How to Fritter Your Life Away in One Easy Step

Step 1: Find a hobby that really interests you. To the point of overdoing it. Never be bored or feel unproductive again. End.

I admit, I've had those moments I hear about from others. The ones that go something like, "I don't know what I would ever do with myself if/when I retire!" Right. Sure, after my 10 hours of sleep, sometimes I have those thoughts too, but they are the product of shear slovenliness and lack of energy. Those who share my occasional weakness in this area are never the types to say that kind of treacle. As if continuing to be another corporate plow horse for decades was some sort of personally productive virtue. Those are folks who really need a hobby or two. I have more hobbies than you can shake a stick at, as some of you probably do. Practice across several musical instruments by itself could kill each and every day while I slowly sat myself into Attila the Blob. But I'd be killing it at the jam session. I'd just need someone to wheel me there and back. But it would sure suck up the rest of each day!

No, mine is a motivational issue (I'm guessing I have some company, gauging by commentary "out there"). My one virtue is that I tend towards obsession in certain areas. Obsession tends to burn the ever-dwindling hours of each day that I am not required by economic reality to roll back and forth in my corporate hamster ball. My mom calls it frittering the day away. While an amusing term, it implies the activity is somehow trivial or lacks substance. Spending all day on social media would be in that vein. But mastering a new reel on the mandolin or working towards not embarrassing yourself when the bluegrass break comes your way is absolutely not. Is it a skill to master social media? Perhaps if you are 80. But, if you are 80, I'd say that even starting a musical instrument is a good productive hobby to commence. Plenty to fill the gaps in the swirl of all that is music. Obviously a good read always makes a nice filler, if not productive in quite the same way. But unless you struggle with reading, well, productivity is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

This brings us to the beholder. Ever notice that when you are obsessed with something, most others tend not to be? And you tend to blab on about your obsession until you see the tell-tale TEGO in your victims face (Their Eyes Glaze Over)? That's why we have to have Meetups and clubs and societies and what-not. So we don't bore our loved ones and coworkers to death, with talk about things that make life worth living for us. For those with abundant hobbies, the likelihood that your significant other is going to have a similar love of this pastime is vanishingly slim. That is why the lingering 50's idea of couple togetherness is full of crap. Sure, because you had kids to raise together. Or she did. Well, see! Even then it was a bunch of crap because even raising the kids wasn't really a shared task. It was more like a diversified business venture. Dad had his three-martini lunches and business meetings at the club while Mom wrangled the little monsters at home and maybe played bridge with the girls once a week. Or maybe it was the 70's and there were some equal opportunity ennui complete with latch key kids and economic stress. Then they wondered why they didn't really know each other after twenty years. Feminine mystique...mother's little helpers...Alice's pills... Is drinking together a hobby? But are there beer pong clubs for those over 80? I dunno. Maybe. But I'd call that a classic failure of the imagination. Plus it seems like the endurance would be a killer. A little weed enjoying the Great Outdoors in some forest seems like a wiser choice. Camping! Now there's a pastime that can really make the day fly.

Sure is hard to break all that cultural programming of togetherness though, isn't it? The standard was (still?) that one or both of you was bored to tears, made a bunch of sexist comments about whoever was getting their preferred extra curriculars and why, while the Pyrrhic victor shot eyeball darts to make sure the fun was being ruined...suspension of disbelief gone. And...scene! Good clean fun all around. And that, my friends, besides growing economic independence for women, is why the biggest growth demographic is single person households. All that forced romantic togetherness trying to come up with mutual obsessions just killed the drill.

Oh, cynic, I hear you cry! Your relationship is different. Sure. And a whole percentage of the American populace also thinks they have been abducted by aliens. I'm not saying it can't happen. Just come back and talk to me after 20 years. Tell me about your shared hobbies. The ones you obsess over. And no, your porn collection or cats don't count. I'm sure they are both lovely and give you lots of joy, but they don't tend to be a shared passion. Except at the club level. If you are one of those lucky souls, I say again: come back and talk to me in 20 years. Some things are just experiences that don't lend themselves to sharing. Or maybe I'm just a boring translator. Could be. Or maybe you are. Or maybe we were just never meant to be together because you love watching men's sports and the Transformers, and I love playing my banjo and jamming with anyone who will have me. Don't feel bad. It's not you, it's me.

