it the very next day.

Tomorrow arrives and you’re amazingly able to jump out of bed and kick start your day just by thinking about how nice you will look in the day’s oh-so-stylish ensemble. You will get so many compliments and your envious co-workers will assume you’ve been shopping, when in actuality, you haven’t spent a single dime. In anticipation for your great day, you get dressed, leave for work early and even stop for a latte… because apparently they haven’t damaged your figure too much seeing as this item still fits.

No sooner do you get to work, pull into your parking spot and get out of the car do you realize WHY it is that this piece of clothing was SHOVED to the back of the closet… It may fit you the same as it ever did… but it is so uncomfortable you cannot STAND IT!! You spend your ENTIRE day tugging and pulling and adjusting and hiding in your office, praying for the day to be over so that you can take this freaking piece of crap and CRAM it in THE BACK OF THE CLOSET… right where it belongs.

Life by the Numbers

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It begins and ends with a number. A dreadful sound shatters the stillness of my slumber and I open my eyes to see 3 green and glowing numbers looming ominously over my rapidly-dissolving dreams. 6:00 a.m.

In the midst of a heat wave, I turn on the news to channel 3 see how hot it is actually going to get today so I’ll know exactly how much or how little to wear. 95. With a heat index of 110.

Stumbling down the stairs to my non-air-conditioned main floor, I glance at the thermostat. It says 84. I say a curse word.

With great fear and trepidation I climb onto the scale before climbing into the shower to estimate the damages from my nephew’s 11th birthday celebration the night before. XXX lbs., XX.X BMI … these numbers are for my eyes only. But I do utter another curse word.

Sitting down with a 200-calorie breakfast comprised of 8 oz. of OJ and 8 oz. of cereal with 4 oz. of milk, I obsessively check the stats on my blog page. At 7:20 a.m., there have been 23 views, 2 comments and 9 referrals. 0 new subscriptions. On Facebook, I have 1 notification, 2 messages, 1 invitation to play FarmVille and 1 friend request. I accept the friend request. I have 664 friends. Nope… make that 663. Someone just dumped me. Somewhere in the distance I hear a muffled scream as my profile goes swoosh into the virtual trash can belonging to the loser who unfriended me.

Out the door with 20 minutes to spare, I have the misfortune of getting behind 2 of the slowest-moving utility vehicles you’ve ever seen. They are doing 35 in a 55. At this rate, I will be 10 minutes late. Eventually I pass them doing 85 (I imagine my speeding ticket will cost well over $100) and wind up behind 1 even-slower moving 18-wheeler carrying 3 steel coils on a 2-lane highway. I follow him for 4 miles at 45 MPH. Make that 15-minutes late.

The word count so far is 335. In case you’re curious. Though now that I’ve used more words to tell you that… it is higher.

Miraculously only 10 minutes late to work, I have 5 unread messages and 7 projects to complete before 5 p.m. As a graphic designer, my work day is infinitely full of numbers… dates, times, account numbers, quantities and measurements. Therefore, I will spare you the details of the bulk of my day.

At 12:00 noon I call Verizon Wireless to give them $112.68. There is $XXX.XX remaining in my bank account. I utter yet another curse word.

By 5:00 p.m., there are exactly 6 hours left in the day before bedtime. Another obsessive check of blog stats and Facebook: 71 views, 8 comments and 11 referrals. 1 new subscription. Facebook offers 3 notifications, 1 message, 0 friend requests. Dinner at 7, a 2-hour phone call starting at 8 and 1 hour of reading, watching TV, writing or painting my nails before the clock strikes 11. I must get at least 7 hours of sleep a night or I’ll be a hot, cranky mess the next day. Just ask my loved-ones.

Turn off the TV, check the thermostat… 86. Curse word. Lights out. 11:03 p.m.

I wrote this account (get it… account?) as an exercise when it occurred to me how much of my daily joy and pain is tied directly to NUMBERS. Why must we quantify our value based on hard numbers… from how much we weigh to how much we earn? From how many virtual “friends” we have to how many people visited or commented on our blog today? For 1 day I’d like to ignore these “values” … and derive my worth from that which cannot be counted. Who’s with me?

