[429] Time To Kill

I don't know where it came from, but I've always been semi-obsessed with time.

Take second grade. We had transparent problem sheets in different colored bins with ten each lined up against the wall. Every time you filled one out correctly, you got a dollar. The same reward applied for every time you could recite a larger and larger set of state capitals. I think I got them all done the first month. Or maybe that one is easy to blame on money.

So how about 4th grade. We had timed 100 question math quizzes. You started with addition and moved your way up to mixed adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. 9 times out of 10 I was the first one done. These had nothing to do with our grade, we got nothing for them, but I was first and I didn't even imagine we were playing in the same league.

I felt powerful as a child. I had a consistent positive feedback loop of success on a metric that everyone had to be judged by. In 5th grade, if my teacher decided to write the day's lesson plan on the board, I would complete it before the bell for first period rang. It's like something was constantly provoking me. If I could do it now, why the hell not? What's next? What's really taking you so long?

I had a number of people tell me it had to do with being “smart.” I just got things in a way the other kids didn't. But, I call bullshit. There were definitely other kids who “got it” like I did, they just weren't obnoxious. The difference isn't one of capacity, it's one of positive anxiety. I wielded a resource that, I probably didn't consciously appreciate to the full extent then, that left an impression on me and peoples' perception of me.

While it's not bursting with the youthful exuberance of the past, I still have that sense. If I can do it now, I've never felt something was stopping me. It's how you read 12 books in a week. It's how you beat video games on their hardest settings in a couple of days. It's how you go from having zero money and zero real idea of what you're doing and open a coffee shop in 6 months, 3 if you condense how long it takes other people to answer emails and do their jobs.

I consider time a weapon. Much as you can defend yourself with a sharp blade, if you use it unwisely you might chop your leg off. When you have time, you get the opportunity to observe, think, and do more. The time I saved, or attempted to save, in elementary school allowed me to develop a habit for reading. I was able to do extra tasks around the school or for the teachers and earn more “starbucks,” our in class currency, to buy things on field days. The quicker I read the entire book list in 7th grade meant I could get my 8th grade required reading done a year in advance. This switches when you get to college of course as drinking takes precedent or high school when jaded loses all meaning, but the sword is always holstered.

I'm concerned because what was taken for granted as positive anxiety to motivate me to move and change and accomplish is turning into something darker than I ever cared to experience. I kicked it back into high gear with business starting. What they don't tell you about is so drastically more important than high fives and well-wishing, or often random arbitrary tales of caution.

For one thing, they don't tell you that nobody operates like you. In school, it's a one man show. It's your grades. I might have to wait for the teacher to put the assignment on the board, but as far as what's expected of me and when I can consider it done and done well, the last word or period wraps it up. The story changes as you load more people in your boat. Secondly, they don't tell you that nobody cares about you. As “adults,” you're expected to take every punch or shut up and do something else. It's your responsibility regardless. You made a choice! after all. And apparently there was a meeting where we all chose to do nothing well, and do it to our heart's discontent. But mostly, nobody clues you into the searing hatred bubbling just underneath the surface about what you're doing or how you're doing it. They hate that you're doing what you want. They hate that you're happy about it.

When I opened my business, I was leaning on a 40 year old who had to move back in with his parents architect for my kiosk plans. His first concern was not getting back to me in a timely manner. I was “negotiating” a contract with a 50 year old crotchety mall middle manager. Nothing about whether or not I ended up getting in the mall was going to influence her paycheck. I didn't “convince” or “ask” to be promoted when I was running through theaters, I expected it, and they knew I expected it. I left the managers at Target with no real choice but to give me the power to fuck up your credit because I was cutting into their tasks. The assistant librarian was pissed off at me for stating I should just move on to the 8th grade books.

Now, I'm old enough to not take it personal. But increasingly, I'm losing even the presumption of empathy. I phrase it in a way of having so much time to sit and watch or learn and experiment, that I've all but obliterated my capacity to even consider people “human.” There is no “it gets better” moment. I don't want you to think I'm overstating this. I've been able to watch in school, business, and general interpersonal relationships how low the bar sits with my telescope from the moon, but you're the aliens.

