Monday, September 19, 2011

Angry Sunday

I thought of playing this off and conjuring up a happy memory and writing about a sweet evening in a past summer when all of the notes in my head and in the winds outside my room were in perfect resonance. I almost was ready to do it, then I sat down and tried to get online and couldn't and now, it would be too much of a boldfaced lie to play it happy for my reading audience.

I write about things I see in life, and, usually, there is a wry smile and a tinge of humor in my work. Mostly, I keep it pretty calm. But crap happens, too, doesn't it? There's no denying that.

Tonight, it was truly an exercise in control when I tried to get on and got a message that, for some reason, my blog "wasn't available." I'm not, by any means, prone to rage, but I had to win quite a victory over my reptilian brain to keep from smashing my laptop. I'm not exaggerating. I did give it quite a shove, but my arms were faintly tethered to the part of me that knows I can't afford to smash laptops. Barely.


It is still in me now, this anger, causing my teeth to grind. It is an anger born of one of the most frustrating Sundays I have had in a long time (a problem compounded by the fact that Sundays are supposed to be the calm before the work week storm). Every event today, from an eternal hour at a school function listening to stilted, vapid speeches (introduced, one after the other, by an administrator who began each introduction [all hundred and fifty of them] with "at this time" -- I could have thrown a shoe) to a string of little and not so little maddening situations; all of this, I say, lead up to a foul mood and a fouler temper. There was everything from simple speed bumps to philosophical conundrums, but they all knocked me down a level lower a step at a time until I wound up in the proverbial hole.

But this blog isn't about venting. It's supposed to be about finding truth. Well, the truth is, I am pissed-off today and whenever I thought a chance was coming for me to climb out of the hole, something happened to push me down again. Whenever I thought the fire was going out in my chest, something would stoke it again.

So now what? Here I am trying to create logic -- trying to force the more sophisticated part of my brain conquer the more animalistic side. People always try to give us coping mechanisms -- count to ten; meditate; think happy thoughts. Uh, no. Not now.

And you know what? Tough for me. I'm mad. The way things have been going, I'll probably go to sleep mad. Maybe what we need to do, sometimes, is accept our anger and not pretend feeling angry is a failure. (Letting anger manifest itself to the detriment of one's self or others, of course, would be a failure.) If I were in a foul mood for no reason, I'd worry. But today sucked a fat ostrich egg. All is in nasty alignment. I'm mad and I'm not going to lie to you or anyone else about it, especially myself.

What do I do?  I go to bed, knowing I'm not an angry person and that, chances are, tomorrow I will be back to normal. It'll be cool.

Oh -- and I kid you not -- want to hear good one? I listen to music while I write, always. I just got a message from my iPod that the battery is low and the thing cut off on me. This has never before happened to me. But today is the day. God's honest truth. Well, at least now I'm laughing bitterly. Light on the horizon?

Nighty-night to this crap. (Single draft tonight, or I'm liable to start throwing in curses.)

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