The property bill sitting in my mailbox today wasn’t a shock at all. I expected it to hit around this time of year, and I ballparked the damage well before the punchline emerged from the envelope. I knew the impending savings crunch, too–were I smarter, I would’ve socked away a tiny bit from each paycheck months and months ago, but I never have the wherewithal to adopt this habit. Instead, I end up socking away bigger chunks of cheddar from the pay periods leading up to the deadline. Again, though, standard operating procedure.
What took me by surprise was the sentiment the piece of paper evoked, a feeling of being trapped. I’ve shared this with you before, and it’s only obliquely related to the tax itself. The invoice will be paid in full, rest assured. The feeling has more to do with the sameness of it all–another tax bill, another year. I had hoped skill acquisition and sociability would pave an easy exit, last time we spoke about this, but I’m shuttering the former idea. I just haven’t cared to learn anything new lately.
Sociability’s still important, of course, and in place of skill acquisition is creation. I’m consuming things all the time. Why not try to make something instead, give myself fully to the toil and treasure of the act? There’s something brewing, but I don’t want to talk about it yet, for fear of snuffing out the spark. I’m sorry if I sound too lofty or abstract, so let me be clear here: I’d like to sell out! I’d sell out in an instant.
When you part with co-workers and leave for your next gig, you say your goodbyes, exchange your short-lived vows to “keep in touch,” and then you move on, relegating their names to the endless shelves of LinkedIn. That’s the norm for me, at least. But it doesn’t have to be, as I was reminded tonight. You can run smack into the past and pick up right where you left off–and in doing so, find it to be richly rewarding.
It was a chance encounter in the dairy section at Target, of all places. I ran into a colleague from yore and before I knew it, 40 minutes had flown by. It’s been more than two years since I worked with her, but conversation flowed as freely as if we were on lunch break, with stories, updates on people, new insights on old narratives. I realized these bonds never truly dissipate. There is a common vocabulary shaped by the psychological scars we endured together. It’s like I served with you, shoulder to shoulder, in the dark corners of the corporate world, against a deluge of market forces entirely out of our control. It made my night.
I can’t say the same for tomorrow night, though. You know my stance on Halloween. No matter how much more sociable I’ve become, the core conceit of tomorrow’s holiday continues to be nonsensical and repugnant. Buying a bag or two of candy to distribute would be far less expensive than hitting the movie theater, but it’s not a question of cost. I simply don’t understand the mandate to be regularly summoned by my doorbell to fund the sugar dependencies of complete strangers, even for a day. I’ve prepped, of course, with my usual routine, ensuring my front porch is swept free of poisonous spiders and their authentic webbing and, most importantly, culpability.
The end is so close, I can taste it. And I did so this morning, in a way, when I tore into one of my remaining 22 packets of oatmeal. 22 left! It’s been a long and storied journey, truly. What I didn’t know when breakfast was being irradiated, though, was how oats would be one of the better-tasting items on the menu today. That’s because I tried going paleo tonight for dinner.
I get the premise of paleo. It’s a return to our dining roots, heavy on meat and veg, free of grains and processed foods and sugars. What’s compelling about the regimen is how proponents describe the way they feel after changing their eating habits–productive, energized, never a food coma. I experienced some of this in a limited capacity, years ago, when I weaned myself off processed sugars for a month. I felt great, so the prospect of recapturing this state of mind and enhancing it was just too tempting.
One of my work buddies graciously handed me a vacuum-packed meal from his shipment, a concoction of grass-fed beef, celery root, parsnip, and coconut oil. Sounds edible, right? Wrong. I prepared the dish tonight–over a plate of pasta, as a kind of hedge–and the pasta, it turned out, was an exercise in keen foresight. Paleo? It tastes like 251 million years ago. Imagine finding these ingredients in the dirt and then spraying them all with a hint of coconut. I was ingesting nutrients without the pageantry of flavor.
How can anyone do this for 30 days straight? It occurred to me that you probably can’t, at least for the paleoheads I know, because the words “I cheated” are a common refrain, which is never a precursor to sustainability. Sneaking in a Cuban sandwich over the weekend or a beer on Thursday night–that makes this sound suspiciously like a diet. I’m going to let this train pass. Sorry, cow! Sorry, parsnip. You all died in vain.