Work Social Functions

My work had a half day social function at a local brew-pub where everyone was "strongly encouraged" to go.  I did not go.

I seem to be infected with some idiopathic melancholy torpor recently.  I guess that is a very verbose way of saying that I haven't been in the best of moods and for no reason.  I will chalk this up to nothing more than the ebb and flow of Midlife Malaise; likely just a local minima that will be gotten over quickly, or certainly no later than vacation which isn't too far off.

I'm not sure that hindsight brings clarity, or if it just brings a new wrong perspective, but I tried to think back on which years were overall good and which were overall bad.  That kind of binary categorization is impossible, so I created an arbitrary scale to do this.
I started it in high school - as the floor for how bad things could be.  There are many situations that could be worse than high school, but it still represents some kind of sub-basement for mental well-being.

There is a lot of noise in any given year, with some highs and some lows, but college was definitely a high point - potentially even artificially so.  Constantly on the steep side of the learning curve.  Always busy - trying to work and go to school full-time.  A lot of interesting friendships, even if some of them were short-lived and/or alcohol fueled.  No public shaming due to wearing the wrong shoes.  Even college-poverty wasn't too bad since there was a group catharsis in not having any money.

Graduation brought a somewhat painful job search, and eventual employment in a vocation relevant to my degree.  While this should have been even better than college, I was hired into a really, really bad situation.  "Oh, what have I gotten myself into."

I wasn't sure full employment could have gotten worse while still drawing a paycheck, but it did.  At this point, the fish started to finally see the water he was swimming in...

A change to a new job brought renewed hope that college wasn't wasted and was almost certainly worth the time, energy and money that went into it.

Things progressed along until the onset of Midlife Malaise.  Is this really it?  Thankfully, this drop in mental well-being isn't continuously permanant.
But this exercise does bring up an interesting point.  When talking about the midlife crisis, experts usually show a "U-Curve" with a minimum for life satisfaction somewhere around the late 40's to early 50's.  This may be right in aggregate, but for any one individual, there is a lot of noise - with life positives along with the negatives.  I suppose some of these can even happen simultaneously.  The low in the "U" may actually represent the depth and frequency of the low points in the noise.

More malaise can bring things down when it lasts beyond a certain amount of time.  The new house has overall been an improvement but was somewhat offset by the painful selling of the old house.  I sometimes wonder if I'm destined to live next to noisy people, or if everywhere just has noisy people?
I'm not sure if I'll still think this when I look back in a few years, but the last couple years have been fine.  Not great, but not bad either.
Still, adult life can get pretty monotonous.

While I would like to believe that life's dizzying highs and crushing lows appear to be smoothing out as I get older, it is probably dangerous to think that.  Involuntarily losing my job or being put in prison would probably be a new crushing low.  A financial windfall or falling ass-backwards into a perfect job could be a new dizzying high.  Outside of something like that, it does appear that life's highs and lows are smoothing out as I get older - and maybe that is where the midlife malaise begins to taper off.  Maybe.

Instead of going to the work social outing at the brew-pub, I sat forlornly at my desk and kept busy.  It isn't that my workload is so heinous that I couldn't afford the time to go, I just didn't want to, and I'm approaching a place in my life where that sometimes takes precedence.  Far too often, I have ended up trapped at these types of work functions talking with someone I really did not want to talk to or talking about a subject I really don't have any interest in talking about - sometimes both.  The conversations that I may want to have are nearly impossible with the threat of management around every corner; standing around without anything relevant to say is a near certainty.
The situation can also be very similar to the grocery store where I run into a casual acquaintance.  After the requisite banal pleasantries, we both return to picking out onions and mangos, inspecting them intently to avoid eye contact again - only to run into this same person in the potato chip aisle.  And the frozen food aisle...  When it happens the third time, I almost want to confront the situation and scream, "Look, one of us is going to have to finish grocery shopping another day because this continued interaction is just getting terrible for both of us."  Throw in enough brew-pub alcohol to be annoying, without enough for sufficient social lubrication and these things can just get painful.
While my life has no shortage of awkward interactions, I just don't see the need to purposefully put myself in those situations.  Yes, I'd rather just stay at work.

The Persistence of (Negative) Memory

The fireflies over the last few days have been really dramatic.  Letting the dogs out for the final time in the evening gives a brief glimpse into that free light show.  I get up early so they are often just finishing their lighted dance in the morning.
Like lots of other kids, I used to love to catch fireflies and keep them in a jar.  Many of them died overnight; watching them, even briefly, is a little more gratifying.

