Happy Halloween!

May all your demons be exorcised, all your sweets be just the kind you like, and all your scares be little ones.

Interesting Times

As in the ancient Chinese curse, 2005 has found me living in interesting times. Did I mention how great 2004 was? Good times. As I hobble about on thoroughly non-metaphorical crutches, now it's like: you're kidding me, right? I was just speaking to my best friend this weekend and he summed up his own interesting times by saying it's a wonder he didn't end it long ago. Honestly, forget the tauma -- you'd think the tedium alone would do us in.

You can't even buy your way out of tedium. Money changes everything -- except that. Maybe especially that. When you don't have to do anything all day long, the average human simply doesn't. I'm guessing that drifting through life is worse than slogging though it. At least slogging gives you something to do.

The most interesting times, a seemingly non-stop onslaught of life's little insults or mediocre mishaps, can be just as boring as a life untouched by the better kinds of excitement. Too much of a bad thing can be just as mind-numbing as not enough of anything at all. Pointless, stupid, out-of-nowhere things from which nothing can be learned, which can only be endured until they pass, things like, say, twisting your knee in the opposite direction when you fall while rollerskating (never again) -- simply gum up the works, slow down progress, get in the way.

Sometimes I think if it wasn't for all the mishegoss, I'd have achieved Godhead or something by now. It seems the moment I concentrate on something I'm actually doing in the real world, something utterly random throws itself in my path, just in case I actually thought I was going to accomplish something in this incarnation. Is this what I'm supposed to learn? That we fall so that we can learn to pick ourselves up (thank you, Nolan and Goyer)? Okay, I get it. I picked myself up from the floor of the Moonlight Rollerway, didn't I? Alright, I didn't literally pick myself up then because I couldn't, but you get the picture. And don't think I don't appreciate those who did pick me up, but that doesn't stop me from being annoyed that I fell in the first place because of rollerskating. Hardly heroic. I want my falls to be epic, not tedious. I want to overcome, not be inconvenienced.

The one thing that really concerns me? The idea that I'll have this life thing completely figured out on my deathbed. The only thought that annoys me more is if I don't. Either way, what would be the point of even learning anything from all this chaos if I never got to apply the knowledge?

I know I have it better than the vast majority of people on this planet, believe me (and knowing that makes it harder to judge others, which is especially annoying -- am I to be denied every pleasure?), and I should concentrate on the big picture. In the great roller rink of life, we're all just Kansas City Bombers trying to skate through another day. God. I loved that movie when I was a kid. Whatever. Things are still a tad too interesting, at the moment. If you want me, I'll be over by the concessions stand with an ice pack on my knee.