The Economy of Your "Thing" - Part 1

It's ten o'clock on a Thursday night. You just got home from a 12 hour work day. Your boss has been riding you like a rented mule, nagging to turn in your TPS reports for the end of the quarter this Friday. Xerox machine went Chernobyl in the 11th hour and that illegal immigrant running the floor buffer across the office just happened to be the last man on earth who could help you repair it. Your herpes simplex 1 is hitting it's stride in the form of a tumescent blister on your upper lip. Strained lower back and you're fresh out of Percocet . Roman candle carpel tunnel flares.

The acronym F.M.L never rang so true.

You flop on the couch with a fresh bowl of Captain Crunch. Not even enough milk to leave a satisfactory bowl of palate-cleanser when you're done.

"Fuck my life."

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, there's always tomorrow. It's only a day aw....

Fuck.

You remember your car is on E. Not enough to make the commute in the morning. Barely enough to make it to a main road. The fact that you even made it home was a scene straight out of Seinfeld.You know...the one where Kramer test drives the car on empty? Last time he went into the red, he blacked out and woke up in a ditch with a full tank. Never tracked down the angel who bailed him out. The stuff dreams are made of. Not quite the sort of luck you've experienced so far this week.

You're donning sweat pants and a Garfield t-shirt that says "looks like someone has a case of the Mondays." This is the outfit you put on when you decide you're not leaving the house for the rest of the night. Not even if it's on fire....and especially not to travel somewhere so public as a gas station, which just happens to be a mere quarter mile away.

The alternative is to wake up extra early and hit the BP on your way in. But those 10 minutes are oh-so-precious.Your weary brain won't even remember this dilemma upon waking. You'll realize it as soon as you hop in your car, with just enough time to make it in on time. You'll be forced to stop for gas, run late, get fired, be unable to pay rent, get evicted, go homeless, and die in the streets, unable to even sell your blood and/or sperm because you tested positive for herpes and opiates.

Plus, you know how much more difficult it will it be to drag your sorry ass out of bed tomorrow instead of taking care of business right now.

What do you do?

"Your thing" is a life where you're gainfully employed, you pay your cable/cellphone/gas & electric bills on time, you can afford to pay for a nice date or a decent haircut, and you pride yourself on being dependable, prompt, responsible and economical. You're at least someone who can make a simple logical decision. Someone who knows your own vices and won't deliberately paint yourself into a corner.

What's "not your thing" is rolling out of bed earlier than you absolutely have to. It's "not your thing" to do your own taxes, or cook your own meals, or repair the Xerox machine when it breaks down on you.But every once in awhile, "your thing" clashes with something that's not "your thing," and the moral dilemma is whether or not you have to will to make the right choice.

Unfortunately for most of us, whatever is not "your thing" trumps whatever is "your thing." Unless you've become so good at "your thing" that you can make a living off of it to the point where you can pay other people to do that which is not "your thing." (more to come on this later...)

You know damn well you wouldn't have driven your sorry, herpes-ridden ass to that gas station. Because that's just not "your thing."

Even though the most difficult moment of the entire dilemma was making the decision to go fill up that gas tank. Once you're in the car, it's just another trip to the corner filling station. A little momentum goes a long way.

More to come in the next blog...


Love,
Bobby