Yes, this time I quoted Kool & the Gang.
You know how people talk about having their life flash before their eyes and surviving some sort of brush with death? And all the feel good stories about how it made them appreciate things that much more afterward?
In the last few days, I’ve learned that it doesn’t necessarily work that way.
During my road trip across the country in the last week, I was driving on the interstate in Texas (about 40 miles away from much civilization) when a bolt of lightning hit just in front of my car. It looked like an orange explosion from a movie scene. And it instantly caused all of my car’s electronics to go haywire and made it very difficult to maintain enough power to keep driving.
Not only did I keep control of the car, but I also made it to the nearest city in my poor crippled vehicle. Every time I had to floor it to get new acceleration, it could barely do much but managed to respond without dying. So I was very fortunate to avoid a catastrophic wreck.
Between this near disaster and all of the poor decisions that I’ve made in my depressed life mess in the last couple decades, you’d think that this would make me take a deep breath and re-evaluate how lucky I am to still be here. Especially in one piece.
But that hasn’t happened.
I knew how empty I’ve felt for all these years, but my reaction to this just makes it hit home that much more. If your life flashing before your eyes doesn’t make you care enough to jolt (heh, pun) some energy into you, then I don’t know what will.
Combine that with how I continue to do worse and worse in general as this year goes on, and things feel that much more dire. I’m not even looking forward to getting back to my target city at the moment, because it seems like nothing I can do there will be enough to dig me out of my situation.
Anyway….I hope to be back on the road by Friday with a rental car. There’s no point in turning back now.
I guess if someone takes anything from this, it’s the following: don’t expect some random, scary event to somehow make your depression or other life issues ok. Just another spot where the real world does not end up like an ideal storybook path.
If you do want things do improve, you’re probably gonna have to do it the hard way and put in the lengthy groundwork to change your habits from square one.
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