Control

My mom used to have a bumper sticker that said, "since i gave up hope, i feel better" When I was younger I didn't understand why someone would say that. My mom is a bit of a character and she was always finding ways of tricking herself into not disliking her job so that was one of her strategies. To loosen the grip on expectation and rather deal with what comes.

A week or two ago when I was making the turn from my apartment on to the freeway I make every day I saw someone coming at me at about 50 miles an hour from the opposite direction. It wasn't a unique thing because every day people hurtle around the corner and only a few inches of paint and the invisible social contract keeps everyone from smashing into each other over and over in a never ending 20 car pile up at that bend. Every time I would go around at the busier times of day I would find my mind starting to wander and really start to embrace terrible scenarios where I would end up eating it right there after getting head onned by a chevy blazer or some suburban moms odyssey. I would be clutching the wheel of my car and just bracing for impact like I used to on the ship when we would have faux torpedo impacts during drills. Then I would grab the wall and wave my hind parts suggestively like I was trying to catch the torpedoes attention to come find me high in the island so it could kiss my ass. "come on mr. torpedo, come and take a big bite of this!"

I was one of only a few who found any humor in pantomiming a missile attack because it was so absurd but if you have never been in the military that is just the cherry on the top of a huge absurd iceberg cake. But I digress, so there I was, holding on for dear life and thinking of my wifes face as she would throw herself into the arms of the uniformed men who came to tell her that I bought it on the curve right in front of  our house. I see her rolling around and wailing and shredding her clothes in anguish. But a moment later I had a cool calm come over me. Sort of like christian bales face at the end of the dark knight rises. A serenity descended over me because I knew that I was doing everything I could to not throw my huge metal chariot into anyone and they were probably doing the same and if god, or allah, or yahweh, or calamitous unforeseen even were to unfold in my biting the big one right there then that would just be that. So it goes. And such like.

I can't stop it I can't even predict it. so why am I burning so many calories thinking about the highly unlikely when I need to get to school and finish a project? A new freedom began to dictate my every thought, since I had zero control over almost everything why not just do what I wanted and tried not to hurt anyone? Why not just do what I can as well as I can and live with it? The fear of failure is always following me around, a personal black bummer cloud that is non-existent. So why don't I just paint the fuck out of some plastic guys and see what happens?