Deflating

No, I don’t need to be doing this. No. Not right now. Shit. No.

Trying to write some code to parse my pay stubs from my last job into a usable spreadsheet format, so I can do some math and consider signing on with unemployment insurance. The mental gears are working and I’m diagnosing the problem, but just looking at the pay stubs, at what I made at that job — and what I’m not getting anymore — I’m throwing myself into a panic freakout. Fuck. God dammit. No.

I’m not broke, but I’m not gaining money. How soon until I run dry? How desperate will I be then? Fuck. More desperate than right now, for sure. The smart man would’ve found a job by now.

Putting the project away until a more level-headed hour. I need a distraction.

Stubbled Youth

Spent the evening at the cafe, most of it at a table with an older guy I know, a real gentle soul who has a way of listening to what is being said and then spinning it, centrifuging out the bare essences, and pulling them from the test tube to show them to you. It’s always great to talk with him. A young friend of his, a girl in her mid-20’s that he’d known closely for a while but I’d just met tonight, joined us, and we were having a good chat.

After an hour or so, another mutual friend, guy, long haired, walked up to our table, and was complaining about feeling invisible in this crowd of youngsters. My older buddy was nudging him to wear a dress to make himself less invisible. I mentioned that he would make one fine bearded lady. He laughed.

A minute later, this girl, the one I’d just met, began to roundhouse kick me over my “bearded lady” comment. In vague touchy-feely terms, she let on that she felt offended by my comment, not for herself, but because she knows an actual bearded lady or two. She then inferred that I should be made to confront a roomful of bearded ladies, make my comment, and then be shown my own teeth.

Is this woman for real? Is she actually taking my comment to task on equality grounds? Am I too insensitive to every race, color, creed, ethnicity, gender, gender identification, sexual preference, lifestyle choice, physical trait, and haircut known to all of humanity? Should I be ever vigilant and guard my words and thoughts at all times even if the offended party is not present nor accounted for when those thoughts and words are made manifest? This girl held a mirror up to my face, and I’m astonished that I could be so brazen, so cold, and so offensive. The nerve of me!

OK, I get it; she’s a 20-something with a psychology/sociology education and a checkered background trying to pull herself up and make the world a better place. I get it. With gender politics, everything becomes politicized. I get it. If you use a pen, you’re using a penis, because they have the same shape, and the penis is used to mark its territory on the virgin paper, which represents the vagina. I get it. It’s gender politics, and it’s about putting terms in places were, sometimes, terms really aren’t necessary.

Before I shortly closed the conversation and left, I told her that I would go home, get on Facebook, and find every bearded lady I can find and directly apologize to her because I was insensitive in my comment to a guy friend at a cafe. She was at least astute enough to pick up on my distaste for her politicization, but she carried on in earnest that I should follow through with my plan. Y’know, for the educational value.

I can’t believe I was that highly-principled and proximally offendable in my 20’s, but I was. It was a control thing, really. If I’ve learned anything in and after my 30’s, it’s that sometimes you just need to chill the fuck out and enjoy humor where it happens. Not everything is against you. Is that so wrong?

Prone, Supine

My greatest feat today was defeating gravity. It took an extreme force of will to pull myself up to a standing position. This is becoming a frequent problem of late, viewing the room from the floor, grabbing at the furniture, standing what I see when I look at myself. Forgiveness comes in tiny doses. I think I need forgiveness to come in tiny pills. Or hugs. Hugs are good. So is a friendly ear.

Vicious cycles are bad. They swirl, spiral, leaving a trail of smoke in the direction of the earth, the mass that pulls on us all. I don’t want to be on the floor; I’ll be there in due time, but not now. I need to live.

Puppet

The specter of job hunting looms large over my immediate future. I recognize that I need to work to live comfortably; I’m no lazy idiot. I stay busy, but my busy-ness doesn’t pay the bills. I also recognize that I’ve taken much too long to start searching, and have lost a lot of key opportunities in not doing so. I’ve beaten myself up quite a bit over that.

Really, the most abusive person I know is myself. I’m always there to shoot down my ideas. I’m the first to read off a list of requirements and duties on a job posting and tell myself every reason why I don’t measure up, so don’t even try. I’m the one who trots out all the lines to snare myself in a ball of strangling justifications. I’m everybody’s jaded father when it comes to my own possibilities. I’m everybody’s cold and aloof mother on matters of my own motivation and support. I am the worst mentor when it comes to learning for myself.

The big demons of self-doubt are, at their heart, puppets that I control. I’m looking at job postings and trying to judge if the job and I are a suitable fit. It’s in this judgment that my hands automatically start the demons’ mouths to flapping. It’s second nature to do so. I get that. But if I was in a relationship with someone as negative, abusive, derogatory, snarky, sadistic, and mean-hearted as I am to myself, I don’t think I’d be in that relationship for very long. If I’m to survive, I must drop the puppets and carry on.

Examined

Socrates, as reported by Plato, went on record to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being”. This has been my driving motivator, and chief justification, for journaling and blogging since 1991. Through doing so, I hoped, I would find myself, and my life would miraculously be worth living.

Twenty-two years hence, I’m left to call bullshit to Socrates’ sentiment.

Bullshit because the drive to know myself has left me more despondent, more guarded, more catatonic. The “ignorance is bliss” epithet reigns as the antidote to my doting. If I had examined my own head a lot less, there’s a possibility I’d have more time, and more confidence, to just get on with it and make life worthwhile.

Navelgazing has its place, but really the more I focus on myself, the more selfish I become. Some of that headstrong antidote would be good to have right now.