The truck

6:00pm, pacific standard time, apartment in Chandler, Arizona, USA, Wednesday evening, July 20, 2022. I listed my truck for sale this morning before taking it to a car wash for a deep clean and shine. There have been no responses to the ad yet, but I will sell it one way or the other before too long. That is a hard thing to say. I have owned the truck for over 12 years, the longest of any vehicle in my life. But I can’t keep it. I don’t want to insure it, nor do I want to take it back to California and re-register it. However, letting it go will be sorrowful. In many ways the truck has been a comforting touchstone of the past. Ten years ago we took a family vacation to South Dakota in it. At that time life was violently unstable. We were moving from Utah to California and had not settled in, nor were we sure we would stay together as a family. We were strained and stressed by many issues, mostly of my doing. The truck was a self-contained safe haven; inside the cab there was no sadness, frustration or anger, just our small family, driving around Wyoming and South Dakota, dodging thunderstorms, drinking coffee and enjoying being together. Alas, nothing lasts forever. After a week the vacation was over and life went on. To the point where now the truck is old and needs significant repairs (kind of like our marriage?) I guess eventually that is how everything goes; at some point you have to say good bye and realize, no matter what, all good things come to an end.

Really messed up

12:33pm the messed up thing is that my behavior has real world consequences. By staying in my head and not interacting with people my job performance suffers. The site I am responsible for suffers. I will lose my job. My income, my home. Yet that is easier than meeting with people. Oddly enough, I like meeting with people. I am not afraid. I just don’t know how to initiate encounters. I don’t know how to make it worth their time. I don’t know how to call to action, close a sale, get the business. My efforts feel futile. So I just hang on until I am kicked out. I will get another job and repeat the process.

Score touchdowns

When a sale fell through I grew frustrated. I cursed the missed opportunity and fell into self pity.

I wondered how I could put so much passion into something and come up empty. The presupposition being I was giving maximum effort, doing everything right and just experiencing unwarranted bad luck. I even thought maybe my despondency might portend a lucky break on the horizon.

If my efforts are not producing results then it is up to me to change my approach. Blaming bad luck is no more acceptable than accepting failure.

In the end it is my job to score touchdowns, win enough games to make the playoffs, then win every playoff game through the championship. Bad luck, tough competition, blown calls, missed chances are nothing but excuses.

I cannot accept excuses in that scenario. I cannot accept excuses in any scenario.