Oddball Update

It’s 2:42 a.m. and I’m sitting at the computer. What a dumbass. Well, to be fair, I slept till a whopping 1:00 in the afternoon today, thanks to working hard all week, followed by a grueling trip to “Faaaammmily Recycle Mart!” on Saturday in a truck with no brakes. So as you might imagine, I’m a little wired right now.

I want to get out and drive my car. Like, drive it a lot. Drive it for no reason. Just drive it around and see if any of the five million other goats in Naples are out and about; maybe I’ll pass one and we’ll wave at each other. I spent some time reading threads on the GTO board today and I realize I miss the place. I used to go there every flippin’ five minutes when I was waiting for my car to show up. After the first of the year, everything just seemed to get so incredibly busy. Couldn’t make the car shows, couldn’t go for drives, had to sit at home and work. But at least I had my car in the garage, so I quit going to the boards.

There’s a big long thread over there called “Florida Official GTO Sightings” where fellow Floridians can post their sightings of other GTOs while out and about. There are more GTOs in Naples and Orlando than pretty much anywhere else, but none of the last three months of sightings contained any mention of me. Then it occured to me: That’s probably because I hardly ever drive the thing, as evidenced by the fact that I have only just recently turned over 1,800 miles and the car is six months old. I’ll be doing the first oil change this week.

It’s nice to keep the car in pristine order, surely. But I think I ought to be getting out there and driving it some more, really driving it around town…but to do that, I feel like I’d have to have some reason for going out, and I so rarely do. I feel like if I go out, I need to go somewhere and spend money there or it’s pointless. And because I try not to spend money unless absolutely necessary, I just stay at home. I’m actually all geeked because this Tuesday, Prey (the PC game) hits store shelves and I’ll have an excuse to jump in the goat and head over to EB to pick it up as my official leisure purchase for the month. Wow, that’s like, so exciting, right? But to me, it is. It’s a momentous occasion.

Back in 1998, when my shiny new Trans Am landed, I would take it out for a summer cruise almost every evening at around 7:30. The T-tops would be off, the Orange Road “Best Collection” (CD slot number nine, as ever) would be blasting that “Cheer Down” soundalike, the wind would be in my hair and my LS1 would be humming down Inkster, past Ten Mile, Nine Mile, all that lovely countryside and those rolling hills that seemed somehow strangely out of place. I’d laugh at all the other cars getting frisky with me in the rear-view mirror; a 300ZX here, a Mustang there.

Part of getting older is taking on new responsibilities…and of not so much losing the ability to go freewheeling around town in a sports car, but perhaps gaining some restraint that must continually compel you to ask yourself, does it make any sense to just get in the car, for no reason, and go out? And who should I inform that I’m going somewhere? Should I let my boss know I’ll be away from my desk? Should I forward my work phone to my cell just in case something comes up? Is it rush hour yet, and will traffic suck? How much gas have I got left? By the time you get this far along that train of thought, you really just don’t want to go anymore. It’s too much effort and too much worry, so you put the car keys back on the table.

I try to think back to times when this stuff didn’t matter. For starters, eight years ago, in July of 1998, there was no boss, no schedule, no work phone, no cell phone (well, except that old Ameritech brick you kept turned off and stowed except for emergencies), and hell…if you were cruising and needed gas, you just fucking found a gas station and got some. No pre-planning required. ‘Course, gas cost about a buck a gallon for premium back then, so that was a little easier to do in a spur of the moment sort of way.

It’s possible that this is the key, the real key, to being happy with the way your life is going. No, not something as specific as being able to go for a cruise on Woodward without over-analyzing the ramifications. I’m talking about the simple, generic ability to just say, “Well what the hell” now and again. To just do things for the sake of doing them without setting up a million safety nets every time, just in case the earth cracks in two while you’re away from the comfort and solace of your big leather sofa, not that the sofa would really do anything for you when the apocalypse hits. And it’s not even big stuff — no one with half a pint of responsibility would say “well what the hell” about quitting their job and taking a six-month tour of Zimbabwe, after all; but when it comes to going out for a drive, taking a walk, saying “Hey, let’s go get ice cream tonight” or whatever… Well, maybe loosening up enough to do things like that is what gives life that little taste of sweetness that makes you hunger for more of it every time you get out of bed. Maybe that’s what makes the difference between wanting to get out of bed, and dragging your ass to the alarm clock.

