These last few months of my life have been the most secure and contented in all my years on this earth. I’ve got secure housing, my bills are paid and there is ample food on the table with plenty of minor luxuries thrown in as well. I spend half my week in the city earning dollars, and the other half 360km away in the bush contemplating my navel and checking the spinach and tomato plants for bugs etc. I have a marvellous life, and I enjoy it very much.
I’m so contented that I’m thoroughly pissed-off that there is nothing to whinge about in my life anymore. How can I ever hope to write angsty novels and stuff if I’m not suffering like I used to???
Well… you could whine about the 360 km distance between work and leisure? Or those pesky bugs that constantly attack your spinach or tomato plants? Or the lack off (or too much) navel fuzz?
Being an old crone, I’ve got no navel fuzz (one less region to shave thank OG) and I can’t really complain about the bugs and funguses that attack the vegies either…'cos there ain’t any yet. And funnily enough, I really enjoy the long-distance commute with all the rural freaks coming to and from the city.
Damn, I AM doomed. What the frig am I going to do???
What about health issues? You or your loved ones could come down with cancer or be hit by a bus at any second.
What about retirement? Something bad could happen, and you’d end up old & alone & poor.
And a particularly insidious one: have you really done the best thing with your life? What if you screwed up? Shouldn’t you be trekking through Asia or helping starving children in Africa? Will anyone remember you if you died?
Yummmmm - anxiety attack. When all else fails, you can worry about the rise of facist dictatorships, nuclear war, and global warming… when you manage to overcome the anxiety about that, the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria…
(I’m REALLY good at this. Too good, according to my therapist.)
Your complaint reminds me of a broadcast of Car Talk from somewhere near 20 years ago that I heard. A woman called in from Hawaii describing in some detail a noise her car was making and she wanted to know what was wrong.
They diagnosed her problem as “Living in paradise and having nothing else to bitch about.” They also assured her that if she lived in Boston she wouldn’t even notice it.
