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[Everything's just wonderful, I'm having the time of my life]
So, we meet again. And in such a place as this? You wouldn't believe.
I'd like to tell you about how I met the Lilliputians with their tiny poking sticks, or that I went to the moon with a bunch of drunk astronauts and I had to bring them home, but I really can't. It appears as though I am just a regular schmo these days. And damned if that doesn't just piss me right off!
It's gotten to the point in waiting for "life" to begin that I've decided I can't wait anymore. I've spent a great deal of time doing less than I should, and I've gotten even less for it. I've wanted to use these hands and this heart and this head full of knowledge and naivete for so long that I've started to lose sight of the whole point - helping people. Now and then I've been worried that perhaps I just wanted to help myself, that I don't really have what it takes to be ship-shape and shipped off, to go to a land like none I've ever seen and change things for the better ... but, ah, then.
I remember it's really not about me, in that I realize that it is. Doesn't make sense, does it? I've been coming to realize that that is really the point. I'm just me. I've been more blessed than most and I have the luck that a million pots of gold couldn't match because of it. What help could I be to someone in another country if I didn't have the benefit of the education we so often degrade (and, probably rightfully)? How could I help if I hadn't the luxury of spending so many summer days drifting on a river or a lake, feeling sorry for myself because there wasn't anything else for my brain to think about? And why would I be even thinking about going away to a foreign land to teach whatever it is that I have in me if I wasn't restless, and eager to do so?
I think I may have lost you, but I also think that that seems all right. Perhaps, so I don't lose you again, so I may be of service in this instance, at least, I'll remember that the job that I think is so upsetting, and such a waste of valuable youth, and perhaps give myself - and it - a little slack. The idea that I can sit in a cubicle and hear a stranger over the miles answer me when I say, Does so-and-so still work here?
"Yes, and, might I add, I think he's more good-looking than ever."
Or perhaps I could recount the moment I dashed off an email to a friend that basically read, Bullshite, you don't have friends - bullshite.
And received an email back explaining that while the recipient realized that as a working journalist who I had briefly spoken to the day before he probably wasn't the person I intended to send it to, he did have a story to share about the time when he accidentally sent an email meant for his friend that ended up in his boss's boss's boss's box making fun of the boss's boss's boss.
Or perhaps you'd like to hear about the time that I was informed by a journalist that the reason Telluride, CO, is named as such is because when the miners left their homes and families for the promise of immeasurable wealth, the women pulled out their handkerchiefs and yelled to the men who had already switched their loyalty:
"T'hell you ride!"
But then again, maybe you don't want to hear about any of that.
Couldn't blame ya.
[I know it's not the life that I chose, but I guess that's just the way that things go]
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