Code Monkey Happy Ninja Banana Surprise!

I’m motivated to write this because frankly, I’m running into too much fear lately. I’m running into so many questioning, non-understanding faces that it’s ridiculous. And it frustrates me, because I want to shake so many people and say “LISTEN, just LIVE your freakin’ life!” Seriously.

But first, let me tell you how my sister and I got the Mary Poppins show canceled last Saturday.

We did. I can tell you how. Drum roll please…. O’Neal’s Law™ strikes again!! YAY! Yippeee! WoooooHOOOOOO!! For those unfamiliar with O’Neal’s Law™, let me state again: Murphy’s Law says “what can go wrong, will”. Neato. BOOORRRRRINNNGGG. O’Neal’s Law™ says “what can go wrong, will, but will go wrong in a very spectacular, quite possibly dramatic, and in the very least, entertaining fashion. Also, whatever has go wrong, will go wrong specifically because everything else was going oh-so-gloriously.”

There. Now you know. For instance, Murphy’s Law™ would have your car break down in the middle of the night, when you’re only 30 minutes from your sister’s house in Nashville. O’Neal’s Law™ has the car break down as you’re driving 55mph at 2am around a curve at the top of a small mountain pass with only a concrete wall and a grassy area ahead of you and because the car is completely electric you have no brakes, no steering, and no lights. And your sister is out of town, somewhere in Georgia. And your cell phone just died.

See? Two totally different cases of experience.

Supercalifragilisticexpi – - STOP PLEASE. STOP PLEASE.

So my sister came up for my birthday weekend and she took me to see Dave Brubeck who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of a most awesome tune called Take Five and also the album it was recorded for and that was super cool. Dude is old. Dude can play. I also had lots o’ beer at my favorite place, and then proceeded to have conversations with my sister I don’t remember. But she was laughing the next day, so I guess they were fun.

Saturday was The Perfect Chicago Day™. Low 80s, breeze off the lake, clear blue sky, holy cow I live for this. And we had an awesome day. Went to a couple cafes, went shopping, went for a tandem ride. Evelyn is still alive, thankyouverymuch.

And then I decided to surprise my sister with tickets to see Mary Poppins. And I was going to do it right. I was going to get floor seats, the good kind, not the ones behind the speaker/rope/technician/curtain. No, no, real. Frackin’. Good. Seats. How good? Ninth row, center section, aisle good. Awesome. Evelyn was stoked, super excited, and “chiding” me because it was MY birthday weekend. Whatever. She’s my sister, she’s my LITTLE sister, and dangit, I gotta do stuff like that for her. Done.

We go to see the show. It is still beautiful out.

The show starts, and it is awesome. The singing is good, the set creative in its transitions and there ya go. We see/hear/enjoy two songs and then the third one starts and Bert is singing, painting in the park and then some lady all in black steps from stage left and says “STOP. STOP PLEASE.”

Curtain down. House lights up. Ms. Announcer Voice™ saying “We apologize to you for the interruption, but we are having technical difficulties and will resume as soon as this is fixed. Again, apologies for the interruption.”

20 minutes go by. And I realize, O’Neal’s Law™ has just struck me down. In fact, I’m SO sure that O’Neal’s Law™ is striking that I make a bet with Ev, for $1.00, that the show will be canceled. Evelyn immediately realizes that this is unfair, she’s just lost a bet, but I force her to shake my hand anyway. Done.

Another 20 minutes and I realize, just as a watched pot won’t boil, a watched curtained stage isn’t going to do jack. So I decide to help it along, and excuse myself for a smoke.

I go outside, and it’s raining. I roll a new one, light it, and just as I’m getting ready to enjoy my time of vice, whaddayaknow I get a text from my dearest sister that yes, indeed, “CANCELED”.

I won a dollar.

And there you have it, another splendid example of what happens when you put us two together and things are going swimmingly. Sooner or later, it will all crash down and there is nothing, NOTHING you can do against it. You can only go with it. And laugh. Which we did. A lot.

Which brings me to the title, the real subject for today: how do you live with the “unknowns”?

For those of you in denial, you think you DO know. You’ve got a great plan. You’re going to work tomorrow. You’re going to buy a house in the future. You’re going to get a new car, or a new computer, or go on that trip or hell, run errands this weekend and hopefully find that cool piece of clothing at the store you saw on sale two days ago. And they’ll still have it in your size.

Really? You know all that? No you don’t. You don’t even know if there’s a random small, but vicious blood clot running through your system this very minute just itching to get stuck in the wrong place and suddenly place you in a position of life or death.

