ideals

After the hell of a birthday I had Tuesday, I've spent Wednesday with my kid...which helps a whole lot. I've spent most of my mental energy on trying to hold myself together, on mustering my strength, on funneling my rage/depression into researching my case and arming myself for a massive battle with the powers that be at my job. You know, fun stuff. Mostly, though, I've been looking for positives, for things that help, for any sliver of worth in myself or in the world.

While I was cooking dinner and waiting for a pot of soup to come to the boil, I picked up my library copy of the Harvey Pekar collection On the Fly. I've loved Pekar for quite some time. He brings humanity to everyone he depicts. While the soup simmered, I took the book with me to the couch. My daughter snuggled up to me, and I plowed though the rest of the stories. I went back to the introduction (previously skipped), which I noticed was written by author/television personality Anthony Bourdain. Near the end of the introduction, Bourdain says,

Harvey Pekar owned not just Cleveland but all those places in the American Heartland where people wake up every day, go to work, do the best they can--in spite of the vast and overwhelming forces that conspire to disappoint them--and try as best as possible to do right by the people around them, to attain that most difficult of "ideals": to be "good" people.

That is all I really think I'm trying to do...and I can't tell you how much reading this helped.