[1175] Boss Baby

Oh, shit! You ready? I haven’t written in almost 3 weeks. In that time I’ve started a new job, gotten sick, my car shit the bed, I experienced what felt like a Craigslist “missed connection” at a comedy show in Chicago (Phil Hanley late Saturday show if you’re reading this, Sam!), and have already begun plotting on how to morph my new job role into something that isn’t tantamount to babysitting+.

Let’s start local. I got pink eye. I don’t think I’ve had pink eye since I was 4 years old. I’m a site director now for the YMCA. I’m around, by definition dirty, kids and the things they touch for at least 5 1/2 hours a day. No matter how much wood I’ve knocked in recalling how infrequently I get sick, they got me. This happened at the tail end of getting over a mild cold that decided to get worse just as I thought I had efficiently beat it. I wear contacts and don’t have backup glasses. My eye’s aren’t terrible, but driving has been extra.*

While sick, I’m getting a handle on the true nature of my role and responsibilities. As with most organizations, they have a “mission” and “ethos” and “goals” which are on thousands of pages of wasted paper and policy, but no less inform how some of the most true-believers operate. I’m at a poorer school that no less has figured out how to raise enough funds to consistently engage its kids. I’ve found some people to click with, and found some people who it’s clearly not in their nature to click. Underneath that is the fundamental problem all companies seem to have with basic demonstrations of competence and communication.

I can’t pretend that my job is that complicated, especially given my experience just in my hobbies, let alone at DCS or in counseling. I try not to say it in a condescending way, but I have said it dozens of ways, that I’m a glorified babysitter. At least, that’s how the role was translating my first few days when it sunk in that the difference between a YMCA program and an actual daycare is, drum roll, the programming of activities. If you don’t have anyone concerned with implementing and consistently executing programs, you’re just babysitting. Hence, in spite of 9 people currently hired to oversee 30-ish kids at my site, they hired me to, you know, actually direct something.

At first, naive me was asking things like, “Why can’t the 9 adults do what I’m told needs to be done here?” Several more days of watching people respond to my questions with deer-in-the-headlights faces and pensive toe digs while trying to explain how they’re getting paid to essentially hang out, I got my answer. Also, everyone before me is to blame, as well as the broader chaos of the YMCA leadership.

I’ve done that thing where I have immediately found common ground with the most adult and introspective person and we’ve had quasi-therapy sessions in the mornings about how things are ran or what informs our perspectives. She will be vital in helping me get on committees and pushing reforms that hopefully flesh out that identity and values the YMCA professes. The takeaway is the same as elsewhere, you need to be the adult.

I’ve got some experience with children, but I’ve never been interested in raising them, am bored to tears after too much of doing whatever it is they want to do, and am generally ambivalent about people which informs how I engage with them professionally. A key thing about this is that I don’t seek to control or dominate. I don’t yell at kids. I don’t condescend. I, viscerally, remember what it was to be a child, and actively attempt to mitigate unconscious cultural norms that aren’t helpful in cultivating what you want.

Thus, I have to be the adult for both the kids and the adults I’m now responsible for directing who might feel licensed to get loud and lecture-y and disingenuous in their approach to a kindergartner. For me, who does not profess to be an expert in child-rearing, but who is informed by his experiences, developmental science, and in watching how others operate, I maintain a certain degree of confidence my kids will figure out how to operate along more structured and accountable lines. I’ll suggest something like, don’t reward and entertain the kid who is being performative in their crying. I’m pliable, but keep a decently strong opinion about the efficacy of certain types of intervention, for what age, and under what circumstances.

Some people deeply appreciate this approach, others get petty, aggrieved, and gossipy. You will, under every circumstances, become “the enemy” in one form or another by virtue of any whiff of change altogether, but more accountable change in particular. That’s baked into any leadership role. To me, this means even more not to try to be a dictator more than demonstrator. I speak to the kids like I want you to speak to them. I credit them when they do something right. I trade in time, so when they waste ours, they get theirs wasted while they’re itching for the gym or playground. It’s literally only been 3 days of mild implementation of “my” way, and I’m already seeing positive results.

