What do I know? Maybe I’m just having a bad couple of days. Maybe I’ve got a case of the January blahs. Tell me what you think. Is it 
just me, or is life becoming way too complicated? Is it just me, or is nothing easy anymore? I’m not joking. This is a serious question.
Everything is becoming a hassle. It doesn’t matter what it is you’re trying to get done, or who you’re dealing with. It takes way longer than it has to, it’s more fraught with problems and frustration then it should be and you’re left wondering why you bothered in the first place.
Should I really have to re-arrange every carton of milk on the bloomin’ shelf in order to find one that isn’t past the expiry date?
Should I really have to tell the cashier at the grocery store to put my bottle of dish soap in a plastic bag in case the top opens? Wouldn’t you think that would be part of the training? Yes, yes, I know exactly what you’re going to say. “Fransi, you know perfectly well you shouldn’t assume they’re trained, or trained properly.” So I guess it’s my fault I lost half the soap to spillage — which also ruined everything else in the bag?
Should it really take three people half a day to change one password?
Should I really have to call back four times, and sit on hold for at least twenty minutes each time, and then get bounced around from rep to rep (and repeat my sad tale of woe each time) in order to finally convince the ‘customer service’ person (and I use the term loosely) on the other end that they did, in fact, make a mistake on my order or bill or my statement?
Should I really have to try to ‘unsubscribe’ dozens and dozens of times before I finally stop getting inundated with emails I don’t want?
Shouldn’t taxi drivers have to carry a certain amount of change at all times. Why is it that I, the customer, have to go door-to-door trying to change my $20 so the driver, who’s sitting on his ass in the cab (make that his filthy, smelly cab with no shock absorbers), can get his tip?
Does this happen to you, too? With increasing regularity? Are you ready to blow your brains out like I am?
Maybe the problem is, we just have too much. And want too much. All these material goods are really becoming more trouble than they’re worth, don’t you think?
I thought I was doing well. For a couple of years now I’ve been getting rid of ‘stuff’. Keeping only what I really need. Or so I thought. Perhaps it’s time for more drastic action.
More and more these days I fantasize about what it would be like to get rid of everything but the absolute necessities. The barest necessities. The essentials. Like my toothbrush.
And you know what? The thought is becoming more and more appealing. I’m tired of fighting gravity. Of pushing water uphill. Of dealing with idiots who not only have no clue what they’re doing, they don’t care; and they’re rude, to boot.
As I sit here, and look around, the little voice inside my head is getting louder and louder. “GET RID OF IT! GET RID OF IT ALL! TAKE THE CATS AND GO LIVE IN A YURT!!”
Gotta tell you, it sounds like heaven to me.
365 And Counting 
Me too Fransi. I dream of a campervan… a yurt on wheels… that would do me.
Sounds better every day 🙂
Believe me, if I could scrape up the money to do it, I would.
But we can dream, right??
I’ll do more than dream if I get the chance 🙂
Looking forward to posts from the yurt! I might be there too, am of the same mind!
Thanks for reminding me — I need a yurt with internet service 🙂
Bad days happen right? Especially when dealing with people haha A week in a yurt wouldn’t hurt. A month in a hut you’d feel out of your rut. Society kills.
That taxi driver sucks! (funny but sad picture of you looking for change, sorry)
Haha! In my high school graduation yearbook I wrote “the more I deal with people the more I like my dog”, so you’re right. Dealing with people ain’t easy. Gotta admit, me scrambling for change is kinda funny :).
I love when people scramble for change. Especially existential. I had years in the country and loved every bit of it. Now I’m 2 years smack in the middle of this little city and it wears on me all the time. I dream of going back. I feel stuck in this “wonderful” lifestyle with tons of friends and gratifying activities and stimulation. Go figure.
Yes, you are a nature boy. You must find city life a drag at times. Sue has the right idea — a yurt on wherls so when you get tired of one place you can move on.
Why do you think i have four dogs? BTW, get a MiFi for the yurt
Ok. A yurt with wifi it is!! I’m telling you, life would be so simple.
