Spring cleaning my Brain

After putting it off for months, I finally quit my job and am now your Basic Unemployed Man, but somehow I get an uneasy feeling there's a more sinister meaning to that.

What does a man who's used to 50-hour work weeks do with all the time in the world now? He observes the most inane details and attempts to unravel life's mysteries. Or, at least, I do.

Okay, here's one. Do the guys who draw up those word verification codes try to input hidden clues in them? For example, if you get ucSpmf, does it just mean ucSpmf, or does it mean "you crazy spamming motherfuckers"? I take a sip of hot coffee and ponder on that with a quizzical frown.

Suppose also, just suppose that, were I to collect all codes and crunch them in the anagrammator, I wonder, would I or would I not regret the time wasted on such an idiotic endeavour?

Thankfully, I abandoned the side quest and stuck to my original mission. And the mission is? Well, if my mind were a house, the mission is to renovate the kitchen, redecorate all the rooms, and give the whole thing a new coat of paint.

And start working again by August. Now, if I weren't particularly prone to obsessing over details, such as why didn't the bathroom tiles last as advertised, this would've been a less painful excercise.

Speaking of excercise, that other night, past 12, I took a walk to the 24-hour stalls instead of customarily driving there. I wanted to walk because I was dangerously close to losing my mind to utter despair, which you may have noticed from my recent posts, and I needed some air.

As I was walking beneath this overbearing tree cast in shadows along a darkened street, I thought I heard twigs snapping, and a few leaves fell around me. Under normal circumstances, I would have made like lightning and bolted. Because I am reminded of a story my friend recounted many years ago, about the same tree, when he saw two red glowing eyes staring at him.

But in my current state of mind, I don't believe life could've thrown anything more at me to make me feel worse than I did. So I stopped and looked up into the darkness of the tree silhouetted against the night sky, raised up my hands and whispered fiercely, "Come on! That all you got, pazza? Come on then!"

But, of course, nothing came. Story of my undramatic life. I think about what I did and feel slightly worried, not about the chance that some evil being might've leaped out, but about the fact that I was actually inviting that. Says a lot about my condition.

So I hope you'll forgive my mercurial moods and fickle feelings, but house cleaning is a stressful time. Still, as messy as it is, I know it's built on solid ground.