It’s hard for me to not think about what my day-to-day looks like at scale. We’re now tasked with hoping and praying our way through the next Trump catastrophe, but that’s only to frame it as though we aren’t the fuck ups. That’s to again distance ourselves from our impact and ignorance and hate that dictates the ship. I’ve no less been listening to all my podcasts and reading about how people attempt to digest the zeitgeist. I can’t recommend enough listening to someone like Anthony Scaramucci and then the 5 vs 4 crowd back-t0-back. Or the guests of Michael Moynihan and Bari Weiss and then up-in-arms Leftist academics on Michael Shermer. The nature of wanting/needing a story to supplement or replace personal responsibility beams brightly.

I don’t think there’s a room with or interaction between any two people that exists where there isn’t both an obligation and potential. The obligation would be to something like an imagined universal human value. You treat people a certain way or expect something even as simple as holding the door open for all of space and time. The potential is for that interaction to be dictated or mitigated by personal folly and ambivalence. “It is what it is” as though you have no conscious choice. As though “reason” doesn’t exist or isn’t defined by how it’s executed in good or bad ways.

Monday this week, at 4:45 AM when I tried to leave for work, I discovered my tire was flat. I live in the countriest of country. It’s pitch black, freezing, and recall, my job isn’t that hard or needing of me to actually be there in order for the kids to be kept basically safe and supervised. It’s already extremely wasteful the hour drive I make there and back every day. I’ve been sick. I’ve got the excuse to stay home and sleep in playing out brilliantly. My truck is at my friend’s house. I’m not sure if the new-old car has the equipment to change the tire, further complicated by being on a gravel driveway. I could have left it at that.

I informed my boss of what happened. I sat briefly with my coffee, and proceeded to get to work navigating the problem. The tire wasn’t just flat, but the car I’m driving is very old and 2 windows are taped to try and hold them up. The tape failed, so the car froze on the inside too. Gotta get that fixed. After 3 hand-cranked failed attempts to get the jack to balance, I get the boot on. I drive straight to a tire shop up the road from my job. It takes hours, I overdraft my account paying more for needed tires than the car cost, and navigate from the lobby trying to get money from an account I almost never use, forgetting the pin. In the waiting hours, I cross the highway to mail a package, get food, and make some other errand calls. I was at work for the after school shift.

That night, a flash frozen rain descended upon the area. Parents were over an hour late to pick up kids. Wrecks blocked traffic. I’m perpetually tired the last 3 weeks adjusting to my schedule, sick, and am trying not to ruminate on the irony of being more in debt after getting a job and in needing to get there than by just being broke and at home. I’m staring down the hour and a half minimum drive. I, too, have to navigate remote country roads at 5 mph so I don’t end up like the SUV I stopped for just before I reached home. A “let’s drag this day out even more” cherry on top.

This is either a story of one massive bitch-fest meant to draw sympathy or a basic story of adult accountability employing the tools and skills of perspective and resilience to meet obligations. Some people will view it defensively and try to engage in a pissing match about who has it worse. Some will be ambivalent because...yeah it’s just life and we all get flat tires and deal with the cold. It’s vitally important to me that we all understand most the moments of inflection and choice. I could have sat out the entire day, blamed circumstances, and lied about my ability to address any part of it. I think that’s precisely what we’re doing at less viscerally obvious moments every single day.

You are accountable to you first or you cannot claim to be accountable for anyone else. I would not deserve a leadership position if I were the type of person to pretend I don’t know how to begrudgingly change a tire in the dark, freezing, and on my gravel driveway. I do, I did, and I’m sure I’ll have to do it again some day. I’m sick, so even if it’s more debt and I can’t “really” afford it, I have my medicated $150 eye drops and Urgent Care bill, and began reflexively disinfecting everything I touched at work. I need to continue to watch myself not being an excuse-ridden piece of shit in the world in spite of my very real, very reasonably felt grievances for things I suffer each day.

I unironically bring up unionizing in every job I take. I get zero enthusiasm, feedback, or curiosity about it. Everyone is keen to complain about the pay, disorganization, conflicting feedback, etc., no one, ever, will even entertain the conversation about how to do it better. They also know that, on balance, they’re probably getting away with a certain kind of murder in how they’re making their money or conducting their role. A union is an attempt at a more formal accountability. We, as a species, instinctively and reflexively do not want that.

Don’t be a screaming ape or in denial about your inner insecure kindergartner. We live and die by what we are bringing into or seek to take away from how we engage with one another. I want patience. I want beat by beat reasoned understanding and reflection. I want an earnest investment towards positive changes and values that aren’t empty abstracted truisms eking out of ambivalent cliches masquerading as adults and leaders. Getting by or through each day on some egocentric story of your rights, victimization, or entitlements is not the same thing as demonstrating your understanding and embodiment of your value system. You might profess to be the boss of your own life, but you should be acting as a avatar of what the best version of that life could look like.

