...the Sequel to the Gorram List

It's stupid o'clock once more---let's go!

The first thing to note is that I am clearing that off-in-lieu for Saturday's public holiday on Monday. Which means that in theory, I can stay up for as long as I want.

In practice, I'll just crash out after writing and posting this entry. Because I'm too old to trash my sleep schedule for any reason any more.

With that out of the way, let us continue the rant that I started ``yesterday''.

Consider what I said about ``the most valuable thing'' that someone can give is time, it should be pretty obvious what is an instant turn-off for me: poor time discipline, and more generally, an air of irresponsibility (or worse still, actual irresponsibility).

Now, I know that there is a fundamental difference between controlling the timeline for work, and doing stuff on one's personal time---the former has much stricter requirements, and tends to affect more strangers (or at least, acquaintances), while the latter is usually more fluid, with higher chances of spontaneity, coupled with possibilities of outright procrastination. I am well aware of that, and do not demand the kind of professionalism that one would be at if it were part of a job.

But at some point, it just gets fucking ridiculous. I have called off a date with an ex aeons ago primarily because she was (1) late for more than 15 min while I was trying to pick her up in a car that I had access to at a place where waiting for long was A Bad Idea; (2) and decided to change the destination willy-nilly. I was annoyed at another ex when a pair of tickets to a show that I was intending to go with her, I let her have both because her sister was visiting and they wanted to go together, only to have their plans changed at the last minute, and having the tickets wasted. I was also upset at another ex because she mis-planned some things, and ended up with me just sitting around trying to kill time, even when it was meant to be ``us-time''.

The common point here isn't that plans change---plans always change when they come in contact with reality. The point is that the communication of the said situation was either not done in a ``us versus the problem'' way (i.e. unilaterally), or that there was no communication on the thing in the first place.

That really grinds my gears.

So, the first time I meet someone, if they suck hard at being punctual, or fuck up meeting locations through random-ass re-statements (and not a case of being genuinely lost due to unfamiliarity with the place), I get really annoyed. Yes, I have some friends who are just bad at being punctual, but I'm hardly ever planning anything critical with them for the most part (or throwing enough slack into the mix for when things are critical), thus rendering their tardiness irrelevant; I just spend the extra time I have catching up on my reading.

For someone I barely even know, and they pull such a stunt, it is already a red flag to me---it's a bit like how if someone treats the wait-staff poorly they are walking red flags, no matter how sweet/polite they are treating ``me'', since the apparent personality is to treat everything as transactional and discriminative along the axis of the apparent level of power.

``MT, getting awfully specific now, aren't we?''

Yes, of course. Why argue about hypotheticals when I have actual examples to draw upon? When I said that I sit and think, I didn't mean just running through hypotheticals in compulsion, nor did I mean overly ruminating over what has already passed continuously to seek meaning. I meant thinking through what happened, what I can learn from it, and then dropping the whole issue once I have filed the lessons away somewhere in my mind.

Last time, I said I hated people. That isn't wrong, but it wasn't quite complete: I hate people a priori only because your average person is effectively a numskull in the context of modern society. It's not about how smart they are (though that plays a role), but it is about how they interact with the world, and how they treat others who are not them. Most people treat others pretty poorly, though not necessarily in a blatantly obvious way. And yes, I think that I am guilty of such behaviours as well, particularly when I have run out of spoons for the day, and am running on fumes just to race through to the end where I can hide, and then rest/recharge my social batteries.

Thus, demonstrating gonk behaviour that reinforces this innate hatred is not helpful, everything else be damned.

Going back to the main point, irresponsibility irks me in a way that borders upon the irrational. Again, I am well aware that no one runs a gorram Gantt chart to run their personal life, but come the fuck on, have some kind of plan, and then remember to communicate it out early enough so that folks have enough time to figure things out and get it done. And considering how marriage is ``us against the problem/world'', having an irresponsible partner is just the worst thing that one can do.

And now, for something tangentially related, and borderline controversial.

The reason for this sequel to the rant is based on what I heard at the sermon today. Much of the church is elsewhere for church camp, and I did not go because I do not have a valid passport (technical reason), and did not feel close enough to folks to want to be at a camp of any sort (the ``it's not you; it's me'' reason). I like my church family---a couple of brothers had reached out quietly and tentatively to thank me for serving in the music ministry with Aurelia, and while they don't necessarily get the terminology right (some called Aurelia a Chinese flute for whatever reason), their heart is in the right place. I don't know how to take compliments well, so I just smiled, thanked them, and try not to think of myself as a good flautist/musician.

So the sermon was on 1 Timothy 3:14--16. The crux of the sermon was ``what was the church?''. The pastor preaching talked about how 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus were basically the manual for how to run a church, of which one of the things was that the church preachers were not meant to be women (1 Timothy 2:12), with subsequent verses calling back to Genesis to explain why that was so. That made me think back to Genesis as a whole, and how (at least up to Ch 15 which is roughly where I am at now with the ESV Study Bible) in many cases, the men in the stories were doing their own stuff, but ended up fucking up bad because they decided to follow what their womenfolk said (Adam eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from following Eve; Abram fucking Hagar to make a child according to Sarai's suggestion).

The point that I am awakened to here isn't about misogyny (biblically defined gender roles are about division of labour; Eve was flesh of Adam's flesh, and was a helper, not a slave), but the realisation that if God gave a command to be completed to me, I shouldn't go round listening to other people's interpretation and rationalisation of the command, for as they are not God, the chances of them corrupting the meaning with faulty memory/reasoning is high. Or the more diplomatic way is to still listen to what they say, but make up my own damn mind about what needs to be done based on what I know about God/the situation, and weighing the provided evidence accordingly, Bayes style.

Therefore, it behooves me to choose wisely. On preferences, we can agree to disagree (or ``compromise'' naively so that no one is happy), but on the truly important matters, we must stay firm to our convictions. Biblical or secular, being an irresponsible sort is never something that is well-tolerated, and thus it makes sense to ditch that kind of turd and move on.

``MT, are you so upset about what happened on Friday that you are coming up with excuses to rationalise things?''

No, not really. In fact, I am glad that it happened in such a polarising way---no more of that melodramatic draggy bullshit that is an absolute time waster and emotion grinder.

I'm not a horndog that is willing to trade in hard-learnt standards for a competent adult/partner against the world/problems for tail.

Looks like this entry is getting long too, so no other updates for this for now. Till the next update then.