New Year’s Resolution, Weeks 44-46
And again I slack off, but in this case, it wasn’t “the new laziness” as described by Seth Godin, though we will touch on that in a moment. I’ve just been really busy and dodging sleep disasters.
Weeks 44-46: Fear 3, Me 0
Current Score: Me 37, Fear 26
Some things that scared me over the past few weeks, and I have been keeping track:
After watching The Walking Dead a week or two ago, I went out to the store to get a snack. Walking outside onto an empty street late at night after that show…yep, definitely scary. Of course, to me, this is a sign of really effective entertainment. I haven’t seen all of them, but I’ve seen more zombie movies than most, I’ve read the entire Walking Dead comic series (consistently among the best reading comics have to offer), I’ve had dreams where I’m trapped in the zombie apocalypse at least a few times a month since childhood, and I’ve met George Romero. I haven’t read the Max Brooks stuff yet, but it’s safe to say I’m familiar with zombies otherwise. This also puts me in a position of being jaded and having a pretty high bar set for anything I see in the genre. To genuinely get the heebie-jeebies from a TV show…well, I’ve got no choice but to offer kudos to the creators. Now, at least for now, as far as we know, zombies don’t exist. Should a grown man be afraid of something from a horror TV show that doesn’t exist? Probably not. Point off here, but it’s a point I’ll happily cede.
I was too intimidated to say hi to David Byrne when he sat behind me at Pee-wee Herman last week, or to say hi to Susan Sarandon when I saw her after the show. Interestingly, I had no problem saying hi to John Waters on the same night, so it’s not all folks whose work I respect that I have this problem with. Every once in a while, this stuff gets me, though. Still need to work on it. Great bodies of work or not, they’re just people. Point off, even if I’ve addressed the subject before. This one’s annoying me enough to make me break my own rules.
I also had a run-in or two with bureaucracy recently, and it reminded me, as it does every time I deal with our inefficient, corrupt government, of just how soul-sucking a thing it is to let them have much control over your destiny. I’m still shaking this feeling off, 2 weeks later. Alas, for the time being, I can’t shake the government off, but I need to find a better way to avoid feeling totally dejected when dealing with the gummint. Point off here, too, again, despite any past reference I’ve made to it because of this project. It’s getting close to the end of the year, and given the concerted effort I’ve put into things, I should not still be disarmed as easily as I am by what are common occurrences in my life.
Wow, I’ve sucked recently! I kid, but I really need to make a point to try and face the next scary thing I run into head-on, in a mature, sensible way.
To get back to Seth’s post on “the new laziness”, I’m not entirely sure that I’d use the word “laziness” in every situation where an uncomfortable and off-putting amount of mental or emotional labor scares someone into avoidance, because damn it, some of those situations are really hard for even the well-adjusted to cope with. However, I do commend Seth for calling attention to the fact that those situations exist in the first place. So often, people are dismissive (I’ve been guilty of it myself more than a few times, alas) when they hear about a situation that someone’s having mental or emotional difficulty addressing. Sometimes, when things are easy for us, or when we’re not familiar with the ground someone else is treading on, it’s way too easy to say “oh, just deal with it”, because in our minds, if we see something as not too difficult, it has a tendency to be viewed as not too difficult for anyone. That’s not always the case. I’ve spent most of a year writing about my own difficulties, even on something as simple as quietly saying “Hi. I grew up enjoying your work. Thank you.” to people I admire, and I see examples of other people running into a whole mess of trouble doing “the easy stuff” every day. As I grow older, I also find myself developing a deeper understanding of why people couldn’t deal with certain things in the past that I just couldn’t wrap my head around when I was younger. Again, I have trouble using the word “laziness” to describe any of it, because dealing with uncomfortable situations is scary, and fear is exhausting (more than just about any other thing we encounter aside from pain), but kudos to Seth for at least shining a light on the subject and inspiring further discussion (as he often does).
I will seriously, seriously try to post about Week 47 on Monday. Give me a hard time about it if I don’t.