Cause I mean, seriously. If you’re micromanaging your life to such a degree that if “Hey, let’s go out for a drive” can’t ever be said without causing alarm bells to go off about there not being room in the schedule for that, or about how it’ll blow the budget for the rest of the month, then you have big problems — whether you’ve realized it yet or not.

This is part and parcel of why I begin to feel like maybe some of the ways in which I’ve arranged my life were not such good ideas. Of why opening up my spare hours to all kinds of tertiary income sources, with clients who might call at any moment to ask for a new website or an enhancement or a piece of artwork for something, may not have been a great idea in the long run. You always hear people say that “money can’t buy happiness,” and you always wonder what the hell those people are smoking. Until you really get there, and see that yeah, it doesn’t matter how rich you are if you can’t comb your hair without wondering if there’s something you’re supposed to be doing for someone right at that moment.

I was thinking about this earlier today. Maybe there’s something to be said for simplifying your life. And maybe I’m not the only one. I used to think that I have a hidden sign on my head that says “YES, I AM LOOKING FOR THINGS TO DO IN MY SPARE TIME, SO PLEASE GIVE ME SOME,” because everybody I talked to at work always asked if I did work on the side and if I was interested in talking to this dude they know who wants a website. I often accept, figuring that every other IT professional must freelance too, because they all ask me about it like it’s expected. Then, a couple weeks ago I come to find out that one of my bosses (the truck guy) is envious that I can handle doing side work, because the times he’s tried it he’s always gone insane and felt like he couldn’t focus or be efficient. I wanted to laugh, because honestly, that’s how I feel a lot of the time, but I figured you were just supposed to feel that way, y’know?

It all started to come to a head this month when my most trustworthy client fell behind on paying me for services rendered. Adding insult to injury, it was for a project that dragged on for over a month unnecessarily and required two ground-up redesigns to get right, all thanks to a lack of communication and due diligence on the part of the contact I was working with. (Hee, I just found an old rant I wrote about that guy whilst still employed there.) Combined with one of my other regular clients, who is already getting charged my “courtesy” rate but who can only afford to pay in tiny installments interest-free over an unlimited period of time, I’m really just starting to think that the whole mess is overrated. The whole reason I’m doing this is for the money, because believe me, I don’t feel like my life needs more complication. If I have to pull teeth to get paid, now, I’m going to drop this shit like a hot potato.

I decided that it would be much more worth my expense of time and energy if I could make my current employer my source of side income, too. There’s more work needing to be done at the company than our staff can handle, and a lot of the stuff is future work that requires a good investment of time researching and planning. I’ve been approached about the possibility of hiring a subordinate to work for me, but we all agreed that finding the right kind of person would be a challenge. So I got to thinking about it, and frankly, I’d rather give some of my off hours to furthering development of our company’s upcoming products than wrestling with some local jackball’s third website redesign because he conveniently forgot to give me all the specs the first time around. I’d rather just see all those extra hours I put on my time sheet compensated and added to my bi-monthly paycheck, no muss, no fuss. And if one week I didn’t feel like putting extra hours in, I just wouldn’t. I get some sanity back, and my company gets some extra man-hours on long-term projects without hiring new staff. Everybody wins.

And with some of my peace of mind restored, perhaps I’ll be able to look further than a few days into the future without wanting to puke.

Then comes the fun part; that is, retraining myself to enjoy a little impulsiveness and a healthy sense of freedom — the freedom that gives us things like evening cruises in a sports car for absolutely no reason at all, or a trip to the ice cream store or the beach just because you want to do something different or fun with your loved ones or your family. Freedom that resists the urge to be quashed by worries of responsibilities that need constant tending to, or of phones or email checkers that might ring or flash if we’re away from our workstations for thirty seconds.

Because sometimes you just have to not give a shit — it’s not like it won’t all still be there in an hour or two when you get home.

Categorized as Randomness