Ain't nobody got time for pain

This is what I do know:

It's nearly 5:00 p.m. on Friday, payday Friday, that is.

Binging on Halloween treats makes me feel like a trash bag.
My life feels a lot like Tetris.
It's November. Bring it on, November. Can you believe that?

The only super exciting thing about November, besides the true death of everything colorful outside (I kid), is the November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2013. If you don't know, it's a little poetry challenge. You're given a prompt every day for a poem. SO YOU WRITE ONE POEM A DAY FOR A WHOLE MONTH. You can do it; I dare you.

It's inspired by the more well-known, NaNoWriMo. This challenge is actually where you attempt to write a WHOLE NOVEL in a month, since November is apparently National Novel Writing Month. (Get the acronym-ish title now?) But I don't know about writing 50,000 words in a month—unless I was suffering from verbal Dysentery.

Anyway.

Ain't nobody got time for that [pain].

I had this very serious post in mind. It was about pain. The kinds of pain, reaction/action... etc. I sat in my car before class on Tuesday, before I even went to the hospital to see my mom, writing about it. "Pain is subjective." "No pain, no gain!" "You're a pain in the ass!"  "I haven't got time for the pain..."

Wait. That last one is a Carly Simon song.

I guess what I'm getting at, or what I was attempting to get at, is that we accumulate pain, maybe, like scratches on a wall. But it's not just one type of pain; there are so many shapes that pain can take. Some are more triangular, some round and heavy like an oversized marble. And each pain, then, elicits both a reaction and an action. The reaction being more of the "involuntary" sort—auto-spat. The action seemingly becomes a way to cope.

Example:

John's dog dies.

Reaction: He cries and loses his appetite.

Action: He doesn't tell anyone, and he never gets another pet.

See what I mean? For me, this helps me to look at my pain. It's good to find the source, of course, but also define it in my terms—the "subjective" part. I like to examine what has changed because of it. Perhaps, I am doing this because so much of me has changed—not just my living sitch, my relationships, my creative endeavors, but my core. For the better, I hope. In ways. It's just been a dynamic (geez, that's being kind) two years. YES, TWO. It's like an obstacle course. Maybe, just maybe, making it to the other side is what has changed me and not the events specifically. Maybe this will show me that, not matter what, I can do obstacle courses.

Except for rope climb activities. I suck at that.

Happy Friday/Weekend/November, everyone!
Oh, and don't forget to write your poem!

mt