Half-Assin' It Since '72

“No one lives their life doing all the things they say they should.”

I suck at everything.

Let me start again.

I think I suck at everything.  Just two minutes ago I realized I wasn’t going to exercise today, and I had even planned a time to go.  I don’t have a valid reason for not going, but I am a little beat after a long day and that excuse will just have to do this time.   I also want to start fleshing out my book idea, and those ideas are coming slow in the last two days.  I look around the house and I see no less than 20 projects I need to finish. I have a hole in my garage ceiling, kitchen remodeling is almost done, the yard is a mess, I have four books I’m reading at the same time, and I still have tax forms on my desk screaming at me about home much of a slob I am.

I know it takes some self-love to let this shit go.  I can do that now, even on crappy days.  And, I would never write an essay about how tough it is to get through the day and finish all your chores.  That’s for daytime TV and grocery checkout magazines.  The feeling I am describing is just not caring about what you’re doing.  It’s darker, more sinister and scarier.     

A lack of passion is that familiar signpost of depression.  The dark and heavy afghan of depression robs you of your will.  I can say that I am not fighting the beast right now.  However, a lifetime of living under its shadow has left me with some nasty habits. 

For most of my adult life, I have been an exemplary employee.  I am usually relied on to accomplish tasks on my own, and I usually have a decent rapport with the boss, owner, or corporate lackey in charge of my comings and goings.  I have had the adult responsibility of bringing home some kind of bacon since I was the wee age of 21.  Mouths to feed.  Mortgage to pay.  Hair to lose.

Inside my head, I was a giant pile of who-gives-a-fuck.  I did the work, showed up on time, was honest and dependable. But I never experienced one good day of work.  I just could not manufacture an ounce of pride. I could never buy into what the boss and the company were selling.  I’m not cool.  I am somehow broken.

So, I was a stand-up Joe at the job, but I was no go-getter. I kept my head down, sometimes literally,  and punched in and out on time. I can blame anxiety and depression and being a young dad, but the truth is I could not find a reason to excel.  I half-assed it all.  When you half-ass your 40 hour a week job, you can easily slip into half-assing your entire life. It becomes easy to quit things. It is so easy to let messes accumulate, stop caring about yourself, leave the house without deodorant.  It’s easy to cut corners and you forget what that sensation of a job well done is supposed to feel like.  I had a few of those sensations in my college classes.  It was nice.

I work for myself now.  I have a client, and I recently caught a little shit because my work was getting sloppy.  It’s fixable, and I’m sure I can right the ship.  In the past, this news would have sent me spiraling.  I hated when I screwed up at a job I couldn’t give two shits about.  From the outside, it makes perfect sense that I would screw up at a job where I had no focus. But, I would just feel like a super-loser; I couldn’t even correctly perform at a job I felt wasn’t worth my time. But I was at the job.  And this was my time as well as the company’s time. I couldn’t put that together.

There was no freak out after I heard from the client.  Which is good news. I also am nursing new ideas for a book, and things are taking shape.  I remember feeling passionate about the first novel I wrote, and how it was as if I carried a little backpack around with me; I could fill it with every dumb idea I came up with and I could sort it all out when I got home like Halloween candy. The key word is passionate, right?  I’ve never had a damn thing published and it irks the hell out of me.  There is a passion in my chest for this.  There is a fight.  It could be all ego and I’m doomed for another disappointment, and it is likely that I will fail, but I still have to do it.  That’s what passion does to you. 

None of those jobs ever ignited anything inside me.  They were a means to an end.  I judged myself and all the residual half-assing it caused by my failures at those jobs.  Jobs I didn’t like.  It is so very corny to repeat the notion that you have to find something you are passionate about.  Most people would like to make money at it.  Yeah, that would be sweet. But I’m willing to bet most of us will never make a nickel off of our passions, or at least not enough to retire on. But you still have to do it. Its passion...it’s kind of an asshole.

So I’m screwed.  This is my passion. Typing letters and symbols to express thoughts.  I love to do it and when I’m on a roll I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  Everything else, outside of my personal relationships, is basically a waste of my time.   

Except exercise.  Yes, I’ll go tomorrow.