Anatomy of insomnia:
Wake up in the middle of the night => Have a random-ass memory about a random-ass person from my past => Wonder what that random-ass person is up to now => Fall down rabbit hole on Facebook wondering how in the fuck there are so many people with the same fucking name => See how many people out there have my name => Give up on trying to find the aforementioned random person => See if any friends are on GChat(which of course they aren’t) => Email people, because everyone likes a 4am email about nothing => Turn on Pandora => Use all my allowable skips in the first two minutes => Get the sudden urge to listen to Skee-Lo => Realize that’s my cue to get out of bed and take this party to the kitchen.
Today is gonna be a long fucking day.
I was wide awake at 6 this morning, so I decided to go for a run. Three-and-a-half miles in 38 minutes, which is pretty good for my slow ass. I almost got hit by a car, which is probably the inherent risk of wearing all black before the sun rises. I can definitely see the value of those reflective vest things, but I don’t want to look like a dork, so fuck it. I’ll take the risk.
Speaking of cars, I had a slight confrontation with a driver this morning during my run (not the one who almost hit me.) I came up to a four-way stop intersection in a residential area. I saw a car approaching at the same time, and I slowed down to allow them time to go so I wouldn’t have to run out in front of them. But the driver came to a complete stop and seemed to be waiting for me to cross the street. I stopped, and she waived me to go. But this is a huge pet peeve of mine. Maybe I don’t want to run in front of your car, asshole. Maybe I’d prefer to let you pass before I continue. I gestured for her to go ahead and go. (Candidly, I appreciated the brief rest.) But she kept waiving me to go, and she looked annoyed, which infuriated me.
My waiving got more animated, but she didn’t budge and kept waiving back, so I yelled at her, “JESUS CHRIST, FUCKING GO, WHAT THE FUCK?” She looked startled, then flicked me off and finally went. I resumed my run. I don’t really have a point, except I suppose this is my strange application of The Golden Rule. When I’m driving, I hate waiting for fucking pedestrians to pass when it’s so much easier for them to stop than it is for me. Thus, when I am a pedestrian, I respect that and let the cars fucking go before I cross the street. It’s pretty fucking considerate of me, actually.
Fuck.
Did you know it’s possible to take an Ambien and not sleep? I didn’t think that was possible, but here we are. I laid in bed, wide awake but stoned as fuck from the Ambien, until I finally kinda sorta fell asleep around 6.
I already decided to take a preemptive half-day. I can already feel the zombie-like state coming on. Oh, and I have two phone interviews this afternoon. I need to mainline some Adderall or something.
Cool story, bro.
The hygienist had an iPod dock in the room, and when she saw me playing with my phone she told me I could put my music on. I declined, but she insisted, so whatever, I threw the fucker on shuffle.
I have like 1000 songs, but four Flight of the Conchords songs played in the first six or seven. Don’t get me wrong, I love FOTC, but out of context, to someone who has never heard them, a song like ‘Foux Da Fa Fa’ is fucking weird.
Oh well. No cavities, keeping alive my 32 year clean bill of dental health streak.
I saw some pictures of myself from over the weekend. I haven’t really seen myself in a while, other than in the mirror, and fuck, I look pretty damn good. Hello, handsome.
Also, I now weigh less than my driver’s license says. So fuck you, state of Ohio. I’ll be leaving you soon enough anyway.
Cool story, bro.
My former sister in law gave me this shirt a few years ago, and I wear it often. Because I am fat and walk with an undeserved sense of entitlement, strangers have come up to me on multiple occasions and asked if I played football for LSU. Of course, I say yes. Even if I wasn’t a jock, I should be able to enjoy ex-jock adulation.
No one has ever asked follow-up questions, but if it ever happens, I am ready; I was a backup long snapper for the 1998 and 1999 seasons, but I had to quit because I tore up my knee. That’s plausible.
This happened again on my run today, only I got to go all out and tell the backup long snapper part, too. Day is complete.
Subtitle: No one cares about your weekend
- As you may have gathered, I ventured to Peoria, Illinois this weekend. I went to college in Peoria and met up with a bunch of dudes from college to do a fantasy football draft.
