Check, check, check. Should I feel brushes of gray guilt from going to work late? Late is 8:30 and though there is a grind to the rush hour, there is certain pleasure from sharing the miserable pathway with so many other difficult humans.

The bright lines from a blurred sun cut through a foggy surface covering not only my eyes but also my sense of what in the world around me might be real. The beautiful shine from the tingly knives which appear to be carving man’s creation delicately enough to leave it there, they brighten my outlook and for several moments I feel an impending chance at success.

Does she say anything good about my frantic efforts? No, but why do I need her encouragement? Why am I so bereft of self-esteem, especially when I am on a long streak of diligently working to do estimable deeds?

She’d be better to leave me alone in my stuffy chocolate pudding, but instead, she pounces on my distracted nature and fries my burnt ends for leaving a confidential paper that is really lacking anything to be confidential about on a robotic, mostly-broken printer in a common workspace where our comrades might read that paper. I need these course corrections. I need a hot flame that curls the edges of my foggy awareness, but despite my fully-developed load of guilt about these defects of mine, something demoralizes me and no matter how rational I am, the day goes straight to the pot of shit sitting outside the building doors where the smokers go for a bit of sanity.

It’s this yellow Tonka toy dump truck that I drive around for most of my living moments and it is heaped with the load of all of my defects. The load is heavy, but I strive to carry it and push and push and push to shove these things out the back of the truck as I travel in a slow lane, not concerned too greatly about the pollution of my defects, for they go to rest with McDonald’s wrappers and all of the other detritus of our blown-out society, but when one person who perhaps justifiably withholds compliments adds a little fly paper on to the back of my truck, it is as if Godzilla himself reached out and smacked me and my shit straight into the ditch.

I try and I beg but the day won’t start over and I come to believe that it is better for me to come to work when it is too dark to identify any of the various objects in my world and when the others are resting comfortably in their achievements.