Don't call it a comeback

I've been here for years!
(LL Cool J, mama said knock you out!)

Actually, I've been back just a few days. As with any time away, there is a pile of shit waiting for my return. Hooray! I love shoveling piles of shit.

First off was work. It isn't that there was anything out of the ordinary waiting for me back at the office, but when you don't go in for 14 days, stuff starts to add up. For me, it's been mail. Lots of it. Mostly, I've got letters from the Federal government demanding money for all the natural gas pipelines I've been permitting on behalf of clients. Instead of "Pulling an H-Dog," as I like to call it, and just writing them a personal check with insufficient funds in the attached checking account, thereby bouncing the check, I just forward the letters on to the appropriate party. In this case, about a half dozen letters went downtown to various offices asking for checks to be cut.

Ideally, this should be a reasonably simple matter. The Feds, ahem, "ask" for money, and one is obliged to open the coin purse. In the case of one particular client, they've gotten my letters and politely thrown them away, thereby enacting the corporate version of "Pulling an H-Dog." All's fine and well until Uncle Sam, or in this case, Auntie Stacey from the BLM, calls me up and wonders where the hell her thousands of dollars might have made off to.
"I'll have to call you right back."

I guess that, technically, I'm not going to jail for defaulting on payments owed the USA. That would be my poor boss, the guy who signed all the applications. Boss man might as well have FOX NEWS tattooed on his ass, and with that kind of patriotism clearly (or discreetly) exhibited, I doubt the homeland will throw the man who cuts my check into the slammer. If they did, though, I bet his new roommate would ask in wonder, "So, I hear you have some ink. Can I take a peek?"

Oh boy.

Other than dodging Johnny Law, I've been trying to figure out what the hell happened to my climbing. I feel like a fish out of water up there right now. It's a sad feeling to grab a hold and remember what it used to feel like to bear down on it and think, "this is a jug," but now feel like screaming "take" and weeping like a small child who missed the magic trick. Was that just a childhood memory of mine? Probably. Lots of weeping buried back there.

The good news is that my yoga isn't sucking quite so bad right now. Today, I even learned how to float to the top of my mat after a down dog. That might sound lame, and it very well could be. But I'm here to tell you, I define myself by my lameness, and right now, my definition is "Big Time!" Basically, I look only incrementally less awkward in class where the rest of the students are calmly wrapping their legs behind their heads like scarves.

And now, I'd like to change subjects entirely.

My shrink made an offhand comment the other day that I should write screenplays. It's a sign form Jesus Christ himself! I should get paid to do this!
(Editor's note: It may have actually been a sign from a clinically trained professional that acutely pointed to the disconnect between reality and the thoughts swirling in my head like putrid, urine stained snow flakes.)

I was lamenting the fact that life is a slippery slope. You say yes to one project at work, and the next thing you know, you're wearing a polo shirt with Proctor & Gamble embroidered across your sagging man tit, schlepping your giveaway brief case, proudly earned at last years employee convention in Phoenix, across the airport en route to another meeting. Once there, you roll your eyes back into your aging skull, and wonder how many days are left until God takes your life via a well earned stroke.
You think about the lack of dignity that comes from shitting your pants just as you hit the floor, face half frozen in the content knowledge that peace has finally come. You'll never hear your wife bitch about the rusting Corolla again, and your daughter has, for all you're concerned, blown her last middle linebacker in the gymnasium. Boy, it's a slippery slope.

So, like I say, I've been thinking about buying a van and dodging that bullet.

Just think of the possibilities. I could ghetto rig a bed in the back, and drive from Rifle to the Red to the Creek, slowly eating my way through my savings in a vain attempt to stay young until my fingers finally calcify into beastly claws from too many years of climbing. Hooray! Take that, Mr. P&G. You loser! I may have died alone and disfigured, but at the end of the day, so did you.

What the hell am I even talking about? Dueling realities, that's what. At some point, we all have to make a choice. Maybe we make enough choices stacked end upon sorry end to eventually see ourselves as mediocre middle managers. Maybe we try to shrug it off until nobody loves us anymore. Maybe we can find some kind of balance that feels rewarding. And maybe, I'll go to yoga tomorrow morning, the climbing gym tomorrow evening, and work on a blog or screenplay in between. If the good doctor is correct, it might just be my life calling.

Think about what you're doing with you lives. They're pathetically short.