New Year's Resolutions

The beginning of a new year may be an artificial transition created by the nature of our calendar, but it's real in that we define our lives by that calendar. So, it might not be such a bad idea to use the break to reflect on one's self and resolve to make changes. This year, I intend to make one that (1) will have a positive effect and (2) is within my nature to do.

But first, let's look at my past resolutions.

In 2002 I wrote my resolutions down. They were:
Stretch daily - success, but only for that year
Begin regular cardio exercise - nope
Improve diet - success with the start of Atkins
Stop clapping hands loudly in the house - I made great strides here

In 2003, my resolutions were:
Organize finances and write wills - nope
Begin regular biking/walking around neighborhood - nope
Stop yelling in anger - nope, poor kids get the brunt of my wrath
Write my book of days - nope, my inability to stick to writing will be my legacy

In 2004, my resolutions were:
Organize finances and write wills - success, but it's 2006 and I need to revisit this
Begin regular biking/walking around neighborhood - nope
Stop yelling in anger - nope, poor kids still get the brunt of my wrath
Write my book of days - nope, my inability to stick to writing will be my legacy

In 2005, I don't have a log of my resolutions. I probably surrendered in despair, but I can't prove it.

Now it's about to be 2006, and I need something at which I can succeed. My resolution is:
Kiss my wife more, and kiss her passionately at least once a day.

I think this will have positive repercussions and it's something that even I should be able to do. We'll see come December 2006...

Misguided Parents and Unguided Children

Child-rearing is an awesome responsiblity. It is the undertaking that forms the next generation, even at the expense of extreme demands on the parents. It is a noble pursuit, which is why many worthless people pursue it: in the hope of achieving purpose and nobility.

Unfortunately, it seems most parents don't live up to the demands. They seek the benefits, but without the reciprocal hardships. Perhaps it's human nature since it seems most people everywhere seek reward without work and avoid consequences even if it means bringing hardship on another.

But back to parents.

I could go on about the spineless, undisciplined parent who passes on his or her sins by refusing to put in the effort necessary to develop self-discipline in his or her scions. Often this is a result of laziness, but sometimes it's due to a foolish perception of compassion. There are actually myriad topics that could be presented to demonstrate how parenting is an awful profession for the selfish among us, but here I'll just focus on the public behavior of children.

Children do need to be allowed to express themselves; they are vibrant living creatures that are sponges of learning. But, they also shouldn't be allowed to run wild and unchecked in public areas if it means their entitlement to freedom will infringe on others' entitlement to tranquility. Parents: think of others for a change and not of only your desire to be be free of monitoring of your chosen charges. You opted for the responsibility of children; do not force that responsibility on the casual stranger.

Too often our cultural emphasis on freedom and individual rights gets taken to the extreme. Too many people have developed a selfish sense of entitlement that undermines our ability to function as a civil community. This includes most rush hour commuters, and some of you parents out there.

The rights of any one individual — whether he or she be a parent, child, or stranger — do not negate the rights of others. This means you.

Happy Birthday, Curlicue!

My little girl is turning 8 today! Hard to believe.

Not many of the baby curls remain in her hair, but her sweet concern for others and sensitive view on life still remains. Hopefully this will never change.

I'm sure enjoying reading the Chronicles of Narnia with you, Curlicue. I hope you have a great birthday.

Happy Birthday, Dinks!

I want to take a brief pause in my ramblings to wish Dinky a very Happy Birthday! I'm looking forward to the weekend-long celebration!

TAPABILY!

A dream or a message?

It's been quite a while since I last posted. Work has consumed my work days and intentional, desperate distractions have consumed my weekends. But mainly my silence is because I didn't have anything interesting to say -- not that this has stopped me before.

I did have this strange dream the other night:

I am at my computer in my old office in Austin (the office that has a window overlooking the other rooms of the office, rather than a window facing outside). There is apparently a garage behind the back wall of my office (at least in my dream; not in reality). That back wall, which is opposite my window, has a vent at the bottom of it. Apparently someone is idling his or her car in that garage, because smoke is pouring into my office from that tiny vent. I notice the smoke, but just get up from my desk, close my office door (right next to the window overlooking the rest of the office) and sit back down as the smoke continues to pour into my office. I guess I don't want the smoke to disturb the rest of the office.

That was it.

That same night, I also had a dream about a woodpecker. I saw him up on the trunk of a tree, then he flitted to the other side of the trunk. That is all I remember about that one.

