A Day in the Life

“The crisis du jour was pain in his shoulder,” Buck wrote in his blog, referring to himself in the third person, “compounded by an aggravating blister on the inside sole of his right foot caused by his sneakers being too tight. They were too tight because of the new gel inserts he had placed in his shoes in a vain attempt to alleviate the sharp discomfort of the bone spur in his left heel. The bone spur had gotten worse in recent weeks due to increased activity playing both tennis and basketball. True, his overall fitness was improving, but he really had no business playing either of those sports lately, what with the re-emergence of the impingement in his right shoulder rotator cuff and the arthritis in his collar bone AC joint and all. Plus, wasn’t he supposed to be resting to recover from the chronic upper-middle back spasms that had driven him to go on hiatus from tennis, basketball, and playing electric bass with two local rock bands in the first place?”

He abruptly switched windows on his laptop computer in disgust at what he had written, and at what had become of his body. It was just as well, he thought. It was time to get back to work anyways. He had important work to do. It was absolutely critical that he complete the By-the-nanosecond project schedule on time. There was a meeting that afternoon - correction, a “pull-up”- to discuss the approach they would be using at the Tuesday "deep dive" session which they would use to prepare for the deliverable review meeting on Thursday. Yes, it was a meeting to prepare for a meeting to prepare for a meeting. Typical fare in Cubopolis. And he just knew someone was going to ask him why these three meetings weren’t themselves represented as line items in the schedule that was the deliverable that was going to be discussed at the meetings. Should a by-the-minute schedule include the details of its own creation? Should project management deliverables be updated retroactively with tasks such as these if the tasks in question had already been completed? These were philosophical questions over which even reasonable people could sometimes disagree. What made it worse was that there were no reasonable people around that day. Some days it seemed like there never were.

He consumed another swig of a non-caffeinated concoction of carbonated water, caramel color, Aspartame™, and several additional unpronounceable ingredients certain to shorten his lifespan with some form of cancer. Not that he had any illusions of outliving his debts to retire in comfort or anything. Three college-bound daughters, a hefty mortgage, and his own seemingly uncontrollable spending habits were already lining up nicely to rain on that parade. His tendency toward procrastination was also a major contributing factor. After ten months with a new firm he still had yet to roll over his 401K from his previous employer into the new plan. God only knew how the funds in his old 401K were invested, or how those investments were performing. Just thinking about it paralyzed him into inaction. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to have control of his finances, or that he didn’t want to become wealthy before his tragic, cancerous death. Quite the contrary, in fact. No, it was because of the administrative nightmare that awaited him. He needed the forms, and those had to be ordered online. What was his user ID? What was his password? He had no clue. It had been too long, and being a stickler for security, he’d played by the rules and never written his passwords down. So he would have to call the trust company (good luck remembering who that might be or what their phone number was) and request a new password. After waiting on hold for twenty minutes, they would send him a new password by snail-mail to the address currently on file, which was probably his old address in another town, some 300 miles away. He’d been through this mess before, when he waited four years before rolling over a 401K after a previous employment change. That traumatic episode had devoured three weeks of his life, three weeks he had lost in a twisted vortex of bureaucratic despair. Some people don’t learn from their mistakes. He was one of them.

It was with a detached sense of guilt that he swallowed some more of his beverage. Although it contained no sugar and no caffeine (two well-documented evils), the beverage was not strictly on the Twigs ‘n’ Berries™ diet. The doctor had had many unkind words for the powerful soft drink lobby and their so-called studies on the harmlessness of the artificial sweetener ingredient she regarded as poison. Screw it, he thought. It tasted good, and he deserved it. He had been good. Not perfect, but good. He decided not to identify the beverage by name in the blog, however, since he would probably not be compensated for product placement. But if the blog ever became publishable as an autobiography, then he might receive inquiries, perhaps even some offers from the major soft drink companies, and if the price was right, a second edition could make everyone happy. He could be bought. He could even switch brands, if it came down to that. He was not ashamed.

The drink was getting too warm. It had lost that frosty coolness, and the emptiness he felt was palpable, like when an old friend fades away, or an infatuation dies. Something special was gone forever, but at least he’d finally gotten to use the word “palpable,” albeit rather clumsily. Too much typing between swigs, he thought, and time was flying by at an alarming pace. A glance at the clock elicited a pang of guilt over the wasted time his client was paying him for. He swiftly made a token update to a line item in the schedule and vowed to make it up to them later.

