UPSIDE DOWN IS PERFECT

I walked a long stretch of beach yesterday morning, taking pictures.  Imagining my perfect life would look something like this …

                        

Then I had to fly back to the city, back to the office.

And work made me angry.  Or at least it did yesterday.

Had to spend 12 hours at my desk catching up on the things I’d missed.  Had to scarf down lunch in five minutes because I got called back to preview, even though I’d brought along Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the hope I’d enjoy a chapter over my tofu chicken.  Had to go home at midnight with the thought that I still didn’t get my most important assignments done.

It was enough to make me curse and pull my hair and hit myself on the head.  And so I did.  Yeah, I know that sounds odd but I do it all the time.  Any therapist would say it’s probably time to quit when you keep bashing your brain senseless at work.  But I’m me. And I process some things slowly.

So it was only last night, in between hurting myself, that it dawned on me exactly what it is about work that’s the problem.

It’s not that my job is stupid … it isn’t, though I know I like to say that it is.  It’s not that I work for big business … how can I possibly look down upon a successful shop that provides literally thousands of people, including me, with enough to eat and live well.  It’s not that I can’t stand the people I work with … truth is, I’ve learned to love them, and not only when we’re on halo-halo break together, taking silly snapshots and dreaming of our futures.

The thing is, I’ve done everything there is to do here over … and over … and over … and over again.    

I AM NOT LEARNING ANYTHING NEW.

And having discovered that, I have no more reason to curse my job or hit myself or pull my hair out. 

It’s become logical now, this fantasy of going off to the beach or an alien city to become a barista or a waitress.  Working at a job that requires me to be on my feet, to balance and to not break anything would teach me something I don’t already know.  Including humility.  Doing tasks that require simple focus instead of the ability to remember details about a hundred things going on at the exact same time … would give my mind enough space to process bigger ideas. 

So guys, take another look at the picture above because it’s actually a shot of my perfect future.

Perfect is not an ultimate state, it’s the process of becoming and learning.

Perfect … is sometimes being upside down. 

And in my perfect, upside down life … which in a sense I’m already starting to live now … I’m still going to fall a lot, because perfect can mean making stupid mistakes …

But at least then I’d be learning something new.