trapped in a cell

it's electrifying

and my heart is set on you

Another winter wound down, and it's difficult to know where I am centered and what I am supposed to make plans for in the midst of all this happiness. I was thinking of an old post I wrote years ago, I had been reading a lot of poetry where everything was connected to nature, and had been sitting in my backyard watching a waxwing toying with some kind of mayfly, dropping it in midair and catching it again, and I had never seen that before and was fascinated and horrified and maybe that was how I had been treating people and maybe how I had been treated. And overthinking. Oh my god back in those days I was good at overthinking, but if there was anything I was better at than overthinking, it was underthinking. Sometimes (MOSTLY TIMES) I would do things without expending so much as a single brain cell. 

I don't have enough of those left to be so careless. So winter is done, and I count it as done. I have one of those rare things - a male friend. A guy I met 10 years ago as a coworker, and in that time we've both moved into our 50s and taken multiple trips to Alaska fishing, and co-host a monthly poker game and mushrooming, golfing, skiing, etc. etc.  His daughter is the same age as mine and when we go on our weekly trip to Snoqualmie, she sometimes calls him and says I LOVE YOU DAD and I accuse him of planning that to make him block out the sun way up on that pedestal and I am lucky to have friends like this. 

The last trip we took, I was talking about my new job and how I work from home, and living with some guilt from our times as co-workers. One of the oddities about me is I feel like I am trapped whenever I am bound by agenda or timeline. and it is a genuine panic, like agoraphobia or phonophobia. The last job I had which was a strict 8 to 5 was in 1999 - I was an admissions/financial aid counselor, and I was telling my friend horror stories about every day at 4:51 PM, all of us would meander out from our desks and gather closer and closer to this goddam analog clock set unironically above the exit sign, watching those hateful hands click slowly and slowlier towards straight up in the air. and so help me god, not one of us opened the door until precisely 5 PM ON THE DOT and it was always the worst 9 minutes of the day and it happened every day.

I was telling my friend I work waaaay more hours than 8 to 5, but being prisoner to a set of hands is agonizing (and probably deserved). 

Anyway - I was confessing to him that all my jobs since have been unbound by clocks, but when we worked together, I was essentially the BOSS at a big campus, and even though I could leave anytime I wanted, my staff could not and would have to gather around the clock and slowly make their ways towards 4:59.99999, so I would feel incredibly guilty if I wasn't there cursing those hands with them in solidarity. So I did the right thing and would say out loud very loudly around 3 or 4 I HALVE AN IMPORTANT MEETING DOWNTOWN MUST LEAVE I'LL PROBABLY WON'T BE BACK UNTIL AFTER 5:00.00001 SORRY

And so I am ok with COVID except for the million people dying and the giant rift between everyone, if only because in working from home, I don't hardly ever look at a clock. I know the saying goes THE PROBLEM WITH WORKING FROM HOME IS WHEN YOU WORK FROM HOME YOU NEVER GET TO GO HOME FROM WORK but that completely ignores the dilemma of time served. 

Anyway, I'm just writing nonsense because I committed to writing 12 posts in 2024, and it's almost April. So much going on. I am building a cabin, and will be selling my dad's RX7 and my mom is in love after 6 years of widowhood and I am still forever struggling with all of my vices except love, interestingly enough. 

but then i was dropped and watched you fly away and didn't know if you'd return or if i was free to fall