Maybe I'll be back with more esoteria before another month passes...

I may be dull, but I look sharp

Yes, my life may be crumbling about me -- perhaps more due to my own perceptions than to any real events -- but at least I look good. My spouse and children gave me some new clothes yesterday, and today I'm strutting my stuff.

The halls in which I labor may be soulless, but at least I've been granted vestigial wings. Thanks, y'all!

Another Milestone

So this is September 26. Does it mean anything to you? It always has meant something to me.

Unfortunately more and more things seem to serve as reminders of how life hasn't turned out as I expected -- milestones on my road to mediocrity if you will. September 26 is one such milestone for me.

My family (spouse and children) are terrific, working hard to make the day special, and doing so yesterday as well. How do people get by without the love and support of family? My family are the heroes in my life and are the fragile railing between me and the abyss.

So, is my dissatisfaction due to being in the midst of a mid-life crisis? That's too glib of an assessment. It labels without defining. How do we make sure we are content no matter our age? Here's a simple description of the choices we should make in life, and a clue as to what I may not have done well:

"Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success." - Louisa May Alcott, American novelist

Does straying from this simple policy mean one has traveled the wrong path? If so, what should be done? A Turkish proverb says "No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back." With a computer, you can turn back by using the "Undo" command or, when things are really desperate, CTRL+ALT+DLT. What does one do out here in the real world? Whatever it is, it likely isn't pleasant.

Sturm und Drang

The storm has passed. With only leaves, twigs, and the occasional dead branch down, we've been spared any serious damage.

We've also been spared the crucible that would burn away the superfluous aspects of our life so that we see who we really are. It is said that crises bring out the best and worst in people. What crises actually do is peel away the faux veneer we have each crafted, thus letting us see our true selves. Are we selfish spirits that loot luxuries when external controls are not present? Are we compassionate souls that will put our own welfare aside in order to help another?

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to peel away the veneer. Despite the ease with which fate treated me this past weekend, I still resorted to stealing the neighbor's Sunday paper. Yes, there were two day's worth of papers on their front lawn. Yes, the neighbors had left town with no indication that they might return. Nevertheless, I took something they had paid and I had not -- something they may be expecting when they return. I may have put their schedule for TV watching in peril for the week. I may have deprived them of their desire to keep tabs on Garfield. I may have undermined their ability to stay abreast of news.

So there it is. I have survived as has my property, yet my principles have not. I set aside my moral code just so I can giggle at Dilbert. What would Prince Valiant say?

On the positive side, I did meet three of my neighbors. My kids learned how to rake (having recently moved from a treeless neighborhood). And I cut down a dead tree (albeit a small one) and collected some fallen branches for my neighbor. But all this is overshadowed by my rampant paper looting, for which I am ashamed. As Rex the Dinosaur would say, "I have guilt!"

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Sturm und Drang (SHTOORM oont DRANG) [German, "storm and stress"] noun 1. Turmoil; ferment. 2. A late-18th-century German romantic literary movement whose works typically depicted the struggles of a highly emotional individual against conventional society.

The Sooie Side of Life

Suicide just doesn't receive the humorous treatment it deserves. Leave it to The Onion to do it right. Actually, the article is not so much a rib-tickler about suicide as it is a satire on the fabric of today’s society, where technology has isolated us from each other. It is ironic that communication and travel are easier today than ever in history, but it is the soulless nature of these technology-supported links that furthers feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Emotion today is conveyed with an array of sterile acronyms and icons. “LOL” means “I am staring impassively at my screen, but will take a moment to recognize your attempt at humor.” A smiley face might mean “I don’t want to take the time to rephrase my communiqué so that you’ll realize my jocundity; let this icon reveal my intentions.”

The security and anonymity of isolation does allow unchecked anger to be the one emotion that is freely shared. Thus, we might find blanket statements profanely expressed by those who disagree with our opinions. This sort of close-minded and puerile invective is reserved not only for the BIG TOPICS (foremost of these being politics and religion), but also for opinions on pop culture: musicians you might (not) like, or even the particular songs you (don’t) prefer by that musician; the movie or TV series you prefer, or even the particular episode of that series; the sports (or team) you prefer; your feelings on why a particular sports team may (not) be doing well; or, and this is a big one, which actor or model you think is the hottest. Some contentious issues, these.

