Something I'm unsure if I get enough credit for is in the amount of things I'm not saying. I may write a 9 page blog, but that doesn't mean I've shut off. I might have knocked a great insult out, but a dozen more pieces of nonsense are eager to get a more strained chuckle or sideways glances. For me, the capacity to shut anything off, or at least turn it down, is what dampens my otherwise bucket of superpowers. Laser eyes that cut everything down in sight or flight when you can never land wouldn't be considered ideal.
I think about this as I think about my new posture towards work. It coincides with how I've seen myself evolve around coworkers. If I can get away with a little, there's little to nothing that suggests to me I can't take more. I follow rules when it's in my clear self-interest. I eschew being a martyr for ignorance and arbitrary, if not well-meaning, rules. It's me playing with fire to feel “perfectly comfortable” with a position that stands in opposition to the long-term stability of whatever it is I happen to be doing.
Interpersonally, say I start to get comfortable around you. This is a problem. I've had to get comfortable around you. This means I went through the process of figuring out why we don't naturally get along, and then I drop my defenses, and start to carry-on as though we're actually meant to be around each other. This was highlighted today by a coworker that's the definition of the type of Millennial that would get me fired calling a comment I made “problematic,” while chuckling, as my fundamental ability to make your out betray your in attempted cordiality.
With work, it's a lot like school. I have a built-in anxiety mechanism for not following a certain kind of structure or occasionally reasonable rule. I don't like to be late, even when it doesn't matter. I don't want to leave a ten minute task staring at me, even if my life will literally not go any direction positive or negative if I sit on it for weeks. I rush to cross the street when I'm jay-walking because a car will and deserves to win against my bravado.
My issue is that I know full well I don't have to care. People say they don't care when they're trying to put distance and deny things. I literally don't care and invite crazy shit into my life to force me to start caring. Any inch of liberty you decide to take in your life when your personality is situated that way is suspect by definition. Is the demon winning? Or are you making reasonable accommodations? Will it get out of hand? Or is enough at stake that you could reign it back immediately if necessary?
For as much as we talk about finding personal fulfillment, joy, passion, happiness, or non-shame-worthy tools to cope, I think we miss the conversation on the kinds of dishes we're serving to our emotional diabetes. I've existed in brazen not-give-a-fuck modes for very long periods, and maintain a kind of resting hum. They don't exactly work against me. I'm very rarely interested or affected by the long-term opinion of someone I don't respect or organization I want nothing to do with. I'm the person who will work your style or mantra until you're forced to reflect. I'll use your language to manifest a world you can't recognize.
So what then and what does that even mean? It just means I'm testing and playing. My anxiety, is a choice. It's the choice to sit in inaction and not rise to the level of defiance or protest I consider it my moral imperative to assert in defense of my soul. The difference between that inner revolution braving a new world, and dying in ignoble slaughter, is the understanding and management of the battleground. My mind is a minefield and my daily interactions are like singular firecrackers trying to antagonize an animal. The game requires a kind of balance no one else can do for me, and that's key to tamping doubt without overburdening your own righteous sense about your actions.
I think you want me nervous and stuck being quiet parsing through the unknowns. I think you want it because I'm a ferocious person who feels fundamentally unpredictable. I think the world attempts to train me every day how to play along and play nice, but this bug in my system can never erase the skepticism and scorn for the environment I see being cultivated, ironically, in spite, of me. Whether I literally get on a stage or buy into hippie-musings about my “celebrity energy,” I'm getting ready to burst. Whether it's like an Andy Dick or Kardashian or something bordering respectable is unclear. But it starts with these seemingly simple acts to beat away the memory of stomach butterflies. It's when assertion rules over defense and maintenance. It's when the abstract amalgam subsumes all former judgments and convictions and compels you to watch. The craving is starting to take over.
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