FINGERBLAST THE FUTURE

So I just finished a shitter of a week that ended with a merciful blumf. Two, count 'em, two projects fell out of the sky with the same deadline in the same week that I'm on deck to do some volunteer work for our church, and...well, I won't bore you with the details, but it sucked there for a while.

Friday morning I went for my quarterly psychiatrist visit so that my doctor could be sure that the TV isn't telling me to masturbate on the mayor's dog before she gave me more pills to make the shiny things be less distracting. We talked about my life. I mentioned I was angling for a promotion, and I've got the kids, and Jack's in kindergarten and Georgia's being potty trained, and my wife works too hard so I'm hoping that the promotion will take some pressure off of her, and I'm on campus all the time because I'm a student here working on a Master of Public Health degree, and...

She held up a hand and laughed. "Are you sure you want this promotion?"

Well...no. It's a sexy thing, but no, I'm not. But I know it's a big shot that I'd be good at, I'm unhappy where I am, and I'd rather risk climbing into a fire than stay in this annoyingly tepid sauna of busy work.

There are two items that will forever stay at the top of my to-do inbox. These are they:

The first is a reminder of where I need to go, the second of how I'm going to get there. Do something with your life that needs to be done, find a way to make things a little better and maybe just maybe leave a mark on the world, and oh yeah, work is the only thing that will get you there.

I cling to those two sentences like a life preserver sometimes, and sometimes it's enough just to let them nudge up against my brain. Keeping them in my inbox means I look at them at least twice a day. That way the distractions can't make me forget.

If you had told me fifteen years ago that my pants would be constantly vibrating at work and that that would anger me, I'd have laughed.

— middleclasstool (@middleclasstool) July 9, 2012

It's all so damn hard to navigate sometimes, and if it weren't for my system, I'd probably be traveling upriver to murder a colonel.

My system, if there be a damn that you give, is the stereotypical Mac nerd setup: Getting Things Done (well, most of it) and OmniFocus. It's a bit difficult to get used to, but once you get okay at it (I don't think anyone ever gets good at GTD), it's very useful.

Uses:

• Not standing in the middle of Target thinking what was the other fucking thing that I needed here
• Indeed, having a mobile application that knows I'm near Target and need to stop in there for stuff. Achievement unlocked: ROBOT BUTLER
• Not annoying my bosses or my justifiably weary wife with yet another thing I forgot
• Boiling all the things in my life down to what I can do right here, right now with the tap of a finger
• Remembering books and movies and websites and games and wines and comics I want to remember, ideas I want to write about, and things to make my wife and kids happy

I'm careful not to put only work in there, for fear my system would become a thing I would avoid. I put happy stuff in there like a recurring lunch date with my wife and an insanely difficult puzzle I want us to do together rather than watch TV. I'm thinking of setting up geofenced reminders all around the city of fun things I can do with the kids when we're out and about. Project likely to be called "Planned Spontaneity".

It was after I got all that stuff in there that I looked at my screen and realized I was seeing damn near the sum total of my life, the chores and errands and work and distractions and things I value, my days and weeks and months to come. My system was showing me the hard data of who I am, and I found myself comparing that to who I want to be. The outcome was okay, but there was a vacuum in there waiting to be filled.

So now I use those lists to chase that first inbox item and never fall prey to the second. And it's a wonderful twist of fortune that the same system that mapped out my life for me also relieved my brain of the burden of remembering, thereby carving out enough space in said brain to think about those two sentences.

Every morning I process my stuff, check my calendar, write my day out on a sheet of paper, and update my trickle list. For the rest of the day, I am out of my system unless I'm running errands. Every evening I check off what I did and take time to think about whether I did anything that day to move forward. I usually spend that time trying not to beat myself up. But I also try to understand where I am and where I can go from here.

You can't think your way out of it. Should I go for the job? Shouldn't I? Should I be spending all this money on grad school? Should I ditch it all and learn the harmonica? Shut up shut up shut up.

Forward motion. Get up and do a thing. Fuck finding your passion. Work. Grab anything interesting when it comes by. Keep your eyes open, and keep your stuff out of your brain so you're ready when you see sexiness happening. Go run. No, fuck you, go run, and tomorrow pick up heavy things and put them down repeatedly. Did you write today? Fuck you. Go run, then go write.

It seems the only hobby I have is making myself suck less. I'm okay with that, as long as it's in service of something greater, lest I disappear up my own ass. As long as it's to make tomorrow come. To be ready when the opportunity presents itself.

Notifications that aren't mission-critical may die in a fire. Email, I don't want to hear from you more than hourly. Twitter, I've somehow found the ability to ignore you most of the day, and I believe it's called "Wellbutrin". My system made the space in my brain to think, and I'm cutting all of you off to make the time.

More days are failures than successes. I'm gradually becoming okay with that. I'm gradually getting better at understanding what it really is I want. Road's gotta lead somewhere. Thanks to the pills and the system and the many many people who have led me to this place, I can think about it, but of course I can't think my way out of it.

