The Devil’s Workday

Today one of the chickens started barking, and it hasn’t stopped for the entire evening. I have no idea what this means. The two of ’em have also taken to flipping over their food dish every afternoon and pitchin’ a fit ’bout it. They’re starting to become a pain in the neck, and when I say a pain in the neck, I actually mean delicious.

In the last week I’ve probably flip-flopped ten million times about what I plan to do for the future, which is typically an indication that I’m trying to plan too far ahead. I’ve been thinking six months ahead, which experience has shown is a completely useless exercise. It’s an indication that I should probably be planning only a month ahead, and instead trying to figure out how I’m going to pack up this circus and roll it back to Minnesota for the summer.

Minnesota. It seems my stomping grounds only make the news when people are shooting at each other. That’s not how I remember it at all, but maybe in 22 years of living there I missed something.

The distant future (distant being anything more than three months out) looks rather interesting. I have no shortage of exciting opportunities, some of which allow me to live and work anywhere I please. However, these require that I figure out a way to work without being in constant pain. Despite intuition otherwise, chronic pain associated with work is usually detrimental to productivity. I do plan on living for at least another 75 years, and I assume a functional pointer finger will come in handy wherever I choose to go. It’s not as interdisciplinary as the middle finger, of course, but I need to find a way to protect it nevertheless.

Hopefully, three months of paddling canoes will give my body enough time to knit back together its damaged goods, while destroying parts that are currently intact. My body will break in places it never knew it had, but that will take the mind off existing ailments long enough for them to disappear. This process is cyclic, and cycles are the way of life. If you can look back while looking forward, nothing will take you by surprise.

Unless you like surprises, that is.