Slow Motion
Over the past year, I have become increasingly obsessed with cars. Namely, what should my next car be. I have a perfectly fine car. Lovely in fact. But leased. The lease is up in January which has put me on a time table to getting a new car (or buying my current car.)
I have spent tons of time plotting, configuring, reading and comparing the different models. Thinking about the new Audi A6, a Mercedes-Benz E500 or CLK500, or the dream car, a BMW 6 Series Coupe.
Or going in a different direction, to get a hybrid. Like the Lexus RX400h.
Literally days worth of time has been spent researching, configuring, dreaming, making spreadsheets, and otherwise wasting my time thinking about cars.
And I think I finally figured out why.
I have been thinking long and hard about what I want to do with my life. Software is no longer as interesting and stimulating as it once was. I have been craving more creative endeavors and to keep learning. The challenges at work are not interesting and I feel I am stuck.
But instead of channeling the energy into making a plan and moving forward, I have been channeling it into a relatively safe consumer decision. It is bold, but still safe. Lately, I am feeling a little more trapped and adrift at the same time. The problem is that my feelings or my goals are not constant, but the existential dilemma is here.
4 Comments:
YES! And to think that you didn't need years of paying a therapist, or a degree in post-marxist critical theory, to come to this excellent conclusion!
You are basically a well-wired person, RoughGroove. This is an incredible advantage for you. It means that when you find yourself in even a mildly obsessive mode, it sticks out like a sore thumb and you can examine what the atypical behavior means. If you suddenly spend lots of time obsessing over a car, you notice, because you are so efficient about all the rest of your life. While you may not come up with the right explanation the first time --it's not always the right thing to conclude that some piece of obsessive behavior is caused by a Yawning Void of an Existential Dilemma-- it's nice to know that one's occasional bad behavior is so noticeable.
Pity the poor wrecks like myself --and I won't mention any other names, but the one I'm thinking of rhymes with "Scarlett"-- whose everyday equilibrium is so cluttered with obsessive habits, shocking memory lapses, hopelessly inefficient work strategies, and behavior more appropriate for zombies and wind-up toys: how are we supposed to suddenly notice that we're spending too much time on the net looking at car ads? or writing comments on blogs?
6:50 PM
Hey! I resemble that remark!
I do slightly disagree with Patios: I think anyone who can eat chicken breasts every day, sometimes for 2 meals a day for months on end is just SLIGHTLY obsessive.
I think our generation has midlife crises earlier and more often than previous generations. We cut our professional teeth on "internet time", so if things aren't popping all the time, if we aren't doing new things, forging new rivers, breaking new boundaries, we get bored and pissed off. Well, at least I do.
Maybe it's time to start planning for Step-The-Next instead of Car-The-Next? Make a list of the things that are important to you in a job, in life (learning new things? Going new places (travel?)? Being in charge/responsibility? Salary?). Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10? Sometime it's easier to find a solution if you know what it is you're really asking for.
Okay, that's my Jr Woodchuck advice (which is heartfelt, since I'm in the same f'ing headspace ATM). Your mileage may vary. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Do not eat.
4:40 PM
So I was just on the phone to Scarlett, and since both of us are too lazy to run our own blogs, we thought that maybe we could take over Roughgroove's blog by talking to each other in the comments section, like the ivy that choketh the tree. But we will try to be nice to our host (in the parasitic sense of that term), and chatter on about things that we can pretend that he's interested in.
But nobody is interested in other people's midlife crises! Not even our best friends' midlife crises!
Can I talk about The Young Ones instead? As Scarlett knows, it's this British TV show from 1983-1985 or so, and has been released on DVD, whence I rented it from the local comic book store. I found it delightful and repulsive and tender. The set-up is five actors (all male of course --I said it was British), four of whom play loud coarse stereotyped college/post-college roommates, circa 1982: the trendy leftist, the hippie, the punk, and the lad. The fifth plays the landlord and any of his relatives that each episode's plot requires.
Delightful: All around the edges of the plot there are terrifically inventive skits and routines (including a musical act, different each episode, that is shoe-horned in with only occasional interest in continuity), often involving puppets; this makes the rhythm of the show very similar to Peewee's Playhouse, as rancid sandwiches on the stove have brief conversations, or a filthy sock moves under its own power to follow the Young Ones to the laundrette for their biannual trip to clean their clothes. The most elaborate of the set pieces are delightful: one time they play hide and seek, and the punk goes into the wardrobe and finds himself in the snowy winter outdoors of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, with the Snow Queen trying to tempt him with Turkish Delight. Did I say delightful already?
Repulsive: as someone who has been at times a trendy leftist and a hippie or at least respects them, and also in my own way respectful of punk, I found the comic stereotypes unpleasant and made without love. The decibel level is very high, as if that was the lesson they had learned from Monty Python instead of Python's fondness for its eccentrics, the ministers of silly walks and the tranny lumberjacks and the time bandit midgets. It's not a British thing: I also find the Three Stooges repellent.
Tender: It's 1983, When I Was Young! I spent 1980-1982 in Oxford, and so I certainly understand where the show's comic energy is coming from; furthermore, I was already older than the undergraduates I befriended at Oxford, so the folly of 25+ year old actors playing 20 year olds, while the theme song oom-pahs away at "'Cuz we won't be/ The Young Ones/ For very long" was not lost on me even then. And everyone else was young, too! Among the bit part actors in the disc and a half that I watched, I picked out Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane, Stephen Fry, Jennifer Saunders --perhaps if I had watched all the way to the end I would have seen a fifteen-year-old Jude Law in a bit part.
Oh, dear, perhaps this has been about mid-life crises all along, then.
Would Scarlett care to comment on the Harry Potter movies, or on any of her own attempts to rescue the drek of her own childhood? (And well, I suppose Roughgroove might have a favorite he might care to contribute to this, too...)
11:09 AM
I do appreciate the comments. Really. Both you and Scarlett are better writers than I am, so it elevates the dreck. I imagine it like having Michael Chabon writing an op-ed piece in the New York Post.
9:34 AM
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