Mile Low

I type this from a darkened hotel room in Denver. The sun outside my ninth floor window is...aggressive. Did you ever notice that? How it hovers there, burning everything? It might just be me and my frustrated, hairline fractured psyche this trip. Naturally, I'd find myself in the sunniest, healthiest, most glowing mountainous city in the country. I miss NYC and not looking anyone in the eye. I'm not anonymous enough here. Yesterday, I found myself having to network and smile and care and I just would prefer not to right now.

Forgive my morose brain. It's just that my life feels so much like a jigsaw puzzle and the pieces surreptitiously change shape as soon as I pick them up. I've got the picture on the box of what everything should look like: a bright two dimensional tableau of two bright people, mid conversation, laughing. They easily gather and collect every line of conversation that passes between them, understood and understanding, making each other laugh. Sometimes there's a goddamned rainbow in the background, I don't know. But when I spend some time searching for the right piece to put in the right place at the right time and I finally think I've got it, the picture has shifted a few inches, or what was day is now night, or in place of a man there is a shadow. And while I was busy noticing all that, the piece in my hand has morphed, or crumbled or vanished. It is exhausting.

And that's how I feel today: exhausted. Anti-sun. Hungover. Over caffeinated. Cynical. I should probably put in some effort today at the conference, to meet new faces and network for new opportunities. And I almost gathered the necessary energy to do so. I went downstairs to get some free coffee and while I stood, staring blankly at factory commissioned artwork on the wall and waiting for it to sputter into my cup, I overheard a man say "I can't wait until I get my truck back...this rental is full of girl juice." So I came back upstairs to type this from a darkened hotel room, in Denver. I've got a meeting in an hour and I'm defying my brain to not run the phrase "girl juice" like a Fox News ticker along the bottom for the rest of the day.

Wish me luck.