Burnt carrots

This is a theme.

The thing I hate more than anything- more than people swinging wide to make left turns- is looking forward to something that doesn’t happen.

Part of letting go means letting go of the dangling carrots and that probably sounds dumb. But I am so attached to these ideas and it’s easy for you to tell me to let go because they’re my attachments. You’re not letting go of yours either- I know. It’s not that you HAVE to stay here. It’s that staying means something you’re hoping for.

So I was working late for someone who does not have faith in me, plugging away at some stupid administrative shit that should be done by someone else, but that’s me because who else is going to do it and besides, my grade is admin bullshit regardless of the roles I actually have (but this is a tangent you have all heard) so I’m sitting here thinking as I do hours of admin bullshit that doesn’t require my brain and I think about how my amazing, brilliant, loving Night Bus and this elusive next grade in THIS job are both dangling carrots and oh hey look, it’s a theme. Here’s some shit that’s never going to happen or if it does, it’ll be YEARS past when it was due. That’s a sad connection (though we’ve made it before) and I cry a while, still typing away with my admin bullshit.

Then I think about how maybe it’s supposed to suck. Maybe I’m doomed to be a meerkat for love until the batteries die and I give up. That’s the recipe, right? When you give up. Maybe I’m supposed to get so fed up with waiting for what’s supposed to happen in this job that I say fuck it and find something else- something that is not what I imagined or have been waiting for. That felt like a positive result: mad is good, frustrated is good, because it leads to action and letting it all burn means building something else. But then I remembered just how long I put up with bullshit. I tolerate shit until the person giving me shit gets tired of it and makes me leave. I am not a masochist- I do not enjoy this.

I need lessons from the one who told me, “I can dump anybody.” I need to set some metaphorical fires. Or, as a friend said, I need to put a little fuck you back out into the universe. Some small fuck yous like throwing litter out my car window or not returning my cart to the corral. I would never throw litter but I see what she means. I need to claim some space, throw out some defiant fuck yous, and light some matches.

Dad had a theory that kids needed to eat a thousand cheeseburgers before they’d try something else. It was a great theory and it worked so well for T. This insightful and understanding theory probably applies to most kids, but it did not work on me, and we’ve joked over the years about what my cheeseburger quota must have been. Maybe my bullshit quota is also way different, and maybe I’m finally approaching done. It HAS been a very long time for both of these situations and for probably lots of others, so maybe I’m approaching my million cheeseburger limit.

The part I’m too tired to think about is how to set the carrots on fire. I may need some symbolic fuck you like blowing up ceramics with a shotgun in the desert. I remember filling a cart with cheap shitty ceramics at the thrift store. This one woman complimented our choice of some weird object and we promptly handed it to her.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that! You found it first,” she said.

“No, we’re gonna shoot it.”

I welcome ideas for some other gleefully unnecessary ways to let go. If I can turn that release into some dumb celebration- a defiant fuck you that makes me cackle- I might not cry (as much).