The Chronic Malcontent achieves serenity, or something like it

Howdy Blogbots. This might be a short post. Nothing much happened this week. I'm tempted to make something up, just to keep you entertained. Like the six of you care. I admit, I often spin the content on the Hellish Handbasket blog, but I don't make content up. I leave out stuff (mostly because I can't remember anything anymore) but I don't add stuff. I pretty much tell it straight on, with few embellishments. So when I say nothing much happened this week, that means I went about my business in a nondramatic fashion. I visited my friend E at the trailer. I talked with my friend S on the Zoom. I walked around the neighborhood last night in the balmy spring gloaming. I wrote a couple chapters in my next book project and edited a disaster that appeared in my inbox on Thursday. I can hear you already—boring! Where's the drama?

No drama. What is drama, anyway, when you live in this place and time? Even when I'm dramatic, it's all fake. Bombs are not falling on my head. I'm not running for my life. 

Nondrama for me means I'm no longer reacting to the day-to-day minutiae of my mundane existence. So what, I have a few pests now and then in my kitchen, ho hum. Bugs gotta live, too. Wind in the trees, spinning trash out of the dumpster, right on, seen that before. Weather is a stupid thing to complain about. How many years (and geographicals) has it taken me to figure that out? Yeah, my beast of a minivan has a few hiccups once in a while. What car doesn't? Money pit misery makers on four wheels. Every morning I look out my window and say, huh, you are still here.

The best stories have some sort of conflict. That's what I've heard. Maybe I'm sunk so deep in my messy bog of ho-hum-ness that I can't sniff out the conflict in my life anymore. I think it's more likely I'm just plain worn out. It's exhausting caring about things. My tiny boring life deserves no drama.

 The only thing that riles me up these days is news that animals, especially pets, have suffered or died because of human cruelty. I don't want to write about that. Thinking about it makes me want to curl up in a ball and die. Humans, it seems to me, are too stupid and mean to live. Then I read a fun book or see some good art and think, well . . .

Other than the occasional meltdown on behalf of abused pets, this week I'm feeling serene. I'm tempted to dig into other people's dramas, just so I have something with which to entertain you. However, it's not easy to generate a strong sense of excitement over another person's drama, no matter how dramatic it is. You know what I mean? It's just hard to get into someone else's shoes. I try, though, I really do. I think I am an empathetic person, in general, despite my self-centeredness. I don't like to see anyone or anything suffer. Not even the little dudes in my kitchen. I'm not a cat. 

Conversely, I do like to celebrate the successes and triumphs of others. My boat really floats when other people's dreams come true. If I can help you get your boat down the ramp and into the water, I'm your person. Except if your dream is to invade another country, but that would be a special case of an insane crackhead. Generally, I love people (but not too close), and I want them to thrive and be happy (but not at the expense of others). 

Drama has its place, but maybe not near me. I just don't have the energy anymore to be on the firing line of life.

A talkative passenger gets the Chronic Malcontent thinking

Thinking is something I do a lot of, maybe too much of, considering that thoughts don't necessarily lead to action. Maybe you have figured out how to think and make things happen—think and grow rich? Think and get happy? Think and create success? If so, I applaud you, you dynamic thinker, you. For me, thinking is a convenient way to avoid doing stuff. It's so much easier to think (dream, ponder, ruminate) than it is to take action.

Consider the ritual of setting our clocks back one hour in the fall, such a colossally arrogant manipulation of our ridiculous human perception of time. Wait, what? Sounds like I still haven't caught up on my sleep. The cat, of course, did not set his clock, being a creature of earth rotation, so he's been on me all week at the hint of dawn, not my best time.

This year, I celebrated the clock-changing ritual by flipping my mattress, changing my sheets, and vacuuming the rugs. I like to do that twice a year. No need to be overly ambitious, especially when it comes to vacuuming. Dust mites have to live too, you know. I try to welcome all god's creatures.

My right leg has been falling asleep when I sit at my kitchen table. I looked it up: leg falls asleep while sitting. Lots of exciting possibilities. (How did we survive before Google?) Thanks to multiple web authors of dubious repute, I'm having one long continuous stroke, I've got a pinched nerve (not sure what that is), or I'm enjoying some sciatica.

I attended an event in Salem last weekend. Salem is an hour drive south of Portland. I attend this event every year. I look forward to the hypnotic drive down I-5 to our state's capital. The drive there and back is better than the event itself, mainly because I get to be alone and out of my house. This year, a member of the group texted me to ask if she could ride with me. Caught off guard, I discarded my first thought (no fricking way, eew) and texted back, okay. She gave me her address, which I recognized as being in the heart of what we for many years have disparagingly called Skid Row, long before our entire city has become one heartbreaking Skid Row of houseless, homeless, sad, cold, tired, hungry, messed up people.

“Just cross the Burnside Bridge and turn right,” she texted.

“I'll pick you up at 8:30,” I responded, wondering if I would be able to walk by the time I arrived in Salem.

Despite the fact that the Burnside Bridge was closed for repairs that weekend, I managed to be ten minutes early, because besides being chronically malcontented, I am chronically early. I sat outside a decrepit apartment building in the loading zone, watching men and women shuffle by with backpacks and shopping carts. I perused their attire and demeanor. I saw their social interactions. I'm learning through observation—in my precarious world, homelessness is always lurking around the corner. I'm lucky, though: I have a car.

Eventually, my passenger appeared. Let's call her Lee. Lee hopped into my car and off we went.

From the time we left her door until the time we arrived at the event venue, Lee talked incessantly. I found out she is a poet. She works as a caregiver for an obese woman, often taking her client to the opera. She told me things I would never have dreamed of asking, stories of childhood trauma and abandonment. She shared about unsuccessful marriages and relationships. I heard about her mother, her father, her siblings, and the siblings from her father's multiple extramarital escapades, some of whom she'd recently met.

I kept my eyes on the road, nodding occasionally, grunting a few times, reluctant to say anything substantive. Lee didn't mind. In fact, I don't think she noticed.  The angst in her voice began to grate on my nerves. It took me a while to figure out that she is drama junkie. I cannot match that level of excitement. By the time we reached the event venue, I was thoroughly blockaded behind my personal bubble, determined to ignore her as much as possible during the day until it was time to make the return trek to Portland.

At 4:30, we were on the road home. I was hoping she would be tired, inclined to doze off, maybe, but no, she seemed as energetic as ever. At one point, Lee said, “I know I talk a lot.”

I took the opening. “Are you afraid of silence? Some people don't like too much silence.”

She was silent for a couple breaths. I thought, oh, yay, is she going to finally shut up? Then, oh yay, did I insult her enough to get her to shut up? Less than twenty seconds later, she said, “I wanted to show you that I was thinking about your question.” Oh, no. Thinking too much traps even drama junkie poets. No one is immune to thinking overload. I can claim no superiority: There's nothing special about me falling into the thinking sinkhole.

A less self-obsessed person would have realized my passive aggressive question was really a cry for relief, a desperate plea for silence. I'm the fool. It wasn't worth the battle. I dropped my passenger at her front door, avoided the hugging ritual, and said I'd see her around. I drove slowly home to feed my hungry angry lonely cat.

An hour later, I dragged myself to my mother's and collapsed on her couch.

“What's wrong with you?” she said. “You look beat.”

I told my mother about my passenger from hell. “She never shut up,” I moaned. “She kept staring at me while I was driving. The entire time, she stared at me. And she kept leaning over and tapping me on the arm.”

“Oh, I hate that,” my mother commiserated, and just like that, I felt the heaviness lift. After all these years, a kind word from Mom takes all the pain away.