Disclaimer: If you want to skip my rant about my morning / personal flaw, skip the 2 paragraphs that follow this
Disclaimer 2: I got carried away with the background for this short story so you can skip the next 2 paragraphs too (first 4 lol maybe skim the 3rd and 4th)
I am feeling stressed today. I didn't wake up in a bad mood, but I need to stop going to my phone as soon as I open my eyes. It isn't for social media, or that hit of dopamine that the narrative says we crave, it is honestly attributed to my love for sleep. Almost every morning for the last seven years (more or less) waking up has meant checking my phone, instantly. Wether that be to snooze an alarm that has been going off for multiple minutes, or to make sure I haven't missed anything important, the first thing I am looking at in the morning is usually my notifications. I do not like this at all, but it is routine now. This morning, and more recently in general, the first glance at the blue light has been to check on work. Work notifications one hundred percent need to be off of my personal phone, I know that, but putting the necessary space between work and my regular life is a flaw I am certainly working on.
Today, the first thing I saw was an email from a client. From the header, I knew the request was going to ruffle some feathers on my internal team, and I was immediately thinking of ways to avoid having push-back. I tend to do this thing where I think of a situation in my head and then run through a few possible outcomes. When I find that I don't love most of the outcomes at hand, the stress starts to build and it never makes a situation much easier. It did not make this situation easier, but now that it is said and done I am frustrated that I went into with a negative mind-set. Unfortunately you will be hearing more about my job and how it fucks my day up, because I hate what I do right now. I am working on that as well... I spent way too much time on social media being brainless yesterday, and I started my day off by forcing myself into a bad mood. Not the best recipe I've cooked up recently, but that is why we are here on ChatGBT. I am proud of myself for opening up the blog and getting to work when I was feeling like I wanted to skip ahead to tomorrow already. Before this, I would have spent the rest of the day on social media consuming hours of media that means nothing. Today, I am kicking myself in the ass and I am going show you a story that has been in my head for a few years now, but never made it to paper.
I had a meeting with a work colleague about a year ago. He works in the creative department, and I like to think of myself as a creative, so I reached out to see if I was heading in the right direction. As we sat down in one of the worst places to grab lunch in the city, the first question he asked me was "where do you find inspiration?" I wasn't expecting that, but I did not have much experience in situations like this and looking back on it, it probably wasn't too surprising of a question. I had never really thought about it though. Through college I majored in creative writing and I was often finding 'creative' solutions to get my work done for my non writing related classes. I had never considered what inspired me. When I started writing my fiction novel senior year of college, my Dad was certainly the inspiration, but I didn't look at it like that. I just wanted to tell his story and show everyone what my imagination would do to it. Not in an arrogant way, but I guess I have always been inspired easily. I like the fine details, I also like the larger picture they create. I found in college that every subject is truly interesting. Not just academic subjects, I mean literally everything. It is interesting to me that There is always something to be learned, there is always more than meets the eye. In this age of social media and the internet, that should be the most apparent it has ever been. Each way you look there is a different account going viral for documenting something they have always done. Once a process is explained and people give themselves the opportunity to understand the 'why' people become interested.
Ranting again so let's reel it in.
I am sitting in this chain deli in NYC, someone I am asking to mentor just asked me a question I am not so sure how to answer, and my first initial thought is to say "Everything inspires me." Good one dude, really intelligent and deep. I didn't give him the chance to tell me how stupid my answer was, instead I followed it up quickly with something that he seemed to think was equally as stupid. "For instance, there is a chipmunk that lives under the step before my front door. When I open my window I see him scurry back under the step and peek only his snout out to scan the area. I think about our interaction and the chipmunk's life, how it is a small, meaningless part of my day, but I could not imagine what it is like to them." I know how to read the energy of a conversation, and he was not on the same wave I was. We had some other little inspirational chit chat, mostly iterations of things I have heard my whole life. The conversation led to nothing in my workplace and I actually couldn't care less, because here we are a year later and that little chipmunk is a fucking inspiration. After all that ranting, here is the first short story on this blog: Small or Large.
