I've been trying to write this for weeks. More, I've been trying to write at all. When you're not overflowing with an idea that's bugging you, or some resounding quote only manages to ring for half a day, but there's still something there, you force yourself to start writing, as I am now, and see if you can piece together a dozen themes and lines into whatever place it is you're looking for.
This has been a very long week. Even when I'm doing nothing at work, I'm at work, which increasingly is becoming a chore to bother with without some tactful distractions or pinches of aberrant behavior. I live 45 minutes away. I didn't leave my house until 7:42 on Wednesday, and technically, work starts at 8:00. I'm naughty.
But, of course, work doesn't start at 8. Work is understood as this thing we all barely make it to by 8:30, and even if you show up to safety staffing late, you haven't missed something vital, and you're going to be given that benefit of the doubt. It doesn't hurt to use the smoke screen of everyone else feeling tired and being late as well. We're all in this together.
I'm hitting that, “This is too easy, wrote, dumb, and impervious to changes for improvement” groove. I get flickers of hope of getting more responsibility or aspiring to do or create something new, and then I sit in a meeting ran by our district manager with endless placations and “state speak” that amounts to, “Don't blame me, we can only do so much over so much time.” My initial back and forth with the literal head of the agency has been dutifully sidelined for over a month at this point. Important people are very busy, don't you know. You won't have to dig far in my writing to find out how much I hate and disagree with the idea that things “just are that way.” And if you're a manager of anything, and reduce yourself to managing away expectations and accountability, you're nothing.
Gear shift. I stopped feeling terribly guilty about debt. It feels like a dangerous place to be. I'm slipping into the mindset that, on my worst day, I couldn't be even close to the norm. The money I spend turns into a month's long frustration and guessing game anyway, so why not just try to enjoy the food or toys that help me refine my space and mood? I hung my guitars, and bought things like cables and hooks. My concern for my environment has grown as I've gotten older. I can handle the garage-aesthetic as a matter of being practical, but you know what? I really enjoy seeing my instruments hanging from the wall, and the easy access to switch between them when I'm picking differently tuned songs on Rocksmith. The analog cord so the audio doesn't delay will be worth the $12.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating, I work best with someone. I go to the gym when someone's there. I create a coffee shop. I get to crack jokes and discuss options and delve into a perspective I'm not locked into. The things I do alone are always, basically gratifying, but not enough to provoke the endless energy impulse anymore. I've felt the pain of headfirst into walls enough times to at least remain mildly ensured that my enthusiasm and drive means nothing alone, and they are considerably more alone than I had the ability to see.
I have a strong personality new girl at work who's rounded, intelligent, and can talk endlessly in a way that doesn't provoke frustration. I barely know this chick and it's kinda insta-friend material. That's what got me intrigued about the office in the first place was finding people who provoked that impulse. The amount of truth in the idea that I don't come to work for the work, but the people I work with, holds as true as it ever did back when I got my first job.
It's not a secret we're relational and exist with respect to other things. When I'm out here, alone, playing my guitar or dancing like a nutter, who cares? The hours I could spend on the treadmill or reading won't matter until I take that information or beach bod into the streets and extract attention. I still believe in the exponentiating potential of brains focused on shared goals. I still think some version of the big dream I have for how my life might flow is possible, and possible quickly. I have every day to day reason impressing upon me how much older I'm getting and how I'm barely cobbling together what a 20-something might've half-assedly put together out of college when they dreamed of being a hemp farmer. This perspective informed by my inability to conceive of my life as anything but marred in debt, regardless if I was 3 months or 3 years away from paying it off.
Gear shift. One of the themes in my day to day is always about responsibility. You catch cases with DCS when you have no ability to take responsibility. You didn't beat, touch, smoke, whatever it is you absolutely did, and every imposition we make on your being is another affront to decency and example of the fascist state. It's not, simply, meth isn't good for you, and especially not your child.
I talk a lot about the responsibility foisted upon me. I was reflecting on my friend who was in a downward spiral with his PTSD. I gave him acid. He'd already had a bad episode, the next was worse. Everyone got mad at me, probably reasonably, not him. I try to frame it by stepping back some. He's old and mature enough to go to war, ship bullets out and ship bodies in, but not allowed to take responsibility of how or when he's going to consume acid, at least around me. There's something to be said about not enabling your friends and knowing better. There's something to be said about the kinds of responsibility towards each other we don't really want to take.
