Obstacles...

I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.   -Blind Seer, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

It seems as if the Universe has decided to test me.

I was pulled over for speeding last night on my ride home.  I was in the middle of a long line of cars, just following the car in front of me for miles and miles.  At one point, the car in front of me stopped to make a left-hand turn.  Afterwards, I sped up to rejoin the line of cars that had moved off down the road away from me as I waited for the car in front of me to turn.  I have no idea how fast I was going, or what the speed limit on that part of the winding road was, but that must've been where they caught me, because as I came up the next hill and around a bend, a Sheriff's deputy stepped out into the road ahead of me and signaled me to pull over.  There were two deputies parked in someone's driveway, both pulling people over in the same way.  It was clear this wasn't the actual speed trap; this was the net.  I never saw the trap, but I assume that it must've been somewhere on that part of the road just after that left-hand turn, because that 100 yards where I sped up to rejoin the line of cars was the only time on the entire commute up to that point that I hadn't been in the middle of a line of cars.  At every other point we'd been moving along like a line of ants, and I'd been going the same speed as the car in front of me, and the same speed as the car behind me. When I asked the deputy where I'd been speeding, all he would say was "Back there," pointing down the road in the direction I had just come.  Well, duh, officer.  Vague, much?

He said I was doing 67 in a 40.  I don't think that's true, but I have to take his word for it.  Normally, when you see a speed trap, it's reflexive to hit your brakes and check your speedometer.  But since I never saw a trap, and since I was just trying to catch up to the car in front of me, I have no idea what speed I was actually going.  And since he won't tell me where I was actually caught, I can't even verify that the speed limit was actually 40.  But, whatever, no big deal.  An $80 fine and 1 point on my license.  Even though I just finally cleared all the points off my license this year, still, whatever, it's not the end of the world.  And it could've been a lot worse - the deputy was giving me a big break by only charging me with 49 in a 40, rather than the full 67.

But I found that I had a really hard time getting over it.  I felt like this completely ruined my new commute for me, this new route to work that I've fallen in love with and come to rely on.  Because part of the reason this commute was so good for me was that it was relaxing - stress-free compared to 270.  But now that I know that around every bend there could be a speed trap that I will never even be able to see, I'm feeling paranoid.  My worry-free drive is now worry-ful.  So, in order to deal with that I have to obey the speed limit, but that doesn't really help, either.  Because now I'm constantly checking my speedometer and always worried about whether I'm speeding or not, where before I never even had to think about that.  Also, a lot of the enjoyment of this road was that it was just a fun road to drive - a winding backroad through farm country.  Having to obey a completely ridiculous 40mph speed limit on a twisting road in the middle of nowhere just sucks all of the fun out it.  So now it's no fun, and stressful.  Fuck, I might as well go back to taking I-270.

I was still really tense and upset when I got home, so I decided to try and meditate to see if I could relax a little.  But it was really late by that point (I'd got caught at work and left later than I'd planned, then I had to stop by the grocery store, not to mention spending fifteen minutes sitting by the side of the road with the cops), and I still had a bunch more work I needed to do, so I didn't have much time available.  Trying to meditate under pressure to hurry up and finish so you can get back to work is pretty self-defeating, to say the least, so as you can probably imagine, it didn't go very well.  But the biggest obstacle was that I had a song stuck in my head.  This is something that has come up consistently throughout my entire meditative history, and I have never found a successful method of dealing with it.  Basically, every once in a while, I will try to meditate, and I'll find there's a snatch of a song repeating in my head, and there's simply nothing I can do about it.  I never get any meditation accomplished during these sessions, because the song continually breaks my concentration, and there's no way to get rid of it.  And every time it breaks my concentration or breaks me out of my meditation I get a little more upset about it.

So when I sat down this time, and heard the song in my head, I knew that I was completely fucked right from the start.  Still, I tried anyways, doing a full 108 breath cycle, but it did no good.  When I stood up from my mat, I was even more stressed out and upset than I was when I sat down.

Our internet was still down, so that made a whole bunch of things more difficult and/or impossible, adding further frustration, complication, and aggravation to an already stressful evening.  When I finally got to bed, it was no surprise that I didn't sleep very well.

This morning, my beautiful, relaxing new commute was, as predicted, stressful and unpleasant.  But at least I didn't get pulled over.

I got to the gym bright and early at 7:30, only to find the place packed.  Every treadmill taken, every elliptical taken.  Part of the reason I enjoy working out in the early morning is because it is never packed.  But there were at least twice as many people in there this morning as I have ever seen in there before!  I have never had to wait to use a machine before, either.  I didn't know what to do.  So I ended up just standing around for fifteen minutes, until a machine opened up.  Which, of course, threw off my schedule for the rest of my morning by fifteen minutes.

But here's the kicker:  about an hour after I get up to my office from the gym, She calls me to tell me that she's just been fired.  From the job she's had for eight years.  By her new boss (about the tenth she's had in the last two years), who's been there only a couple of months.

Wow.

Ok.

Gotta say, didn't see that one coming.

Up to this point, it had just been a series of annoying complications.  But this is different.  This is a sudden 90-degree turn in the course of our life from here on.

It's kind of difficult to take it all in, honestly.  Suddenly, the foundation of our lives has become slightly unstable.  We know a lot of things are about to change, drastically.  But, we don't really know which things, or how, or in what way.  It could be anything from Really Bad (e.g., we can't pay our mortgage and end up losing our home, etc.) all the way to Totally Amazing (e.g., she could end up with a new job that she loves, that pays better, that finally gives us more time together, etc.).  Everything is up in the air, which is scary, but also full of potential, which is exhilarating.

This time will be what we make of it.

So, are we up to the challenge?

I have to say, I'm looking forward to finding out.

The Beginning is a delicate time.  -Princess Irulan, Dune