2004-08-04 - 12:23 p.m.
Unfortunate Son
Lately I’ve been afraid to go to sleep because I dread waking up at some god-awful hour and not being able to go back to sleep. After weeks of waking up at least twice during the night, last night I was able to sleep. Maybe it’s because I only got a few hours of sleep the night before. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t at the bizarre freak show that my house has become. Whatever the case, it felt great waking up this morning at 4:47 knowing that I was awake because it was time to wake up. I felt rested and alert, and—with the exception of the pain in my lower back that I’ve convinced myself is a tumor—I felt pretty damn good.
Rode my bike in the rain and even that didn’t seem so bad. Didn’t wear the rain pants that I recently bought because I learned the hard way that if the rain doesn’t get me, the intense sweating will. I did, however, wear the rain jacket, and although every inch of my body below my waist was soaked, my upper body was nicely dry. It wasn’t raining too hard on the lakefront south of Fullerton. The sky was gray and pretty. Sat or rather, stood at Olive Park and watched the clouds engulf the buildings, and obsessed over the meaning of the fortune that I got out of a stale fortune cookie last night. I can’t remember it verbatim, but it went something like, “Don’t let opportunities pass you by while sticking to your chosen path.” I tried to put it into perspective regarding my current situation, and then I thought, “Just who does the writer of that fortune cookie think he is? He doesn’t even know me, and I didn’t even ask him for his advice. Yet he comes up to me like a drunk in some bar and starts giving me advice.” I started to get angry. What made me even angrier is that I CAN apply it to my current situation in several different ways. I have to remember that it’s only a fortune cookie.
Still, I was totally psyched about last week’s fortune, “Put the universe inside you. Make it your own.” I remember that one for sure. The thing is, I can’t be a selective fortune cookie person. I should take the advice from all of them or none of them. This confuses and irritates me. On the one hand, they’re cookies for chrissake! On the other hand, what if I don’t take the advice? When the time comes, in the back of my mind, I’ll be thinking, “See you should’ve listened to the fortune cookie. Had you listened to the fortune cookie, you could’ve avoided this whole mess.” And on and on.
I’m hoping that my next fortune says, “Don’t believe anything you read.” Then I’ll KNOW I should believe them.
