Picture a zombie from any zombie movie you’ve ever seen.  A slow, lumbering creature moaning pitifully, arms stretched outward for balance, glazed-over expression on their face.  They say zombies are like this because they are dead, but I have a different theory.  I think they are like this because they have to get up at 5:30AM for work.

That’s me in the mornings.  Doesn’t matter what time I went to bed the night before, or how much sleep I got.  I could have been asleep for days, but I’d still be a zombie if my awakening were to occur any time before noon.  I’ve always been that way, and I don’t know that it will ever change.  Very simply, it’s who I am.

People that are bright and cheery in the early mornings annoy me, and I’m both envious and put off at the same time.  I don’t know how anyone could possibly find anything to be cheerful about with only a handful of brain cells activated.  Perhaps they’re chemically altered with coffee or soda pop.  Those things simply don’t work for me.   Certainly, cheerfulness cannot be a normal state in the early morn.  It is inhuman.  Inhuman I say!

I recently agreed to take the morning shift at work.  I’m fine with it, actually, because the carrot was getting my weekends off.  That’s a nice thing; it makes me feel normal, in a way.  In order to achieve this morning shift however, I must somehow coax my warm, comfortable, and perfectly happy self out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:30AM.  This is because I am a shower-taker and a breakfast-eater.  I could probably gain another half-hour or so of blissful sleep otherwise, but my body is conditioned to food at the onset of my day, and a shower is the only thing capable of semi-waking me up.  Because of the shower-taking and breakfast-eating, I lose roughly 15-20 minutes of beloved sleep.  I also must spend an additional 10-15 minutes wandering about it a dazed stupor.  These things are necessary to achieve the proper amount of wakefulness needed to drive to work and begin my day.

It’s not 100% peachy though, even then.  My job consists of sitting in my office and answering phones, which is conducive to lots of head-nodding and eye-rubbing.  Don’t misunderstand:  I like my job and I’m ever grateful for the opportunity, I simply have a hard time adjusting to life before noon.

As the wise and noble Garfield (the cat) once said:  “Mornings would be great if they came later in the day.”  I’m a firm subscriber to this way of thinking.  It’s unnatural to be awake before the sun comes up.  For primitive man, it could have meant life or death.  No one wants to get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger whilst stumbling about in the dark, especially before morning coffee.  Take a lesson from our ancestors, and remember that more sleep is always a good thing.  Oh, and if you see an unkempt creature with wrinkled clothing, messy hair, purple eye bags and a pale complexion, lumbering along with a blank expression of abject misery, it’s either Amy Winehouse, or just me, on my way to start my day.

Today marked the completion to some goals that I’ve had for a while.  There were two major ones:  Get a job, and get a new place to live.  Having started my new job on Monday, and having signed a lease to a new apartment late this afternoon, those two important goals have been accomplished.

Allow me to be introspective for a minute.  It’s been a tough year so far, and the toughness isn’t over yet.  In sports terms, this year is a “rebuilding” year for me.  Lots of basic changes and adjustments to my life and my lifestyle.  Gone is the $50K per year job that I used to have.  Gone is the freedom and laziness of unemployment.  Gone is a lot of money that I used to possess, and gone is the sense of optimism I used to have for myself and my endeavors.  These things have been replaced with a low-paying job, daily commitment, a tiny bit of income, and a very unsure feeling about how to continue.  My, how the mighty have fallen.

Not that I was every really all that mighty, mind you.  It’s just that I was used to a certain standard of living, and that standard must be lowered if I’m to survive with my sanity intact. 

I never thought this is where I’d be at my age.  When you’re young, and you picture yourself as older, you tend to picture things as being wonderful.  Good job, nice house, cool car, maybe a hot wife and even a couple of kids.  You don’t think that as you approach 40, you’d be scraping by on an unsteady income without a sense of direction or purpose for your life.  It’s difficult to see it even when you’re inside of it  It’s almost like a bad joke, and you just can’t believe it.  I feel like I’m having a bad dream, and I’m ready to wake up any time now.  Yet the dream continues.

It’s not all bad, so don’t get me wrong.  I have a job, I have money, and I have a place to live and food to eat.  That’s more than a LOT of people have, and I’m grateful.  I am thankful for the things that I have, but I used to have more.  Now I have less.  Sometimes change is hard.

I know I’m whining.  I apologize, but reality has bitch-slapped me into submission, and I just need to vent.  I need to get it out of my system so I can wake up tomorrow and embrace my new future, work as hard as I can, and hopefully turn things around.  I need to find that purpose again.  I need to re-find myself, for I sometimes fear that I am truly lost.

I’m in a "follow the crowd" sort of mood today, so I’m going to do one of these, since at my advanced age, the perspective could be an interesting contrast to the others.  Here we go:

20 years ago:  I was 16 years old, still living at home in Greenville Ohio.  I was between a Sophomore and a Junior in high school, very thin and lanky, with a misguided sense of goodness about the world and an extreme case of immaturity.  Highlights of that year included getting my driver’s license and my first trip to Disney World in Florida.  I had my first ever job, at a place called Hardee’s (known to my Utah friends as Carl’s Jr.), and I hated it with a passion like no other.  I worked there nine months and quit with no notice.  I didn’t have another job until after high school.

