Arriving at work yesterday, I was handed a Performance Review to fill out.
How have you displayed the company's core values in your job, how have you treated your co-workers, how have you displayed ethics at work, blah blah, the usual bullshit.
Then, inevitably, a space to describe Next Year's Goals.
Part of me thinks honesty is the way to go here. Though I'll no doubt scribble something about trying to "meet expectations," I want to say I'm lowering my expectations, that instead of giving a rat's ass and railing against the blatant inefficiency and obvious favoritism I encounter everyday, I should just put my brain in neutral and coast. I should cease caring and simply wander the hallways, blandly performing whatever Sisyphean tasks are assigned me.
Hey, it's what I do in my real life.
Was it only a year ago I filled this space with shiny happy posts about the new life I was about to embark on with Tabbatha? Co-habitation, probable marriage, with a kid already in place and hell, maybe even another in the future. A ready-made family, a life I'd never known. It seems so recent, and so long ago.
Since Tabbatha and I ceased to be, what has become of me? I've gone around with a couple of women, but expectations were low, and even then, weren't met. Mostly, I just hang out, go to work, zone. I'm only forty-two, but there's already a sense my life is winding down.
Things can change, of course. I remain open to that possibility. But my life is a testament to my inability to maintain a relationship, to hold down a job without getting bored, an unstable mix of restlessness and stasis. This may be all there will ever be.
Most nights as I settle into bed, music plays. Classical, usually, sometimes jazz, sometimes Marshall Crenshaw or Steely Dan. Monika burrows under my side, her head snuggled into my armpit, her purring so loud the whole bed shakes. Delmar wraps his front legs around one of my feet, occasionally gnawing on a toe until he drifts off to sleep. I can feel their breathing, and my own, as the music fades and darkness swallows me, and a strange sense of contentment rises.
Maybe if this is all there is, it's enough.
