{"id":78934,"date":"2012-01-15T23:26:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T04:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/78934\/weekend-upbeat\/"},"modified":"2012-01-15T23:26:43","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T04:26:43","slug":"weekend-upbeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/78934\/weekend-upbeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Upbeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Mango just put out a blog called “Weekend Update<\/a>“… which coulda been the title for this blog!)<\/p>\n

I<\/font> had been having a bit of confused ennui so far this year.\u00a0 A mini-existential crisis sort of an affair wherein I have been wondering where my life is going, regretting my somewhat solitary existence and feeling guilt over the harm I have done in the past.\u00a0 At night, dreams of such intensity and lucidity racked my psyche so much that I couldn\u2019t wait until morning.<\/font><\/p>\n

Yannow\u2026 The usual.<\/font><\/p>\n

Breaking out of it with what, on the surface, has not been THAT remarkable of weekend, but I guess it comes down to doing what I really love doing, being satisfied with the results and realizing that I am fully responsible for my own happiness.\u00a0 Freedom sans a dream can descend into stifling stagnation.\u00a0 Freedom takes work.\u00a0 Every moment, every day, is a new opportunity.<\/font><\/p>\n

It began Friday Night with the open mic at the Thumbnail Theatre.\u00a0 Having recently dusted it off whilst cleaning up Hell, I decided to play one of my other instruments – the \u2018ol 6-string bass ukulele. Nothing, nothing in this world, improves my mood more than shouting \u2018BAMBOODYDOO\u2019 at the top of my lungs!<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/object><\/p>\n

\"\"S<\/font>aturday found me back at work, continuing a remarkable run of sales I\u2019ve been having this year, culminating with a 6-appliance-package of all high-end stuff to a couple who had just bought a new house.\u00a0 I finished up at closing time, and although I was technically off at that point, I decided to stick around because I had a lot of tasks still to perform.\u00a0 Besides, just the day before, I had been given my official company-endorsed heavy equipment license, and I was eager to use the load-picker forklift to move some heavy steel around.<\/font><\/p>\n

Way back in the stock room, whilst riding up and down in the cab of the load-picker, apparently I didn\u2019t hear the store\u2019s intercom.<\/font><\/p>\n

Twenty minutes after closing, I emerged from the depths of the store and my appliance moving tasks to find everything eerily quiet.\u00a0 No one was about.\u00a0 No one stocking shelves.\u00a0 No one cleaning and sweeping.\u00a0 I was alone.\u00a0 Locked in a 40,000 square foot home improvement warehouse store all by myself.\u00a0 Oh.<\/font><\/p>\n

Shit.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cIs anyone else in the store?!?\u00a0 Please call me at 817!\u201d <\/strong>I pleaded into the phone, the only response being the echo of the intercom repeating my words\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n

It was made even more eerie by the large flakes of snow falling in the parking lot.\u00a0 Apparently, the managers had gotten everyone out early in anticipation of this storm.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, I was relieved to see the assistant store manager open the entrance door, laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re lucky you\u2019re driving these days, Joko!\u2019 he told me, \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t noticed your van parked in the lot, you\u2019d still be stuck in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Today, the snow continued to fall.\u00a0 Unlike many places at this latitude, we really don\u2019t get that much snow here in Seattle.\u00a0 Last winter, it snowed twice.\u00a0 Year before that, not at all.\u00a0 Now three years ago, we had \u201cSnowmageddon\u201d where the city was virtually paralyzed for two weeks, but I digress. Point being, it\u2019s a rare enough occurrence up here to still be magical, wonderful and fun without being annoying.\u00a0\u00a0 Gotta take advantage of a snow day and a day off in one!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I needed to build a snow-something!<\/em> Not a snowman.\u00a0 That\u2019s been done billions of time.\u00a0 Aha!\u00a0 A snow obelisk<\/strong>!\u00a0 Mind you, given that there was a scant two inches of accumulation on the ground, it wasn\u2019t easy to build a snow-anything!<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Finally, as I was watching my Green Bay Packers beat themselves by dropping pass after pass and fumble an amazing season away, I got a new visitor at my window.\u00a0 Hey!\u00a0 You\u2019re not a squirrel!<\/p>\n

Given the amount of left-over chicken I fed him, the white terrier from across the street will likely be back.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n


\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Bamboodydoo, prosperous times and snow, how could I NOT feel great right now?<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Is there anything you do to break yourself out of a funk?\u00a0 What\u2019s your ennui-busting activity?<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Mango just put out a blog called “Weekend Update“… which coulda been the title for this blog!) I had been having a bit of confused ennui so far this year.\u00a0 A mini-existential crisis sort of an affair wherein I have been wondering where my life is going, regretting my somewhat solitary existence and feeling guilt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,10,837],"tags":[1617,674,680],"class_list":["post-78934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-life","category-nature-2","tag-cats","tag-dogs","tag-vera-wangs-spring-collection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}