ozymandias

Yesterday Jenn was going through some old photos online and found a few of us from 14 years ago. I obviously looked much younger then, different from how I look now, and seeing my old self made me uncomfortable. It was like the old me in the picture wasn’t me at all.

Isn’t that weird? I was shocked at my reaction, at my preference for my older, grizzled visage (I think it’s because I’m more familiar now with my current face than my face from 14 years ago). But I was also shocked that I would see an old pic of myself and feel so disconnected from the old me. It was kind of a disassociative experience.

I wonder if this is very common. I don’t think I’ve heard people talk about this before. I feel like the usual story is you see old pics of yourself and go “dang, I was so much younger and better looking then, I really let myself go,” yada yada. And I’m not saying I wasn’t more youthful or attractive then, just that I’m more familiar with the current me, like it more because of that, and feel weird when I see old pics of myself now. Anyway, now I’m going to start asking friends if they’ve ever experienced this too.

I was definitely slimmer back then though, I’ll give my old self that. Lived leaner then, cheaper. I’ve been working on that lately though, getting back to living a bit leaner, and it’s going well. Just need to remember that too many cookies and full sweetness bubble teas catch up with me if I don’t moderate my intake of that stuff.

something mike is familiar with

Man, there just isn’t enough time for everything I want to do. I’ve had the last several days off work and I’ve been jamming all kinds of shit I want to do into them — going to Jenn’s horse show, numerous errands in Victora, numerous errands in Duncan, going for a run, bubble tea, fucking with lava lamps, practicing drums, cleaning the house, doing mountains of laundry, strength training, picked up new chickens and integrated them in with the old girls, a friend’s retirement party, watching UFC, etc. And yet, I still haven’t gotten to a ton of other shit I want to do. Visit Barb, go for brunch with my dad, do some work on the Tercel in the garage, practice drums more, bake, replace some of the house plants I don’t like, that kind of thing. I need to retire like right fucking now. There’s just never enough time for all the shit I wanna do.

everyone will forget you in short order, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing

I have a pretty strong sense of shame. When I mess up and do something dumb or regrettable, it’s with me till the grave. It’s not pleasant but that’s the way I’m wired, and I don’t think that’s all bad. I’ve talked on here before about how I think a good sense of shame is useful for learning from your mistakes — you mess up, you feel bad and don’t like it and don’t want to feel like that again, so you don’t make that mistake again. Hey, that’s just great.

But I’ve been thinking about work lately and the countless co-workers that have come and gone since I’ve had my job, and how no one talks or thinks about those former co-workers now. New staff cycle through who never even met the old ones so the memory of the old ones evaporates completely quite quickly.

So even if I do something I feel dumb about at work, I just have to think about how

• no one cares about my mistakes as much as I do,
• one day I’ll be gone and once I am, no one will think about me or my mistakes at all because memories are short and new staff won’t have known me to start with, and
• if anyone did remember me or any mistakes I made, they have either moved on already or will move on soon too,

so it really doesn’t matter and I shouldn’t beat myself up over it. It’s neat to think about this stuff and recognize how insignificant most of us are beyond the present and immediate future. We only matter to the people who deal with us, while they are dealing with us — once you aren’t in their lives anymore, they forget you. It’s kind of crazy. On one hand it’s sad but it’s also somehow comforting in a way. I’m not sure why I also find that comforting, and I’m too tired to dig into that now. It’s late and I need to get to bed. The main thing I wanted to get down was that everyone will forget about you and all the things you did, both good and bad, pronto.

time vs you 2

This morning I was chatting with my chum Michael about his teenage son fooling around with recording some rap/hip hop music at home with his friends recently. It reminded me of when I was younger and used to do similar stuff with my pals. We’ve made a bunch of fun, silly recordings over the years: a banjo-based mountain music version of the Pokerap, a funny and stupid(er) version of I Get Around by The Beach Boys, covers of The Ghostbusters theme song, Break On Through by The Doors, Liquid Swords by GZA…

