Rut

As far as the eye could see lay an unblemished white sheet of freshly fallen snow. The quiet beauty of winter sprawled itself out lazily turning an otherwise unremarkable parking lot into a Siberian postcard. I would have stood there longer and espouse more cliches about snowfall except I had a 10 o'clock and this wintry wonderland was standing between me and punctuality.

I stomped through the snow leaving increasingly deeper footprints and for some strange reason I thought that I should be carrying a broom so that I could cover my tracks because there are a lot of cannibalistic Inuit hunters roaming around Astoria.

On a snowy day like this all SUV owners have a not so subtle smug look on their faces, much like the one I would be wearing as soon as I dug my jeep out from under the 2 feet of snow that had accumulated all around it. After 15 minutes of furiously lashing at the snow with shovel, pick and broom I started the jeep just to discover that the defroster decided to take the day off...yay for SUVs.

Quite agitated now I trudged back to the other end of the parking lot and dug the sedan out in only 5 minutes. I should be a professional snow remover. With the front and rear defrosters set to scalding I triumphantly rolled out of the parking lot through the driveway, went up the ramp, checked for oncoming traffic then proceeded to turn out onto the street and then promptly got stuck. All the vaunted German engineering that went into the all wheel drive doesn't mean squat against the harsh laws of physics. All four tires spinning above a frictionless surface only generates extreme agitation.

So there I was running late, car stuck in a slushy quagmire while SUV drivers drove by giving me derisively smug looks as they spent their 9 mpg cruising effortlessly as I tried to roll out of the snow pit. I returned a look that I was hoping would convey "I have an SUV in the parking lot, but the defroster's on the fritz, so I have to drive this thing in the damn snow." unfortunately I think the look came across as "Go fuck yourself."

Anyhow as I was trying to dig and roll out of this pit while still racing against the clock, a guy pulls up in a sation wagon/SUV crossover. Great more smugness...I wonder if he'd like shovel for breakfast. He introduced himself as a guy from Chicago and asked for an extra shovel to help dig me out of the ditch. I felt a little guilty for my instinctive mistrust, but the last black guy from Chicago I met is trying to socialize my health care, raise my taxes and take away my guns. But this guy was pretty darn nice and I still made it to my 10 o'clock albeit soaked with dirty slush since I left my driver side window open because I was hot from all the snow shoveling and I didn't want to be sweaty and I drove past an oncoming 18 wheeler which drove right through a puddle giving me a winter log flume experience. Life is great.

What does that have to do with the rut? Not much, I just wanted to share my blizzard misadventure. I suppose you could draw parallels with the car being stuck on that hump of snow and then needing rescue from the Chicago fellow, but no. I don't want to go there.

The biggest benefit of the white stuff is that people bother me a lot less when it's snowing. I have developed a Pavlovian fear of my phone; it's shrill ring and the unceasing blinking of the red LED indicator. Calls, emails, texts, messengers, reminders, updates, downloads and all other manner of merciless demands for immediate attention and response. If blackberries were people they'd be the most soul-sucking, needy, selfish bastards on earth much like (insert favorite enemies)

So the phone, the job, the investments, they all cause large amounts of stress. This stress leads to boredom, restlessness, fatigue and irritability. Those translate into a reluctance to partake in any and all forms of social interaction for fear of more phone calls, texts, etc. which then translates into a chronic low grade depression stemming from stress, fatigue and lack of social interaction.

So physician, heal thyself.

I'm not a physician nor a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist or even someone you should ask for advice at a bar with two people. I'm just a very tired person much like the rest of you. I am exhausted by the same routine of grind, splurge,grind. I'm even more exhausted by the grind, save, grind. I read in a very good book, "The Pursuit of Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert that when we imagine ourselves doing a activity what we actually do is project our current emotional state onto said activity. For example right now I am bored, tired and annoyed. So when imagine going out tonight I will imagine it to be a boring, tiring and annoying night even though I may have the time of my life. Unfortunately our vanity tends to exert a great control over our perceptions. It's more satisfying to the brain to be right than to be happy, so if I project that negativity it is most likely that my evening out will very much live up to my pessimistic expectations.

So I am stuck in this rut because I thought I would be stuck in this rut. I'm quite the annoying little bastard aren't I? Alas, there is a way out. Since we're now aware of our brain's cognitive processes we can definitely delude ourselves into being happy. That's where those "power of positive thinking" people get their smiles, well that and Valium. But if I had the wherewithal to force my mind into a constant state of self-delusional peppiness then I would be a very different person. An entirely different brand of insufferable, but I prefer this version.

That being the case, I have no choice but to proffer the standard options for a Friday night. Drum roll please.....

Let's go:

a) to Atlantic City: drive for four hours in the storm of the century to wager thousands of dollars on a negative expectation and then chide ourselves for our impulsiveness and swear never to return to this den of destitution.

NO

b) to HIRO/Circle/Pink Elephant/Mansion aka hell no/360 degrees of doom/stink pachyderm/hovel again spend thousands of dollars on a negative expectation because on the off chance that one of the members of the roving bands of bottle hopping miners is just pretending to be a veteran digger and is actually a nice person, she will not leave with you because she doesn't want to expose herself to the rest of her pack lest they bar her from future hopping expeditions.

NO

c) to PR. One word to live by. One word to die for. One word to rule all words. NOPR

d) normal activities; watch a movie, eat dinner, bowl, paintball, tennis, swimming, racquetball, etc. etc.
These are all great things to do, but for people who have led a life mired in A,B and C these activities hold little appeal and on the rare occasion that they are appealing, the sad realization that such activities require an extended social network of non-degenerates dawns upon these ABC dwellers and they retreat to their fortresses solitude and bide their time till they can revert to their pagan ways.

So there you have it. A lifestyle rut.

In order to combat this disease I read, watch TV, consider charitable causes and then stick my head in the sand and focus on work because I cannot generate enough momentum to break free of that cycle, I can only hide from it as it stalks me relentlessly. Constantly beckoning with empty promises of drunken glory, superficial beauty and fleeting gratification. I run, it follows and the chase begins anew.

After running so hard, the little remainder of my energy is re-diverted to making money, growing the business, etc. etc. which in turn leads back to the blinking red light and shrill ring of my needy little friend.

Co-dependency is almost as beautiful as freshly fallen snow.