Spreadsheets or people: that was the decision I presented to you a few weeks ago as I traced the contour of my career and wondered, years from now, where it would lead. On the face of it, it was a grim choice, with a snoozefest on one end, emotional mortification on the other, and a general sense of being cornered, like discovering you’ve depleted all your skips in Pandora just as a Michael Bublé song begins.
Turns out it wasn’t a grim choice at all. Far from it, in fact, and in a moment of clarity today I realized why the human race, rather than Excel, won out. It’s actually been winning for a while now, despite my proclivity for avoiding people, and here’s why. For one thing, anything I can do in a spreadsheet could easily be shipped overseas or tasked to a computer. In a sense, Excel is a foregone conclusion, a kind of aftermath in a war of flesh against silicon. Let’s be honest here: no matter how many formulas I jam into a spreadsheet, I can never hope to match the computational power of a solar-powered calculator, let alone a modern processor.
Relationships, then, become precious, and shepherding data suddenly takes a backseat to investing in social currency. But how to embrace all this when connecting with people is such a draining proposition? It’s simple, really. I know what parts of my career I enjoy. I like figuring out how stuff works. I also like fixing problems. When you wrap people in the context of these two things, well, there’s your escape hatch, with a clearer course set before you and relief–above all, relief–that your compass was working all along.
One sure sign that you’ve been approaching church with neither clergy-approved frequency nor mindset is wondering, halfway through the sermon, whether subtitles are available on the projected screens. How I was even able to think about this was a miracle in and of itself, because Sunday found me conscious at a reasonable hour, courtesy of alarm clock, and wholly engaged in my morning routine. With my hair gelled and congregation wear in full effect, I set off to drive to worship, but then I began veering back to bed.
Understand that even though I was rested, dressed, and ready to go, the siren song of sleeping in drew its nets around me, and the very act of pulling into the parking lot 15 minutes late turned into a sheer test of will. But made it I did, and the question of closed captioning took center stage. Obviously I wasn’t expecting on-demand subtitles. This isn’t the first time I’ve listened to the pastor’s Scottish brogue. It’s more an issue of all the television I’ve consumed in lieu of service, and accordingly the strictures of the screen, rather than scripture, have become the norm for me.
I couldn’t even begin to tell you what the message covered. Bits and pieces I remember, though, and the tone, more than anything, stuck with me. There was one stretch where he held forth on what church wasn’t: it’s not a social club, nor entertainment, nor a parade of concerts, nor a political action committee. I also remember how he delved into why there are no polished PowerPoint slides with neatly bulleted verses. You bring your Bible, and you flip through it. His was a conviction from an earlier era. No pandering, no fucking around, just a sensibility that hearkened back to Puritan days in the New World, when drowsy congregants were smacked with sticks because they mistook hour six of the service for siesta time.
He also spoke on being more than a “mere church attender,” with which I disagreed. Now, I know what moving beyond attendance means, where I’m rarin’ to offer time and emotional capital to the parish and public at large. My current juncture is more in line with the sacred script of Old School, which proclaims: “We will give nothing back to the community, as well as provide no public service of any kind. This much I promise you.” So merely attending would be an upgrade for me, honestly, and if I can simply show up consistently, plant rump to pew, I may be better for it.
When I was walking to my car during lunchtime today, which is to say my favorite time of day, I realized I was partaking in a glorified snack break for adults. You may recall your years in grade school, with the golden stretches of recess and nap time, and I ask you here, now, in the working world, whether anything has really changed. Consider the trajectory of a normal weekday. Step one: make it to lunch. Step two: try not to fall asleep after lunch. Sure, it may be a food coma, rather than a boring class, responsible for putting you under, but that’s merely a riff on an old theme.
Could it be that the march of time doesn’t actually march? This is what I mulled over as I drove to the dentist–not to eat there, obviously, but for a cleaning. Once in the waiting room, I listened to a fellow yammer loudly into his cellphone for a good 10 minutes. Business, you see. Shop talk for the rest of the waiting room to hear. It occurred to me the alternative to this arrangement, had this been 15, 20 years ago, before the advent of miniature mobile phones, would be small talk, and the trade-off suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
But then his call ended, followed by the telltale, self-satisfied sigh that usually means offline conversation is imminent, and I braced myself for the standard suite of topics: recent weather, where I’m from, what I do for a living, and then, God forbid, a segue into organized sports. At the same instant, I noticed there was political commentary pumping out of the flat-panel television, and an even worse scenario flashed across my mind, replete with sports talk and armchair analyses of the midterms. I had to take action.
I whipped out my own phone, then proceeded to be engrossed by it, typing away furiously with both thumbs. I guess I looked like I was texting? Two issues with this. First, I don’t think the clamshell design helped my case. Second, I don’t have texting capability or Internet connectivity on my phone. My button presses were used instead for browsing my collection of pre-loaded wallpapers and checking for a firmware update I knew wasn’t there. Modernity, in other words, yoked to the timeless art of avoiding people.