"What else was life supposed to be besides a series of clever recoveries from the way it was supposed to be?"

The chairs still sat atop the tables with lights still low when I showed up at 'my' Starbucks to write this morning, so I decided to try the truck stop instead. I found a welcoming wi-fi signal there, and an atmosphere much more conducive to pursuing my intention. No soundtrack blaring. No deaf regular screaming everything he says. No altogether too high-test decaf to jangle my spirit. As quiet as a library. My huge DIY project looks like it will be delayed today, with weather reports increasingly agreeing that today and likely tomorrow, too, will be rained out. Baseball games still get rained out. Sometimes schools close when the snow flies. Flights might get delayed or cancelled when threatening weather settles in, but most activities continue as if invulnerable to any kind of vagary.

Where might a person find a reliable source of disruption for their plans if not even a rainstorm can get much cancelled? Simple gloom of night used to be enough to dissuade many from venturing forth. Simple, normal, could-happen-any-day acts of God used to turn our terrible tenacity, but we've grown increasingly insistent as if we no longer acknowledge how sublimely vulnerable we might be to what might be accepted as simple instances of God's Will. A rainstorm in Texas sends cars floating away. One wonders from a safe distance what those folks were doing out driving around in a driving rainstorm, anyway. Could they have not done what even the New York Yankees occasionally do, and call their game on account of rain?

My first reaction to the news that my project would be delayed by rain was, quite predictably, denial. I searched for contradicting predictions and, the internet being its magical self, I had no trouble finding them. I heard myself explaining that a few passing showers might skirt the area, but hardly any rain should fall. I made no contingency plans. I stuck with the program, instead. I was already feeling as though I might not achieve my lofty goals even if not interrupted by rain, and the rain might force me to acknowledge that I'd planned altogether too optimistically again. I might well have planned altogether too optimistically again. I usually do, but the plan's just a plan, hardly holy writ, and conditions might change at any time with no way to reliably predict given that even the more reliable forecasters' conclusions conflict. I can find any justification for doing anything I've firmly set my mind to doing.

From Master Of My Universe to Pawn in no time. This seems to be the great gift of finding myself RainedIn, a sensation I suspect that my ancestors were much more than fleetingly familiar with experiencing. What now? What next? My clever plans might have gone to naught, but I'm still standing. I could choose to become a victim and start composing lame excuses, but I won't. Instead, I guess I might decide to do a little radical accepting. The way it is now seems to be the way it is now, and I might be the only accessible point of leverage in this situation. (It's now officially a situation.) I suppose I could get out of my own way and simply say that my project's been blessed with an unplanned delay. I might find the opportunity to reassess just what I thought I was doing back when time seemed endless and resources not yet constrained. I'll do what I was planning to do, anyway, just most certainly not in quite the way I'd earlier imagined.

I suspect that my life might feel more blessed if it was more frequently cursed with RainedIn events. If I could find a way to rationalize a few halfway decent barriers to satisfying my own vanities, I might discover an elusive form of sanity awaiting me on the other side. Imagine how powerful I might feel after succeeding anyway, in spite of or perhaps because of all the unforeseen barriers I encountered along the way. In this part of the country, we never complain of rain, for we're always somewhere behind receiving all the rain we could use. Every storm a gift. Each inch of moisture a genuine godsend. Disruptive? Certainly! Might even I find a way to usefully integrate any disruption? What else was life supposed to be besides a series of clever recoveries from the way it was supposed to be?

©2019 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GlancingKnow, #PureSchmaltz