[969] Insecurity Blanket

I’ve just had a thought about a “binding force” as it pertains to my work environments, and what I attempt to not fall prey to when I’m alone.

It would be too simple to call it a kind of “mediocrity.” It functions that way, to be sure. It’s a consequence of a lack of accountability. It provides a sense of security. Let’s just talk about what it sounds and looks like.

At DCS, no matter how bad a job you are doing, the person “in charge” will do one of two things. They’ll intervene in your behavior, take up the conversation that needed to be had, and attempt to fix the problem. Or, they’ll defer to their boss, their obligations, talk about how many counties there are, and basically ignore you. They will speak to how there is functionally no real oversight without a companion Avengers-level threat to kick people into motion.

The security comes from the size of the organization. Even if someone tried to watch, they can’t, unless the problem gets too large and provokes a death or lawsuit.

At the methadone clinic or in prison counseling, it’s much the same, but the problems are less variable and if anyone dies it’s only a junkie, right? You can remain poorly organized, fail your audits, and bleed employees, provided you’re just another operation that was bought by a national conglomerate. People are watching, rather closely, but only the bottom line. They’re not concerned with your performance across anything human or factoring in anything practical.

The security comes from the size of the bank account, addict population, and number of clinics under one umbrella. A few dozen or hundred can burnout or die, and it’s an overall rounding error on the books.

Maybe you want to sell books! What does becoming an author at a small publishing company have in common with big bureaucratic structures? There’s deference to all of your other obligations and priorities. There’s trading on the goodwill of the highly conscientious to obscure the lack of organization. Provided the ownership tows self-soothing party lines about the vision and purpose that you can recite in harmony, no need to scrutinize, be on time, or connect with the language underneath the business book buzz words.

The security comes from following the templates laid out by larger organizations and infusing them with elevated interpersonal baggage to help gin up the fog about who is responsible.

It’s a lot easier to identify failure points with smaller structures. There were 5 employees when I drove a taxi. If you didn’t make your shift, that was you. There weren’t offices for the schedule to get lost in or a lack of clarity on who to contact about where you were supposed to be. The number of times I’ve been maliciously classified as “independent contractor” tries to lay this “I don’t want the responsibility” backdrop bare. The smaller you are, the more personal it feels, and the less you can avoid the difficult conversations around what you did or didn’t do or don’t know.

Whittling down further, in a partnership or relationship you see similar dynamics. You can usually tell if a relationship is healthy or not based on how people respond to each other’s concerns or perspectives. Are you “too busy” to find the mental space for your partner? Is it wholly beyond your control to inform how they might feel about your living arrangements or social dynamic? Do you think God will step in and provide where you can’t?

When you’re just alone, and perhaps this is why I gravitate towards sentiments about being an individual and finding a personally honest thread, you can witness how this (in)security force works in you. You too tired to practice? You deserve some indulgence? You ashamed to speak to how you actually feel or think and wish to blame whatever happened to you or maybe belabor a traumatic past? The excuse, just like the responsibility, is open to you in every moment. Whether or not I play my guitar and the reasons I give myself for doing so are on me. I can’t stop the rain in my desire to complete my wood shop, but I can decide if I want to bare the humidity and set up a tent for when it stops.

It’s a singular thread and conversation with yourself from which all catastrophe or great things spring forth. Do you even acknowledge how much you can take responsibility for in any given moment? Do you respect the power you’ve been given? How many people do you reflexively find fault in before you get to you? Do you ever get to you? As someone who appears to be in the business of courting blame, I can’t say I hear nearly ever how it’s your fault.

This is why I own when I’m a dick. That’s me being accountable. I meant it. I knew when I turned up the snark. I didn’t “just react.” I probably spent months trying to play nice (or dumb in my language), and you didn’t get something fixed or even really try to make it better. At DCS, this meant sometimes destroying families. At the methadone clinic, people died. When you overwork yourself, you don’t just take years off your life, but the world closes in on you, and it does not appear like there are other opportunities or outlets for recognition or dollar amounts you deserve.

