by N. K. Peske
I’m doing the best I can, and that’s all that really matters.
PROCESS
I can’t be forced to do anything.
Sid Vicious
Process. I instinctively cringe when I hear that word. I imagine myself plodding along in endless toil toward some longterm abstract goal, like death.
But process is simply a term for the way we do things, like washing only the tops of our dinner plates. I mean, that’s the side you eat off of, right? Why wash the bottoms? Or like walking the dog at night so you don’t have to scoop the poop. What are they gonna do? Dust for fingerprints?
When our processes help us save time, money, or, more important, precious personal energy resources, they are invaluable. Take a moment today to cut a new corner. Drink straight from the milk carton of life and leave the refrigerator door open while you’re doing it.
The shortest distance between two points is usually a creative maneuver, best done out of the sight of a police officer.
PURPOSE/MEANING/
FEELING NEEDED
Act if you like, but do it at your peril.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So often the world places a high premium on being needed, being useful, and having a purpose. Things that do not meet these rigid criteria are tossed away, dismissed, discarded, donated to a local charity, or left to languish in the back of the fridge until they ferment into food for cockroaches—unless your ex-mother-in-law decides to come over for dinner, in which case you’ll cut off the blue stuff and serve it to her on toast.
Are we to become fodder for lower life forms before our time? No! This is why it is so very important to keep breathing and have a detectable pulse at all times, even when in a turkey-and-football coma.
We must also remember that life is its own justification. Like the cockroach, we are our own very special link in the food chain, and it’s going to take more than boric acid to stop us from following our natural instincts.
Between the past and the present, I am the missing link.
EMPTINESS
B’deeya, b’deeya, b’, that’s all, folks!
Porky Pig
We all remember, don’t we? That terrible moment when we looked around and realized, This is it. This is the end of the road, the final frontier, the whole shooting match. This is my life, my home, my woman, my inferior stereo system. This is all I’ll ever be, do, have, and let’s face it, it’s been a downhill slide since high school. I’m just another nobody, a dust mote in the cosmic scheme of things, a zero, a bum, a loser.
But then it hit us, didn’t it? Like a blast of fresh air on a clear adolescent autumn afternoon with a dog and a brew and a whole squad of sweet-thighed high school cheerleaders crying out our name ‘cause we just aced the big game against those meatballs from Central.
In that moment of despair, we suddenly remembered that the new Kim Basinger movie is on HBO in twenty minutes and that Domino’s Pizza delivers.
Attitude adjustment is a lot easier than life adjustment.
DISAPPOINTMENT
Have the neighborhood kids been right all along? Am I truly nothing?
Al Bundy
Disappointment. Remorse. Regret for the roads not taken. When these feelings of sadness and insecurity overwhelm us, we begin to reassess the decisions we have made in life and to reflect upon what might have been had we chosen differently.
Maybe it is a good idea to really experience the depth of regret lying fallow in our stagnant minds. Maybe we ought to lie down to get the full effect. Once we are lying down, though, and the couch pillow is supporting our neck just so, holding our gaze in perfect alignment with the fifty-yard line while maintaining our mouth at enough of an angle to be able to sip out of a can without raising our head, we feel validated. We remember why we have chosen to be Men Who Do Next to Nothing and remember, too, that regret is something that women invented to make men go to work every day.
As we let ourselves experience our grief and pain, particularly when we experience it at a 180-degree angle, it all begins to feel like something else, something along the lines of euphoria.
When life gets you down, lie down. What’s the point in fighting gravity?
CONTENTMENT
We are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
La Rochefoucauld
Happiness is an elusive and spontaneous thing. Often we fool ourselves into thinking that if we had a better handle on our lives—if, for instance, we had a nice car, a better job, or some idea of how we were going to pay the rent next month—then we would be happy. Of course, when we actually do pay the rent we feel depressed because we’ve thrown all that money out the window for some cheap dump right next door to an old bat who calls the cops every time you turn up your stereo above level five. What a witch. Then we wonder why we can never feel contentment or happiness. We wonder where we have gone wrong.
The first mistake we made was in listening to the woman who told us that we’d feel better once we had a better job and could pay our bills. These material things don’t bring us happiness. Happiness cannot be planned or purchased. Maybe it’s time we begin to question the woman who taught us that possessions and power can bring us contentment. Maybe she owes us a six-pack for dishing out such rotten advice. Come to think of it, it may be the same woman who keeps calling the cops. Something should be done about her.
Happiness comes from within, and occasionally from Anheuser-Busch.
SUCCESS
Success has ruined many a man.
Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps it isn’t success itself but the way in which we define it that causes us so many problems. If we define success as having a job, a house, or a car with a functional transmission, then we are bound to feel like losers.
If, on the other hand, we say that success is the ability to live healthy, contented lives, or if, for instance, we define success as getting through a day without suffocating or getting mugged on the subway, how much more comfortable would we be with ourselves?
Starting today, I’m going to learn to be happy with each and every accomplishment and reward myself accordingly. When I wake up and get out of bed tomorrow, first I’m going to congratulate myself and then, as a reward, I’m going to lie right back down. I could go on like that for weeks.
I am as successful as I think I am.
TRAVEL
The soul of a journey is liberty …
William Hazlitt
One of our strong points as Men Who Do Next to Nothing is our understanding of the value of vacations in the process of recovery. Vacations mean a break in routine, a time of rest and renewal, a time to pamper ourselves. When we travel, we open ourselves up to new experiences, new women, new athletic teams, and different kinds of beers on tap. The change in scenery vacuums out the cobwebs of monotony, restores our spirit, and makes us feel brand spanking new. Which reminds me of that weekend in Tijuana. But that was a different kind of spanking, although I did feel new afterward.
How sad that we must relegate this expansive experience to a mere two weeks out of each year. How weary and irritable we become with the dull routine of our lives. Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves some difficult questions. Isn’t it time to look into taking a permanent vacation? Shouldn’t we be looking into how unemployment benefits work? Couldn’t we get by on her salary?
Vacations don’t have to be expensive. Cerveza’s dirt cheap in Tijuana.
If I buy a case of Dos Equis, maybe I could have a vacation right here on my couch.
HIGHER POWER
One with God is a majority.
Adam Clayton Powell
How easy it is to forget that our Higher Power is always there to give us strength and courage. How else would we find the courage to say, “No! I will not go to the store just to buy toilet paper. If I can do without it, so can she!” Where else can we find the inner strength to say, “Yes! I like the grayish half-light created by the soot caked to my window, and I will no
t clean it off.”
When we are in touch with our Higher Power, we see the Zen-like beauty in all things. Like that pile of old papers and empty Roach Motel boxes on top of the VCR. Is it garbage? Is it art? Certainly it’s worth thinking about for a few more weeks.
When we are in touch with our Higher Power we know what we are about and can stand up to those who question our priorities, like our bosses, who place budget meetings over office football pools, or our friends, who think we should pay them the fifty bucks we owe them before springing for a new pair of Ray-Bans.
When we are truly one with our Higher Power, we are at peace, we are cool, we are credible, and best of all we are probably unemployed.
I wouldn’t want to mess with God’s will.
LONELINESS
Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.
Karl Kraus
It’s funny, but even when we are surrounded by people, we can find ourselves feeling alone, separated from the rest of mankind, out of place, and out of the loop.
We need to share special moments of connection with others. We need to feel we are not alone in thinking there’s a big difference between Miller Lite and Genuine Draft. We need to know that someone else thinks the “Trouble with Tribbles” Star Trek episode is overrated. We need to be comforted that someone else understands the devastating ramifications of instant replay and truly needs his MTV.
When we feel lonely we must reach out. Wouldn’t it be nice to share our most intimate thoughts with that hot A&P checkout girl with the awesome pair of cupcakes?
Today, I will not dwell on my feelings of aloneness. I will make new friends and keep the old, for one is silver and the other gold.
Reach out and touch someone. Just be sure you can’t get arrested for it.
TOIL
[W]e have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing….
Luke 5:5
This quotation is so aptly reflective of the ultimate emptiness of the oppressive system of enforced labor in which we live. It is a system subtly imposed by women and one we have learned to conform to in order to get laid.
This is not reality, it is a conspiracy, perpetrated by workaholic women and perpetuated by us helpless addicts who would do anything in exchange for the wild thing.
Fortunately, if we are courageous, there are other options, and not all of them cause blindness.
One in the hand is worth two in the office.
HOUSEWORK
A good housewife is of necessity a humbug.
W. M. Thackeray
They say there are two inevitabilities in life: death and taxes. Taxes, though, are easily avoided—just refuse to work. And death doesn’t worry me much because it only happens once, and it doesn’t cost money. But there is a third inevitable curse that they habitually forget to mention: housework.
No matter how many times you clean, you always have to do it again. As an experiment, I tried to get around the fruitlessness of housework by living nude in an empty apartment and eating all my meals out. But one morning, lying naked on the floor in my sanctuary, I saw it—dust on my baseboards, dust on my light fixtures, dust on the floors and windowsills. There was even dust on me. That fateful morning I realized that no matter where you go, there is always going to be dust. There is no lint-free corner to retreat to, no place where you are completely safe from housework.
