The Worlds of James Vesping

One of the things I’ve never understood about the workforce is the tracking of time. That is to say, when you clock into the job with a card, pass, or something that says “my butt is in the chair, you start to pay me now,” this starts a magical effect where work is being done and productivity is ramping up, thus building fortune for the corporation, executives, shareholders, and so on. It has never made much sense to me, ever since I was told by a senior executive at club fed that if my butt wasn’t in a chair, he was losing money. How can such a thing be a measure of productivity or success?

Apparently in the working world, it means everything. You accomplish production goals, your quota for this quarter, the clients are happy, everything is great — but wait! You left 30 minutes early on this day! You arrived 5 minutes after start time! You took 30 seconds longer on break! Everything is falling apart now and it’s all your fault!

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If objectives are being accomplished efficiently and successfully, then perhaps merely tracking time in seats is an outdated metric. For sure, it’s useful in some capacities, but it doesn’t tell the entirety of the story. After all, if someone follows the rules to the letter, clocks in at 0800 and is there til 1200, then exactly after that 1 hour unpaid lunch (we don’t pay you to eat, what are you, human?) you come back at 1300, and your butt is in that chair til 1700, does that really say anything beyond the individual simply being there at those hours? Was anything really actually accomplished?

By the metrics of the modern age, apparently everything is accomplished by measuring that time alone. That’s the way they’ve always done it, they say. Change is too hard. We’d have to think about other measures to quote a realistic figure for a job. We might have to pay workers differently. They might try to work from places other than the office or production floor where we can’t be certain if they’re actually working. Supervisors and managers might be redundant if we trust employees to get their tasks done!

But tracking goals completed, objectives accomplished, and work actually done is hard. It requires looking beyond butts in chairs and distilling the actual work from the mythical measurement of time. It means looking at individuals by their merits and own abilities, not by an equal passage of time on a clock. Everyone is different, which is anathema to a system that indoctrinates humans from birth to fit a mold for stamping widgets and obeying the factory overseer.

Clock in and stamp that widget, slave.

I’m not going to lie; yesterday was a very dark place for me. Many questions over where I’m going, what I’m doing, what I’m going to achieve — and whether or not it’s worth achieving. I’ve tried to look at the stories I’d like to write, the scenarios I want to create, the skills I desire to hone as an artist, but often the desire to simply give up becomes overwhelming. It makes for quite the alternating conundrum of motivation and sloth. A dark pit, made difficult to escape.

I often wonder what my mother would say or do in these situations, but I have to remind myself that I am not her. She is gone and I remain; my actions and judgment are my own. Proceeding forward is in my hands and mine alone. That can be a challenge when life’s trials have thrown numerous obstacles in your way, with doubt clouding your mind. What’s the point of going forward when you are only pushed back by something like a disability? Is it worth continuing when you are belittled over your inability to hear? How does one go forth in an already challenging environment with a disadvantage?

The maw of despair can be overwhelming. I can’t blame those who simply allow themselves to be enveloped by it. It takes incredible effort to pull away when the deck’s stacked against you, much less when you at least have some advantages. My mother understood that, which is why this time of year is always so painful for me. Without her guidance, her wisdom, there is so much missing from my reasons to continue. I push myself forward, if only for her memory. She believed in this endeavor, even when I could never see it. Perhaps, in the end, memory is all that I need to push forward out of that maw of despair.

But I still miss you, mother.

Like a lot of things, I’ve been slow at updating this. Truth be told, I’m a bit surprised I’m still here!

I just finished another novel, this time taking quite a bit longer than previously, but sometimes that’s the way it goes. I went through several phases of interruptions early on in November when I first started it, which delayed progress quite a bit. It’s very easy to lose track of something when you’re not constantly working on it, and in my case it often results in eventual disinterest. Taking a few days off is a sure way for me to lose momentum and become bored with the subject, so I try to avoid that if at all possible. Unfortunately, that tends to result in some pretty wild back and forth on the part of my health, as the constant drive for progress can be debilitating. It’s a difficult balance to get right.

As I’ve noted many times before, I’m a very introverted person, so I don’t like the constant pull of social media and staying in contact. Even this website, which no one reads, is a chore to update. I’d rather be working on some piece of art, writing a story, or documenting something else than make posts here. It isn’t like I’ve got a lot to talk about, right? I’m a hermit, barely clinging to the living, with hardly any life experience. I was a stable hand growing up, ostracized by my family because I was deaf. I got a cochlear implant to help, but it didn’t. I got a degree to get a job, but it wasn’t enough. I worked for club fed for six years, and they told me I needed to learn to hear better. Since then, I’ve aimlessly drifted, hoping that writing would distract my overactive mind. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t.

