I was driving my daughter home from school one afternoon when she asked me a question I wasn’t expecting from a six-year-old. “Daddy,” she said, “Am I going to die?” I had mentioned something about death to my daughter a few days prior while answering some other question of hers. Whatever I said, I guess…
I was in the office restroom washing my hands when the water pressure failed, and the sink started to sputter water. For half a moment my heart sank, and panic washed over me as I began to wonder whether this was a sign that California’s drought-stricken reservoirs had finally dried up. Then the water pressure…
The secret to leading a happy life in the First World is learning how to compartmentalize the trivial and the mundane from the terrifying and the consequential, and regarding them with equal importance. It saves you the trouble of twisting yourself into knots out of existential dread or the perpetual empathetic agony that comes with the realization that at every moment of every day, people are suffering.
Often times when I’m alone with my own thoughts, I find it hard to relax and just enjoy my free time without feeling guilty that I’m not doing something more constructive with my life. It must be residual guilt from my younger days as a student.
Don’t get me wrong, I find plenty of time to waste my time. I play an excess of video games, I watch hours of YouTube, I shop online for deals on paintball gear, and I browse Reddit like it’s a second job. There are plenty of things I enjoy doing when I find some quiet time, but they all inspire this pervasive sense of guilt within me for not doing more with my life.
GOD: You fault me for my lack of intervention?
KEVIN: Of course.
GOD: Just a moment ago, you told me that God should let His children live their own lives.
KEVIN: In an ideal universe, even the most aloof and irresponsible deity would take at least some measures to stop his children from hating and killing each other…
This is a conversation about Ben.
“Jesus, what motivates somebody to shoot himself in the head?”
“I suppose some people’s lives just suffer a deficit of meaning.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m about to shoot myself in the head if you keep that shit up.”
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2014)
Day 26: “Naked and Lost”
________________________________________
It’s funny to think of how much importance we assign to pants (or trousers, as the English call them). I don’t know if it’s due to societal conditioning, or if it’s some deeply rooted instinctual preference, but it’s hard to take a guy seriously when he’s not wearing pants.
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2014)
Day 25: “Social Media”
________________________________________
I don’t have much to say right now about social media, but today’s writing prompt has gotten me into an oversharing kind of mood. So today on Prosaic Shades of Gray, I present to you the first ever installment of a little something I’d like to call “TMI Tuesday”.
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2014)
Day 14: “It has to be aliens”
________________________________________
On September 21, 2013, I married Diana, the love of my life. We had been dating for nearly ten years before we finally got hitched. In all the time that we had been together, Diana constantly begged me to write a “mushy and romantic” blog entry in which I discussed the many ways that I loved her. For one reason or another, I kept refusing, and I never gave in. I came close to honoring her request once, but then I turned it into one big joke.
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2014) Day 12: “One bite” Kevin’s Inner Monologue: I’ve really let myself go these past few months. I was doing so well last summer with P90X until the wedding happened, and then the honeymoon, and then the holidays, and now this stupid month-long writing challenge in February. Now I’m…