Work **~~whip-crack--** Work

Work takes over. Work carries a pocket watch that it pulls out by its long fob, thumbs the top button, springs the door open and checks, hands a blur across its face or hands stopped against the crystal in a pantomime of surprise. Who me? What was I doing? Can you open the window of this glass box I'm in? I've a transparent trap that's captured my hands and holds them down pat.

The notebook has two sides, face-en-face, a personal side on the left and work side on the right. If all goes well, if the life can walk that tightrope of appointments and tasks and fancies and larks, hobbies and have-to-dos, then they will end neck and neck. Lately, the dark horse of the daily grind has pulled away from its rival, has run laps around its loping competitor and finished without a photo-finish required. The little black spiral notebook does not judge the race, it merely records it, like the lanes of a track, the racers prints marking their wild gallop, their frantic final moments, the beginning steps of grand plans.

Don't let's start bemoaning our lot, begrudging our friends the time they've got, the loans they've not. We assumed that 4 careers in a lifetime might mean easy transition, like speeds on the transmission, from starting gear to passing, to cruising. The earthquakes of life changes, the waves that crash down, eroding the paint on the side of the house, tearing shingles of the roof, causing a lost tooth or two, these failed to make the warning cut. These are the surprises of a grinding gear, the gravel to pavement bump on bad springs, spilling the coffee, dropping the calls and taking a hot iron to that last throbbing backbone and giving it a good poke.