Look at a previous topic from a different direction.
Turn it around. Write the reverse. Reconsider what you wrote.
assignment 21
I spent the worst day of my life all alone in a cheap hotel room in East Texas on Easter in 2001 vomiting blood. If that weren't insult enough, I had a computer book to read and the only thing even mildly interesting on TV was Top Gun. On the positive side, I did have a plate of leftover Easter dinner and I had managed to sweet-talk my soon-to-be-ex friend into loaning me a fork so I wouldn't have to eat with my hands. The condition there was that my friend would be by later to pick up the fork, as no one would trust me to return it.
That was the tail end of a perfectly disastrous trip.
The return wasn't that much better. An acquaintance I've long since ignored very happily drove me to the airport in Houston. Contrary to the normal lovely south Texas weather, thunderstorms kept the plane on the ground for an hour past its departure point. Of course, if the plane actually pulls away from the gate even a few feet, the airline can claim an on-time departure, even if it has condemned all of its passengers to sitting, buckled-in, phoneless, waiting for something to happen.
Then again, flying headlong into a thunderstorm as fast as possible in the hopes that you'll catch a brief respite of raining mere kittens and puppies is also disconcerting.
My connection was in Phoenix. I have nothing against Arizona at all. I'd rather miss a connection there than in Chicago, for example, because finding a decent hotel with a ride to O'Hare is more trouble than it's worth. On the other hand, Arizona's perfectly reasonable refusal to deal with the ever more ridiculous Daylight Savings Time means that trying to calculate potential layover times in relation to thunderstorm-related delays is worse than the usual delay and timezone change math.
Both I and my luggage made it on to my flight, though I had to drag my luggage at a full sprint (as full as possible while dragging little-wheeled luggage) from one terminal to the other, only to present my ticket, sweaty-faced, to the attendant who was seconds away from giving up on me and closing the door. I feel sorry for whoever sat next to me as I panted and sweated and desperately wished that I had had time to pick up a bottle of water from somewhere.
The rest of the flight was uneventful, as far as I can remember. To sum up the whole weekend, though, I'd flown several states away to visit a longtime friend who'd just moved, had a huge fight with said friend without even knowing why (or even that it had happened), fell ill thanks to the outsider-unfriendly Beaumont Triangle weather, and completely wasted what would have been a decent Easter vacation with my family friendless and alone.
What makes a day imperfect? Feeling ill. Any day in which I vomit is unpleasant, though my 25th birthday was pretty good. (I felt old, so I went to my favorite park and ran up the hill, only to realize that running up a hill at 8 am without warming up and after eating a breakfast of raspberry yogurt and granola and milk is a good way to convince your stomach to cast a vote against doing that again. I learned a lesson about male vanity that day.)
What else makes a day imperfect? Worrying about other people. I had no idea what I had done to upset my buddy in Texas, but I had to live with the consequences anyway. When I worry about other people — when I've done something I know is bad or when I think that someone is about to do something harmful — I feel this sharp pain in my left wrist. I don't know what it is, unless it's all of the pent-up stress in my body concentrating at just the wrong spot in my back to pull on the nerve bundle from my arm. It's plausible anyway.
Being alone and wondering if I'll meet my schedule bothers me. I hate missing flights and I really had no idea if I could even find a ride back to Houston from the Louisiana border. Granted, missing my connection in Chicago was worse, as I had work the next day and felt really badly about telling my work partner that I wouldn't be back in time to work on whatever project needed our attention. Still, it was unpleasant to imagine what kind of trouble I'd have to face just to put my life back on track again.
Since that time, I've developed another marker of an awful day. If I don't accomplish a minimum amount of work, I feel terrible. Usually that means performing a couple of maintenance tasks — dishes, laundry, minimal cleaning — that keep my life reasonably together while I tackle a couple of progress tasks — researching or making a new purchase, working on a small project, or enjoying some well-deserved personal time — that help me become who I want to be. I like to be flexible on what I do and don't schedule for any given day, but if I can't seem to start working and haven't really done anything at the end of the day, I feel as if I've wasted a precious day.
Conflicts with other people don't ruin my day, though regret does. I regret some of the stupidest things. For example, one day in high school, I forgot to change lanes and accidentally cut off another driver who honked. I felt guilty for a week over that. Another time, I fell out of a raft in a set of rapids and had troubled sleep for weeks. Another time, another driver rear-ended me as I waited to turn left onto my street; I regretted that too, though I had absolutely no fault in the matter.
Whatever the case, anything that robs me of my peace of mind — or more accurately, anything that I allow to rob me of my peace of mind — has the possibility to turn an otherwise normal day horrible.
It would have been nice to see the alligators too.