The only thing I’m certain of is that I can’t stop. Even if I only do a little bit at a time, I can’t stop being creative. I’m not particularly good at it, but I can’t stop. There’s always some new idea, some different angle, some project to complete. Perhaps, in the end, that will be what kills me. With the way my heart feels, that could very well be my fate.

As my uncle is fond of saying: So it goes.

The fifth anniversary of my mother’s death has finally come and gone. Five years ago, it felt as if my entire world had fallen apart. Turning the clock back, exactly five years ago, my father and I had just finished taking care of my mother’s rabbits after the emergency services rolled her lifeless body out of my parent’s home. We had tried in vain to contact my sister and brother in law, until at the very last moment my sister called our father. I can still remember his face, hearing his sobs as he explained it. I don’t know how my sister handled the news, but I know she was just as hurt as the rest of us.

I remember coming home and pulling out a revolver, then playing Russian roulette on my stairway. No matter what happened, I couldn’t get a round to go off. It was always a different number, a chamber opposite or just under the hammer. I pushed myself away and tried to get some sleep, but such was impossible; it seemed as if my entire future had come crumbling down. I had only just left club fed a little more than a year prior and had not even published any of the books I had written in the past two years. My mother had insisted we could do it, that she would be there to help me. In return, I helped her however I could.

The year prior, I had actually intended to move away from the midwest USA, possibly to one of the coastal areas. I knew a number of people in the Pacific northwest, so I thought I would try living there for a while. Unfortunately, I found out that I had a hernia that summer, and with no health insurance I was scrambling to find a solution. My mother found a place south of my state that would do it for a cash price, so I went there and had it repaired. By the time I had healed, it was already late fall and it delayed my trip. When I was finally up there, I found out that the area really wasn’t for me, but decided I might try again the next spring.

It wasn’t to be. That winter, my mother had complications with a medical procedure and was in the hospital for a few weeks. I ended up taking care of her rabbits for that time, so I determined I needed to stay a little bit longer — at least until my sister returned from her deployment. Even though I felt frustration with where I had lived for the better part of 30 years, moving away wasn’t a rational decision until things were settled at home and family. I later determined that it didn’t matter where I went; I would always be a rejected outcast, no matter what, so I needed to focus on what was important to me. That was writing, even if it wasn’t a recipe for success.

As I sit here writing this, with only 29 minutes left in the day, I keep hoping to find a way forward. It is frustrating and I often find myself wondering if I should have done what I tried to do that night, five years ago. What would have changed? What would have been different? Would all my questions be answered, or would I merely be led to more complex questions? I have no answers; only theories. Speculation. Uncertainty. I attempt to answer it with writing, but it is always hollow and fragmented. I can only come to the conclusion that there may not be a way forward — simply forward. I can’t change the past, nor can I stop the future. I can only go forward.

I don’t intentionally space these updates out like this. Usually, I’ll make an update and go “I’m free! Time to do something else!” and before I know it, several months have rolled around and a “little break” has turned into cobwebs and dust. That tends to happen a lot more as I’ve gotten older, especially as I find myself chasing whatever interesting whim I find myself currently descending upon.

The subject of age is of particular concern for me on this day, because it would be my mother’s birthday if she were still alive. Five years ago, for her birthday, my father and I bought her a new television and Blade Runner 2049, as she was a big fan of the original Blade Runner. I can recall the events pretty vividly, even now, and then I remind myself that it wasn’t yesterday, last week, or last month; little bits of time have passed and it has now been five years. Half a decade. If I went back to that long ago, I had only been away from Club Fed for just over a year. Time, seemingly an incredibly slow behemoth, has passed in what feels like a blink of an eye.

For better or worse, I continue to write, even though it feels as if there is a lack of purpose in such. In the five years since, I have completed four novels, one novella, and six short stories. It’s not nearly the same pace as that first year, back in 2016, where I completed four novels in an entire year. I’m uncertain if the speed really matters and my philosophy over the past five years has simply been “a little bit at a time.” It doesn’t matter how long it takes, just so as long as there is something consistently built up over time.

Because I have not — and likely will never — have any success in this writing endeavor, I have been attempting to find my way into gainful employment since 2019. Even though I haven’t been setting my sights very high, it’s been a disappointing search, with nothing but rejections stacked upon rejections for the past four years now. Each time I think I’m getting closer, the rug is pulled out from under me. It is seemingly a curse, a silent way the universe is telling me that I’m not welcome here. It’s a feeling I’ve had for my entire life and each time I try to understand the world, everything changes and I am left with a new, indecipherable enigma to solve. Little by little, I build up my understanding, until it inevitably comes crashing down, with nothing but a worthless pile of rubble to show for it.

