This may meander more than usual.
Every day I hear a story of someone with a life circumstance I do not want. Teachers striking testifying to working 4 jobs (while I wither at a mere 3! occasionally), a minority group preaching to the real world damage from ignorant comments from celebrities, or just the general muck that surrounds the president. If I had 1/10th of the degrees of bullshit I read about, well, that's the thing, it's easy to say I don't want that, but then, adversity breeds creativity. People willing to work that hard for something they believe in have a more powerful motor than I'm operating with. And call it every ounce of bleeding ignorance it is, the idiots surrounding the white house are of immense consequence we might only ever accidentally find ourselves being.
There's this huge unease when I have too much time to sit and think. It's never about whether a task or job is particularly hard. It's the attitudes surrounding it. It's the suppression of what could make it better. It's watching people be rewarded by those who know better (do they?), and waking up to eat your bran. At least you're fed, right? At least you'll keep regular. I don't think it's wrong to want to change or improve your circumstances no matter how good you have it. I just don't know how to describe the story of “my good” that isn't more parts shitty backdrop than it is my prevailing opinion or capacity of my will.
It may just be a consequence of my basic lack of belief in most things creeping too far. I don't just not believe, I know I'm actively wasting, with a purpose, for a check, my time with the vast majority of the things related to my new job. I had the epiphany before I ever entertained the idea of a “real job,” I don't need 30 years in an office and a mid-life crisis. No amount of teary-eyed mothers and fathers who stick to the program are going to fill my heart with a sense of drive and purpose. I'm just not wired that way. Or, the path to accessing that wiring involves the stripping of every superficiality.
Last night a kind of wake up call was vollied back and forth between me and Byron. It's not that our jobs are ever that hard. It's that they occupy so much space in your mind that if anything outside is going wrong, it feels exponentially worse. Is it a “problem” the software this company uses takes 10 seconds to load between every click? Well, yes, but it's not the problem of traversing a desert looking for a better life. The problem is in the response of your colleagues who've no time or energy to speak to how to improve it, and your supervisor is going to, in the politest email terms, suggest you're an idiot, and when you get home the dishes will be dirty and another roommate decides it's time for a concert at 9:30pm. I don't want to talk at length about shitty software, piano playing roommates, or dishes. But where is my mind?
If I ever manage to have a proper breakdown, I want people who were looking for “signs” it was coming to take note. There is no “thing” or “moment.” It's a lack of sensible structure and meaning that slowly rips apart the excuse to keep it together. “Going through the motions” is indifferent as to whether it's carving out a canyon in your conception of yourself or washing and re-washing your brain with the normative zeitgeist. The “stress” comes from your unconscious mind that knows better. It knows it doesn't have to be like this. It knows you'll hear thousands of the wrong story before a tenth of a percent of what is needed breaks through and slowly disappears. Or worse, you adopt a “faith” that it will work its way into the fabric and do precisely what it needs to do. A good or important idea mimicking raising a child perhaps.
I'm losing the desire to ever invite people to things. Ego wants to believe it's me they don't like. Despotic understanding of how life doesn't have to work but does knows they don't even think to bother thinking of me. Then you start to wonder what's been in it for you in thinking about them? But then, hoping to avoid the irony, you're not. You're thinking about yourself and how you're reacting to their absence. Looks like the blame is yours all over again. Idiot.
And what would you do if they were around? Make too many references to “the good old times?” Force a level of politeness you absolutely haven't matured into? Constantly be checking your watch for the next appointment one of you has to get to? Spending more money than you “selfishly” want to insulate yourself with because food or toys always feel more deserved and meaningful than the Instagram picture testifying to your time together? Look how quickly and magnificently I can despotically paint an interaction before it ever begins! What purpose does this serve? Is it “reality?” Is it akin to a “suggested donation?” Probably just some lame cry for help, so then what else is new?
I keep returning to the idea of how much I miss believing. “In a few short months I'll be able to...!” “You love me! You really love me!” “If I follow these rules, master this art, good things will follow.” “If people could just be shown or given the tools, things will change.” “If I provide the kind of access or dedication I wish someone had offered me, like minds will find each other and we'll take off.” Small and fragile dominate my mental landscape. The last threads of trust and reliability slowly ripping away from the past. And me, still but one ridiculous voice in a handful of heads “sharing my pain” and “sounding crazy” and “wasting his time bitching” and “making quotes as if someone has actually said these things to him out loud.” I wish.
