I AM the Uh-Oh Baby

I had the following conversation with myself today:

So, Mr. Grumpy-Pants. What do you want to do with your life?

I have an easy, if frightening answer to that question: Not much. I love to be lazy.

But then the guilt kicks in and I keep going to work, keep up with Uncharted, keep up with school and keep thinking about that novel I’m writing. Or not writing, as the case is, since I haven’t clicked a keyboard on that mother in a serious way since, oh, I was in my first year at RWMC. I’m now approaching the end of year three, with no end in sight. Which is good, since I need the money. (Speaking of which, I’m sure not doing any more freelance work with FranklinCovey this year. They changed how they reported the income to the IRS, so I had to pay self-employment tax this year. Not that it was out of pocket, but just reduced our refund. It took some of the fun out of refund, I tell you.)


Fortunately, this Dilbert comic strip is not me. I have been cursed with the curse of Puppy-Dog Eyes, which makes it harder for others to discipline me, especially when I make wee-wee on the floor. But competence? Not hardly. The older I get, the more I feel like the Pat McManus character who was dumb as a rock, but put on an air of extreme intelligence merely by staring at a problem while he tamped tobacco into his pipe. You will not find me high on the Motivation Meter is what I’m telling you. Albert once and a while asks me if I want to take flying lessons. I laugh. But inside I’m thinking YIKES something else to be incompetent at. At least right now my incompetencies do not stray into the realm of where I could cause harm to myself and others, outside of my incompetency at driving a motor vehicle. Adding a third dimension to my motoring skills is not going to improve them by a third, is my way of thinking.

I could be a rather competent Uh-Oh Baby, though. Striking fear into the hearts of people like Alice and Beni might be kind of fun. Especially if they thought I’d migrated south for the winter. Which I might do next year.

I have people tell me that individuals who sense their own incompetence are intelligent enough to do so, so there must be come modicum of intelligence there. Or does it just mean that one of my biggest competencies is knowing whan I am incompetent? I think Virginia Woolf works this way.