It’s just before noon on Sunday. I don’t have anything particularly pressing to do. I learned yesterday a belt sander I ordered was “delivered” to a tree in the middle of my drug-addled neighbor’s yard, so naturally when I went to retrieve it, it was probably hours into its way to being pawned. A few minutes ago, I received a text asking if I wanted to work from 5:30-8:30 last minute. I don’t, but there’s a broader political game I’m playing at work that it might positively influence to do so.
I’ve had around 3 “acute” flare ups of stomach-dropping anxiety over the last few days, the most recent maybe 2 hours ago. I’m a person who, in some form or fashion, wants to feel like he’s being “productive.” Sometimes that looks like extra sleep. Most days it’s trying to wrap as many little errands into whatever else I’m doing. The more free I feel, it bleeds into exploring hobbies or ever-fledgling business ideas. The belt-sander was going to speak to one of those, but because I’m so rarely home anymore, what I hoped to start yesterday will no doubt be pushed another week away.
While I idle and contemplate, I scroll and copy text into Natural Reader from articles about the state of the country. I’ve got Severance paused 7 minutes from the end of the latest episode. I’ve got a text half-written to my handyman friend about getting my water fixed and turned back on. There’s nothing “calling to me” beyond an encroaching desire to shit, complicated by the fact that my water isn’t on, and composting isn’t my favorite way to spend time. I have leftover pizza I should eat before a headache sets in.
All of that feels like things to mention in order to “get them out of the way.”
I have one brain. Every impulse or occupation of that brain is on the same plain. I could reroute my day towards unanticipated work, or slide right back into my couch and fall asleep. I could bemoan the rise of fascism, or play my guitar. The inherent conflict in how or whether I express my values can reduce me to a paralyzed haze, or matter-of-factly give me a reasonable sounding road to trod along. I’m presented in every moment of every day with the opportunity to reflect my understanding of myself, my values, or what I think is the right thing to do right now.
When I don’t know, I write. There is no perfect logic that would justify keeping to myself and pretending my options are more limited than they are. I’m not suffering ambivalent feelings about how I might spend the rest of my day. I’m certainly not yet feeling “motivated.” There are little organizational things I could do around my house. I don’t anticipate anyone reaching out to me to do something fun. I suppose I’m feeling decently “selfish.”
I believe your job is one of those things that takes considerably more from you than it could ever give. You’re not just at work the hours you’re there. You have the commute. You have the stress you must decompress from within the amount of sick, personal, and vacation days they see fit. I’m talking about my job right now, and I genuinely hate that. I hate even more that it’s such an all-encompassing substitute for how I might otherwise meaningfully engage my time that there’s a temptation to go.
Thankfully, I was able to dig out the deeper feeling in typing that. I don’t want to go. It wasn’t clear to me whether I might or not until then. If I did go, it would be only after I found and allowed for how much I don’t want to. I don’t want to float through ambiguous space. I don’t need to go to continue my broader political aims. I don’t need to endear myself towards one of the people who will be there I’m looking to subvert. The money will not be worth it. It will mess up my sleep schedule. It will push my willingness and ability to get those little house things done that much further away.
As I look for what to say next, my eyes drift to harrowing news articles about the ongoing fascist chaos. I believe what happens at the macro level is an extension of what’s being experienced in the micro. It’s one of the reasons I belabor each beat of my thoughts and what’s vying for my attention. If I’m a confused chaos agent, things I care about in life will suffer the effects from my chaos. I think you get “strong men” totalitarian waves because you have huge swaths of the population who want a magic daddy to fix all their problems they’ll never bother to own or articulate.
My job, like so many, is poorly organized and run by people who demonstrate immaturity, ambivalence, and exhaustion regularly. You don’t have to do some deep dive into the pathological make-up of the players. It’s the same tendencies and excuses wherever you go. They need people tonight because they are fundamentally stocked with unreliable people. They hired those people with an attitude about hiring concerned only with spot-filling. You don’t need an advanced business degree to know what happens next.
So it goes for our broader social and political environments. We don’t get our thoughts coherently organized around what’s antagonizing us, motivating us, scaring us, or empowering us. We just lay out all the feels in memes, tiktok videos, and shutting off our brains entirely. Always, “the problem” doesn’t exist until we feel it. You love voting for fascism right up until he ends your job? Sweetheart, your job was to never be confused about the nature of fascism in the first place. It still is. You gonna use your extra time to wise up and do better? Or are you so far down the stupid and lazy rabbit hole you’d rather die than face the truth?
You’d think the pandemic would have taught us that with so many dying while so ardently denying the danger. You’d think the alleged science communicators and reporters would have worked that much harder to convey consistent and accurate information as it developed. Instead, we double-down until the handful of people responsible for keeping the train on the tracks get to use their space to exploit and control that much more.
I’m mostly fascinated how I’ve been able to just kind of watch the burn. I think The U.S. is all-but lost, but only because every day most individuals at every opportunity are doing what it takes to stay that way. Most aren’t at Bernie’s rallies. Most aren’t picking up the phone to call and complain. Most aren’t getting detailed and nuanced about how anything actually works. Most aren’t advocating for the dramatic overhauls it would take to rediscover accountability. It’s still buzzwords, clickbait, awkward “stop hitting yourself” responses from the “opposition.”
I might have a chance of being apart of something worthwhile at my job because I work on and account for it each day. What would my effort in service to my country look like otherwise? Pithy and passive facebook comments on my fascist governor’s page? Calls to a full voicemail box? Honking extra aggressively in solidarity with protestors as I drive by? Do I really believe that the local translates to the macro, or do I suffer an ongoing delusion about the butterfly-effect hopes I assume for my potential impact? I think, though, it’s not a “belief.”
I just watch the same patterns, I don’t dictate them. I see what happens when you lie, whether it’s “at the top” or interpersonally. I know how I feel when I’m invited to play along with that game. I know what happens when you offer an excuse versus take responsibility. I know what happens when you can’t be bothered to account for all of the things at play in your brain, so you default to cliches and denial. I know how it plays out practically to be too afraid to speak up, be it to your colleague, or to a corrupted locus of power that would prefer to operate within your ignorance and its ability to intimidate.
I will start “believing” that “we” have anything resembling the tangible and practical capacity to fix or save anything when my day-to-day is more honest and accountable than I’ve been witness to my entire adult life. What happens when I am able to write about all of the things I can reliably trust, that are speaking to my stability and growth, and my ability to invest and see come into fruition? I struggle to even imagine it anymore.
What I can trust is the nature of a handful of individuals in my life. Take notice of the deliberate phrasing in trusting their nature. I can trust that I will continue to take the time to parse out where the heart of my motivations lie. I see an incredible amount of danger and death coming. I don’t feel there’s going to be an adequate response or appropriate lessons learned. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to “escape” so much as attempt to “insulate” to the degree the next pandemic or brown-shirt hoards allow me to.
This is what you asked for in pretending you don’t speak the language of what it takes to survive, let alone live well. You don’t get to engage in apologetics for greed, rape, pride, Nazi salutes, religious zealotry, anti-science “choice,” and held-harmless detached observation and “just asking questions” without an equal and opposite reaction from a cold and ambivalent universe. I may not be able to control the automatic responses in me to the smell of that bullshit soup, but I don’t have to bow at the feet of who’s serving it.
I think it’s time for pizza and laundry.
No comments:
Post a Comment