“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader

"YOU SEE THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR CYNICAL EYES"

(Written 17 March 1999. Published in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted 23 September 2009.)

I think that that line from the Styx song, "Fooling Yourself", is the perfect description of how I thought I see things. However, after talking with a friend of mine who has been a reader since Day One, I have come to the conclusion that I have lost my healthy cynicism and become a caricature of myself.

It wasn't always that way. When I first started, I was indeed looking at the world from a cynic's point of view, and I knew my place in the world and did not take myself seriously. The columns were pointed, yes, but on topics that could be considered rather Seinfeldian--the silliness of "March Madness", the sadism of Valentine's Day, the lament of a lost car. They were fun to read and fun to write.

Somewhere along the way, the fun left. I can't quite pinpoint where or when, but it happened. Suddenly, I started becoming serious and taking myself seriously. I can, you know, because I am "a columnist", and thus I am important. Or so I thought. Somehow, I lost my perspective.

"Give me a job, give me security, give me a chance to survive. I'm just a poor soul in the unemployment line, my God I'm hardly alive."

It's amazing how those lines from another Styx tune, "Blue Collar Man", ring true. Unemployment has a way of sapping your life-force (for lack of a better term.) Of course, it is so gradual that you don't notice. It is only when you look back on a long period of time that you can see the striking change in yourself. In the over fifteen months that I have been, for all practical purposes, unemployed, I have discovered that I have become bitter and hard. I have built up this veneer, this wall, around myself to block out the pain. It is hard to feel good about oneself when you can't even support your family and there is no hope of ever being able to support your family without starting all over. I've been staring down the barrel of a gun (so to speak) for the past year and the only way not to think about it has been to isolate myself from the world, to deaden myself emotionally. Of course, this is not fair to Mrs. Schrader and the little Schraders, but you find yourself doing what you have to to cope.

"Well I'm so tired of losing, I've got nothing to do, and all day to do it. I'd go out cruising, but I've got no place to go and all night to get there. Is it any wonder I'm not a criminal? Is it any wonder I'm not in jail? Is it any wonder? I've got too much time on my hands, it's ticking away with my sanity. . ."

I didn't fully appreciate the lyrics to Styx's "Too Much Time On My Hands" when it first came out in 1981; after all, I had never had the problem of too much time. Having experienced the idleness that comes with unemployment, let me just say that it is true, you can have too much "free" time. Too much of anything, even yourself, can make you lose a clear perception of reality, make you lose your focus.

I feel that I have lost my focus. Thus, I feel that it would be beneficial to take an occasional week off over the next few months to allow myself the opportunity to review and regain that focus. Next week will be one of those times. Filling in for me next week will be a budding journalist from Little Rock Central High by the name of Samuel Fuller. I also have some unpublished, slightly off-topic columns I will be throwing in the mix periodically as well.

So, if things seem a little off-kilter sometimes, don't panic. Consider it the columnar equivalent of highway construction--a temporary detour needed for the completion of improvements.

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