[CN- Periph­er­al men­tion of abuse.]

Some­times you have to roll up your sleeves and say, “My ener­gy and time are going places that do not align with my val­ues.” 

For every­thing my step­fa­ther was ter­ri­ble about—and occa­sion­al­ly even abusive—in ways sys­temic, sys­tem­at­ic, and some­times phys­i­cal and personal—he was actu­al­ly pret­ty decent at these lit­tle Pez-dis­penser bits of wis­dom. He would tell me to pay atten­tion to who ben­e­fit­ed from hav­ing cer­tain points of view ascend; he would ask me who gained some ben­e­fit or who had an axe to grind. He would get me to think crit­i­cal­ly about a lot of stuff.

One of the lit­tle dime bags of salient wis­dom he dropped one day was about dri­ving the speed lim­it. I was say­ing that the curve speed signs were just sug­ges­tions, and I could take those cor­ners way faster. I think I was eigh­teen and thought I was a total baller because I could speed. 

To his cred­it, he didn’t get angry or threat­en to take my keys away or do any one of a mil­lion things which would have had me act­ing con­trite and obse­quious in the moment, and then going EVEN FASTER the instant I was alone. He just nod­ded:

“Of course you CAN take a turn faster than the speed lim­it, Din­gus. Any­one can. It’s actu­al­ly not post­ed because it’s dan­ger­ous to go that fast… and it’s not that impres­sive that you’re doing fif­teen or twen­ty miles over. But only just so long as noth­ing goes wrong. If anoth­er car drifts too far in your lane. If there’s water on the street… a pedes­tri­an you didn’t notice…. a dog in the road… even just a squir­rel in your periph­er­al vision that tricks out your reflex­es because at first you think it’s some­thing else and now you’re halfway off the edge and over-cor­rect­ing. If you were going the speed lim­it, some­thing could go WRONG, and you’d still be in control—you’d still have a split sec­ond to react. But if you’re dri­ving along at the actu­al edge of what you can han­dle, then you have zero laten­cy* for reflex speed. And that’s how peo­ple crash.”

[*I don’t think he said “laten­cy,” but that’s what he meant. He had“simplistic” words and words“so super­cil­ious that peo­ple would be sure to know he was an aca­d­e­m­ic.” He was one of those guys who sneered at bill­boards say­ing that food was health­FUL, not healthy… (oh those igno­rant fuck­wad bill­board design­ers). That whole mid­dle sec­tion of vocab­u­lary where words con­vey mean­ings pre­cise­ly and acces­si­bly rather than osten­ta­tious­ly didn’t appeal. He had no use for lan­guage that couldn’t be an intel­lec­tu­al blud­geon.]

But what­ev­er he said, it made me think. It made me think then, recon­sid­er my whole speed­ing phi­los­o­phy (I have a lead foot on straight high­ways, and the tick­ets to prove it, but I’m care­ful around the curves). And like most things Eng­lish majors deal with, I drew con­nec­tions with it and oth­er parts of my life that don’t have any­thing to do with dri­ving.

I think about that exchange a lot these days. The speed of my life along this wind­ing road is faster than what I can han­dle. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it all works on paper. I can go twen­ty-five over the speed lim­it and even take the turns life throws at me. But only until some­thing goes wrong.

And of course, it’s life. (And par­tic­u­lar­ly MY life post 2016.) When’s the last time some­thing didn’t go wrong?

I’ve reached a turn­ing point—a sec­ond one in the last year—where it’s time to begin to real­ly look at where time is going and if it’s land­ing on pri­or­i­ties. So these are the things I’m going to do to keep cre­at­ing enough time to write.

Put dat­ing on pause. I can prob­a­bly bang my friends if they’re into that, but I’m not kick-start­ing any more capital‑R “rela­tion­ships,” and I don’t real­ly need to date beyond who I’m already see­ing. If some­thing devel­ops, it devel­ops (I’ve nev­er been one to not chase an organ­ic spark of gen­uine, authen­tic con­nec­tion), but I don’t need to go looking—no mat­ter how cute they look in short frayed den­im shorts and cow­boy boots with a tied-off but­ton up… um… you know what, let’s leave this alone for now. 

[And now that I’ve said that, some­one who lives like next door, total­ly wants to do kitchen table polyamory, and is a per­fect match is going to show up lat­er this after­noon.]

