"...wear each other well…"-Snow Patrol

Thank you.

That's it. Have a good day!

Ok, you're right. When have I been that brief? When have I been brief at all? When have I written 2 necessary words when there's a bag of superfluous sidekicks to join in and bring mischief?

A word party!

I hate for my words to be lonely.

Right?

Right. So here we go.

I wanted to say "thanks" again to those of you who commented last weekend, and to those of you who know me personally and emailed. It meant a lot. Why do I feel like a supervisor trying to sound inspirational when I say that? "Thanks for really stepping up last weekend guys and hitting one out of the park for the company. You truly are the best…" Blah, blah, blah. It's always something they copied out of an "Inspire the Proles" handbook.

I had a boss tell me once "I walked on coals."

I was new, and didn't know him well enough to gauge if it was a metaphor or not, "Cool."

"No really! I walked on hot coals."

I'm guessing, not a metaphor. "That's great." It didn't really change my response. Metaphoric coals work just as well with me.

He leans in, looks into my eyes and says, "I want you to do the same for me."

We better be talking metaphor now. Otherwise, I'm going to be the cold splash on your hot coals. The closest I get to hot coals is Arizona asphalt, and I haven't done that since I was a teenager.

That was the same job we used to do a "woah!" clap. It was one of those slow clap things. It started with a one "woah" one clap, then gradually increased in pace, pitch, and volume, until it turned it a veritable applause of screaming self gratification. Quite clapper had to clean the excess testosterone from the walls.

I was never quiet clapper. I was always part of the team. Sales teams are crazy, and managers will say and do anything to drive the frenzy.

"Here, have some chum! Now get out there!"

They never meant it. I mean, they meant the chum, but their "caring" wasn't sincere. As long as the sales figures came in, and they kept their job, that was their goal. Last weekend, I got to keep my sanity. You guys really are the best.

So how am I doing this weekend? Good. Thanks for asking. I'm doing much better. I called a friend of mine this week, it was her birthday. I've known her since we were 20, and we're like siblings without all the "Her cookie's bigger!" crap. She got mad on the phone, "And you didn't call me?"

"It was 4am."

"That doesn't matter."

"I'm not sure your husband would agree."

"If you need to talk, you call."

"Yes. Ma'am."

"Don't call me that! It's my birthday!" I will take this moment to point out she's older than I am. "Love ya sis!"

Another friend wrote me yesterday saying, "Seems like you're doing pretty well. Any change requires a period of adjustment, even when there is not much change."

Ain't that the truth. I'm shuffling in stagnation. This must be how the tarred bound dinosaur felt.

I guess what I'm saying in my less than direct way, is that we all interact and play roles in each others lives. We're all like a gears of a machine. Each one of us touching an other driving it on to do it's purpose. Some gears are bigger, they do more to push, others are small, and only shift a little, but all are important for the mechanism.

I know, that's somewhere between an Orwellian nightmare and a cheesy Lifetime network special, but it's what I got today. Would you like some Whine with that cheese? The part of Big Brother will be played by Meredith Baxter Birney.

Despite the schmaltz, try to remember the gear thing, because before it was some crappy motivator tool, grinding things into pap, It was somebody's shiny prototype: new, fresh, original. Depending on how we look at it, and how we interact, is what type of gears we are. We stay sharp and link-up and we help others lock down and roll on. Sometimes it's nothing more than a "how are you doing." It matters, if it's sincere. That's better than spinning in place, afraid of saying anything, doing nothing.

MyUnwife and I? We fell out of sync, spun unequally until we spent the last years grinding our teeth. I'd give her her teeth back if I could, but I'm fresh out, and we're way past a "woah" clap patch.

I think we have to do our own driving as well though. Sometimes we have to get out there and do, just to help ourselves. I was reading another blog this week and the author mentioned meetup.com. I'd never heard of it. In fact, at first I thought it was a dating site. It's not though, it's for finding other people who are interested in what you are. Sure, I guess you could argue that's dating, but it doesn't have to be. I didn't look up things like bondage to see if that was right or not. I did find a local pole dancing club, and I am so joining. But purely as a professional spectator. I mean who pole dances without an audience? I think that's the least I could do, to be the gear for somebody else!

Man, I'm a giver.