I want to pick back up the weapon analogy. Give it to a religious zealot. They swing it around slicing and dicing you with bible quotes if you're lucky, lobbing off your head if you're not. Ideologues wire their swords to explode on poor people. The more time they spend doing so, the more rehearsed, the more comfortable it feels and that kind of terrorism becomes normalized. Wield the sword in service to any kind of conditional power. I'm at the behest of the people who have a skill I don't or own a spot I want to reside on. Am I irresponsible with my time for attempting to engage with them? Was I simply sold a bill of goods about what to expect from them? Are they just in a battle I was never meant to join?

The poor level of conversation in society has been one of my poorly beaten dead horses. I walk the halls of this study center and I've encountered one conversation that wasn't related to violence, religion, or pop culture. Practice makes permanent, and the more you recite your superficial understanding or double down on provoking or “being real” towards the violence, one day you'll wake up at 50 with the emotional maturity of a 10 year old. I can't count how many allusions to prison have been made, arguments with spouses over the phone, or general gossip that, at some level is inevitable when you're living with 60 people in a hallway for 2 weeks, but is borderline impressive when I can see it winning against high school.

Meanwhile I'm over here planning to call every insurance company in the country, every wedding planner in the state, and attempting to suss out how my relationship to time has molded me since childhood to completely alienate myself from the gen-pop, and what that means in relation to expectations and power. Aren't I supposed to feel like proud or something after that sentence? Isn't there supposed to be an emotional reward for carrying pretense into everything you do?

I asked my friend how he conceived of power.

He said, “For me to exert power, typically means exerting influence into the decision making of another.”

I specifically asked him because he's one of the 2 believers I know who will speak honestly when they come up against the limitations of their thought process. That is, he never disagrees with me “because.”

What bugs me about this answer is that, for me, it's extremely weak. Decision making, as far as I've been able to observe, is extremely incidental for most people. They weren't born a particular sports fan, but every decision to buy memorabilia, tickets, or watch “the big game” is one pebble into the stream perhaps your parents started pouring for you, a brand manager before them. If I tell you “don't think about elephants,” the fact that you do has nothing to do with my exertion. Or, I don't feel exerted.

For me, power is fluid. It flows in the same way time does. Until you're paying attention, you're getting battered around by an irresponsibly wielded weapon. My thought then is, perhaps my contrarian personality influenced why I always needed to be on my time. The teacher was wrong in thinking I needed all day, my parents were wrong in thinking I needed that kind of school, and my managers were wrong about the reach of their authority. I'd endlessly listen to friends who were wrong about the capacity of their “love,” the reach of their “passions,” or the consequences of their “drama.” The world outside my head has never made an emotionally compelling appeal that didn't start from an irrational provocation or angry place. It's never made sense. I lightened up a bit after I started drinking and took shrooms or acid a couple times, but make no mistake, people made sure to fuck the fun out of those too!

I'm worried about what I'll turn into, more than anything specific that I could do, once any sense of compassion is gone. If I estimate correctly, usually when I write an in depth blog about how the tide is changing in my head, it's not even 4 months later I'm living out the consequences of the switch. You hear about how hard people are struggling or how the powers that be are killing us. Not once have I thought a wish and a prayer could fix anything. Not once have I not conceived of at least 10 questions that could be asked and sought after about whatever problem. I've never been confused about who to blame or why. A handful of warmongers and billionaires aren't supposed to placate the response of 300 million people; unless those people are wagging their swords like they wag their dicks.

And until recently, not once have I wanted to fall in line with the rest of the walking dead. Which would only be to preserve the last kernel of respect I can feel slipping. Don't be fooled. It's easy for me to hate. I can feel myself loosen up at the thought of going back to treating people like cattle. I'm not a martyr and don't care to claim the stress of ignorant hope and beliefs. If I feel like my whole life has been molded by being incidentally fucked by the people around me very independent of my ability to try, learn or care...what happens when I take my moon-shooting habit and turn it against you? I've argued indifference as the worst position you can have about people. At least I'd maintain reasons for my behavior. The passion to destroy is still a creative passion. I'd just make people what they try to make me. Incidental.

I've been fleeing this mode of thought for so long. Maybe it's time to accept and fight.