Small or Large:
I was born under this step. My dad was born here and his dad too I think. When I was young, the burrow under this slab of concrete was my whole world. Mom would always tell us how lucky we were to have this home. It protected us from harsh storms and gave us a place to hide when the hunter was patrolling. Then I got older, mom passed away, dad left and I think he passed away too, not sure though. My two older brothers were killed by the hunter, it is a noble way to go in this life. My youngest sister moved off to a den in the backyard and we haven't seen much of each-other since then. I have been lonely here with myself and J. She isn't the youngest, but she certainly didn't get mom's brain. I like taking care of J, she reminds me that it is okay to not be so complex all the time. Sometimes you just need to relax and burry your head under some leaves, run up a tree and slide down the gutter, just let loose! Trust me, I try to be like J, but I always end up worrying how we are going to eat tomorrow. I worry about the Hunter, even though the chatter from the backyard has been saying he retired. The last couple of days I was channeling my inner J. The mailman left the birdseed refill on top of our step and the blue jays came in and did all the hard work. I stocked up on enough seed to get us through next winter and likely the rest of our lives. J didn't care, she just wanted to play this new game she kept raving on about. "It's called 'high jump' cmon cheeks ya gotta try it with me" she would go on and on for minutes begging me to play. Finally, like any good big brother, I gave in.
"Okay J, let's play your game" she squeaked and danced for a couple seconds and then nudged me towards edge of the burrow. I took my time peering out of the cracked concrete, dad always taught me that the Hunter is the biggest threat to our family, but that doesn't mean they are the only one. I scanned our mulch yard for any signs of predators. Our yard stretched for about 8 feet, one of the nicest properties on the land for sure. We used to have a double that, but a family of song birds moved into the shrub at right before the 2nd window. We have less now, but my dad would say the backyard is no place to raise a family and we realistically would be fine with only our step. Once ya get a taste though, am I right! We still had a tree and about half a shrub to call ours, along with the mulch of course. J came flying out of the den almost taking my whiskers off on her way by. I almost yelled at her for not checking the surroundings first, but I guess that's what she has me for.
She peered over her shoulder and shouted "cmon cheeks I know you're old but I didn't know you were that slow" as she ran circles around the tree. When I finally caught up I was expecting a routing game of hide and seek or see who can fit the most seeds in their cheeks. J tends to surprise me though. "Ok, get ready it is about to happen" J said in half a breath. "Wait- wha-what is about to happen?" I responded, but she had already taken off towards the house.
The only times we ever interacted with the house were for 4th of July (we always watched the fireworks on the roof with the squirrels) and to go gutter sliding in the summer. It was a well known amongst the chipmunk community that the less you interact with the house, the longer you live. Some backyard daredevils liked to say that this house was different, they would claim they had families come from other houses where if you were seen, your whole den would end up dead within a week. I guess we have it pretty good.
I took off following J and I started to notice little scratch marks on the siding. My eyes followed the marks all the way up to the first window. No way those are from J. But sure enough, she approached the base of the house and with one leap of faith she started scurrying up the siding. At this point I had to go after her, she could get seriously hurt up there, or worse, she could be seen! I yelled and ran and jumped and scratched. To be honest I have no idea how it happened, but next thing I knew, J and I were side by side siting on the first windowsill.
"Isn't it awesome Cheeks, look how nice it is! Don't ya love being up here, Oh I love it such a nice view" she went on and on about the view, but I couldn't hear a thing. I was terrified. At least I thought I was, until I learned what terrified actually felt like. "He's coming cheeks hide! It's almost time to play." I tired to explain to her I don't understand what we are playing but she scooted me back to the edge of the windowsill where there was barely enough room for one of us. "We are going to have to squeeze, I haven't tried this with 2 players yet" she laughed at her joke and probably at the look of my face. "Ok now listen cheeks this part is really important" J said as she stood on top of me. "When he opens the window we have 1 second" "One second to what J?" She ignored. "J one second to what" then the window opened.
