“The less routine the more life.”
– Amos Bronson Alcott
I stumble through the progression of days as if the impediments I encounter are always new, as if the furniture that occupies the rooms of my life has always been rearranged over-night and the lights are always off. The furniture has not been rearranged. The lights are usually on. The impediments are the same old road blocks with fresh coats of paint. I do not learn.
I took in a foster cat four weeks ago. She’s beautiful, with a disposition that puts to lie the belief that all calicos are psychotic. She came from the shelter to my house obese, and I agreed to get some weight off of her before we brought her back to the shelter (where well-meaning but clueless hands took pity on her and fed her to her heart’s content)(interesting phrase that, seeing that her heart’s content could have been the death of the said same heart). I thought I’d have her longer – I haven’t even gotten a full pound off of her yet. But a prospective forever home has been approved for her, and she goes to meet her new worshippers tomorrow. I will miss her.
Work is what it is. It’s as though somebody in management dropped copies of 1984 and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book and the words got mixed up. “You got Minilov on my five year plan!” “No, you got five year plan on my Newspeak!” And then in unison: “But wait! They’re perfect together!” Fade to laughing freeze frame. Yes, boys and girls, we have a new five year plan. We are no longer employees; we are team members. That comes complete with new teams and team meetings that we apparently have to attend on a regular basis. We had to take personality profile tests. We now have annual reviews that take five large Excel sheets to put together. (One of the questions on the annual review asks us to rate ourselves on participation in community activities. THAT one got my hackles up. It’s none of their damned business what I do off the clock.) Depending on how we score on our reviews, we get custom made Personal Improvement Plans (PIP’s) that will either show us our way up the golden ladder or our way down the swirley porcelain tank of oblivion. Even I, a shadow in the pig pens of business, have been sucked into the black hole of what amounts to the Ministry of Funny Walks. I think I’ll forgo the walk and see if I can’t find a Segway.
Memorial Day marks six years. If my calculations are correct, my liver would be completing freshman year of college now. It would be looking for a summer job after pickling itself during spring break. Or maybe my liver would have been working full time already – a mechanic, an electrician, a stock boy at Wal-Mart, a drop-out computer genius building the next generation of time-sucking electric vampires in his garage. Conservation of momentum: potential lost for potential gained. Noether’s theorem is satisfied. I am less so.