The weather was finally nice enough over the weekend that we could do outdoorsy shit. I had planned on just hanging out on the deck writing all day but after a grueling 7 block walk/jog over to my sister's and a snapchat convo with my bestie, we decided to go on a bike ride for an hour or so. Our booming small city has recently added a bunch of paved bike trails so I loaded up my bike, my niece and her bike and headed out to meet my friend and her daughter. We ended up taking this nice trail which heads out of town towards a park. It does this little detour so for a good chunk of it, you are actually riding out in the country. It was freaking amazing. Growing up on an acreage makes me instantly homesick when I get out surrounded by fields and the quietness of it all. Unfortunately, we had to move into town when I was in about 6th grade and eventually ended up selling our childhood home in the country. I was completely devastated but the house had gone to shit and none of us had the money to put into in and move back. The people who bought it basically bought it for the land, tore down the 2 bedroom underground house that held so many good memories and the out buildings to build a monstrosity of a McMansion on the 4 acres. It fucking killed me.
Back to the bike ride, it was great. I felt so at home and peaceful which considering my life, is a pretty big feat. After the 5 mile or so ride those good feelings stayed with me until I came home and realized that nothing had changed. In fact, for the hour we were gone shit went a little awry. My sister had somehow jammed the wrong key into our back door, making it impossible to open. We had to take the whole thing off and go get a new handle. It really wasn't a big thing because we have the means to go out and buy a new lever but not really something I had expected to deal with.. After that things went alright then I started getting some text messages in regards to some personal shit I am handling poorly at the moment. Once again, not a big deal, just another thing that I am trying to figure out on my own that from the outside looks very different from the inside. Or maybe my perspective is just skewed and biased since it involves me.
I guess besides the fact that leaving for any amount of time doesn't mean when you return all the problems in your life will be magically solved, there is also a lesson here about timing. At the time my mom decided she was going to sell our house and land, she didn't really have a choice and we didn't have the money to fix it. At the time that our door handle got all jacked up, we did have the money to fix it. Yes, there is a significant difference here but the fact remains that overall, timing is important. I feel like everyone misses opportunities because of poor timing. We miss important events, chances to do amazing things or see the people we love. We get in accidents, we have accidents, things break that we can't fix at the moment. We overcook our steaks and we under cook our chicken, we eat at restaurants the day before they announce a listeria outbreak in their lettuce.
Other times when the opportunity is there, we are too caught up in other shit or too afraid to take any chances *ahem Second City*. We create excuses and put it off but, and watch this magically fucking tie in right here, YOU STILL HAVE TO EVENTUALLY DEAL WITH IT. Say your basement decides to let in a bunch of water one spring, you clean it up, a couple months go by and you think "Hey! We haven't had any problems and I really don't feel like throwing a bunch of money and work towards it this summer so eh, I'll deal with it later. So you put it off and guess what happens the next spring...fucking basement water. You clean it up and start the whole process again and again until finally one day you notice that it's starting to smell a little and the baseboard look a little jacked up so you decide to investigate and TA-DAH! You now have mold in your walls. What?! But how?! I've only been letting my basement flood every freaking spring since I moved here 5 years ago, how could this happen?!
That's life. You put shit off because of bad timing, whether real or imaginary, and then wonder a few years down the line, when the problems get too big to ignore, how it got to that point. Maybe if we all spent a little more time looking at the reality of the situation and try to rectify it a little earlier, our lives would be a whole hell of a lot easier. But we won't. Because it's too hard or there is too much involved. So we end up chalking up the missed opportunities as something we had no control over while people judge us for not doing enough or trying hard enough when our basements flooded the first time while standing in their own basement, knee deep in water
I guess what I'm trying to convey is everyone is the same. We all put things off for another day secretly hoping it never comes because keeping things the same is easy and seems less stressful that way (hint: it's not). So let's all just keep playing in our moldy basements, breathing in those spores while pretending that it's not slowly killing us.
Yes, I AM in a great mood. Thanks for asking.
No comments:
Post a Comment