2 important decisions for several reasons:
At work, I was dealing with a paper pusher and master of the re-frame with titles and degrees and whatever other actionable yet imaginary white collar bureaucratic bullshit power that matters and yet, I had my Alamo moment.
I had my "this is the line in the sand" moment.
I could sit here and let this motherfucker talk to me like this.
I can kneel down, and be afraid, and I can supplicate and be the company man I've mocked others for being....
....OR I can cost myself some money, cause myself some justifiable hardship and calmly inform him that I don't let people speak to me that way. There will be stress. There will be time in the unknown. There will be come serious time of famine and the like perhaps....but I will emerge from it less flappable, more taciturn...more able to brace against the storm of life.
It has come with some moments of fret and some moments of worrying and tension, to be sure, but I can look back and know that I stood by what matters most: my self-respect.
As for the siren I was dating: they say the devil comes dressed as everything you've ever wanted.
This was definitely the case. She's physically exactly what I like. Sexually exactly what I like. Emotionally she feeds off of my emotions and has me in this constant push/pull-string theory cat on a ball of yarn/puppet master yanking his marionette dance routine.
It is and was emotionally exhausting.
Were I a younger man, I would stay in the firefight. Alas, I am no longer the young buck I once was. I'm past the start of my decade of (as Fitzgerald put it, loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know et cetera) 30 and I don't have the time nor desire to endlessly waste my emotional collateral on things that have not and will not change. There is a stupid insistence on what we WANT sometimes....but often this is the very thing which causes us pain.
Truth reveals itself slowly and instantly but you have to be watching and listening and receptive. IF you're like me, you see it late, after the fact....and in retrospect, but the lessons can be learned and make you a bit quicker to spot the truth in the future, but not always.
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I now face another crossroads.
The last vestige of my anonymity remains.
I have felt the urge to step out of the shadows into the internet's feeble light as I have seen more and more/other bloggers do the same.
My dual concerns remain: can I seek work as a professional and can I be 100% authentic and still spit the truth if I am no longer protected by anonymity.
It is a tough question and a valid one.
Part of me as an artist knows that by remaining faceless my message and what I say remains pure in its own right, rather than a false idol or image tied to the visual.
Sometimes a picture fucks up the words as any good wordsmith or bard knows.
I don't intend to make a living with my lifestyle and/or by writing.
You have a life to live, in the way that you wish to live it, as a professional. You don't intend to make a living with your lifestyle/writing. Unless you have an intent to be an author and make money - which in this world requires a face or posthumous publishing - then your life and goals are not served by stepping out from the shadows of the anonymous and into the light of the public eye.
ReplyDeleteBy doing so you are simply handing someone a stick with which to beat you, ammunition to use against you, in your life. Whether a man or woman. For whatever reason they may see fit - even because they "vaguely dislike you" or "just feel like it" because you "upset them". Or because they dislike your opinion and have decided to complain and take you down a peg or two (ie get you fired, like the idiot woman with the donglegate employees).
Your private life, your private philosophy, your private goals and hopes and dreams, your private path to whatever - are your business. Not anybody else's. Putting them out there for all to see and associate with you personally is simply handing someone a free handle with which to manipulate you and jerk you around as they see fit. You would be allowing someone to hold everything about your life in their hand, for their amusement, for nothing of worth in return.
Remain in the shadows.
As a young man once said to me, hoist the black flag.
ReplyDeleteAs for the shadows, when you fight the darkness, the shadows are the place to be.
BPS - it's a fleeting thought from time to time, a freedom of living in the open but yes, the glare of the light of day would no doubt be harsh.
ReplyDeleteRas - profound, thank you.