Grinding Down

Where do I start? The grinding sameness of every day, week, and month? The insipid infection of nowhere and nothing? Pursuing every day the monotonous needs…get up, go to work, maybe have another argument on the phone on the way in, arrive angry, go through the day with a mind twisted by anger, push through the same challenges, come home, eat dinner, have necessarily superficial conversation (so many little demands, things that have to be done, drop offs, clean, and god knows what other drudgery sucking away the ability to care or engage), distract self with a bit of surfing (can’t read as it’s too solitary a pursuit and would result in endless drama – but surfing is a horrid mean that leaves everyone unsatisfied, but just not quite enough to crack open and expose raw frustration and sorrow), then slide into unconsciousness. Repeat. Up, work, argue, balance, exhaust, pass-out.

What is this doing to me? I weigh more than I ever have.I'm exhausted. So tired. I often consider mashing the gas pedal down and slamming into a tree, pole, or off of a cliff. It would kill me yes indeed. I have to stop my body from following the ideation…have to force myself not to. Of course, you might say why not change your life rather than end it. Excellent question I’ve spent some time with. It’s much more difficult to sort out changes while maintaining continuity. How do I know which pieces should give, which cannot, which pain to choose, to avoid? How do I know what choices to make? I don’t know how to choose from the many. Colliding with a fixed object at speed is manageable. Sick, isn’t it.

Grinding, grinding, grinding down. I have access to no variety of experience without first diluting them through discussion and compromise. I have no experience of my own. I must always find the compromise in everything I do. I have deflated myself so as to not offend or distress. And now I am tepid, taupe, and sometimes struggling to remember where what I am and why I live.

A Reason to Smile

Today, while hunched at my desk, my dull gaze was caught by a flash from my phone. I considered ignoring it and continuing practicing my dull, but was eventually overcome by a wayward remnant of innate human curiosity. What I found helped me smile, so I will share.

Text1: There I was. Sitting in Chicago. Enjoying a salad. Then I realized I had missed my plane.

Time passed while I considered this and decided a mild giggle was in order. Then, while working myself up to giggle, another message arrived.

Text2: My goodness, I`m developing a serious alcohol dependency.

I did in fact break into a quiet giggle after reading this. Wages of sin..? No, just the effects of our protracted struggle against the crushing momentum of our profession. Onwards and upwards.

Rock On

Another day has passed. There were multiple points of failure. In my efforts, others efforts, lives. A series of implosions and dazed looks. Occasionally, we break out in booming laughter, hoping our wheezing desperation will drive off bad spirits and ill luck. I’m uncertain if it’s effective, but I hope it is, and, well, over the years I’ve learned hope is a strategy. Truly, there may be no other we’ve ever used. We struggle forth with nary an ill word. Optimism is indeed the by and only word. We must proceed. We must adhere to policy. Success is inevitable. And, on the off chance that we in fact fail, we must exert our every creative fibre to present failure as success. Though I’m with excellent people and we do, despite our best efforts, succeed some of the time - it is a charnel house driving all of us downward into a twisted spiral of half-truths and fictions. There’s no point in what I’ve said – no desire to communicate anything beyond the invariable, inestimable, breakdown of potential and ability within which I drift.