Vacuum Packed To Preserve Freshness

There is a football game on Sunday that looms large. It is huge. Bigger than the earth's ability to contain it. The vibe is so big that it envelopes the earth and travels out into space. The super intelligent beings that watch and laugh at us are saying "What the hell is this? We are getting a signal so intense, so focused, so passionate that it eclipses any transmission we have ever picked up before. And we are suddenly consumed with an overwhleming urge to purchase TV's with 60'' screens."
The scope of the Super Bowl validates the enormity of the sport of football. A sport where men willingly subject their bodies to pains and strains and pains and ruptures and broken-ness and concussions and bruises. All in the pursuit of victory, all for a shot at a championship.
Sixteen regular season games. Three or four post season games if you are very lucky and very good. That is a very short season. The short season amplifies everything. Every win, every loss, every injury, every mistake, every spectacular play. This is life as it should be lived. Alive with emotion and passion. Vibrating with excitement and potential.
That is part of the allure of the Super Bowl as a fan. You get to be insane for one game. Out of your mind, forget your life, crazy-passionate, let's crazy go nuts transcendence. You get to be alive. Especially when your team is playing
I am angry and under attack. I am in a very difficult place. You may have noticed that in some of my previous writings, although I am amazingly subtle. So angry, so lost that I got somewhat distracted from the game. If you know me at all, that tells you exactly how pissed off I am.
THE PATS are in the Super Bowl. I need this game.
Their fifth appearance in the last eleven years; seventh in their history. With three rings to show for it. That is excellence. That is a legacy.
I want more. I want this game as much for me as I do for them. I need to celebrate like a wild man, I need to scream and laugh and high five and emote like it ain't never happened before. I need to explode out of the current 2012 Joe, and inhabit a greater, more destiny bound 2012 Joe.
Events appear to be coming together in a way that will fuel the vibe to the highest level possible. Keith's house is the tradition. A family tradition that I love because Keith taught me to love THE PATS.  Full circle, baby, full circle. But it is possible that everyone will be there. Keith, Emily, Craig, Karen, Eddie and his new woman, me and my amazing wife. This has never happened before during THE PATS amazing run. If that is the way it goes, my happiness will be unrestricted.
Intense period for me. Super Bowl on Sunday. Job interview on Tuesday. Between now and then, and around and through it, I am trying to prepare for the interview as intensely as possible. I have never taken a job interview so seriously.
I think in extremes. I have to have a Super Bowl win. I have to get this job. I tell myself if neither one happens I will have nothing, and I fear my reaction. Reality says that no matter what happens at either event, my life will go on. I will survive, and I know this. I have been kicked around enough after almost six decades to know that you always find a way to survive.
But I don't want to survive. I want #4 and I want the job.
Strange vibe. There are those who want me to get the job to get rid of me, there are those who would love to see me fail, there are those who want me to succeed out of genuine concern for me as a human being. That's the way life works whether we want to admit it or not.
It's possible that this Super Bowl means more to me than any of the others. Although that is a difficult measurement, like asking an average shmoe to distinguish between the intensity of two nuclear blasts.
I only know that I am hunkered down for the next  six days in an intensity bunker. I am concentrating all my efforts, drawing everything in, making myself tighter and coiled, preparing to do battle, preparing to give all of this my best shot.
A win in XLVI would be a perfect springboard to a solid interview. Interesting time in my life.
To those who share a genuine concern for me as a human being, I'll keep you posted. Everyone else can kiss my ass.