A massive cloud of smoke came bellowing out of the window. My first thought was fire, I reached to grab J and run back to our step, but she was on the move. "Cmon cheeks hurry!" she shouted over her shoulder. Fear, terror, anxiety pulsed through my body but then, my feet started to move. Across the windowsill, picking up speed, catching up to J. Wait, I thought, the windowsill is about to end. "Jump into the smoke cheeks!" she could hardly get the words out around her laughter. Stunned by what I had heard, I reached out to grab her. She launched off of the windowsill 5 feet off the ground. My momentum followed her and I felt my heart start to sink. Through the think cloud of smoke, I finally regained vision just in time to see my fate. Death I thought, death for all the remains of the step family. I clenched my eyes closed and braced for impact.
I felt lighter. More airy, I am not sure exactly how to describe it, but I was feeling like seconds had went by since we jumped. Maybe even a minute had passed. The next thing I heard was 2 angry song birds and a mixture of laughter and crying coming from J. I started to gain some sense of direction back and I realized we had landed directly in the songbirds living room. I moved through the bush and tried to gather some of the broken branches from their now broken roof. "I can fix this for you. I am so sorry." I tried to ease the tension. "This is the fourth time this month she has came crashing through this ceiling and this time she brings a passenger! This is getting out of hand. Hunny maybe we were better off in the backyard." "She could've left the attitude back there that's for sure" I nudged Mr.Songbird and gave him a smirk. "You wreck my roof, and insult my wife! I have had it," Beaks started flying and I even think the baby songbird jumped in for a few pecks. I bounced around the bush and created a little bit of space before I realized I hadn't got to J yet. Was she alright? Did they say fourth time this month? Am I still in this bush? When did she stop laughing? I wanted to scream and yell but instincts kicked in. I grabbed J and tossed her on my back. Still laughing, she managed to get out "giddy up now" as I took off out of the bush and towards the step.
It felt like it took a week to get back to our step. Once we were in the den I almost completely forgot what had just happened. I kicked up some warm dirt, put my feet up and dove into some seeds. "Hey J, you gotta try some of these seeds" "No way, you need to try some of these berries" she responded. Berries? When did we get berries? Before I could form the thought she blurted out "The songbirds had these just laying around so I figured they wouldn't mind." Typically I would be dragging J back over to the songbirds bush and we would be returning the berries, but I wasn't feeling so 'typical'. I wasn't feeling any of my normal ways actually. I hadn't thought about the Hunter in hours, I had no desire to move from the exact position I was in, and I felt like I could eat all the seed in the den tonight. J and I laughed about the berries, then we laughed about the Hunter, (which I had never found funny before) we laughed about the songbirds, and we laughed about the jump. I tried to get serious when she brought up the jump, "Ok J for real though, never again." "Oh cmon cheeks you don't have to be so lame, we are having fun! Your whole life has been 'watch out for the scary Hunter, make sure we have enough food, don't touch the house unless it's 4th of July. Have a little fun." Usually I would have been offended, but I wasn't. I chuckled into a response, "Ok, maybe one more time, but after that we it is off limits!" She looked at me with a smirk and held it for a few seconds before laughter consumed us both. I let the laughter shape the rest of the night. We gathered up 4 cheek-fulls of seed and made our way to the top of our step to watch the moon. We both giggled looking over at the songbirds still hard at work repairing their roof. "Sometimes I like to think the moon is cheese. If we lived there I'd be very fat." I guess it's a good thing we live under the step.
Disclaimer #3
If you made it this far, congrats to you lol. This probably sucks, I am aware and I do not really care. I felt like writing today and I did. The story has no real ending or middle and barely a beginning, but it is a story. I didn't edit this or re read it even, I just used this as a way to decompress. When I opened the blog today I was pissed off. I wanted today to be over, I wanted to try again tomorrow. I am done wishing days away though. I created today, I thought, I tried, I challenged myself. Everyone has their own kind of lemons, some are large, some are small, some life gives to us, some we create on our own. At the end of the day people are only looking at your lemonade.
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