True Confessions

It's better to burn out
Than to fade away
My my, hey hey.

Out of the blue and into the black
They give you this, but you pay for that
And once you're gone, you can never come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black.

It's a little late, and this may run too long, to send over to one of AG's Monday Confessional posts.  But I'm still going to put it out there; it's like a huge pus-filled growth and it needs to be lanced. 

Glue Birl recently wrote a post about anger, and  fear.  I don't know if I completely buy the relationship;  I've usually found myself more on the Johnny Lydon side of the equation.  But I can see how fear certainly intensifies anger; hell, I think fear intensifies everything.  And it seems I have a bit of fear going on lately.....

On Tuesday I had a job site meeting.  We've been having code issues on a 4 story building under construction, and much of these issues are being driven by a particularly zealous Inspector - and one that doesn't have a particularly thorough understanding of the codes, or even of his function in the process.  Actually, this guy has also disrupted the other project that was just finished, and the Owner is looking at me for culpability in the inevitable cost overruns due to this interference.

Have you ever met someone and taken an instant dislike to them?  I feel like a cat with every hair on my back standing on end.  The first time I ever talked to this guy on the phone, before I even met him, he  shouted into the phone that he felt I was not doing my job properly.    He may not know the code well, but he certainly is convinced that I'm professionally incompetent and works diligently to demonstrate it.

Oh, it's quite a long story.  But on the prior project, we spent time during construction over and above what we normally anticipate to the tune of $25,000, in unbillable hours.  Certainly hasn't helped the bottom line during these final days, and it seems to be a similar pattern on the current project.  Fear or not, I confess to  a bit of .... anger.

Tuesday; we had a meeting called to try and resolve the major issues that had erupted, and I found myself standing in the job trailer with a dozen people, standing directly across from this guy as he tried to portray me as incompetent, unresponsive, and unreasonable.  Doesn't matter much whether he has a point or not, and this isn't the place to determine it.

One of the cardinal disciplines integral to most martial arts is control.  After a bit of work, you can develop techniques with a fair bit of speed and power; by the time you reach the higher levels, you are expected to display control of the things learned, many of which have some lethality.

Standing there, four feet from this man, it struck me that even though I'm not the most limber, his head was just about the perfect height for an inside crescent kick that would have put him down, and the urge to do so was.... almost irresistible.  [a crescent kick is the kick Chuck Norris likes to use; it's quick and direct and comes from the side] 

There were quite a few people around, but I knew I could black him out with a carotid strike, smash his nose into his brain with a palm heel strike and make a perfectly valid attempt to break his neck with a kick before anyone could stop me.

And I could barely participate in the flow of the meeting because I couldn't stop visualizing this. Quite vividly.

It was more than a little disturbing, and fortunately we were able to dispense with most of the agenda and I got the fack out of there before I .... fell down.  I managed.  The discipline and control maintained... barely.

I suspect some of the folks there had an inkling, though, because nobody spent any time trying to talk to me after.  Let's call it lucky.  Wednesday night I sparred, working with some boxers, and broke some boards.  It helped.