Every day I climb a little higher. Every day I get a little closer to freeing myself from this dark chasm.

But I'm not out yet.

I look down at the swirling blackness below me, and I can't help but wonder, how much would it hurt if I fell to the bottom again now? Or now? Or right now?

I can't tell. The bottom is lost in the darkness. All I really know is that every inch of upward progress is another inch I could fall. Another inch closer to freedom, but also another inch closer to death.

I don't think I want to die. Not again.

But until that day when I finally claw my way out of here, and back into my life, the fear of falling will increase with every move I make.

The blackness follows me up, obscuring all of the progress I've made. It taunts me.

I'm already so terrified of falling that I can barely will myself to move, and I've still got a long way to go.

Sometimes I think I should just stop, but I can't. There are no ledges upon which I can rest.

Sometimes I think I should climb back down.

Sometimes I think I should jump.

Then, at least, I could stop being so afraid.

Tonight I was hoping to tell the tale of my exciting journey to The Land Of Oz.

No such luck.

The night was a complete waste, weather-wise. At least here at my house it was. All it did was rain.

And I was really looking forward to seeing some flying monkeys.

Tonight's one of those slight chance of severe weather nights, complete with a tornado watch. This is in stark contrast to the other night when, 75 miles West of me, two dozen people were killed by a tornado that supposedly had zero chance of forming.

So tonight I get to sleep fully-clothed, on my couch, with my weather alert thingy by my side, ready to run into my basement or into my front yard - whichever suits my mood, should severe weather threaten.

This is quite cool, having storms like this in November.

It would be slightly less cool to be killed by a tornado tonight, but at least it would get me out of work tomorrow.

Tomorrow's supposed to be our main threat. Fucking all Hell will probably come unleashed and I'll be stuck at work.

Okay, let's say you're stuck in rush hour traffic. Cars are lined up nose to ass as far as the eye can see. Traffic is crawling along, too fast to simply coast, but too slow to actually touch the accelerator.

Let's also say that someone in the next lane over wants to get into your lane. Maybe there's a wreck up ahead, maybe their exit is nearby. Whatever. They pull up alongside you, or maybe a little ahead of you, and they hit their turn signal.

(Turn signals, for those of you that don't know, are those doohickeys that stick out of the side of your steering column. You click the doohickey up to signal your intention and desire to turn right, and you click it down when you want to go left.)

So this person has signaled that they want to merge into your lane, ahead of you. I say let them in.

Stop or slow down, make a gap in front of your car, and let them into your lane.

Now, you may be asking, "Dave, you shithead. Why the fuck would I want to let them get into my lane?"

This is a reasonable question, and I understand why you're asking it. Except for the shithead part. That was really uncalled for.

Everybody wants to be a selfish prick when they're behind the wheel of a car. Shit, that's half the fun of having the damn thing. The other half is that you get to sing along to the radio without anyone hearing how horrible you sound.

But I digress.

The thing about letting that person cut in front of you is this: You get to be nice to them, but you still get to be a selfish prick to everyone behind you!

It's win/win!

Let's say, for argument's sake, that you don't let the poor sap in. What do you suppose he'll do?

Remember, he's a selfish prick, just like you.

He's going to drive even further ahead and he's going to try to cut in front of someone that's already way ahead of you.

Maybe that other person has read this entry, so he knows what to do. He slows down and lets the poor sap in.

What happens next is what I like to call a chain-reaction. I didn't make that term up. It's from a movie or something. I think Ted "Theodore" Logan and some hot girl were in it. That Leaving Las Vegas girl I think.

But I digress.

The guy way ahead of you taps his brakes to let the poor sap in. The guy behind him taps his brakes, and so on. By the time you get more than about four cars back from where the actual merge is taking place, those people don't know what the fuck is going on. All they see is a bunch of brakes lighting up ahead of them.

So they slam on their brakes and come to a complete stop. So does the person behind them, and the person behind them and so on and so on until you are forced to come to a stop and sit for a good thirty seconds until the traffic starts moving again.

And, while you're sitting there stopped, that merger and that mergee way up ahead - they've gone on about their merry way. They're probably already home getting laid, while you're still stuck in traffic.

You could have been that mergee!

But nooooooooooooooooooo! You couldn't take one second out of your precious life to help a fellow human being. So instead, you're getting thirty seconds stolen from you. Karma is a bitch, isn't it?

If you'd just let the poor sap in when you'd had the chance, your inconvenience would have been minimal, but you'd still have had the satisfaction of knowing that everyone behind you would suffer.

Like I said, it's win/win.

I hate Mondays soooooooo much.

But this one just got a little tiny bit better. Maybe even a lot better.

I came in this morning and checked my calendar and saw that the entire afternoon was full of stupid meetings.

Imagine, if you will, my glee when I checked my calendar again just now and saw that all of the stupid useless meetings were last Monday, and that I have this afternoon open.

Yay!

You know what the highlight of my day was?

I went to Target and bought some clothes hangers. Twenty-six regular ones and four of the clippy kind for hanging pants.

I also bought The Fog on DVD, just so it wouldn't look like I'd made a special trip to Target just to buy hangers.

Then to rest up from that adventure, I took a nap and had this dream:

I was in Chicago or New York or some other big city for some boring work thing. I decided to sneak out and do some exploring.

For some reason I didn't have any socks on, and my shoes were hurting my feet, so I figured I'd try to buy myself some socks if I saw any stores.

I got into this elevator and tried to push the top button (floor 101) but it wasn't working. Then some Hispanic guy came in and slid his card into the elevator control panel and the 101 button worked for him. I guess he was special or something.

The elevator, when it got to the top, turned into a sort of slow-motion roller coaster or something. It wound around the top of the city for quite a while. All of the walls were glass and I could see that there was all kinds of touristy shit up at the top of whatever city this was. The Hispanic guy kept pointing out all of the good stores and bars that I should check out. I thought it was nice that he was so down to Earth even though he was special enough to carry the magic elevator card.

Once the elevator/ride stopped, I got off and saw this building that looked like it was from the Flintstones cartoon up the hill. The building and its landscaping was molded out of some yellowish plasticy stuff that felt like it had a five o'clock shadow, plus it was pretty greasy feeling.

I climbed the very steep hill to the Flintstones building, but once I got there they were charging admission to go in and I didn't want to spend my sock money so I just sat with some lady and her kids and we watched the goings-on there at the top of the city.

Stolen from forgottenfriend

How evil are you?