maybe i deserve this

It's true. Life goes around in circles. Sometimes ill happenings that occur are not the so-called fates being cruel or kind. It's just idiocy on your own part. Sometimes you just bring things on yourself. Like when I was growing up, I had a cousin about 12 years my junior who idolized me. I couldn't stand him. He annoyed like those Looney Tunes characters Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier. Chester, ever exhuberant, always wanted to pal around with surly Spike, to which Spike always gave him a backhand in the mouth and flatly quipped "nah." Enough of this and my mother foreboded "you keep rejecting him like that and one day, some woman that you're really interested in is gonna reject you the same way." I'm inclined to blame the messenger, not for the times that it actually did happen and I deserved it, but for all the times subsequent that I didn't.

These days however, it seems like retribution is coming to me in a more direct 1-to-1 fashion with some things. You may or may not have read that I've been recording more and designing less lately. I go through these seasons when I'm highly creative and highly productive and then sometimes I hit "the wall" where everything stops, nothing works, nothing grows, and nobody gets anywhere too quickly.

“I got to pay back. I need some get back. Payback.” - James Brown, “Payback”

Unfortunately for a few of my drag-leg web clients, my patience ran out for these long-standing jobs that had lingered past the threshold of novelty into the zone of tedium. Some of them I jettisoned, and some of them I just ignored as if behind soundproof glass. In some cases, i was just sick and tired of hearing the their voice on my answering machine, and in other cases, I really did want to do the work, but my head was so glutted with minutia that i couldn't do what i wish i could for them. There were times when i avoided their calls... let their e-mails fall like trees in the forest with no one around to hear the sound... for whatever reason committed or omitted, i've let people down, disappointed them, frustrated them, impeded them. Choose your own disheartening verb. I did it. It was me.

Well, fast forward to weeks and months later. Now I'm in recording mode. And I'm at an array of disadvantages, not for talent, mobility, or inspiration, but for faculty. There are some things I can't do and I need other people. Wouldn't you know it. I feel like I've faced a suspiciously familiar wall of dead ends, red herrings, empty promises, and (more importantly) unanswered phone calls and e-mails, like a red sea with no one to part it for me. Whenever I experience such a rebuff, I always wonder... is this just due retribution? Did I do something to warrant this? What if it is fair afterall? Perhaps I “had it coming” like the chorus of vampy murderous female inmates sang in chicago. Maybe I deserve this.

Because I'm aware of Christ's grace, I know that I will always undoubtedly forget to dot an "i" or cross a "t". I don't believe that that alone is a guarantee that I will spend the rest of my life in a miserable existence of reaping repercussions of shortcomings that I was inherently born with. [Sidebar: if you're such a person who does believe that, you might want to let go of that pattern of thinking in hopes of avoiding miserable existences.] Nonetheless, I do believe that what goes around comes around. By this I mean that if you (read: I) sow irresponsibility, inconsideration, and faithlessness, you should not be surprised when you experience it in your life and you should make an attempt to minimize it wherever possible and eradicate it if at all possible.

“Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” - Ephesians 4:28

As a matter of course, I always have to pose the question: What do we do now? Well, you can't change what's done, but you can alter what you will do in the future. I can try to make amends for offenses I've already rendered. I can start by apologizing. (Now that I'm older, my apologizer works a lot better than when i was a teen). If the people aren't too terribly sick of me, I can offer to compensate for what i've caused them to lose. The bottom line is, I don't like what I'm reaping, so I really need to go sow something different.