Thirteen days into Lent. A grim Tuesday night of rain and fog. Rain dripping from the eaves of my porch and from the leafless trees along the sidewalks. Windless fog dulling the street lamps and making apparitions of the occasional pedestrian on Cumberland Avenue.
An evening to take inventory.
I am losing ground on all fronts.
Tomorrow I am to meet with my accountant about taxes. I have compiled about half the information he’s going to want.
I am behind on my correspondence. I missed sending my dad a birthday present—he’s 91 and always says he wants nothing, but I know he’s expecting something. I owe some of my students an email. One long-time friend from Eastern North Carolina has now written me three long emails without a response.
Despite my recent entry into Medicare, last week Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina wrongly removed almost $700 from my bank account. After spending nearly four hours on the phone without ever reaching a representative who could help me, I went to my bank to fight the withdrawal and make sure my connection with this insurance giant is severed. The bankers informed me that they couldn’t help me, that I needed to cancel my account and open a new one.
On a table to the left of my desk are hillocks of papers from students waiting to be evaluated.
On the floor to the right of my desk are nine books waiting to be reviewed.
Missed birthdays for month: three.
On my desk itself is a notebook in which are recorded six Lenten resolutions made on Ash Wednesday, only two of which I have kept these past two weeks. Once again, I am a “Lenten Loser.’
Meanwhile, here I sit, writing this column.
Messy, yes?
And yes, a little depressing.
And what to do?
Sometimes it seems the only guide to life—or at least my life—is simply to slog on.
Isn’t that what most of us do?
Maybe at times just slogging is enough. Maybe when we find ourselves overwhelmed, when we just get tired of pushing and pushing against obstacles, maybe it’s enough that we keep punching and taking the punches.
Long ago, I used to box. I’d climb into a ring with some other guy and throw punches and I won some fights and lost others. Once an opponent named Sunny Bargala hit me so hard I literally saw stars, but I shook off that hard right and won the fight. In all my fights, I never got knocked to the canvas. Back then, I was proud of that fact.
Since then, life has knocked me down a good number of times. Like most other people, I keep getting up, not because I am brave or noble, but because I have no other choice. What other option is there? I’m going to lie there in the dirt?
Recently I read an online account of the floods of some places I’d visited in Northern England in 2015. One man whose house was flooding—“the water was coming under the front door”—was furious because he asked the local council for sandbags and never received a response.
His fury made me laugh. His house is flooding and this guy is enraged because his government didn’t acknowledge his request for sandbags? What’s wrong with him? Couldn’t he make his own sandbags from rags and earth? From plastic trash bags and dirt from his yard?
How in heaven's name did we—or I—get the idea life was supposed to be easy?
When the punches come, we have to stand up and punch back. When the floods come, we have to try our best to stop the waters.
To paraphrase good old Scott Fitzgerald, so we slog on, boats against the current.
Okay. On to that stack of papers. And maybe a few late night prayers.
Despite my recent entry into Medicare, last week Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina wrongly removed almost $700 from my bank account. After spending nearly four hours on the phone without ever reaching a representative who could help me, I went to my bank to fight the withdrawal and make sure my connection with this insurance giant is severed. The bankers informed me that they couldn’t help me, that I needed to cancel my account and open a new one.
On a table to the left of my desk are hillocks of papers from students waiting to be evaluated.
On the floor to the right of my desk are nine books waiting to be reviewed.
Missed birthdays for month: three.
On my desk itself is a notebook in which are recorded six Lenten resolutions made on Ash Wednesday, only two of which I have kept these past two weeks. Once again, I am a “Lenten Loser.’
Meanwhile, here I sit, writing this column.
Messy, yes?
And yes, a little depressing.
And what to do?
Sometimes it seems the only guide to life—or at least my life—is simply to slog on.
Isn’t that what most of us do?
Maybe at times just slogging is enough. Maybe when we find ourselves overwhelmed, when we just get tired of pushing and pushing against obstacles, maybe it’s enough that we keep punching and taking the punches.
Long ago, I used to box. I’d climb into a ring with some other guy and throw punches and I won some fights and lost others. Once an opponent named Sunny Bargala hit me so hard I literally saw stars, but I shook off that hard right and won the fight. In all my fights, I never got knocked to the canvas. Back then, I was proud of that fact.
Since then, life has knocked me down a good number of times. Like most other people, I keep getting up, not because I am brave or noble, but because I have no other choice. What other option is there? I’m going to lie there in the dirt?
Recently I read an online account of the floods of some places I’d visited in Northern England in 2015. One man whose house was flooding—“the water was coming under the front door”—was furious because he asked the local council for sandbags and never received a response.
His fury made me laugh. His house is flooding and this guy is enraged because his government didn’t acknowledge his request for sandbags? What’s wrong with him? Couldn’t he make his own sandbags from rags and earth? From plastic trash bags and dirt from his yard?
How in heaven's name did we—or I—get the idea life was supposed to be easy?
When the punches come, we have to stand up and punch back. When the floods come, we have to try our best to stop the waters.
To paraphrase good old Scott Fitzgerald, so we slog on, boats against the current.
Okay. On to that stack of papers. And maybe a few late night prayers.