In my experience, there is no greater wake up call than a good smack upside the head. I’ve been known to use it rather a lot, really, though I tried to get away from the habit when I got into college, as I felt sort of bad whacking people like that.
For awhile, I used the smack upside the head too liberally. I used it to try and train my father not to use puns (I don’t really hit people very hard, or at least, I try not to), but that failed miserably, as my father is just as big a punster now as he ever has been. I used it when the guys in high school made crude comments about the girls in high school, though they started to expect the smack upside the head, so I switched, for a time, to a swift kick to the shin. I talk a great deal about wanting to smack people upside the head and yell “your life doesn’t suck!” though I never actually have.
I actually hadn’t smacked anyone upside the head in a long time until, oh, about a month ago, at a larp game, when one of the larger guys made some comment about a shotgun being what they really meant by “feminine protection”, and I think it surprised the hell out of him. Also kind of amused him, though, so I don’t know how well that really worked.
I hadn’t even thought much about smacking people upside the head in awhile, at least, not in anything more than a metaphorical sense, and even then, only in the “your life doesn’t suck, dammit” fashion. Then, without warning, I received a smack upside the head of my own.
From life.
There’s this marvelous book out there, by Paulo Coehlo, titled The Alchemist. It explains in the form of a fable how everything that happens in life is supposed to happen, and how life will try and steer you onto the proper course, so you’ve got to be listening when it does.
And man, if you’re not listening? It starts to get less and less subtle, until *WHAP*, you can’t ignore it any more.
Life wants me to move back to DC.
This started, oh, sometime a long time ago, I suppose, perhaps in London, when I realized I really liked living in a city, but that there really weren’t that many cities I could really see myself in. Except, of course, London (because I WAS there), and DC. But my parents live in DC, and I was young, and head strong, and wanted so desperately to grow up, so I shoved it off, because I knew for a fact that if I went anywhere near that city, I’d end up back at their house.
So, as I was trying to figure out what the heck to do with myself after graduating, I refused to even consider DC as an option.
Instead I went to Gainesville. There were countless reasons that I gave myself for that choice, but when it came down to it, it was because I knew people there, and it wasn’t DC or Tampa, which I believed to be this big, sucking black hole that would never release me if I was actually paying rent there.
Of course, then I got to Gainesville, and realized that it does much the same thing. People move in, but they seldom manage to move out.
But that didn’t matter to me, after all, I was only going to be there while I sorted out what I really wanted to do with my life. Right?
Well. So I started sorting. Life choices were considered, tossed out, reconsidered, retossed, and then put on file while I tried to find a job.
Then I got a job. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. And I figured I could stick it out until May, when my lease ran out, then maybe head back to DC for a little while to go to grad school, maybe.
Then I went home for Christmas, and life started getting more insistent.
I ran into all sorts of old friends and acquaintances, and every time I tried to head back to Gainesville, someone else would want to hang out.
But I made it back, just in time for New Year’s, an anticlimactic occasion which I spent watching South Park in my room with my cat, because everyone was just so damned surprised that I came back at all.
Then the oddest thing started happening. People just started to . . . fall away. The people in Gainesville, and even some in Tampa that I’ve been finding time to hang out with are no longer there to hang out. The Wednesday night “family” dinners stopped happening all together, and people I used to have great conversations with started answering in single syllables. I found myself spending more and more time in my room, online, with my cat, mostly talking to people who lived in and around DC.
But of course, I didn’t get the point. I hadn’t been smacked upside the head with it yet, after all.
Then I got fired. I’ve never been fired before, and I didn’t quite know what to do about it. But I started slaving away, getting applications and resumes sent out the very day I got fired, hoping against hope to get another job so I could stick around my lonely apartment, not talking to people, for another four months before moving home.
Really, I was being rather dense by that point. My mother started trying to talk me into moving home, with lures in the form of journalism courses and not having to pay electric bills, at least, until I got myself a job, anyway.
But I couldn’t quite fathom the idea of paying rent on an apartment that I’m not going to be using. Well, at least not until this last weekend.
When I looked at my bank account, and at the fact that I hadn’t received a single call for an interview in the nearly a month and a half since I started applying around, and that odds were, I wasn’t going to.
So I emailed Mom and Dad. Turns out, they’re heading down my way at the end of the month. They can help me move then. I had two weeks to sort things out.
But still, something kept saying “um? Too fast! Slow down dammit!” but that was the dumb, thick, silly me.
Life had smacked me upside the head, after all, and now I was paying attention.
Suddenly, my best friend is inviting me on a road trip to Myrtle Beach, and my sister is talking about going to see a concert in DC around her birthday. Sure, I’ll still be in “What the hell do I do now?” mode when I get there, but I’m being proactive, making the decision instead of sitting up nights trying to do it. I’m letting people know, mostly just to see their reactions, which are all enthusiastic, so far.
Life is now patting me on the back. “Good girl,” it’s saying. “Have a treat!”
Just call me Pavlov’s dog.
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