Atrophy of a Trophy

It's odd that I should loathe sports as much as I do, given how much I appreciate sports metaphors. Perhaps the inverse is more befitting; maybe I should hate sports metaphors because of my disdain for organized sports.  Who knows?  All I can really say is that I do love a good analogy and there are so many of them to be had in the physiology/conditioning typically associated with professional sports.

Getting back into the swing of things with 'blogging has been more difficult than I thought it would be.  You'd think that it would be easy find the willpower necessary to do something you enjoy and get so much satisfaction and fulfillment from, but it seems to be just the opposite.  There's something of a sweet-spot in writing, where you enter a sort of transcendental state of communicating with the universe or, at least, with the universe inside your head.  It's this kind of literary witching-hour where all the stars align and thoughts flow seamlessly onto the page, clear and crisp as an autumn morning, with little rays of sunlight illuminating all the right places to make you notice and appreciate things you've never even considered as a part of your reality before.  You know the sort of thing I'm talking about, you can see it in all your favorite writers.  When one merely considers the final product, it's not hard to walk away thinking that good writers exist within some sort of elite stratosphere of the universe, where everything they write is immediately put on the top shelf by the front door of every Barnes and Noble, while the rest of us straggle somewhere along the bottom of the barrel with our sad little 'blogs that nobody will ever read. 

As many people as I could point to as evidence for this theory, I'm coming to see it for the lie that it is.  Read any article or interview with a writer that deals with the actual process of writing and every one of them will tell you what sort of unadulterated misery it can be at times.  My personal favorites on this subject are Anne Lamott and Donald Miller.  They seem to occupy a similar space as me, one where writing functions somewhere between a communicative vehicle for their ideas and a compulsive disorder substituted for collecting all their dead skin and belly-button lint in an old masonry jar.  It's not quite a need, per se, but there's a certain sense you get from them, like writing is an urge they have to satisfy, that they would still be writing down their thoughts and ideas, even if they weren't being paid or published.

I thought about this idea a week or two ago when I read an article from Animal Planet dealing with black market exotic pet industry (you can check it out for yourself here).  It talked about the many downfalls of the exotic pet trade, how it encourages poaching and spreads diseases and affects the balance of the ecosystems from which many of these animals are taken.  As tree-huggy as it was, the article did a good job of making a practical case against the exotic animal trade (a market essentially rooted in novelty) because it's cool to have a pet tiger and all, but the sort of impulse buyers that would actually pay for one rarely stop to think of the consequences.

Although the article didn't dwell too much on it, the thing that got me going was the idea that, regardless of its upbringing, a wild animal will always be, instinctively, a wild animal.  They grow more rapidly and, usually, to a larger size than domesticated animals will.  They have needs (which are fairly specific and quite substantial) for a certain amount of space and social interactions, certain types of food, shelter, and reproduction rituals.  For instance, pandas eat upwards of 20 pounds of food a day.  An adult male tiger may stake out a territory of anywhere between 20 and 40 square miles.  When those needs aren't met, they exhibit signs of stress and may adopt unusual behavioral patterns that typically involve some type of self- or others-oriented abuse.  I remembered, after seeing this, that I'd read somewhere that zoos and circuses will sometimes drug the bigger animals to keep them from freaking out all the time because their living conditions are so artificial and confined.

For me, the most surprising aspect of all is how common-sense this stuff is.  Part of what makes these animals so unique is how perfectly adapted they are for their natural habitats, so yeah, it's understandable that being removed from them would create problems.  It's kinda like being kidnapped, I suppose, and I can't even imagine what kind of emotional/psychological trauma that must cause.

But then I started thinking about my own predicaments in life, and all the stresses and strains I've been wrestling with.  I started thinking about the rapid growth that's taken place in my own life over the last few years; about how my instincts have changed and now my needs are different from what they used to be.  At one point, retail was a great gig to have because I could sleep 'til noon, show up hungover and squeeze my school-schedule in wherever I needed to, as long as I was free to work weekends.  At one point, having a messy apartment was safe and comfortable and kept people from invading my space too much.  At one point, I was an alcoholic pothead whose sole purpose in life was to feel as good as possible for as cheaply as possible, doing as little work as possible.  Now, I'm coming up on a year's worth of being sober and I have a college degree.  I want a real job with a fixed schedule where I can work hard, knowing that my ability to be productive is not only making a difference to me financially, but it's making a difference in the people around me; that, by doing my own job with pride and excellence, I'm having an impact on somebody else's ability to do theirs.  

I've been going through register training at work hoping that, by adding the ability to do one more thing in the store, I won't be so bored and frustrated all the time.  But the truth of the matter is that it won't make a difference.  In the end, I'm still a wheel in a cog in a machine that, truth be told, doesn't really need me.  I've put in a fair amount of time there, to be sure, and they've certainly invested a fair amount in me, but let's face it: saying that Home Depot needs me as an employee is like saying that the bathrooms need hand-spun silk instead of toilet paper.  I'm never going to be happy there because I'm not cut out for retail.  I'm too smart to stand around and tell people what aisle air filters are on or where the paint department is.  I'm too gifted for "actively seeking out customers" to be the most engaging thing I do.  It's no wonder my back has been all broken out and I'm not sleeping well lately... I'm the fiercest killer in the animal kingdom living in a concrete dog run.