Imbalance

You know that feeling like you’re swimming against a current? Like everything you try and do is meeting this weird resistance – some kind of negative karmic polarization. I’ve had that feeling recently. It’s as if there’s a gentle hand on my chest, not pushing me backward, exactly – the force isn’t that strong – but firmly pressing against me, like a friend pretending to try and keep you out of a fight he really kind of wants to see you in. Sometimes the resistance is steady and persistent, sometimes it’s more like an occasional gentle shove.

I really felt it Wednesday. I fought against a mild current of it pretty much all day, slogging through phone calls and other tasks that seemed fairly spread-out and manageable at the start of the day, but which as the clock hands fell toward evening increasingly seemed targeted toward keeping me from leaving when I needed to leave.

People who know me know I’m generally 10 minutes late … consistently and to just about everything. Commercials before movies in the theater, annoying as they are, were made for me because now I can still make it in time for the previews. I used to set my watch and all my clocks 10 minutes ahead to compensate, but that didn’t work because I knew all the clocks were fast. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true. I’d eat through that 10 minutes, plus 10 more. Even when I’m five minutes early (or five minutes late to you), something will happen to add those five minutes back.

Same thing happened today. First I was delayed at work, and then the train stopped short of the station at which I needed to get off and sat for five minutes. Then of course I was late (not 10 minutes late, but still late) and flustered and pretty much nothing seemed to go right after that.

But it’s not just a being late thing. Recently I just feel a step off – I’m catching the joke a hair too late, just missing a call, walking too fast in downtown crowds or too slow, reaching an elevator as the doors close on me and then lurch back open, missing the bus, missing the train, catching all the yellow lights. I’m a half-stop off, a few degrees out of time. In general, not quite right and running a little rough.

This syndrome smacked me upside the head on a recent trip to Oregon. It was like I wasn’t supposed to go; the force was working against me. Southwest forgot to put my bag (and the bags of about 80 other passengers) on our nonstop flight to Portland. My rental car ate one of the two CDs I really wanted to listen to while driving – on the first day. My replacement car was half-car, half-monster truck. It snowed in places in Western Oregon where it hardly ever snows. There was a tornado in Vancouver, Wash. I got a bogus parking ticket while visiting friends in Tacoma, Wash. The pump at the gas station on the way to the airport kept clicking off, and the one attendant (no self-serve in Oregon) was too busy to pay attention. There was construction on the usually empty freeway out to the airport.

Which isn’t to say the trip wasn’t enjoyable, it was. But there were all these … things. And they’ve continued to varying degrees since I’ve been back.

Things just don’t feel quite right. I mean, there are plenty of reasons for things in general not to feel quite right, but this is different … this is like being out of synch with the universe or something. I’m trying to play bluegrass while everyone else is singing a dirge. I’m walking on the right but everyone else is walking on the left. Not to complain, because I know you don’t care, but it’s tiring. Hmm. Now I’m trying to recall the last time I wasn’t tired, like tired to my bones. It’s been a while. And yet, I can’t sleep, at least not when I’m supposed to.

Maybe that’s it. I am by nature a night person. I’m just getting cranking at 10 p.m., but that alarm clock is set for 6:30 … a.m. that is. The butt-crack of dawn. I think that’s where my synchronization begins to break down. I’ve been shoe-horning my life into “regular business hours” ever since I can remember. That’s what we do, right? That’s acceptable. And most of the time it fits OK, that schedule. But maybe sometimes things just get a little out of rhythm, out of round, and the drum starts banging against the side of the washer in spin cycle.

What happens then? You shut it down and rebalance. Not an option here. Shit, I just took a vacation. I just gotta hope that things find their center with time. Maybe with the spring … winter, after all, sucks.

In the meantime, I guess you’d best steer clear if you want to keep your baggage and your CDs, or if you don’t want to run smack into me as I’m tottering along the sidewalks, trying to regain my balance.