Capped

Found out today, while scheduling PTO for the holidays, that I am currently at my limit for saving up my Paid Time Off. I’m unable to accrue any more free time-money. 280 hours, max. That’s 7 fucking business-weeks. What even am I doing with my life?

In “Star Trek: Insurrection”, Captain Picard mentioned he had 6 months shore leave saved up and that he’d like to visit the planet again. I’m not near that level of bank, but if not for the cap I’d start calling myself Jean Luc, because my dedication(?) to the job is just that selfless(?) and I’d have all that company liability owed to me. At my current rate I’m accruing almost 8 hours of PTO every 2-week pay period. At 26 pay periods per year, that’s just over 25 days; 5 weeks.

I am doing this wrong.

The last time I took a long vacation was exactly this week in 2023 to go visit friends in Seattle. Since then, I’ve taken only 1, maaaybe 2 days off at a stretch to go visit family back in Arkansas. But that’s penny-ante bullshit. That’s not a vacation. That’s work. I need a real vacation. I need real time off, to remember why I’m fucking doing any of this. To enjoy my stupid life. No fucking wonder I’m burned the fuck out.

I don’t have to travel; I can have a staycation (ugh), but that doesn’t feel right. I need to be out there, not in my dumb little life with my dumb little patterns. The burden of planning and booking anything keeps me from bothering. But that’s not right. Definitely not right.

Now that I have a coworker who can read a wiki, the lights will stay on while I’m out. So to hell with it, I’m taking Fridays off for the rest of the year, probably. At least until the holidays.

Or whatever.

Scribble

Dreamed I had lost the ability to write. Met a girl, we hit it off, she had to leave town, so I wanted to give her my number and email address. Tried to write it all down. My letterforms came out garbled, incomplete, illegible. Like I had a stroke or something. It was kinda traumatic. Literally the definition of trauma: a dream.

It makes me concerned for my future.

Of course, this was inspired by my past: last night, jaggedly writing an entry in my journal. I need to continue the practice of handwriting more, because my muscles are getting sloppy. But not that sloppy, eesh. Even my typing is waning, because I spend much of my day swiping and tapping.

I should spend more concern in my present.

Leveling

“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In my third semester of Deutsch, I understand that the difficulty of learning a language increases logarithmically. It’s like the skill leveling in a MUD of old. 1x to level up once. 1,000,000,000x to level up ten times.

I feel like I’m in over my head. But I didn’t learn English in 3 semesters. I took my entire life.

Lesson here is to learn as early as possible. Don’t put it off. NEVER put it off.

Idyll

I came from poverty. So in this day and age — even after personally making the grade ­— I can’t fathom, can’t understand how so many people can sit in their car and idle their engine for so long, as if gasoline costs nothing, as if noise wasn’t a societal issue, as if exhaust wasn’t a shared burden.

What are they doing? Playing games? Listening to podcasts? Eating lunch alone? Enjoying the air conditioning? Having a private phone call? Watching a movie on the infotainment system?

It’s been a bit extra since the pandemic started, and it never went away. I can’t grok it. I mean, on a cerebral level, sure, I know why people do it. But is there no urgency in conservation? Of the environment? Of money? Money!

Individually, my contribution to the global greenhouse is tiny, but collectively we weigh heavy. I find myself turning my engine off in the drive-thru because I hate gas stations that much.

Doesn’t anyone else understand their part in this?

Turn off the engine. Roll down the windows and join the world. Or go inside to your couch and big screen and surround sound. Anything else. Please.

Analyria

It’s funny to me, in my advanced age, how I would write so much poetry in my younger days, yet I never actually read any poetry. I still find myself unwilling and – if we’re being gracious – functionally unable to read poetry. 

It’s physically uncomfortable. Once I see verse on the page, my mind shifts into a “this is serious art, and you need to pay attention to the pictures they’re drawing.” I go into the endeavor the hard way and bail out.

But the poetry of my twenties? That was just me playing with word shapes and conceptual reverberations. Finding the rhythm in ideas. Trying to express things with big-brain patterns. Shortcutting prosaic sequences with orthogonal parallel images. Artistic masturbation, really.

I’m subscribed to some literary journals, and I feel sheepish when I flip past someone’s poem. I know it’s supposed to be good, or it never would have made the editorial selection. But in reading, I can’t find a handhold to climb its stanzas. I flail against the rocks, nails chipping, dust falling into my face. I drop the chalk bag, unclip from the belay, and go home. I tried, friend. Really, I tried.