Two hours into the call with tech support they told me I was going to be given the gift of a new laptop for which I thanked them profusely.
“That is a pretty good birthday gift, it is not your birthday today is it?”
“No sir, my birthday is past.”
“Well can you think of a better gift?”
“Yeah, I can think of a few.”
I think it caught him off guard because he asked me if I could name one and I said it takes two hands and went silent.
He said he wasn’t sure what that referred to and I said he ought to take both hands and grab his head and shake it.
“Are you trying to tell me my head will rattle or something like that?”
“Nope, not really. Was just curious to see if you would do it.”
He laughed and said I sounded like a real character.
“That’s what some people say. I almost got a hula hoop for my last birthday. If you want to make your kids crazy tell them to help you shake your hips so you can hula. Teenagers love that.”
Then he told me he was 28 and single but that he trusted I must have been an interesting father.
“Aye, I think they’d say so…maybe.”
Stumbled across a Facebook mention of a guy I knew from blogging and thought about how many bloggers I know/knew that died.
More than a handful but I can’t tell about how many died young. Well, I probably could if I thought about it but truth is this isn’t supposed to be a morbid account or their deaths or a memorial of their lives.
It is just a moment in which I am reminded again about how fast things can turn. We don’t know how much time we have and there are moments like today where you look around and ask yourself what the hell you are doing.
Are you really living the life you want or think you ought to be living.
And if you aren’t, well what the hell are you doing? What are you waiting for?
It is why I told a couple of the guys they ought to speak their minds and not expect others to be mind readers.
Told them about a couple of mistakes and plans for rectifying them.
“Hard to do that without causing more chaos, don’t you think?”
Nodded my head and said “maybe.”
“So what is the plan?”
“If we were in the same place I’d say look me in the eye and remind you I am the goddamn freight train and I know it.
I know who and what I am.
I lost virtually everything and moved my entire world and began rebuilding. I will do it all again if I have to, but ideally I won’t start from scratch. Won’t have to.”
He asked what that meant and I said it means I know loss and I know what it means to be far lower than I am.
“You may think this sounds depressing but it is not to me. It is hope and reality. It is experience. I know things because I have done things.
I still prefer to fail having tried than not.”
Write hard enough and long enough and you’ll find the write words, in this world or the next.
It is why I don’t limit myself to being just here.
