Seabiscuit

I have recently realized, much to my chagrin, that the old analogy Jennifer and I use re: motivation in life has, over the years, become the most apt. 

We agree that the two of us are much like Seabiscuit.  For those of you who don't know, Seabiscuit, as depicted in the 2003 movie "Seabiscuit," only "ran" when there was a challenge.

This, dear pantsless Jenifers, we can distill into multiple areas of life, for me personally:

• Romance: I am commonly attracted to (and pursue) people who present me with a challenge (i.e. they aren't interested, they have some sort of emotional issue, they smell oddly like chicken, they have appalling manners, or they are kind of mean -- plenty of other examples are available, just ask me -- usually these people end up being just like I am (except for the chicken smell -- I smell like a big cigarette) -- it's shocking!).
• Fitness: I really only exercise when I notice how fat I am.
• Responsibility: I get things done at the last minute (my drivers license expires in about ten days -- need to nip that in the bud, will probably wait until next week).
• Work ethic: I test myself with very little sleep coupled with too much fun (going to work on a Sunday at 5:30am after a Saturday night out until 4am, for example).
• Personal upkeep: I buy underwear and socks only when they fall apart.
• Et cetera: The list goes on... but gets more vindictive (at times), quirky (most times) and peculiar (at all times)...

While somewhat too illuminating, I feel like that list (and its multiple omissions) pretty much sums up my life at the moment.  I only run when there is a challenge.  And when I run, I win -- but I don't run much, mainly because I'm lazy, kind of like how I'm too lazy to end a sentence, so I operate mainly off of lists and run-on sentences and multiple sentence fragments.  I suppose the take-away from the above is that life must present some sort of challenge to remain interesting -- and when nothing terribly compelling happens, one has to create these challenges -- even if it's as stupid as not grocery shopping until I'm too broke to afford both ramen and diet coke (and choose diet coke every time). 

To tie into another favorite metaphor, life lately is just a Samuel Beckett play that Beckett wasn't up to writing.  It's absurdity found in day-to-day normalcy.  As absurd as finding a feather sticking out on a wingtip from a Wal*Mart fried chicken 8-piece family pack.  As absurd as a dog costume on a human.  Absurd as lighting the filter tip of a cigarette and taking a drag, as watching Christine give her rat a bath, as getting all dressed up and good-smelling to go to the gas station, as meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife... wait, that's ironic.

Anyway.