Cynisism…It Comes With the Funk I’m In

Lately, much to my disappointment, everyone seems to be annoying me. That guy driving ten miles a hour under the speed limit, the fifteenth scam call of the day,  asking my wife a question and her thinking my motive for asking be different then the real reason. It’s even been Lucy the Wonder Dog not listening to me after I’ve called her twenty times to leave whatever she’s smelling alone and get on with her business, or her running down the street in pursuit of one of the many squirrels that we have luring her away. But it’s not just things I have no control of, it is also a feeling I’m about a half-step off and my focus has decided to be unfocused. I have a list four pages long of things needing or wanting done. I’m in a funk and I can’t get in rhythm with the music.

From time to time this irritating period comes over me. I fight to get out of it, but sometimes I give in and try to roll with it. It’s kind of like stopping the worrying about being politically correct in a society that has restricted how someone feels without understanding the why and simply expecting everyone to fall in line because that is what someone other than the offended party want. There’s no compassion other than for what they might have in the moment as control over someone else. Politically correct is nothing more than control to make everyone conform to the ideology you believe in. There is no basis behind it other than this control. We mask the control by saying it is to protect ones fellow man but knowing that the minoritizing of someone you believe to be wrong because they may be minoritizing someone else is still minoritizing. You’ve just decided on what means more to you and the offensive party be damned. I know a few that have made an art at this. I had something happen recently where I had put a bad dad joke on a family thread and the only response on the thread was someone telling me someone else wasn’t going to like it. All I could think was not that this person wouldn’t like what I say, no, what I thought of was how much control this person was under who responded to me. I’m not trying to say if anyone was wrong or right, in fact I feel everyone was acting in their best self-interest. And when it comes to others, there is nothing more annoying than self-interest. When driving, it is the biggest cause of road rage, and most of us feel the annoyance because we just want people to display common courtesy we have deemed common. I have a good friend that would probably tell me that common courtesy would fall into the same category as common sense. If things were common, then everyone would have it.

I have too many things coming up to be feeling this way. I need to be locked in to be on top of my game. It’s not the things already set to occur; it is those things I want to occur that seem out of reach because of the inability to step over the hurdle. Where did my sense of jumping in with both feet, conquer and make myself an authority on the subject go? Maybe its an incentive thing. Am I lacking the motivation, or have I become lazy in retirement and don’t want to upset my applecart that represents peace and tranquility? Apparently, life has forgotten that I am retired, and I just want to enjoy the simple life. Do I secretly still have something to prove? To whom? Well, the answer should be obvious, my boredom needs a challenge. I understand the challenge, I understand what it is I should do. All of these are rhetorical questions and have been answered before by me asking over and over again. I think Jen is tired of waiting on me and has moved on to her own gratifying things. She is busier than a one-armed paperhanger. She is inspiring to lots of women, to me it’s just Jen, but standing back and observing one does see that not much stands in her way of self-trial. She doesn’t always get it right, but she does what we all should do and learns from the mistake and tries again, differently this time. Maybe the only thing she won’t try again is the business thing, but I think she may have figured that out too. Her Sips-N-Art was a big hit the first time around, so she is doing it again. She doesn’t charge for it, but certainly could, but the idiotic stepping through a minefield the State of Texas lays out for small business is laughable. Certainly, a pain to deal with and probably why she doesn’t charge. Too bad, one thing is for sure with her, she is passionate about all the things that she dabbles in, and the State of Texas touts being light-handed when it comes to business. Maybe so, if they spoke English on the rules and terminology they use, otherwise you need a law degree to stay on the straight and narrow with the Secretary of State.

My frustration lies more in knowing what I don’t want and less about what I do. I can’t focus enough to even sit down and learn more about what it is I need to know. This knowledge, in knowing myself, is certainly the key to me pressing forward on that leap with both feet to finding what it is that could center my life again. I need the center to feel good about myself, but more so need it to have the confidence I need to succeed. I don’t deal with failure and obstacles very well, that is obvious. Some I admire in their resilience; some I think are just stupid to keep stepping in the same pile of shit life keeps putting in front of them. Maybe they just have failed so much that that is where they are most comfortable being. Maybe, but confidence is key for me and a roadmap laying out the pitfalls and shit piles lets me move forward; and a good pairs of hip boots would help too.

But this funk is affecting things I already feel accomplished about. I’ve got hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in fishing gear and fly-tying equipment. I can’t even find the motivation to set things up, let alone tie a fly and go fish with it. I’ve even lost confidence in my fly-casting. Something I know I had gotten pretty good at. I’m beginning to feel my mind is in its eighties and I’m taking the elder-block approach to things. Decide today I am going to do something, only foiled by an evening of thinking so much that I talk myself out of doing whatever it was that caused excitement yesterday. I laughed at my mother-in-law for doing it and lately have been humored by my dad doing it too. This just won’t do for me, I’m way too young for that by twenty years. I had a dream prior to retiring that I’d make more and be more successful in twenty years than the forty years of working. Some call it gumption, some intestinal fortitude, and some simply driven. What it is called, I want me some and I want out of this funk. I want life on my terms and although in theory I already have it, I really don’t feel it. Too many people still count on me, when I just want one dad, a wife, and a dog, kids and grandkids to count on me. I guess if I’m going to have a funk hanging over me, then I better find the right music to get me be-bopping again. Until then, get in the right lane if you have to drive slowly, leave me alone about whether some party not in our presence would have been offended and therefore you are for them, and for God’s sake, would someone do something about Donald Trump? He is the most annoying son-of-a-bitch on earth. Man, I hope he goes to jail. Oh yeah, can every MAGA dumb fuck out there realize how stupid they are and go back to the hole they crawled out of? Come to think of it, maybe if I’d leave Morning Joe off in the morning, I wouldn’t be so out of sorts with the world by the end of breakfast. New plan, find my music list!!