Make sure the yurt is big enough for a litter box for all of you!
Good thought! So I need a yurt with wifi and room for 3 litterboxes. Here I thought I’d be totally unemcumbered … 🙂
One good thing about moving a lot during our marriage is that we don’t get attached to many things. For years it was have garage sale, pack the few favorites and a suitcase, and in 12 hours we are living in a different country for two or three years before we would do it all again. Seven years in one place is a LONG time for us. So ditching stuff is always a way to free oneself from the burdens that comes along with owning stuff. (Only Art, Music, Books, and a few family heirlooms go with us).
As for the constant annoying dealings with things like customer service, I always chat them up with dumb questions that I know the answer to just to find out how much they really know. Or I have them on about just about anything to make them laugh and get a move on. Or sarcasm works too. Especially if I am dealing with a particularly, shall we say, unorganized mind – they never catch the sarcasm until much later.
I think it may be age. I certainly know there are a finite number of days for me, I haven’t the time or energy to waste them on annoying idiocy.
You are certainly right about how moving a lot cures you of becoming attached to things — or even buying too much in the first place. And you get the added bonus of seeing the world as a local instead of as a tourist. Sounds like you’ve had a wonderfully adventurous life. Tons to blog about :). And yes, life is short so don’t waste any of it. Sounds like a good plan to me 🙂
Oh dear, you aint seen nothing till you live in France, what you’ve experienced times 100 I’m afraid, there is no logic to it, just the way things are and being so long like that fat chance of it ever changing.
Interestingly, French public services have just found the internet, finally in 2015 and so now when you call the health insurance company, the telephone connection doesn’t have an options for a real person, and worse, it actually hangs up on you and tells you to look at their website. If the question can’t be answered, you have to subscribe and then you get told you’ll receive a password by post in a couple of weeks. Then you can send an electronic message, still not personal or to any named person, which then tells you, they currently have over 200,000 emails in the queue and the time to respond is currently sitting at 7 weeks. I tell my mature French student about this and he says, Oh my wife has a friend that works for that company, let me ask her. And that’s how I jumped the queue. You have to have friends in the right places. My husband had the same thing in the passport office, another customer leaned over to him after being told he could have a rdv in 6 weeks and said smugly, you know you have to know someone if you want an earlier appointment like me. Well, that didn’t go down very well, I can tell you! 🙂 Oh I could regale you with a thousand great stories of irrational bureaucracy and then the customer service assistants, well they are priceless with attitude!!
However, there are many wonderful things that kind of make up for it, at least that’s what we have to tell ourselves as those civil servants mock and laugh at you behind a piece of paper to their colleague next to them. We trade these kind of stories regularly!
omg!! I can’t believe it. I had no idea. I guess I should count my blessings. I think I’d be drinking copious amounts of your wonderful French wines if I lived there. And it is wonderful material for a book or for a stand-up comic. So maybe all isn’t lost, anyway? Glad you’ve warned me, though. If I do move to Provence at least now I know what to expect. I’ll put a never-ending prescription for Valium on my list of things to get before leaving as well 🙂
It will make you reflect back on this post and be grateful to their incompetence, because it aint a patch on what you are going to experience here! Here they delight in making you cry, be prepared to re-experience feelings from your childhood you thought long buried. Definitely a book in it, some of the things we encounter are hilarious of course. A sense of humour absolutely necessary!
I cry as easily as I laugh, so I should feel right at home :). And I do tend to find the humour in most things even if it sometimes takes a while. Sounds like there could be enough material for a weekly television show, let alone a book. Maybe I should brush up on my script-writing skills 🙂
Oh yes, sketches! Funny, tomorrow I am teaching a class of 20 retired French people and we are going to do a couple of sketches from Fawlty Towers, wondering if they’ll get the jokes since its a show that mocks the French! It should be laugh anyway! We need a few laughs in January. 🙂
Fawlty Towers is hysterical. Their reaction will be very interesting. Maybe you’ll blog about it?? Despite the frigid temperature here January hasn’t been all that bad, I must say. Here’s to a good February!!