The last couple years (technically only the last 18 months, but it *feels* like at least 2 years, or maybe 5), life has been full of those “slings and arrows” that Hamlet whined about. In my experience, though, they’ve felt a lot more like body blows. Straight-up gut-punches.
Here is a summary of the last 18 months:
May 2024 – Body blow.
June-July 2024 – Fast, hard jabs to chin.
August – November 2024 – Gut punch, followed by a flurry of boots to the head–and at least one kick to the groin.
December 2024 – Almost a respite. Some time to recover–
January – February 2025 – Gut punch, pile driver, elbow drop.
March – April 2025 – Flurry of blows.
May 2025 – Another fucking gut punch. (<– When I suddenly found myself unemployed.)
Summer 2025 – Additional flurries of wow-this-blows.
Autumn 2025 – Black eye. (But at least I’m re-employed; yay?)
The hits, they just keep on coming.
Maybe this is par for the course. The older you get, the more you’ve stuck your chin out there, the more chances life, the universe, and disinterested fate get to take swings at you (and your loved ones).
My point isn’t “woe is me”–tho, lemme assure you, there is woe, more than a little despair, and even some gnashing of teeth.
Instead I’ve been thinking how I should probably come up with a faster way to “process” all of this. Get back up on my feet and stick my chin out there again. Less staring, stunned into the near distance. More getting back in motion.
Rope-a-dope sucks, but sometimes it’s all you got.
But when you do get a breather, and you’re barely standing up, and you’re half-braced for the next punch to the mouth to interrupt your plans–
I don’t know that anyone would blame you (or me) for curling up in a ball on the floor and just waiting it out. But goddamnit I’m not done yet. And I’m too old now to be doing a lot of waiting.
So I’m working on getting better at getting on with the ticking after the ass-whooping.
I feel like I’ve been getting more than enough practice in.
So here’s hoping.
-David