I keep a third sentence in my pocket at all times, and it reminds me of a related thing that's equally important. This one's from Leonard Cohen:

I hated everyone
but I acted generously
and no one found me out

Your hands will tell you what your brain cannot. Your brain may lie to you; your feet will not.

It's a curious thing not to trust your brain, indeed to think of it as something separate from you that must be managed. Wonderful servant and terrible master and all that. But it seems to be working. I try not to depend on it to remember. I try not to listen to it when it whispers to me about the possibilities. I try to grit my teeth and take a step forward, because it's the only way I'm going to find out.

Want evidence that I'm right? It took me five drafts of this post and probably at least 6,000 words before I got the right foundation laid. I didn't figure out what I was trying to say until I started writing while I was making dinner. Two-way chicken. I shit you not.

Go and Do Likewise

I don’t use them very much anymore, but I used to say a prayer of thanks every time I went through a fast food drive-thru. A literal prayer of gratitude that I was lucky enough to have been born into a life that kept me on the outside of that window.

I don’t scrub toilets for a living. I don’t pick up discarded condoms out of the backs of limousines. I don’t have to resign myself to the possibility of spending the rest of my life smelling the same floor cleaner every day. I don’t have to worry about shelter or fresh water, for that matter. A bad day for me is when my DSL connection goes down.

I feel fortunate because of this. I also feel guilty, sometimes, though I know it’s irrational.

Yet no matter how good the job, my most constant companion during the workday thus far has been a perpetual round-peg-square-hole sensation, that no matter how cohesive the team or stimulating the work, where I am is not for me, not long-term.

It’s not exactly a dissatisfaction, more a sense that it’s not what I was built to do, if you’ll pardon the determinism.

I met a woman in an Auto Zone parking lot once who claimed to be a prophetess. Mary was (and, I assume, still is) a die-hard evangelical Christian. She believed strongly that the Holy Spirit had given her the gift of prophecy. She wasn’t trying to proselytize, wasn’t insane or pushing an agenda on strangers. It only came up then because she felt what she believed to be a sudden stirring of the Spirit and began to use what she believed to be her gift.

I remember her looking me dead in the eye and declaring that I would one day help children. She fanned herself and smiled and shook just a bit and declared that she was feeling it strong that day.

I was in my early 20s, most of a decade away from having my first child. But she was adamant. Wouldn’t necessarily be yours, she said. But children. She was certain. It was strong that day.

Now, I don’t believe in prophecy, not as a magical psychic power. I believe a prophet is no more or less than a person who understands his or her own time and place perfectly, who sees what can and must change. That’s what John the Baptist was. That’s what Martin Luther King was. Hell, I could point to a long line of capitalists that fits the description. Certainly it wasn’t Mary, as she only knew my first name.

But what she said occasionally comes bubbling up from the depths of half-remembrance and I wonder if it will come true. What really pokes my poodle is wondering if it will because she indeed did have a gift, that of planting suggestions in perfect strangers’ respective heads.

My life and the Internet have taught me about one thing over and over again: my own privilege. I am white. I am a man. Damnable cruelty of aging aside, I am not difficult to look at. I am straight, I am thin, my gender matches my genitals, my parents could afford my college education, and I learn things usually much faster than the average person. I even attend a mainstream Protestant church, though my theology and ethics swerve pretty far left of the average Arkansan. Life, in short, is a goddamn golden goose for me.

Life owes me nothing. I owe life a debt of gratitude. Yet I do so little.

And then there are those people I am condescending enough to be grateful not to be. There are Mary’s words. And though I don’t believe in fatalism, there is that lingering question in my head: Is the sense I get with each new job that this will not be where I put down roots caused by this guilt? Can I even claim not to be a fatalist when I catch myself looking around an office where I am happy to work and thinking this is not where I am meant to stay?

To be dissatisfied with so much would be an unforgivable sin, were it not that I know that my real dissatisfaction is with myself, with my laziness and cowardice. I suspect I’d be happier if I did more. For all my liberal pretensions, I simply do not do enough for others, when the God I claim to believe in says it should be my whole life.

Anesthetizing yourself is much easier, of course. You merely start by saying the right sorts of things and getting angry at the right sorts of people. But the attractiveness of that option has faded, and my patience with myself is wearing thin. The trick will be finding something to do that doesn’t detract from my time with my wife and children, as I have so little to give them as it is.

Currently I work for a non-profit, trying to help doctors to provide better care for their patients. I believe it is very important work, good work. I’m going to start graduate school so I can become more of an expert in this field. Perhaps this will be the path to change. I hope it will, as I have no clue what to do otherwise. But more than that, I suspect (and hope) that this is only the beginning.

As for the children I was prophesied to help? Who knows. I adore kids, the smaller the better. I even made two of ’em, and for all my failures as a father, so far they’re all right, beautiful and brilliant little critters. I’d like to claim some responsibility for this. If I can help others as well? Name me something nobler, and I’ll do it.