Client GS7.AZ1 - Session 5

(Beep. Music fades in.)

Let’s be blunt about this. Plans change. Or more accurately, circumstances change, and plans should plan accordingly. No pun intended, if that could even classify as a pun. 

I don’t even know anymore. I don’t think any of us really know anymore. We’ve kind of all just hit that point. Unexpectedly. Maybe we could have seen the writing on the walls had we looked. Maybe we could have predicted how this was going to go, but accepting it was a whole different matter.

Look, you have your spreadsheets and charts and all of that. And it’s like what your old professor said: only you can see the best moment to jump. Even if you were to share those things, those handy visuals, no one else can tell you that. Because it doesn’t just depend on those facts and figures. It also depends on how you feel about the ever changing circumstances. However you feel about your prospects running with your self-employment when the world is upside down is completely justified and right. This isn’t the sort of emotion or fear that you should chastise yourself for.

I know talking to that professor was comforting. I always thought chatting to professors was one of the best parts of university, even if I was never good at utilizing it. But that was at a different university. One that feels like a place I went to in another life. And that isn’t entirely wrong, now is it? It was another life for me. I was a different person back then. But I’ve become who I need to be. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

And maybe that’s the thing you need to accept? That the person you are will need to change or adapt to circumstances. And that growth is painful but inevitable and is the sort of thing that will leave you better off for the trouble. 

Emotions are complex, we last said. They are a wave that rises and falls with each day. With each churning of the world. 

So no, I don’t know what you need to do. I could never know. Sure, self-employment is something (inhale)… that, that I’ve been thinking more about. I think it would be great in some ways. I’ve started getting more involved in my girlfriend’s lecture-taping, and that seems like it could be a fun thing for us to do. I don’t know. Sometimes I like the idea of being a producer of some kind, especially if my very beautiful, smart, and perfect girlfriend was the center of said content. 

And it’s something that some people do. But rationally, I can tell you that this is not the right thing for us. Rationally, we don’t know enough of the technical side. Rationally, neither of us know exactly what we would do for content. Rationally, we know that filming a university lecture is a very unique kind of beast. And it’s not the sort of thing people would willingly come to.

Maybe, they wouldn’t. Sometimes I think about going back to subjects I did not like in school just to be able to go through them at my own pace and without a test looming overhead. But that’s probably just a way to fill the time.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

And yet, thinking rationally isn’t always possible. Sometimes, we’re just passengers. Have you learned to be just a passenger yet? That’s what so many of us have to be right now: passengers to forces beyond our control. And sometimes, yes, in the course of our lives, we get the moment to direct. But now is not your moment. This is not your time. And spreadsheets can’t take control on your behalf. Spreadsheets are attempts at understanding a world you aren’t quite ready yet to grasp. A world you are in discussions with, yes, but the conclusion has yet to be reached. And may well never be.

Can you accept that part? Can you accept how hard it would be to ever find an answer in times like this? To ever truly know what’s in your best interest. Even when things come to pass, you may still not know.

In some ways, that goes against the very nature of your plight. The thing that started all of this. You wanted self-employment because it meant independence. It meant power and self-direction. But here I am telling you that such a thing may not be possible. Or may not come to you as easy as you may have hoped. That just because you don’t have to get your lunch hours approved doesn’t mean you wouldn’t still have some meeting you’ll need to schedule, and they may or may not impose upon that time. It doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be a pressing deadline or some other demand steering you away from that Asian fusion place or your maybe new girlfriend who helps out at the Asian fusion place her parents own.

Or more pressing matters could still come up. Matters that might dictate the comings and goings or lack thereof for the entire world.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

You wanted control. But what is the lesson here other than control cannot be had? Not over our lives. Or our emotions. Or your reaction to the lesson that I begrudgingly have to tell you about. Of course you won’t like it. I don’t like it. I make it work acceptance-wise, but it’s not a great approach.

And that’s… That’s just it. I can’t make you accept this. I can’t even help you accept it. There’s no softening of the blow I can do here. I don’t know you well enough for that. I know facts about you. And I can recite them with some ease, but that’s about it. I know you in the same way you know statistics, the same way you know your spreadsheets. For one, how well has that worked out for you? And two, that was probably a needlessly aggressive way of wording it, and I don’t quite know why I did that.

I don’t know how to be a good companion or confidante to you or anyone. I toss things out there that people work through on their own time and in their own way. And that makes me worry about you. Because you feel alone. In the same way I sometimes feel alone. But you have no roommate, no co-quarantine partner, and no romantic partner up until recently.

You see, you are in flux. Whether you quit your job or not. We all are.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

We are all adrift, you know? And in theory, I need to get you to grab at the shoreline, but for that, you have to know that you need to do it. You have to know that you are drowning, but that was never obvious for you. And a stranger wasn’t really going to manage such a message. I could never get that across. 

But that professor could. That professor who once taught at the university with that stupid quarter system. Sorry. I know that’s your alma mater, but does my girlfriend teaching there give me the right to call it stupid because I still think it’s stupid.  Anyway, that was a familiar voice right? Even across the years you still recognized it. That was the sort of voice that could help you see what was right in front of you. That you weren’t swimming. But drowning as of yet, but somewhere in between.

I hope it helped.

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?