As I sit in my cubicle and stare at the moving trees and gray clouds, I have to wonder what made me decide to riding my bike. Each time I roll out of bed at 5:00 am so that I can pack my huge shell of a bag and foist myself on a tiny metal frame so I can speed unprotected amongst the streets of blind drivers, I think: are you crazy? Yes. But there is something rather great about it.

1.) I'm actually riding my bike the 3 miles to work, all of which is uphill on the way there.

2.) I can check out other people's houses easier and with more time then when I drive because I petal like a 70 year-old. My neighborhood is rad, by the way.

3.) The ride home is all downhill, so I make it much less time and really only take an additional 5 - 10 minutes than it takes me to drive.

4.) I spent $50 on gas last month. That's crazy for me, since I was spending $150 - 250 a month, which I know it could be higher if I was in Europe and all that jazz, but hey. I'm proud.

5.) I can sing little songs to myself like, "this is the way I walk my bike" and "bicycle" and other such things that I usually loath but think I'm being clever. Its 6:00 in the morning. Its a miracle that I can find my face, let alone do anything else.

In theory, this will help me get in a better shape.  I don't know why people are so insistent on what shape they're in, though. You always have a shape of some sort. Just because the rectangular shape is in style, or the ever so coveted hour-glass shape doesn’t mean I need to conform. I am of the oblong shape. Because, lets face it, I'm not quite round, and if I was, I wouldn't need a damn bicycle to ride to work.

One of the last times I took this little journey, I was walking my bike up a hill next to work and being passed very quickly by a 65 year-old man on his bike. Giving him the usual, "good morning", and he was not only not out of breath, but hadn't broken a sweat. My face, on the other hand, was about to burst into its own super nova. Think of the mess.

Don't get me wrong.  Part of me loves that and there is a flip-side to it as well.  I'm a fickle gym junky, meaning that sometimes I will go everyday for months, get irritated by the lack of change and stop going for a couple more months.  Just now, I came back from where I was trying to watch the silly TV, but was taking side long glances at the resistance chosen by the innocent bystander next to me.  She was young, slender and had good skin.  I wouldn't say that totally I loathed her for this, but I did get a mild feeling of elation when I realized that she was madly pumping a resistance of 2 to my 9. 

Then again, she isn't of the lovely oblong shape. 

Eh.

Popcorn?

Yes please!

First of all, I almost feel  like I should apologize for the last post.  I was wallowing, and I'm sorry.  But the good part of public pity (provided people don't participate in the fail) is that I find it a great way to own my personal filth and decide if something needs to change and what could be done about it.  

The light bulb went off whilst sweating my life away on the elliptical machine at my favorite gym.  This was the great enlightenment that can usually only be obtained either in sleep or the loo, I needed a new drive (funny that this should come up when I'm actively in motion towards the cyclical attempts to stave off diabetes).  Something new to work towards. 

Now, I usually don't like television much.  Its dull, and commercials are a pain, and when you tell the stupid doctor that he doesn't know what he's doing, you have the pleasure of seeing him get angry at you.  But at the gym, that's a different story.  I love it.  I'll even watch the news, something I especially loath, but particularly like building shows or fashion make-overs (*shame*).  On this fateful day, it was an international real estate show in Iceland.  Beautiful.  

It was crazy.  I was instantly jealous of the participants, so hungry for travel that I wanted to gobble up all the information as hastily as the huge fast-food take out order I would feast on later.  Not just because it was Iceland, although that place looked beautiful, but the act of moving drastically to another country, something I hadn't done in years.  I'm sure taco grease was sizzling out of the pores of my fevered brow. 

So for now, I'll just think on it, see if its just a passing fancy.  But its always good to dream.  And right now, packing up two suitcases and my cat is mine.  

Kick the Can

Life always has ups and downs.  Everyone knows this, or quickly finds out.  Perhaps another way to phrase a down-time would be to call it a fight or internal/external battle.  Maybe it’s the lack of struggle, for some people find that they need the external upheaval and discord to make life interesting and not fall into a rut.  Many people seem to suffer from boredom and tedium, something I’m not familiar with, but have craved for most of my life. 

Finally, after many years of struggle with one situation or another, I feel free from most stressors.  Sure they’re laying off people at work and some day I’ll be one of them, but I don’t go to a job were I clean up human feces straight from the source (anymore), and no one tries to punch or kill me (anymore).  Outside of work, I have my hobbies and things that keep me occupied.  Going to the gym, rolling my oblong form around on the ground with the other limber (slender) participants.  I read and write (sometimes).  And for years, I made art.  Huge emotionally dark things bespeaking to a time as a cripple and horribly depressed, financially ruined person.  Giving up art meant giving up a lot of that anger. 

Or perhaps it was how I’ve changed my outlook in  general.  In times of strife I like to rely upon family.  In this case, my favorite aunties: auntie-depressant and auntie-anxiety.  Mixed with large doses of a shrink, and equilibrium has been made.  After twelve years of dedication and love, I left my long time lover, Cigarettes.  God, I miss her.  But with her out of my life I have a great deal more time.  Which could lead to the precipice of tedium.  Along with smoking, I gave up a favorite hobby: dating. 

If pressed, I’m fairly certain that my long history of inappropriate dating would instigate a line of men that would wrap around the block and meet back at my door to ask for dinner and a ride to their friend’s house.  Would you lend a $20 for the bar?  Needless to say, it’s a lot more relaxed in my head and my home.  That being said, now there is more time for the dreaded life review and goal setting. 

When I turned thirty, I looked back and said, thank God I never made any goals in my life.  I did graduate from collage, a BS (and yes it is) in art, have a job (but not a career), and a couple of very lovely housemates.  This, I’m afraid, is the part I have the most difficult time with.  The job and living like a teenager.  Granted, I adore my housemates and would hate to move out, not to mention that I can’t afford to and as for the job… welcome to the economic boom.  As in crash. 

