[1179] Problematic

I think one of the bigger, presumptive, places that I’m more readily moving away from is the idea that, nearly anyone, is genuinely interested in “solving a problem.”

This isn’t meant to sound like some kind of abstract fatalism. I think my appreciation for what constitutes “problems,” people’s perception of them, and the utility they serve has been a major blindspot and underappreciated. That is, a “problem” to you is explicitly someone else’s “solution” devoid of a shared context. This can be anything from a political football topic like abortion to substance abuse to every layer of self-deception both necessary or insisted upon to ride the story of your life.

I try to be careful in my formulation and definition of “problem.” I find myself, particularly after I developed a habit of writing, qualifying my problems with things like, “first world,” and “I’m healthy, fed, have supports, stuff, etc.” My problems, by and large, are qualitative, selfish, and an extension of what I choose to indulge. That can certainly get fuzzy depending on what lens through which you wish to analyze and scale, but I’m not yet in genuine fear I’m merely at the mercy of the worst consequences of stupid-fascism, or hunger, or that sickness has to offer….yet.

The two areas of life where I dare invoke “problem” most often are with work and interpersonally. with work, I’m often trying to align the stated work goals or obligations with my personal values, competencies, or monetary goals. Interpersonally, I’m navigating people’s interpretations of how I speak to and attempt to achieve my goals. This is a consistent and ongoing series of conversations, roadblocks, and experiments.

Every year, I try to “give myself more room” to “engage problems” in a comprehensive way, and also via social experimenting. It’s not some kind of technical and scientifically robust experiment, and no matter how broad or encompassing I’d like to believe about my efforts, I’m always missing most of the story or necessary components. Nonetheless, this is how I tend to approach my “existential problem” of undiagnosed-ADHD or “multi-potentiate” or “busy-brained” or “woefully-under-achieving-high-achiever” kind of existence.

Practically, this looks like being childless and having my shed-house in the middle of nowhere so I can free up funds. This looks like the cars I drive that cost less than the tires I need to replace on them. This looks like my ability and willingness to both take and quit jobs that it’s unclear if they’ll serve my broader ideals and lifestyle. It’s the tone in my emails when I’m met with professional irrationality. It informs the standards for my friendships and concept of family. It helps me put my Amazon wishlist in order, because some toys expand how you might work or create, and some are just nice to have.

A lazier and imprecise me might say I have a problem at work with someone who recently emailed my boss an outright lie. It’s a simple lie from a simple person about where I spent my time during a holiday party. It’s an invitation from that person, and my boss, to get into a he-sad/she-said infinite digression that foments resentment, stress, and inefficiency. Thankfully, I’m not that lazy and imprecise. I knew, before I ever took the job, the kind of people I’d be working with, the blindspots and vulnerability of my boss, and most importantly, my broader series of goals.

If, stupidly, my goal was to persuade that staff member to tell the truth, I’d be stuck in a hell of my own making. If my goal was to make my boss better at discerning who to trust, or better at holding people accountable, or better at organizing her own responsibilities it’s the same deal. I don’t couch my goals in my ability to necessarily transform how people behave. This is a subtle, but important distinction from “holding someone accountable.” I can’t change you. I can change the environment from which we operate. If the environment lacks someone willing to speak clearly and honestly and able to account, I can choose to be that person.

In my experience, this has been both my personally mental-health saving series of choices, and professional ass-saving one as well. I’m not the kind of person who fucks around at work and makes it easy or obvious that I should be fired, written-up, or otherwise condescended to about how I’m approaching a role. I get the privilege of that confidence because I accept and recognize how I feel good and thrive when I choose to operate that way versus any other. Be it at the grill at Steak-N-Shake or at the table of other “directors,” I’ve met an endless array of people who complain. They have no desire to organize, fix, unite, or even speak to those above them. Worse than all that, they refuse what power they have to operate as good as they can in their own realm.

I find this propensity everywhere. It’s the first-line call center representative who knows your problem can be fixed with a click or a pass to the supervisor, but pretends for 20 minutes otherwise until you get angry. It’s my addiction counseling clients who, intellectually, have every answer to every problem, but can’t be persuaded there’s anything to tangibly practice or is worth experiencing discomfort during as they learn. It’s family who make (or have stolen) hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars who only tell stories of what they can’t afford. It’s apologetics of every flavor. It’s infinitely tailored to your industry, hobbies, and psychology.

