And now it's time for the daily rant...


There's this unfortunate idea in our society that being a "productive" member of society means being a spiritually-empty tool of the man. It means selling out and becoming The Man, a phrase that has absolutely no fucking meaning anymore.

Now, for anybody that knows me well, they know two things. The first, is that I'm about as organzied as a trailer park after a tornado. The second is that I'm a productivity geek. I read Lifehacker and 43 Folders. I post about my attempts at organizing. I'm constantly tweaking and fidgiting and rebuilding and working at it.

This belief that most people have, that time management is something for "other" people, for "tools of The Man", just plain pisses me off. Stop me if any of this seems familiar:

• Books: You have a few minutes before meeting up with someone, and there's a bookstore nearby. You walk in, and remember "that book, the one about the thing, by what's-his-name". And that's it. You vaguely remember what the book was about, and you'd recognize it when you saw it. Maybe if you searched for it at a kiosk? Something about "lunch?" Oh, there's a few thousand books that came up. Hrm. Well, I'll just browse the subject. I'll know it if I see it.
  
  Later that day, you look at your Amazon wishlist or see an ad for said book, and wonder how you could have totally forgotten.



• Movies: You're going out on a night on the town, and you figure you'll go see that totally awesome movie that someone mentioned awhile back. Unfortunately, the movie's local run is over, it's out of theatres, and because it's an independent flick it's not going to hit DVD for another six months. Oops.</i>
  
  
• Games: "That podcast talked about that really awesome game. I should totally pick it up. Oh, they don't have it. I should order it."
  
  "Who's the publisher?"
  
  "Um... something... uh, with an eye?"



• Everything Else: You'd really like to keep in touch with people, really. Your friend that just moved out of town, maybe you should fire them off an email, or even better, a letter. Huh. Haven't seen person A in awhile. Maybe I should give them a ring. Those shelves really need to be hanged up, I should get some hardware. What about the plant hangers?

These are the little things that slip by on a constant, regular basis. Some days, with some people, there might be half a dozen or so of these things that slip by, and at the end of the day, after missing out on the book, the chat over coffee with a friend, the plant hangers that you could have picked up when you were at the store but spaced out on because you were focused on lightbulbs, and the letter you needed to mail, it's easy to get this feeing of sheer incompetence about yourself.

Most people are being destroyed at the whim of the little shit that they're not able to get past it and into the bigger things they want to do. Like that political event you wanted to go to, but couldn't because you couldn't clear off your plate. Or the big conference that you put off registering for and taking time off for because at some point in time, it fell off the radar and you stopped thinking about it until now.

And here's the subtext I keep seeing over and over again from people: that time management, organizing, and thinking about projects and all that is for the soulless consumer that needs to "slow down, and, like, totally simplify their lives." Fuck. That. Noise. Fuck it with a goddamn rake. These are the same people that never get their shit together, seem to be constantly moving from one crisis to another, always have half a dozen or more unfinished projects lying around their house, and constantly complain that there's never enough time to do anything while watching television or listening to NPR and munching on organic potato chips. I am almost positive that we've met someone like this. (And if you're pointing a finger at me, go right ahead and point: I'm not going to deny that I've not done any of this, or that I'm not doing this right now in my life.)

Why does it piss me off? Because it seems to be something amongst the leftist rabble of the world: that all we really need to do is slow down and be ourselves, and stop letting The Man control us. Great. The solution is to just... what? I'm sure they've got some great ideas. Wonderful ideas. Big Ideas. Ideas that would Change The World As We Know It™. Ideas that will never be spoken because they never had the time to get together with other like-minded people and put them into motion. Plans and large-scale community projects that would have been earth-shattering, but languished because they simplified their lives to the point of not participating in what was going on around them.

The world is the way it is for no other reason than six billion people have decided that the world should work this way. You want to make the world a better fucking place? Get your shit together, get a bunch of other people that have their shit together, and fucking do something about it already.



EDIT: Man, what is it with me and LJ cuts?