The future comes, a little bit at a time, and all we can do is the same. A little bit at a time.

A theme I often find myself writing about is the concept of what I call “threads.” I doubt it is a new or unique concept; I am all but certain it is a very common theme in many works. In essence, it is the idea that there are things about our lives that are set in stone and some that can be changed by our own actions — or lack thereof. Threads are pathways that shift and alter, yet remain constant. They are mysterious, yet certain. They are malleable, yet forged. They are the roads of life that we unconsciously form through our own actions, inactions, the natural world we exist in, the influences of others, and so many other factors that result in our lives. A thread is something like fate, yet nothing like it.

A working example would be the death of my mother. What would things be like had she not died? What small and large differences would the past four years have been for me had she still been alive? There are so many uncountable changes that it is hard to predict. Maybe I would have found more success as an author. Perhaps I wouldn’t have met the friends that I have today — but perhaps I would’ve met others. My skills would be different due to pursuit of alternative objectives. Possibly there would be less of a rift between my sister and I. These changes then go beyond myself: what would life be like for my two nieces? My father? His friends? The people I know now? The effects are broad reaching, complex, and so chaotic. Trying to make sense of it could drive one to madness.

For me, this is what threads are. There are threads out there where my mother didn’t die. There are threads out there where I remained at Club Fed. There are threads out there where I was never deaf. But altering a thread alters more than just one individual; it alters the paths of many and as a result, the world as a whole. Sometimes, it becomes so very tempting to alter threads through our own wills. This is impossible, because threads cannot be changed like that. I often find myself trying to do so, to bring things back to a thread where my mother didn’t die or that I didn’t quit Club Fed. But this is short sighted, as painful as it may seem. Because if you go back and start making those changes, you’re left guessing what might result afterward. Further, why stop there? If I could go back even further, there are so many other things I would change on this thread that eventually, the very thread that makes me who and what I am would alter me to the point I wouldn’t be this person. You can’t manipulate a thread while maintaining a sense of self, because that comes from the thread as well.

Yes, it is painful to live on a thread where you feel as if so much has gone wrong, that you’ve made so many unforgivable mistakes. It seems impossible at times to move forward with the knowledge, the guilt of being so flawed. But that is the nature of what we are. A thread is an iteration of what could be, what has been, what will be, and what never will be. It is the stage of a play and we have no choice but to play our parts.

Four years on after my mother’s death, I still struggle to continue with this thread. Yet at the same time, I feel compelled to do so. There may be answers through the journey or at the end. Equally probable, there are just more threads. Perhaps, eventually, I will become content in the fact there may never be an answer. Simply threads.

I’ve often heard it said that forgiving is for one’s self and not so much for the individual being forgiven. “Forget about them,” I was often told. “Don’t let them dictate you,” they said. I’ve never been able to reconcile that, because I have a hard time forgetting pain, real or perceived. In my mind, forgiveness first requires those who have harmed others to first show penance for what they’ve done. It shouldn’t be as simple as going to the god of your choice and groveling a bit, putting a bit of money in the poor box, and walking away with a clear conscience. Yes, sometimes, forgiveness requires more than just a few words and small actions.

If you talked to anyone at my workplace 5 years ago, they likely would’ve said that they did nothing wrong. That what they did to others was no big deal and that they ought to be forgiven for such small things, if they really need to be forgiven at all. A great many of them firmly believe to this day that they did everything right and no harm was done. Will they ever know? Will they ever gain the conscience necessary to understand not only the harm they did, but the evil they embraced? If you were to ask me, I would say that they will never learn that in this lifetime; only after it has passed will they have a chance to understand, at at that they may never come to terms with it. They may take many lifetimes to finally reconcile the evil they have done.

You see, when I left Club Fed, I wasn’t just giving up a job. I wasn’t just giving up a career. It wasn’t just a paycheck, the benefits, or any material considerations. I was giving up a future. I was giving up hope. Those harmful words that I remember so clearly to this day will remain with me even after I die. “You just need to learn to hear better,” they told me. “She’s just trying to help you out,” they said after those words. Even as I write this now, I can feel anger and hatred within my heart. What would drive people to not only say such things, but to excuse them as well? The reasons are numerous, of course, not to mention varied. Each individual had their own justification, I’m sure. Maybe it was just too much trouble. It was a small thing; I shouldn’t have taken such offense over it. I should have kept it inside the organization; going for outside help was the wrong thing to do. It’s not their job to deal with it; they should just keep their heads down and wait til they finally reach retirement, then they might be able to do something about it.

