Unless you're Charlie Sheen, I've come to realize that life always seems to find a way to level you out. If you're feeling too great, something will knock you down a peg and vice versa. I come to look at this as a universal law.
Minor example:
A friend had asked me to check the Smith Westerns show with her last night, but I felt I really needed to get some things done after a hectic two weeks. I came home feeling particularly zombie-ish, after another 8 hours at the coal mine, knowing that there was work to do. For instance, there were two years of income taxes to be submitted, some medical forms for prescription rebates that needed to be sent, an apartment that required tidying for a pending dinner guest (ooh la la) job boards that had to be searched, a bunch of story ideas that were asking to be hashed out, an even bigger pile of stories that begged to be completed, a few travel plans for upcoming events that required some coordination, and a future that probably necessitated a second look, if not a complete overhaul.
So like I said, there was work to do.
I made some dinner quickly and then set to filling out the tax forms until I realized that I didn't have my 2010 info printed off and - more importantly - I didn't have the tax forms. They'll have to wait. I then got out my prescription receipts - for the old foe, rosacea - only to discover I'd completely filled out the form I had to send in six months ago and forgot to send it. Since then, I had collected an additional $32 receipt and - again, more importantly - changed addresses. I'll need to get a new form so... that one will have to wait.
I then went onto the job boards and found the same old, rehashed, phony recruiter, analyst, marketing specialists jobs posted at each site and gave up.
I did find this beauty though:
Uncle Sam wants you... and your clarinet
Since I was on the computer, I thought, why not jot down some of the story ideas that were popping around in my head. Easy enough. I opened an old Word document called 'story ideas' and then added a few to the ever-growing list. These things are like seeds buried in a pot in a dark, dry attic. After seeing all these ideas, I lost hope and lost any energy I had to flesh out some of the partially-watered plants.
So what was I left with? My dishes? Meh... Make future plans? I think about those enough, so because I hadn't slept well the night before and since wanted to tire myself out, I grabbed my hockey skates and stick and set outside for Parc Lafontaine.
Now initially when I moved into this apartment, I was giddy in anticipation of a winter spent on the park's two rinks, as I would only be five minutes away. But with an upswing in general activity (and my hockey homey, Freduardo, also becoming increasingly busy and leaving me with no one to head out there with) I've only found the time to get out maybe a half dozen times. Due to this, every hockey outing has left me doubled over on the ice, sucking wind through burning lungs after only 15 minutes, while dudes twice my age skate circles around me. It hasn't been very enjoyable.
But last night, I walked over slowly, taking in the blue-nearly-black sky and the stars shining. It's sad how little I look up at the sky here in Montreal. The snow was hard from weeks of melting and freezing and melting again and dogs ran on top of it and then fell into it, as their owners stood laughing, smoking and chatting. It felt like I was seeing the park for the first time almost.
I put on my skates standing up and then joined a game. The first time the puck was passed to me, I gave it away immediately, because it had been a few weeks since I'd played. This went on for a while until finally I started to catch up mentally and then I started threading some passes and deking some guys and I got so into the game that I forgot to be tired and forgot to be winded and I forgot my job and my worries and I just played.
We went from four-on-four, to three-on-three, to two-on-two and eventually, taber-knackered (as the Lazer would say) we decided to leave. I was sweating buckets and was completely bagged, but I felt like I'd just had a full-body and mind massage. I felt the cold air on my throbbing face and it was like awaking completely into the moment. I wondered why I hadn't done this every night.
To tie this back to my original point, I got home, threw my skates and sticks on the floor and started at the dishes. Right away though, I felt that something was up. As I dipped my hands into the dishwater, I noticed that I couldn't see them if I kept my gaze at the tap. This temporary blind spot is the first warning I get of an oncoming migraine headache.
I hadn't had one in about a year and four months and I was surprised that my body would choose now of all times to give me one, but when I look back at my history, it makes sense. Whenever I'm stressed out and then I go and have a euphoric workout, my body completely de-stresses and that changes something about my blood pressure or blood flow or something, and that leaves me prone to these headaches.
