The Finger Trap by Johnny Worthen

Author:Johnny Worthen [Worthen, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dandelion Ink
Published: 2019-06-09T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I slept like shit that night. I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling the entire night. I tossed and turned and bounced and rolled. I worked a worn trench into my new mattress. When the sheep walked off the job—demanding better working conditions, overtime pay, and a dental plan—I counted shadows until their foreman threatened a strike. I twisted my sheets into sailors’ knots and fluffed my pillow so many times, I felt like Ron Jeremy’s personal assistant. I watched the clock tick away but I knew what time it was. I was just unwilling to face it. I knew by dawn it was time to quit. In the bleak hours of the mid-night, in the hour of the wolf, when every dread and regret rises up to be counted and beat back, I saw the clear and constant pattern of my life. When the challenge was gone, I’d move on. When it was no longer fun, I left. When it was hard, I quit.

Seven months in a job, and I’d either have to commit to the politics, seminars, new skills, and trainings, or I could call it done and tell myself I was a jack-of-all-trades, when, in fact, I was a quitter.

I once read about the ninety-ninety rule. It said that the first ninety percent of a project’s development required ninety percent of the effort, and the last ten percent, required another ninety percent effort. It meant that the effort it took to get a project ninety percent of the way done was about the same as it took to finish the last little bit. Giving up at ninety percent made ergonomic sense, if you didn’t mind never finishing anything.

I got up when I had no more shadows to count, and the light streaming through my window was too tinged with the red of my tired eyes. I decided to be busy, to put off my defeat a few more hours by being useful and unloading a box or two.

Nancy had gotten me enough furniture to hold a lot of things; shelves for my trophies, DVDs, and books, and places for me to ditch the remains of a thousand interests I’d abandoned at ninety percent. She knew me well.

I hung my best oil painting, the last one I’d done, where I thought I showed real talent before never picking up a brush again. I found the novel I’d written, edited once, and abandoned. I found the books on car repair I’d purchased en masse, determined to restore a ’66 Mustang my neighbor had offered me. The books were pristine. I never got started with that one. I gave up at ten percent there.

Every box had reminders of my inability to specialize. What I once saw as a strength, I now saw a fatal flaw that would betray an auburn-haired girl who had waited for me.

My relationships had always been selfish. Before Nancy, I’d gone through love affairs with the same level of commitment as my jobs and hobbies.

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