We seek security in the story we tell ourselves about what we can or can’t do, say, or see altogether. This is how I can immediately see when people are almost complete failures when it comes to a personally honest account of their life. It’s all the little things. When my stomach drops at the thought of going into work, I write about it. When my relationship with a new friend or coworker creates competing impulses, I explore. When the work I set out for myself needs to account for new details like increased financial or physical costs, I do the math and modify as needed. I’m not just feeling my way through the dark and yelling at you when we bump into each other.

When I look around my house and I see the sheer amount of shit I own, it’s hard to deny how many of my “problems” are part of a narrative fantasy to help keep me oriented around my preferences. The only real debt I truly have is a lack of a meaningful collaborative project. I’m not financially burdened as much as I’m boxing myself into a quasi-stable mode of living that comes with getting “real” jobs and eating time with toys and distractions. I like being able to go to the comedy clubs and concerts. I’d like considerably more a team of 5 people making a credible attack on various levels of power or speaking in organized and deliberate ways on how to achieve practically sustainable living and working arrangements.

I can get a job, buy toys, keep the bills paid, build my little castle, and play my music. I can’t talk you into joining me. You’ll help me here and there, but our mission isn’t the same. I discover time and again how many missions do not comport with my own, because mine attempts an outsized recognition of what I’m capable of and truly desire. I can continue to reiterate that I don’t just want money, or what’s in my Amazon cart, or even time. After all, I have time now. I’ve had considerably more time in the past. But time without the money, or the friends, or an actionable plan just leaves me to spend too much time finding things to get angry about online. I’ve been home for the last 3 days or so and it feels like an eternity. I look at what I’ve built and think, “That’s all?” I have a fucking problem lol, and it’s not much to do with “me” than it is “us.” There is no us in my world, or it comes in spurts, or resents how I conduct me.

And I don’t mean to overstate this, because I have irons in the fire, and collaborators, and friends good for the things they’re good for, but it doesn’t scale. The connection breaks when you try to attach it to a long-term investment or vision. It gets routinely undermined by how incensed you feel about what you probably are fucking up and can’t cope with owning. I like to remind you when I don’t miss a day of work, cancel class, or show up late because I’m celebrating my attentiveness. I like to show you how many hours and dollars it takes to run a proper experiment in salvaging or sustainability because you need to feel the work before you comfort yourself with the narrative.

I cannot persuade myself only to sit and play my guitar, or my videogames, or disappear indefinitely into shows and YouTube. I don’t have kids. My bills aren’t incredibly high. I’m not the head of any organization. But who I am, or the tools I’ve been given, don’t exist, can’t exist, unless they exist relative to my experience, work, and recognition of the world around me. I live in nation teetering on fascism. I live in an environment poised to make us all extinct. My brain doesn’t shut off just because I travel somewhere or find some new preoccupation. It’s all happening all at once and in every moment.

I can bare the weight of that perpetual existential crisis. I’m not going to kill myself or drink myself stupid. I’m not going to get depressed and retreat. I’m not going to stay silent. I’m going to keep calling out “you” for not bothering me for anything but the placation or indulgence of your feeble feelings. I’m going to keep questioning what you’re really working on and point out the elaborate excuse-ridden nature of the children’s game you’re calling “adulting.”

Don’t get the impression that any of this matters, either. It only matters to ME. It matters that I write the blogs, build the wood shop, get the pallets, be on time, or achieve a level of technical sophistication in how quickly I can move my fingers along an instrument. I don’t need you to come on board. I don’t need you to invite me into your thing or entreat the baggage I would bring. I know that the things I need have nothing to do with me at all, they just exist at the ends of my patience or willingness to manipulate. I have gained considerably more patience over the years and my heart isn’t in manipulating.

I am going to ask that you pay attention though. I can’t make you read the blog, but I can make sure it says you should recognize how bad you are at being honest with yourself. Are you happy, full, or fulfilled? Are your days filled with meaningful interactions or mildly gratifying indulgences? Does something call to you when it gets too quiet? Did you reach out, speak out, or take a punch in a worthwhile fight? Did you sacrifice something that matters in service to something that matters more? Whose fault is it, me for pointing it out, or you for running away?