31 and Life to go
So. I'm having a bit of a birthday on Sunday. And as with most years, my birthday is one of the more fundamental ways in which I mark the larger stages of my own personal development. A time for reflection and for resolution. As such, my birthdays are, by and large, a complete motherfucker on my emotional state, as they probably are for most of you. That unique, singular day out of the year when you sidle up to the mirror of self-realization, take a long, hard look at yourself and find that you are forced to say, more years than not, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I'm another year older and just what the fuck did I accomplish in the last 365? HUH?"
I clawed away the last of my debt record this year. Paid off the credit cards and the looming spectre of that brief period of insanity when I thought I could afford a cellular phone. The old loans and the old owings and cleaned it out. Zeroed out all the balances and actually started putting aside a fairly reasonable chunk of cash. I did pretty fucking well at it, too, by my own sense of reckoning. Cleaned it all out around January and had managed to put aside 1500$ by May...at which point, I was promptly laid off. My accrual of new savings have, shall we say, SLOWED since then. But, true to my principles, I am still hovering at that same 1500.
I got laid off. That was a first. I'm a little more accustomed to some guy walking up to my desk and saying, "Get the fuck outta here!" Being laid off was a great deal more congenial. Had the same end effect...I've been out of work for three months and have come to hate just about every burning little minute of it. But at least the seminal event was pleasant.
I re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-finished my novel earlier this year, and keep hoping that people will tell me it's ready to be sent off to be published. But every last lazy sum-bitch one of you who begged me for a copy hasn't read the fuckin' thing. Clearly, this is its own kind of commentary.
My roommate has been sleeping on the couch for the last two years. Maybe more. I forget when it started...probably something to do with that yappy little shit of a dog the woman who used to live downstairs kept. But when the dog left, my roommate did not re-appropriate himself to his room. He's still sleeping on the couch. About 9 feet from the front door. Which means every time I want to go out to...y'know...buy a newspaper and peruse all its handy little things like JOB listings, it wakes him up, because he's the lightest fucking sleeper the world has ever known. So we came up with a plan. I'm supposed to move to the front room, which he refuses to occupy because one of the walls is pretty much a solid, throbbing green mass of mold-damage...but which he's not willing to call maintenance for, because they'll just get plaster dust everywhere and they won't even get it right anyway. And he's supposed to move to the back room...the room furthest from the offending front door. The room least likely to be bothered from 6am to 2:30pm when he is asleep.
We came up with this plan 3 months ago...and haven't done SHIT.
But don't hate on him, snarklings. Hate on me, if you have to. It's my responsibility as much as anybody else's to see that this shit gets done. My responsibility to make sure that the rooms are the way they are supposed to be. That the stuff gets moved. That order is restored. It's a clear-cut case of me not taking enough charge of my own demense. Reminding myself that this is my castle, and I am king, and that a good king has a certain degree of responsibility to those around him.
So I'm taking a whole mess of goddamned bulls by the horns. Starting today. I'm done with the goddamned sitting around. I'm done with the waiting. I'm done blaming my problems on others. I'm staking my motherfucking claim and TO HELL wth anybody stupid or brash enough to argue with me. This is MY TIME. This is MY LIFE and by Jove, I intend to LIVE!
I will not be held prisoner in my own home...by my own living room. I'm fixing shit, and I'm fixing it TODAY. Because it is my RESPONSIBILITY to fix all that which is broken in my own life. No worthless little fairy godmother is going to come wave her magic wand and simply make it happen. That has to be me. I have to wave that wand, dammit, and if you listen tonight, somewhere in the neighborhood of 7:22pm, you will hear it. And when you hear me utter my Bippity-Boppity-Boo, it will be as a fierce barbaric yawlp to make my proud Irish, German and Cherokee ancestors quake in their pissy little moccassins and say, "Sweet Mother, there goes a MAN. And he is taking care of business!"
