2003-06-02 - 2:29 a.m.

I am the Bedrock

I am at the moment a fairly broken individual, and bereft of much of what I have come to consider motivation -- and what of it? Agonize though I may tonight, I will be at work tomorrow clocking on at the appointed time and hustling people around to performing their duties as is necessary to keep John's store in operation.

Broken indeed, broken of what I used to have confidence in and -- thus -- clung to, because I have that tendency. A couple more illusions have shattered, but the pieces of each rise up again nearly as large as their progenitor. Post-modernism of the soul, I have no confidence that apparently blissful waters will not abruptly discover the capacity to allow a vortex to bloom.

Want to develop cynicism at an astonishing rate? How about its' opposite, humanistically oriented hope? Both, so simply: talk to the people around you. Which one you develop depends on how you percieve the conversations you have.

Let's say you're of the opinion that people are generally stupid, and that this opinion is lodged so deep in your behavior that a hell of a lot would have to change in order to retain a feeling of self-respect if you were ever to stop believing that people were generally stupid. You will tend to believe that the intelligent people you meet are exceptions, and that the brief flashes you see from others are misinterpreted stupidity; that the norm is to be confused by everyday tasks and three-syllable words, to be unable to cook one's own food or maintain one's property without hiring a professional. That the norm is to be the demographic, and that you are fortunately above that through whatever happenstance or effort of the Sovreign Will.

If you tend more toward the other end of this arbitrarily created scale, you will probably simply view the intelligent people you meet as comrades without thinking overly much of their frequency -- optimism, wholeheartedly, I suppose is how I would characterize this. You might tend to see what is loveable in people, regardless of their raw intelligence, and to see that it is not all that seldom that the "dumb" people see things you cannot because of a difference in perspective.

And if you're up here, the intellect becomes capable of some remarkable pounds-per-square-inch, and your perspectives tend to be things of hard-packed earth and stone rather than air or wind -- we're our own best defenses, and our own final bulwarks. On the up side, not to make it sound too hopeless, we're also the only ones who can really open the gates.

To be broken does not necessarily reduce one's functional capacity, much less in any sense worsen one's state of being.

Many things can be broken that impede everyday operation -- ice, illusions, and the ribbon at the finish line or a grand opening -- and we still persist in thinking of breaking

of disillusionment

as uniquely un-valuable, un-pleasant, avoid-worthy events in life.

It is something I attempt so very strongly to remind myself of constantly -- that we are defined as often by the desires that are not fulfilled as by our successes and triumphs, and that the importance of what we want is equalled by that of what we have. I am, as this diary shows simply by existing, very shitty at remembering this at any frequency that would be action-influencing or visible to those around me.

Imagine, when positive change is so rare and out-of-character that it's dismissed as a fluke.

--

It occurred to me today that there is a specific mood I sometimes get into where I am very social and very successful at talking to people and making them laugh and getting to know them a lot better than I did before -- hell, I can almost take their pulse from ten feet; just so abnormally attentive to the people around me that it's elementary to make most of them like me with a bit of effort.

I like that mood because I generally laugh more and am not so worried about where my life is going.

I wonder if that is what it is like to be happy, or at least somewhat chemically balanced -- I have sharper spikes into the positive, true, but I think I get the most lasting benefit out of the times I spend with other people.

If this is indeed the case, then the Paxil I am awaiting somewhat less than patiently may indeed help things more than I knew. Sleep-deprived or drunk or the few times I've been high, I have unbreakable confidence and the feeling that the chaos and confusion of the world is the surface on which I'm swimming, and yes I'm partially immersed in it, but I'm up there, if that makes any sense.

Imagine, being able to talk to people in person like I talk to them in text -- sharing thoughts and not particularly being bothered if the thoughts were recieved poorly or even ignored, because hey, there are other people.

Perhaps the only thing new to you about the previous paragraph is someone wistfully wishing for something you already have -- the awareness of it is the new thing, not the desire. Value, value, value, value, value what you have. Unlike the usual ending of the proverb, in which you are exhorted to value what you have lest it slip away, I will point out that valuing and appreciating something will not prevent it from being lost, but will preserve you from many types of poisonous regret, more dangerous in their own way than any arachnid.

I am running over thoughts in my head for the July Creative Writing Contest on SomethingAwful. The topic, literally or metaphorically interpreted being up to us to decide, is "heat".