It’s been years since we’ve done anything like that though, and I’ve been thinking about why that is. I think it’s because, as we get older, free time becomes more and more scarce. I mean, teens with no jobs who have summers off or only work 20 hrs per week and live at home with their parents have lots of time and money to do fun, silly stuff. But now, a lot of my time is taken up by boring necessary shit — cleaning the house, yard, cars, or doing maintenance on them (cleaning gutters, changing oil, stacking firewood, mowing lawns, vacuuming, learning to clean scale from toilets). I also spend a lot of time working out, hiking, stretching, getting massages and physio to keep my body from fucking falling apart. Shit like that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about these activities. I love all that shit. Even mundane shit like washing dishes while listening to chillwave brings me immense joy. But I want more creative, artistic outlets too, and I want something neat to show for my efforts afterward. I want to write music, I want to record it, preferably with friends, and I want to be able to share it with people afterward. I want to learn to draw, and I want to make a Calvin & Hobbes-style comic that I can hold in my hands and laugh at and be proud of.

Sadly, there simply isn’t time for all of these things. Even blogging like this takes time, time that I can’t put toward learning to use a computer recording program or practicing drawing. And I LIKE blogging, this is one of the things I enjoy doing but sometimes I feel like I should not do this, so that I would have more time to devote to other creative endeavours.

I really just need to fucking retire. Fuck work. Life is too short.

I am a slave to time. And to jobs and money too, I guess.

time vs you

In the last few years, I’ve become more acutely aware of how much time people have left to do things. A better way to put it is that I’m getting nervous about how little time we have to do things we love.

Example #1: as an avid MMA fan, I think about the window of viability that each fighter has. It’s quite short — they can’t compete at the highest levels of a bloodsport (and win) very far beyond the age of 35. By that time, the various injuries have caught up with them and they’re too crippled to win fights at the elite level. So 15 years is typically the maximum length of an MMA fighter’s career, and most are shorter than that at around 10 years since not everyone hops out of high school and says, “I want to fist fight for a living.” On top of that, when you consider how training, injuries, personal life, and the timing of booking fights against suitable opponents and how those opponents schedules play into it, those 10-15 years of viability are eaten up surprisingly quickly. It would be pretty terrifying to know you have such a short window to do what you love. If someone had told me at age 14, “you can only play music for the next 15 years and then you have to do something else,” that would have loomed over my head in a big way. I would have obsessed about that expiration date.

Example #2: Brandon Cronenberg is a film maker. Brandon made a fantastic film called Antiviral in 2012. Finally, in 2020, he released his second film, called Possessor. Brandon must have started getting serious about making movies when he was about 30, and now he’s 40 and he’s only made two flicks so far. There’s nothing wrong with only making a few movies over your film career — that’s definitely preferable to churning out a mountain of shitty ones — but I can’t help but feel like he must have other ideas and material he wants to explore but hasn’t been able to yet, who knows why, and that gives me vicarious anxiety for Cronenberg. 40 yrs old is halfway through your life, less if you get sick or die suddenly, and everyone slows down as they age too, so holy shit he needs to put his nose to the grindstone if he wants to make some more films in his lifetime.

I wonder if my anxiety about this kind of thing is a short-term thing that will disappear in a week, or if it will stick around and worsen as time goes on. I think it will probably be both. I think I’m going through a bit of a phase right now but I also think this is something that will pop up more and more as I inch closer and closer to death.

Incidentally, man oh man I wish we knew when we were going to die. If I knew I was going to get hit by a truck tomorrow and have my brains splattered across the road, I’d do a few things differently. Like lots more chips and cookies tonight, for starters.

too early, too late: they’re both shitty

People always bitch about other people being late, and I hate it too of course but I also think being early is just as lousy. It’s essentially the same thing, it’s like saying to the other person “I’m just going to show up when I feel like and to hell with your plans.” It’s inconsiderate, it’s disrespectful.

Why am I bitching about this now? Because yesterday I had two people coming by to buy stuff. I told the first person to come at 11 am, and the next one to come at noon so that I would have time between them. But the first person showed up late and got here at 11:15, and the second person showed up really early and also arrived at 11:15. It made it really confusing for all of us — I thought they were all one group, who knows what they all thought, and it took us a minute to figure out what was going on. It’s a good thing I was home, and not in the middle of a workout or showering or jerking off or whatever the fuck else I do when I am not expecting company. That could have been a real disaster.