[451] Spare

Pride comes before the fall, or so I’ve been told. If there is a more famous sentiment that can’t be passed laterally to “eye for an eye,” I challenge you to find it. I suppose were it not so famous it wouldn’t be worth talking about its nature to hide. You couldn’t break down when it appears or explain what it does to whatever subject has been introduced. And what of the fall? It seems to me we no longer believe in such a thing, but moreso insist it needs to happen faster. It’s not a faint hint of caution or parable, it’s 21st century fascist rallies and cheering austerity. It’s fatalistic. It’s me getting ahead of myself.

I understand what it feels like to be confident in something you’ve done or studied. I believe it was a qualiasoup Youtube video that talked about pursuing your Ph.D, and for all the time that it took you are a bubble on an infinitely growing circle of knowledge. It’s respectable to occupy one’s brain and pursue knowledge, surely at some level to the betterment of humanity in general. In another light, it can isolate you into only ever being able to relate to the world through that medium. “The rest” shrinks and implicitly becomes less worthy of your time or capacity.

Now of course several years spent studying a subject or devoting a standard work day to your craft is not the same thing as being some feral child in the woods. Given the amount of on-the-fly analogies I’m sure to make in this, let’s adopt the habit of not reading into them too far. The idea remains the same. “The whole of life” is a subject unto itself in marrying science and philosophy, the natural and machines, the body and the “self.” To wholly advocate or relate to the world from an even more specific and particular trapping of the imagination, than the limits of our bodies already impose, doesn’t do us any favors.

As I see it, some people chase the white dragon beyond the realm of common sense or courtesy. It’s what makes pursuing goals that don’t rely purely on your own effort a pain in the ass. I look for programmers, I get very serious people who are very professional and busy who could never dare to indulge my fantasy if I don’t swallow their email lecture and appreciate just what kind of standing they hold in the “programming world.” Mother fucker, you’re looking for jobs on Craigslist. I didn’t call an elite firm in downtown Chicago asking for a revolutionary new program to guide a tank with mind control.

But everyone’s got advice. How could they not? One person sent me the equivalent of a “DIY build a business plan” template just so they could better understand what I want is a map that already exists, but needs to display marginally different information. I want to know how rock hard they get when they tell me their hourly rate. I want to know why it’s relevant you programmed an app once that no one’s heard of and several pages that remind me of the alterations I used to make to my Myspace.

It’s riding a wave of bullshit. That’s the most frustrating thing about “becoming familiar with everything” you will ever experience. Everyone is so. full. of shit. It already feels understated and fact-of-life right? That’s because your experience of everyone being full of shit is itself So. Full. Of shit! Crazy right?

Because when you might jokingly write off a teenager’s expression of love, I spent years delving into how or why that love was or wasn’t coming from God. When you are able to write off and enjoy the show of modern day politics, I spent several months trying to put candidates in a historical context that didn’t reduce me to tears upon thinking too heavily about their influence on our collective psychology. It’s a form of suffering, I don’t want you to pretend there’s an ounce of worthwhile pride I’m seeking. I have to figure all of it out, because the pain of not knowing is worse.

And I suppose I don’t know enough people who are the same. I don’t work with people who have an unflinching sense about the standard they hold and what it feels like each second it can’t be met. I have habits I know are explicitly what I’m looking for in other people in order for things to go right. I don’t need trial periods. I don’t need to hold your hand. I’m not in doubt what needs to happen and the type of person that needs to be behind it. Wagging your price tag, burdened by your habit of attempting to school me, hell, even responding with anything but a dispassionate “ok, gotcha” is a dead giveaway you’re probably the worst fucking person I should never be working with.

The world really does operate on this “choice” thing I’ve mentioned in the past. Let’s talk about Oregon students getting shot up. Intellectually, I don’t want to be randomly shot or afraid of the country I live in. Personally, fuck em. I don’t give a shit. I’m not choosing to shoot people nor advocate for their right to be blissfully unaware of how the rest of the world operates around guns. I don’t hold myself responsible for dead people from gun violence. The fence sitters. The Constitution jockeys. The insanely afraid of every bump in the night crowd. You killed those people. And if anyone went down who held the same views, they killed themselves.