I think that I may be writing about someone who strings up their hammock in high trees around a large city and waits to die, baking in the sun.

However, since I have not decided why they are there, how it will end, or what will happen in the interim, it remains merely a slightly strange idea -- and only strange because of the hammock, really, we're a civilization obsessed with death.

I would hate not to enter, knowing that it's there, but I would not respond well to something I actually worked hard on being flamed.

Another thing that comes to mind, thinking of heat, is that I have always pictured a motel in a little snippet of a book I once tried to start writing -- it was somewhere around 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the way through the book (not that I'd written the rest of it, mind you, beyond a few paragraphs that have remained unedited and unread for a couple of years now) and I'd been reading too much Jose Saramago and was starting to write like him, all run-on sentences and mystically abjurational half-nonsense statements of depth and fancy ..

and there she was in my head. She has black hair, and is probably at least half Mexican; it is probably eastern Washington or southern California, since it is very flat and red-tinged and hot outside. She is leaning on her elbow against the doorframe of the entrance to her room at a cheap stucco-walled motel in the middle of nowhere, a truck stop across the street drawing fading business as the night moves inward and the windows are no longer bright enough to keep away the awareness of the sun's departure. Her hair dangles down behind her and she looks like she ought to be smoking, since her right hand obviously wants very much to be doing something while her left supports her contemplative post, but there is no cigarette and there is no quick Bic click to start a smouldering flame.

And all I was really aware of, thinking of how the character who was her husband is thinking of her at right that instant in the book, is that he knows without justification or source for his knowledge that she is leaning like that right at that moment and looking at the sky. Seeing the day's blush fading to a more appropriately somber twilight blue over there to the west, above where her car used to park. And that he didn't need to know where she was if he knew that she was doing that, right then.

All doorways, you see, are the same in memories of love.

I can actually feel an interest in seeing how that one turns out. Perhaps that is the end, and that is the ending line -- the requisite topic, the heat, is what died between them.

Trust as heat. Social thermodynamics. Interesting.

I have not wholeheartedly tried to find anyone else to share this life of mine with in a year and some now -- the lack of wholeheartedness, it seems to me at this moment, dilutes the memory of what I had as much as does the attempt to expand and enrich it using other people. I cannot invite another into a romance I once had, and that was the .. crime? .. I used to commit.

Now the crime is that I no longer allow the possibility, nor look for it, nor do anything but turn it away whenever I can lest it be another beautiful disappointment.

------------

..yeah. In the six months to a year that I plan to remain here, barring further information or developments, I have much time to further my own physical and mental development. On Friday, I will be picking up my first full set of free weights, bar, plates, and all, expenses not withstanding. There are few things that will benefit me as much that I could do with my money, I am thinking, and there is a point beyond which barbells will no longer build mass.

I think I may have reached that point. I can curl a third of my body weight on my right arm fifty times, my left arm forty. I will never be a powerlifter, but I am not overly bothered by that -- few of the immense people that I have met were particularly bright or friendly.

Darla and I are adjusting to the thought of John being gone. The only image that comes to mind is closing ranks -- John will shortly no longer be available to answer questions or make decisions that we do not want to make, and someone will be installed above us who has significantly less practice making those decisions.

I spoke with my district manager today and put in a quiet plug for the only candidate I find to be at all suitable, in that he would most likely stay out of our hair, sign the right papers, and collect his paychecks while we ran the store the way it has been run to this date.

Admittedly, he'll slowly deplete the store of worthwhile personnel because he makes absolutely wretched hiring decisions, but that's what training is for, c'es pas? It's better than angering the existing staff to the point where they walk; few of our employees need the job they have, and most would have no trouble finding work elsewhere even in the current economic situation.

Corporate doesn't teach that mentality though -- they teach that all employees are equal, or would be if we'd trained them correctly.

"He'll probably have trouble making the grade at the interviews," said the district manager, "Given that he's got a few bad marks against him already as a manager. Which reminds me, I havn't seen an email in my inbox from you stating your interest -- havn't gotten around to it yet? We're thinking of paying quite a sum to the new manager assuming they can keep the store operating on the level John's brought it to."

"Not really interested at the time."

"Oh, pity; let us know quickly if you change your mind -- there are still a couple of days left for interviewing, and we'd really like to see you apply. Whoever does get it though, I'll be making sure to tell them that they're getting the best manager in the district under them."

