Parking My Brain

Am I weird, or is it just part of being alive that every so often you just feel a little "crummy", just different in a way that you don't like, not always for any particular reason, or at least not for ones you are really aware of or can figure out?

Headache, tummy ache, these all take a variety of forms.

For me, it's often triggered by either working too hard without rest and/or not taking adequate sustenance. Or maybe gamma rays.

It's weird, but the job I have now is the only one I haven't really gotten paid more that a pittance to do, but I find that I work harder and longer there than any job I've ever had. Maybe it's because I'm pretty much only doing things I find enjoyable in some way. I'm not sure why I find them enjoyable, many or most of them are rote, brainless computer chores.

Go to a web page, download something. Take that and open it in an "editor" of whatever kind, and do obvious, simple things that are mostly a version of another common task. You might do 7 things, but they are versions of the same 2-3 things. Enter metadata, and save the files. Yaaaawwwwwnnnnn........

But I go in 10:30-11 I'd go earlier, and one day a week I show up at 7, but mostly I aim for parking "sweet spots" in time: parking is VERY tight I got a mean note on my car today for having parked "too close" to another. Imagine taking the time to write a note like this. People sound all bitter and threatening ("I wrote down your license number!"), but no one seems to get to the point of what THEY would've done. I mean, how many people are there that plan to go someplace and do something--usually with people depending on you--get there, drive around, and can only find one spot, but it's really TIGHT...so they just go home? I have calculated the exact number, and it is NONE.

"Your car was VERY CLOSE and COULD HAVE damaged my car..." Really? How? Might my car just get an impulse and lash out? 

I am definitely one of the most thoughtful parkers you'll ever find, because I think a lot about how I place my car. For example, I try to position my car so that another might be able to fit, whereas clearly many people just pull in and split, bisecting a giant space, depriving you of a space where you might have wiggled in. People aren't thinking on this level, but I'll get to that.

On he other hand, I am also one the the most skillful parkers you'll ever encounter. I have parked in spaces so small that I took photos to impress people. I drive a 98 4runner, not the bulkiest nor the most nimble car, and I've parked it in spaces that measured considerably less than a foot longer than the car itself! I checked because a folded-in-half dollar bill (6" long) would not fit in either the gap in front or behind my car! In person, it doesn't even seem possible.

This close job freaked me out so much I actually went back down (elevator down, walk a block and a half, and back, not just peeking) to check on it, as if there were anything else I could have, or should have, done. It was almost as if I had aligned it and just pushed it straight sideways into the spot, it was crazy. But I felt a little BAD about the position I put others into.

I thought, "will people be angry?" And if they are, so what? I have something I have to do and I need to leave my car someplace. If I got it in, then the others almost certainly could've gotten theirs out, even if it took some maneuvering. 

And I think that if makes people mad, it's too bad. You take your car in public, you can leave it in any legal spot it fits in. Have you ever heard it said that you must make sure there is a foot in front and in back of your car? Have you ever seen anyone MEASURE? Of course not. A "place" is where your car will fit, that's all.

It's not usually a problem because overwhelmingly I find people have a very poor conception of how big their cars actually are, and mostly need at least double the required space to do ANYTHING. I don't get it. Parallel parking is a necessary and common evil, why wouldn't you pay attention on trying to be GOOD at it? I do...I visualize approach path and angle, imagine where my rear wheel is compared to the curb so that I can turn at the exact right moment, etc. Mostly, I just back in, and my car is perfectly positioned, about an inch from the curb. I'm that good, but in get a lot of practice. There may be parallel parkers as good as me, but not better.

So today this person was so irate, she wrote me a pissy note. (I mostly don't see guys doing this for some reason, perhaps because it's kind of humiliating.) When I first left I checked, and she had a solid three or more feet in front of her to get out. I figured she could just have driven straight out. But maybe someone came later, and then parked right on her front bumper. Ok, I would have felt angry too. But it's a rough and tumble world out there, what with car bombs, kidnapping school girls, beheading journalists...and challenging parking, well...it can get vexing! Sometimes you just have to CLENCH.

I liked the way s/he (could've been a guy) made sure to mention they had my license number so that in the FUTURE, well...I'd clearly be FUCKED! "Your Honor, on this date I made a note that this same car was also...parked DANGEROUSLY close. What if a CHILD...." Really? The knowledge that a stranger has my license plate and a memory of my bumper being close but not touching his...how will I sleep tonight? "So...what got YOU into Gitmo...?"

But best of all to me is the idea that people somehow think that their cars will remain pristine and untouched by any vehicle or object FOREVER. Just how does that sound in court?

"I believe, You Honor, this resulted in a SCUFF on my...BUMPER!"

"Um..." The learned justice interrupts, "...on your...WHAT?! 'Bump-er'? Doesn't the very word logically parse to declaring a designed function of...BUMPING?!"

"Court finds against plaintiff and assesses a fine for clearly having been intoxicated while driving, otherwise such stupidity could never be explained!"

