Sitting On My Bed

I am sitting here on my bed and I am thinking about life and by that I don’t mean to come across as clichéd at all as I am actually sitting on my bed and thinking about life something I almost never do unless my wife is being particularly bossy. If it makes you feel any better, and it is sort of odd if it does, I’m not just pondering my own life and existence, but also the lives and existences of the sushi chefs who moved here from Japan with dreams of vinegared rice that will almost certainly turn to nightmares. I am also thinking about the filling dinner I just ate and am attempting to digest as we speak.

I am aware that “we” are not speaking at the moment – I’m not sure what exactly I did to make you give me the silent treatment, I mean I don’t even know who I am talking to, I mean typing for, at the moment. But, that too is a good question – who am I typing for? Myself? Friends and family? Our alien saviours? A young boy sitting in his room, on his bed, somewhere in Indonesia? For some reason, I am always imagining a boy in Indonesia sitting on his bed, although, to be honest, I cannot say with total certainty that it is his bed – it just isn’t clear in my imagination. It could be a pullout couch or a hammock. I hope it's a hammock.

I am typing for myself! And for freedom and also for frozen blocks of ice – not sure exactly what the plan is for all of those blocks of ice, but I believe in ordering large blocks of ice first and coming up with a purpose for said ice later on. If nothing else, we’ll be drinking really cold water at my house tonight! Come on down if you want to be near all of my ice! When I say I am typing for freedom what I mean is...actually I've probably already said too much and I should be continuing to focus on finishing those first year Econ papers they requested so I can see my family again. To be honest, I'll miss the rice dishes - damn these kidnappers/people I met on the bus/cactus aficionados with gourmet chef skills who seem to like my writing!

In the big picture I am typing for myself as writing what I write makes me feel a satisfaction that I can’t find or buy or stumble upon in the woods at night. There are plenty of smaller pictures as well and teeny tiny pictures as well and after that the pictures just get so small making the shows so hard to watch I may as well go out and get some fresh air. 

And tonight, as I sit here on my bed, I am thinking about my life and thinking about all that I have accomplished up to this point and where I want to go in the next year and the years after that. Next I want to reorganize my sock drawer in order of friendliness. I often assign personality traits to my socks and try to figure out which socks would be standoffish if I met them in line at the local butcher. After the massive sock drawer overhaul, I plan to read the remaining socks the riot act, which in my mind is a valuable how-to list on staging and carrying out a riot in case their master (me) starts slipping into a deep and dark phase where sock abuse would invariably be at the top of my list.

Up to this point in my life I have done well. Good thing I invested heavily in pork futures! If I was my mom, I would be proud; if I was my cat, considerably less so. My cat has unrealistically high expectations for me that I find both flattering and hard to live up to.  But, I have done well. I have a beautiful wife with whom I have helped create two children and a chest of drawers that looks more like a pile of kindling, or at least infinitely more so that my children who more closely resemble small humans like myself. I hope they fulfill their destiny and become taller as well as being able to cook their own breakfast and pack their own lunches so that I can sit at the table and review the need to plot any revenge or plant a garden or somehow kill both of those birds with one stone. Note to self: start collecting stones just in case. 

For those that have not met her, my wife is tall and even more so when I ask her to stand on a kitchen stool while I cower in the corner or in front of the heating vent to at least stay warm as cowering gives me a chill. We own a cat. Our cat is heavy. We are trying to either feed her less or add to her exercise regime of laying around the house all day. I’m not sure if own is the politically correct term these days for my relationship with my cat, and I am trying to downplay that term aside from when we play chess and I win and jump around the room pointing at her saying “I own you!” I also point to random cupboard doors and lamps and exclaim the same thing, only with significantly less confidence.

I find my work as a school guidance counsellor rewarding and enjoyable. I haven’t always been a counsellor mostly due there being some rules barring pre-teens from holding the position and in a past life I am fairly sure I was a merchant somewhere in the vicinity of Venice and before that I was a particularly funny and financially conservative wildebeest. I'm unsure if that is foreward progress, but I hope I am playing my cards right so in my next life I am either a financial advisor or the pope. If I was the pope right now all of time spent in my formative years working on my posture wouldn't have been a total waste.