That is the day I decided to move in with my girlfriend.
A woman’s work is never done, so what difference will a few more loads of laundry make?
CHANGE
I can’t change the laws of physics, Captain.
Scotty
I must accept that no matter how hard I try, some things will never change. In fact, most things won’t. My salary, for instance, my future prospects, that rattling in the radiator of my Pontiac, male-pattern balding. It’s a discouraging list.
Of course another thing I can’t change is that some things are going to change, like my marital status, which has proved extremely mercurial, as has my place of employment. My TRS report is in constant flux. Sometimes nightmares that look just like good opportunities come my way and change my bank balance.
Let’s face it: changing or not changing, it’s all one giant, miasmic, disastrous, infinitely collapsible world in which a guy is better off just grabbing a pillow and ducking for cover.
If opportunity knocks, don’t answer the door. Let her get it.
POWER
Power without abuse loses its charm.
Paul Valéry
As we begin to recover, to get in touch with our true selves and to accept who we genuinely are, we begin to get the idea that we may in fact be all-powerful beings.
We begin to sense that awesome power first in relation to others, like when we scream at our families, neighbors, coworkers, or employers. Next we are screaming at whole teams of guys much larger than us on the television, and soon we are screaming at large institutions, like the Department of Motor Vehicles, or the Office of Unemployment, or even the entire U.S. government, but usually only over the telephone. The government can’t afford caller ID.
Gradually we begin to feel that power glowing and radiating within ourselves. We uncover the Spartan warrior within us, standing our ground at Thermopylae, combing our luxuriant locks in calm defiance of the invading Athenians. We flex, we grimace, we don’t change our underwear for a week.
Today, I will assert my power. After all, I’m a taxpayer. At least in theory.
RELATIONSHIPS/
COMMITMENTS
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
Our fathers thought they had it all figured out. Get a good job, and you get a good woman. Take care of her financially, and she’ll take care of you physically and emotionally. What this amounts to is that for a little chicken soup during flu season, clean shirts, and an occasional (very occasional, to hear my father tell it) afternoon quickie, our fathers allowed themselves to become success objects.
We modern Men Who Do Next to Nothing have other options. Modem morality makes it possible for us to escape the success trap. People live with each other now before getting married; women work. These new advances in gender relations can be used to our advantage. There are women out there who, in exchange for an occasional Hallmark card and a few vague references to future commitment, will contribute to our lives not only emotionally and physically, but financially as well.
Never say “I do” when you can get away with “I might.”
CONFUSION
Lack of understanding is a great power. Sometimes, it enables men to conquer the world.
Anatole France
So often, we Men Who Do Next to Nothing are expected to be rational. Yet so much of our life just doesn’t make sense. When we struggle for logic and clarity, we get confused and irritable. We become the kind of man who kicks small animals, becomes a nuisance at cocktail parties, and demands to know things like how bombs can be called peacekeepers or what the purpose of monogamy is in an overpopulated world.
In our recovery, we have learned that no matter how hard we try, nothing is going to make sense. We can’t understand what’s going on because invariably women are involved somewhere in the process, and they remain one of life’s eternal riddles.
If you don’t know an answer, skip it and go on to the next question.
COURTESY
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We Men Who Do Next to Nothing are constantly feeling the pressure to be nice, to be courteous, to mind our manners and do our fair share. Many of us have given in to this restrictive mandate and have experimented with politeness. We found out that being polite is not only dishonest and detrimental to our recovery, but a lot of unnecessary effort that doesn’t pay off in the long run.
Those of us trying to get clearer with ourselves must face the fact that courtesy is a deception. Real men don’t really say “Excuse me
.” They don’t write thank-you notes. They don’t volunteer to help with the dishes. They don’t get up and leave the room when they have to fart. So why lie to ourselves and those close to us?
If we want to be honest with ourselves and others, we have to be willing to let go of niceness along with excess intestinal gas.
COMPARISON
Comparisons are always odious and ill taken.
Miguel de Cervantes
How beautiful and joyful it is to accept ourselves the way that we truly are. How sad that women so often have difficulty appreciating the purity of our visceral selves. How unfortunate that they must always compare us with others, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, or the guy next door with a full-time job.
Held to impossibly high standards, of course we don’t measure up. We are too short, too tall, too fat, too passive, too underemployed. But to compare human beings is to miss out on the unique splendor of each individual. Who else could name from memory every RBI in Babe Ruth’s final season? And not just anybody could drink forty-seven kamikazes without blowing chunks. All these are indeed special gifts.