zeldafitz

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

If It's Not Fun...Go Talk To Someone More Neurotic Than You Are

The philosophical mindbender for today is: what is it like to enjoy your job? Anyone who knows, send me an email, wouldja? Because I WANT TO KNOW.

I look to Oprah for the big picture celebrity gratification tidal wave of Eternal “Blessed” Appreciation Syndrome (EBAS), but I come away empty. Something about not having the matching opiate money symmetry or something. Because with her, it’s the dough. You can just tell that she is getting all her “gratification” from the money and ALL it can buy. She traffics on our petty, stupid, private Bahamian villa torpor as well. DREEMS. When I watch her show (which is almost never, due to the oppressive nature of my Clydesdale lifestyle) I slobber and succumb to the 10 trillion flower surprise weddings, the queen for a day stories involving a new house for a long suffering mom and the guy who lost 800 pounds and got a new Porsche. I cry through all of it.

Anyhoo, I just don’t think that Monday mornings I should be talking myself off the ledge. This is my interior monologue on Mondays, “I am not depressed I am not depressed I am not depressed. Count blessings, start gratitude journal. I am not depressed. I love my husband. I love my kids. I am not depressed. Except I feel kind of…depressed. But I am not depressed."

Oprah’s not depressed. But Oprah’s biggest worry is getting dissed by Hermes. She has found life totalitude. Splendiferous fulfillment.

WHY DID JERRY GARCIA EVER UTTER THE WORDS: If it’s not fun don’t do it. WHY? Maybe he was talking about drugs. Fucker. Sitting around painting ties, making even more money postmortem.

Do you think you can find your inner raison d’etre through a gratitude journal? Will a makeover get things going? Microderm abrasion? Laser hair removal? If I were a hairless, microabrased, Hermes-shopping, gratitude journal writing, 800 pound Porsche aficionado, would Oprah save me? Could I cut out all this figurative wandering in the desert wondering who the next Messiah is? Because everyone knows she is alive and well and living in Chicago.

Seriously, if there were ever anything more fatuous than listening to what Oprah likes to buy, I don’t know what it is. But I follow the list RELIGIOUSLY. Some people say the rosary; I buy Oprah’s fascinations. Cuz you gotta figure if she likes it, with all the money in the universe, it’s got to be good. She had a show one time about what special things to do for your guests, because you better believe girlfriend knows how to treat a guest, and she suggested, and I kid you not, that you have soap and shampoo available for the guest that has not been used. Thanks for the tip! Wow, I never would have thought of that. You mean a guest might not want a hair-encrusted bar of soggy Ivory soap or something? Boy, I’ll have to write that one down.

I was feeling a little “unmoored,” shall we say, a few minutes ago, so I went to talk to Carol. I like Carol, but...Oh. My. Sifting through the absolutely staggering neuroses of her children, her spouse’s children and every other child that they have ever been in contact with, is like watching the welcome home party in The Graduate backwards, forwards and in super-slo mo. It made me feel like Beaver J. Cleaver inhabiting my own antiseptic bubble world. Makes my 24/7 suicide ideation look like child's play.

So remember, in the place of finding out your true calling, or the right "life path," if it’s not fun, go talk to someone more neurotic than you are (and if you just read this, you're halfway there!). Feel better. Gain perspective. Toss your gratitude journal out the window. Reconnect with your inner kook.