You Might Gag While You’re Reading This

You know what’s totally embarassing?

Having a midlife crisis in public. I mean, how cliche can you get? I turned 40 and shit hit the proverbial fan. See? Another cliche. What the hell is the matter with me?

A lot of stuff has happened since my trip to the big city. The upshot is that my hand has been forced in some ways and, frankly, for the better. I’m going to have to use my time working more strategically, more productively…and the net result will be more time for me.

MEEEEEEEEE. Me. Me me me. And me.

Just me.

All of me.

There is no I in team, but there is a me!

All that me-time is going to be put to good use nurturing something I helped to make and have neglected for a long time. And some of it is going to be spent taking better care of myself.

Or, as my headshrinker likes to call it, “self-love.” Which always makes me laugh like a 13-year-old boy. What she means is that I need to do the basic things that separate us from the animal kindgom, as in…regular bathing.

She says when you feel good, you can’t help but look good. And looking good is a clear signal to the world that you are healthy, focused and ready to face what comes.

I do not look good lately. My skin is a mess and I have new spot of alopecia on the left side of my head, the sinister twin to the large one on the right that has been slowly growing new hair over the last several weeks. And in a cruel twist of irony, I also need to add “full-body laser hair removal” to my Amazon wish list.

I look like I feel: Groggy, confused. Like someone who might need some help.

***

Today, the kids had off school. The teachers claimed it was “randomly selected” for a teacher workshop day, but I smell a candy-scented trail that leads directly to the fact that Halloween fell on a Monday night. They don’t want all those sugar-addled kids at school. Leave that to their mothers.

I called my crackerjack and mostly unemployed babysitter and she took the kids out all morning. I worked my required four hours and then, I did something most magical.

I turned off my email.

Oh yes, I did. And it felt as naughty as a pair of crotchless panties in a convent. I did all this crazy shit, like “laundry” and “dishes” and “floor washing.” I bathed, put on pants without a hole in the knee and a pretty top. I put on mascara.

I know. It’s incredible.

I also did a lot of work for my business, clipping off those loose ends I’ve been tripping over while I was running toward some crazy-ass goal that I cannot achieve. What I want is security. I want what my parents had in their lives, at least what looked like security to me back then.

And guess what? Money does not equal security. Just ask the people Bernie Madoff defrauded. Lightening can and does strike, and sometimes, twice.

I am slowly, slowly understanding what makes me tick. I know, I know, no one gives a rat’s ass about what makes my head so messed up. But I need to, if I am going to get what I want. Which is contentment. Not happiness, not security, not a heated pool with a lightshow and fountains (but if you’re offering one, I wouldn’t want to be rude and refuse).

I want to live each day as it comes without freaking the frack out over what comes next. I’ve lived in the future far too long and my legs are really, really tired from peddling the bike that powers my time machine.

This is my long way of saying that I may be coming close to achieving this:

You’re welcome.