But this unfettered rage can lead to some humorous moments, tinged with rousing irony, such as when your typos are under attack by a critic who writes “Your such a looser. Your grammer sucks!”

The Onion's article captures all this about society, but at the expense of leaving the latently funny topic of suicide as but an afterthought. So, I’ll have to continue my search for good humor about self-inflicted death. In the meantime, refresh yourself on the reasons you might not want to commit suicide. Bookmark that page and return to it again and again. You might need it when Life makes you feel like a looser, as it so often does.

Inspiration on the Tube; Not so much off-Tube

This past weekend was the antithesis of the previous weekend in my world of football. The UT-Hookem-Longhorns traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to play Ohio State in The Horseshoe. This, the first ever match up of these two “storied programs” (to slip into sportscaster-speak), lived up to its billing. Texas came out strong in the first quarter, then struggled offensively in the second, third, and most of the fourth quarters. If it hadn’t have been for the defensive bend-don’t-break Texas defense, which limited Ohio State to field goals when touchdowns looked likely, Texas would have been out of the game. The final 5 minutes of the game was worth the pain of watching countless beer commercials.

Soccer on the other hand was uninspiring. Brian McBride scored for Fulham in the match with Newcastle United that heralded the return of Michael Owen, but that’s about it. FC Dallas continued its downslide. Worst soccer news: my son’s first soccer game with his new team in his new club in our new town was called due to thunderstorms. Since the team had yet to pick up all of its players and hadn’t had a chance to really practice well together, it might have been a blessing that the game was called. Nevertheless, I was eager to see “Flippy” get back to the thing he enjoys most outside the home.

Perhaps the best soccer I saw this weekend was when I started playing my son’s (“Cheekers”) game, Backyard Soccer, on the computer. It’s fun, if not very challenging, and made me pine for a simple neighborhood park where local kids could assemble their small-sided teams and play the game in its simplest form. This would be pure soccer: fun for the kids, with ample opportunity to experiment with the art of the game. Of course, if it ever became successful, it would draw the attention of adults. “Helpful” adults would come in to increase the competition, then other adults would have to come in to make sure the “helpful” adults weren’t bending the rules, and more adults would need to ensure safety and liability issues were covered. Then we’d realize that to ensure this, we’d need more organization. Soon, we’d have just another soccer club, where soccer is over-regulated and fun is only an occasional by-product.

Ah, another dream dashed. Glad Monday is here to quash any other dreams or aspirations that might be bubbling in my cerebellum.

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams. –Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957)

Football and FOOTball

Yesterday was a series of chores and busywork waiting for the real purpose of the day: televised football.

Finally, evening came and the family watched as our esteemed Longhorns crushed the hapless University of Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns, 60-3. This should have been a great thing, right? Nope. I decided to spend much of the game in the yard, finishing my handcrafted weed-eating of the grass tufts on the periphery of my lawn. I chose to worship nature over worshipping Longhorns because:

1. Louisiana was devastated by Katrina the Monday before. How can we relish humiliating them?

2. And, yes, it’s humiliation when you keep your first string quarterback in despite leading the opposition by 40 points. Why would you keep Vince Young in? Lack of confidence in your second string? Lack of desire to hone the skills of your backups? Granted, many of the less visible positions had the second string on the field prior to Vince taking a break, but Vince’s presence was glaring and odious.

3. This was the first game of the season and I have to ease into the morass of obnoxious commercials that have brief moments of football floating in between. Have you ever wondered what the nubile, gyrating girls on beer commercials have to do with beer? Do you know many (any?) attractive women who guzzle beer regularly? Of course not. Those sylphs in the commercials aren’t drinking the beer; they're the form taken by women after you’ve been drinking beer. The man behind the curtain has been revealed. Be warned.

4. The scenes of beautiful Austin (shown between the moments of football and moments of advertisements) were soul-wrenching.

5. The game was meaningless. UT should have won, and effortlessly. However, next week the Longhorns take on the Ohio State Buckeyes for the first time ever. This clash between two of the biggest and most respected college football programs will be good theater. It will also be the first test of the Longhorns. I have faith in them; here’s hoping it’s not unfounded.

After the game, and thanks to DVR, I managed to watch a real football game with grand implications (and fewer commercials). The US Men’s National Soccer Team took on Mexico in their second meeting in the final round of World Cup Qualification. After a fairly uncreative -- but physical -- first half, the game opened up in the second. The U.S. took it to the undeservedly overconfident Tri-Colores, winning 2-0 (a score that should have been 3-0). With the win, the U.S. has qualified for the World Cup next year in Germany, and Mexico must earn a tie or a win in its final three qualifying matches -- which is should do by Wednesday.

