A Workman's Dream--Snippet 5

......I hope not one of you who are listening to any of this are to the point of feeling sorry for me because that is also on the list of things that really get to me. Once you get labeled as someone to feel sorry for, it seems to stick and stick for good. Everyone then spends their time patting you on the back and telling you things will start looking up a little bit farther down the road, or how things always get bad before they get good, or some other crazy nonsense that someone who hasn't given a second thought about what they're saying to you because if they would have, they wouldn't of said it. The thing that really gets me the most about people mopping around for you is they're always talking about times in life when black clouds of bad luck seem to just follow you around, but the only real black clouds in my life were the ones talking to me about my current case of bad luck.

      I guess all of this is leading me up to what I really want to talk about and that is I'm lonely. I know that sounds small, but it isn't to me. It's been working on me pretty badly lately; gnawing at me like some parasite that's been deep inside me, but has now out of hunger made it to the surface. I think it's mostly because Spring is here. The azaleas don't really get to me anymore, but the dogwoods and honeysuckle get me every time. It wouldn't be that bad and Spring wouldn't weigh that heavily on me, if I didn't have to spend so much time with it, but it's really not a choice I get to make anymore. It's been made for me.
    
      I walk to work and then back home. It takes about twenty-five minutes one way, but I rarely walk that fast; especially on my way back home. It's not so bad most of the time, but sometimes I hate it so bad that I can't see straight. I start wishing everything would have gone differently and that I lived somewhere else, but mostly just that I'd have a car. Guys with cars don't know what they've got; even the ones with crappy cars that are covered in rust and stickers that don't belong to them. Everyone thinks people that walk are homeless or some sort of deviant and that's a whole new can of worms that gets me so steamed, but I've already jumped around so much that I think I'd better tie up some ends before you quit listening altogether. I'd hate that because you can always tell when someone quits listening to you. They start fidgeting or looking around and they try to stop you when you come to some brief pause. You can see them going crazy inside trying to find something, anything that sounds plausible about why they would need to leave at that particular moment. I know this sounds stupid, but I always end the conversation for them. I'll look at my watch and act surprised and then rush away saying something about having to be somewhere, but if you really know me, I haven't had to rush anywhere in a very long time.

   So, I walk to work. It's sort of become a part of me now...

Keep writing or shut it down. Fitzgerald is said to have had 10,000 false starts. Is this one of mine?
   David