You Might Need An Attorney For…

I am sitting in the parking lot of a local BJ’s restaurant trying to finish a telephone call with my insurance company.

We’re reviewing a bill and I am trying to figure out if the form was created by a blind monkey because it is gibberish.

The person on the other side says most people don’t have any trouble following it and I can’t help muttering “inconceivable.”

This paper reads like the instructions Olaf at Ikea threw into the box to explain how to build a Farfigskeezitnugen.

That reminds me that one day I might have to fly out to Sweden to kick his butt or at least pelt him with a dozen bags of frozen Swedish meatballs.

Why?

To show my gratitude for the quick and easy set up of the Farfigskeezitnugen.

Two Hands

Back at BJs there is a grimace on my face because I can’t reach through the phone and grab the person on other side of the line.

It is probably a good thing that I can’t because grabbing their head and bouncing it off the door is usually considered assault.

Usually being the operative word there because there are a few cases that have been thrown out because the judge had also just finished speaking with their insurance provider and felt badly because they understood the defendant’s frustration.

Frustration and I are becoming close friends but it is not by choice.

Though I can’t prove it I am convinced there is an unspoken rule at the insurance company to make this process so difficult people will just give up.

But I am not the kind of guy who just walks away when things get hard, far from it really.

When something or someone is important to me I dig in harder and deeper.

Things You Learn From Comic Books

One of the characters in Luke Cage has a saying, “Forwards, always forward.”

I like it.

Makes sense to me and it fits with what I tell my children and how I feel about life in general.

I can still hear Til Kingdom Come playing inside my head. It’s one a long list of songs on a rotating internal playlist.

Been busting my butt to reach that place somewhere down the road where things click and don’t clatter.

So much of it is based upon a feeling that I can’t understand or explain but it doesn’t bother me the way that damn insurance bill does.

No need to pelt Olaf with meatballs about this one or to get too crazy which is kind of funny to me because it seems contradictory.

But I suppose if you go back to that Luke Cage line it is because I don’t have to ask, question, wonder or think about whether I have moved forward.

I have.

None of this is based upon looking backwards.

Although I must concede some of my high school English teachers might be pleased to know some of the lessons they taught have stuck with me.

Decades later I can hear them speak about Marlowe’s poem about The Passionate Shepherd to His Love or Macbeth.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

or

“…Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make love known?”

Those were lines I used to mock for reasons you can blame upon the foolishness of youth.

Experience has helped me understand them in ways I was incapable of before.

Today I look at them and wish for a conversation with Shakespeare or Marlow that I can never have to talk about writing.

So in some sense I am looking backwards but the purpose is forwards, always forwards.

It occurs to me I haven’t spent much time working on SEO or doing things to market the blog and my writing.

There is more I could do to push things along and try to obtain some of the opportunities that are available but I haven’t.

Emerson would say this isn’t smart and that if I want things to happen I need to take action.

I agree with taking action but I wouldn’t ever rule out luck.

Luck plays a role in things but the size and scope varies.

So while would always position myself to take advantage of opportunities and do my best to take action I won’t say there is nothing else involved because sometimes there just is.