It is unfortunate that ignorance and regional chauvinism combined to make this significant sporting event largely unnoticed by the American public, who are for the most part lost in their habitual opiates.

The U.S. continues the WCQ matches when it travels to Guatemala on Wednesday, September 7. Not needing a win, the U.S. can rest its veterans and test the mettle of other players who might become instrumental in our quest to win the World Cup.

Beating the world at their own game. Now THAT’s exciting theater.

But this coming Saturday? Hook ‘em.

The harsh nurse

At the risk of beating a dead horse, here's yet another quote on the value of difficulties:

"Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness -- a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion." William C. Bryant, US poet, editor

Unexpected sparks

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

An unexpected spark brought gladness to me today. I was permitted an hour's reprieve from the corporate confinement I have voluntarily sentenced myself. My wife trekked from bucolic suburbia to the concrete maelstrom that is the business district (one of the many in Houston) where I work. I was able to introduce her to the pleasant, if soulless, coworkers of mine, and them to her. Then we had lunch.

She is such a delight, especially when she is freed from her domestic demands.

When I returned to my designated cell-cum-cubicle, I felt a bit lighter than I had before. Usually, when joy comes and departs from our lives, its brief appearance makes its absence all the more apparent, and the despair all the more palpable. Luckily, I am still under the illusion of bliss, and hopefully that remains.

Here's hoping that you have someone that can spark the kindling of your life.

(And, to continue the metaphor: keep the kindling of your life from getting soggy or else the spark won’t take.)

The Power Tools for Life (batteries not included)

So when we last left The Road Less Traveled, we saw that the difficulties in life are there to help us forge enlightenment in the kiln of suffering. Some might find this to be reassuring -- and indeed it is nice to know that there is a reason for what seems to be a series of arbitrary misfortunes -- but we’re also now wondering what we can do to develop ourselves in those times when we’re facing unemployment, a spouse that deserts us, or a really nasty papercut.

Peck tells us there are four tools at our disposal...

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Therefore let us inculcate in ourselves and in our children the means of achieving mental and spiritual health. By this I mean let us teach ourselves and our children the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and to experience the pain involved. I have stated that discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. It will be come clear that these tools are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively that I call discipline? There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. As will be evident, these are... simple tools, and almost all children are adept in their use by the age of ten. Yet presidents and kings will often forget to use them, to their own downfall. The problem lies not in the complexity of these tools but in the will to use them. For they are tools with which pain is confronted rather than avoided, and if one seeks to avoid legitimate suffering, then one will avoid the use of these tools. Therefore, after analyzing each of these tools, we shall...examine the will to use them, which is love.

...So if your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine. Then why desire to evolve at all, you may ask. If you ask this question, perhaps you do not know enough of joy...

****

So, the four simple tools of discipline we can wield in order to glean worth from our travails are:

1. delaying of gratification – “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live."

2. acceptance of responsibility – “The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.” Accept responsibility for your duties, successes, and failings. At the same time, distinguish between that for which you are actually responsible, and that for which others attempt to make you responsible. For instance, don’t let marketing specialists define your responsibilities in life.

3. dedication to truth – "What does a life of total dedication to the truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination...to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner." Oh, and by the way: "The less clearly we see the reality of the world--the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misperceptions and illusions--the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions." Don’t be befuddled.

4. balancing – “To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously. In other words, discipline itself must be disciplined.” Some dead Greek guy (yes, it was you, Hesiod; now sit back down) once said “Observe due measure, moderation is best in all things.” Taken absolutely literally, this means one must not indulge in excess, but even moderation must be moderated, and this occasional excess encourages sanity.

Peck then follows this description of the tools of enlightenment with a discussion on the quality that defines how we apply these tools. He calls this quality “Love.”

Love (not romantic love, which is mostly a selfish emotion) is about nurturing your own or another's spiritual growth. Love is an action and a decision, not just a feeling, and it requires hard work and courage. “If an act is not one of work or courage, then it is not an act of love. There are no exceptions. The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another we give him or her our attention; we attend to that's person's growth. When we love ourselves we attend to our own growth." So love isn’t buying flowers, baubles, or toys for one’s mate, nor does it mean buying your child every toy he or she wants; it’s ensuring your loved ones take the path and have the experiences that will help them grow. And that means allowing that person some independence, and not suffocating him or her (and, in turn, yourself) with a constant, adoring presence.

