Freaked out!

It's a curse.

For as long as I can remember I have been surrounded by freaks. At work...at school...standing next to me in the grocery store...at the dentist's office...and even in cyberspace.

It's as if they seek me out because they know how absolutely crazy they drive me. I don't know what it is, but I can't seem to swing a dead cat and not hit either an enormously pregnant teenager with a smoke in one hand and her one-year-old in a stroller in the other, or a bandanna-wearing, Trailer Park Boy who has no respect for authority and thinks the world owes him something, or that ridiculous driver who absolutely MUST get in front of you, no matter how fast you're going, just to slow down to a snail's pace.

Or maybe it's not as bad as it seems at all, and the Universe is just telling me that I need to stop expecting so much from my fellow man and lower the bar a little. This would turn out to be especially funny (exasperating?) when I started this job and was suddenly expected to conduct interviews with people who had never been acquainted with a bar of soap, let alone a curriculum vitae. The bar is now six-feet-under...as is my pride.

At my previous job my manager took me aside once and told me to stop coming down so hard on people all the time, and that really made me think. I can't help it: I have such high expectations of myself, and I subconsciously cascade that onto others around me.

The Dalai Lama says that the secret to true happiness is 'tolerance'. Followers of the Hindu religion believe in Karma: that we all have our own personal crosses to bear and lessons to learn in each lifetime, and that it is only once we achieve enlightenment that we are able to end the series of reincarnations and finally pass over to Nirvana.

So it would seem that my 'cross' is the expectant young tramp with no regard for her unborn child's life, the cretin with the goatee, tats and mentality of entitlement that could very well be the baby daddy, and the inconsiderate and shockingly dangerous driver that I have no choice but to share the road with every day all rolled into one.

Yikes...I think I need a vacation...