I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of my work with young students and I value personal satisfaction quite high, but lower than I rank gold bars. I wish I had more gold. I am attempting at this moment to put all joking aside but I am also trying to declutter my room and "be more zen". I'm not entirely sure what being more zen really entails, but in those efforts I am reducing my carbon footprint as all of that carbon dust was clogging my pores and was a total hassle to clean up too.

My life could be shinier, especially if I had more gold, and not just my forehead and I imagine that if I was to legally attain a lot of gold all of a sudden and stand next to it, my forehead would appear quite dull by comparison. Instant savings on face creams! Each weekday, I show up to work, aside from holidays where I stay home and "work it" and I do not work like a dog as that would just not be appropriate unless the dog was good at listening, giving advise and word processing and if it was, I could sit back and sip my water with a curly straw – those things are so cool – and occasionally pet my dog and feed him a doggie treat. No, I would describe my work ethic as more similar to that of a llama or a rare Asian song bird on a slow day and like a farm animal being led to "the sausage room" on a busy one. I don't eat meat, but I imagine that I would love the sausage room as it just sounds like the dance club to end all dance clubs. Seriously, that would possibly shut down all existing dance clubs.

With my wife, I own a townhouse in a large metropolitan city coming to a country near you in the near future. I know, I know, that makes no sense – trying telling my city that! Well, more accurately we have a large, mostly unpaid mortgage on a townhouse, making our owning it more metaphysical that I'd prefer. If we owned a percentage of our house at this point, I think we’d own a bathroom and the stairs, which would make for some interesting dinner parties that our guests would never forget. Never. 

Of course, we’d love to pay off our house and be free from owing the bank so much money, but maybe we’d miss the bank and all of the lovely walks and flower gardens although it is highly possible I’m once again confusing the bank with our local botanical garden. I love it there – it’s too bad they don’t do mortgages. We’d also love to have a bigger house, because I’ve been brainwashed to believe that bigger is better in all senses – boot size, frying pans, hickeys, and have that bigger house be located more centrally in our city, because I’m growing tired of living on the fringe. Life on the fringe can be cold and dangerous and often windy. Once I heard voices that instructed me to go to the library and read some historical essays so that I would feel smarter. 

I imagine a large, central house would change some people, but not me – I’ve already changed and I never change twice unless it has been unseasonably warm.

I am in my mid-40s and all of the self help websites tell me to get off my butt and stop spending all of my time on the internet. "Age is just a number" they tell me, to which I reply "10010000111101" as I once heard that machines all speak binary. Suprisingly, not only did nothing happen, but a man knocked on my door selling hotdogs door to door which is quite rare though I did cook them well done as the last time I served my kids rare hotdogs my younger one tried to hijack her daycare and sell it to China. 

I am trying to get off my butt more often and to "share the wealth" by sitting on other body parts too with my new favourite being that area between my shoulder blades. The clock on the wall reads 1:30pm which means it is way too soon for dinner and that I should have had more to eat for lunch if I am hungry, which I'm not, and the clock also reads "midlife" which means my regularly scheduled crisis is overdue. Just so you know, I try to have a good crisis every year around April to coincide with my seasonal allergies as the sneezing gives me a welcome break from all of the yelling and scrunching of face muscles and reading of periodicals.

I should be pulling my hair out or crying over spilled milk or using more cliches and outdated expressions. I should be regretting not "living it up" in my 20s and investing well in my 30s and filling my freezer with fillets of halibut. But I'm not. I should be grilling some burgers or attaching plastic gills to toilet paper rolls or being less ironically random. But instead I am trying to face this period of my life head on as my shoulder is sore and my head is up for the task as long as he hasn't been pulling my leg which would be quite the impressive feat to say the least seeing as he has no hands or arms.

Existence is fleeting which makes much more sense than to say it is fleecing which makes none. I have looked at my life and then set up some mirrors and looked at its reflection and then I hired an artist to draw its portrait which is sitting somewhere deep in my storage room at the moment gathering dust. I don't always know where I am going or where I have been or why I seem to alway be surrounded by somber moustachioed men strumming guitars. But I am happy in this moment on my bed, digesting my dinner looking forward to some sleep and the days to come.