I’m not under the illusion that I’m perfectly helpless and at the mercy of history. I’m deeply baked into how fucked “everything” is and how amazing everything is relative to something else all the time. I’m an “all things being true” kind of person who then asks the question of what my next move could or should be. Almost always, the answer starts with something like this. I take the endless flow of competing and messy ideas, write them down, read/listen to them, and keep asking where “I” exist, my agency and choice, to engage parts, all, or none of it.

I don’t consider it a “belief” system that we’re all united by something shared, coherent, or “greater” and “more powerful” than ourselves. This is the language we have, not the words I’m married to. I talk about how you don’t need complicated math or philosophy to pull your hand out of a fire. Barring a unique medical condition, that shit will hurt, kill you, or otherwise make it untenable to be conscious, so if you’re choosing to stay alive, you stay the fuck out of the fire. We get to decide how to frame our imprecise concepts as “more fiery” or not.

A good portion of my life has been in a state of confusion about what constitutes fire. That’s because I was basing it on the people around me. When my aunt was getting routinely physically abused by my uncle, it never made sense to me why all of these large men on my mom’s side of the family, one of them being an army sergeant, didn’t beat the fuck out of her husband and tell him to stop. And my dad’s side, I never understood why my uncle was able to get away with talking to my grandmother like she was trash. My grandmother whom he lived with his entire adult life, cooked for him, cleaned, and was just a beacon of love and care for her family.

As an adult, I can understand how notions of “family,” or “love,” or histories between people can complicate whether or not, on balance, for any individual, a little physical or verbal abuse is the bargain solution for a sense that it’d be hotter, for all involved, otherwise.

Most people most of the time aren’t going to write out pages of context and situate their series of choices as things to own and embody. Most people are going to reflexively react and justify, like a child who says, “Yes, I hit him, BUT.” Most people don’t grow out of that, they just turn it into something superficially more complicated.

In the spirit of that superficiality, a lot of choices look downright bizarre devoid of that shared context and sense of reality. Why take jobs you don’t like? Anyone with a remote sense of responsibility might angrily answer that question. Why spend your money on (x)? If you have an acute sense of time and how quickly it’s running out, things snap into focus. Or, if you adopt a fairly ambivalent or nihilistic sensibility, you’ll puff, pop, and glug away until your successful acceleration of your time to go. How invigorating and engaging can we make isms/ists, religiosity, gossip, reality TV, or consumerism when the alternative is to face and suffer the details that belie their appeal?

Who wishes to wake up everyday with a mantra akin to, “I’m an angry, afraid, irrational and infinitely ignorant great ape with bad habits, harmful biases, and a terrifying capacity to destroy, but there’s genuine hope and reason to believe things will be okay, and not because a strong-man or magic sky daddy told me so.”

Ultimately, my problems have nothing to do with you or your behavior. They have to do with my willingness to engage my perception in any given moment and perhaps reevaluate my goals or approach. Right now, I need to make just-enough money. I need to continue learning about my latest interests in music production, day-trading, and woodworking. I need to do some chores, finish some episodes, and maybe run a few errands. I need to stay on top of how much time I spend in service to an ideal versus rumination on when it’s been violated. I’m not here to argue a case more than live by an example. And, to be sure, it’s an example for me first, because I don’t believe a goddamn thing about what you say about the example I’m watching, recording, or navigating through what you set.

I think if you’re upset about pay, you organize and demand more. I think if you recognize and wish to fix the catastrophe of gossip, don’t pass it along. I think if you find yourself stuck in a chronically abusive dynamic, it’s a choice to define your situation as such, and detail your responsibility to it, all things being true about the tyranny of your oppressor. In this way, you don’t have to be naively optimistic, dispositionally blessed, or exceptionally lucky to enjoy most moments of most days. You’ll start to see the way out of suffering in small or selfish ways. That is, if you think it’s even a problem to do so, and want to fix it.