apologies to the mailman

I was sending a lot of packages for a while. I would get my number and wait in line for indeterminant amounts of time behind people exhibiting varying degrees of impatience - some with visible mounting fury.

Generally, I ended up at the counter with this one mailman. He's a pretty outgoing guy. He always made a point of asking me if I was working hard and what I do for a living.

And everytime, I lied. I said "I'm self-employed ..." "I freelance ..." "I'm in school ..." I couldn't bring myself to tell the truth. I am a little lost. I am not doing anything. That's right I lied to the mailman. I am that low. I often wonder if he knows and if he feels free to lie in reply. (I hope he does.)

People look at me funny when I say I don't do anything. They are quick to take offense to such an obscenity. The harder they work the more offended they are. After all, they are running around like mad barely a moment to themselves as they struggle and strive and fight. Who am I to stop and smell the garbage on a sunny weekday? Clinton reformed the welfare system to force people like me to pull our weight and become productive members of society.

What can I say? As the playwright Larry Shue said in his funny funny play "the Foreigner" - "some of us were born to be a waste of food" and a burden on our loved ones.

I just.

I realize that I've been faking it. And it is a very difficult life pattern to break. People say that the best way to break that life pattern is to find my passion and go for it. Which makes sense. I am frightfully lazy and pig headed. If I am not persuaded that doing a thing is important, if I am not persuaded that a thing makes sense, I will not do it. That or I will drag my feet about it. The challenge at hand is to persuade myself which is no easy task. I am the skeptic, the cynic, the pessimist who laughs in the face of everything.

It is much easier to criticize than create. The prospect of creation terrifies me, frankly. So I am having trouble finding my bliss. It would be great to get some help but it's hard to ask not knowing what to ask for. Probably years of therapy to start.

I think of that line from Lloyd Dobler in that Cheese movie "Say Anything":

"A career? I've thought about this quite a bit sir and I would have to
say considering what's waiting out there for me, I don't want to sell
anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to
sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or
repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career. I don't want to
do that. My father's in the army. He wants me to join, but I can't
work for that corporation, so what I've been doing lately is
kick-boxing, which is a new sport...as far as career longevity, I don't
really know. I can't figure it all out tonight, sir, so I'm just gonna
hang with your daughter."

Trouble is, from that point of view there's not much left. Except maybe saving souls if you buy into that worldview and you don't mind working for those corporations.

Some of my friends encourage me to just do something. They're kind of impatient with me. It's actually a great plan. Except that following that kind of advice is how I got here.

I suspect that this process never ends. It waits in the wings whenever I look up from what I am doing. I grow and change and my life changes and the task at any given point is to retailor my self and my life to each other such that it remains a fit. Maybe not a snug like a glove perfect fit but a enough of a fit to breathe and move and be.

As a first step in all of this, I stopped lying to the mailman and to everyone else that I meet. I confess to doing nothing. But in fact that is a lie too. I do a lot of things: I blog. I make lists. I sing. I teach myself how to play the great hits of the 80's on the guitar. I cook bland hi-fiber foods. I knit. I do yoga. I write. I call and email my friends. I campaign for reproductive rights and net neutrality. I do dishes and laundry. I think. I daydream. I loiter at groceries. I sleep - a lot. Every day I find something new to do. For now, I haven't figured out how to get paid to do any of them. I will have to figure it out soon. I think some of my fillings are crapping out.