ADJ

The other day some of my faraway family came into town for a visit, and I got a chance to see my little cousins. I say, “little.” One is nine the other just turned a dozen, so they’re already pretty grown-up. Or at least I thought I was so at that age.

I can’t stand the 12-year-old. She’s started staring at people. Not to any practical purpose or to win a staring game, but just to do it.

It doesn’t bother me that she does it to me; it bothers me that she does it all. I had thought that was my thing.

Yes, I was that kid in Junior High and High School. But it was okay because I had figured out that it was socially taboo to stare at someone for a long period of time with an expressionless face, and I had figured it out on my own. By doing this simple thing, I could make other people intensely uncomfortable, which is far more entertaining that it has any right to be or you may be able to appreciate now.

But now she’s doing the same thing and for the same reasons (at least I assume), and that was my thing that made me oh so clever and unique.

She’s a cute girl, and will likely grow up to be very well-liked and well-adjusted, but I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive her this, ever.

There are some things I just don’t like to acknowledge, and my lack of uniqueness is one of them. Yes, yes, we’re all unique and beautiful snowflakes, but when you’re a child, you’re told and can honestly believe (because everyone else seems to believe it) that you’re really super special and no one else is like you. When you’re five being bright is enough to be called a genius. No one is actually talking about you, they’re talking about what you may one day become. But life goes on and potential shrinks and one day being “smart for your age” no longer matters, just being smart does. By early adolescence, you aren’t actually as smart, artistic, or athletic as you had been convinced you were, but you still want to be special. And as you exit childhood, you start to realize other people actually perceive you. If you can’t excel, one of the ways to stay special is just to do something weird.

Maybe I’m drifting off topic here, but what an amazing revelation it was then that you can affect someone else’s life by doing nothing but looking, just looking. How proud I might be of figuring it out–if not for a cousin coming along to throw in my face it’s just something some people do.

Not that I didn’t know all of this before. Working at a convenience store quickly horrified me as I (and I’m sure anyone who’s worked a customer service job) realized that people are all the same. If you place us in a given situation, we will all behave in the same way, ask the same stupid questions, and make the same tired jokes everyone before us has, all the while fully convinced of our own individuality and wit.

So I wasn’t even weird. I was just common without virtue or benefit. It’s insulting, and she insulted me whether she realizes it or not.

I’m totally not getting her anything this Christmas.

Sometimes I try to give my blogs shocking titles in the hopes of increasing readership. It doesn’t seem to be working, but I don’t think, “I hate the consistent requirements of life and futile struggle against entropy” would have enticed anyone. Forgive being misled into clicking.

In a way, though, that is an accurate title. As much as the newsroom is fun to be around, the demands of my occupation are positively ludicrous. I have to come in bright and early at 3 p.m. five days a week and sit at a computer reading things until midnight with only a one-hour lunchbreak. Just a few months ago, 18 hours was considered a full load, and here I am working 40. Oh, and roofers think they have it bad having to be outside all day, but when I drive in the afternoon in my car, sometimes I burn my hand on the metal part of the seatbelt and it stings like you wouldn’t believe. Then once I’m in the office, I have to have a sweater for when the air conditioner goes on the fritz.

But the worst thing is that every day is a new day, and every paper, too. For example, the other day one of the other copy editors caught a potentially libelous comment that was going to be printed in the dot.you (you people say the meanest things). It was my page and I didn’t see it, but she did and for all I know saved Freedom Communications from a hundred thousand dollar lawsuit or settlement. But the next day was a new one, and doing her job very well on one day did nothing to help her the next. Today’s problems don’t care about yesterday’s triumphs.

My tongue is nearly all the way out of my cheek by now, so I’ll keep it in the middle of my mouth from here on. I joked about college credit hours, but schoolwork in general is nice in that it’s cumulative. I guess you start over each semester or year, but you can do well enough through the beginning that you can take off the end. It’s not that nothing is like that in “the real world,” you can be financially successful at one point in your life to the point you can take it easy later. In fact, I think that’s the whole purpose of working and retirement. But for the most part, consistency is key.

It sucks that you have to brush your teeth every day to prevent bad breath and rot. Brushing your teeth fantastically on Tuesday doesn’t mean a thing Thursday. You can’t work out enough in a day to last you for the week, or work out so well before the age of thirty that you stay healthy afterward. You can’t clean your house so completely cleaning is no longer necessary.

This must be what God was talking about when he cursed Adam. Not just the toil of laboring against the thorns, but that the thorns would always grow back and Adam would always have to eat. He would have to work hard, and not just hard, but work always.

Slow and steady doesn’t win the race. That’s nonsense. The hare would beat the tortoise on any given day. But slow and steady wins every race after the hare decides to stop running them. The stalactites keep dripping whether fight them or no.

Life, like death, is inexorable and unconquerable. It’s futile to catch mistakes on a paper when there’s just going to be more tomorrow. It’s futile to clean because it’s just going to get dirty again anyway. Meaningless, meaningless, we hate the futility. But we like our newspapers accurate and we like our things clean, and we steal little victories here and there, and hopefully we can rejoice in them while slowly, steadily losing the war.

Not even usual

I hate my job.