Joe ~ May 30

 

Taking A Break

 

For the past month I’ve been staying away from social media. I give it a quick check every now and then just to soothe my fear of missing something important. But, I find it’s OK. I was never one to post about my trials and tribulations and on the few occasions I did, I usually felt bad about it. My sensitivity in picking up certain vibes from people, is that a number of folks don’t really want to know about how good you’re doing or how many chatychkes you’ve collected and are gathering dust on the piano. I Don’t bang the drum of success when all those relatives and friends still remember you as a quiet unassuming lump of flesh of no particular importance to anyone in particular, or just someone to ridicule to make oneself feel better about oneself. Those attitudes have been left behind me as I’ve become an official senior citizen. I know that for sure because I get a $1.50 off at the movies and a roundtrip ticket into Penn Station is only $4. The accompanying arthritis and various maladies are always playing one of my favorite songs, “Everybody Hurts”. But, I hang on. Next week I will go to my high school reunion and will have a few drinks and dance too much to the point where I think I’m doing it really well and I get cocky and do it more and more until the DJ says TH…TH..TH….TH….THAT’S ALL FOLKS!!!! And find myself not being able to get my body out of bed in the morning because every muscle, bone and joint are hurting so much and I have neglected to bring the leftover Oxycontin pills from my last surgery, So I suffer and rightly so. I’m mean really….does anyone really give a crap that this 6’3”. 290 lb. Boo-bon spent the night before trying to prove he’s another John Travolta. I have trouble filtering out the good and the absurd in my behavior sometimes. I could chalk it up to alcohol in the past, but not anymore….I hardly drink at all. So, I continue to beg off the Happy Birthdays and Many Happy returns in responding to my fellow friends and followers in the never-ending story of media expectations. Sickness, death and just my immediate concerns for the nearest  of the nearest is enough for now. I’ll slowly make a list and try to reestablish ties that have been left to loosen if not go away completely. Is it the right path to take. Perhaps.  Am I doing the upstanding and responsible action or am I do I just need the reinforcing feeling that I am not pissing people off or they might not like me anymore. We shall see or we won’t … we’ll see…I’m painting again…that’s a good thing…I’m still contemplating taking my writings and crafting them into a one person show or possibly a more than one person show…I want to sing in a concert one more time because God is telling me, GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND JUST DO IT ALREADY!!! I want to walk a pilgrimage across the north of Spain before my body will not let me….right now it’s still in the WILL NOT LET ME stage, but hope springs eternal. Yes, It sounds like a bucket list and more and more that’s what it is becoming. But an ancient Chinese philosopher wisely said at one time, “ The Journey of a Thousand Miles starts with taking two Tylenol and a shot of Tullamore Dew”.