Most people have trouble judging themselves, or evaluating their own work product. That's been my impression anyway, and I've known a lot of people. Oh, there are always the Donald Trumps of the world, people who give themselves high marks for whatever damn thing they may be doing. But most people, people who are not crazy, have a hard time making value judgments about themselves. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Who knows? I don't know.
Of the writers that I've known, including myself, there is a common refrain. “I looked it over when I was done, and I liked it a lot. I read it again after a few days, and I thought it was all crap.” Or visa versa. I suffer the same phenomenon, not only about my writing, but also about myself. Some days, I think that I was a good boy and a good man, an all-around nice guy. Other days, I'm not so sure.
The Good
Certainly, I have my good points. I am a generally polite and charming man, on the outside. I am not only tolerant of diversity, I genuinely embrace it. I am capable of working quite hard, at least I once was. I have achieved many good results at a variety of things, although the overall scorecard is mixed. I test well (the secret is a good plan and intense preparation). I enjoy praising people when they have earned it, and I keep my mouth shut when they have not. As a supervisor, I reprimanded people gently, and always in private. I have a rich history of good deeds, from little kindnesses to acts requiring more commitment and sometimes a bit of bravery. Those are unknown and unprovable, because I have never sought credit for such things, believing them to be simply a necessary and normal part of life. I also have, however, a good public record of positive contributions and service to my country and my community. I joined the U.S. Navy during a war, and received an honorable discharge. Later on, I joined the Peace Corps, and I cheerfully served my two years helping to train English teachers in a developing country. I have done a lot of volunteer work, including about 100 hours per year for most of the time that I was a lawyer in Los Angeles. I started the public interest law foundation at my law school. That added a lot of work to my second year! (The first year, they scare you to death. The second year, they work you to death. The third year, they bore you to death.) I was a Cub Scout den leader and Pack treasurer! I've never been arrested, nor have I come particularly close. Does any of this count for anything?
The Bad and the Ugly
Not really. It certainly doesn't count for much.
You can be Mr. Wonderful for ten years, but the first time you lose your temper and make a scene, they cut you out of the circle of love. The typical human community is not a very forgiving place. They like predictability; they like consistency. They prefer consistent slight disagreeability to ten years of cheerful assistance with one ten minute explosion.
The people who are stuck with you, children, parents, wives/ husbands, they feel much the same way about it. You can be a good father, even a very good father, 99% of the time, and you can lose all of your good-will with that 1% of time spent losing your shit. Or, as in my case, you can merely be depressed. That requires a certain measure of patience and understanding from your fellows, and compassion fatigue may set in long before the natural end of the relationship. The same goes for friends.
By the time I was ten, I was completely alienated and withdrawn. I still had friends, but I was less comfortable around them. My relationship with adults became toxic. All metrics of trust had been broken, and I avoided all contact with adults. When contact was unavoidable, I faked it, desperate to get away from their influence. It was all due to a combination of temperament and environment, against the background of a dysfunctional family. I had no safe space until I got married and we got our own apartment. I learned to cope better over the years, but I have never gotten over this early training. I have always had friends, but very few at a time. I treasure my time spent alone, and I am never bored. There is always something to read, or write, or watch, or listen to. Every time I walk out of the door into the world of reality, I become hypervigilant and fearful. I am happy in my way, but my way would probably feel like misery to you.
But, enough about me! Oh, wait. This is a blog. It's all about me. Maybe I should stick this one in the “Not for Publication” file.
The Dead
I'm at that certain age, when the truth is that you feel okay every day, unless you try to pick something up off of the floor or something. In any case, however, you are getting unambiguous signs that all of your systems are approaching their end of service date. I try to focus on the fact that true frailty is still more than a few years off. Then I recall how quickly the past ten years have disappeared in the rear-view mirror, and I realize that the next ten years will certainly pass more quickly, because that is the nature of things. The odds for my living another ten years are about fifty-fifty. I try to look at the bright side: I'll never be this young or capable again, so enjoy it while you can. It's not an easy posture to maintain.
I listen to a lot of music from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and many of the artists were my age or close to it. Most of them are dead now, and the news contains reports of more deaths daily. Many of the newly dead are younger than me; many much younger. Musicians, dead. Movie stars and directors, dead. All of my aunts and uncles, and both of my parents, dead. Authors, dead. Entire pillars of civil society, like newspapers, civic and religious organizations, and education in general, dead. Politicians, dead. Politics as we knew it, dead. Painters and graphic artists, dead. Just this morning I received a report of another old friend dying. All of my memories are clouded in a miasma of death. Some days it's hard to keep up my mask of neighborly good cheer. I just want to go into the bathroom and cry into a towel.
This Star-Crossed Year
The entire notion of a peaceful, happy retirement, safe in the bosom of one's family, has become quaint. Only a lucky few can experience it in the circumstances that are prevalent today.
On top of all of the financial and societal barriers to a happy old age, we now must deal with this fucking plague. What a mysterious, mischievous virus this is! It's all over the world, and it's invisible half of the time, asymptomatic. If you've had it already, you may or may not be able to catch it again. That all adds up to trouble. We may never be completely rid of it. And by then, we will almost certainly be thrust into the midst of a new coronavirus. That's what coronavirus means: NEW. We may be in masks, and fearful, for decades. The next one, or the one after that, may be much worse. Say goodbye to shaking hands, and hugs, and ordinary socializing. Young people who need to get their ashes raked must be at their wit's end.
This will also go down in history as the year that politics went completely off the rails. It has derailed, tumbled into a deep ravine, and exploded into flames. It's not only America that is experiencing this spectacular failure. Many countries around the world, whole regions, even, are dissolving into their own brands of madness. Even Merry Olde England is riding the crazy train to ruin. Trumpism is spreading to Australia and Europe. Dare I say that China is flirting with a resurgence of Maoism? Some new type of capitalist, expansionist Maoism? (Maoism with 5G, an Internet, and aircraft carriers.) Fascism is making a big comeback in largish countries very close to the major trouble spots from the mid-Twentieth Century. Evidently, sufficient time has elapsed for people to forget what a nightmare all of that brought about the first time. You'd think that fifty million horrible deaths would make more of an impression. You'd be wrong.
So who cares about my self-image? We've got bigger fish to fry. My little problems aren't worth the powder to blow them to hell, as my grandfather was known to say. Not worth a greased jack-pin to ram them to hell, a phrase that John Steinbeck coined in “Of Mice and Men.”
Don't worry about me, and worry less about yourself while you're at it. We should all be concentrating on a return to a civil society, alleviating this terrible climate situation, and passing forward some of the better aspects of our culture to the screen-addled younger generations that are growing up as we speak and headed right into the arms of Q-anon.
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