The Boomer In The Morning

This is, or at the very least could be, the start of a new series of posts about the writer’s life. This writer in particular. Part of the reason for doing this is to wean myself off writing about American politics, which has become so absurd that it’s barely worth paying attention to anymore. But like a car crash, it’s hard to turn away unless you have something better to do. Hopefully this is that something better. If not, I’ll come up with something else.

The Boomer drags himself out of bed at about 9 am after a night of fits-and-starts sleep. The drugs he takes to quiet the screaming voices in his head have done their best, but sometimes to no avail. He feels like he has a hangover even though he quit drinking sometime in the seventies.
He stumbles to the kitchen and starts the process of making coffee. He is doing this with muscle memory because he is not quite conscious yet. But already his brain is starting to churn, although it’s mostly white noise. He’s wondering what he has to do today, when the truth of the matter is he no longer has to do anything if he doesn’t want to. He married a women, and never divorced her, who knew how to manage money and now there seems to be enough to glide to the end of their lives without any real financial consternation.
But the Boomer refuses to give into the easy life. While the coffee is brewing he cranks up his computer. He stares at the files on his desktop, but no alarm bells sound. Good. He takes a deep breath and goes back to the coffee machine which is noisily squeezing boiling water through the fine grind to create the potion that will bring him back to life.
He pours a little milk into the coffee. He doesn’t think about eating. He could go for days without food if he needed to, but the meds he takes to ward off all manner of modern day affliction dictate that he take them with food. He will think about that later, when he actually starts to think.
He takes his coffee out onto the back deck of his house overlooking the pool. How the hell did he end up with a pool, he asks himself. As he sips the coffee and the caffeine starts to work its magic he stares at the blue salty water and thinks. Oh yeah, we made a killing in the Toronto real estate market and moved our asses 70 miles down the road to twice the house at half the price. And it had a pool.
One of the Boomer’s friends calls it The Quiet Side Of The Lake, this place he lives in now. You wouldn’t know that if you listened to the manic year old German Shepherd next door. Two minutes of dogsanity about 4 times a day. But in between the silence is eerie
He thought he would have trouble adjusting to a slower pace of life in a smaller city on the quiet side of the lake. But he surprised himself by adapting almost instantly.
He thinks that maybe this is the way it was supposed to be for him. Forty years of corporate life, entrepreneurial madness, traffic jams and idiots piled high have delightfully morphed into friendly people, bike lanes on all the major streets, no rush hour to speak of, and good shopping just about everywhere he goes.
The Boomer is coming around. He can feel the gears in his head, now well lubricated, starting to mesh. Their friction creates ideas. A blog post, a poem, some more headlines for his friend’s T-shirt company, an email to his partner. A web site update. And some toast to keep the pills from doing whatever they would do to him without food.
The Boomer drains his coffee and realizes that the biggest decision of the day is whether or not to have another cup. He stares at the pool, his vision now 20/20 or something close, and sees that there are all kinds of leaves and bugs floating on the surface. He walks to the pool shed and switches on the pump. Then he grabs the skimmer and the summer day begins in earnest with pool maintenance.

The Boomer’s days are full. He rides a good 10 kilometres in search of groceries or a hair cut or interesting things to photograph.He writes whatever he needs to write then writes whatever he wants to write. He’s not retired because writers don’t have that luxury. Instead he just floats through the day, chatting occasionally with his wife, who always seems to be on her own schedule. He swims some lengths, a few more than the day before each day. And he thinks. And he realizes just how lucky he is.
Despite a nervous condition that could have been much worse than it is and despite pretty much always weighing more than he should have, he has never collided with disease or serious accident.
You could say the Boomer’s life was boring, but he would disagree. Most of it takes place between his ears and except for the hour or so that it takes to get his engine started, things are always hopping in there.
The Boomer makes another cup of coffee and some toast and brings them into his beautifully lit office. He opens a new Pages file and stares at it for a minute…then he writes.
The Boomer In The Morning....

This is Boomer Post #1. Other posts in this series can be read at https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray

Jim Murray is a communication strategist, writer, art director, blogger and beBee brand ambassador for Canada. His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, headquartered in St Catharines, Ontario and designed to serve forward thinking businesses in the Niagara and Golden Horseshoe regions of Southern Ontario. You can find out more about us at: www.bulletproofconsulting.ca

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