For the past two weeks my life has been a living mash up of two wildly different songs — “Changes,” by David Bowie and “Hotel California,” by the Eagles.
It goes like this: “Ch-ch-changes. This could be heaven or this could be hell.” And, as best as I can tell, which of the later — heaven or hell — is determined by my ability to embrace the former. Let’s just say at this point in time I’m more in a wrestling match in purgatory than I am in a warm, fuzzy hug inside the pearly gates.
I’m all about change especially when it comes to underwear, towels, sheets, toothbrushes, car oil, air filters, kitchen sponges, socks and smoke detector batteries but not so much when it comes to things like new technology and system procedures. It’s worse than trying to sort out an erroneous charge on the phone bill or trying to get homeowner’s fire insurance in California or someone in front of you driving well below the speed when there’s no way to pass or when the bottom of your favorite reusable grocery bag fails and the eggs and apples get scrambled in the parking lot.
While I have been blessed with the unwavering patience of those trying to teach me this new technology I have to master in order to basically keep doing the work I’ve done for 30 years, I have to admit that it has me feeling out of control and questioning my competency. From setting up a new email, to logging hours, to group chatting on an unfamiliar program that I have managed to enable on my computer but not on my phone, to accessing and learning the new word processing program in which I’m now supposed to work has been time-consuming and not altogether successful. If failure is not the opposite of success but, rather, part of success then, oh baby, baby, I’m bound for glory. But in the meantime, it’s just a whole kaboodle of head-banging frustration and overwhelming feelings of stupidity.
Whoever said “the more things change the more they stay the same,” was an idiot. And the next person who tells me “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” is going to get handed a shovel and told to start digging because, I’m going down hard any minute here now, Skippy.
Earlier this week, following an already long day of work and several fruitless hours on the phone with tech “support” trying to get the “easy to use” email app to work, I was running late to an appointment and, “in a state,” as my beloved husband would say. And, even though I knew it was pointless and childish, I pretty much hated everyone and everything and was primed for staging a princess, foot-stomping, hissy fit, nutty. All I needed was an excuse. In fact, I was itching for one and, naturally, the universe delivered it up on a big old silver platter.
I was just pulling up to a deserted intersection in my neighborhood about two miles from home and five miles from where I needed to be when the car just stopped. It didn’t choke, clunk, shriek, bang, grind or blow anything. It just quietly came to a dead halt. I had been so consumed by the frustrations of the last few days, so preoccupied with trying to adapt to the changes in life that I completely forgot one basic task: go to the gas station. So there I was in the dark and the rain with two mismatched socks, disheveled hair and no gas. And that was the only excuse I needed to let ‘er rip.
I started screaming, cursing and ranting, banging my hands on the steering wheel, and stomping my feet on the floorboard. I was so self-absorbed in letting it all out while extolling myself with never-before combined utterances of blasphemy and adding failing arms to the fist banging and foot stomping, I didn’t notice a large dark-colored pickup truck had pulled up next to me. Nor had I noticed the 40-something driver who’d rolled down the passenger window and was peering at me with alarmed concern. When I did notice, I was both annoyed at having a perfectly good and much needed hissy interrupted and embarrassed at being caught staging a nutty. Truthfully more of the first and less of the second but I rolled down my window anyway and made an attempt to smile. The effort must have contorted my face into a ghoulish grimace because a glimmer of fear passed over the guy’s face as he tentatively asked, “Are you OK, ma’am?”
“I ran out of gas,” I answered feeling like a looney imbecile. And then, much to my chagrin and utter humiliation, I burst into tears. “And apparently out of control too.”
The guy chuckled, got out of his truck, grabbed a large gas can from the truck bed, told me to open the gas tank hatch and then proceeded to put fuel in my car.
“I don’t have any cash,” I called out. “I’m a woman gone over the edge.”
“Don’t worry about the money. It’s a long fall off the edge. I get it. Just glad I was here to break your landing,” he said, screwing on the gas cap, shutting the hatch, getting back into his truck and waving good-bye as he drove away.
As I started the car, I thought whoever said “life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change” was an idiot.
