My Latest Existential Crisis

Ah, that old familiar territory. It seems like only yesterday that my friend Scott and I would regularly experience these types of crises during work at the start-up software company for which we worked. Flash forward eight years and I still seem to be circling the drain.

So, my client here in New Haven has an insurance business for which I'm developing training materials to support a software implementation. Yesterday of all things, I was creating a training module that taught readers how to update an insurance policy for a "deceased" owner. Frak, I thought, someday some jackass at an insurance company who doesn't know dick about anything will be changing my status to "Deceased" in some damned software system.

One minute, I'm writing a boring training manual. The next minute, I'm struggling to deal with my own mortality, attempting to reconcile the time I've spent on this planet with the time I hope I have left. Thinking, once again, how much I really detest so many things about the corporate world.

I couldn't help but think of how, lately, everyone has seemed a little more brittle. Several weeks ago, I had to leave New Heaven to get home as a result of a family medical emergency. My mom was suddenly hospital with what the doctors thought were heart problems. At the time, they scheduled a heart catheterization, certain that she had some sort of blockage. (Turns out, the docs weren't right; her problem wasn't cardiac in nature but was a reaction to some medication that presented like heart problems.) I threw all my shit in a bag, sped to the airport, and bought my way onto the next flight home. It was a freaky few days but, in the end, everything turned out OK. Nonetheless, it was one of those situations that sort of belly-punch you into an awareness that life is fragile and time together is fleeting.

"Don't waste it. Don't waste it." These are the words that keep surfacing from the depths of my mind. When I emerged from the fog of thought, I grabbed my iPod and, magically, stumbled onto "Theory of the Crows" by The National which was in my queue. The lyrics seemed to fit and I felt a little less desperate, a little more a part of the world, a little less alone.

where crybabies cry

in the united states

bright white on both sides

like a plate

nobody listens

nobody should

it'd be a waste of attention

not enough money

to buy a PC

so i come in this weekend

asleep on my feet

and if i forget you

i'll have nobody left to forget

i guess that's what assholes get

traded my day light

for a career

but i need you to disprove

my theory of the crows

pouring my fingers across the keys

will someone review my salary please?

i'm selling my time to the man who sells style

that time should be mine to waste on you

i'll suck off investors

i'll suck off VCs

i'm losing my posture from time on my knees

they treat me so well

cause i'll do anything

it's in my nature of service

but i'll need you to disprove

my theory of the crows

kids of the wealthy are raised by the poor

you send daughters to los angeles and new york

i need mine to see me when i wake up

i need mine to know

that i'm what they come to

when they come home