On being Productive

Tonight something funny happened. Well, at least to me it was something quite amazing, because I forgot that shit like this happens. Other than that I had a frankly senseless day today: a lot of anger in the morning, followed by some honest attempts to make something out of it in the afternoon, and  a sad decision to have a burger for dinner. The highlights of the day were a phone call, and an unexpected try to sing 'Sunday Morning' by Maroon 5. 

At half past five I was ready to leave the house and it took a tremendous mental effort to get there. I walked all the five hundred meters to our small McDonalds subsidiary without looking up once, I think. Partly to avoid any confrontation whatsoever, and partly because it rained a little. There were two other costumers,  both seperate parties, eating silently. My plan was to have a little burger and a bottle of water, I packed my book, I wanted to read for a good hour and then return home. When I walked up the stairs and through the door to the counter, I heard the lady ask for my order and me saying "Ein Doppel Cheeseburger Menü mit Kaffee".  

While the lady was punching something into the order-taking-mashine - I think the coffee in the set-menu threw her off - I turned around and inspected the scene. I was looking for the best spot and picked a single table in the left rear corner next to the window and far away from the back entrance and the tray waggon. I turned back around and nodded to what the lady said. I got the fries and the coffee first and took them to my seat. A minute later she brought me the burger. Freshly made and packed, the wrapping paper lasted for about twenty seconds. I started eating as a couple entered the restaurant and destroyed the comfortable silence. 

I was almost done with my burger, but decided to listen to some music anyways. I ate my fries while Notorious B.I.G. rapped over a remixed Frank Sinatra tune and drank my coffee while John Legend and Black Thought sang about a little Ghetto Boy. And I won't lie to you, I actually enjoyed myself there. 

I thought about today's blog post and fished for my almost A4 notebook and a pen in my bag. Tobs gave me a real nice ballpoint pen the other day, it's one of those give-away pens from work, but since he used to work at Porsche it's a pretty good one, black and heavy with a comfortable grip and black gel ink. I already scratched off the Porsche print. I started writing, and after a few corrections I came up with the following:

There are days when you just hate everything. As much as I love being home most of the time, there are those days, days like today, when I can't stand it. I don't know, every now and then I wake up in the morning and just hate everything. And I think everybody has it. 

Sometimes stupid stuff helps you to chear up, stuff like cleaning the house or rearranging all your possessions. What I often do - because I'm too lazy to clean the house or mess with the few pieces of furniture that I have - is to make new categories for my clothes and refold them in a new order. Sometimes I clean my shoes. But sometimes non of that works and I feel like drawing a face on everything and punch it till it bleeds.

It's a funny pool of aggression that I have there. I mean, I believe everybody has one, more or less obviously. And I think that everybody has his own way of dealing with it. Some people do sports, some people drink and keep drinking, other people hit their wives. I think it's basically a question of somehow transforming energy. Michael Jordan called it: "Turn negative into positive". Maybe not everything, but I think that a lot of emotions and a lot of messy feelings can be boiled down to raw energy. I think that's what Bruce Lee meant when he said: "Be water, my friend". At least that's how I interpret it. 

And then I looked up and leaned back. It was funny. I was focusing so much on the writing that I didn't  notice the place filling up with people. Listening to the music and slowly drinking my coffee I looked around. I saw a group of young girls chatting away, another group of young guys acting cool in front of the girls, an elderly couple and another noisy one, a few loners, and me. Everybody more or less minding their own businesses, how very nice. I was in a good mood and kept writing. Some people leaving and others coming, but nobody bothered me. 

When I felt I was done for today, the place had emptied and I had filled six pages full of scribbling. I don't even remember the last time I just sat somewhere, carelessly writing in my notebook. I switched topics, though, and wrote about raw human energy and the possibility to canalize and use it on a higher, more productive medium. I'm thinking about making a short semi-scientific paper out of it. Might be fun.  

Anyways, for today's post, after all I'm genuinely happy with how today has turned out.