I’ve been really, really busy with work.
As in: when I went out to dinner with a friend for the first time in months, I looked around the restaurant wondering, “Where’s the computer screen?”
Before starting a blog, I promised myself 4 things I would never do:
1. Write in clichés.
2. Refer to my blog as a “blog”
3. Post irregularly, inconsistently, incautiously, or irrationally
4. Begin a post with the phrase “Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile, but…” and then continue to give a pathetic excuse about how busy I am with work.
And yet the day is upon us when your humble author acquiesces that — having now broken points 2-4 — sometimes promises are made to be broken.
Shit. There goes #1.
To address broken promise #4: I do feel regretful that I haven’t posted in nearly a month. This is inexcusable, but perhaps not unforgivable. I have been been experiencing some more-tumultuous-than-usual times, backed against 15-hour work days.
In fact I should be working now. Shhhh.
But I find that I don’t mind it so much. That’s because my mantra for the last few months has been, in various circumstances:
Do whatever it takes to survive.
Let your dishes pile up, don’t brush your teeth, give up alcohol, give up anything resembling a social life, give yourself a bedtime, pop No-Doze™, call your mommy and cry on the phone, forage for berries, whatever.
“Survive” here, of course, means “do what it takes” to meet the responsibilities of your top priority — be that keeping your job, keeping your safety, or keeping your sanity.
(If Nike™ hadn’t of beat me to it, I’d claim ownership of their tagline.)
For most of us, our definition of “survival” has long since been separated from finding food, water, clothing, and shelter. We’re reminded of those who have to worry about meeting these basic needs only when we pass a hand-scrawled, cardboard sign displaying “Homeless. Hungry. Please help.”
But what other forms does “survival” take? At what point do we still consider surviving merely an obligation, a pressure, a “should?”
“It’s a bummer, I have to work all weekend,” I remarked to my landlady today. “No you don’t,” she smiled back, “you choose to.”
And so I do.
How much of this choice is rooted in non-choice? What percentage of our actions are done because we need to and what percentage because we choose? Perhaps that’s all survival is: coming face to face with necessity.
And perhaps the need to survive is inescapable; we meet certain levels of survival (“I have food/water/clothing/shelter at the snap of my fingers”) so we then find new criteria by which to survive (“OMG! If I don’t graduate from medical school my family will disown me which is the same to me as death!”)
So as I walk home along VanNess, feeling safe but certainly aware that I am a female walking late at night alone, I wonder if me looking over my shoulder is “survival?” What about taking steps to ensure my happiness? What about paying my rent on time?
I begin to see a spectrum of survival.
Tier 1, Overt Daily Physical Survival: i.e. Gaunt man rummaging through garbage to find food.
Tier 2, Physical Needs Not Daily Concern, But Tenuous Stability: i.e. Elderly woman with cane, difficulty getting on bus, may have heart attack at any moment, but with clothes on her back.
Tier 3, Basic Needs Well Met, Pressure to Maintain: i.e. Youngish mother, leaving job at night shift, but warm Starbucks< ™> in hand.
Tier 4, Physical Needs Never a Concern, Survival in the Realm of the Abstract: i.e. Upper-middle class man carrying expensive leftovers, pressure at work/home, depressed and passionless.
It’s like walking tightropes at different heights — we all have to balance, but some of us just have thicker ropes.
I go out on a limb and label each tier as “survival” because on some level it does all trail back to basic needs: “I have to meet this deadline because I have to keep my job, because I have to get medical benefits, because I have to get my diabetes medicine, because I can’t survive without it.”
Factor in love and mental clarity and happiness and self-expression and social interaction, and the web of “what one needs to survive” expands.
In the end, we’re all just working within our particular framework for survival. That means (and this is nothing new here), we have to give each other at least a sliver of understanding –because we’re never gonna survive unless, as Seal put it, we get a little empathetic.
Oh wait. He sang about getting crazy. Never mind.
But still: we do what we do in order to “make it through.”
Which brings me full circle to my broken promises. I sincerely feel a pang of remorse for letting my “blog” sit idle for so long — unfortunately, I had to withhold writing whilst I met some more pressing needs. So you see, in a sense, I was not writing to survive.
Hey — I told you it was a pathetic excuse. But hopefully you have some empathy.