To Sleep, Perchance to Scream

This turns out to be a post that I composed several years ago by now. It never left my draft folder. I don't remember why. Most of the dramatic stuff has past with just a lingering afterburn left by now. With the wisdom of passing time and crisis lived through, I'm thinking definitely hormones. Fuckers. Now that I've used that word, I might have to turn on the "adult content" warning on this blog. No, I think I'll wait until I get an evil digital overlord warning. Considering the tiny audience, I'm guessing no one will be too scandalized. So, for any ladies "of a certain age" out there who happen to stumble on this in the future, this is for you. In case you need it to feel sane or empathy for someone you know who seems, well, a little unhinged. Maybe. Maybe just got the raw end of the DNA dice roll.

I think I need a shrink. Or a sports car and a boy toy. Or both. The other day, it occurred to me that this might be what is often called a midlife crisis. For men, at least. That's because, besides the somehow fey "male menopause", there's not really a male-centric word for it like there is for nearly everything else. Except, come to think of it, there is that "men" in there. I feel crazy. But not that cinematic, cathartic, find-yourself, feel liberated sort of crazy. It's more like, "oh, my god, how did I allow things devolve into this? What am I doing?" Is it my life, or my hormones, or both? Is this what it feels like when the estrogen goes bye-bye? If it is, then I understand why Big Pharma sold so many of those little HRT pills. And I haven't even gotten to the daytime commercial content yet.

I need a life viagra. I feel like I've been slapped around and all my dopamine pulled out. Is that even legal? To be on the street with no visible means of mental support? It feels perilous. If I weren't so dutiful, I'd have already called in crazy for the last year, I think. That bit where you find yourself in your twenties…it's seeming so good right now by comparison. When you're twenty, you don't have much, if anything, to lose, presuming you aren't already married with kids (yikes!), which I can't imagine many are. If you're lucky like me, I was finishing up college then. World is my oyster theme. Except for the oyster seemed really far away and looked more like, well, more like an oyster, but with no shell. And definitely no pearl. Formless. What a dumb metaphor. I wonder how many people are on the far side of the oyster and still no sign of pearl? Probably more than I think, 'cause that's always the way it is. You just don't realize it until, well, you're my age.

It feels like a bad trip. Or, rather, a good trip gone sort of…mediocre. At least with a bad trip, there is drama and that sort of hyper-sensitive, over-stimulated, exposed nerve ending feeling that at least lets you know that something is definitelygoing down now. Although, at the moment, I do have a spooky sense of exactly that sort of feeling. But I know how to "correctly" (I hope) interpret it. I know I'm not going to die right this second.It's almost like the beginning of a panic attack, of which I've only ever had one in my life, brought on by an unfortunate ulcer drug cocktail interaction.

So here I am. Experiencing the same old hormones leaving the body moments experienced by a bazillion women through the ages. At least I hope that's what it is. Could be some crummy relationship crud in the mix too. Could be some crummy work situation issues in the mix. Could be my sorry ass is just that. I wish I had the energy to scream. Maybe tomorrow.

PollyAnna Nightmares

Dark night of the mind. A heathen despairs in the face of too few words to evoke the sleepless unfolding of that chemical, electrical stew that is the brain and can no longer prevent the emotions trickling, then spilling out and out and out onto the pillows. There is no soul, only sole, the most desolate of the two. Now there will be no sleep for even this most devout dreamer. It is a perpetual motion machine, with cogs whirring, brain ablaze, hamster wheel turning, electrons firing, despair and frustration throwing themselves against the walls of why did you allow yourself to dwell on the tide you've been holding back for so many years? My face is tense, I don't let it all out. I want someone to get some sleep, even if it can't be me. To be in bed and not sleep or nearing it is anathema. I don't understand real insomnia, except dimly on these occasions. Tiredness is not part of the equation, unless you count the mental weariness of damming up the occasional swells and sucking mud of moderate despair. Moderate. Not knife wielding, tailpipe breathing, bullet eating despair. Not the kind that creates a public stir or sends you home in a basket. Moderate. This seems obvious. No great American dramas are formed from moderate despair, only the grand or the grindingly lifelong, overarching kind. They all consume at some level, but some are more wearing. Again, I can only imagine the deeper., can't get my face off the floor or outa the basement noose. Or so I think.

