AT&T

photos by Jonathan Mash (it was really really bright that morning!)

Well, another week's adventure lost to moving in and trying to get my internet up and running.  Basically I've spent my nights making friends on the phone with AT&T representatives and my days off waiting for, entertaining and acting therapist to AT&T technicians.  Which, I'm very good at, don't get me wrong.  One girl I had laughing hysterically on the phone because I said that when I was making my way through the instructions while setting up my non-working internet, it said very boldly that if I had problems, just go to att.com.  I mean, really?  She just died laughing saying how funny that was and she never thought of that before, that it's just rubbing it in my face that I couldn't get my internet working.  Anyway, I'm good at handling these things.  And making people laugh, I guess.  

And I realize that I wasn't always so patient and understanding.  I did used to get frustrated and upset when anything got difficult.  And I thought that things just weren't going my way.  And that I was unlucky or something.   But I've spent a while in the world now, and I think I've sort of got it down.  How it works.  Which makes it easier.

I've been thinking about that during my varied four-hour windows of waiting for technicians.  It's interesting to me to see that most people expect the world to run how they think it should instead of how it actually does.  I swear if you just realize that it operates how it does operate, you will be a able to navigate it much better and it will be so much more enjoyable.  Like, most people think, in the world that they've created, that there isn't traffic, and no long lines, and planes always take off on time and babies don't cry and cars always run and everyone is nice.  I mean, if you just look at the world for a little while, it doesn't take much to get it figured out.  And if you see it as it is, you realize that most things don't work the way you want them to.   Once you understand that, you can adjust yourself.  

Instead of expecting it, for some reason, to fit in to your image of what you want it to be, and getting angry and frustrated every time it doesn't, expect it to be what it is.  Ah, here I am, on the tarmac for an hour with babies crying, yeah, that's life.  Oh, I'm in a long line at the market and only have five minutes to get to where I have to be, funny, so true.  The bank is closed today, and I have this check I need to cash, well, banks are closed on holidays.  Stuck in traffic again in LA, now that doesn't surprise me.  

Seriously, it seems like most people get upset at the way the world is.  And that doesn't seem fair.  I mean, you can get angry at things that are way out of the norm, I guess, like an asteroid hitting your house, but not at things that are standard operation.  Most things in life are unreliable.  And so we get to adapt as we go.  And that makes it interesting and that makes it the adventure that it is.  And it also gives us the opportunity to choose how we react.  Do you want to get mad or do you want to be the person who understands how life actually is?  I, personally, have resigned myself to knowing how life does work, I mean, at some point you've just got to surrender, and that helps a lot.  Because I don't have to fight it.  It is not what we think it should be and it is not what we want it to be, but it is a brilliant and crazy landscape of unpredictable.   And we get to live it.  I do believe that there is a best way to do it.  And I want to do it that way.

And, guess what? I don't have to write about AT&T anymore, as of this instant, thank god! The technician just left and it's working! And we became friends too and are going to have dinner tonight.  Haha, leave it to me.  I have a good feeling about this week.  I think I'm going to get out and be able to write of something else like I've been wanting to, some trek out in LA.  Oh, that would be so good!  And, see, this didn't go the way I would have wanted it to at all, but, somehow, it's been wonderful.