"...to the Dark Tower came."

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed..."


There are frustrating days, and there are frustrating days.

And then there's today. Well, technically, it was yesterday, but I'm writing this from high atop my perch, staring out at the Dark Tower on a late Thursday evening.

It's a few minutes before the new, after-the-Olympics episodes of NBC's Thursday night lineup air, and, honestly, I should be happy and relaxed and looking forward to the fast-approaching weekend.

Instead, I'm angry and annoyed and at one point during the day, I think, my head may have caught fire.

I even wrote a long, passionate post about what caused my head to catch fire, and I planned on putting it up on the site today, or over the weekend. But, in the end, cooler heads prevailed and I was talked out of actually clicking that "Publish Post" button at the bottom of my screen.

I'm a little bummed out that the post won't see the light of the Internet, because it really was an honest little manifesto and it felt good getting my thoughts out on (virtual) paper.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The reason why I'm so annoyed presently is that an issue I thought was long dead has managed to rear its ugly head once again, and now I have to figure out a way to deal with it.

It's an issue that I've mentioned before on the blog, albeit cryptically. I won't go into it today, but I will say that things were going pretty well for a little while there, and I was managing to settle into my new "job" (it's still voluntary for the moment, hence the quotes). I'm seriously thinking that I might be good at this new thing, and that I might have a future in it.

Or, at the very least, I can be good at it for the near future. We'll see about all that, though, as the weeks progress.

But just as I was finally starting to feel like a regular person again--"employed" and getting up early and making trips to the water cooler every couple of hours--this nagging issue finds its way back to me.

But that's not the point of this post.

The point is, I'm annoyed. So very, very annoyed.

And I'm annoyed with myself for being so darn annoyed, and I'm annoyed that I'm constantly on the phone trying to figure out what to do next, and I'm annoyed that I'm lying awake at night, thinking about this mess when I have to be up at 5:30 in the morning to make my commute to "work."

With all this annoyance and, frankly, anger, at what is ostensibly a stupid, pointless feud, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. And, funny as it may sound, I've been thinking quite a bit about Batman.

And, more specifically, the first line to a Batman story that's been kicking around in my head for several years.

I've had this idea for a Batman story that begins with a single caption that reads, "I've been angry for a while now." And through the first four or five, mostly wordless, pages of the story, we'd see through pictures exactly why Batman's been so angry.

Sure, it's bare bones and fairly useless, but I like the set-up, and I dunno. It's fun "writing" Batman stories in your head, don't you think?

Anyway, I've had the privilege of submitting a Batman story directly to Denny O'Neil, and I've experienced the great joy (and, frankly, utter surprise) in his telling me what he thought of the story.
His words are on a piece of paper that I keep in a folder in a drawer in my desk. And I have a feeling that piece of paper will be one of those things that I'll always have, in a folder in a drawer in my desk.

It's been a goal of mine to get the chance to tell that Batman story to a wider audience for, well, a while now.

But all I can think of at the moment--this moment when, thankfully, there is nothing seriously wrong with anyone I love, or with myself, and a moment where my world is certainly not going to end--is that unwritten Batman story, and that first line that seems to perfectly encapsulate my feelings today.

I've been angry for a while now.

And, like I said, my problems are not major problems. I consider myself lucky that I have the problems I have. Because things could be--and, probably should be--a lot worse. They're not. I'm lucky.

But, still, I'm annoyed. And I think it's helpful sometimes to let annoyance and anger stew. So, yeah.

I've been angry for a while now.

And I wish I could tell you why.