The Dark Cloud Over My Head

There's a black cloud hovering over me that drizzles on my head wherever I go.

I'm not sure how I came to acquire it.  It just started following me around a few weeks ago, dishing out a steady stream of moderate misfortune.

It could be worse. I could have gotten a storm cloud assigned to me, the kind where everyday a new tragedy unfolds.  My little hovering cloud is more humble, trickling out a steady-but-constant stream of mild melancholy. 

I'm flattered that the Cosmos considers me important enough to assign me my own personal weather pattern.  Of course, I would have preferred my own personal rainbow or wish-granting leprechaun, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

I still don't think I'm important enough for this kind of personal attention, though. I could understand the universe assigning a personal black cloud to Dick Cheney, or Nancy Pelosi, but I'm just a guy with a blog, typing away in relative anonymity.

In fact, I keep telling the cloud above me that it can do better, but it argues with me and tells me that I'm all it ever wanted.  Frankly, it seems a little desperate. Although I guess it sounds about like the kind of dark cloud I'd get. 

As with Pig-Pen from the Peanuts, my little cloud follows me everywhere I go.  And I'm not just talking about today, when it was warm sunny when I left home (without an umbrella), only for a downpour to start on my 10-minute uphill walk to my office.  Although that did actually happen. 

And the situation repeated itself when I was halfway to Starbucks for my mid-morning coffee.

But it isn't just the literal weather that's getting me down.  I've had the opposite of the Midas touch lately: instead of everything I touch turning to gold, it turns to camel dung.

Two weeks ago my job vanished in a sudden office reorganization.  I got shifted to a lateral position where I do mostly the same thing, but the change meant a new boss, and a whole bunch of bureaucratic headaches to endure while the changes take place.

For the last year or so, I've used running as my escape from the burdens of life.  I've spent the last two months training for my first half-marathon, which I had circled on the calendar for next Saturday. Inspired by my brother's fight against cancer, I was doing it to symbolize my ability to overcome, through hard work and perseverance, any obstacle that I too might face in life. 

But I when I tried to sign up yesterday, fresh after finishing the 10-mile run that was the last step of my preparation, the race was already full. I apparently missed being able to register by about 30 minutes.

In other words, I not only failed to finish the race I'd spent two months training for, I couldn't even manage to get started. 

In other developments, my sink started leaking and my toilet broke.  Two sets of close friends are moving away.  My favorite shows have inexplicably failed to tape all week.  I somehow screwed up my favorite recipe, and I made an extra-large batch.

My neighbors keep having loud parties late at night that keep me awake. My favorite basketball teams stink, and the 10-day forecast that once was full of sun, now looks cold and rainy, especially in the area directly over my head. 

Last week, my Spanish teacher gave out CDs for everyone to listen for homework. Mine didn't work. I suppose that's just as well, because I've already lost it anyway. I would ask for another one, but without having the benefit of the CD, I'm not quite sure how to formulate the question with the proper grammar. 

To cap it all off, my new boss yelled at me today, for something that wasn't my fault. 

I just can't catch a break, and I'm even infecting people around me. 

One of my friends lost his cell phone and the guy who found it started using it for the purpose of sexting his whole phonebook with graphic pictures.  (Apparently the guy who found the phone was white, and rather, um, insignificant). 

Another one of my friends had a pipe burst while on vacation and came home to a completely flooded house.  Even my wife texted me just seconds ago to say she left her lights on and her car won't start.

We know one couple who lost a pet and a parent last week, and a million others in the midst of medical drama, relational crisis, or toxic jobs.  Basically, almost everyone I know is starring in their own Shakespearean tragedy. 

I know my problems are small compared to those of many of my friends.

It's not that any one development has been overwhelming, it's just that living in a pool of non-stop drizzle gets depressing after awhile. 

Still, I'm hoping that my recent little cloud of never-ending petty annoyances means the big storms of life will go elsewhere this year, kind of like how a cold front can push away a hurricane. 

I'll take my misfortune in moderate, bite-sized doses, if it means I can get all of out of the way in time for those lab results to come back favorably, and if exchange for living with perpetual annoyances, nothing debilitating happens. 

I know in a theoretical sense I'll never have that little, personal rainbow (much less the wish-granting leprechaun) that I wished for at the start of this column, unless I endure the rain first. 

But right now, I'd just settle for a sunny day. 

Disappointment Strikes

"You've made the mistake," the book publisher said, "of thinking everything that happens to you is interesting."

Ok, so that publisher didn't actually say that to me. He said it to Anne Lamott (before she hit it big).  But it hardly matters.  I can relate. 

I always pause for a second (which in this case, was actually three days) before I publish something that might seem better suited for a diary. There's enough people posting their personal baggage on facebook already; you don't need to hear mine.

But Lamott has sold a lot more books (many) than I have (none) talking about what she learned from life's petty struggles.  If people will read about her funny stories and spiritual lessons from the unfortunate messes in her life, well then, maybe, just maybe, you'll be interested in taking 10 minutes to hear about mine.

You see, I had this illusion that I had some control over one aspect of my life.  Things had been going well in my professional life, and I had sort of had the whole future mapped out in my head.  There was a clear path to even bigger things ahead.  But all of it vanished with one sudden announcement last week. 

The details aren't that important.  I worked hard for something, and it didn't work out for me, for reasons I don't entirely understand. And I'm not talking about my divorce from Bleacher Report.  This is something that actually matters. 

It isn't a tragedy.  The sun will come up tomorrow, and my health and family are just fine.  But it still sucks.

The world looked one way last week; it looks different now, and the change isn't for the better. 

Disappointment comes from the crashing realization that life is going to be something different than what we had planned or from that to which we felt entitled. It is the downside of having dreams.

I'm a big dreamer, so I've been disappointed often. And it never stops to hurt.

Still, my complaints are minor compared to most everyone else I know.  Almost everyone in my circle is dealing with some major negative life drama.  For some, it's the loss of a friend, for others, it's a poisonous work environment, a troubled marriage or the health of a relative. Almost everyone has obstacles they didn't sign up for.

If you can relate, I'm sorry. 

But there's something oddly therapeutic about big disappointments. The refocus our attention on what matters. They provide a reason to retreat to a quiet place (or in my case, a Mexican restaurant) and have a conversation with our souls. In my case, the conversation is occurring over a margarita, which is an added bonus.

Disappointments are a chance to learn from our mistakes (perceived or actual) and use our spiritual side to put the pieces back together.

For my situation, I went through the requisite stages of grief: anger, depression, bargaining. I haven't reached acceptance yet, but I have reached the point of asking myself, "what's next?"

I haven't figured that out yet. 

What I have figured out is that things feel five percent better when a friend offers to take me out for drinks or calls to ask how I'm doing.  Until things get better, sometimes the only thing that helps is to find someone who is willing to listen. And when the tide passes and you feel like yourself again, it's twice as sweet to celebrate good times with someone who has seen the other side.  

One thing I've learned is that most of the good things we get in life come either without our feeling worthy of them, or or only long after we feel like we deserve them, but usually not in between. 

So until your ship comes in, or your problems settle down, the best thing you can do is abide in the company of those who love you. Or have a margarita. 

Or maybe both, at the same time.  If you don't have such a friend, well, I'll be down at Las Maracas this weekend.  And I could use the company. 

I Hate Valentine's Day

When I was growing up, I hated Valentine's Day because I often found myself alone.  Now that I'm grown and married, I just hate Valentine's Day because it's dumb.

I hate Valentine's Day because it is a day where you do something special for your loved one because society tells you its expected, which defeats the whole point. I dislike it because it's a day where men express their unique connection with their wives by buying either jewelry, flowers or chocolate, just like everyone else.

