Twenty Two Miles of Peace

Summer Fridays may be the very thing that keeps the advertising industry in motion. The thought of a single day, extending your sanctuary time to three entire days, is enough to keep one's hope alive.

Rob and I packed up the car 9AM Friday morning with all intention of reaching Boston before 2PM. Two pit stops and one hellish traffic jam later thank you very much Big Dig, we arrive in Boston at 5PM. We depart the city and head a little further North towards a tiny slice of Americana called Swampscott. This town is the home of my two cousins and just about every suburban stereotype one can imagine. We sleep the night in my aunt and uncle's Victorian house on the dead end that over looks the ocean, listening to the sounds of nothingness as our eyelids grow heavy. Living in the city for all my life I have become accustomed to nightly noises and interruptions and have now reached the point where such distractions are needed for restful sleep.

We wake at 6AM the next morning and head out for New Hampshire to embark on our camping expedition. I've never been so far North in this country and it amazes me how much the North starts to resemble the South.

Arriving at the Saco river we unpack our gear and the puppy greets every pair of feet in site. Our canoes are waiting for us upriver a bit so we load up the van and prepare ourselves for twenty two miles of camping and canoeing.

S.O.S.

I truly mean it in both ways of interpretation.

Same Old Situation:
Yes it's like the bank here. Well... There aren't a lot of impotent, frustrated middle aged men running around, but things change and yet they don't. I'm still pigeon-holed in this fantastically frustrating position of being over qualified to do what I do. They call me an executive assistant, and all I hear is secretary. I wouldn't have taken the job if I knew that what they were hiring me to do. Never trust an employer and I've learned that when they interview you, you too are interviewing them. The shiny gloss they polished themselves with before I took this job was just that. A way of obscuring the truth from my eyes by blinding me with a reflection of what I wanted to see.

I'm stuck here now, for awhile. I need to regroup and figure out what it is I'm going to do with my life. If I'm filing and answering phones in five years, I'm also swinging from the rafters, preferably by a telephone cord for the irony.

I could write a roman a clef all about the monsters I've worked with. But honestly do I think I'm going to make any money writing about people no one cares about. Self importance is only that, importance of self, no one else cares. I'd need to take a job with some one who means some thing to the world, not just some one who things they do.

As it stands I'm waiting for health insurance, and perhaps some spiritual awakening that will allow me to go through the motions of my life without feeling all the pain.