As my 8th day comes to a close of open-to-close working in service to this...I don't even know how to qualify it “goal” of becoming basically “even” once again financially, I'm burdened with the usual thoughts I want to discover a new way to say. This isn't the hardest I've ever attempted to work, by far, but it does bite in a particular sort of way because I'm surrounded by people who've made my environment where they are. I have a job that you can certainly approach from a few different ways to maximize your preferences. Whatever can be said about the “at-will” perks, I prefer money.
I had something of a stunted imagination as a kid. I envisioned like the front foyer of my future mansion, but never thought much about where the kitchen would go or what the rest of the rooms would contain. I didn't think about filling it with a family. I didn't suspect that I'd only find layabouts and alcoholics to party with when all my friends were “living the dream” of whatever incarnation their life took. At bottom, I had a basic idea that money=what I want. To a large extent this remains true simply because that's how life has been organized. I want to laugh at my favorite comedian? $40 and 2 appetizers I don't want.
But as I live each day exactly the same way, actively trying to blot out my mind, ignoring articles signaling the end of the world, ignoring the pain in my chest and the blandness of the same quick food I prepare for myself to leave with everyday, and pursuing those superficial always the same conversations about the nature of the job and who doesn't care enough to make it better, I can't help but to feel a quiet horrifying comfort. It's so goddamn easy. It's unbelievably mundane and obvious and how could anyone fuck this up. I just sit, and drive, and just watch the next episode, and eat microwaved terrible chicken, and talk about some band or some change that in no way materially affects me. In a way, it's easier than studies, because I can always leave.
I find this TERRIBLE. Not just terrible, but scary and ridiculous and disgusting. I NEVER want to consider myself in “delivery boy” terms. I don't want to pick up smoking to fit in. I don't want to reminisce about the times I used to have any authority or self-respect. Our minds want routines. When I think about how I got through school in retrospect and undersell the power of the routine, I get confused at how I managed to get through it. But here I am, reciting a cartoon bug's mantra from Rocko's Modern Life, “I get up, go to work, come home, watch some TV, and go to bed. Up, work, home, TV, bed.” That struck me as fucked up as a child.
People seem to express the idea often enough that as time goes on, they realize they don't need the fancy car and huge house or expensive dinners. I struggle to think they ever really have a grasp on what they need when they say things like this given that it's perfectly obvious nothing has needed those things ever. I find the statement more indicative of an admittance that those things can't be achieved. The people that want those things find ways to get them, one terrible way or another. For my part, I've clarified and specified I want freedom and time. If I'm using those two things like I want, it's hard of for me to imagine not getting something simple like money. I've so far in life managed to get the majority of things I have by sitting around.
I want to play. I want to laugh. I want to have earnest interactions with people I work and create with. I was thinking a ton about when I felt the most “like me.” in anything I've done. And it's in doing it actively and engaging. “Faith without acts is dead.” When I put my (horrible word) faith in myself, my reward system kicks in. I can't work for 2 minutes let alone 2 months “because.” Even the smallest goal keeps me awake and looking for ways to placate my mind begging me to quit. That's the reality. I'm always begging myself to just go with it. Just hang out at the bar or eat out all the time. Just spend all your money on movies or concerts. Just take one day of open-to-close working and enjoy yourself.
For months, one of Jordan Peterson's lines has been ringing in my head. “Well, what the hell do you know?” in talking about people pursuing what makes them happy. I could have my quick nothing ideas about wealth and shiny things as a kid, but have no idea the reality of obtaining them. People think they want relationships and influence and looks. They want to be famous or talented. They never want the journey or the implications. I signed up for the grind, the doubt, the delivery boy at 29 route. I'll also be literally retired in 2 months if I just go with it and keep driving all day.
But in active engaging, I was elated to put together the coffee shop. I allowed myself to overcome my “logic” regarding relationships and get into one that will never really leave me. I designed my house. I took immense pride in cleaning theaters in ankle weights 3 times faster than anyone bothered to pretend was necessary. When I was reading to take notes and map information, I was putting away hundreds of pages a week. When I had to beat every level on the hardest setting in first place or never lose a single general on the secretly unlocked level after 6 run-throughs playing video games, I got to lose myself.