My troubles are now so white middle-low-class (is that real?) that it makes me want to vomit.  Is this what it means to not have the constant battle?  To have the glory of just being happy to not be in pain or to be able to smile and mean it?  No one to avoid or be chased by, to break in or try, no one to cheat you or on you.   Is this really enough?  Just to be happy that nothing bad is happening?

The answer:  Yes.  What do you think?  Sometimes its not easy to make it through the day, wonder what cosmic joke you rode in on, or galactic asshole is pressing down on you for fun.   But those horrible things, those terrible nasty days that make you never want to wake up again have the ability to make the days that aren’t like that seem just that much brighter.  I’ve been waiting for so long to not be terrified, or hurt, or angry that I almost feel all those things just out of the normalcy they bring.  In a way, its as addictive as smoking was.

Its easy to get used to misery.  To having nothing to rely on but yourself and a broken reality.  Getting bogged down in the garbage of work.  People who get paid two to three times more for doing much, much less but hold you responsible for any errors just to make themselves look better.  It seems like a fake trouble.  Like something not real.  But it still is.  And its valid. 

I suppose the point I’m trying to make (to myself), is that even when life slows down, or things seem insurmountable, its important to own your feelings, but not be carried away with them or by them.  The other day I was sitting in my cubicle and actually lost my complete luster for what I do everyday.  Hard not to.  And the difficulty to engage in my own purpose has been smothering.  I forgot to forward an issue to be reprocessed on time.  It wouldn’t have been a problem if the payment run was still operating twice a week, but that change recently to once a week.  My first though: shit.  Now I’m going to miss my deadline, get written up, get my lead (whom I adore) written up and possibly fired.  And then the gloom rolled in.  Not even fear.  Just gloom. 

With a better written statement, I could find a way to end this with an upbeat, or with some moral, but I can’t right now.  Later, maybe?  Perhaps that’s the part of life that I’ve been missing for so many years.  It just goes on. 

The end.

Time Surved in Military Purgatory

During Army Basic Combat Training (BTC) located within Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, I ran, marched, and poured sweat with two-hundred and fifty of my fellow soldiers.  By being unfortunate enough to be small and a few other standard complications involving a pelvic fracture, I never saw much of my military future that didn’t include typing behind a computer screen, much as I am now with typing my life for an unseen public.  Injuries in the military are almost inevitable to some degree, and this kind of affliction happens to roughly forty percent of all short white females in training.  As a student, the military was required to send me back home for school so my drill sergeants had no choice but to send me to a place to wait until my mandatory return home date. This place was the Orderly Room.

It would be more accurate to say that the Orderly Room was part of a much larger building, each sectioned off for the different companies so that no company interacted with another.  It housed the main supplies, the linens and the equipment that the low ranking soldiers used for training purposes. Also there were the offices for the highest-ranking sergeant and captain, mostly un-used as they were usually overseeing the company’s training.  Inside, there are linen bins, forgotten clothes that were sent for cleaning and never retrieved, and broken supplies.  Like the soldiers there, each broken fan or scale would wait to be fixed, moved or sent away completely. 

Calling this place “orderly” was irony in itself being more of a hang out spot for wounded soldiers (the Broken) and soldiers waiting for their training to start (the Waiting) and could never be organized.  We spent every single day in camouflaged purgatory  Understandably, there was a lot of general confusion about where to be and what to do.  While there, even I found it difficult to complete even the simplest task without a direct command.  Later and with additional experience it unfolded that this was almost as common as military injuries.  The hive-mindset is infectious. 

The building was set up as follows: the main office was blocked off with a ceiling high chain-link fence earning its name as the cage. Crammed into the opposite wall was the concrete block of a room that held all the weapons and then a corridor connected the two.  This corridor was where soldiers would come and sit on plastic milk crates and more often, the floor, and would be given little jobs such as cleaning the offices or moving objects from place to place.  Sometimes we just existed quietly in this place where all we did was hurry to wait.  Every day we would go back to the gray cement walls, floors, atmosphere; this place could be oppressive because no one wanted to stay in BTC any longer than originally planned.  But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention so we got really good at entertaining ourselves.

Although the general feeling of the place was as gray and moldy as the walls, we had a great time there more often than not.  We would frequently watch drill sergeants joke and talk like people rather than domineering hate machines.  Not all of them were rotten but some we liked more than others.  It was from the back of a cattle truck that I had the great pleasure of watching the company’s meanest drill sergeant crutch his way to the Orderly Room with his foot in a cast.  I would love to say that I pitied him but what ever made him break his foot was now saving the rest of us from his tyranny because he was taken the rest of the rotation off to heal.  Only the Broken got to watch this great moment in our basic training history and I would have sold my soul for a video camera right then, but as this was a lot better than hearsay, I was very happy to be privy to this glorious sight.  It was him that led the march so hard and fast that many of us, myself included, sustained grievance injuries and were taken out of training.

Along with this there was a sense of almost pure harmony.  The dimly lit rooms with its grungy windows and cobwebs hanging like garlands from the ceiling, we had laughter, which was rare in Basic Training.  We had close associations with the employees and amongst ourselves.  As soldiers we came together like a small company of our own.  We would meet up every morning, from our different platoons, and would shed the animosity and rivalry the training soldiers felt like a moth-eaten coat.  Together we stood up for one another and would spin yarns about our situation and ourselves.  Although the Orderly Room was anything but, it still managed to give the Broken and Waiting a place to call our own.  I would have given anything not to have been injured, but I wouldn’t give up the memories I got from being in our makeshift clubhouse for the world.