My mom was full of advise, but the best advise she gave me was this,
"You spend a third of your life working, and a third of your life sleeping and a third of your life with yourself. So you better love your job, and the person you are sleeping with and yourself, because if you don't you're gonna hate your life. And you only get one."And I used to think wow, really a whole third with just me doing just what I want?! It sure doesn't seem like the math works. I mean I see where she came up with it. Eight hours sleeping and with an eight hour work day leaves eight hours for me. But for me it works out to more like seven hours sleeping, ten to eleven hours working which leaves six hours for me. But I have a 45 minute commute, one way, every work day, on a train. So also with people I didn't choose. Subtract two hours from my time, leaving me with four. Four hours out of twenty-four to do exactly what I want. Doesn't seem fair that we work so hard for so little down time. So little time to express ourselves or enjoy our favorite people when we are awake. When you do the math its not hard to see who loves you the most or misses you because they fit you in, they remember you, they miss you and make time for you. I have always felt honored and loved when any of my family or friends chooses to spend time with me because it is so precious. And when a favorite person who lives far away, and almost all my loved ones are, it's even more precious, because it's harder to remember to tell someone far away what's going on in your life daily. And those are the relationship building moments. The great days, and horrible ones, that we experience as we are going through it. It's the people you surround yourself with when you're on top of the the wheel of life and on the bottom, that really count to you.
I know everyone's life is busy, most people's are much busier than mine. I used to live in the rat race, and I chose to slow down when I shrunk down all my possessions and moved to the big big city. And while it has been much quieter here in Chicago, that is by my own choosing. I don't reach out or make plans unless I really want to see you because that four hours a day, (sixteen on my days off) are precious to me. Beyond words precious.
Because I'm one of those ambiverts. And it takes all my practiced copping skills make it around so many people on a daily basis without running and screaming from either the size of the crowds, the fear of strangers eyeing me, or the sheer mountainous amounts of stupidity I encounter just watching and listening to my fellow man. And I'm not talking about the wee ones here, I'm talking about full grown adults. Children are never stupid. BUT OMG some of us really grow into stupid adults. The things you hear on a train or bus! I mean as a writer, the character stream is endless. My new favorite game on the train is to guess which one is the serial killer. Or, which one will never be married. Or which one is cheating. Or who is the Trump supporter.
That one is getting scary. I sat next to a guy on the bus. Old. White. Poor. With a Trump button from his campaign, on his baseball cap. I hadn't noticed it before I sat down, as my arms were full of three-year-old. I felt embarrassed for him. He didn't speak any politics, he didn't have to. His hat was YELLING it for him. He seemed nice enough, just like any other kid friendly person around me when I have my arms stuffed with three-year-old. I don't know what I was expecting. Perhaps a pedophile. It reminded me about the majority of his supporters are the disappearing white middle class and poor uneducated white poverty class in this country. The ones that wanted so much to believe his lies. And before when I felt only anger at the betrayal of these people, now I feel only pity for them because now I know it was a mistake. They wanted to believe. And voted with trust. Some still do. And I have to respect their choice, because I know in time they will come to see what I, and half the nation saw, all along.
Historically, its usually a religion or a moral ideal that gets a revolution going, and boy we have a lot of them now. I wonder if these old, set in their ways, white, people with guns and little education, are the right people to piss off though. Angry because their industry isn't back, and their health care is not better, but gone, and their benefits or social security are also gone. I mean Trump is playing with fire if he thinks these people wont turn on him and these people, when pissed off, are scary. I just don't see these people who are quick to judge and quick to anger, sitting still for him going back on his promises to give them something magical and impossible.
Because I'm one of those ambiverts. And it takes all my practiced copping skills make it around so many people on a daily basis without running and screaming from either the size of the crowds, the fear of strangers eyeing me, or the sheer mountainous amounts of stupidity I encounter just watching and listening to my fellow man. And I'm not talking about the wee ones here, I'm talking about full grown adults. Children are never stupid. BUT OMG some of us really grow into stupid adults. The things you hear on a train or bus! I mean as a writer, the character stream is endless. My new favorite game on the train is to guess which one is the serial killer. Or, which one will never be married. Or which one is cheating. Or who is the Trump supporter.
That one is getting scary. I sat next to a guy on the bus. Old. White. Poor. With a Trump button from his campaign, on his baseball cap. I hadn't noticed it before I sat down, as my arms were full of three-year-old. I felt embarrassed for him. He didn't speak any politics, he didn't have to. His hat was YELLING it for him. He seemed nice enough, just like any other kid friendly person around me when I have my arms stuffed with three-year-old. I don't know what I was expecting. Perhaps a pedophile. It reminded me about the majority of his supporters are the disappearing white middle class and poor uneducated white poverty class in this country. The ones that wanted so much to believe his lies. And before when I felt only anger at the betrayal of these people, now I feel only pity for them because now I know it was a mistake. They wanted to believe. And voted with trust. Some still do. And I have to respect their choice, because I know in time they will come to see what I, and half the nation saw, all along.
Historically, its usually a religion or a moral ideal that gets a revolution going, and boy we have a lot of them now. I wonder if these old, set in their ways, white, people with guns and little education, are the right people to piss off though. Angry because their industry isn't back, and their health care is not better, but gone, and their benefits or social security are also gone. I mean Trump is playing with fire if he thinks these people wont turn on him and these people, when pissed off, are scary. I just don't see these people who are quick to judge and quick to anger, sitting still for him going back on his promises to give them something magical and impossible.
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