The same line of thinking applies to the parties. Camille Paglia pointed out that girls used to have to be home by dark and the boys could go be boys. When girls got their freedom to party, the consequences of drunk hookups became the rape culture of toxic masculinity. Which oppressor do you prefer? The administrator locking you up, or your own hormones and well-sung songs of debauchery related to drinking? Who gets to make the choice not to go? We certainly don't believe rapists can't help themselves.
Reverse. I'm comfortable in my space. Even when the power goes out, the air conditioner was running, so it was still comfortable and eerily calm to not even have the frogs making noise. I actively look forward to getting in my chair, sitting in front of my 6 screens, getting distracted and turning on my other big screen to play a game, or reading a few more pages in my book, or rearranging furniture for the 15th time. This place isn't just very me, it's as close to an approximation of the kind of active function-over-form yet packed to the tits with shit to do or find utility in. When I get a chance to organize my tools and have a workspace, it'll be an even sweeter walk between my dozen interests. Even if that takes 6 or 12 months or basically forever because I want it now.
I think I'm learning how to “enjoy being” a little better. My drive isn't gone, but my “this couch is niiiice” has definitely increased. I don't scrutinize every dollar if I know I'm going to enjoy the meal. I buy the second Chick-fil-A sandwich at the same time as the first. I think I'm at a record 5 or so days of not having my jaw painfully clenched. Part of me worries this is the consequence of something important dying that I'm unaware of . Part of me wonders if it needed to die.
I find it interesting, and telling, and proof that I really do know myself, that I still just wanna hang out. I don't want to pretend to be keeping kids safe and negotiating petty office nonsense. I wanna wake up and hang by the pool until I'm bored, and we go play with this truck engine or 3d model and print something. I wanna watch every single movie I've downloaded, and rewatch movies I claim to have enjoyed, but can't be bothered because no one's said, “I haven't seen it yet!” for me to watch it with them. I wanna have the people on hand to save 2 grand and dig our own damn pool, and to spend the 2 hours studying the parts manual for my riding lawnmower so I can figure out how to repair it. I want the kind of fluidity between interests that takes an incredible amount of work to look so simple and “obvious” a way of conducting life. I want to reinhabit the space farmers and journeymen were before wage slavery.
Right now, I am principle resident in situ. I'm carving, by my lonesome, out the pieces that anyone could appreciate and see worked into the psyche like the stripper pole did for the parties. Instinctively, you knew what you had to do. That's what I want this to become. I want it to draw out your inner stripper, and when the field is full of flopping tits, you'll look at me and go, “I get it now.” When I think I'm losing my mind or things are never going to get better, I look around. I remember how I never felt I'd be doing this, typing, in my air conditioned space, with my instruments mounted, books half-read, and growing number of tools to combat the animals and elements. These cumbersome and heavy things that have survived the travel, theft, and weather so arranged as to speak to my vision and will. A command center in Starcraft.
I think I'm going to start cold-calling for people looking to rent and dropping in at places that seem like land is where it's at. There's a tree-growing place on the way to Solsberry and different landscaping companies I want to try. It occurs to me that, as far as I know, I still get everything in life I ever truly want, and maybe I just haven't wanted “ the simple ask” to work as well as it might. I'm taken back to when I worked for 2 days at the IU call center. One guy just said, “Yeah, sure, $50 then?” or something to that effect, no hesitation, as if he'd been waiting his whole life to hear my scripted bullshit. I've called hundreds of people just to see if they wanted anything to do with a planter my neighbor invented. I haven't called a hundred people on my own behalf for anything, mostly because I like to present it as I'm working with it, not so much trusting a cold-caller to carry out their half of my vision.
I don't know. Can't hurt? Can't damage a brand that doesn't exist but on paper. I've read some entrepreneurial posts who say flyering is more effective than you'd believe. I could create the kind of flyer only someone like me could create, field some calls, explain the vision, draw up some contracts. Reaching out is horrible and everyone's a failure, and, almost as if GOD WILLED IT, I got a job where reaching out to failures has gotten associated with a paycheck. How is that not a sign?
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