One Of Those Days...

You ever have one of those days when it seems that, even though you don’t believe in a higher power (or maybe because you don’t), that higher power is thwarting your every attempt to be productive, efficient, or dammit, just get one thing done today?

Well, I’m not having one of those days. But J is. Everything he has tried to accomplish has been thwarted in a singular manner. It is relentless. I found him, twenty minutes ago, sitting on the couch with a toothpick between his lips, staring into space in abject misery. I could tell he was at the brink. The breaking point. The point at which I would’ve succumbed to tears (I cry easily and without much provocation even on a good day). He just looked miserable and angry and frustrated and sad.

You know how it is – you try to accomplish something – you have big plans. Your every move is blocked like there is a bully that has you backed into the corner and keeps saying, try to get out, and when you move to scoot past him, shoves you back.

So what do you do? Well, what I usually try to do is back off. Pick another project, smaller, less complex. More accomplishable. And I keep inching my way down until I find the thing that I can accomplish (which, by that point, is usually finding the Kleenex box by feel because my eyes are puffy and blurry with tears of sheer anger).

But, and this is one reason why I love the man, he does not succumb to tears, or slamming things around (another of my favorite venting methods). He sits and stares into space, then takes a deep breath, and heads back to the self-same project which brought him to such misery. No down-stepping to easier projects for him. I like to see this as evidence of his boundless persistence, although in fact it may be plain stubbornness, a quality, take it from me, he possesses in spades. Either way, it is admirable. I think.