He felt an aching in his left leg as it slowly lost circulation due to his sitting position. It was either the leg or his ass that would go numb, he knew from experience, depending on which way he sat. He made a command decision and switched positions for awhile. He would switch back later after his ass fell asleep. The problem was balancing the keyboard in his lap. He had it down there because one of his doctors had advised him to keep his arms low and rested so that the muscles in his back wouldn’t exhaust themselves over the course of the day, delaying the healing which would allegedly one day occur. Then, a temporary loss of network connectivity, probably related to tropical depression Eduardo outside, and the helpless feeling associated with knowing he had forgotten to save his changes, washed over him like a wave of raw anguish. Rookie mistake, he chided himself angrily. He had a history of being hard on himself.

Then, out of the blue, a funny thought occurred to him: hurricanes and tropical storms always received names, just like people. How come they didn’t get nicknames like people too? There had been a Hurricane Charles, he was reasonably sure, but why hadn’t anyone called it The Chuckster? Or how about Katrina, the one that devastated New Orleans two years ago? Maybe from now on she could be referred to as "Hurricane Nasty Bitch." Hell, that would be being generous. Hurricanes Dickhead and Assclown are also memorable national disasters that come to mind. What a bunch of jerks those guys were, huh? Hey, is this thing on? These are the jokes, folks!

[Publisher’s note: we do not condone Buck 99’s profanity, but feel it is appropriate, in the interest of free speech, to leave his comments unedited as he originally intended them. That, and we want to find out what he can get away with on this site. Stay tuned.]

He abruptly decided not to quit his day job to become a comedian. No, far better and more financially sound to keep the day job and become a writer.

There was a brief but pleasant interlude when he received an email from one of his friends, whom we shall call E-Taco. E-Taco had picked up on the negative vibe our protagonist was putting out that day. His mood wasn’t really as bad as his buddy had perceived, though. The writing was cathartic, and the time appeared to be passing very rapidly, after all. He would be home for the three day weekend in no time, with plenty of time to procrastinate completion of the study group assignment he’d just received from his employer via the company email. Nothing like work on a holiday weekend to keep the mind sharp, he thought. Besides, the study group was a means to an end. Upon completion of the class and passing the certification exam, he could finally escape the terrifying world of project management and return to the frustrating but relatively benign realm of software application design and development. He would rather fight seemingly insurmountable engineering obstacles and defects than be stabbed in the back by politically savvy, power hungry middle-management ladder-climbers any day of the week. That, and he had developed a keen hatred of a certain project management software tool provided by a major software provider operating out of the Pacific Northwest region. If the makers of that tool wanted him to cast aside that hatred and embrace the tool in a public arena such as, say, this space, then they would need to reach out to his agent and discuss a product placement advertisement deal, as well as fix some of the many annoying “features” of their product.

The email from E-Taco suggested that our protagonist should abandon the Twigs ‘n’ Berries™ diet in favor of nachos, onion dip, and beer. Our protagonist decided that this was not a wise course of action. After all, hadn’t he just received the “Energizer Bunny” award at the Hoops Hotline awards cook-out just last night? The award was given to him for having the most energy at both ends of the court. He had accepted the award humbly and cracked a joke about thanking The Academy, all the while inwardly feeling proud of having received this superficially meaningless award. To him, it was a testimony to how far he had come in five months since the lifestyle change, proof that his energy and overall fitness really had improved. He celebrated along with the others as they received their own awards, his second light beer of the evening grasped firmly in one hand, his plateful of carrots and hommus in the other. He even tried a little onion dip with some baked chips, and it was good. He was a little buzzed when he got home later that evening, though, and made some poor decisions regarding a box of delicious, satisfying, whole grain crackers and the quantity of which should be consumed at a single sitting. Although his weight was up on the scales the next morning, he would happily endorse the manufacturers of these fine crackers at a discount rate if they can guess who they are.

Besides, he knew that going off the new lifestyle would be a major financial misstep. He had just spent a mint on new clothes from two leading men’s clothing specialty stores. Although he prefers one of the stores over the other because of the cut of the legs on their slacks, he would gladly endorse whichever one offers the more lucrative deal, then use the funds to secretly purchase his slacks from the preferred vendor if necessary. He had also developed a positive self-image for the first time in his life. He liked the way he looked. He always took a few extra moments during bathroom breaks to admire his reflection in the mirror. Not with vanity or even pride, really, but more with a sense of pleasant surprise that hasn't worn off yet.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, night had fallen, and millions upon millions of hot, naked Asian chicks were busy getting it on. This final sentiment brought to you by E-Taco.