In the end, people found ways to not take action because they feared that by taking a action that it might be the wrong one. Better to not be in a position where you have to answer why you did an action, because nobody got in trouble for not doing anything. Naturally, this has been proven wrong many times, but we’ll push that aside for now. So many individuals with responsibility who simply wanted the prestige of that responsibility without the actual duty of such. I shouldn’t be surprised, for this is a reflection of both culture and society as a whole.

I remember a great many things. I remember dreams I’ve had to the point I’m not sure if they are mere dreams or something more. Is the waking life the real one or a cover for something else? Are these events the experience of one person or of many? Is this reality or something merely playing at it? Perhaps these questions help with imagination and thus creative ordeals. But what is such if it leads to nothing but pain? Am I simply addicted to that pain, vainly holding onto it so I do not fade away? Is pain the only reason I have retained this life to this point? And if I were to let it go, what would I become?

Yes, I remember. I still hold that anger, that hatred, all so tightly that I fear what may become should it ever be released. For in this life, my greatest fear has never been the end of it, but instead what would happen should I be consumed by so much hate that I’ve kept buried deep within my heart. I fear that at some point, the people of this world will force me to embrace something far worse: apathy.

5 years on, my hope is but a mere candle. And with each passing day, I find less and less of a reason to not extinguish it.

I am not a prolific blogger, journalist, or social media person. In fact, it’s one of the least favorite things for me to do. To the point where I simply don’t do it (shocking, I know). You have to engage with an audience consistently and perfectly, or they’ll forget about you and move on — the worst thing that can happen when you’re dependent on selling entertainment to people! Some might believe the worst thing to happen would be to get cancelled; I would argue that’s the second worst thing to happen. If you irritate enough people for that to be a possibility, then it means you’re at least generating attention, and enough can bleed over into an audience that will buy your product regardless. There is a reason the Streisand Effect is a thing. And there’s my evil deed for the day: you are now spinning down the evil hell that is TVTropes! MUHAHAHA!

Anyway, as it relates to the title of this post: I recently checked the comment section on my website here. Why would I have comments enabled? Am I a glutton for punishment? Do I want to see shady pornographic videos, dirt cheap pharmaceuticals, cheap knock-off shoes from this totally legit seller in the comments section, or maybe Russian, Asian, older women really are desperate for dating options? Well, no, not really. The fact is this website is pretty small, with little real attention, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon (see the previous paragraph about social media). I don’t get that many spam comments per day, so I figure what few may come through I can easily filter out. That works well, if you can do regular upkeep and cleaning.

I did not do regular upkeep and cleaning, so I had a whopping 300 some odd spam comments waiting for permission (I’m not a total dunce and maybe those ladies might actually be legit; hope springs eternal). What I found curious about the vast majority of the comments was they had nothing at all to do with the subject matter of the post. All of them looked like they were farmed elsewhere across the web, from baking advice to writing advice to discussions on physics. Seriously, what the hell? Lowest effort I’ve seen in a while. Complete with the last three names, right in the comment body! I can’t even seem to get the important, tailor-made spam messages. Talk about a slap in the face!

One of the things about being a former IT worker is you never really lose your curiosity on the subject. The job and the tech are usually interesting, otherwise there would be little incentive to do it (I guarantee you it’s not the people, neither fellow IT workers or the customers). So when I look through spam comments, I like to see the patterns that emerge, and one of the key patterns was almost always the exact same mechanism for the comment body, with the actual spam payload held elsewhere — the username and user URL in this case. WordPress, probably for reasons owing to its community and origins as blogging software, includes a field for the commenter’s site URL. Presumably this was so bloggers would be able to connect with one another and thus increase their chances of building an audience and being noticed (remember, this predates big social media platforms like Facebook by a few years and came about in the post-AOL years). It is still there today because… Reasons? I suppose WordPress blogging is social media itself, so it has some utility there. Regardless, it seems rather pointless for those not linked to the whole system.

For our brave spammers, only a few put actual URLs inside the comment field, and those were mostly older spambots. The more recent ones stuck to a comment + first name + middle name + last name format. Their usernames however, contained the usual spam stuff like “videos,” “drugs,” and so on. The user URL field was utilized for the actual spam site location. I guess too many anti-spam systems became good at parsing the comment field for this kind of nonsense, so shifting to user names and user URLs became the spam meta. No doubt that will eventually change, as while the internet may be forever, it is never forever unchanged.