Sorry to be blunt, but it’s been a really shitty year for me. The big ones are, in order:
I guess I’m just on the “short” schedule for this crap: I get the massive “here’s a cluster of hot red pokers up your ass from the universe” beat-down every 6 years, not the classic 7. But regardness the timeframe, make no mistake: I do feel utterly and completely beat down.
I look around, and I see so much of this. I see so many people struggling through beat-down after beat-down. Almost everybody gets fucked by insurance companies. Almost everyone works their ass off for less and less every year. Almost everyone gets nothing but a companion beat-down from their workplaces, if they end up getting hurt and have trouble performing their duties.
I’m tired of it. All of it. It’s all bullshit. Everything, from the maddening series of little problems I’ve had with my bikes over the last week, to the grinding, poverty-level wages WalMart pays employees, forcing them to seek government assistance, profiting off the employees spending that government assistance back into those stores, and then having the gall to call those workers moochers and freeloaders. I’m tired of watching us slowly turning our children’s natural environment into a future nightmare of hell, and lazily arguing about whether it’s even real or whether something should even be done. It’s all bullshit. And I’m tired of it.
I’d say I’m ready to give up, but… I already did. I stopped playing footbag. Bad weather, work pressure, special holiday activities and other obligations that always trump my footbag time; not being able to afford a decent place to go play footbag in bad weather; physical pain, and the cloud of personal and collective dispair. One precious Footbag Thursday slips by. Then, another. Yes, I gave up. I fell into the rabbit hole of anger and dispair.
I finally played footbag again last night. To be clear, I despise my winter kicking situation. The Secret Hideout itself is OK, but… it’s not legitimate. I have to “steal” my time in there, just for my own sanity. And what do I get for trying to take care of myself? The perpetual worry I might get discovered, lose what little I have there, and possibly even lose my job over it. Sorry to sound entitled, but… I deserve better. I’ve played footbag for over 30 years. It’s my life’s work. I deserve to have my kicking time, and space needs, respected. But all I get is beat down, shoved away, and I have to go hide in this skanky, tenuous pit.
But, I still played footbag. It seems like such a small thing; selfish, too. But it gives me a moment of joy, however fleeting. Gravity does not judge, it’s love is pure and consistent. It fuels the light of love inside me, a light that is infinitely more powerful than all the effort I could ever put into fighting the darkness directly. There is a lesson in here, somewhere.
With my soul bathed in the light of love and the power of happiness, even for a few minutes, I can let that powerful light radiate outward. I can project joy and happiness, instead being overwhelmed by anger and dispair. I believe it makes the world a better place, however insignificantly. This, for now, I can do for the world.
1:00 / 79:30 – MY FINAL FOOTBAG TIME TALLY FOR THE YEAR 2012.