Nyquil: Makes Colds (and Cash) Disappear

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It’s quite a racket really. A multi-billion dollar industry feeding off one of our most basic of needs… the need to feel better. Fast. Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Bayer, Halls and Kleenex (just to name a few) have us right where they want us.

Standing in the cold and flu aisle at Rite-Aid last night my head was spinning. Perhaps it was the sinus pressure or just a good buzz from the expired Dayquil I had consumed hours earlier. But I actually suspect that I felt faint due to the ginormous, yellow price tags beneath all of the items I needed to purchase in order to feel relatively human again.

$10 for a 4-ounce jar of Vicks Vapor Rub?  Yeah, we here at Rite-Aid think that’s a fair price. $7.99 for 12 sore throat lozenges (with magical healing vapors, don’t forget)… Halls believes thats reasonable. $16 for a combined package of Dayquil and Nyquil (the-nightime-sniffling-sneezing-coughing-aching-best-sleep-you-ever-got-with-a-cold) cold medicine—the mere 6-day supply… Proctor and Gamble considers that two-for-one deal a real bargain! And you know what? Of course they can charge whatever the hell they want to because by the time we’re actually standing IN THE AISLE of the store, our judgement has already been severely impaired by our insufferable symptoms.

So basically the small blue basket hanging on my arm that is barely one-third of the way full is worth my entire paycheck. Hmmmm… how badly do I want to feel better? If I don’t get some relief, I won’t sleep. If I don’t sleep, I won’t do a good job at work. If I don’t do a good job at work, I’ll lose my job… leaving me broke and penniless and unable to purchase this outrageously-overpriced shit in the first place. It truly IS a dilemma.

I settle on a compromise of buying ALL generic and only the necessities. I selectively choose to address the ability to breathe, the ability to swallow without the sensation of downing shards of broken glass, and some assistance with sleep. Oh and some assurance that I won’t fly into a sneezing fit during the next staff meeting and risk being mistaken for an epileptic in the midst of a gran mal seizure.

Let’s face it, when it’s all said and done and the 10 days that the “common cold” takes to “run its course” are up… I am left with the remains of these costly items. They’ll wind up in a box or on a shelf or tucked waaaaaay in the back of a cabinet somewhere. They’ll join the ranks among the other useless, dried-up, crusty members of my ever-growing collection of expired jars, tubes, bottles, blister packs and baggies that are cluttering up random corners of my home because for reasons beyond my comprehension, I refuse to throw them away.

And this small fortune will sit there—gathering dust—until A. I move. Or B. I need to make room for another year’s cache of cold remedies. Or C. I am hospitalized for consuming some antihistamines that were around during the Clinton administration.

The Finger

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I got the finger from an 80 year old woman on my way to work this morning. No… not the finger you’re thinking of. This was worse. It was the angry, jabbing, pointing index finger instead. You know… the scolding you’re-being-a-bad-girl-and-you’d-better-behave-or-else-you’re-really-gonna-get-it finger that your mother gave you if you were taunting your sister while she cried or you so much as glanced at the cookie jar 30 minutes before dinner. The one that apparently STILL has the power to reduce an independent, 36 year old woman to a puddle of shame.

I guess she was cranky because … OK … maybe I almost sort of pulled out in front of her this morning when turning off my road and heading to work. I wasn’t actually going to pull out in front of her. Of course I was going to stop. Or at the very least pause. Due to the disparity between parking spots and automobiles in my neighborhood, many people are forced to park on the side of the road, leaving a driver no other choice than to pull a little further out into the road in order to see around said vehicular visual obstructions. This is allI was doing—checking for traffic in the middle of the road—in order to proceed safely and merrily on my way.

And she freaked. And the finger came flying out with great gusto! At first I was shocked by the overt aggression in her appalling gesture… then a fraction of a second later extremelytempted to give her the index finger right back. But then I thought better of it, given that I most likely reside within a 2-block radius of this woman. If the saying goes that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, then I would venture to go one step further and say that you ought to keep your neighbors right under your nose… and remain squarely in their good graces.

