The least comfortable chair

There’s a chair in my living room that’s old and kind of broken down. The springs need replacing and the padding needs re-stuffing. It’s one of those old pieces of furniture that’s been handed down for a while. My wife is the third generation to have it. The chair is well made and I like how it looks.

I choose to sit in this chair more than any other piece of furniture in the house. Which doesn’t make much sense as it really isn’t a comfortable chair. There’s a couch and another chair in the same room (that’s right, I’ve got three pieces of furniture in one room. I make that kind of money). But I almost always choose the old, uncomfortable chair.

And I think I know why I choose the chair. I don’t want to be comfortable.

If I sit comfortably in my living room I might relax. And I get comfortable and relaxed that means I’m satisfied with what I’ve done and where I’m at. I don’t think I deserve to relax until I’ve accomplished every goal. If I haven’t managed to get 40 hours worth of work accomplished in a single day, in addition to my day job, than I haven’t really done enough to deserve a relaxed moment in my living room.

These are unrealistic expectations, to be sure, but isn’t that better than complacency?

Probably not

LW

People Wrestle Alligators

If there was one motto hammered into my head growing up it was “you can do and be anything you want.”

My mother presented and believed in this concept as the literal truth. She taught not only that I could find a job doing anything I wanted but that if I really truly wanted to become a frog robot I could find a way to make that happen.  Maybe I would first have to develop frog robot technology and then create a way to implant my thoughts and personality into the frog robot. Or maybe I would have to reshape what it meant to be a frog robot into a realistic possibility. But if I really wanted to be a frog robot that shit could come true.

This is a silly idea. Can someone really be anything they want? I’m still not convinced it’s possible. Even just the I want to be a doctor I can be a doctor kind of way. Some people can’t do some things no matter how much they want to do them. What really happens is they change their wants to fit the possibilities in front of them or they live a life of disappointment.

Is that pessimistic?

This is mostly how I think and then I remember that there are people who wrestle alligators. Someone once decided they wanted to wrestle an alligator, enjoyed and then decided, “hey, I’d like to make a living doing this,” and they got that shit done. That really weighs in favor of the possibility of possibilities.

I could probably become a professional alligator wrestler if I really wanted to so I can probably became a professional whatever I want to be. But that doesn’t sound very pessimistic so I have to think about it some more.

Love

Levi

Ouiji

I think I might have summoned the wrong kind of spirits. I got out my trusty ouiji board tonight to try and get some answers. No matter what question I asked the answer was always the letter F followed by the letter U. At first I thought it was initials of some spirit I had accidentally summoned but then I realized this board was cursing at me.

Well, I said a few choice words of my own to the ouiji board and they were not too well received. A cold wind passed through they room blowing out my candles and mussing up the pentagram I’d made from sand and that pretty much ended the session.

I guess I need to work on my communication skills.

Or talk to the living.

Love

Levi

You’re in the water!

I wish I could arbitrarily declare a new rule or boundry and everyone just had to accept it.

I took the little miss to a playground after work and school today. She mostly played on her own or with me but for a little while she played with a few older girls.

The leader of the group was clearly enjoying her dictatorship and making sure to announce the next thing in order to keep all the other girls off balance and unable to declare some different idea. At one point there were four little girls on a large teeter totter and one of the girls wasn’t listening to the older boss girl. The girl in charge was getting frustrated and making demands but this younger girl really wanted to get her plastic shovel that was off in the sand. The younger girl got off of the teeter totter and started walking towards her shovel. The girl in charge, clearly having excercised all of her options, used the only weapon she had left. The younger girl had gotten two steps away from her shovel when the girl in charge shouted, “you’re in the water. You can’t be in the water. Get back in the boat.”

That’s right, this little girl changed the reality for all the other girls involved. Just moments ago the teeter totter was a car and they were driving somewhere, but she made a new declaration and the car disappeared and the road instantly turned to sea. At least, those changes happened for her and the little girls on the teeter totter. The girl heading for the shovel was faced with a dilemma and it really stopped her for a moment. She absolutely, without question, needed to get this plastic shovel. But, about the worst breech of ettiquette for children is to not accept the rules of a game. Even when those rules are changed in an instant and only changed to serve the interests of one bossy little girl. It’s okay to make the world change by declaring something new, it’s not okay to ignore the new declaration. I don’t know why this is how the playground works but it is.

The little girl who needed that damn shovel, though, determined that her need for the shovel was greater than her need to obey the rules of the pack. She took the last two steps to get her shovel. The girl in charge was irritated and the sea disappeared. The other little girls invovled got off of the teeter totter and everyone moved on to their own things. No one could maintain the fantasy at that point because it had been proven false.

Someday I’m going to be in a meeting at work and I’m going to want someone to stop saying literally the most boring thing in the world ( this happens at every meeting I’ve ever been in, sometimes I say it) and I will declare that no one in a blue shirt can use nouns and maybe, just maybe everyone will accept it and the boring will stop. Or maybe the boring shovel will win.

LW

Illusive speed

I love

running

on an incredibly

windy day.

I can

pretend

that I’m

extremely

fast.

LW