2004-07-29 - 11:56 p.m.
like the burning end of a midnight cigarette
"crossposted" to my LJ
Somewhere along the line, I seem to have ended up having not such the good day. Or, rather, have ended up in not such the good mood.
It could’ve gone either way, I guess. We’ll start with my week. I drove about 875 miles in the work car. And got out to do all the measuring and stuff. See, I worked alone this week.
When I got into the office on Monday Morning, I saw Kenny, and greeted him (of course). And he said (or maybe it was Michael-Paul) “You don’t have a crew.”
I was of course baffled. Turns out that John T. quit. That morning. By calling in and leaving a message on the office answering machine. Supposedly he had been fine with the reshuffling of his assignment as of the night before. But he up and quit.
And I – being the somewhat idiot that I can be, because really who couldn’t use a week of vacation – elected to go out and work by myself, because the option was there, and Bruce even made sure to let me know I didn’t have to go, but… yeah. So I worked alone for the week, down in Washington County.
It was both good and not-so-good. On the one hand, I got to listen to whatever the heck I wanted, and didn’t have anyone else’s opinion to consider (not that I really have to in the first place, being foreman, but I can’t just ignore Andy’s opinion) about when to break, or when to quit for the day.
Of course on the other hand, that many miles/hours in a car alone is very lonely. Especially when repeated over consecutive days. I was a little starved for interaction. And then ended up coming home to play video games in the empty house. Go figure.
Slight topic jump.
I’ve decided (or is it realized?) that I don’t want much to hear about FRFF. I mean, I’d be fine hearing just about the music or whatever, but I’m not sure I want to hear all that much about the interaction and the togetherness and the bonding and the singing together, and just… everything that makes FRFF so much more than the music coming from the stages.
At first, I thought it was jealousy that “they” (meaning pretty much everyone who was there, I guess) got to go, and I didn’t – I’d really wanted to go again this year, having enjoyed myself so much last year. But it’s not that – or rather, it isn’t about not being able to go this time.
Chalk it up to not having gone, or chalk it up to having been alone in the car with only my CD player for company all week, or chalk it up to my just being in one of those funks, but I’ve managed to convince myself that – however much it appeared differently to me at the time – last year I was (as it so often seems to me) outside the experience. I tagged along. I talked, I sang, I enjoyed companionship and the community of experience. But was I really part of it? I don’t have the same reality for other people that they have for me, I don’t think. At this time last year, it didn’t matter (didn’t even occur to me); I’d had a good time, I’d needed the time away, and it was of the good. But now, looking back on it, I wonder if I was deluding myself that I was as much one of “the group” as I felt I was at the time.
In a way, it’s sort of the opposing example to my time “managing” (officially I was the Student Assistant Trainer) the varsity softball team at my HS. More or less all the way through that, I thought that I was tolerated admirably, but I wasn’t much more than a piece of equipment (I was, after all, on the equipment list – longbutnotreally story, unimportant). I didn’t realize until the team picnic – both years, really, as a matter of fact – that they thought of me as one of them. I hadn’t been on the outside or the fringes, I’d just thought that I was. A lot of highschool was like that for me, I guess. Things I was a deeper part of than I’d realized. People who were better to me than I’d thought they were – than I’d suspected of them.
And now this. At FRFF last year, a large part of it being what I needed was the synergy of it… the connectedness. And now I find myself wondering if I was a part of the circuit at all, or if I had just grabbed hold, and gotten the charge without being in the line. (If I’m somehow garbling my attempted metaphor there, please forgive me.)
I so rarely feel an actual part of things. When I do, it’s in small groups – no more than two or three other people, usually. I cannot feel myself an actual part of a larger group. I’m on the fringe, even if the whole cloth is woven of other fringes.
It’s as though something in my make-up is still so much the loner, even though my forebrain has forgotten how to deal with it, how to wear it like a second skin, how to revel and thrive in the ability to be solitary even in a crowd.
There is such an anonymity to being benignly tolerated. And I used to enjoy that. I used to really like being as much a piece of the set as a player in the drama (or farce, or tragedy, what-have-you). But it’s so shallow an existence. In not being really seen, you can’t be really known. Even being disliked might sometimes be better – because at least at times being disliked is for real, concrete reasons. There is little or nothing concrete in being blankly tolerated within the scope of the fringe.
I’m having a very hollow feeling tonight. A feeling of such great insubstantiality. I’m sure it will pass – the times I’ve felt a nonexistence have passed. The times I’ve become somehow half convinced that I’d died years ago and was hallucinating the remainder of what my life might have been in the final moments of near-consciousness have passed. But the times I’ve thought that if I were to be erased from the world – disappeared somehow entirely – very few if any would remember me… those times tend to return.
I’m not writing this to have it refuted, to be told I am wrong. Nor am I writing it to be told I am right, for all that might be worth. I’m not writing this to expose some sort of self-esteem issue: I don’t think I need to have it pointed out that’s probably the root of this problem. I’m writing it in an attempt to pin it down, to codify it, to explain it away to myself. (And here I’d been doing so well lately in terms of not needing to understand everything so deeply.) And I’m posting it – both in my Diaryland and my LiveJournal – so that I will remember it. Remembering is important. Perhaps because I think my memories (even of emotional or philosophical states) are so much a part of me. And perhaps because I intend to cannibalize it – as I do so much else – into some poem or story someday.
Memory… this all reminds me of a friend (at the time, if I recall correctly, boyfriend – although it could’ve been just before that phase of the relationship) from highschool. He had a theory about existence being based on a certain number of people believing that you exist. At the time, I was to be held responsible if his existence ended due to that quota falling short.
In completely unrelated news, my computer seems to have eaten editpad. I’m going to have to figure out if I still have the install for that, or if I have to download it again. Because I miss editpad for writing out the journal entries that need more thought than just being thrown together on the actual update/post/whatever page.
Right. I’m sleepy. Maybe I’ll go to bed “early” for a Thursday night, and see if I feel more substantial tomorrow. I’d say feel more myself, but this is myself too, tired and hollow as it can feel to me.
WillDave has a saying. About not just having issues, but a full subscription. Some days that’s just a funny thing to apply to someone who’s whining. And some days it fits me a little too well.
Perhaps it’s just as well that I never feel myself too close to the heart of a group. If I did, I’d worry I was the dysfunctional center-player, rather than just the quirky bit role that appears at the whim (or block) of the writers.
previous howl
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Murrrrrrffff? - 2005-01-04
A Late Review - 2004-09-12
Weekend Update - 2004-08-08
Intermission - 2004-08-07
Rambling or something. - 2004-07-31
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