Monday, October 18, 2010

It's the Abstract that Hurts

I've had a string of rotten stuff happen. I keep pulling myself up from feeling sorry for myself by focusing on people in situations much worse than mine - like the 33 miners in Chile. I mean, if they can survive a month under the ground, who am I to complain about a few days of crap?

I don't really have a right to complain about the gardener hired by my landlady who called me a bitch at 8am on a Saturday morning. Or the client who insulted me personally and professionally while "excusing me" from duties on a project for which he wasn't paying. Or how about the colleague who, while attempting to sniff out my business plan, swooped in from behind and stole the job.

More abstractly I could complain about how the gardener, calling me a bitch at my own home, enunciated  the fact that there is no man living here (because if there were, he wouldn't have dared speak to me that way.) Or how the self righteous insults of the non-paying client had me questioning my professional capability at the same moment my "colleague" pulled out a knife and stabbed me in the back.

Or I could bemoan a lack of romance - real or imagined. The actuality I can live without - I've got more than a decade of practice. But the abstract romance keeps the pilot on. When it gets extinguished it becomes a hell of a lot more difficult to fire up. And the cooling is piercingly quiet.

But hey, the kids are healthy. The bills are paid. I'm going to see my favorite band perform tonight. (Never mind that I couldn't find a date and am going alone)

I'm not complaining.