My car is COVERED with dings, some of which I put there myself, but most not. If you are walking up to your car, and the person in the car next to you gets out and lightly, carefully dings your door while getting out, there is but one single, solitary acceptably gracious response: a smile! 

One person is thinking, "Oops, I was trying, sorry, hopefully it's not noticeable..." And the other is thinking, "hey, it's a CAR! That you took effort gratifies me. Go forth from this point and don't let this incident diminish from your overall joie d'vivre in even a theoretical way!"

When I bought my last car (this very one), I made good and sure that it was covered in thick metal and paint, and even maybe some strips, thinking that, along with safety, comfort and economy (and coolness), small impacts would then have fairly trivial effect.

You know what you call a person who is fretful about a ding in the paint of their car? A DICK.

It was dark when I read the note, and I felt physically crummy from pushing myself too hard at my free job. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that working with me is one thing that they'd rather do above all others. And it mostly works. Some mornings a staffer will walk by and say, "Oh thank goodness--you're here! I've got some recordings or tasks and I'm always glad to see that YOU are here, because I know you'll do them right."

I am the guy who takes almost suspicious care in whatever I am asked to do. I suggest things--in a gentle and deferential way--to help others produce something they'll be just a little happier with. I record people reading promos, and I direct them..."that was great, but what if you put just a little more on the word 'today'..." and demonstrate...and usually they say, "oh yeah, definitely, lets do it again."

I'm surprising good at little things most people don't think you can be good at. I'm good at promos. I might have been a great actor, but the hassle!

Of course, this all comes at a significant personal price. There is a clinical term in psychology, "perfectionism". It doesn't mean that you think that what you do tends to be more perfect, it means that you have a certain constant low-level awareness of the requirement of doing everything PERFECTLY. Walking. Breathing. Picking something up. And more complicated things, but really, absolutely, everything.

The huge problem is that the definition of "perfection" carries a connotation of unreachability. It's Xeno's Paradox: each shot can be twice as close, but theoretical perfection is definitively ruled out.

You wouldn't BELIEVE my suicide plans, Dan describes them as my "design projects".

It makes for a somewhat torturous life, and if think that all of us have suffered from it considerably more than most others. But it's not really volitional. It's the ultimate perverse defect. But it's best to be aware of it, to remember to cut yourself the slack you need to survive. 

So I read the note, felt a little anger, a touch of what I'd say in return (they write everything but their name and number on the note, so THEY get to vent, but your humanity is NULLIFIED because you can say nothing). Then I thought, "at least it wasn't a ticket!"

When I got home I felt crummy and didn't know what to do. Too late to eat, watching a show would worsen my headache...I took some pill I had handy, and just lied down. 

I tried to find a position, overall attitude, position of limbs, not too much pressure on anything, making smaller and smaller adjustments. And when I found a physical spot I could accept, I kept doing...something. Thinking in a certain way, trying to see what firing patterns of my brain felt less crummy, and finding microscopic but detectable improvements.

And then a little physical adjustment, and then the whole process, to approach that feeling where it just doesn't psychically GOUGE me. And it gets a tiny bit better, but never fully "better". ("Better" and "better": one of the greatest defects of English. Larry David did a great bit on "Curb" where he made a bet with his acupuncturist about feeling "better". The guy was of course a savvy Asian, and laid the trap perfectly. "So Mr David, are you feeling better?"

Larry admitted that yes, he was feeling a bit better.

The acupuncturist declares, "I win--you owe me $5000!" And the scene closes with Larry fretting in his classic way, "better, not BETTER! There's a difference! I feel better than I did, but not as if my problem had been eliminated, not ALL better." Grrrr...

As you immediately sensed, because I know you to be particularly insightful that way, I only started writing this once I felt "better" enough, the fact that I'm willing to write is a sign of feeling better. Still don't feel BETTER better though.

While all better is best better is still always better than not BETTER better.

But the REAL notion that kicked me off was the thought of what I was actually DOING, lying there, trying to feel less crummy. It had to be SOMETHING. But it's like detecting a neutrino, or Higg's. (It's always good to say "Higg's" when appropriate because it certainly establishes you as someone of great knowledge and fine discernment. And leaving off "boson" is kind of like referring to Scorsese as "Marty"--it's important, but a little ordinary to people like US.)

I was lying on my side, shifting my arms so there wasn't too much weight on my right wrist, and then trying to find the greatest amount of STILLNESS I could, and focus on THAT. is the smallest thing I can feel seeming like even less? Oh no...that's a little worse, maybe 1/1000th the width of a Higg's worse, but it's the wrong direction.

When you're just lying there, focusing, tuning, trying to find all the ways you can control, and how to nudge them, what is it exactly that you are doing? In that astonishing web of impulses flashing across your brain, a weird, gooey muck in your skull, something is happening, you are finding the controls, and figuring out how to nuance them, like the perfect cello performance: you know it's better, but you can't ever really say how.

Parking my brain.