- Peoria was never what you would call a “nice” city when I lived there, but because I arrived when I was 18 and naive, I formed positive impressions of many things and places because they were novel to me. Ten years later, bars I loved sucked, food I loved sucked, and the city was much more of a dump than I ever realized. It’s like Pawnee, Indiana, only if Pawnee was filled with crackwhores and meth heads instead of charming folksy characters.
- I can still drink like I did in college. The same cannot be said for some of my friends.
- Related to the above, I made very poor financial decisions at the world famous Big Al’s strip club. And I don’t even like strip clubs.
- Even though no one cares about your fantasy team, I really like my team.
- Being around college kids at a college bar is a surreal experience. For me, anyway. But the nice thing about college girls is that as I get older, they stay the same age. /creep
- Being older, I now know that when a random college girl talks to me at a bar, she only wants me to buy her a drink. This was lost on me in my younger days. /wise
- DID YOU KNOW JIM THOME IS FROM PEORIA?
- Cool story bro.
Feel free to skip if you don’t give a shit.
The year was 2006. I was weeks away from ending my three year law school nightmare. I felt unburdened for the first time in a long time, because I had just decided that I wasn’t going to pursue a career as a lawyer. I had $15,000 in savings in the bank, no debt, and the freedom to go anywhere and do anything that I wanted. I had a girlfriend who I loved, and she too had the freedom to move anywhere with me. I had an opportunity to write a book about my law school experiences. I had some ideas of what I might want to do; “dreams”, as the kids call them, although I never would have been so bold as to admit to having a dream. My point is, I could have lit-rally done anything that I wanted at this point in my life, and I chose to move to the suburbs of the city where I grew up, get a boring job that paid the bills, and get married.
In other words, I took the safest possible route. No risk, and I had a pretty good idea of how things would turn out. It’s an utterly defensible move, if completely unglamorous. It’s the move that most people would have taken. Rereading that whole scenario, with the benefit of five years and the clarity of hindsight, is almost cringe-worthy. And yet, I don’t cringe. As I reflect back, I understand that I’ll never have the same sort of freedom in front of me as I did in 2006. I own a house, I have other debt obligations, and I surely don’t have $15k in the bank to help me transition to whatever it is I want to do. The degree of difficulty of completely changing my life is much greater now. And those “dreams” I thought about in 2006 no longer resonate with me. (I suppose I am in the process of trying to figure out exactly what it is I’d like to do.) What I do have, I suppose, is the benefit of being five years older and perhaps wiser.
Before you wonder, I am not feeling sorry for myself nor am I looking for any sympathy. I’m not unhappy. I like where I’m at. I don’t regret the decisions I’ve made. Even if I did, what would be the point? Regret is probably the stupidest feeling to have. It’s the only one that can’t be changed. The past is the past, and all related platitudes. I thought I had it all figured out when I was 26. That’s why I did what I did. I confused the easy path with the right path. That is a very common mistake, and it’s one I am trying not to make again. Live and learn, as they say. I’m trying.
Okay, enough of that bullshit. How about Ron Swanson dancing?
The polo shirt I am going to wear today is pretty wrinkled. Usually in this situation, I would throw it in the dryer for a little while, but today, the idea of going all the way down to the basement seems rather daunting, so I decided to iron it instead.
Now, of course ironing is more work that just putting it in the dryer, but the iron is on the main floor of the house, thus avoiding two round trips to the basement. Not really sure what any of these means, or why I felt compelled to share it, but there ya go.
I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that I don’t really sweat much, and a few people asked for more detail for some reason. This heat wave has made sweat a popular topic conversation lately, but unfortunately, it is not a topic I can relate to.
Some people pour sweat. Soak a shirt during a workout. Sport pit stains on their work clothes. Sweat through their pants, and other gross things. This is completely foreign to me.
When I get hot, I just get really fucking hot. I turn red. I roast. My forehead will sweat a little, and I might get a little sticky if it’s really humid, but no real sweating.
Maybe something is wrong with me. (Actually I am sure something is wrong with me.) I am probably more susceptible to heat stroke, but I like to stay indoors anyway. And it’s not like I’m going to go to the doctor and say, “Hey, can you make me more disgusting?” I consider it to be a blessing, really. Who likes a sweaty guy?