"Thanks; I appreciate it."

"Hey! You the man!" said the fifty-something, short, rotund man who would only understand the phrase about to break if he were forced to wear a baseball cap backwards for a day. "Looks like we've got all we need from your numbers -- thanks, and have a good one."

"Toodles."

Astonishingly boring work-related business material follows. I will subscript it all for easy identification and skipping-over; if you do not wish to read it, simply accept that I will not work for the above-mentioned district manager because he is a disingenuous ratface bastard.

_{Much like any business, we have to pay for our labor -- the amount we spend on labor is expected to vary in direct proportion to the amount we sell. This figure is referred to as variable labor since the cost varies with the amount of business that we do. Corporate hands down a set of labor targets indicating what percent of one's sales can be spent on labor for a given district. Inside the district, the district manager assigns weighted amounts to each individual store that will add up, roughly, to the percentage of district-wide sales that they are expecting to have to account for at the end of the paperwork period. Bonuses, as well as performance reviews, have a large component headed by the word LABOR, wherein one's performance in controlling labor costs by sending home unnecessary personnel is rewarded by money or "punished" by the lack thereof.}

Industry standard prior to the takeover of our corporation by a monolithically huge bank was around 26-29% labor, depending on the market and the staff with which you work -- the better your people, the fewer you need for a given level of sales, since all tasks will be performed more quickly and efficiently.

We have historically run within a +/- 0.5% variance of 24% labor, week in and week out, lowest in the district.

Our sixteen-store district last year pulled in a meager $210,000 straight profit. My store, one of the sixteen, was responsible for $130,000 of it.

Which is why I took my district manager's telephone lecture on adhering to the randomly-assigned 22.14% labor target with much clenching of fists and breaking of pencils and a preternaturally calm voice that he would have known as a danger sign if he'd paid any attention to me in the past year that we've worked together.

I honestly do not care that we've been assigned an impossible target -- it helps the mostly-inept other stores in the district out, since we take the fall for labor targets not met while they take a breather with their 28.5-32.0%'s and feel glad that it's not them.

I do care that our district manager is attempting to pretend that he's not simply screwing us out of our bonuses to keep the rest of the district happy, and I do care that he will lecture me as though we do not both know what he is doing, and as though I should feel like a failure for not doing the impossible.

...hee, which, honestly, I do. I resent that I'm given a task that I cannot fulfill, because I will smash my head against impeding walls until either my head or the wall gives 'way. Historically the wall has chosen to move, and thus my advancement in the corporate world to date. I have a thick skull, ask Mouse, she'll testify with great enthusiasm.

-------------

And so here's to a first that I hope I'm ready for -- making a serious effort to fall out of love with someone who embodies what I hoped for out of life, and more importantly, doing it without manufacturing some reason to become bitter and simply cut off communication with them. A childish response will end in tears, I tell you.

And Sim, I don't know if you're reading this rolling your eyes or feeling a little funny in the stomach or even if you're reading this, since if I were reading this I certainly wouldn't be checking back multiple days to see if I'd missed some long and rambling entry for the n^th time about how life never seems to change, and this will most likely be displaced by more unvented thoughts in the morning, leaving probably an innocuous entry on the front page.

If you're rolling your eyes, I understand entirely; I'm always one for the grand gesture, however useless, and I'm quite aware of that -- it's one of the tools I use in personal maintainence and upgrade, you see. A starting signal, of sorts, to correctly phrase and state my goal publically. Once people know I'm trying, I'd be ashamed to quit, you know -- one reason that's stood when the others for living drop away temporarily: using my shame against itself.

And th' grand gesture! I resolve to fall out of love with you, becoming a better friend in the process. I do not know how I will achieve this (though the words "slowly" and "painfully" come to mind, as well as "trial and error", primarily "error"), but I will find a way. It is simply not a viable mode of life to sit around slowly turning into the worse parts of your godfather; I will not still live this way in ten years, or hopefully even in five.

Who knows what five years can bring? Five years ago I had no comprehension of the world around me, less of other people; no knowledge of massage, had never had sex. Now I can see muscles through my fingers and find tension with a blindfolded touch.

Five years from now I may be as unrecognizable to myself as the third-person image I have of myself five years ago. Disassociation must be avoided, however -- I am the one who did everything then, and I am still the one who will emerge from from the ashes, alite but alive.

Pretty grand gesture, huh?

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