I take a call. I resolve, or fail to resolve, a certain problem. I take another call.
"Hi there," I decisively announce, "my name is Riley. How can I help?"
Each call is not a pure affair. It is always colored by specters of previous calls. The preceding customer may have pleased me with their spirit, may have scorned me with their impatience, may have left me bored with their incompetence.
The other day I heard the sound I hear quite often these days. *BEEP* 'You have an incoming call' *BEEP*. The second beep prompts me to prompt them. "Hello, this is Riley. How can I help?"
There is no taking these calls as individual affairs. Each is encumbered and informed by the call I've taken before. Each is burdened by the emotions that have been generated through my prior experiences. I felt this with much clarity this last week. I knew that the previous customer had upset me and that I was fuming, reeling, recovering from what had happened to me. Yet I had to face the next call. There was no time for a break. There were 15 people waiting to speak with us. My time, moreover, is observed and regulated, controlled and evaluated.
'Adherence', they call it.
Ha.
Leave me alone, I say. Let my time be nameless, I naively beg.
Yet this insight into the nature of my interactions, this intimation of memory's influence, is one that I wish to import into my life. I don't want my life to be burdened by the past. Informed, sure. Burdened, no.
For today is not yesterday. What has happened yesterday will always be a part of what is happening to me today. 'The present' is not a place that one can comfortably dwell. The past is right here, sitting in front of our stupid faces, informing and distorting who we are and what we may become.
I wish I could forget the previous call. I wish that paranoid man, rambling on and on about the government's attempts to steal his identity, didn't corrupt my ability to discuss with a sweet woman her current needs.
A bitter old man in Nebraska can prevent me from being close with a gentle middle aged woman in Kansas. True story.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Yes, I Confess, I Think Only of Myself
But what else am I to think of? Am I not the privileged object of my observation? Is my mind not the only laboratory that I will ever have access to? Indeed, my mind is forever confined to this body, to these memories, to this path.
I have been at a bit of a crossroads in my writing. I've not been entirely sure where to go. I have about 22 pages of an essay on Clausewitz and narrative. I have several sections mapped out. I attempted to dig into it a little bit and I found myself struggling. I didn't have it in me to pour over that text like I have in the past. I think I'll finish it at some point. At the very least I intend to edit what has been done so far, clean it up, and present it as a self-contained object. What has been written so far could very well stand on it's own.
Lately my mind has been occupied by the prospect of another project, one that I haven't seriously thought about in a while. It would be something that would look like 'creative non-fiction' or 'philosophical journaling'.
My life has taken an interesting turn of late. I've started a new job. It's quite corporate, I must admit. I answer phones. I talk to people about their troubles with the internet, with a website, with their money. My contact with them is brief, specific, and purposeful. Yet I find that people often reveal themselves to me in serious ways. They betray things about their lives. They tell me their stories.
They tell me of their health troubles, their family dilemmas, the breakdowns of their marriages, the gradual separation of their families, the secrets their children don't know.
As I've grappled with my own story, the narrative arc of my own life, I've found that everyone has their own narrative arc, their own story that they are living and that they divulge by necessity.
I intend to reflect on the narrative reconfiguring that has been occupying my own time, and how part of my story has been these intimate encounters with these other people. I intend to tell you of myself as I tell you of them.
I have been at a bit of a crossroads in my writing. I've not been entirely sure where to go. I have about 22 pages of an essay on Clausewitz and narrative. I have several sections mapped out. I attempted to dig into it a little bit and I found myself struggling. I didn't have it in me to pour over that text like I have in the past. I think I'll finish it at some point. At the very least I intend to edit what has been done so far, clean it up, and present it as a self-contained object. What has been written so far could very well stand on it's own.
Lately my mind has been occupied by the prospect of another project, one that I haven't seriously thought about in a while. It would be something that would look like 'creative non-fiction' or 'philosophical journaling'.
My life has taken an interesting turn of late. I've started a new job. It's quite corporate, I must admit. I answer phones. I talk to people about their troubles with the internet, with a website, with their money. My contact with them is brief, specific, and purposeful. Yet I find that people often reveal themselves to me in serious ways. They betray things about their lives. They tell me their stories.
They tell me of their health troubles, their family dilemmas, the breakdowns of their marriages, the gradual separation of their families, the secrets their children don't know.
As I've grappled with my own story, the narrative arc of my own life, I've found that everyone has their own narrative arc, their own story that they are living and that they divulge by necessity.
I intend to reflect on the narrative reconfiguring that has been occupying my own time, and how part of my story has been these intimate encounters with these other people. I intend to tell you of myself as I tell you of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)