Dull drivel

It's been a while since I've written anything. And I feel a driving need to do so now. I need the release... all this pent up energy needs to come out in a sustained slow burn or a dramatic supernova! Burn? Supernova? What the heck am I talking about? I haven't the foggiest but I have a feeling I'm going to like it.

For starters the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur. A quicksand like monotony that leaves one without enough energy to do anything to break it. Work has not been the problem... quite to the contrary it's what has kept me going. But what happens when I’m not working? Nothing! I feel heavy… a feeling that reminds me of a hot, humid tropical afternoon, the kind when it feels like the sky itself is weighing down upon your shoulders. Part of the problem is that my body clock has gone AWOL… I believe it is on vacation somewhere a few time zones away while I’m still here in SLC! Who in heaven’s name gave my body clock permission to leave me? Sure as hell wasn’t me. And how does it feel? It feels like I’ve been channel-surfing through my days and catching nothing but the same dumb ads on every channel! That’s a little messed up. But not nearly as messed up as insomnia! That, my friend, is a whole different ball game.

That’s right, insomnia! Imagine waking up drenched in sweat in the middle of the night only to realize that you’re not yet in bed and your eyes shut off no more than ten minutes ago. Imagine lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling until suddenly it’s no more than a few inches from your face. Imagine staring into the pages of a book until you start seeing ants run up and down the spaces between the words. Imagine looking at the clock one moment to see the hands at 1 am and to turn around and looking at it after a few minutes later to see the hands at 5:30am… you wonder where the hours went but you do remember every song you listened to. And when sleep does come at some ungodly hour, it brings no relief. Instead it brings dreams… visions of a gray world set to a background score that is something akin to the sounds made by a ceiling fan squeaking for some grease as it rotates at that odd pace that is neither slow nor fast but is annoying in the extreme. It makes you want to lash out and tear up everything in sight. Only, you can’t move… you can’t even shut your ears. Scary thought, huh?

If you still don’t understand what I’m talking about, picture getting stuck on a long bus ride next to a bigoted, narrow-minded, conservative know-it-all who acts so “nice” it makes you want to gag. Yes, you know the kind… the kind that can’t stop telling you how right they are and how wrong you are… in the politest terms of course. And all this after they’ve known you for all of 3 minutes. The conversation feels like something between a visit to the dentist to get a tooth pulled and sitting in a car without air-conditioning on a sultry summer afternoon, staring at the barren landscape as you wait for an endless cargo train to roll by at an annoyingly slow pace. By the time you get off that bus, you’ve lived a lifetime in purgatory… every neuron in your brain screams for a violent release. People like this remind me of the immense black cloud of mosquitoes that circles above your head just after the rains… they don’t attack you all at once but instead adopt a spirit-crushing pattern of random bites. If only you had a flamethrower.

Speaking of spirits being crushed, picture trying to accomplish the most trivial of tasks in a bureaucraZy – running from pillar to post until you fall to your knees screaming and weeping in defeat.

Now why have you been picturing all this depressing and disturbing imagery? Why, for my entertainment of course! All that I’m saying is that you don’t know dull until you can tell apart 256 shades of gray. Now that I have transferred my entire load to you, my dear reader, I shall retire to bed. Oh sweet joy, my body clock has skipped back a couple of time zones. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!