Seeing as I had a really bad one about three years ago, where I lost feeling slowly from my left foot to leg to chest to arms to hands to face to tongue and had trouble forming a simple sentence, I took care to notice if any of those symptoms were reoccurring. My left foot felt a little funny, but I figured it was just from the hockey. I took a shower and that's when my auras (think of a blind spot that takes a weird shape and becomes like a greyish, twitching and pulsing puddle or blotch over your line of sight) went into full-blown mode. It was like I had the Northern Lights going off between my eyes and the world and I had to try to look through them. It's typically this part of the migraine experience that scares me most because I don't know what causes this to happen and the experience is completely debilitating since I really can't see. These auras were probably the worst I've ever had and so I made my way to bed and turned off the lights and tried to sleep before the pain hit. Didn't happen, when the auras started to subside 20 to 30 minutes later, the stabbing feeling had kicked in right behind my right eye, which is where it always happens. Last night, it was worse than most. It felt like someone was coring into my brain and then injecting something into it that was expanding that core. It felt awful and then I started getting nauseous. I started to recite easy to remember quotes or lyrics to make sure I wasn't having any of the speech difficulties. I was sweating and rolling around in bed and I couldn't take my mind off of the pain. I then decided to get an old movie - Donnie Brasco - that I can nearly remember word for word, and I put it on while turning my laptop screen off, so I would just listen to the movie.
I think I probably fell asleep at 3 a.m.
Anyhow, that's a long-winded way of saying that life always finds a way to sprinkle some bad into the good or give you some good when you're feasting on bad. This might be the only thing I am sure of in life. That's almost how I would define life. ie. When I start to get back into some kind of fiscal comfort and I start planning a short trip or a small purchase I need, a long-lost bill always arrives in the mail. "That's life," I think to myself.
Also, I probably wrote this whole thing because I might have felt guilty for missing work today seeing as I wasn't 'sick' in the traditional sense. I mean, I didn't get any sleep and my head still hurts, but I probably could have gone in if I needed to. Yet, I was sort of suffering from a 'migraine hangover,' where I wasn't really thinking clearly most of the day, evidenced by my foray out for some groceries, where I tried speaking to a grocery clerk in French and I found myself stuttering on a word for a good three seconds.
2 comments:
Has your job searching led you to this one yet?
http://mlb.com/dreamjob/
I think you should apply.
Man, so I hit the link two hours ago and saw that "SHIT the deadline to apply is in an hour." I put as many words together as I could as quick as I could about my love for baseball:
"1) While I can’t claim to have fallen in love with baseball the traditional, romantic way - cramming into a crowded subway car with my old man and taking the long ride out to the ballpark, to cheer out the home team with a hot dog in one hand and a pennant in the other – I’d like to think that my long distance relationship with the game gave me a better appreciation for it, which made my first personal experience that more intimate and special.
Okay, enough with the uncomfortable sexual analogy. The thing is, I grew up just south of the Arctic Circle in a small city called Yellowknife, where snow covers the ground for more than seven months a year and the nearest major league ballpark is probably a 30-hour drive, which probably comes out to 30,000 hours by dogsled.
Despite this obvious handicap, I grew up breathing the game. I can probably thank my parents for that. They both played fastball – the underhand, windmill pitch version of the game – and I lived at the ballpark every summer. The neighbourhood kids and I would scratch out meager livings at the weekend tournaments, where foul balls returned to the scorekeeper would earn us 25 cents – or $1 if we looked really pathetic. I would batboy for my parents’ teams and run up and down the dugout stairs impatiently until the games finally ended and I could take a couple swings, run the bases and – of course – slide into home.
Some of my biggest moments as a kid happened on the ball field. In kindergarten, my dad let me step into the batter’s box against his team’s pitcher. On the third pitch, I lined one down the third base line. The only problem? I had made contact with my thumb. I ran straight into our truck, closed the door and then started crying. I didn’t want anyone to see my tears. (No crying in baseball, right?) A few years later, my dad’s team was short and I got the call up, probably becoming the youngest men’s league player in city history, playing one inning in left field against the jail team. There wasn’t a prouder nine-year-old on the planet that night.
We were far from a real park though and so I had to get my fix through Edmonton Journal boxscores and our NBC feed from Detroit. I became acquainted with Lou Whitaker, Sparky Anderson and Allan Trammel. However, the Blue Jays were starting to put together a squad and each morning, I would study the stats page like a mathematician to see how Devon White, Kelly Gruber and, my favourite, Roberto Alomar did the night before.
I still remember the life or death October nights – made that much more dramatic because it was already winter outside – when the Jays did battle first with the Braves and then Mitch Williams and the Phillies. I still remember jumping around my living room like Joe Carter.
Unfortunately, I haven’t done it since."
...and then talked about why the Pujols negotiations will be the biggest storyline of the year (because it will because that's all anyone in the media cares about because they can break stories instead of writing thoughtful pieces about the games, players, etc. ie. see Derek Jeter this summer)
and I submitted it and got super-pumped...
until I saw that the next step was to submit a 2-minute video about why I love baseball, etc. I had 21 minutes. I'm in my boxers, with chocolate milk in my beard. I'm the 'guy on his blog in his basement.' No way I'm submitting a video in 20 minutes and getting this thing.
So that's it. Dream job dashed.
Thanks for the link though, I should have checked it earlier
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