There was a time, not long ago, when the proper upkeep of clothes confounded me, forcing me to employ desperate measures like bankrolling a steady influx of new shirts. Indeed, the very idea of marshaling steam technology to make oneself look sharper was pure science fiction, and you may as well have claimed that telephony had gone cordless and I would’ve believed you. Well, things have changed since then. I’ve made progress. I can now dewrinkletize a button-down, not to mention invent new verbs, in mere minutes.
The question has come full circle, in fact, and I am again preoccupied with acquiring new threads, though what drives me now isn’t necessity, so much as vanity. Certainly I’ll pick up a new article of clothing here or there, but I haven’t made a truly concerted effort to understand the world of apparel since aught-five, when structurally compromised jeans were all the rage. Those were pre-recession days, I suppose, and it was fashionable to look like you were destitute or possibly AWOL from a local casting of Cats.
Here, too, things have changed, with the denim of today sporting an altogether different style. Gone are the carefully positioned tears, and the only way to achieve the destroyed look these days is through your own industry and a pair of scissors. Now, if trendy is what you want, it’s going to be slim, low-ride jeans for you. I unwittingly brought a pair to the fitting room over the weekend, and it just didn’t take. It was horrifically uncomfortable.
I guess I’m just not shaped like a hipster, you know? I simply don’t want to chat about the latest grungecore hits while sipping alternative brews, ever, and my protest begins with comfortable pants. Is darker, regular-fit denim the answer for me? Perhaps, though if we continue along the current trajectory, carpenter jeans will likely see a revival soon, and maybe this time we’ll figure out what exactly goes in the hammer loop.
As I was driving home from work tonight, drained after hours of basking in the sickly white glow of spreadsheets, I asked myself a question. It’s been a long week, and when you combine that with an empty road, bleary eyes, and a darkened sky, you get contemplative. I thought about the past few days, the coming weekend, last year and the next, and then I steeled myself for those three words: Is this it?
It’s a painful, yet wholly necessary query that should be asked regularly, I believe. It suggests discontentment, possibly unwarranted, and it’s a question that can inconvenience you, uproot the familiar, if you go the distance with it. But it can also save you from being stuck on loop. There are better words, I’m sure. Were I more entrepreneurial, I’d probably be uttering three different ones–Here’s my plan–but that’s a mindset I simply don’t possess.
By and large I’m content on most days. Job, house, car, savings, creature comforts–I’m fortunate, certainly. But at the same time, I’ve always wondered what it means to be truly “passionate” about something, be it a hobby or work. I’ve never really understood the word. It tends to evoke images of rescuing whales or some such shit, all for great personal satisfaction and little reward.
Invariably I imagine donning sackcloth and renouncing worldly riches to pursue my life’s calling, and that’s just not me. I like nice things. I like food. I like money, and were I to stumble upon a way to parlay something I enjoy into a revenue stream, well, fuck yes I’d sell out in a heartbeat. That’s every person’s dream, I suppose–to stop asking the question, my question, and instead declare, “This is it.”
For the past few months, my golf clubs have sat neglected in the coat closet, gathering cobwebs and darkness in what was to be their final resting place. I had entombed them there after a particularly confounding summer, where the few instances of improvement were crushed by a preponderance of frustration and poor form. This was in no way helped by my continued refusal to seek professional instruction, of course, and it’s likely matters aren’t going to change much on this front.
I’ve been thinking about the game recently. It started with a couple mental pictures that seemingly came from nowhere: a brief flash here of an early morning drive, a brief flash there of carts lining up for tee-off, a quick panorama of rolling hills covered in dew and chill. It’s the kind of shit you’d find in a Werther’s commercial, you know?
These images eventually piled up, culminating in a morbid curiosity that resolved in two small words. What if? What if I hit all the right notes this year and managed to become proficient? What if I possessed this skill in my business toolkit? What if I were able to resist a chili dog with the conviction of a thousand vegetarians?
I acted on this curiosity over the weekend, exhuming my clubs for a trip to the range. The violent backswing–the very fruit of my efforts from last year–was fully intact and had to be toned down substantially. The need to focus on the ball quickly became apparent. It was a productive hour. But the real test of what I’ve retained comes this Saturday, when I will wander the greens, or what I refer to as the Field of Woe, for four to five hours of my life. It doesn’t stop there, though. Last Friday, fortune also presented a chance to attend the Masters again, and I am compelled to go. I fear there may be no escape.