Futility @ MindSay 
Think of our lives as a ship at sea...all of our daily comings and goings take place on this ship...every encounter, every thought, word or feeling, every response, every action and reaction...our marriage, our intimate moments, our fears, our pain, our prayers, our dreams, our secret desires, our cries to God...they all take place on the ship, our ship of life...but the ship is just that, a vehicle constructed of circumstance...and although the circumstances are most often captivating, somehow the whole of us goes lacking..and somewhere deep inside, because unfulfilled longing has a tendency to overwhelm, we sense a soft wind blowing us toward a harbor, a cove, for our private souls sake... and without forethought or reason, other than we want the whole of us to live, we lower the sail and we head into the wind...
We're not going to get out alive, so live, dammit, live!!
lovespirit
It's a hand-me-down desk, given to Lorelei and me by her older sister and her husband. They didn't need it, but didn't want to throw it out. It's not in the best of shape, either, having been moved many times. It's banged up, kinda ugly, and not horribly sturdy. And it just doesn't have enough space for my needs.
I'd been trying to figure out how I could get a larger desk in here, and finally gave up. It just isn't gonna happen. Oh, sure, I could get a slightly bigger desk that I could make fit. But that's not worth the investment. Nor could I find anything of suitable size that would let me relocate, for example, the printer and/or CPU unit, thus freeing up desk space.
Until last night, when it suddenly occurred to me that I might be able to remove the desk's single file drawer without ruining the integrity of the desk. So I did. Mostly.
Turns out the integrity of the desk wasn't ruined, but it was definitely compromised. As I sat down, after removing the drawer, enjoying the luxury of not banging my right knee all the time, I noticed that my monitor seemed a bit crooked. Then I noticed why.
In the center of the desk is a vertical board that supports the middle of the hutch. And up where it connected with the hutch (via metal posts, not an actual firm connection), it was sagging. There was a quarter-inch gap between the top of the board and the bottom of the hutch. And if I pushed down on the middle of the desk, the gap increased.
Yikes.
Now, I'm no engineer. But it occurred to me that I needed something underneath the desk surface to hold up the desk. And maybe something to help secure that board, maybe in the back, out of sight. So I emptied the hutch of fifty pounds of books, cleared off the entire desk of stuff, and moved the desk away from the wall. Naturally, this gave me the opportunity to dust the sucker off, which I did.
And in the process of dusting, I took note of one of the "boo-boos" that happened the last time the desk was put together. The vertical board in question, as I said, was held upright by two metal posts that were inserted into the top of the board, and they fit into the bottom shelf of the hutch. Well, for reasons I can't recall, somehow those posts got pushed through the bottom shelf of the hutch, making a mess of the particle board. I frowned, being reminded of this. But then I realized this actually offered a solution to my problem.
I drilled down through the holes-that-shouldn't-be-there, deeper into the vertical board. Then I inserted long wood screws, securing the heads with washers, and screwed them tightly into the board. Sure enough, that gap disappeared, and the desk was sturdy once again.
Very cool. Except that now I'd completely emptied the desk and hutch for no good reason, other than to dust it.
Either way, it's now loaded back up, with the CPU unit underneath, where the file drawer used to be. I have lots more space to use, now, and while it's far from ideal, it's at least a great relief. This should work well, at least until I move to a larger place.
I have another blog for my geek self over on GuildPortal. It doesn't have this feature. And last night, after the desk project was finished, I began a very lengthy blog entry there. Now, I won't go into detail (as you've suffered enough with the desk story), but suffice to say that, because of the lack of an auto-save feature, that blog entry went poof. About 45 minutes of writing, gone.
To say I was unhappy would be an understatement.
For example, I have a new class I'm teaching for the first time on the 11th, and I've needed to put all my notes together into something usable for the class. Also, Monday night I complete my phone training for the suicide crisis line, and I've got some paperwork to finish before that.
My problem is motivation. I have none. I'm feeling depressed, like everything is a big waste of time. I've almost reached a "why bother" point in my life. I'm not seeing results from anything I invest a lot of time into. I feel burnt out on so many levels.
This afternoon, I took a break from working on the class and sat on the sofa, scrolling through the names in my phone's directory. I felt like I needed to talk to someone... but I didn't call anyone. Most of the people in my phone list aren't people I'd talk to with this sort of "problem." And the others? I guess I just didn't feel like tossing all this on them. I don't know why. I know that's what friends are for. I certainly don't mind when they dump their life's crap on me; I want to listen, and help if I can. And I know they feel the same way. But... I just couldn't, today.
I feel so alone. I'd hoped by now, a year after my separation, that I'd have an active social life, especially because I live downtown. I'd hoped to be actively dating, for that matter. But, though I've had a few dates, none have been recently, and none were particularly promising. And my social life? Non-existent.
It's ironic... last week, Boss A said to me, "It's good to have you back." By this, she meant that I seem to have fully recovered from all the crap I went through last fall and early this year. She said, "Not only are you back on top of your game here at work, but you seem actually happy, too."
Evidently, I fake a good game at the office.
Or, more frighteningly, maybe I'm not faking when I'm at the office. She's right, I am back on top of my game. And I genuinely like several of my co-workers, so it's not difficult to be "up" at work. And I've been so busy in my free time over the past month or so that I haven't really noticed how depressed I've been growing.
Lorelei tells me on the phone that she misses me. And in truth, I miss her, too. In most ways, she's still my best friend. But being married - to her, or to anyone - isn't the solution to my problem. In some ways, it would just make things worse for me.
I don't really know what I'm saying, here. Or why I'm bothering to say it. Just to get it out, I suppose.
It hurts me to see others hurting, observing their futile struggles from a distance, and watching as they work themselves deeper into tangled mass of barbed wire and words that has been woven for them. The cruel snares and stares, the bitter words that poke and prod at the poor people. I long to protect them, to scoop them up in my arms, to tell them that it will all be okay, and to make it that way. I desire the power to rearrange the world, to show these individuals that there is beauty in life and in others. I want to fix everything, but I am not handy, and I never have been. I cannot. I merely may offer my friendship, my support, and advice that is nearly impossible to follow (for it is indeed always easier to give advice than to follow it; to know what is the right thing to do and to actually do it in an adverse situation are incomprehensibly different).
This is my blog, so I will not reveal their pains, just my own frustration at being a mere observer and emotional nurse, rather than being able to ride in on my noble steed to save the day for these very deserving, mishandled and mistreated individuals. A great philosopher (though I cannot remember whom it was) once said that every person feels as if he or she is an observer to life, rather than an active participant. I need to learn to conquer my passivity in this respect, and to participate.
I recognise that this entry probably appears irrelevant, sappy, and misplaced, but quite frankly this entry does not concern those who dismiss it as such.
But then again, maybe it concerns them most of all.
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