Sometimes, I wonder how badly the world wants to get my attention.

So incredibly egotistical to assume the world wants to get my attention over someone else's, but sometimes, it certainly feels like it. Like today: I tried to take the "fast way" home from work (you know, the fast way: the way that is faster. Because it is. Even if it isn't.), but I took a wrong turn and ended up on a fucking confusing Salem highway taking me the absolute wrong way and it took me almost ten minutes to get back on course, only to get stuck in the most horrible traffic from a catastrophic accident only 2-3 minutes up the freeway. So instead of skating home quickly, the fast way turned into 45 minutes in park on the freeway. Brilliant.

I tried listening to the radio, only to get pissed at the Blazers for losing to the Bobcats. Who does that? (I mean, seriously. Who loses to Charlotte, who we just traded with to get their best player?)

So I had to turn that shit off. Instead, I sat in traffic and really thought about how one wrong turn, one street too soon, can lead to losing an hour of my Friday night in the I-5 parking lot. In a lot of ways, that wrong turn feels like it has more cosmic significance. Had it not been for that wrong turn, I would've avoided the accident entirely, been home sooner, not missed my chance to see some people tonight. It felt like I needed to be stuck in traffic, to hear the only team I really care about choke away a lead to a garbage team, to not get what I had envisioned and felt like I deserved after such a busy week.

I didn't get the Friday I had planned on, nor the one I hoped for. Instead, I got home to an empty house, made dinner for myself, watched Up in the Air, and listened to my soundtrack for the evening. Not what I envisioned, but almost better in a strange way.

In its own way, the universe reminded me that regardless of how in control you think you are, you aren't even close to calling the shots. And that no matter how smart you think you are, you're actually way less smart than that (Assist: David Foster Wallace).

So let us toast what we cannot know and could not have guessed. Most of what life contains comes to us unexpectedly after all. It is our job to welcome it and give it meaning. And today, I give my wrong turn significance beyond its stock.

Playlist of the evening:
1. January Hymn - The Decemberists
2. Someone Like You - Adele
3. My Body - Young the Giant
4. Only Happy When it Rains - Garbage
5. Unforgiven 3 - Metallica
6. Sail - AWOLNATION
7 Lost in the World - Kanye West and Bon Iver
8. Sweet Disposition - The Temper Trap
9. Crystalized - the xx
10. Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac