Sunday, bloody Sunday (last b-log until July) ...

Oh, the seventh day. Regarded by most as a day of reverence, repentance, and, most of all, rest. How is it, then, that I feel the most restless on Sundays? I'd like to add an "r" of my own: reflection.

I guess it's no coincidence that Sunday is the day of the week that I spend most of my hours alone. Intentionally. The majority of that time is occupied in coffee shops thinking, writing, and chipping away at the mountain of magazines under which the table by my front door will soon collapse if I don't do my part to save it. Sunday is when all of the ideas, ambitions, and information running amok in my head collide and amalgamate. It's when I do my most coherent thinking ... and probably my most disjointed.

I skim an article related to famine and think about what role I play in perpetuating it. I absorb a poverty statistic that sickens me to action and I try to relate it to others. I see a celebrity magazine resting on a table with ostentatious taglines that cause such a violent involuntary eye-roll that I bump into the person ahead of me. I drink from a bottle of water on which the company proudly advertises a pledge of 5 cents for every bottle it sells and I question, "That's it?" I wonder if compassion is an acquired taste and why guilt is the largest untapped resource on the planet. Sometimes I'm so naive.

Sunday is the day I typically go shopping for groceries. As soon as I set toe into Fred Meyer, I'm confronted by mass absurdity. I was educated in a milieu that extols the growth strategy of Starbucks, the slogans of the ARMY, and the efficiencies of Wal-Mart. My profession was borne of a philosophy that fabricated the need for seven million different types of pen. Quite possibly the simplest and most rudimentary implement this side of the wheel. Perfected during some era near the BEGINNING OF TIME. Yet, as a marketer, I'm schooled to see that wall of pens, stand stoically with my arms crossed, and admire it with equal parts smugness and accomplishment. We did it. In a world where more than half of its population doesn't have access to a basic education, I can write upside down with the greatest of ease in one of nineteen distinct colors and hues. Yay, we win. Who, you ask? Beats me, 'cause I'm pretty sure we lose.

I get disgusted with my profession, with my country, and with my life. I exist simultaneously as a marketer and a human being, proving that they're not mutually exclusive. I want to change the term"marketer". Or at least what it means.

Sunday is the day when I spend the most time with my parents, which sadly isn't much. I used to be bored by my dad's undying enthusiasm for topics like psychology and Mayan culture. I used to find it insufferable. I used to think I didn't connect with my parents on any level philosophically. They're conservatives. They're cynics and drumbeaters. However, the more I talk to my parents, the more I realize the things that pull us apart most are our affiliations, our labels, and our unwillingness to listen to one another (or, at least, mine). We see eye-to-eye on so many things. I was ambivalent to appreciate their ideas because of a superficial partisanship. A label divide, that's all it was. "Conservative v. liberal." Where the great divide exists. That "v" might as well be a wedge, because that's how insignificant much of the partisanship is. Let's just remove the v., let's just lose the labels. Sigh. Sometimes I'm so naive.

I used to think my parents were jaded. (When you're young, liberalism=idealism. When you're old, liberalism=socialism. Ergo, idealism=socialism, maybe? I bet Marx saw it that way.) I used to think that idealism aged like bad wine, turning acrid and into vinegar. I once saw no remnants of idealism left in my parents, who both existed at various levels of hippie-fication throughout their adolescences (radical, leftist hippies, not the hacky-sack variety). Really, though, their idealism wasn't reigned in at all. Their youthful fancies are as fresh as mine, albeit a bit rougher and with, ironically, fewer shades of gray. Just because my dad's waist got softer doesn't mean that his brain followed suit.

I'm fortunate to have grown up in an environment that encouraged discourse and I wish I wouldn't have realized it this late. I am no less bored by my dad now than I was then, but I have an appreciation for what he prattles on about. Our viewpoints aren't cohesive by any stretch, but at least we can respect one another and our disparate opinions. I feel like I'm finally able to afford him the respect that he has afforded me ever since he called me "son". We still find each other despicably wrong, but never despicable.

In our youths, we can disregard tax brackets, familial obligations, and retirement funds. We are, as every bitter adult likes to note, ignorantly invincible. Unfettered idealism is a luxury not unlike an endless wall of pens. The big difference is, though, that we can do so much more with our idealism than we can with our goddamn pens. We have to foster it and believe in it. We have to harness it. And ourselves. And our restlessness. And our Sundays.


Boy, that entry was not atypical of my mental meandering. I hope someone found a thoughtline in there somewhere. Anyway, as you read in the post's title, this will be the last b-log until the month of July. (collective gasp.) But don't worry. I'm working on something and there will be plenty of nonsense afoot. In fact, I'm planning on posting every day for thirty days straight right ... (drumroll) ... HERE. Click HERE to see my most current project come June. HERE you will find my imminent weblog while this one is on temporary hiatus. Do not fret, though, as this blog will return near the middle of the summer. For now, though, you should really click HERE to follow the absurdity that is my life during the month of June. Where can you find me June 1? Why, HERE of course. HERE you'll find peace, peace of mind, pieces of mind, but not pieces of meat. Absolutely no meat HERE. Why? Click HERE to find out ...