Flattened

I can't remember a busier week. A new office, a new enemy and now a new low for my self-esteem. Whew!

My lifetime self-esteem curve looks like the first hill on a roller coaster: very low and very flat until it slowly and steadily climbs to the highest peak, pauses a second, then plunges down in a sickening descent. I have no idea how low it will go before it bottoms out.

In the last week I've been rejected by my children, I've been destroyed on the tennis court and I've been squashed at work.

When I work a lot, I don't see my kids as much as I'd like. When I work a whole lot, like I've been working lately, I don't see my kids for days on end. When the weekend rolls around, and I re-enter their lives, I try to take them out to the park, I try to throw the ball with them, I offer to take them to ice cream, but they reject me, clinging to mom while refusing to do anything with me. I understand that this is their way of punishing me for being away, I give thanks that this means they still want, deep down, to be with me, I resolve to quit my job and work from home, but none of this makes it any easier to take. And the longer I'm away, the longer it takes to crack their shells. Some weekends, like last weekend, I never get through to them. Then I head back to the office on Monday for another wall-to-wall work week that sets me back even further.

Between work and family, I have little time for anything else. My only regular outside activity is a one hour tennis lesson each week. Although I've been taking these lessons for two years, I've never had time to play against anyone other than my coach, so I've always wondered how good I really was. My coach wondered the same thing so last weekend he arranged for me to play against another of his students. We were both evenly matched, the coach said. We weren't. He beat be 6-0, 6-0. I couldn't hit a serve to save my life, and when I did he returned it where I couldn't get it. My returns all sprayed long or wide, when I could get to them. I miss-hit all the easy shots. By the time my evenly-matched opponent finished me off, my chatterbox coach sat mutely, stunned by the magnitude of my ineptitude. After two years of lessons, it took less than one hour of court time for me to demonstrate once and for all my complete lack of talent for this game.

There's always been this guy at work who everyone talks about like he's the second coming. It used to really bother me that someone who started with me was so quickly and universally loved and praised and promoted, but after a few agonizing years of hearing him harmonized in heavenly hymns I made my grudging peace with his sanctification. Last week I worked with him for the first time. He's even better than his press. I've never met anyone with his talents, his easy manner, his piercing intelligence, his judgment. He didn't actually walk on water in front me, but I'm sure he could if he tried. He surpasses even my most conceited vision of myself. I used to think I'd catch up to him one day; now I know I never will. It's all very humbling to see in someone else all you hoped you'd be. I'm so disoriented I don't know where to go from here. All I know is it's time to grow up and dial my dreams down.

I've long wondered why I write this blog. Why do I give it the time I could spend with my children, my tennis game, my career, my life? Now that I'm plunging down the self-esteem curve, I see for the first time that this blog is giving me something I'm not getting anywhere else. My need for it is pathetic, to be sure, but it is also convenient, offering a handy repository for dreams that would otherwise disappear under the flattening pressures of my middle-aged life.

Comments

[Waterfall]

Sorry about the tennis game, Outer Life Guy. Your coach should give you more practice playing against people other than him. My dad taught me to play tennis, and while I was really good at returning his serves (because I was familiar with them), I couldn't play at all against anyone else. Particularly if they put spin on the ball.

I hope you start back on the upward curve soon. That downward curve is the pits (pun intended). I don't have kids, but I feel the same sort of frustration at neglecting the "important" things of life in order to make a living. Trading time for money, it sometimes seems.

And blogging ... blogging is a sanity-saver, as far as I'm concerned. At least it has been for me and many of the bloggers I know.

In the movie "Shadowlands," one of C.S. Lewis's students says, "We read to know we're not alone." I wonder, do we also blog to know we're not alone?

[Kari]

Ah, you write this blog because I need this blog. It is a certain gift of joy on occasional dreary days, and a much-needed reminder (when one works alone at home) that one is not, in fact, alone. The absence of rancor and fury and narrow-minded petulance is a blessing in itself; add to this a voice of such generous spirit, good humor, normality, intelligence, and insight? This is a miracle.

[rannva]

As my mother would say when things seemed endlessly dark: "One should go and pull an old horse rug over oneself."
That is the motto of the week over here as well.

[Stan]

Thanks very much for the mini-essays on your blog. I've just become of aware of them and enjoy them immensely. There is much wisdom contained in your writing. They are indeed Charles Lamb-ish. Keep up the great work.

[DarkoV]

In trying to understand the part with the whole and then tying in the dip in your self-esteem curve with your recent entries, the following conclusion has been (humbly) drawn.
1) Thine Enemy is in cahoots with the dispensation of Voodoo curses. Have you had the feeling, recenly, that you're being poked?
2) Why Voodoo? It's not simply the office you now hold. It's the reasonable deduction drawn that you are a heriditary griot. Your superiors sensed it; that's why you have the new office. Thine enemy sensed it; that's why you are (temporarily) suffering some calamities.

Accept it. As a herditary griot, you tell the stories that teach people to live productively and chohesively in society. You have been designated by the collective blogosphere to be the depository of the collective knowledge. You are spending your life making yourself aware of it and you are developing the necessary skills needed to share it effectively with others.

..and as Napoleon Dynamite says, "Girls like guys with skills."

[Cardinal]

Quit the stupid tennis.

Tell your enemy at work to grow up and get over it or you'll blow him away. (He'll be shocked and won't not what to do for a few weeks.)

Work with Mr. Perfect, but watch him and take over what he does one by one and do it better. (Yes, you can.)

And spend all your free time with your family. That's what you need, not the tennis.