However… I would also say that this whole unpleasant situation could have been avoided if only she had stayed in her house and off the road until the regular morning commute was over. See, I have this theory. Do you want to hear it? If not, I suggest you stop reading this right now because of course you know I am going to share it.

Here goes: People who are (for lack of better words) retired and unable to drive at least the speed limit should NOT be on the roads between the hours of 7-9 a.m. and 4-6 p.m. I feel this should be a law. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. they can have at it. As far as I’m concerned—the roads can belong to them. Here is my reasoning… many of these people aren’t fond of theI’m-in-a-hurry-and-need-to-get-where-I’m-going-NOW-because-my-5-yr-old-had-a-meltdown-this-morning OR the I’m-exhausted-from-cramming-my-non-work-life-into-4-hours-every-evening-so-I-overslept-this-morning-thus-causing-me-to-rush-around-to-get-to-work-on-time dilemmas that 8 to 5 commuters have. In fact, they often perceive the aforementioned rushed drivers to be “annoying” or “threatening” or “dangerous” or “insane” or “scary.” And it is because of this conflict that—when on the road at the same time—things can turn ugly in 0 to 60 seconds.

So to my neighbor and her guilt-wielding, road-raged appendage I say: Either stay off the road or I suggest you holster that finger. Because next time… I might just fire one right back at ya. Have a nice day.

Thrisis Averted

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Recently I read about something called a “Thrisis.” Apparently, it is a newly-invented term for that dreaded period of time when someone in their late-twenties freaks out because they find themselves staring straight down the barrel of the big 3-0.

Give me a break…

MUST we make up a name for EVERY single portion of the life cycle now? Apparently we must… because we do. Mid-life crisis has been around awhile… but now there are the tweens, the quarter-life crisis, kidults and thresholders—another fairly new word for 20-something men and women who delay adulthood, opting for perpetual adolescence instead.

Now, don’t get me wrong about the practice of creating new words. Language is a living thing, and I completely understand that making up new words is an important part of cultural evolution. I LOVE words. I can’t get enough of them. You can ask anyone. I SAY a lot of words, I WRITE a lot of words… just like now… I am typing these words just because I can.

Anyway… As a 36 year old, let me put the late-20-something-kids-in-thrisis at ease. Thirty is nothing. I welcomed 30 with open arms. I threw a freakin’ party for 30 when it arrived on my doorstep! It is a wonderful demographic in which to be a part of. No longer viewed a “child” by society… you achieve actual adult status, but the investment firms, insurance and pharmaceutical companies haven’t begun stalking you yet.

Now, 35 on the other hand has been a bit more interesting… And perhaps the term thrisis is MORE applicable here.

You see, at 35…

  • You find constant comfort in the fact that Jennifer Aniston and the rest of her “Friends” are older than you are.
  • You notice the lines linger long after the laughter has stopped.
  • You have entered a new bracket on just about everything… forms, various risk calculations, medical conditions, surveys, products, etc.
  • You are becoming acquainted with new vocabulary words such as: mammogram, vitamin deficiency, blood-sugar level, bone density, “good” cholesterol, “bad” cholesterol and triglyceride.
  • You encounter people who, upon hearing your age, start their next sentence with the words: “Well, you’re still not too old to… ” Then, upon realizing you’ve unwittingly become a victim of ageism, you ask yourself: What the #$@!?
  • You still prefer the look of the clothes and styles in the Junior’s Department, but can no longer shop there due to the fact that the Jr. garments do NOT have industrial-strength slimming, smoothing & supporting spandex cleverly-hidden in every nook and cranny.
  • You discover that putting “enough” lotion on your neck has suddenly become an obsession.
  • You realize that your hatred for Justin Bieber stems from the fact that he reminds you of the brat who tortured you while you babysat him WHEN YOU WERE 14.
  • You, yes YOU are now the target audience for Botox commercials.
  • You are no longer the “young” one on the job. You have actual co-workers who not only do not KNOW who Chris Farley, David Spade, Mike Myers, Matt Foley, Linda Richman or Jack Handy are… They don’t find them funny either.

So if you’re standing on the brink of the big 3-0… Fear not! ENJOY yourself… Because you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.