The book concludes with a discussion on Grace, the least developed section of the book. There are interesting thoughts present here, but nothing new. Those who have a bent towards New Age religion might be sympathetic to the ideas present, but, while I’m squishy, I’m not that squishy. Nevertheless, I appreciate his attempt to herald the fact that there IS something grander and greater out there -- something bigger than each of us individually.

So, we know life is difficult, we know it's not by accident, we know the four tools that can extract benefit for difficulty, we realize that we need to apply these tools to our lives and the lives of our loved ones, and we have an inkling that there is something greater than humanity running the show -- now what?

Well, for one, it's probably time to read some more books. More immediately, it's time to quit reading this balderdash, stop delaying your gratification, and go out there and live.

And don't forget that floss and sunscreen can help prevent some of life's difficulties. Not all difficulties are good, I'd wager.

Why does your life suck? To make you better!

Life is difficult. With these three words, Dr. M. Scott Peck begins his book, The Road Less Traveled. I generally scoff at self-help books – and this book doesn’t entirely escape my pervasive cynicism, particularly when it lauds psychotherapy to excess – but I found this book to contain some intriguing insights that help put life in a new light.

Below are extracts from the opening pages of The Road Less Traveled. It provides Peck’s manifesto on life and what we need to do in order to makes something of our lives. First, we need to understand that difficulties are what develop us. Second, we need to cultivate discipline, particularly self-discipline to draw benefit from the obstacles thrown at us.

Here is Peck...

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Life is difficult...

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been specially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?

Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one....Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning...As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.” It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

Most of us are not so wise. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain....

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality. In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”

But the substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was designed to avoid....And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel.

****

So, there you have it: the goal for each of us is to develop ourselves into spiritually mature beings before we die, but we’re faced with human characteristics that keep us from achieving this. The sins we face aren’t anything that haven’t been named before. They include laziness; lack of discipline; avoidance of responsibility; emotional immaturity; confusion over the true nature of love; poor parenting; and a culture that generally accepts and nurtures the victimization mentality. None of this is novel to us, heck we could write a book on them…only so many other people already have, so don’t bother.

Is this completely new to you? Probably not. Still, Peck has managed to distill the thoughts and ideas of others to a somewhat succinct description of not only the travails of life, but the reason for those travails: to forge your soul/mind/spirit/self into something greater than it was when it first arrived as a naked and goopy hominid.

For an even more succinct look at how struggles are the key to our advancement, there’s this anecdote about the girl and the butterfly:

A young girl noticed a cocoon with a small hole in it. The cocoon was wiggling, so she sat and watched it. After a while, to her delight, she saw a butterfly struggling to squeeze through that little hole. The butterfly worked and worked for hours trying to get out until it was too tired to try any more. The sympathetic girl thought she’d be a friend and help the butterfly out, so she cut away the rest of the cocoon. The butterfly was bloated with shriveled wings. She watched the butterfly for a long time, waiting for its wings to straighten so it could fly away -- but it never did. The rest of the butterfly’s life was spent crawling around the garden, lugging its fat body along and dragging its useless wings.

The butterfly’s struggle through the restricted egress of the cocoon is designed to force fluid from the butterfly’s body and into its wings. Without this struggle, it cannot fly or thrive, and it is forced into despair and a life of writing bad poetry in blogs until its existence is blissfully terminated, either by a bird fortunate enough to find the lumbering prey, or perhaps by just fading away after a meaningless existence in corporate America.

Peck doesn’t relate this fable, which probably would detract from the intellectual image he’d want to convey with his work, but it would have been more enjoyable to read this than the Tales of Psychotherapy he decides to share later in his book. Nevertheless, Peck does make a good case for the benefits of strife...a benefit that one can even accept regardless of religious preference.

Knowing all of this can make one feel better about life and the sucker punches it occasionally throws, but how does this help in dealing with the sucker punches? It doesn't, at least not too much -- but later in the book Peck describes the tools for turning your troubles into food for development. I’ll address these later. Until then, revel in your troubles. Or do what I do and sigh about them.

Wash under your nails...

The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly. –Charles Reznikoff, poet (1894-1976)