April 4, 2023
A frustrated reflection for Lent
I scrawled this in a bar one night and then realized I actually liked it. There’s mild profanity in it.
So here is the problem with realizing that “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” is just the flipside to “I come so that they may have life, and have it in abundance,” that Lent is about the fact that life is precious and not merely finite, that it’s precious because it is finite, that whatever trials or deprivations we put ourselves through are supposed to be about reaffirming life and not just deprivation, but what is and isn’t truly important…is that it occurs at a time of year when there is so much shit to do that I don’t want to do! That while I try to spend the season in deeper reflection of how I actually want to be spending my time, about what my responsibilities truly are to the world, and how to feel more genuinely connected to it, there are so many obligations to things that are not that! That are not how I want to be spending my time at all! And so as much from procrastination or anxiety as from inertia or bad habits, I find myself falling back on the very ways I really, really don’t actually want to be spending my time. Scrolling through the internet without actually reading a word. Playing stupid computer games. Making Twitter comments that don’t matter.
Because I don’t want to be doing my taxes! I don’t want to be getting around to trying to answer e-mail I don’t know how to answer, or saying things to people I don’t want to have to say! I don’t want to be spending my morning on the phone with the bank and the landlord trying to figure out who lost my rent check and whether I need to stop payment and send a new one or whether the management office is actually just two months behind on processing checks, and then also eventually having to write the property manager and tenant liaison to get them to give me a rent credit because the bank charges $30 to stop payment on a check, even though it wasn’t my fault it got lost in the first place, and also all my bathroom things got ruined the last time the ceiling fell in from the leak they swore was fixed and quite frankly they should be reimbursing me for the new towels and bathmats I had to buy.
I don’t want to be spending my life doing any of this!
And so I dither and procrastinate and hate myself more instead of just flat-out ignoring it or refusing to deal with it.
And like part of the irony is that, for instance, my taxes wouldn’t be a weeks-long, maximum anxiety-provoking ordeal if I just did something stultifying for a living that I don’t really want to do, like—not work in theater, have a normal job, have one job.
But ohhh no, I have six employers in an average year, and one misclassified me as an independent contractor, I co-edited a book so now I earn royalties, I collected unemployment, I won a class-action lawsuit we’re collecting payments from, I have expenses to claim from working out of town, so my taxes are a hot nightmare.
This is why people just walk off into the woods, just walk off into the desert, I get it! I get it now!
If I just walked off into the desert, and the Devil showed up and offered me “all the kingdoms of the world,” if I only got down on my knees and worshipped him, I’d be like “…Am I supposed to be tempted by this?”
Is this supposed to be a temptation?
I have my doubts it was even that hard for Christ to turn his back on the offer.
I have my doubts about how much he even wanted any of it.
I can very much imagine the human part of him looking out over what Satan was offering him, and understanding what it would really mean, what it would really take, for all the kingdoms of the world to be yours, and just being like “…No. Thanks, though. But I’m good, actually….”
I keep trying to unsubscribe from all the mass e-mail, all the deals! and special offers! because deleting it all every day takes more time than it takes me to read and deal with the ones I actually need or remotely want to deal with. But by virtue of having read an article or sent a message to my Senators or bought a single tank top or gone to a concert, it just. comes. back.
How many pairs of shoes does Merrell imagine I go through in a year, anyway?
Speaking of which, I actually need to deal with this one e-mail right now, and that one about something else, both of which concern utterly trivial matters but are now making me more anxious due purely to how long I’ve neglected answering them.
I don’t want to! I don’t care! Why can’t things just work, and keep working???
I don’t want to learn how to use the new Equity website! Or this new employee portal! Or that one, either! I don’t want to do another mandatory online diversity and anti-harassment training! I don’t want to have to call my ACA navigator about changing my health insurance for the sixth time this pandemic! I don’t want the app for that! I don’t care anymore! I wasn’t put on earth for this!
I want to be writing, or sewing, or hiking, or having sex! I want to paint the way the patch of moss on my favorite rock looks like a piece of music. I want my commutes not to take time, I want the transition time that normal, stupid things take me and not other people credited back to my day, I want other people to quit doing shit to me that I have to go and figure out how to say something about, I want bureaucrats to stop screwing up my life in ways that destroy my time and cognitive bandwidth to fix.
That’s all I want!
Anyway. Happy fucking Lent.
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