Gus Walks Into A Bar

There was a scene in a recent episode of Better Call Saul that hit close to home. Gus Fring, ordinarily a murderous drug cartel kingpin (*note, this is not the aspect I related to), was having a quiet moment drinking a glass of red wine at a bar. Soon enough, a sommelier appeared and he and Gus went on to have a conversation sprinkled with the kinds of small nods and “I remember you telling me” type comments indicating familiarity and comfort. Gus does most of the listening, reveling in the story telling of his companion who reminisces about a long ago trip to Europe and how the types of soil grapes are grown in affects the wine that they produce. Their conversation is lightly flirtatious and when they discuss a wine Gus purchased at the sommelier’s recommendation and for which Gus was waiting for a special occasion to open, it appears a more intimate conclusion to the evening is afoot. But when the sommelier excuses himself to retrieve another bottle of wine he wants to share, Gus discreetly reaches into his pocket, peels off four $100 bills, and asks the bartender to tell the sommelier he (Gus) has been called away.

 It is a sad coda. Here is a lonely man so emotionally distant from the world that he is willing to pay for a few minutes of enjoyable conversation but deny himself physical pleasure. I have a person like this in my life. Someone I get together with from time to time to just talk, mostly about what is happening in her life, her job, family, challenges she faces in working her way through the world. We go out to dinner or a movie, sometimes we just got ice cream at The Bent Spoon. It is all very innocent and a small respite for me from the reminders that I am unhappy in my own life and yet I feel awful every time I see her. She is lovely and engaging – that is not it – it is my own self-loathing that I am so damaged I need to pay someone to keep me company knowing they are (at best) just sort of nodding along.

The End of Ambition

 

There comes a time, often without notice, when you quietly transition from someone with ambition to someone who accepts that certain things will not happen for you professionally. I have been thinking a lot about this lately because I realized I am now on the other side of things. As the old saying about bankruptcy goes, it happens gradually than suddenly. Some promotional opportunities I did not get that chipped away at my self-confidence (maybe I am not as smart and talented as I thought I was). A whisper or two about being difficult to work with (sorry for having high standards of the people who work for me). My own bad decisions when presented with options and choosing the wrong one.

The story has layers and I cannot point to any one thing that led me to this place, just an accumulation over time. Mike Ehrmentraut observed that we all make choices and those choices put us on a road that leads in a certain direction and that sometimes those decisions seem small but they are choices nonetheless. I think there is a lot of truth to that. Personally, I think of it more like being on a road headed in a certain direction – you have some goal you are trying to reach, for me, it was to become a judge – and you make decisions you think will get you closer to that goal. Over time, your choices get you closer to, or, in my case, completely out of reach, of that goal. Worse, those decisions, ones you made and ones others made for you, affect your day-to-day livelihood. The annoying clients. The endless office bureaucracy. The assignments you do not like but cannot turn down. The dipshit partners who think you are simply a cog in the machine and could not give one tiny shit about your well-being. It all piles up.

And if that was not enough, being of a certain age tempers your motivation to change things. Why go on a job search for something else that will make me unhappy in different ways when I can just wait a few years and retire? Am I willing to give up the things that I like about my job (or at least view as selling points) such as the short commute, decent retirement benefits, and health plan, for a job that I might have to drive longer to do, will contribute money into a different retirement account instead of just staying here and investing in the one I have, and might make me change doctors who are not in whatever plan this hypothetical other job uses. And that is before I even get into looking for such a job and going through the interviews, etc. etc.

Not to mix metaphors, but all of this also has that frog in the boiling pot of water vibe to it. You know that one – a frog put in room temperature water will be slower to jump out as the heat gets turned up but if you dropped a frog into a pot of already boiling water, it will jump out immediately. Things have sucked for a while, except they always seemed manageable but now I just feel so deeply unhappy knowing that there is nothing ahead of me but day after soul crushing day of misery until I can quit this shit job and it just makes me fucking miserable.