Friday, January 4, 2008

LIMBO, how low can you go?

On my desk there is a small metal box in the shape of a rectangle. Three sides and the top are solid tin, but on the front there is a slit from which a small golden arrow protudes out and then bends to point strait up. If you saw it out of the corner of your eye you might think it was one of those old school thermostats from the fifties and sixties, like the one featured on the classic film "A Christmas Story". However, this isn't a thermostat at all but an instrument used to gauge the level of blah reeking from my life.

There have been many times when the arrow has been pegged all the way to the right, indicating a life ripe with out right exhaustive opportunity, adventure and challenges, the kind that makes you want to stick your head out of the open car window while doing sixty-five like a deranged bloodhound or wet yourself, which ever you prefer.

Then there have been periods of my life that were not so exciting and the needle would register more to the left. Once or twice I think it has even dipped far enough to approach the notch that reads "Little House on the Prairie" and TV dinners boring. This level is, at best, severely self destructive both to your self-esteem and your overall health, I do not recommend spending much time in this neighborhood as you are likely to loose your desire to breath.

Overall I consider myself to be a happy, positive, fairly upbeat fella. But these last couple of months have been unusually trying. The main culprit is nursing school. I have never been involved in something so time consuming, energy intensive, anti-climatic, unorganized and such a frustrating and impotent use of my time in all of creation. Additionally the sudden sale of our home with our lack of any concrete plans for the future have left us in utter LIMBO, with no daily routine, no space to call our own, and no end in sight. Over the holiday I have been on break so I haven't even had school or work to distract me. It has me feeling like Bob Murray in "Groundhog Day", except I don't have an annoying insurance salesman to punch as a release.

This potent combination has been draining to say the least. You can imagine my angst when I looked at the Bored-o-meter and found it pointing at an all time low... "watching granite disintegrate". I cried, and I am not ashamed to admit it.

Well, ok, the box doesn't sit on my desk, in fact it is in my head and sometimes I talk to it. But that isn't the point, the point is that...the point is... well, I don't know what the point is. Just remember that no matter how bad your life gets, just think of my bored-o-meter and thank the good lord you aren't stuck in front of a TV being taught a life lesson about milking cows by Michael Landon while you gnaw on a salsbury steak with a half baked brownie for desert, wishing you were half baked yourself.