Beauty In Between

Today, like as many days as I can in the Fall, I'm enjoying Pumpkin Beer. I've been curled up on the couch, playing videogames while my wife works on homework, or watches television herself. It's a pajama bottoms and sweatshirt kind of day. A younger Syd didn't appreciate this as much. A younger Syd sought stimulation and did so with a vigorous regularity. "What could be worse than boredom?" says the disenfranchised early twenty-something? "What could be better?" replies the thirty something college student. I've engineered this leisure, by continuing to work ahead in school, and I couldn't be happier to lounge when lounge time comes.

It won't be here tomorrow. I think that could be said of far too many things. Tomorrow I face a day of training at work. No customers, yes, but plenty of boredom. In fact, it's the worst boredom I think I could possibly imagine. The last time I had to experience a training day like this, I thought I would just hang myself in the bathroom before the end of the day, and I like life. As adults, we did 'team building' exercises that included putting together, as a group, a series of puzzles intended for children 2 and up. At the time, I was the youngest at 28, yet I still received questions as to where the corner piece should go. I'm serious. I just handed the pieces to someone else and sat down, hoping that Doc Brown would show up and take me away.

The rest of the day progressed in much the same way. I spent an hour and a half listening to people ask department specific questions about a new program to IT, a group of people who knew the program, not the department. I watched people that make about five dollars more on the hour than myself try and puzzle out a cd player. I received the door prize of an electronic door stop and a brochure to the place that we were at. I thought as hard as I could on teleportation, hoping that by thinking it, it may help me realize it. I'd teleport first into a bank, then into a hot tub with naked ladies, Kalhua dipped cigars , and bottles of Cristal . In the background, I would hear the second Ol' Dirty Bastard record on repeat. Not far from my hot tub would be a hammock . It'd be late May/early June and I could sleep on the porch in the nude. Then I woke up to one of the most mundane experiences of my life .

Tomorrow, I get to repeat this experience, but I write this with some degree of satisfaction. Is it better? I'm certain it won't be. I'll listen to insipid questions, by people who quite possible have undeveloped frontal lobes , and watch my clock waiting for the time to leave. I can promise that I'll start looking at the clock around 9:00am and I fully expect to arrive at 8:30am. But at least I have a job. Part of me dies in writing that, like serving capitalism is some kind of grand reward. Great, I can keep my head down, not rock the boat, and get a paycheck. Why bother living if you're just serving? And I can answer that: I am loved. Putting up with bullshit like this allows me to come home and buy my wife whatever it is that her heart fancies. It allows me leisure days like today, where I drink my merry brains away, fighting for freedom on Mars , and watching whatever bullshit I can find on television all day. As much as I never want to be an agent of the ordinary, I'm finding that beauty lies somewhere in between. I choose to live for those moments and work for more of them.