My neighbors had a party of sorts a few nights ago.  As people were showing up, one person in a Jeep showed up and parked askew on their lawn.  My mind jumped to living in the previous house several years ago, 20 feet away from 18 and 21 year old brothers.

A few years after we bought our previous house, Les moved out to move into his mother's house after partially renovating it.  He sold our neighboring house to two guys; 18 and 21 year old brothers who had recently received a sizable inheritance from their grandparents.
There were brief delusions that the two were mature; that 18 and 21 year old brothers won't act like 18 and 21 year olds.  That idea was shattered on the first weekend when the older brother (Old-T) had a party.  It went into the wee hours of the morning and was raucous enough that people down the street asked me the next day whether it was as bad as it sounded.
Hoping it was a one-time thing was misguided.  The next day Young-T was overheard on the phone calling friends for a party.  As it turned out, it was one of the quietest parties Yong-T ever had and that weekend was one of the few parties Old-T had.

Being below the legal drinking age, Young-T and his friends congregated at the house most weekends and often through the week.  Nobody ever wins neighbor wars, so I tried to be tolerant, but it was extremely difficult.  When they first moved in, Young-T had a red car with lots of cheap ground effects and a monster sub-woofer.  There is not enough insulation in the world to separate the noise it made while people were hootin' and hollerin' out in the yard.  I laughed a little as the ground effects were torn off the car in steep section of the driveway - I could only hope the sub-woofer would suffer a similar fate.
To be fair, when I would politely remind them that we lived within a few tens of feet from them, Young-T would make an attempt to quiet things down.
"You guys, we have to be as quiet as a mouse," Young-T would run around saying.
But, with copious amounts of alcohol, only so much could be done before inebriation took over.  The base was turned up, the screaming restarted, and who knows what else was going on.  The only hope was that sleep could be achieved before the cacophony really got going.

At the time and in retrospect, living next to them was pretty awful.  Old-T had a girlfriend and was almost never there, leaving the much less mature Young-T to exceed in degeneration.  The parties continued nearly year round.  Looking out the window at 2:00 AM and seeing a group of guys peeing in my back yard was never fun.  The occasional fights, junk strewn about, driving through my yard, all constant annoyance.  I think the noise actually bothered the neighbors across the street more as they called the cops often and even tried to get the township officials involved.

In time, the red car with the cheap plastic ground effects gave way to a black jeep.  Even after Young-T turned 21, the parties at home continued.  I think by this time, the juvenile behavior affected finances to the point the drinking in bars with regularity might have been prohibitive.  Degeneracy is hard to keep up as a full-time occupation.

Some time later, the Jeep was destroyed; I can only assume it was in a drunken accident.  We heard third hand that Young-T had moved back in with his parents, who had subsequently moved to Colorado - I can only assume what a life shock that must have been.  Later, I found a letter that had blown into my yard detailing the remaining (significant) cost of the Jeep that must be reimbursed to the finance company.  It was easy not to feel too bad for him; there was almost some poetic justice there.

It is approaching five years now that we've moved from that house.  Yet, when the Jeep appeared on the neighbor's lawn a few nights ago, I shuddered a bit- the persistent memory of the two boys.  After nearly five years living in this house, I knew the shudder was misplaced, but the memory is persistent.  Not only is this new house separated by orders of magnitude more space, but I've never heard a late night peep from any of the neighbors.

Some time after Young-T moved out, Old-T spent considerable effort cleaning up the house and sold it (for surprising amount more money).  Becky was a very quiet neighbor, but that is another story altogether.  The house is currently on the market again, but this time for less than the cost of Young-T's Jeep; sometimes life has sad outcomes.

The fireflies were out again last night, hopefully creating new persistent memories.  After letting the dogs out, I stood by the fence and watched the winking light all over the yard.  The broken clouds created brief glimpses of stars that mimicked the fireflies and the air was unbelievably still and calm.  Even the beagles seemed to try to be quiet.
It is likely that with more time, reflection will make living next to 18 and 21 year old brothers seem better or worse than it really was.  All memories are grossly flawed.
With the help of quiet nights and winking fireflies, the persistence can be destroyed to be replaced by a new set of memories.