I think five minutes in either direction is acceptable. Five min early, five min late, that’s fine. That allows for little unforeseen circumstances like light or heavy traffic. 10 minutes, eh, I’m not going to freak out but I don’t like it. Anything beyond that and I start getting pissed. I just don’t think it should be that hard to manage your time appropriately.

time vs necessity

a friend once told me that he didn’t agree with people saying they “don’t have time” to do stuff. he said that even when we’re really busy, we always have the ability to make time for things, to reschedule or move appointments and crap around to accommodate whatever else requires attention. he went on to suggest that when we say, “i don’t have time for that,” what we are really saying is, “i could make time for that but it’s not a high enough priority to me.”

“sorry mate, i’m way too busy to help you with whatever. i’ve got like 3 seasons of game of thrones to catch up on.”

it was about 10 years ago he said all this to me, and i still think about it all the time and still agree with it 100%. so i’m careful about how i use the “don’t have time” excuse because i know that i’m lying through my teeth when i say it. there is always less time that i can spend napping, emailing, reading heavy metal and MMA news online, and fussing over my chickens, and i think most people in the privileged world are in similar boats.

we have a lot more time than we often like to think.

 

i don’t need any god damn advice

i’m just a goth girl at heart.

i realized a number of years ago that i don’t like getting advice from anyone. i noticed this over a few times when i was dealing with some kind of bullshit in my life, trying to figure out the best way to handle it. each time, i was aware of my different options or whatever and the various consequences, and was having a hard time deciding which would be best for me. i talked to a few of my closest friends about what was going on, and no one really had any good advice. i got a lot of “shit, that sucks,” “i don’t know what i’d do if i were you,” and “i’d do this.” and none of those things were any help to me. i was still left with the same options and consequences.

the thing is, no one can make any decisions for you. when you’re dealing with shit, you have to deal with it. that’s all there is to it. it can be hard as hell but that’s what needs to happen for you to get through it. i used to think it felt good to talk to friends about stuff i was dealing with, just as some sort of release or catharsis, but now i don’t even believe that. i consistently found that whenever i talked to friends about heavy shit, i wound up hoping they might illuminate some sort of new understanding or way of looking at my situation, and that rarely happened. so all those times, i just wound up spending 2 hrs rehashing the same shit i had been mulling over in my mind for the last week, except this time i did it out loud, which was even more annoying. and i was no further ahead by the end of it.

so now, i usually like to just keep my drama to myself. i bottle it up inside until i’m under an immense amount of pressure. then i react violently and unexpectedly to the slightest unrelated thing, like when someone bumps my ankle with a shopping cart at the store and i throw my basket down in a rage, spilling oranges all over the floor, and scream “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, DO YOU HAVE NO FUCKING AWARENESS OF ANYONE ELSE AROUND YOU, YOU SELFISH CUNT?” just kidding. i actually keep a lot of my shit to myself because i have learned to be confident in my abilities to work through my personal problems. i just need enough time and rational thought to achieve it. and i feel good about that.

i really hate it when people bump my ankles.

this isn’t to say that i don’t need friends to lean on. i absolutely do. sometimes there is some unknown aspect to a problem i’m working through, something i can’t put my finger on, and sometimes a friend can see what that thing is or lead me to figure it out myself, like dana did when i was depressed by babymetal last year.

something kind of funny related to my babymetal depression is that after dana helped me figure out why i was depressed, i told ben about the whole thing. but before i could even finish what i was saying and get to the punchline, ben said, “so you felt like you were able to remember and appreciate what that youthful joy felt like but you were no longer able to experience it firsthand anymore because you are so weighed down by adult concerns.” it was absolutely incredible. ben’s intuition and understanding of me was stunning, like that of a high paid psychotherapist. that was one case where i could have gone to a friend for advice and been fixed right up but it was a real one-off. you can’t expect that kind of magic from people, ever.

no, the only way to reliably get through the shit that life hands you is to give yourself lots of time to process it and decide how you can come to grips with it. at least that’s what works for me. you do whatever the hell you want. i don’t care.