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Abstract

            <div><p>medium.com</p></div>
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    </div><p id="4d0e">My anxiety went into overdrive and my all-too fertile imagination took me directly to sleeping under the Williamsburg bridge and not even the nice end of the bridge. No, I’d be stuck at the end where the rats are.</p><h2 id="e704">Off went my camels into the desert</h2><p id="ef2d">It took me days of freaking out to first find the right action to take. We took the action and then I had another week or two of sleepless nights working through strategies and alternate plans. And then it was another solid week of me wandering around the dunes, crying out plaintively for my camels before I topped one final rise and there they were.</p><p id="af46">In this situation, my camels were the quiet certainty that I’ll be ok even if we do lose this apartment.</p><p id="33c4">Oh. Right. No, we won’t be living on the street (unless I start drinking again and then all bets are off). In fact, since I can’t predict the future we could very well find ourselves in a bigger, nicer apartment, <a href="https://readmedium.com/so-you-lost-your-view-d0200707fbdf">one with a view</a>. There’s no way to tell what will happen tomorrow or in six months or in four years when this building loses its tax-abatement protection.</p><p id="1aa9">Oh, hello camels, I am filled with joy at finding you again.</p><h2 id="eeab">Camels are slippery and never stay put</h2><p id="757b">Probably the most powerful example of my losing my camels happened in 2003 when I was hospitalized, without health care insurance thank you very much, for a mysterious auto-immune disorder. Talk about going off the deep end. You remember the story:</p><div id="24fd" class="link-block">
      <a href="https://readmedium.com/in-every-pile-of-poop-there-is-a-pony-6a5f475249f9">
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            <h2>In Every Pile of Poop there is a Pony</h2>
            <div><h3>(What two weeks hospitalized in Bellevue taught me)</h3></div>
            <div><p>medium.com</p></div>
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Options

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    </div><p id="1177">We are talking one big desert here, my friends, and if your camels are anything like mine, they can slip away in an instant.</p><p id="db8b">Being unemployed with a quickly diminishing amount of unemployment benefits remaining sends them over the nearest dune in a flash. You’d be amazed how anything as big as my camels can just vanish in the time it takes me to get up to pee at 3 in the morning. I come back to bed, camel-less. Then I lay there and plan and strategize and prepare and deliver ultimatums. It would be sad except it’s really kind of funny that I keep doing it even after experiencing the joy of finding my camels over and over and over.</p><h2 id="787e">What if my camels never wandered off?</h2><p id="d111">Would I levitate through my life in a perpetual state of blissful acceptance? Even writing that makes me wince. Can you imagine how excruciatingly dull that would get?</p><p id="2b38">There are some important muscles that need to keep being flexed by this process of losing and finding herds of wayward camels. Being all blissed out would only atrophy those muscles and we’re going to need them. We all know this in our heads and eventually, we get that knowledge deep in our hearts as well, that life is going to just keep being life. It’s nothing personal. Everyone gets hit. There are sickness and loss and getting fired and breakups and losing lottery tickets and canker sores and bad book reviews and false friends and broken ankles and insomnia and burning dinner and death and fish that’s gone bad and it never ends.</p><p id="e36d">Until it does but I went over that here:</p><div id="e290" class="link-block">
      <a href="https://readmedium.com/death-is-a-privilege-256d3ed92a53">
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            <h2>Death is a Privilege</h2>
            <div><h3>Consider the alternative</h3></div>
            <div><p>medium.com</p></div>
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    </div><h2 id="c90d">Let your camels wander</h2><p id="4846">They always wander back and when they do you will get to experience that joy all over again.</p><p id="58f4"><i>© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved.</i></p></article></body>

The Gods Allow Our Camels to be Lost in the Desert

That we may know the joy of finding them again

Where the hell did I pick this one up? Some 12 step meeting or from a therapist or, hell who knows, in a bar?

It’s something I heard somewhere and have been spouting ever since.

Just to be on the safe side, I asked the Google about it so I could attribute it properly and this was the first hit:

Opt-In

The Case for Cock-eyed Optimism in a World Going to Hell

medium.com

Now I know damned well I did not create this saying. Someone else said it in my hearing and I liked it and now I drop it into the odd conversation here or there. So, to whoever out there said this, thank you. It’s a very handy little ditty that makes me sound all wise and grounded and shit.

But I can see eyes glazing over. What the hell does it mean exactly?

Maybe you never do this but I certainly do. I forget all my grounding the minute any new threat to my little plans and designs rears its bulbous head. For example, getting that scary rider with our lease renewal, the one that stated by signing and dating it we would be acknowledging that we understood that our apartment would lose its rent-stabilization status in four years? Yeah, that.

In Which Reality Gets Too Real (Estate)

Fear and loathing when the lease renewal arrives

medium.com

My anxiety went into overdrive and my all-too fertile imagination took me directly to sleeping under the Williamsburg bridge and not even the nice end of the bridge. No, I’d be stuck at the end where the rats are.

Off went my camels into the desert

It took me days of freaking out to first find the right action to take. We took the action and then I had another week or two of sleepless nights working through strategies and alternate plans. And then it was another solid week of me wandering around the dunes, crying out plaintively for my camels before I topped one final rise and there they were.

In this situation, my camels were the quiet certainty that I’ll be ok even if we do lose this apartment.

Oh. Right. No, we won’t be living on the street (unless I start drinking again and then all bets are off). In fact, since I can’t predict the future we could very well find ourselves in a bigger, nicer apartment, one with a view. There’s no way to tell what will happen tomorrow or in six months or in four years when this building loses its tax-abatement protection.

Oh, hello camels, I am filled with joy at finding you again.

Camels are slippery and never stay put

Probably the most powerful example of my losing my camels happened in 2003 when I was hospitalized, without health care insurance thank you very much, for a mysterious auto-immune disorder. Talk about going off the deep end. You remember the story:

In Every Pile of Poop there is a Pony

(What two weeks hospitalized in Bellevue taught me)

medium.com

We are talking one big desert here, my friends, and if your camels are anything like mine, they can slip away in an instant.

Being unemployed with a quickly diminishing amount of unemployment benefits remaining sends them over the nearest dune in a flash. You’d be amazed how anything as big as my camels can just vanish in the time it takes me to get up to pee at 3 in the morning. I come back to bed, camel-less. Then I lay there and plan and strategize and prepare and deliver ultimatums. It would be sad except it’s really kind of funny that I keep doing it even after experiencing the joy of finding my camels over and over and over.

What if my camels never wandered off?

Would I levitate through my life in a perpetual state of blissful acceptance? Even writing that makes me wince. Can you imagine how excruciatingly dull that would get?

There are some important muscles that need to keep being flexed by this process of losing and finding herds of wayward camels. Being all blissed out would only atrophy those muscles and we’re going to need them. We all know this in our heads and eventually, we get that knowledge deep in our hearts as well, that life is going to just keep being life. It’s nothing personal. Everyone gets hit. There are sickness and loss and getting fired and breakups and losing lottery tickets and canker sores and bad book reviews and false friends and broken ankles and insomnia and burning dinner and death and fish that’s gone bad and it never ends.

Until it does but I went over that here:

Death is a Privilege

Consider the alternative

medium.com

Let your camels wander

They always wander back and when they do you will get to experience that joy all over again.