10 years ago:  I would have been 26.  Let’s see… at that time I was living in my second apartment in Troy Ohio, with my roommate Caleb.  Caleb and I wanted to start a band, with him playing guitar and me on the bass, but it never really took off.  I was working at a gym as a fitness instructor then, making very little money but loving the job because I essentially did nothing at all, four days out of the week, and had a killer body to show for it.  I worked overnights at the gym, which meant plenty of time for goofing off, socializing, watching television in the nursery, working out, flirting, napping, and occasional cleaning.  I made lots of friends with the overnight patrons, which included several professional wrestlers, a really hot radio DJ, and off-work strippers.  Fond memories.

5 years ago:  Living in my apartment in Columbus Ohio.  Working for Best Buy, traveling the country setting up new stores and remodeling older ones.  One job to open up a new Best Buy resulted in a trip to Orem, Utah;  someplace I’d never heard of and likely never considered going.  Utah was quite beautiful, although the residents told me that the state had been in a severe drought for years.  I didn’t believe them, because it rained the entire first week we were there.  This was one of those times in my life where I was very depressed, looking for a change or a way out of my current life situation.  I’ve never been good with routine.

3 years ago:  The summer of 2005, I was still with Best Buy, working in a store in the receiving department.  I had the itch to start traveling again, and looking through the job boards, I discovered that Best Buy was adding a special projects team to the Salt Lake City area.  Furthermore, I noted that the manager they hired to head the team was someone that I knew and had worked with before.  In all honesty, it took me all of about one day to completely make up my mind to drop my entire life, sell, give away, or throw away everything I owned, say goodbye to my friends, and move my entire life to the other side of the country.  With my experience, I could be the supervisor for the team, make good money, and have a chance to start over again.  Maybe I could beat the depression after all.  I remember telling my parents about it, not asking, but telling them.  I remember my boss at the time, who came up to me one day after I told him I applied for a job in Utah.  He told me, "good luck!"  I responded, "I’ve already been offered the job."  "It’s only been two days!  You didn’t have an interview?"  "Yes, it was a phone interview.  He asked me if I knew what the job was, I said yes.  He asked me if I thought I could handle it, I said yes.  He then said, congratulations.  We’ll see you in Oklahoma City in two weeks."  My boss was dumbfounded.

I remember taking stock of my possessions, looking around my apartment trying to decide what to take.  I also remember picking up everything that wasn’t nailed down and throwing it into the dumpster outside.  In all, I tossed out 90% of everything I’d ever owned, and squeezed the rest into a shipping pod.  I truly started my life over.

1 year ago:  Unbeknownst to me at the time, my last summer with Best Buy.  We’d opened a new store in West Jordan, and I was supervising the Merchandising department.  I was growing extremely resentful about my job, and I wanted to find something different.  I’d just gotten out of a somewhat long-term relationship with a wonderful girl, and I was looking forward to new possibilities.  Getting restless again, like before. 

So far this year:  I was occupationally liberated after ten years with Best Buy in January.  Instead of finding a new job immediately, I decided I was going to take off anywhere from three to six months and enjoy it.  I cashed in my stock options, took the vacation pay, and sat back to relax.  I’ve discovered a renewed interest in Photography, started writing again, and opened my eyes to a world without the restrictions of going to a job and working for the Man.  I feel physically healthier than I have in at least ten years, and I can honestly say that I actually get enough sleep now.  Of course, the economy derailed and screwed up my plans for early retirement, but leaving Best Buy was still one of the better things that’s happened to me recently. 

As I write this, I’m still very restless.  I’m looking at new possibilities on the horizon, and Utah may soon become another chapter in my history.  We’ll see.

George Carlin died today.

Everyone knows who George Carlin was.  Not everyone liked his particular brand of humor, which was always sharp and punctuated with crisp four-letter words and divergent thoughts, but to me it wasn’t always about his humor.  What I liked about Carlin was how razor sharp his mind could be.  How he took everyday topics and shone a light down upon them, making them brighter and more defined, and forced you to look at them in ways you never thought about.  He was a master of logic and thought, and never let even the small details go unnoticed.  No one was safe.  Nothing was safe.  Everything and everybody was fair game.

And he was right. 

I’ll repeat that:  He was right.

No one pushed the envelope more than George.  No one had more balls.  The greatest comedian in my lifetime.  One of the greatest thinkers ever.  An inspiration to me most definitely, and many millions of others.  One of the smartest people who ever lived.  Ever.

The whole world is dimmer somehow…

Carlin on language.

Carlin on environmentalism.

Carlin on religion:

Carlin on voting:

Carlin on intelligence and fat people:

There are so many more moments.  Do yourself a favor and watch them all.

Bye George.  We miss you already.