Location: Houston TXDate: 11.15.11
First with a travel hint: You who have kids know this, but if you don’t and you are thinking of traveling let me give you a huge hint, if you think you want to pee, maybe even just a tiny bit, do it right then and there whatever you are.
I have peed, not like peed my pants all the way down to the shoes or anything, but I have dribbled a bit in preparation, and I've hobbled into some places (count:10). And I've gone in the bushes (4), into a planter (2), and into a bottle of empty beer (2). Killer boots man!
So obviously, if you are a follower, a fan, an exodusee-at-heart, you will have seen now that I've been through some ups and downs. What did I expect, really? I'm a human tossed about, like all of us.
And most people are such fear zombies that they can hardly even overcome the fear of saying what they really want outloud for, well, for fear of fill-in-the-blank. So there are so many levels of it that’s its almost impossible sometimes to get to the chewy center of a person. And I enjoy sucking on a psyche, it's beneficial for both parties.
Ask someone who is seized by fear what they really really want. I did. Last night. I do it all the time. The five-percenters will tell you right away. Five-percenters is my term for the questioners in the world. That's my ball team: the seekers. The other 95% I call the uncrackables.
Last night, I asked an uncrackable.
And when I ask an uncrackable, they will ask me, really? Really what do I want? And I will say yeah, what the fuck do you really really want? And then they hesistate and they say it's silly or it'll never happen anyway.
But then ask them what they are doing to get to this, to realize this, and the answer is almost always not a damn thing. Do you think, and I mean this, do you think maybe you will have a second go-around at this?
What if it doesn’t work out the way I envision it to work out? Well, then you envision too much and you need to instead focus on what you want and how you will get yourself there and hopefully the rest will take care of itself. Or maybe not, maybe the whole thing will be a shit-show.
If it's not what you envisioned and then you tuck that away and you know that you ordered the richest thing on your spiritual menu and that if it doesn't taste the way you thought it would than at least you don't walk away hungry.
The uncrackable, she was sitting alone at a restaurant, as I was, and we get to chatting and I can tell she is a little drunk.
When I ask her the question, and after she spills her martini onto her side dish, she asks me if I really want to hear the honest answer and of course I want to hear the honest answer. And she is looking me in the eyes as best she can to make sure I'm not going to make fun of her and then in an instant, I see that sea part for just a second.
I want to be a housewife she says, and instantly she looks a little guilty and a little embarrassed.
Super, I say, and then, what are you doing towards obtaining that goal? I say, are you joining singles clubs or going to singles shit or whatever you do when you are single and want to be a housewife? And she categorically and emphatically states she will do no such thing. I ask her why, I bet you can tell me what she says, because they are stupid.
I tell her, small steps. I rub her shoulder and I tell her that her father and her brother and Houston and all the other emotional furniture she has complained about don't belong in her house. Spring clean, baby. Take a couple of days to yourself and envision life without the burden of the stow-aways in your head.
But I think at this point she is too drunk to absorb anything because she keeps talking about dessert.
She tells me I am too cute, and the booze is settling in pretty hard on her now, but I give her the blog address and I make sure she is listening when I tell her this:
“I'm afraid too. We are all afraid. Everyone around you, all the people you know and see no matter what you may think you see, they are all afraid of something. But sooner or later you're going to have to make the decision that you're tired of that, and you will have to take it in baby steps and if you keep doing that, then one day you will look back and wonder: how did I get what I wanted all of a sudden?”
