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all hours spoken for
Tuesday, October 20 1998
Today a simple fact became clear: the more I do, the more I have to do. If I develop a reputation for getting projects done with incredible speed, eventually people come to expect me to get their projects done with incredible speed. I have to learn how to manage my time more effectively, pushing out my elbows enough to assert my own time-space, necessary for a healthy mind.
I ended up opening a bank account at Bank of America during my lunch hour today. You see, Bank of America's digestion of Nations Bank is occurring entirely too slowly for my schedule. The banker with whom I set up my account, a normal-looking middle-aged woman, had a disturbingly motherly attitude towards me, referring to me as "sweetheart" and "pumpkin" numerous times. Californians are weird, and I mean that in the most meaningful sense of the word.
In the evening I called my folks and was distressed to hear that Hoagie's Macintosh is barely functional. As far away as I am both in time and space, I'm powerless to help. Nathan VanHooser, a genuine computer professional, has been over a few times, but I have a feeling that the troubles are now at a level of complexity that will require hours to untangle.
I realized today with even more resignation than ever that I have given up almost all of my personal alone-time, time that I once regarded as essential to my being. I'm at work for ten hours every day, and then I come home and I'm with Kim. She cooks me dinner and other wonderful things, but the stress of continual socializing (of one kind or another) makes the life I once enjoyed a bygone memory. No one seems to be aware that I need my own time, though I've mentioned it on occasion.
I'm coming to feel that this period of my life is yet another kind of monasticism or (at worst) imprisonment. I'm warehousing my life right now, accumulating money, social connections and knowledge without really doing what I want to do, without serving my ultimate life-purpose.
In the evening, while the Padres were losing (we watched crap-television instead), I went around my site fixing and improving some long-neglected corners. Then I buckled down and actually answered some email. When I finally went to bed, I found that my time attending to these things had actually made Kim jealous. She wondered if I was carrying on some sort of dark mysterious email conversation with "another woman." It was such a preposterous and aggravating notion, especially given the fact that my old Charlottesville friends have essentially abandoned me in my absence. "I wish I was," I responded truthfully. What followed was a long, protracted fight. The greater part of this fight actually Kim trying to patch things up so we wouldn't fall asleep on a bad note. But we had weak results in reaching her goal of harmony. I was exasperated by the ridiculous extremes of Kim's jealousy reflex. I had lost all desire to be close to her. The way Kim was giving voice to her unexamined irrational concerns reminded me a lot of her mother's phone conversations with her. But when I told Kim this, she took it as a serious insult, and so the fight continued.
With no place to flee either in space or in time, I felt so thoroughly trapped that my stomach began to ache.
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