How To Walk 10,000 Miles Through The Desert

Kenny Chesney is singing Somewhere with You and I am lost in a million different thoughts but probably not what those who know me think I am thinking about.

Sometimes I get irritated when I am told they know what I am thinking in a manner that suggests they get it when I know they don’t.

Daughter told me the other day I looked like I needed a hug so I opened up my arms and she tucked herself inside and whispered into my ear. Don’t ask me to tell you what because that is special father/daughter time.

Son tells me he is tired of not being given the respect he deserves and I give him a smile. He says it is not funny and I nod my head. “It is not and I am not laughing at you. This is one of those moments in which growing up can make you crazy. You are old enough to think you can do anything and everything but society doesn’t agree.”

I don’t tell him that I feel the same way sometimes because I don’t feel like having an in depth conversation about it, it is pushing 11 PM and I am just too damn tired. Maybe we’ll check it for later, maybe not.

Hell if I know if anything I have to say is going to make him feel better or understand especially when so much anger is boiling under the surface in me.

How To Walk 10,000 Miles Through The Desert

I look at the photo and think that it describes how I feel now. Endless blue skies make opportunity seem right there for the taking and yet the %Y^#%^$ car is broken down and I can’t rely upon anyone else to help me.

Part of me doesn’t care because I like doing things on my own and most of the time I never feel like I have let myself down. Of course that ignores the part of me that is my biggest critic and adversary.

That reflection in the mirror tells me to suck it up. He says we have been here before and that we follow Clint Eastwood’s advice in Heartbreak Ridge:

You adapt. You overcome. You improvise.

But the thing is today I am more tired than usual. This round of disappointment has taken more out of me than normal or maybe it is just a lack of sleep catching up with me.

Maybe a good night’s rest will give me the energy to adapt, overcome and improvise.

Maybe that will be enough to make me believe the stuff I tell my kids and maybe I’ll take my bad attitude and shift gears but it hasn’t happened yet.

I need to find a new basketball game. Need to go sweat and test my will against other men. Need to go into a gym and be the one who is causing the clinking and clanking. Need to push myself to the limit and then find a new one because it is how I get through these fucked up moments.

But instead I am learning again how to walk 10,000 miles through a desert and though it is a great way to add more steps to my FitBit routine it is a bad way to make me smile.

Somewhere there is a bottle of Burning River Ale or some other tasty beverage waiting for me. All I have to do is hang on, adapt, overcome and improvise a little bit longer.

Just wish that it didn’t happen again so quickly.

• Saved: Life