[1237] Pointy Fingers

I think I’m gonna need to uncover what I want to talk about as I do.

Part of me wants to talk about attention. As a watcher of hundreds of shows, listener to dozens of podcasts, and attender of hundreds of performances, my sense of how I utilize my attention might be an aberration. Sam Harris beckons us to “wake up,” an idea echoed from one of my favorite movies Waking Life. The throughline of a movie I first caught as a teenager to the words of a public thinker today is my memory and expression of my attention.

It strikes me as mutually if not equally important to consider not just what you focus on, but how. Rich people talking about issues talk about them differently than “average” or “poor” people. I still don’t get the sense that any camp really clocks that difference. It’s one highlighted when you bounce between podcasts. Posh intellectual types speak differently than contributors to the brand, and seemingly what ties them all together is the ability to confidently assert their opinions as good as any person with a million views ranting in their car.

Why would we want attention altogether? We know people monetize it. We know how isolated and angry or anxious people feel, so when someone even pretends to see it there’s a vein of solidarity. As a counselor, I tend to see the exact opposite desire. The more people pay attention, the more they see how responsible they are, and they don’t like that. The more they focus, the more they feel the layers of contradictions and discomfort in their body. It’s akin to being invited to working out, and immediately recoiling from the pain.

If you’re like me, I hate working out. I hate running. I did yoga again for the first time in months, and it was incredibly painful, and I felt immediately better, which has carried into today. The payout is rarely in the moment, and my scattered attention feels mildly tortured focusing on the pain behind my knees as I stretch and shift my hips back. I can also recall a time where I ran so consistently playing ultimate frisbee that I stopped getting winded over the course of two back-to-back games. My attention, when there’s mitigating factors, can be utilized to substantially better health than I regularly maintain otherwise.

I just got back home. My home is an endless series of calls for my attention. My computer has nine screens. I have hundreds of shows left to watch. My water has been broken for weeks. The instruments glare at me. The half-finished cutting board woodworking project is hanging out. The next videogame can be popped in or my phone is going to buzz that my resource production has maxed in Last War. My cat tries to force herself into my lap. I’m a little hungry. I’m a little cold. I have 259, functionally spam emails, from things I’ve at one point shown an interest in.

Those emails are all running the same kind of “give me your attention” game, thus they all become flat and “too much” very quickly. If any given journalist or essayist needs to post 3-10 times a week, you think I’m reading all that? If I’ve been to 50 different venues who all want me to see who’s coming up next…If I’ve expressed 30 seconds of interest in your guitar course and then you email me 30 times to remember to checkout or with your even better deal…It’s impossible to give a fuck. Now, I kinda hate what I sorta liked. Even the things pretending to organize it all, like Unroll Me, are junk, and you’ll spend as much time arguing with it as you would just deleting everything or unsubscribing.

Between this paragraph and the last I tackled my email. This month I got 113 unopened messages about performances at different venues or from band-tracking apps, and 105 unopened messages from a group I’ve just labeled “Talkers,” be they individual journalists, writers, statisticians, or podcasters. That’s not including actual spam, or those endless multi-tier email auto-signups if you click through an ad or sign up for something in order to order. Buried in all that bullshit were 2 emails I actually needed to focus on, my accidentally almost-lapsed car insurance, and what I need to do for/with a debt consolidation company.

While I’m writing I’m pausing to kill zombies. I’m contemplating heading outside to “pretty up” my white-trash looking property, or heading to town to Door Dash a bit. The calculation, the “why,” driving my behavior has been situated in a decently arbitrary place for quite some time. I have loose “wants.” My needs I’m never truly without. By extension, what grabs my focus often feels arbitrary or meaningless or on its way to being something I kinda liked that turns into something I sorta hate. I need more money, but only because I want to feel better about where I’m situated in what I owe to friends or family who need it in exactly the manner I do. I’m not taking food out of kids' mouths, like my Nazi governor, but it doesn’t mean I like the look, even fleetingly, like a leaching piece of shit.

Here’s where my orientation gets baited. I also have an exhaustive personality. If I decide to focus on one thing, I will do that one thing until I break. If I can convince myself that I am, in fact, too big of a leaching piece of shit, you won’t hear from me until I’ve fixed my problem so definitively, I can hardly recognize why I considered it a problem in the first place. I’ll be back to working sun up to sun down. I’ll sell everything there is to sell. I’ll eat the same cost-effective sandwich for every meal. I’ll essentially be playing dress-up as a guy with “real problems” and taking on the noble stress of how to be accountable to them.

In order to do that, I’d have to ignore, never forget, everything that has contributed to my current circumstances. I’d have to personalize every single detail as though there was no good reason to choose otherwise in the moment that I decided to increase my debt or stay in instead of drive all day and night. It becomes this all-encompassing, and ridiculous, exercise in self-flagellation. It’s barely sustainable. It’s not going to win me a medal or adoration. Why am I working then? For who? To get what? To build what? I want to keep doing almost all of what I’m currently doing, it’s just not mathing right in who I’d prefer to owe and over what time frame.

Hopefully, I find out in the next day or so whether I’ll have secured a new “normal” full-time job. I don’t hate the idea of a consistent paycheck. Combining that with any luck whatsoever in selling what I wish to sell should help me fix my debt situation in 3 months. The catastrophic feelings I catch when I look at my bank account or think about when someone covers a meal for me will swing the opposite direction. Theoretically, the weather will improve a little by then. I always have “so much” work to do, and yet observe myself sitting, waiting, and trying to efficiently approach so I don’t churn myself into a bitter and exhausted husk. I will do it. It’s a genuine worry I will pick that. And that’s precisely the point where you actually would only have yourself to blame.