You don’t know next week, you don’t know tomorrow, and you certainly don’t know the next minute.

So how is it that I find so many people living in fear of the unknown? It’s not like we’re not familiar with it. It’s not like it’s some stranger who just knocked on our house of life and said “Hello, I’m Unknown, and I’ve come to visit! Do let me in, and do you have pickle soup?”

No. Our unknowns exist beyond as small a span a time as the next minute, around the corner merely five feet ahead, or just over there, ten feet, in Aisle 10, next to the orange juice.

I have people wondering how I’m sane, not knowing where I’m going to live in a month or so, or what job I’ll have or what the hee haw is going on with such-and-such and isn’t that driving you mad?

Sure, it’ll drive me mad, if I insist on KNOWING. And it’ll drive you mad too. Certifiably.

Instead, I insist on living. I take the moments as they come, the days as they unfold, and the nights as they linger.

That doesn’t mean I don’t make plans. That doesn’t mean I’m a wish-wash of Charlie Brown indecisiveness. It doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes, dreams, and big ideas of which I’d like to see tangible evidence of progress in the future.

But what it does mean is that I don’t live in fear of the unknown. I don’t shirk away from something new, a “what if” or a “but it might…”. If there’s something that I think I will enjoy, and the experience presents itself, then I step forward. If I find that stepping forward gets me struck by lightening because I happen to be the same height as Pikachu, then I try stepping back and see what happens.

And, quite often, I find myself laughing.

(not to be misread as “What I’m Not Going to Tell You, Now That I’m BLACK”) <-- thank you, Mark

¡Hola! ¿Como está?

I am now physically, mentally and emotionally back in Chicago. I've been back, physically, for over a month now. Mentally, it took about a week or so before ALL the brain cells decided to volunteer for service again, and re-enlist in their various divisions: Job Labor and Drudgery, Fun Happy Spastic Randomness, Sexy Housemaid Chore-mongering, and Sleep-o-matic Dreamcastic Theatre. And well, emotions? What emotions? I have none. *snick. and er.*

For those of you first discovering that I actually have a blog, like to share thoughts, and can actually type in a somewhat literate fashion, welcome. This is my life. In a handbasket. Enjoy the free entertainment.

For those of you who were wondering where-the-heck-and-what-the-heck has Billy been for the past month and a half, well, I'm not really going to tell you that. I'll tell you where I've NOT been: Mexico. Nor have I been in the Philippines, Caribbean, Kenya, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, China or France. A shame that last one - that was part of one of my plans, eight months ago.

And so, I get to my point of today's post, under the lovely general category of Monkey Mondays. Mondays suck. They're meant to suck. I mean, one of the days of the week HAS to suck, consistently. Otherwise, how else would we celebrate other ones in particular? Some people love Mondays. Those are the same people that loved pop quizzes worth 20 percent of your grade in Calculus. I hate those people.

Having your plans changed immeasurably can also suck. Let me tell you how:

I made the decision to go to Mexico in January. I was finalizing things then as well, slammin' through paperwork and logistics and otherwise dead set on going. Exactly two weeks after I had confirmed going, I got my best full time job offer ever. During layoffs. I had to say "no". Ouch. I would have been set monetarily for the rest of the year, big time. But no, I was going to Mexico.

March. Chicago to Mexico. I was to be there for six months.

May. Mexico back to Chicago. Oops. NOT in Mexico for six months. Make that only two months. Scramble to find housing, scramble to revamp ye olde resume, scramble to get all brain cells, body cells, and other randomly found on the sidewalk cells working together as one. Beer.

June. Winter revisits Chicago. Ouch. Double oops. Many, many unhappy people. Unhappy economy. Job cells getting restless. Emotions running free, unleashed, screaming "Look ma! No hands!"

This past weekend. Summer arrives. Maybe for good. Maybe just for a two day visit. We don't know, we live in Chicago. We've learned to not really trust the weather, but at the same time to grab the sun with both hands and stare at it as long as we can because tomorrow it might not be around, and then it won't really matter that we're all blind from burning our eyes out because there wouldn't be anything to see anyway.

I'm not going to tell you that my life has been interesting, especially starting when I got back to Chicago. I'm not going to tell you that all my plans were pretty much kicked to the curb exactly one week after being back. I'm not going to tell you that if I didn't go with the flow, I would be a very unhappy, stressed out person. I'm not going to tell you I find happiness in the simplest of things, like walks along the lake, coffee with friends, or running into random people on the sidewalk I haven't seen in months.