So scream it with me, Snarklings, scream it to the heavens above and let it be known that the kids (even the 31-year old ones) are united and they will NEVER be divided. So at 7:22pm, I want to hear all across this city, this state, this nation and THE WORLD, the barbaric war-cry. Bippity-Boppity-Boo. SING IT, CHILDREN!
I clawed away the last of my debt record this year. Paid off the credit cards and the looming spectre of that brief period of insanity when I thought I could afford a cellular phone. The old loans and the old owings and cleaned it out. Zeroed out all the balances and actually started putting aside a fairly reasonable chunk of cash. I did pretty fucking well at it, too, by my own sense of reckoning. Cleaned it all out around January and had managed to put aside 1500$ by May...at which point, I was promptly laid off. My accrual of new savings have, shall we say, SLOWED since then. But, true to my principles, I am still hovering at that same 1500.
I got laid off. That was a first. I'm a little more accustomed to some guy walking up to my desk and saying, "Get the fuck outta here!" Being laid off was a great deal more congenial. Had the same end effect...I've been out of work for three months and have come to hate just about every burning little minute of it. But at least the seminal event was pleasant.
I re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-finished my novel earlier this year, and keep hoping that people will tell me it's ready to be sent off to be published. But every last lazy sum-bitch one of you who begged me for a copy hasn't read the fuckin' thing. Clearly, this is its own kind of commentary.
My roommate has been sleeping on the couch for the last two years. Maybe more. I forget when it started...probably something to do with that yappy little shit of a dog the woman who used to live downstairs kept. But when the dog left, my roommate did not re-appropriate himself to his room. He's still sleeping on the couch. About 9 feet from the front door. Which means every time I want to go out to...y'know...buy a newspaper and peruse all its handy little things like JOB listings, it wakes him up, because he's the lightest fucking sleeper the world has ever known. So we came up with a plan. I'm supposed to move to the front room, which he refuses to occupy because one of the walls is pretty much a solid, throbbing green mass of mold-damage...but which he's not willing to call maintenance for, because they'll just get plaster dust everywhere and they won't even get it right anyway. And he's supposed to move to the back room...the room furthest from the offending front door. The room least likely to be bothered from 6am to 2:30pm when he is asleep.
We came up with this plan 3 months ago...and haven't done SHIT.
But don't hate on him, snarklings. Hate on me, if you have to. It's my responsibility as much as anybody else's to see that this shit gets done. My responsibility to make sure that the rooms are the way they are supposed to be. That the stuff gets moved. That order is restored. It's a clear-cut case of me not taking enough charge of my own demense. Reminding myself that this is my castle, and I am king, and that a good king has a certain degree of responsibility to those around him.
So I'm taking a whole mess of goddamned bulls by the horns. Starting today. I'm done with the goddamned sitting around. I'm done with the waiting. I'm done blaming my problems on others. I'm staking my motherfucking claim and TO HELL wth anybody stupid or brash enough to argue with me. This is MY TIME. This is MY LIFE and by Jove, I intend to LIVE!
I will not be held prisoner in my own home...by my own living room. I'm fixing shit, and I'm fixing it TODAY. Because it is my RESPONSIBILITY to fix all that which is broken in my own life. No worthless little fairy godmother is going to come wave her magic wand and simply make it happen. That has to be me. I have to wave that wand, dammit, and if you listen tonight, somewhere in the neighborhood of 7:22pm, you will hear it. And when you hear me utter my Bippity-Boppity-Boo, it will be as a fierce barbaric yawlp to make my proud Irish, German and Cherokee ancestors quake in their pissy little moccassins and say, "Sweet Mother, there goes a MAN. And he is taking care of business!"
So scream it with me, Snarklings, scream it to the heavens above and let it be known that the kids (even the 31-year old ones) are united and they will NEVER be divided. So at 7:22pm, I want to hear all across this city, this state, this nation and THE WORLD, the barbaric war-cry. Bippity-Boppity-Boo. SING IT, CHILDREN!