Posts tagged ‘manhattan’
I have recently submitted a proposal to the new board of directors. It took a few months to formulate but I had to make sure all the data was correct. Last time, she asked all sorts of questions that I didn’t have the answer to. So this time I went back and double checked and even triple checked the interviews, and had practice conversations with a counselor on the upper West Side that didn’t even take my medical insurance. That’s how serious I was to get this right. And I can now say with more certainty than I did last time that I’m really ready to move forward with my next decision. I hope that this decision will have the right affect on future decisions, which in turn will cause, spontaneously I might add, other opportunities for decision making and ultimately the end goal of cooperative and dynamic interaction..
anxiety is like a big bear standing next to you. if the bear could talk, he would be saying, “i’m going to fucking eat you.” but anxiety involves more than just the bear. because in this scenario, you are tied to a tree. you can move your hands and your fingers. but your legs are going nowhere. and even if somehow you could separate your lower body from your upper body and you actually survive, i’m telling you now you are not going to out-crawl an athletic, salivating bear whose only mission in life is to eat you.
but anxiety is more than just you, a tree, and a bear. that little motherboard in your human condition comes up with a load of coping mechanisms to deal with certain kinds of trauma. you know, suppression, repression, those kinds of terms. but when it comes to anxiety, that little motherboard of yours really can’t do anything but turn anxiety into a car. and you start riding through life on that fucking car and you look out the window and wave at your friends and take pictures of the pretty scenery outside. and you think, problems? sure, i’ve got problems but not real problems.
it’s all fine and dandy until something happens. and that “happens” can be something like a bump in the road or a sharp turn or just one of your fucking eyes that stares in the wrong direction. and you’ll know when the “happens” happens, because you’re going to look down at the steering wheel and realize you are tied to a tree with a hungry bear standing next to you.
sometimes, you have to take a deep breath and just dive in. yes, you might drown or encounter some kind of poisonous serpent or a new species of eel with sharp teeth. but imagine the excitement, the accomplishment, the pride you will feel when you find out that your lungs are actually gills and your hands are actually webbed tentacles. so get in there. get in there as fast as you can.
in five years, do you think they still will be friends?
i will tax cut your ass off with my tongue. i will shut down your electricity with my cheek. i will divert all your orange juice to mayor bloomberg. i will take your ice cream from your freezer and put it into my toaster. i will move all government jobs to kenya. i will outlaw anything with yogurt in it. i will build a shrine to overweight cows and put it in the center of columbus circle. i will remove everything above 96th street and put it in the bronx under a big blue tarp. i will get rid of the subway and require everyone to drink gasoline. i will force everyone to put a tattoo of barry goldwater above their right knee. i will require everyone to put green backsplash in their kitchens. i will make it illegal to wear anything made of pashmina. i will force everyone to bow down to martha stewart.
give me a few years and i won’t have to amaze you with either my word for word recital of dickinson’s ‘a curious cloud surprised the sky,’ the fact that i have lunch with tori amos about once a month at my parent’s house in bar harbor, or that i know the manager of pianos. wait until this estrogen really kicks in and i’ll tower over you like a giraffe in knee high boots.
i think a lot of people think, including myself, that if they stay in the same job, things are going to change, you know they just will somehow, someway. just stick out for a few more days and those days become months and those months become years and then holy shit you’ve been in the same job for almost ten years. and then you realize nothing really changed except you’re going to come home every night and avoid the mirror but every once in a while you’ll look in the mirror and ask yourself, “what i am fucking doing?” and that’s one of those real questions that we as humans like to avoid because it actually makes you think for real, makes you step back from the moving and doing and checking fucking email for the sake of moving and doing and checking fucking email. and right there and then you can make a choice to leave and do what you want to do or you can go back to doing the same shit you were doing before, hoping and wishing that the whole scenario is going to change, or you can step out and do what you’ve been deferring for some undefined moment in time in some undefined moment in the future.
in my next life, i’m going to be a fucking rabid alligator will bulletproof skin that eats people in suits.
the reach is one of the most difficult techniques to maneuver, particularly in public places. it requires cat like instincts and above all, an affinity for taking chances when they count the most. this is what defines success, both here in the subway and in the corporate world. the lessons i will teach you over the next six weeks will change your life, wherever you are and in whatever station of life you are in. with this once in a lifetime course, YOU too can make the reach!
e v e r y d a y aperture 