Happy Failure

Sunday night, my buddy Ward decided to run my inventory. Monday night, the boy decided to lay into me and when I told him that I didn’t want to end our conversation that way, he told me that I don’t always get what I want.

Narcissistic aside: Do I ever get what I want?

Needless to say, Tuesday morning I woke up feeling pretty bad. Like, why bother bad. Like, can I even get out of bed and get to work bad. Somehow, I dragged myself out of the bedsheets and into the shower, where some crappy pop music and my incredible irritation at a local car dealership radio ad which is so anti-consumer that I can barely stand it got my Christine mojo going again.

Then, instead of watching twenty minutes of The West Wing like I do most mornings, I yanked out my O magazine (yeah, I read O. Judge away.) and quickly read a couple of articles. One got to me – Elizabeth Gilbert’s article called Lighten Up! where she extols the virtue of making a complete mess of yourself because it’s not the worst thing that can happen. It can often be the best.

So I decided to fail spectacularly on Tuesday. I completely shot my diet, 15 days before I leave for vacation. I had Chik-Fil-A for breakfast (my biscuit had cheese on it!) and an absolutely non-Jared-approved Subway (foot long!) sandwich for lunch. I went home and drank beer and decided not to eat dinner because it’s too flipping hot to eat and I refuse to turn on the A/C because it’s still early May. I chattered at friends about how I really am making mistakes in my relationships, how I put expectations on people, and how much I love reality TV. I watched Celebrity Apprentice. I went to bed at 9:15. It was lovely.

Did it make everything better? No. I’m still upset with Ward because I didn’t deserve that attack. I understand it though, because people sometimes have to vent their pain and they’ll do it on the closest (physically or emotionally) person near them. Still, an apology is in order. And although I didn’t want to speak to the boy – he seriously hurt my feelings! – I left him a message wishing him well on a project he had that day. And I felt anxious about a) making the call and b) not getting to speak to him.

Phone call fail. The rest of the day was pretty peaceful though. It’s nice to know I can just be for a day – well, the daylight hours anyway.