I despise it because it's a day of overcrowded restaurants, overpriced flowers, and overhyped obligations.

It's even worse if you're single, and you spend the day hearing society telling you that it's a day when you don't matter at all.

I don't think Valentine's Day is even necessary. If you are in a good relationship, the other half of it probably regularly expresses their love for you.  If you aren't, then one night of empty gestures doesn't fix the problem.  If anything, it just makes it worse by providing a temporary false sense of hope that ultimately just prolongs the misery.

The best argument for Valentine's Day is that even happy couples sometimes get overburdened with their respective life obligations and don't make time to do romantic things together.  Valentine's Day provides a day to do that. 

That perspective makes sense to a degree, but the few times I've actually gone out on Valentine's Day I've been struck by how unremarkably romantic the scene actually is. 

Restaurants are overcrowded, service is slow, and the table next to you is pushed uncomfortably close.  Hurried waiters provide poor service, and the restaurant might not even be serving its full menu. 

If you're like me, then amidst the chaos, it inevitably occurs that you ask yourself why you came out to fight all this madness in the first place. It occurs that if you had just used Valentine's Day as a reminder to make reservations for sometime in March, you'd be having an exponentially better time for a fraction of the price. 

"But it's Valentine's Day," you think, "so we felt like we should go out."

And then, as I think that same thought, I'm reminded why I hate Valentine's Day.

Fighting the February "Blahs"

The worst month of the year is here once again. 

It's cold outside. The days are short and grey. No holiday is in sight, and the flu is spreading like warm butter. 

Even the Super Bowl has come and gone, leaving in its wake power outages, disappointing commercials and one unanswered question:

How will we survive until March comes?

The obvious answer is to buy a pet.  It provides a new distraction and some fun in your life during an otherwise dull period.  But you might regret this later.  When the novelty has worn off, you might be left with a cat named Trouble who tears up your furniture, drools everywhere and insists on being entertained 24 hours a day. 

This situation is where I've found myself ever since I got a cat in February of 2004.  You should definitely try something else. 

You could take a vacation to some tropical destination where life doesn't feel so gloomy, but that's hard to plan on short notice and you probably blew all your money and vacation time at Christmas anyway.  Besides, when you got back the February cold would hit you in the face even harder.

You should probably form a different plan.

You could start drinking heavily so as to float through this dismal month in a mental fog, but that might get you fired.  And doing so would leave you vulnerable to catching one of the 16 types of airborne illness floating around, which would leave you even more miserable. 

You might want to consider a better alternative.

You could pack up and move to the Gulf Coast, where you would get an extra 3-day vacation for Mardi Gras built into every February. But that's probably not a realistic option for this year. Mardi Gras is next week.

Besides, your children might eventually get mad at you for raising them in a place where it never snows, and you'd have to evacuate in fear of your life every hurricane season, which, trust me, isn't much fun. 

So you aren't going to be able to rely on that plan either. 

Instead, you and I just have to bundle up and make peace with the worst month of the year.  But how?

I'm trying hard to find a silver lining this year's winter gloom.  I'm reading more. I'm volunteering.  I'm training for a half-marathon, taking Spanish classes, and trying to fill my weekends with cultural outings and plans with people I like. My wife and I found a new church that's shaking us out of our spiritual ruts.

In short, I'm using the bad weather and the lack of distractions winter brings to force myself into doing positive things that I might have otherwise neglected.  

It's working so far.  While I still hate the cold and the darkness, the coping strategy of self-renewal and social bonding has made this February (and the back end of January, which can be just as bad) more interesting--and more fun--than any winter I can recall.

I'm sure by the time a sunny spring weekend comes, my brain will be fried, my body will be tired, and I'll yearn to sit in the sun with a refreshing beverage and watch mindless tv on the porch of my favorite sports bar.  That's exactly what I plan to do, when the time gets here.

But until then, I'm stuck with February.  It's cold and it's dark, but, as I've learned this year, at least it can still be interesting.