First, I could just be feeling “generally better.” While training is bullshit wherever you go, I haven't spent a single day at work yet where I wasn't laughing my ass off, figuring out a complex social problem, learning about something nuanced and complicated, or having a fair and nice chat with someone who immediately knows the nature and tone of what it takes to do a job like this. These are all reassuring things. People are dynamic, so when you're dealing with them, it's theoretically going to be hard to be “bored” in the sense that a job like delivering or stacking or generally laborious tasks might beget.
Second, it could mean I'm getting “comfortable.” I've talked about my increased spending habits for things like smoothies or frappes. I've dipped into that Amazon wishlist several more times this month for things like nicer clothes, basically for work, and a hodgepodge of items that have been staring at me for a while. What's 15% of your budget if it's things that you'll wear for the next several years? Particularly when most of your clothing is faded, misshapen, and occasionally an item you got for Christmas when you were 12 years old. I be looking fly, don't think twice about eating out, and besides general labor, there's no looming huge expense around the corner barring injury or disaster. I've even gone in for things like life and health insurance.
Third, it could mean I'm losing the capacity or will to be paying attention to “the world at large.” It's hard to be that scared of Trumpian fiery maelstroms when you're debating the whereabouts and hunting down white trash pieces of shit for several hours a day or giggling at a hilarious judge in court for several hours. I still scroll through. I still catch articles here and there. The focus? That has to keep me continually waking up in the mornings and maintaining polite-enough comments and the demeanor for a professional environment. We're at the front lines of the people's lives who are actually, sometimes literally, on fire.
Fourth, I might be losing a measure of respect for what it is I have to say when I'm realigning my place of knowledge towards a job or routine. I can't opine that intelligently and can mostly just skirt remembered statistics from headlines. I can give “general counsel” about the wisdom of not falling prey to fear-based decision making. I can say you should make time to practice all of the little things that are important to you. I can resolve myself to wildly practical and old sentiments and sentimentality because that's the kind of shielded environment I've adopted.
In reflecting on the environment, thoughts regarding “class warfare” or “protected status” came to mind. Mind you, this was while I was sitting in a court room. Here, in this little room, you have “judge” and “lawyers” and “FCM” and “CASA” and a bailiff and perpetrators and trainees and court reporters. All have their roles. All are invested in, at the very least, the pageantry and dignity of it all, and one wants to believe they have noble spirits who espouse the moral courage and commitment to the protection of rights. But, if you pay not that close attention, they're all still human. The judge can crack jokes. The attorney can look disorganized. The FCM can have his ears gauged. The whole of the endeavor is what's protected and what people will always rediscover no matter how crazy shit gets. It's safe. It has rules. It's a necessary bargain and conformity so you don't end up on the other side of the aisle crying and making excuses for your actions.
I've never been the disingenuous anarchist type. My “withdrawal” from society involves consuming as much information about it as my brain and body can handle. I slide pretty seamlessly between worlds whether or not there's an accompanying panic attack about the “radical shift” in my perspective. I think I'm hoping to discover a way to fit a multi-variant long-term position into my head without corrupting the spirit it takes to create in spite of norms. The big government machine is precisely that. Norms, procedures, pleasantries, and posture in service to maintaining certainly values which are meaningful and worth it. It's not that malicious or complicated, at least where I work, and for better or worse, if you bond with it too closely, you're not going to see the reasons and ways in which it needs to change.
I know that with my brain, no matter how seemingly comfortable or good I get with things, I'll get bored. I'll get restless. I'll start finding little things to pick at even while I wholly appreciate what makes things awesome. I stayed at a pretty terrible low-paying job precisely because every day I felt like I was working with friends who hung out after and developed flows and habits to compliment each other. I got to take this job with not only my best friend already laying out cheat codes and clout, but 2 other people I knew or worked with in the past. My biggest gripe is waking up earlier than I care to, and even that will be a fading issue after I get out of training. Turns out, I love cubicles. Movies have corrupted my mind about the utility of walls for organizing things. Grey walls don't look any bleaker to me than mountains look glorious, and I stare at white walls and a computer 60% of my time in general.
I've become ever-more painfully aware of my lack of “abstract” thinking. I can hold a small number of things in my mind at once and try to work with them. This is why I can “forget” I got my degree and am exceedingly competent and think the world is crashing when I lose a shitty delivery job after having never even applied to one that required my “adult” skills in the intervening 8 years. The cubicle bias is one example. My approach to playing and learning new music feels very static and repetitive. I need to think to myself, “I should beat the whole game” as I linger around firing up a system with one I bought months ago. I'm bad at doing things in small growing parts, I suppose besides from writing, as I feel I get lost or lose things in the transition. It feels like shuffling through the first minute of every song in a playlist. I can get the gist, but am I really appreciating what I'm listing to? Even my “bad” or “boring” shows I watch sped up, I try to, more or less, at least be focusing on it instead of reducing it to pure background noise.
Consider, I was watching shows, couldn't bring myself to continue, started playing the guitar, figured out I'd memorized well-enough a section of “Do You Want To Build A Snowman” and then remembered I hadn't written in a while and cut myself off before locking in the last 2 bars. I also have a habit of pausing a show with a minute or so left and getting up to cook or take out the garbage. I speculate I'm subconsciously trying to prevent something from ending or the feeling of “end” and the obligation to figure out something new. As long as the show is paused, or there's hundreds of them and movies in the queue, there's always something easy enough to occupy your time and mind with, right? Once the big projects on the land are done, then what? Back to eating more? Back to putting myself against invisible walls about the kind of creative and entrepreneurial example I need to be hell bent on setting? Because, I'm telling you, I fit extremely well into this well-dressed competent man world with just enough chub to make the lonely thick single ladies consider me approachable. My 2 kids and 2 car garage are about 15 flirtations and half a dozen “this is it!” cuddle moments at quasi-romantic locations.
Here I beckon my inherent obnoxiousness. The same antagonist you find insufferable ushers me along when none of you care to chime in or help. You think my polite deconstructions of our conversations were ruff? I could turn myself racist and ageist and ableist and express every ism to myself at the speed of thought if I felt myself slipping too far. Light the fires of fear and anger and get this train moving, as it were. Use the tightness in my right hand and crankiness of my knee to insist all the more urgently the need for decisive and consequential action! I'm gonna live forever, don't you know, just keep watching.
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