Listen to a free discussion on Notes on the Spectrum: Three Leaps Ahead
Here’s the truth: discomfort propels action. Either you move to get out of your unsteady state or you fail. Drop. Blank. Deep wet depression. (DWD: A term the AI critics made up.)
My son continues to voice frustration that he can’t get his desk setup for the work he’s supposed to be doing. Here’s the issue as I understood it just minutes ago pulling into my house, opening the garage and seeing my son, waving me off from parking in my space.
“I’m in a meeting,” he says. “Sorry.”
He’s had a month or two to set up his desk. He’s also had access to my desk, my large monitor, and my hardwired internet connection. He’s staying out all night and fiddling with guns in the garage. The desk is not the issue. Then he claims to make progress in an all-night coffee shop. On his laptop. It’s not the monitor or the desk. It is him.
My guess is he assumed when I left that I was going to work, giving him unlimited access to my house for 9 hours. Nope. I have the day off. He’s in the dining room on a conference call. It’s interesting to hear him navigate the development conversation with his savior sidehustle woman. “Do you want to say hi to Emily?” he asks.
He doesn’t need to set up an elaborate desk and move all his shit from the garage into another room of my house. He needs to plan and make progress toward getting his own place. In the garage things are a bit cramped. Also, about the size of any apartment he might qualify for now. He was looking at apartments. Seemed to be getting a grip on the reality of the situation. Job = Apartment. No job, or side job, whatever he’s doing now… No apartment. Perhaps a roommate. For now, in his mind, I assume this roommate with dad situation is not ideal but it’s free, provides food, ac, and wifi. The bed is of incidental value.
Okay, I came to a decision on a few things. 1. no more guns in the house, at all. None. Leave them in the garage gun workshop. No more Glock on his cock, at least not while he’s in my house. 2. rent starts in December. All $$ will be saved for future rent deposit. 3. an articulated plan for his job-to-apartment escape.
It is interesting to hear him snow his motherly employer. He’s so smart. He’s full of fluff and technical sounding excuses. I get it. I developed websites for freelance clients for years. Blame the tech, blame the web, blame the designer or coder or writer. Blame someone else.
It is a theme here our lives as well. I blame no one. My son blames everyone else.
I am the only one who is going to move myself through and out of this rough patch. I am actively hunting for a job. Actively applying. Going to a 40-hour-a-week job at a grocery store. Pushing forward is the only path for me. I am also shedding side projects and things I’d like to do. Music is the biggest example. I’m rattling cages on the ideas of starting the band again, finally. I am making no progress and putting no real time into the execution. It’s just an idea. Even songwriting has been paused. Fragments are being lost on phones and pieces of paper, blown away by the current windy conditions.
I have one, okay two, targets. Numero uno is a new job. The second is this writing. Is it a journal, a novel, something more akin to therapy? A blog of difficult parenting life? Some sort of AI engaged fantasy I’m spinning out for myself alone?
Job on the line, says the main person is traveling through December 1. They hope to make the decision soon after that.
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sidenote: AI is really bad with commas and run-on structures.
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Job in the mix is a contract for Google, making 4 – 5 times what I’m making now. In one week, part time, I can make more than I’m making for a full month. UG.
I’m trying to understand the best way to articulate my need for a plan. Just him and me? Add his mom? Do it with a written note? Give him time to run and return. Give him a little more time to get a plan together. He’s been here on and off for nearly three months. But hey, it’s the holidays. I don’t really want him to come to Thanksgiving. He can mull in his unhappy stew like he has done the last two years. A sober house Thanksgiving. Then a post-sober house roommate situation where he didn’t have the courtesy to answer my requests. Christmas went the same way.
He’s an island to himself. The sharks and stormy waters of his own making. I am offering safety rings, lifeboats, and warm blankets. He is flailing with guns and choosing ghost walking in my house and in the world, while most of the local population is sleeping. Is he taking his meds? Indications are no. Is he getting any sleep? A couple hours in the afternoons when his body passes out. Is he making progress on his savior project? No idea.
He just moved the business conversation out on to the screen porch so I can’t hear the conversation. LOL.
My mom was loving and warm. She was also a hardass bitch when things didn’t go her way. This morning I put on a Harvard shirt and said, “Hi mom. I could use your help, today.”
Her fierce parenting said, “No guns in the house. Ever. Get a job and get out. First get a job. Your place here is temporary, no need to set up shop.”
Maybe that’s the approach. Tell him about Nana’s boundaries when I lived in her house. No. This is between the two of us. His mom is on some escape trajectory of her own, vacationing with our daughter, without her husband. And taking her for Thanksgiving too. A wound I can feel.
Mostly, I want to put my arms around my son, tell him, like I did in the text last night, that I would do anything to support him. I am doing that already. He, however, is not meeting me halfway. And I suspect he’s both using MDMA and selling it. Those are two knockout violations of my house rules. I’m going to ask his mom tomorrow if she and her husband are prepared to house the chupacabra.
The forecast calls for massive rains coming late tonight or tomorrow and lasting several days. My lawn will appreciate it. My job will be harder to attend to. My son will need to make some decisions and show forward momentum. That’s about all I can do today.
