Posts tagged with "hard times"

Overflow

When a man is full, what can he do?

Burst.

—Zorba, the Greek

Or in my case, over­flow.

I start­ed cry­ing in class. Thankfully, no one noticed. People can get awk­ward around a crier. Unfortunately, sup­press­ing a good cry is as unsat­is­fy­ing as sti­fling a sneeze.

A lot of peo­ple hav­ing been say­ing the wrong things to me late­ly. On top of that, the abun­dance of inter­ac­tion I have with peo­ple — a side-effect of my projects — is leav­ing me drained and over­stim­u­lat­ed.

Sometimes I won­der if it’s in my nature to be emo­tion­al. That try­ing to change this is like try­ing to teach a bird not to sing.

I don’t even have time to deal with this. I have to put it all aside, because there are more impor­tant things to think about right now.

At the bus stop, I real­ized that I have a ten­den­cy to brood. I don’t lis­ten to hap­py songs to get me out of the mood. It’s all minor keys and lemon peels, so I can help it run its course.

It’s been a rough week.

Sometimes, a part of myself spills out.

A Pat On The Back

It was one of those days at work. Things weren’t exact­ly going wrong per se, but it was stress­ful enough as it was. People were all over me, want­i­ng this or that, under­min­ing my deci­sions, inter­rupt­ing my con­ver­sa­tions, run­ning around like their heads were cut off.

I kept remind­ing myself to breathe deeply (from the feet, as the Taoist sages are often described as doing) and calm­ly, kept think­ing about the word tat­tooed on my wrist, and it worked for a while.

By 3:15, I had to get out of the build­ing. It was sup­posed to be a three-song walk, but it end­ed up being nine. I did­n’t even bring my coat; I was burn­ing so much inside, that I did­n’t need it. The win­ter slushed creeped up my jeans by six inch­es, but thank­ful­ly no one noticed.

Tyler was leav­ing as I was step­ping back into the office. He invit­ed me to an art show at Bablyon tomor­row1. I told him that I’d think about it, know­ing in my head that I would­n’t go.

I had to stay late to work on the serv­er. Fifteen min­utes lat­er, Tyler walked into my office (he must have walked part way, then turned around) and asked if I was alright. Admittedly, I’ve nev­er been able to hide my moods very well, but I thought I was doing a decent job of it2. He told me he could feel that my ener­gy was low, so he asked if I want­ed a hug. I polite­ly declined, not because I did­n’t appre­ci­ate the ges­ture, but because I did­n’t think it would have helped. He gave me a firm pat on the back any­way and stepped out of my office.

And it helped more than I ever would have expect­ed.

  1. Which is strange, because the last thing I went to see at Babylon was a Dwarves con­cert [↩]
  2. Something of an old habit of mine. Not being able to hide my moods is often a bless­ing in dis­guise for me, because it com­mu­ni­cates to peo­ple that some­thing is wrong. Otherwise, they’d nev­er know, and it would nev­er be fixed. [↩]

Where I Belong

Those who rule in accor­dance with Tao do not use force against the world
For that which is forced is like­ly to return

—Verse 30, Tao Te Ching

I may know bet­ter, I may under­stand what I’m sup­posed to accept, but that does­n’t make it any eas­i­er.

Sometimes the world is crash­ing down around you, and all you can do is watch.

Because you can’t yell at the sky to keep it from falling.