Fill in the _______

I have bathed, eaten, and napped today. Aside from walking the dog, I have not accomplished much. If I knew that most people or even many people had not even left their house, I would probably feel better about myself. But I suppose there will always be someone I can compare myself with when I'm determined to feel bad about myself. Which brings me to something I've been mulling over for a few days, filling in the blanks.

Filling in the blanks is what happens when I see a person walking down the sidewalk with a yoga mat. I assume they have their shit together in spades and I get frustrated with everything they are that I am not. I don't know a thing about them but I take that snapshot of them walking down the sidewalk and slide it in the self-recriminating section of my mental wallet. Same thing during encounters with couples. Even if I know enough about them to wonder how it works, I still ascribe to them some quality that eludes me and all the happiness a heart could hold. I can even envy a friend of mine who is working through a painful separation likely to end in divorce for at least managing to get married. Or a girl walking down the street looking cute and put together for making an effort and enduring some small suffering, a cold head, less comfortable feet, to look nice. I can fill in the most innocuous observations; if I made it into a drinking game, I would never be sober.

I have shied away from determinations and resolutions this year but I have been making a semi-conscious effort to stop assuming everyone has some slice of the life I want for myself. To reflexively denigrate who I am and what is great about me because of what I am not. I just watched a movie where a guy realizes his rival never had the life he envied. Truer words were never written. I used to interview people interested in applying for my old career field and I always led with the things that sucked about the job. When people saw us, it was always for that 1/10 of the time we seemed to be doing something exciting or cool. They didn't see the remaining 9/10 of report writing, meetings, lawyers, evidence collection, autopsy, trash covers and all the other spade work that came before and after the 30 minutes of actual cool stuff.

Today I walked the dog on a bright sunny day in record breaking snow. We encountered an awesome fort, complete with a cardboard flag. The snow was powdery and my old combat boots were warm. I talked with friends, had a yummy lunch and a lovely nap. I am clean. Large swaths of my house are clean. I am going to see if I can set up a mini-tripod to get a picture of me and Baloo at the fort. I'll bet at least one person who sees us will wish they had my life.