I haven't been lost since the last time I was drunk, and that only managed to turn me into an antagonistic child picking on a smaller child. I don't get lost in this job, I disappear. I'm “driver.” I'm the number one driver, of course, but driver nonetheless. And if I became “manager” it'd be the same thing. I wouldn't be there. I'd be CT's procedures and policies and paycheck. I'm spontaneous. I'm mean. I'm creative. I'm self-destructive in a way people learn to have fun with. I'm none of those things reciting that little bug's mantra.
At least, being me, I'm always trying to multi-task. I finished The Runaways, am getting through even more TV than normal, and switch over to exhaust the 3 worthwhile podcasts telling stories in interesting ways. It's still only a half measure. I'm not immediately recording or working with that information. I'm not referencing it in a joke as me and my friends get drunk and bowl. I'm not doing anything even remotely physical. And never will the drum rudiments on the steering wheel or repetition of 5 notes on the trumpet be a substitute for substantive practice and focus.
I also think about people who in some form or another seem to be doing what they like, and then get completely fucked over. The Jack Kirby's. Or the people doing vital work hampered by greed or something equally stupid. The local activist or healthcare professional. If you aren't born of a certain pedigree, the options seem to be to get specialized and marginalized, or punished for your ideals. Then you're expected to capitulate to the prevailing power structure, or lose all hope of having a say in how your execution is to be carried out. But then, what the hell do they or I know? Maybe that's exactly where they belong and what they deserve. Maybe their conception and capacity for “happiness” is just in those spots. This strikes me as fatalistic and depressing.
Say I serve my 2 month sentence, now I'm “even.” No payments on my house. Property taxes not due for another month (a mere 2 days worth of work to pay for the year). I've presumably gotten all the work done to make my house actually livable (with a place to shit that stays warm and everything!) I even have the moving truck fixed and I can begin advertising the next string of opportunities to throw my back out or have someone get in an accident driving it. In comes insurance, and advertising, and gas. But, it'll be mine. I'll be engaged. I'll try to do better in not spending money “simply” because it's necessary to get to the other side (oh, the wasted insurance payments for the coffee van...). I'll get to cuss and drive and dick around online trying to figure out how to create a website not stolen from a template farm.
Or I could wait. I could take my time and save up from working the hot hours over the course of a few months. I could just keep paying the $200 a month for 3 years until they get $6000 instead of $3500 for paying early. The truck can sit dead in the grass and remain my storage unit I happened to pay a year's worth of rent for in advance. I can keep trying and failing screenings in the meantime. I can hit on girls that aren't totally disinterested, but less interested than the amount of effort I'm willing to put in. I could just roll with this townie lifestyle, do some art shit, learn to give a fuck about hiking through woods.
Neither option feels good. Neither is really “better.” They're just choices. I don't know how they'll make me feel. I know why I've fought against “normal” for sure. I know it doesn't feel good to not have money. I know there's a weird motivation that comes from digging yourself out of a hole that's different from what propels you into the future. I'm losing my spiteful and defiant edge. I've no one worthy to fight against, so I have to wait until the state of Indiana decides it wants taxes. I have to provoke myself to buy an engine I can, as of yet, barely afford because I'm the only one holding myself accountable for what it can come to represent. It just sucks. It's just lonely. It's just pointless.
Here I think of the flash-forward ideas I had about being with my ex or the family we might have had and the odd comfort that afforded me. Life gets pretty simple when “that thing, I love it, keep it alive” is flashing red all the time. In my case, it suggests I treat myself rather poorly and carelessly if I can't be bothered until there's someone else I feel responsible for. How many more push-ups would I do if I didn't want my kid to be fat? How often would I prepare healthy meals in advance? How quickly would I sell my instruments if they desperately wanted a bassoon? Well, I'd probably just budget for a bassoon as I still want to learn my instruments, but still. I'm not in much different a direction if I spend $400 or $4000 this month in that, it's still only at the level of “me.” A concept so corrupted and dumbfounded, well, I don't even know how you bothered to get to the end either.