I start to wonder about my DNA, like some college friends' obsession with alcoholic parents and their thinking they will fall to addiction through bad genes only. Two "wacky" grandmas in their own ways, each seeming relatively sane in most of the contexts in which I ever knew them and yet ever so faintly off. Seems like whining. Like a poor excuse for not sucking it up. Doesn't feel like it though. Even so, the possibilities recline there in the back of my scrambled feeling brain, like some horrible meme or jingle that won't leave, and just huddles in a corner, rocking and smiling idiotically. Just there.

Evil humors. I can very much see in these moments how religions take hold. And yet I still do not understand. It does not make anything feel better. Never has. Although, you could argue that since it is not there it doesn't have the chance to. Some supernatural power! Not even enough to make an eleven year old believe in it. Even when I was a kid, and my best friend's family went down in their small plane, and I ventured a prayer (what else was there to do?), I knew it was a waste of time. A waste AND it didn't make me feel better. AND I felt like a grade A hypocrite (ok, so maybe only a grade B; after all, I was only a sixth grader). So much for comfort and hope. I suppose there's equal mental illness among the religious as irreligious. Maybe more in the former, I suspect, but likely unrecognized (you know…hand of god and all). Whatev', to use a "word" I absolutely hate, and yet find vaguely amusing due to its clear declaration of "I don't give a fuck" in a single faux word. Just enough of the word to demonstrate you just don't care, with a chaser of disdain. Ahhhh…not at all refreshing. Like this distressing lack of sleep with its distressing, isolating, lonely thoughts. I could really chew some scenery right about now if my stomach didn't feel like it was about to eat itself instead (and that is not a happy feeling either).

Even though it seems even more important to take a sick day in this instance, I'm pretty sure it's not contagious. At least not in this form. It might cause other variants, of course, to have to witness the effects, experience the downer, or mutate, possibly eliciting a "Why can't you be more upbeat/positive?" Or some other more passive aggressive response. "Because, I have brainless Pollyannas all around me to show me the error of that way of being!" These are the ones who never seem to do the paperwork or documentation. Maybe that's it, you chirpy no-paperwork mother-fuckers! If you don't understand Dilbert and laugh, then not only am I truly sorry for you for that loss of comedy options, but you have obviously lead a charmed and/or non-corporate life, or you are twenty and this is our first real job. I hate you. Fortunately, those two feelings cancel each other out. I think.

It sounds like it is raining out. Just in time for a 2:00am closer.

Irony, thy name is patriot.

Before 9/11, our nation's freshest emotional scar and now the latest shorthand for everything that threatens and undermines "the American Way", I had a lot more patriotic feelings. And since I was a kid I've always loved the flag as a graphic representation of this country and it's ideals. My brother and I had matching flag Speedos. Loved it, loved matching my brother. It was my favorite suit ever, with the added oddity of having left strange dark tan lines that temporarily worried our pediatrician. Not much SPF in white nylon apparently. Immediately before 9/11, I was actually thinking I might buy an honest-to-gosh American flag to put out. Not one of the cheesy nylon made-in-Taiwan things you see everywhere, which always screamed irony to me, but an actual US-made, natural fiber real deal (ok, maybe a little smaller, but still). Then, the towers fell. I'm not gonna lie. I couldn't really process it right away. I watched the second one go down live on TV. I listened to my brother do a little freak out on the phone about driving down for our planned backpacking trip. I told him that staying home would not solve or change anything. We went on our little overnight. There were too many bugs to enjoy it for longer, but we had a pretty good time, it was fun in the end. There was not a plane that flew overhead. It was only a little odd at the time. It's more eery thinking about it all these years later.

