Ruminations of a Bored Mind

I am sitting on my deck and I’m looking out over Plumper Sound, sail boats in the breeze, seagulls squawking. The wasps must feel the imminent arrival of cooler weather and the end of their days, because they are getting stupid. A bald eagle perches in the dead top of a fir tree by the cliff below, scanning the water for prey. I have one ear perked for the bleating of the goats on their regular trek through the meadow below my house and the other tuned to B.B. King riffing on his guitar on my CD player. I’m sipping on a cool wheat beer, sucking on a stogy and working on my tan. The world looks good, as if it was made just for me. I’m thinking you got it made, boy.

And then that little but very persistent voice in the back of my head mouthes off, telling me: “What do you mean life is good? You’re bored out of your mind. You should be thinking about a change, some excitement, some mayhem.” I have to agree. My mother used to say that busy fingers kept the mind at ease. My mind is not at ease. Since I sold my business and retired here, I have pretty much done nothing of consequence.

That was not how I spent my life before retirement. I was one of those guys driven to earn. For the last 20 years of my working life I was a media salesman, selling TV advertising and that is really a job for the young and energetic. To be successful in that business, you had to hustle. I’ve never been idle for long in my life, ‘til now.

At one time or another before I settled on the advertising business, I’ve held down some strange jobs in my life. I worked as an obituary writer with a major metropolitan newspaper, the jump-off point for most newspaper flacks back in the day before the internet, with great aspirations for my bi-line on page one above the fold. I lasted six months, lured away by money and the enticement of writing sentiments for Hallmark Cards. That move turned out to be major mistake. Once you’ve been through the grinder of Hallmark’s OK Committee, which vetted every word written and every design before it saw the light of publication, you knew that this was not going to be a lifetime career. I’ve been a waiter (albeit only for three days, before the restaurant’s owner suggested that it’d be a good thing if I looked for more suitable employment).

Have you ever run the Money Machine at the Dade County Fair in Florida, with a gun-toting state trooper keeping an eye on you and all that cash? Or staged a Julio Iglesias concert? I have and I don’t recommend either as a career choice. I’ve worked as check-canceller at a bank (again for a brief period due to my unsuitability to rote), an assembly-line quality control inspector at a ball-bearing plant, a grain elevator repairman, a faculty club house boy, a whorehouse bouncer (a job that paid very little, but at least offered some collateral benefits), a house painter, grain-truck driver, construction worker and as a pilot for a funeral home in South Florida. (Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know what possible use a funeral parlor had for a pilot.) And I whiled away considerable time in the employ of my Uncle Sam, upholding the law and wreaking havoc. I almost forgot, I also was a Fuller Brush salesman once. Remember them?

The early experiences in my life, the war and its aftermath, taught me that life is iffy. All my life, I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had a bead on me, was gaining on me, as Satchel Paige so deftly put it. It taught me to never let down my guard, to stay focused. And that seems to be the problem, because now that I am comfortable, I have let down my guard and I feel lost. During my indenture to Uncle Sam, I reached for the vodka bottle to shut up my conscience. I set great trust in its calming qualities. But now that doesn’t work anymore. Overexposure, I guess. My old handler in Uncle Sam’s service, who was from deepest Arkansas, used to say: ”When in doubt, kill the sumbitch.” But that was then, this is now.

Sometimes I wonder, if my father, who’s been dead for over 30 years, is watching me, judging my every move, as he did when I lived in his house. My father had high hopes for me and I disappointed him deeply when I sailed for America. Would he approve of what I’ve done since?

I have started and run businesses and I was pretty good at schmoozing. I never was very good at sitting on my butt and idling. But none of the activities I’ve participated in, turn my crank anymore. I just can’t see myself being involved in any of that again. Been there, done that. So what should I turn my attention to?

I’m thinking about all the things I haven’t tried. Maybe I should try the undertaking business, a trade with a secure future or start an oyster farm. Maybe write my memoirs or become a highwayman. Your money or your life. But the thing is, what you do doesn’t matter. What you do and how you live in your head are two totally different things. My mind flashes back and drags up bogeymen that I have kept locked away, I thought securely and forever. Boredom does that to you. All the dead, friends and those who were not, lined up like body bags on a faraway tarmac. So many. There’s only one lesson to be drawn from that picture and that is I survived. Get over it.

So, here’s my plan: I’m going fishing.