Sometimes You Roll A Two

Here's a horrible metric (OK, it's more anecdotal, but anyway):

Most People are assholes to smokers who get lung cancer.  The popular stance seems to be "What did you expect?"

People, especially like Gillian what's-her-name, who spend most of their energy and creativity measuring up to a manufactured search image handed to them by society, have a deep need to shame others for Not Measuring Up.  It's no fun being a demi-goddess if you can't lord it over people.

But even if you don't spend your spare time attacking the multi-talented writer, producer, performer, jazz and classical musician and all around Pop Star Lizzo, the lure of superiority is hard to pass on.  Even pretty compassionate people can let slip some backhanded judgmental quip like, "You have melanoma, huh?  That's why *I* wear sunscreen."

It's usually more thoughtless than evil.  But it does harm.  So, when you're going to talk to someone who's met with misfortune of any kind, ask yourself first if some part of you thinks they had it coming, and then tell that part of you to Shut The Fuck Up, enjoy your own good fortune and handle your own creeping anxiety ("What if that could happen to anybody?  What if that could happen even to *gasp* me?") without the outward smuggery.

And then there's SELF-blame.

And of course I do.

Because for several months, being more and more aware of my lack of value and appeal on the job market and how that affects my plan to "Keep working 'till I'm 80!", I'd begun to sink into nightly fits of black anxiety and despair.  I could never seem to earn enough (and never really did) to keep up with life, an I don't mean a life of designer shoes and cocktails or even a life of more than four pairs of shoes and a vehicle that's younger than twenty.  The statistics truly suck for those of us facing Elderhood now, as well-documented by Elizabeth White in her indy book 55, Unemployed and Faking Normal.  It's often said that "There's no safety net" and it seems to be harder than ever to just get by.  You can only write off medical expenses in excess of fifteen thousand dollars.  I even heard a young white male engineer (as employable as you can GET) make a remark about losing his job, living in his car and eating out of the trash.  I think it's not just me, it's the zeitgeist.  But it's horrific, toxic zeitgeist.  A friend of mine personally knows some young teachers who do live out of their cars, because they don't make enough to live indoors on a teacher's salary.  

I've been running these panic tapes for weeks and full out dreading the next twenty years.

Then cancer pops up like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and snarls, "Bitch, you don't have a future." and part of me is actually relieved.  And then I feel like an asshole who brought this on myself.

Cancer is always in us in some form, (I heard somewhere) but it's not till it's strong enough and we're weak enough that it can get a hold on our health.

DO did I weaken myself with these nightly despair sessions enough to give the tumor a chance to get comfy?  Did I bring this on myself, my friends and Jim by just being a coward?

It's not four in the morning right now, so I can shake it off pretty easily.

Life, in my eperience so far, is not a fulfillment of a New Age book that makes grand promises, and it's certainly not the fulfillment of the New England Work Ethic promise I was raised with that begins, "If you work very hard...".  

In my experience, life is more like a game of D&D.

Your grand plans are good thought exersizes, but nothing can happen until you roll initiative.  And we can't always roll D20s when we really need them.  

Sometimes when you're facing a Shambling Mound and your hit points are down, you roll a two.