From Plastic Monkeys to Axe-wielding Maniacs

At the end of this month, it will be 15 months that I’ve been working at home and to be quite honest, there are some days when I just want to get my daughter on the bus and sit quietly staring out the window for 8 hours until she gets back home. I remember having this exact same feeling in school as a lad because I suffered from basically the exact same conditions. Despite the fact that there were people all around me I was more or less completely isolated socially. The reasons are relatively varied and no doubt already documented somewhere in this long and semi-periodic exposition of a blog but the effect was largely the same. I spent the first 18 years of my life interacting with the same 2-3 people and here again I find myself in the same situation. Except for the Christmas Eve out with The Boss and his Wife, my sphere of meaningful and non-work conversation has been exactly four people, two face-to-face and two electronic for the last year or more. Somehow, ‘speaking’ to someone electronically just doesn’t quite cut it.

I’m told, oddly, that this is just the way it is. Modern men just don’t have friends. If this is the case, then that completely sucks. So while my wife is chattering away with her friends for hours on end, going out for ‘coffee’ and throwing baby showers for people I’m just supposed to sit here in my stew of whatever it is I happen to be doing this month? Or perhaps just answer an email or two? What a hollow life society bestows upon us.

It is useful to note though that it was not always this way. When I worked in Customer Support at a software company we were a very tightly-knit group. I actually still talk to some of those people. It is this act of communicating with someone across such barriers of inconvenience that form my primary definition of friendship. In no job since that one though, have I come even remotely close to ‘making a friend.’ I can’t imagine for a moment that the Customer Support people were any more or less compatible with me than my subsequent co-workers but clearly the environment is different enough to keep a considerable distance between me and the person working next to me. Working at home though I don’t even have a ‘next to me’ so whatever hope there may have been for crossing those barriers is long gone.

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m simply poorly suited to socialize at any level. I read a study once about baby monkeys who were taken from their mothers and instead fed by plastic ‘mothers’ made up to look like adult monkeys. The ‘mothers’ were basically just food dispensers. The baby could go to its ‘mother’ and suckle and were fed as well as normal monkeys but never had any social interaction with an adult, just a plastic doll. When these monkeys grew up they just sat in the corner terrified to move. It’s hard not to cry when you think about those poor monkeys especially when in many ways you ARE one of those monkeys. My mother was just about as much like a plastic mannequin as a person can get. I always had plenty to eat and suitable clothing but on an emotional level it was clear I was merely in the way. Family lore even has it that when my father saw my mother in the hospital after I had been taken off to the nursery her first words to him were, “How are the dogs?” I was a mere afterthought, a mere biological inconvenience, an exceptional bit of afterbirth not so easily disposed of.

Penultimately, it’s worth writing down a few of the theoretical solutions to this little “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” conundrum. The first and most obvious is to simply ‘go back to the office’. This is a doomed proposition though in my mind. First and foremost, I worked in the office for 2 years and didn’t manage to make even an iota of progress. I spent the first year sitting literally thrust into a corner by myself. I ticked off whole WEEKS on my calendar when I spoke to nobody in the whole company except for my own boss (amusingly an acquaintance from the Customer Support job). I was as good as a remote employee even when I was in the office. By the time the office had expanded enough that I had immediate neighbors I was already established as the ‘hermit in the corner’ and had a personality poorly equipped to overcome such an image. Add to that the fact that the last time I was in the office I felt like a downright disruption rather than a visitor and I think we can safely conclude that going back to work in the office isn’t the way to break out of my bubble. If anything, it’s more likely to deepen my existing cynicism.

It has also been proposed that I should go take a class at one of the many local colleges. While I don’t disagree with this proposal, the timing couldn’t be worse. I’d happily go take a writing class at U of I and probably will if I think about it at the right time but classes just started so one can’t simply break in in the middle of a semester. I’ll file that away for later consideration.

The third and crappiest option that occurs to me is to simply increase my online chattering. There is no end of random lonely people on the internet which may share enough of my interests to be interesting to talk to. Perhaps there’s a book club out there that reads literature rather than whatever the current Oprah selection is.

One thing that I can take from this with certainty is that most of the isolation I feel is completely my own fault. My current company prides itself on a sense of cohesiveness and to look at those outside my bubble that does indeed seem to be the case. They get along perfectly (at least from my perspective in the bubble) and seem to have a lot of ‘fun’. The conclusion one is forced to is that I’m the one screwing up. Perhaps it’s leftover from the schoolyards of my boyhood but whenever I approach someone to interact I can’t get over the thought that it’s probable that I’m disturbing them in some way. That they would just as soon roll along in whatever track they were traveling than be diverted by any of my inane babblings. I’m sure that attitude, though born of benevolence on my part, makes me look like an ass to the outside world. In some twisted way, I think I have to be less considerate of others (at least from my viewpoint) in order to be seen as friendly or approachable. I suspect this is how the baby monkeys feel too.

