I’ve written the first few lines of a dozen different blogs over the last few days in my mind. When that happens, it’s like an animal is scratching at the door to be let outside. You assume it has to pee, but it could just be restless or saw the neighbor’s dog and wants to play. My simple-minded dog brain rarely distinguishes some level of “suffering” from “boredom” from “overwhelmed” from “exhausted,” so I dig my toe into the dirt and meander around a point until I can land on a hard description.
The last 2 days have proven as great or greater a measure of progress on getting my house done as the last 2 and a half months. I still find myself at the mercy of my “basically by myself” programming which seeks and finds Craigslist morons instead of asking around the circles of people I know. Consider, it takes me reaching near breakdown mode before I think to ask a coworker or text a friend. My ingrained assumption reflexively dismisses the idea that the people I come in contact with are good for anything. Perhaps more specifically, good for what I need versus what I think I might be able to get out of them.
A large portion of my mental space recently has been ruminating on how I find myself, again, annoyed and put off by people’s terrible communication. They don’t show up on time. If they make a definitive statement, I know precisely what is not going to happen and exactly the steps they aren’t going to take to ensure nothing happens. People ignore me until it’s convenient, or they’re on a meth induced fervor, and then expect me to meet their conditions after they’ve strung me along or lied about something.
And then another reflex kicks in. I tell myself I don’t deserve this. I’m pressed to statements about not being able to find a single reliable person in the entire state. I’m impressing upon acquaintances my relative impoverished state. None of it, by approximation, having really anything to do with me and who I try to be.
I had the thought that I was perhaps losing my subjective self. My company is so routinely superficial or self-destructive, I’ve nothing to reflect upon that isn’t a level of complaint or frustration. I meet kids at the bar. I have 2 minute pass-bys at work. I make the same endless appeal for grabbing a beer or help on the land to general silence and indifference. The one person acting closest like me to show up and get shit done, reinforce the idea that my goals and projects are as achievable as I’ve been describing? My dad. He shows up, we work, I almost have all my walls. He’s agreed to drive me to the hospital Tuesday should I prove unable to navigate constructing my solar array.
There isn’t enough “there” there for me to really be moved one way or another. I used to think people grasped how special it was to have more than a handful of friends, actual friends, to hit the bar with. That of course dwindled out. The “celebration” reduced to edge dampening and pleasantries over bummed cigarettes. Receding deeper into my gut is that loud and excited pursuer of all things. It’s a weird place where, maybe I want to make you laugh, maybe I’m actually more concerned with setting you up to be disregarded after whatever I’ve said. I’ll call it being lightly poisoned by my new favorite phrase “middle class mediocrity.” You don’t need to shoot for the moon or experience a belly laugh, a chuckle will suffice.
I took off work a little early. I’m losing the “pride” of making as much money as soon as possible. I met a kid at the bar who immediately talked about how much money he wants to make and that’s why he’s in school. I just felt a little sad for him. So much enthusiasm and he didn’t even try for a more rounded or meaningful answer. I, still, want considerably higher amounts of money too, but I’ve learned I can barely buy friends a beer with it. I can pay people just enough to provoke a blowback that disproportionately impugns my time and patience.
Increasingly I’ve been taken by the idea of wanting the struggle. A character in the show Better Things described her father getting older. In normal life, you’re used to framing your troubles as something you can keep working to make better. As her father aged, he just kept getting more broken until he was gone. I think I treat my day to day life like it’s an aging person, while normal middle class mediocrity sees the potential for a fix for everything. Today I could die with sworn blood oaths to loathe certain actors in my life. Today I could meet an incredible person I’ll somehow regret not searching harder for and finding sooner. Today I could be reminded of the endless opportunities tucked underneath the waves of endless pretension and scorn. The newest, shiniest, or most terrible thing all just one more crumbling piece falling away. An arbitrary up and down eroding.
I’m going to go grab a beer now. I’m going to pay more for it than it’s worth. I’m going to scroll through my phone and stare too long at a hot waitress with all the tact it’s impossible to do that with. I’m going to do it alone because I’ve been trained to know better than to bother inviting people without weeks of advanced notice and mild pleading. Then I’m going to return to my car, drive to the top of the parking garage, and sleep until it’s time to go to work again tomorrow for another $150-$200 I kinda need to maybe move an 1/8th of an inch in some direction I doubt amounts to more than a prayer or fart in the wind. You know, real me shit.
