Internet Bard

I have to share this story. Be forewarned. This is not a story with a moral, a point, or really any socially-redeeming qualities.

It’s just entertaining as heck.

So anyway. Last week, some colleagues and I pulled up to a family-style restaurant for lunch before a meeting. As we’re piling out of the car, I notice in the parking lot… a KISS car.

Yes. A car covered with images of the band KISS. Flames lickedup the trunk behind the logo. Black and white faces graced the sides, with the corresponding band member names above them. A KISS CAR. At Shoney’s.

Well, it just so happens that my friend Jeff, a UPS pilot, is also a huge KISS fan. Like “dresses up as Ace Frehley every year for Halloween” fan of the band. So I walked around the car to better describe it later to my friend. I had assumed it was a custom paint job. Wrong. It was an auto-wrap.

Right. Some guy paid a professional sign company to auto-wrap his car. With KISS. Okay.

So I walked into the restaurant, and went into the ladies room to throw away some trash from the car. As I’m coming out of the ladies room, I pass a guy and hear him say to me something along the lines of “Wow, you look really good!” With enthusiasm.

I was dressed nicely, if conservatively, in a black dress and short heels. And there really wasn’t anyone else in the hallway. So I turned my head to see if he was talking to me.

He was.

“I’d love to take you for a ride in my KISS car.”

*blink*

ME: “Um. No thanks. I’m good.”

HIM: “I saw you checking it out.”

ME: “Um… nope. I’m good. Thanks.” (Mentally: Must. get. away. from. crazy. KISS car guy!)

So I bolted for the table with my colleagues.

Okay, let’s break this down. First, who on earth goes trolling to pick up women at a Shoney’s? At lunch?

Second, “I’d love to give you a ride in my KISS car?” Really? Seriously? That’s your standard pickup line? Does that work often?

I swear, some days, it’s like I’m a magnet, and weird people and situations are iron filings.

(ETA: Thanks to my boss, @joemazing I have been able to add actual photos of the KISS car. And I only just now realized that “Love Gun” is also emblazoned on the hood, which sort of completes the story. You’re welcome.)

I wanted to post something today, and unfortunately, I only have five minutes.

So I think I will riff on the subject of envy.

I’m continually surprised at the level of envy I feel, when I pull my attention inward and consciously notice where my thoughts are.

Another surprise? That 9 times out of 10, I don’t actually want the thing I’m envious about someone else getting.

Maybe it’s the satisfaction and contentment I’m assuming and assigning to the other person. They appear to be getting exactly what they’ve been striving for, and whether it’s something I think is worth having or pursuing, I envy their success in getting the things they pursue. Maybe it’s the clarity of desire that I imagine they have that I envy.

My own experience says that we’re rarely contented and satisfied long, even when we achieve what we’ve sought.

How silly it seems, when I really make myself be honest, to envy something that may exist only in my fertile imagination, as opposed to being grateful for the beloved things I know I have.

“I’m George McFly. I’m your density.”

We all get a little distracted from time to time.

It’s not usually a big deal. In fact, a little distraction every now and then can lead to some creative breakthroughs. Fiber artist White Feather wrote a good article about this on Thoughtwrestling, another blog I where I sometimes write.

There are also certain tasks, situations and moments that really require our full attention. They command our complete presence. Driving a race car is a good example (as my friend Kristin, aka Grease Girl, found our last year when we were at Scout Mountain Motorsports Ranch).

In between those margins is a big space where we have to determine how fully we channel our presence and attention. I notice this particularly during in-person conversation, something at which I am notoriously bad.

I’ve had people tell me I make them uncomfortable. I am highly distractable. So to combat that, some of the time, I consciously direct my attention at the person speaking to me so intensely that they feel like some invisible klieg light is glaring down on them.

It’s a little too much presence. I am a little too focused and concentrated THERE at these times, and the other person feels pushed out of the space that I’m willing every ounce of my attention into.

On the other hand, I’ve also had people leave a conversation with me convinced I didn’t hear a word they said, only to be shocked when I repeat it back to them later. I wasn’t giving them sufficient non-verbal cues that I was really attending to them. I didn’t make eye contact, or I kept working at something else. I wasn’t present enough.

Life is a continuing cycle of pulling ourselves in and putting ourselves out there. Passion sometimes prompts us to cast our presence into situations, heedless of the consequences. Fear (which is often a good and necessary thing) sometimes demands we draw ourselves in, making our presence as small as possible, in hopes of avoiding dangerous attention.

It’s a bit like sailing. The wind is always changing, and if you don’t pay attention to where you need to be, you can get whacked pretty hard.

I love crafts and sculpture. Particularly fiber arts. I like making useful, beautiful things.

I hadn’t done much creative craft work in a really long time, though, because my craft supplies have been choked and buried under a bunch of supplies I inherited (aka “couldn’t let go of”) when my mom and grandma passed on.

My yarn basket, in particular, was a mess of tangled threads. At first, I tried untangling each skein separately. Eventually, I remembered the story of the Gordian knot, grabbed my scissors, and literally cut out anything I didn’t want.

With the useless and unwanted stuff cut away, sorting and untangling the good stuff was a pretty simple task.

Over the last week or two, I’ve been trying to maintain that clarity of purpose as I pick up the threads of my vocation that I set aside to go on vacation. The first week back is always a little disorienting, I think. So last week, I was the goldfish in the baggie, still trying to reacclimate myself to the tank. Just finding the ends of the threads (and discovering which ones had been cleared away by circumstance in my absence).

Now, it’s time to do something with the threads. To start weaving the pattern. I’ve already made a reasonable start. It’s a new pattern, a change of direction, and I think it will be surprising to some.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I had a plan for Wednesday at work. It didn’t really work out. It was all for the best, really. The other direction I ended up getting pulled in, the other stuff I ended up doing is probably going to pay better dividends for me, my employer and my clients in the long run.

But still. I had a plan, it was a good plan, and I had to put it off to the next day.

I had a plan for the evening, too. For the most part, it worked out as I intended. Wii Bowling with my highly competitive daughter. My son, hanging with his buddy for most of the evening. Chris having an evening out with one of his best friends from high school.

Right up to the part where I was going to go to bed, the plan went off without a hitch. Then something happened.

In the greater scheme of things, it wasn’t a big thing. It wasn’t a horrible thing. It was an echo, really. A hiccup, relatively harmless in and of itself.

Here’s the funny thing I’ve learned. You can’t uninterrupt things. You can’t stitch the moment back together. What you can do, is interrupt the interruption. You can keep nudging the trajectory, bit by bit, till you’re back going the right way again.