The dogs on Main Street

When people show up at your house in the middle of the workday to try to talk you off the proverbial ledge, it might be time to get a fucking grip.

Sometimes, though, those people come bearing chocolate. Always a silver lining, amirite?

Yeah, that’s my day today. It’s 5 o’clock and I’m so much calmer than I was 9 or 10 hours ago. I thought I might actually be losing my mind, like I was watching this odd little person have a breakdown in front of her three computer screens, and wondering “What’s wrong, little person? What could possibly have happened to upset you so?” And the problem is that the answer is nothing, really; nothing more than the usual workday routine of due dates and deadlines and milestones to achieve or not.

Anyway, when it’s too much, when you have to eat an elephant, the thing to do is to eat him one bite at a time. And that’s what I did. And I listened to music as I worked. You can’t cry and sing along to a block party playlist at the same time. You can do one or the other, but not both. It’s just electric, just electric, just electric.

Yes, I like Justin Timberlake. Fight me. Some JT, some Aretha, some Queen, some Machine Gun Kelly, some Dua Lipa, some Beyonce, some Brandi Carlile, some White Stripes, some Eva Cassidy, some Elton John singing about Philadelphia Freedom, and I was right as rain.

And then some Bruce Springsteen. The dogs on Main Street howl 'cause they understand, and so does Bruce Springsteen. There was a dark cloud rising from the desert floor this morning. But everything is OK now, and I still believe in a Promised Land.