Keep myself to one or two class­es. That gets me an activ­i­ty class and an aca­d­e­m­ic class. (Or maybe just one of those.) I want to keep going to get cer­tifi­cates that will make me more valu­able, and I love school and learn­ing, so it’s real­ly easy to feel like a kid in a cliché store when I get the cat­a­logue for the next semes­ter. But I’m already doing what I want to do, and I don’t need to go so hard. One or two class­es a semester—I’ll get my addi­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, and maybe even my A.A. in Kine­si­ol­o­gy even­tu­al­ly. 

Lim­it things I com­mit to. One of my prob­lems is that I want to do all the things. Hik­ing with friends. Dat­ing new peo­ple. Going to shows. Hang­ing out. Being the most awe­some step-par­ent that has ever exist­ed. An hour here. Two hours there. But I can’t do it all. And I can’t keep say­ing, “Sounds good” until I real­ize I have fif­teen min­utes of free time on a Tues­day morn­ing at 6 a.m. to get me through the whole week. I have to start say­ing no. Not just DURING my writ­ing time, but around the edges of it and even when I’m not plan­ning on writ­ing at all. If my life is a high-octane social-fest with no “me-time,” I’m going to just want to chill and recharge dur­ing the writ­ing time. I want to do things with peo­ple, but I some­times lose track of my lim­i­ta­tions. 

Be high­ly attuned to the time sinks. Trau­ma is funny—I mean… inas­much as CPTSD, depres­sion, and anx­i­ety are “fun­ny.” Haha­ha­ha­ha. They make ME fun­ny though, so I’ve got THAT going for me. 

But okay, they’re WEIRD. You go for the short, quick dopamine fix­es when you’re deep in that pit. The more com­plex palette of enjoy­ment is too hard. You’d rather play a game on your phone and watch a rerun than cook a meal—even though you love cook­ing. When you’re fresh off the trau­ma boat, the choice of fig­ur­ing out three thou­sand but­tons on your snazzy dig­i­tal cam­era that you don’t real­ly under­stand when you’re on a pic­ture-tak­ing hike, or try­ing to work that app to get them off your cam­era and onto your com­put­er, or mas­tur­bat­ing furi­ous­ly for two hours… well, it’s just no con­test for a while. You go for the easy fix.

I can see why a lot of peo­ple get hooked on drugs or alco­hol.

Then one day, you start to come out of your fugue and want plea­sur­able things a bit more sophis­ti­cat­ed than waf­fle par­ties because there is ever-so-slight­ly more tol­er­ance for delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion, but all the shit­ty fuck­ing habits are still there. All the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion impuls­es are strong neu­ro­log­i­cal path­ways. And you real­ly have to put some effort into re-estab­lish­ing good rou­tines and expung­ing all the ins­ta-grat­i­fi­ca­tion fix­es that are start­ing to have the “life-ful­fil­ment-nutri­tion­al-val­ue” of cot­ton can­dy. 

That part is hard. If you’ve been spend­ing two hours numb­ing your­self out of your exis­ten­tial dread every morn­ing before fac­ing the day, pop­ping up to do some cal­is­then­ics the minute the alarm goes off is a big­ger shock than that time the annoy­ing yel­low meeps from Despi­ca­ble Me got their own movie… and it did well.

Drop­ping that week­ly online Dun­geons and Drag­ons game. It kills me. I love being a nerd. And a cou­ple of hours on a Sun­day night was not THAT much. But also… it kind of was. It was two hours with peeps across four time zones that kept me up late on the last day of the week­end. It was a crit­i­cal “me-time” moment that I have need­ed since for­ev­er to cen­ter myself before head­ing into a new week. It’s two hours (and maybe an hour of prep), but it is so much more than that. 

Besides that game though, I’m doing a lot of hold­ing myself BACK from mak­ing the same mis­takes again. There aren’t a lot more THINGS I can cut out. I’m not will­ing to stop deep­en­ing my com­mu­ni­ty ties with the local UU church and alter­na­tive-spir­i­tu­al­i­ty peeps. I’m absolute­ly not going to quit run­ning. The things I’m doing to sur­vive cap­i­tal­ism are essen­tial. (Although if you like my writ­ing, and want me doing more of it instead of chas­ing side-gigs to pay the rent, please drop a few dol­lars on my Patre­on. You can get in before I’m forced to raise all the prices at the end of the month.) 

What I do have the abil­i­ty to do is be bet­ter about all that is left. The road is going to wind. And I can take the curves too fast if noth­ing goes wrong. But if the last decade has taught me any­thing, it’s that some­thing will always go wrong. So let’s put down the top, hit the gas, and keep it at an entire­ly rea­son­able fif­teen over.