One day in the not too distant, getting graaaadually dim past — wonder whether 12 months constitute a distant past? No… hmm, well it's certainly dimming, it’s certainly leaving a dust trail running into the sunset of the distant past and certainly must have parked itself somewhere in the middle ages or from the Gregorian Calendar to a parking garage in a Neanderthal’s family calendar. You get my point. Anyway, my fingers digress away from the matter in mind — focus, focus. This cooped-up-at-home state has ever so slowly cracked the Trojan horse lurking in the neurons and the insanity army is tip-toeing creepily into the sanity part of my psyche kingdom. It won’t be long before they crash down the gates, plonk their flag, and park their butt on the throne. Again, my fingers have taken a wide detour with the matter in mind — focus, you, focus.
I have to lay all the blame for my current state of mind or more apt term would be mindlessness on the next-door rooster. Yeah, you heard me. Not too long in the distant past, there was a time when I had put the rooster out of work and on unemployment benefits. I used to be up and away for work on my speedy bullet long before he could lift his bleary eyes from his feathers and do his bugle call. Now he takes great pride in his revenge, struts up by my window in the misty morning, shakes his 12-inch tail, clears his throat, and gleefully let's go by crowing down my ear canals. I suspect he crows a few notes out of order just to jump-start me off my sleep. One of these days I am going to take one of those out-of-tune notes and play drums on his noggin. That should teach him not to mess with a man and his forty winks.
All this is happening ever since the Work For Home — ahem — I mean Work From Home phase of the Technological Age started. Now instead of my speedy bullet, it’s a got-up-from-slumber zombie walk from the bed to my squeaky, speaking in a creaky voice, back-breaking — my vertebrae from C1 — C7 gives the attendance every day now, come to think of it, I heard a C8 today hmmm — sorry excuse of an ergonomic — my ass — chair. Then the fun part starts. Fire up — one day, one day I will literally fire it up — the network dongle, wait out the hair-tearing, headbanging on table part before the network traffic is freed up and flows enthusiastically into my laptop and I take my first exploratory steps — testing wise — into the workday, saying a yes yes smooth ride, no no roller-coaster ride prayer for the day. Working at home means lots of calls to initiate and attend to. Now conference calls can be a bit awkward, sounds that you only hear in your nightmares pop up — beeep booop, beeep booop, scratchy sounds as if something is trying to scratch its way out of the speaker, heavy and deep breathing with occasional twitches (catching rabbits in the conference?), the silence of the deep where you can drop a pin and still hear — you know… silence. I could spiel spell some do’s and don’ts, mostly don’ts, and non-guidelines on conference call etiquettes but I will leave that for another time.
Nowadays it seems like Father time has woven himself seamlessly into the collective parts of the day, the mind has dumped its ability to distinguish between days and …time. Eyes glued to the screen and fingers playing continuous tap dance on the keyboard, I can almost see tell-tale roots forming where my legs used to be. I am sure pretty soon, I will be sprouting leaves and my dear wife will be coming around once in a while with a garden shear and pruning me like a bonsai tree. Not a happy thought. That’s why it’s important to take regular breaks like right now. Hey, where are my legs? I swear I had them when I sat down. Oh, false alarm, it was just covered by my belly matured to its full size and then some. All those raids into the storeroom and devouring all the snack supplies has come back with a gym membership form with a complimentary exercise ball attached. Ah well.
