Exodus

Probably the most constant theme I've hit over the years (and years and years) is that, even though there's a massive--even directly contradictory--difference between the motivations of discipline and compulsion, the end results are often indistinguishable. Did you get way more done versus the expected mean output of the average person? And is the difference in those results an expression of their laziness OR their relatively well-balanced mental/emotional self-regulation? WHAT DOES IT MATTER IF THEY'RE IN SECOND PLACE AT BEST? Winners don't give a shit about your rationalizations. If you were able to buckle down and/or obliterate the sense of boundaries that would otherwise keep you happy and engaged with the world around you, maybe you wouldn't be looking at the back of me disappearing in the distance. Think about it.

I'm neither going to indulge in nor tolerate any speculation about which core motivation has driven to post every Thursday, every week with almost no gaps for 20-ish years, just suffice it to say I acknowledge I have been an absolute machine. And machines, famously, live full and meaningful personal lives amongst the meat-creatures with whom they are forced to coexist, miming and mimicking their ticks and micro-expressions not to mock or manipulate, but just to make sure everyone feels comfortable. The weird steely focus and shocking productivity makes flesh-folks defensive already, there's no reason not to make an effort to give the Uncanny Valley the widest possible berth.

When specifically not considering my motivations and appetites, we don't have to spend time considering how it makes me feel to have accidentally missed posting for an entire Thursday just six days ago. And to be clear, it's not avoidance or deflection. The fact that I'm posting this after 9 pm on this specific Thursday is a hefty clue for you, observant reader, that I've got A LOT GOING ON. "Exploring ones feelings" is an indulgence for people who are "capable of staying awake." The good news about my job offer for a place telework-ineligible two counties away from my two-decade-plus home simultaneously also sounded a starting gun for an absolute frenzy that has included finding an apartment, paring down a four-bedroom house with a five-person history over 23 years into about 800 square feet, achieving the move while also spending about half my waking time back at the old house coordinating the five-figure effort to prepare it to be Someone Else's House.

Has it been a lot emotionally? Reader, it has. Has it been a lot physically? Reader, also, it has. Has it been a lot financially? Well, yes, but we're talking about selling off Southern California real estate two-thirds of the way through its conventional mortgage term. The rug-pull of losing the only real home I've ever had and facing down the proposition of willingly foregoing the warm-hug of the ghost-images of my babies (when they were still properly addressable as such) contained within the fiberglass-stuffed walls has been a heavy lift but will eventually result in a literal payoff. For now, constant driving back and forth along a 50-mile track in SoCal freeway miles for the opportunity to make 10,000 tiny decisions means I. Am. Sleepy. I can't remember not being sleepy. I'm sure at some point I was, but that lazy fucker didn't have a job. It's time we shed that dead weight memory and actually achieved a thing, which in this case looks a lot like living like a 20-something urban apartment life thirty years after it was an age-appropriate idea. Romantic, sure, but how much of that romance would you trade for the convenience of an attached two-car garage?

Am I sleepy now? Have I actually fallen asleep once or twice in the course of writing this? Am I certain there's any kind of thematic or even coherent connection paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence or even word to word? The answer to that is clear: at least I'm doing it, one way or the other. Maybe it's discipline/commitment, maybe it's compulsion. Either way, the measurable results are the same: 1) a finished blog post, and 2) legitimate questions raised about my capacity for self-care. The only thing I can say for sure is that I don't "do it for [the readers]." It's not that I don't care, it's just that the line starts behind me.