Latest Projects & Contest with a Prize!

Since I know that you're all just on the edge of your collective seat to know what I've done in the woodshop lately I'll tell you.

I went out and spent a bit of that leftover cash on a scroll saw. Even at $250 it was a dern fine investment in my opinion. I carved someone's name out of a 2x6 in traditional 'Robert Indiana' style:



And made someone else a traditional old-timey toolbox. Considering her age isn't exactly compatible with tools per se I instead cut her a few letters to go in it:



Of all the projects I've done, I have to say that I'm the most satisfied with this one. The design was arrived at in my standard typical meandering style and ended up as a viable and useful finished product. Beyond that, the wood was all just leftover scrap from the shop so it was basically free (give or take a few broken saw blades.)

Oh, I promised a contest. I made a number of extra letters for various reasons (3 Ds so she could spell Daddy, 4 Es so she can spell her own full name, etc). So the contest is a simple one. The person who comes up with the best English phrase or sentence to use as many of these letters as possible will win a SIGnificant prize! So here they are, go at it:

A - 3
B - 1
C - 1
D - 3
E - 4
F - 1
G - 2
H - 1
I - 2
J - 1
K - 1
L - 3
M - 3
N - 2
O - 3
P - 2
Q - 1
R - 1
S - 3
T - 3
U - 2
V - 1
W - 1
X - 1
Y - 1
Z - 1

Goin’ to Church

Yes indeed, you read that correctly. Last Christmas Eve we took ourselves down to the local church and got us some religion. We went to one of those new fangled churches down the street. It was… well, really surprising. I kept wondering to myself, “OK, when is the headliner going to come out?” It was really more like a pop concert than a church and I can’t for the life of me twist the event around in my head enough times to make it feel right. It did though, do a lot to solidify my thinking on religion as it’s practiced in this country.

So we walked into the place and it’s a HUGE space with 3 big-screen TVs at the front with some burning flame graphic playing and a countdown sequence. We got there, I’ll have you know, with 3 minutes and 24 seconds to spare. After the countdown to liftoff passed we got down to business: thirty minutes of religious songs accompanied by a decent-sized band and 7 or 8 singers who took it in turns to act as the lead. I was not aware that churches had traded their choirs for rock bands. I was more than a little disappointed.

After all the singing, we finally got to the message. This was REALLY horrifying. The premise was perfectly fine; it was the usual claptrap about how we’re not really alone and Jesus is always there for us, etc, etc, etc. No problem with that. I didn’t have a problem until Jesus WALKED ONTO THE STAGE. Yeah, I know. Most of you are just sitting there thinking, “Um, so what?” And yes, I know you heard me and you still don’t think a thing about it. Please understand that I’m not a religious person but this horrifies me on behalf of the entirety of the Christian faith. They actually had someone dress up as Jesus and prance about on the stage. Now, he was very dignified and all but the fact is that a person, a lowly human, dressed as Jesus, your savior and embodiment of God, and walked around in front of a crowd. At the VERY least, this is a distraction from the true Glory of the REAL Jesus. For a brief period, instead of giving glory to Jesus himself, the people in the audience are instead looking at this person dressed as Jesus, this ICON of Jesus, this base representation. This bit of worthless dust, this man, has taken it upon himself to dress as Jesus and pull even the most tattered shred of dignity from the real thing. That just strikes me as WRONG.

So yeah, that was the experience I came away with from Church. I got the sad impression that the Christian faith has turned itself into a pack of idolaters. I was already a bit suspect of the crosses before what with having all these symbols of Christ in the house, some complete with a dead Jesus, just seemed wrong. Don’t even get me started on the whole ‘graven image’ thing. But now, just having a cross isn’t good enough. We actually have to SEE Jesus, in the flesh. As if any Christian alive today is good and pure enough of heart to deserve THAT. And what seems saddest is the fact is that it’s this kind of church that seems to be taking over the faith. If I’d gone to church and sat through a dry lecture filled with Biblical quotes and promises of damnation designed to keep people on the straight and narrow I’d have come back and wrote a glowing review. That, in my mind, is what Church is for. Church shouldn’t be about a few songs and making everyone feel good. You should walk out with a mote of sadness in your eye as you realize how you’ve wronged mankind over the previous week, not a prideful grin.

Blog Housekeeping...

Just some random housekeeping items here to share.

Firstly, for the clamoring hoards of you who just HAVE to know what I'm reading at the moment, I've added a link to my reading list at the left. Now you can read along with me. Almost time for Wuthering Heights again on our Bronte tour! Don't get left behind!

Also, I've added a link to the Tattered Thread Bible Commentary as well. Now you can see all the random Bible comments in one handy place! Isn't that adorable?!?!