Put a Plug in it

Put a Plug in it
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

Photo taken in Philly (Philadelphia) on Saturday, March 31, 2007.

April 3, 2007, New York City:

Put a Plug in It

I woke up this morning at 5, and hit the snooze.

Suddenly, I was pitched into a dark and hazy moment where I was at home in Jersey taking care of the boys. Then the phone rang. It was my (eventually to be former) mother-in-law.

I told her, jokingly, that her daughter was out on a date, picking up her future mother-in-law in Park Slope (Brooklyn).

Nancy responded, seriously, “Yeah, she said she was a little nervous about it.”

“Whooaaa,” I thought, “I was only joking.”

Apparently, the joke was on me.

Thus, suddenly startled awake by this curve ball of a dream, I immediately got up knowing that I had overslept my oversleeping.

It was now 5:20 and it was time to get the hell up and make something of my life, for I was tired of sleeping on the job, I was tired of being utterly bored and blaming everyone and everything else, when the only person there was to blame is—me.

In other words, it was time to put a plug in it, it was time to start shutting up and doing something about it, rather than dying a slow death of compromise, complacency and ennui.

Fuck that.

*

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling as if things weren’t going my way, as if I weren’t in control, as if I couldn’t go with the flow even if I wanted to—because there wasn’t any stream to float in, the creek bed was all dried up, and I, I was just sitting moping in the middle of it.

Specifically, lately, I’ve felt as if I were at the bottom of someone else’s totem pole, delegated to the back of the bus, behind a half a dozen of her other priorities.

Like I said, fuck that.

Admittedly, I’ve been feeling my own special-brand of Attention Deficit Disorder—the kind that spurs me with incessant prods to my slowly deflating ego with, “What about me-me-me?” Alas, no Rit-fix or dose of amphetamine was going to fix this personal brand of ADD.

The only real solution was to retake the helm of my destiny—to press on, move forward, don’t stand still and don’t look back.

So, bye-bye baby and Honey, Here I Come.

*

Yesterday, I read an interview of sorts with Muhammad Ali and the lessons he's learned.

He said: Watching George come back to win the title got me all excited. Made me want to come back. But then the next morning came, and it was time to start running. I lay back in bed and said, "That's okay, I'm still the Greatest."

Well, I've yet to achieve any such acclaim, which is why I roused myself up this morning, regardless of my greater desires to do otherwise. After I've actually achieved something notable I'll let myself indulge in the luxury of sleeping in.

So I got up, got dressed, and went to the gym.

“Wisdom and love have nothing to do with each other. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love—you'll stick your finger in anything.” - Robert Altman -