I'm not going to tell you there's a song in my head, it's in F minor with interludes of D flat major and F major and A minor thrown in for good measure. I'm not going to tell you about the day two staff members at a hardware store kept checking on me because I'd wandered in, hair unkempt, frayed jeans sagging past Crackdom, walking a little stiff and cheerfully wishing the counter staff Happy Saturday, looking at all the light bulbs.

It was Sunday.

I'm not going to tell you about the day I showed up for one of my first gigs, all bushy-tailed, ready to go, plow, stream some code from my brain to my hands to the keys to the board to the net.

24 hours early.

I'm not going to tell you how all my stuff is in Nashville, myself is in Chicago, and parts of me are still missing topes, quesillo, invisible highway lanes, thistle bushes and Hug Attackers. Children who live at a particular home just outside Tlacolula de Matamoros, Mexico, it seems, have found a permanent residence in my heart.

And I’m certainly not going to tell you that a man can make the best laid plans and within a twirl of the wind, find they’ve all been re-arranged, changed, canceled, remade, added to and all together mixed up beyond recognition.

I will, however, tell you that’s not at all necessarily a bad thing.

I’m in Chicago, and Chicago has said “welcome back, and oh by the way, all the plans you’ve had in your head are now gone, again. Have fun!”

Welcome back, indeed. Happy Monday.

I’m listening to a song by Rob Dougan (and you should too), and for those of you who are Matrix fans, you owe this man for one of the best songs from that movie. His album, “Furious Angels” still rocks. Anyway.

My theme song right now is “I’m Not Driving Anymore”, and I haven’t been for some time, especially the past couple of months. I do believe I’m walking, and in fact, at times, skipping, dancing, strolling merrily along my way. But I’m a little…. uneasy. And not all-together here.

My body is in Chicago, my heart in Oaxaca, and my stuff is in Nashville. Help?

I own the stuff I brought in my bags with me from Oaxaca. I’m selling the stuff that’s in Nashville. I gave away some stuff in Oaxaca before I came back up, because I didn’t need them.

Why am I doing this? What the frack am I doing?

*sigh*

I’m writing now because I think it’s important to show the weak times as well as the strong. And so, today, here’s a weak one – and it’s based on this: I am still very much in the hole financially, in terms of loose ends that need to be closed, and in terms of the goals that I must reach before even attempting to return to Oaxaca.

I am weak now, because that age-old friend, Mr. D. Oubt and his cousin The Great Unknown™, have quietly come beside me, and begun their ever-generous whisperings of wondering. What if I don’t find work before the end of May? What if I don’t teach at all this summer? What if August comes and I still haven’t hit the level I need to in the account to please the gods of immigration? What if another jaw-dropping job opportunity comes up? And then it spins from there… what if I go down there and I realize I’m not really there? What if I get denied on my FM3 visa? What if, what if what if what if

And then words, in the firm voice of such disciplined confidence I always respected, break through all the muttering, chattering and whispering.

Rule #1: Be where you are.

If there’s one thing that has stuck out to me from all the things my dad told me, it was Rule #1. And he meant it. It always struck me that when dad was doing ANYTHING, he was THERE, doing THAT. If he was in a bike race, or training, or working on his bike, or driving, or singing, or teaching, or watching a movie, or the news, or even something so trivial, mundane as mowing the lawn… whatever it was, he was there – focused on the task, and more often than not, working on it till it was completed.

I am the opposite. I have so many incompletes there are times they keep me up at night – and it is often one of the main reasons I don’t WANT to sleep – because what if tomorrow doesn’t come? I’m not finished! I’m not done! Just one more line of code, one more line of music, one more chord here, one more thought on this problem, one more email, one more text one more ZzzzZzzzzZzzzz….

So I have tried to focus, although it’s been challenging trying to answer so many questioning, shocked faces of recognizing I’m in Chicago, not Oaxaca, that it’s been only two months, not six, and that the next words out of my mouth “I’m here for four months” don’t make sense, and take explanation for understanding.

I can only hope that I’ll have work to focus on soon, to take me away from the daydreamingness of another land, a mind distracted, disenchanted with current surroundings. Until then, I must be where I am. I must BE here in Chicago. I must complete tasks at hand, goals set before me, obligations still warranting attention. And hopefully, I’ll complete them well – as I intended the first time I went down to Mexico.

120 hours here. 120 days till there.