November 26, 2019

No, the title of this post isn’t my attempt at rewriting an old joke. And it’s not a euphemism for being hit by someone, either.

No, this is the story of one of those little occurrences that life throws at me to wake me up.

The Setup

Early morning, before work. It’s dark out. I hear the dog from the neighbor behind me giving his I-see-something-worrying bark instead of his usual I’m-so-lonely moan. So I turn out the lights and look out the window. Why I expect to see anything in the impenetrable dark, when I never have before, is beyond me. But part of me seems to think I’ll develop infrared vision. Anyway, I don’t see anything.

The Arrogance

I decide not to turn on the light by the window as I turn away. Of course, I know the layout of my bedroom well enough to make it to the light switch by the door. And hey, I can see the glow from the streetlights through the window in the room down the hall, so I know where I am. Really. I’ve got this. I put my hand out in front of me to make sure I don’t hit the door…

The Smackdown

And of course, I walk into the door. The door is open. I have my hand on the handle so I know where it is. Yet somehow I still manage to misjudge where the edge of the door is and I walk into it, smacking the brow bone above my left eye against the edge. Ouch! You’d have thought I’d been running from the way it hurt, instead of walking. Sheesh. Thank heavens I wasn’t wearing my glasses, because they would have cracked.

Photo of an open door

The offending door

The Lesson

After I turn on the light and stop cursing myself for a fool, I head downstairs and grab an icepack. I don’t want to have to explain to people that yes, I really DID walk into a door, and yes, I do feel a complete fool. Then I start thinking about how this is pretty much an allegory of how my life has been going. I go through my days thinking I know where I’m going, only to smack into my own ignorance and discover that I don’t have the first clue about where I’m actually headed.

*sigh* Yeah, sometimes life literally has to dope smack me. So far, though, the wake-up is working. I’m thinking a lot more about where I want my life to go, both for the near future and for the long term. So, Fate, you happy now?

[All right, peeps. I’ve told you my humiliating story for the week. What’s yours?]

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