But what really irked me in those days (still does) was the instantaneous plasti-patriotism. It wasn't me though. It was everyone else. All of a sudden flags were everywhere, like the when a local team wins the Superbowl/World Series. But we hadn't won anything. We'd lost something. A big something. And I don't mean buildings or planes. We couldn't comprehend what we'd actually lost. And there was so much more to lose in the ensuing years. Vengeance was the easiest and most accessible emotion. I indulged in it. Absolutely. But, suddenly, what I couldn't indulge in was the graphic display of reactionary jingoism. I get it, I get it. People must rally and heal and do the national group hug (I still cannot bring myself to watch United 93. The personal, individual horror, outside all the nationalistic blah-blah is too much. I get emotional). Yeah, yeah.

But where were all those people before? Where had they all been as "Fair Trade", the WTO, Walmart and cheaper and cheaper goods undermined our wages, our economy, our standard of living, our national sovereignty? Kennedy Democrats and military Republicans had always been flying mostly cheapo American flags—many looking shamefully battered, I was always disappointed to see. Everybody else back then was like—meh! Did I wish that there were wall-to-wall stars and stripes as far as the eye could see? Nope. Was I annoyed and disappointed by the opportunistic and sudden display of synthetic Americana sprouting like so many cheap car lot commercials everywhere I looked? Yeah. I was. Still am. Yay, Lakers! Yeah, Raiders! Eff yeah, USA! Does that make me ashamed to be an American? Of course not; not only is that idea offensive but is facile and ignorant. It just makes me wanna slap my fellow citizens around for their tardy reactionary displays and grotesque personal choices.

BTW, do I see all these latter-day patriots at the polls, or writing to their representatives (do they even know who they are?)? Do I see them at the recruiting office? Or see them urging their kids to serve? Not too many…though they do seem to be over-represented among the ranks of those who stumble over themselves to "appreciate" others' service (a special sentiment to all who would accuse anyone else of not "loving their country" or impugning anyone else's patriotism, if you have never served—or made the honest attempt and been rejected—especially when you were young and had those choices to make: Shut the F up). Is there a dissonance here? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm just past tired of hearing the flapping jaws of presumption. And it's invariably over descent. It brings out the worst in chicken hawks, neocons and now Republican former hippies. Real convenient by the time you're middle aged or older. Like St Augustine: it was all good while he was debauching his way across the landscape. But now that he's had his fun, he's seen the light. And he says, do what I say and not what I do. Just like your mother. Only none of you but one is my mother. Mom gets a free pass, mostly 'cause I'm pretty sure I'd win any debauchery contest between us. But I could be wrong.

But I digress. Back to tragedy-induced gratuitous flag-waving.

It's very much like the treacly old sentiments about not appreciating what you have until after tragedy strikes. That is us. En masse. But the way many apparently decided to show their solidarity was to fly a bunch of tacky plastic Chinese-made flags. I don't remember seeing a single dignified, natural looking textile Old Glory anywhere that wasn't there beforehand. I gave up the idea of putting a nice one up myself out of personal protest and disgust. Of course, no one will "see" this unless they read it here or have had this conversation with me before, and not many have. Though I feel stirrings now and again—the design and emotional symbolism do pull—it still may still be years more before I can again think of displaying a proper flag. Who knows. By then, there may not be much to celebrate at the rate we're currently going. After all, last survey I saw, a majority of Americans randomly polled on the contents of the Bill of Rights, thought it was a bad idea. Go USA. While we're at it, why not let the government into your bedroom, blood and bank account? You don't have anything to hide, do you? Oops! Too late. After more than two centuries we can't even keep our few basic tenants straight much less react to current events or see our own need for reading glasses. It's far easier to just fly a piece of cheap plastic crap at our doorstep. Soooo much easier. I guess that's what passes for American solidarity anymore. It is easier than the alternatives. Like proactive thinking about actions and consequences. Being part of the solution instead of the problem, and on and on.

Jingoism does not equal patriotism anymore than idol worship equals romantic love. Do not presume that I am not a proud American because you cannot tell the difference. Descent is still the most American of all ideals. And fifty falling buildings will not change that.