This idea of responsibility. It’s a fucking joke. According to your silence, according to my general perception of society at large, according to popular comments online and attitudes from the farthest reaching voices on the planet, I could die tonight and be said to have “won” the game. Don’t believe me? It’s not the awards I could pursue, the position I could hold, or the amount of people I’ve influenced. I have money, time, friends, hobbies, if not only several reasons I’m still keen on waking up tomorrow. I understand power to be fleeting, my ego and time illusory (yet effective), and on my worst day you’ll get something like this and a horrible joke, unless I get too drunk and then maybe a hole in the wall. Small potatoes.

Old people will tell you to appreciate your health. No better time to go out than before the cancer strikes. Pursue your goals and learn things! Leave aside that knowledge alienates and weighs on you. Did you know there used to be a medical condition attributed to people who learned too much? Consume consume consume! I literally have nothing left to buy that isn’t meant to mimic bored upper middle class people. Paycheck to paycheck? Nah, bills paid 5 years in advance and many days I feel I’d be comfortable living out of a van if paying those ever becomes too cumbersome. Hang out with your friends! Maybe a few times a year, and haven’t you gone back to people as cattle? Surely people love you! This isn’t “It’s a Wonderful Life,” they’ll manage as well as they are without my word vomit.

I need to rid myself of what feels like a curse. Something about me needs to die. It is beyond weird as fuck to think my life would be considerably easier if I were a suicidal person. Slow that down and tuck your concern back in your pocket. Objectively, dead people don’t feel the burden to whine, a significantly easier task than finding the words to chase away the headaches.

How easy it would be to have faith! How easy it would be to be fatalistic! What a joy were I a pothead! What grace could a constant flow of rum bestow!? Nay, stretch my athletic machismo and take up boxing! The cure all along a kind of irony only blows to the head could mete out.

I mean, in reality, even the environment I think about cultivating in the future, it’s still not even the greatest proportion of “me.” I think about the last friend hangout. For all the lore of Corbin’s basement. I wasn’t there in the past. I don’t belong in the basement. It can’t be resurrected in the same form anymore than my house parties. It’s almost a freak accident I fell into this group of friends given how little paperwork and zero fees were due. I’m barely athletic, could give two shits about the outdoors. My tie seems to be our capacity to be assholes. Old news? Ever stated explicitly? Does it matter?

In a sense. Because then when I’m complaining or advocating or trying, I’m not really speaking the same language. You’re all smart people. We can obviously discuss things in intelligent ways and that’s a huge draw when you’re cultivating a healthy atmosphere. But I’m not calling you to hide the body. Of course it’s not a knock against you, but it’s more than a difference of hobbies, ya know? A nagging ruthless efficiency isn’t friendly.

I feel I’m constantly dancing around “pride.” I feel like pride is supposed to instill a sense of joy or belonging. Like you’ve staked out your place and feel confident you’re providing something valuable. Perhaps you’re now “proof” of something ineffable. I provide the contents of my ass and every once in awhile it strikes a chord. I debate whether finishing a book or getting drunk and doing trivia alone are going to be more “respectable.” I invite people to constantly talk and think down about me with blogs, in doing drug trials, or in what the average observer would no doubt call “failed” coffee ventures. The only time I felt proud was dashing headlong driven by naivety. It certainly doesn’t matter how old you are. I just feel like I’m constantly bumping into the previous gaps in my perspective exhibited in other people. And instead of informing me what I’m almost certainly fucking up, people can only condescend; if I’m lucky, shrug their shoulders.

You’re not “proud” when someone doesn’t operate like you. You’re envious they can operate like they are. I feel I’m nothing if not capable of bringing people down. Raining on the parade. But it’s in service to, “but fuck everything I’m saying, I genuinely hope it’s the best thing ever.” I can’t just spend money and believe. I can’t just take words for it. I can’t take pride in the words “start-up” or “entrepreneur.” I don’t forget everything I want to do or haven’t done just because I’m surrounded by more relaxed types nor pressured by the unreasonably anal. I’m always just here. I’m just waiting for a cue that isn’t to eat, shit, start a movie, or write.

I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to debate whether or not you can grasp I understand the reasons I’m going about something the way I am. But I really don’t want to fucking pretend. I don’t want the same handful of people constantly come to mind when I think about their habits and how they pollute the landscape at large. I don’t want to relate to the world through facebook chat and pictures. I want to be exhausted, just not existentially. My environment, big and small, is zapping my will. I’m in a drought. Someone turn off the sun.