Boding well for my longevity....

I woke up early on New Year's Day because I’m a loser who didn't stay up all night getting drunk with others. No New Year’s kiss for me. Plus, I had work, because I have somehow gotten myself a job that requires of its employees people dumb enough to apply for a job that requires its employees to work holidays.

Well, that was an awful last sentence. Still, that is exactly what the situation is. Anyhow, the sun was out bright but it was visibly frigid outside, in typical Rio Frio fashion, and I turned up the thermostat, which has a mechanism that would allow me to schedule it to kick on automatically at certain times of the day and to specific temperatures, but even seven years of living with such a luxury is not long enough, apparently, to combat my preternatural laziness and steadfast refusal to make the effort to learn how to engage such a mechanism.

I jumped onto the internet and scrolled through Facebook, liking everyone's New Year's posts, except it was 7:12 in the morning, and I became self-conscious because everyone would realize I was up so early, and therefore a loser who didn't stay up all night getting drunk with others. No New Year’s kiss for me So, first I wrote a tanka that went:

Every other year

I have a midlife crisis

perhaps It bodes well

for my longevity, I

attempt to convince myself.

Then, I checked my email. Much to my surprise a "secret admirer" had sent me a message stating:

"To a very handsome man,

May the New Year bring you much joy and find you in the perpetual protection of the Angels, Buddhas and Immortals.

Sincerely,

Your Secret Admirer"

That was nice. I had always wanted a secret admirer. Beginning in my youth, and even occasionally in the present, I had often times borne the misfortune of being a secret admirer myself, but had never had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of one's affections or overtures. That, combined with the unexpected blessings of good will made my eyes well, and forced me to fight back a swell tears...although one (or two) managed to shimmy their way through my defenses. 

I took a screenshot of the email and forwarded it to my old buddy, the Ethnically Ambiguous Mario Suazo, hoping it would make him envious. To my surprise, Mario Suazo was awake and texted me back immediately.

"You sent it to yourself, last night. Right before you went to bed, probably," Mario Suazo texted, circling the 9:30pm time stamp in the corner of the email with a digital red marker. He also circled my name twice, once in the "to" section in the email and once in the "from" section.

"So?" I texted back.

"So...what's the point?"

"I always wanted a secret admirer," I texted, simply.

I lamented my ever-present laziness, once more, in failing to establish a new, fictional email account instead of using a pre-existing one under my own name.

I then ventured into the frost and into work, and spent the rest of the first day of the new year looking up pre-Socratic Greek philosophers on Wikipedia and playing chess frustratingly poorly on my phone. Basically, activities that didn't require me to actually do the job that I was getting paid to do.

 

                                                                                                 Out in the front yard--
                                                                                                A stray mongrel pissing on
                                                                                                Already dead grass

 

Start of a new year--
It feels pretty much the same
As it did last year