Practicing Life #10: On Setbacks, and Fears, and the Difficulties of Gratitude
Meditation:
I’ve given some insight into my work situation these days. I’m looking for a second job that will likely land me in the 70+ hour workweek territory. Something is on deck that might be a good opportunity, financially, but relatively speaking the schedule will be grueling. I’ll be pulling more or less all-nighters four nights a week to get it done, in which my sleep schedule will consist mostly of naps. If I’m writing fiction, it will have to be on “lunch” breaks those days. Guess I’m going to be forced to try out that Tim Ferris polyphasic sleep bullshit. Hope it works.
But I say “relatively” because I try to think about the hours and work put in by our ancestors and even by people like Seals and Marines and farmers, etc. nowadays. It’s not exactly like I’ll be breaking rocks on the night shift. Like all crap jobs these days, I’ll be stuck in front of a computer monitor. This has its own hazards, of course, but it’s not demanding in the way our largely immigrant forebears had to make a life from the dirt, not knowing if they would eat tomorrow or be able to feed their children. I don’t want debt accruing, but the amount of credit people are willing to give me more or less assures I’ll never be homeless. I try to think of how hard people worked in the past just to survive. How hard many good, honest people have to right now. It’s perspective that we have grown accustomed to an easy life.
This is not a defense of the modern wage slave system, of the fact that a nice on-paper income from my day job evaporates and does not allow me to properly provide for my family. And we don’t live in a mansion or anything. Things are jut expensive now. I won’t rant about why, but obviously many of those things are not my fault, nor yours. We know who the bad guys are. But still, we have to do what we have to do. It’s lamentable that it is so, but so it is. I’ll still have a few days a week to be present with my family and you can bet your ass my phone is going in a drawer and I’m going to do my best to fight through the tiredness and give them all the love and attention they need.
But I’m afraid. I’m not proud of that, or pleased. But there it is. I worry if I can make it. I also have a pretty unshakeable faith that I can, with God’s help. It’s a very mixed bag of feelings. To that end as well, it is tough right now to be grateful for all the ways I am blessed. I have a beautiful wife and children who, despite any interpersonal hardships that happen in the course of life, love me. We can eat and we have a nice home. I have a job at all, which many don’t. I’m (somewhat) healthy. I am pursuing my dream and some of you are actually reading my work and cheering me on. There is a lot of good. But I also think we shouldn’t be afraid to be mad about how things have ended up. There’s lots to hate as well as love. This is natural. It’s fine to tell God you’re pissed about it. Prayer should be an honest and open communication. But we can’t stay there. It’s imperative that I and anyone in a tough spot keep our eyes on the goodness going on and focus on solving the problems we have.
None of this is admonishment or even advice particularly. My life is a mess right now in multiple ways. It’s fine to admit this. That’s step one of solving a problem. And I’m working on the steps that follow it. I’ll be alright. You probably will too.
All thing work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.
It’s become trite to quote that in these situations, but I think a lot of people miss that it says all things work together for good, not that all things are good. It’s going to work out. I believe that as much as I believe anything. In this life or the next. But sometimes it sucks in the meantime. I’m sorry that’s not more upbeat, but realism is fully compatible with optimism. Default pessimism is to be avoided but we don’t have to pretend everything is okay. Sometimes it’s not. We just have to do what we can to figure it out.
Viewing:
Owing largely to my mood over life happenings, I’ve been watching dumb comedies again. That said, I watched Spy with Melissa McCarthy and really enjoyed it, to my surprise. She has superb comic timing and while there are a few misfires, it’s consistently very funny. Rose Byrne and Jason Statham kill it too in their supporting roles. I especially liked watching Statham play a totally inept, asshole version of the character he plays in all his action movies. Good fun all around.
Writing:
Chipping away at the novel when I can. Probably at this point we’re looking at a late October release. Not what I wanted, but where we are. New short story should be out next week on
and you can read “The Container” here on The Write Books, which I’ll be serializing by (relatively) popular demand. There are also a couple essays I put out, including one yesterday ranting about how art can be a very protentious concept.Reading:
Sigh. Same book. Almost done. You can look at the reading list I just posted for 2023 and see that this is not my normal reading pace. Painfully slow here, but I’m just going to claim extenuating circumstances and keep trucking.
Listening:
I realized I haven’t been putting any info about my daily soundtracks and maybe including them is a good way to connect with people. I love music and listen to an album in full almost daily. Sometimes it’s the same one as yesterday, sometimes not. Fair warning, although you’ll find a lot of variety in my taste and my P3 playlists, my personal daily listening is going to trend very heavily toward extreme metal and classical music. But maybe you’ll find something to love in these posts.
On that note, I’m revisiting The Killing Gods by the excellent Misery Index a lot lately. A generally killer band, this record is the one for me. Hard to say if it’s a case of objective quality or rather that it was my first introduction to the band, but for me it’s their best work. A lovingly awarded silver medal goes to their Rituals of Power, which I fully recommend as well. This is very slammy, techy, fast death metal that somehow has hooks in it. No real melody to speak of, but the riffs and choruses stick with you anyhow. Headbanging par excellence. Enjoy.
Ciao:
That’s all for now. I’ll see you tomorrow. Hopefully to discuss something other than me whinging about work problems. I hope you have a great day!