Before I became a Quantum and was just a guy living a life, I had to worry about spoons and spreadsheets.
As a self-employed IT consultant, I was my own boss, which meant how I scheduled and spent my time was utterly up to me. In addition, it gave me lots of free time.
One might think with bountiful free time one could do so many interesting things – learn to play piano, become a master programmer, or just go out and have good times with friends. (Well, the last one’s not such an option for an INTJ introvert like myself, but I digress.)
But like always, it’s not that easy – not for people like me. I don’t just need free time to do something, I need free spoons as well.
I have mental challenges. I’ve been diagnosed with OCPD – obsessive compulsive personality disorder, although I would somewhat argue the accuracy of that diagnosis. I certainly have a touch of good old OCD, and heaps of certain kinds of anxiety – ironically, one of my greatest sources of anxiety has always been mortality, which could well explain why I got the powers I did, actually. And I’ve already described that pain of watching humanity self-destructively pile onto the savagery of the universe with their own elective cruelties.
However my greatest source of mental challenges is the brutal combination of two things: needing romantic love in my life as much as I needed oxygen, and seemingly having every possible obstacle to achieving that in my way.
What obstacles? Well, I am introverted, cerebral, quirky, a culture of one with unorthodox ideas, I speak without a filter and respond honestly, I don’t know and am unable to learn social niceties, I’ve had a developing hearing loss (tinnitus), I didn’t stand out in a group (more of a wallflower) and therefore dislike group activities, I am fully committed to rationality (never popular), I’m generally unwilling to go along to get along, I expect and demand fair treatment, I am a solitaire instead of alpha male, I make decisions pragmatically, I’m understandably cynical about others (though, sometimes not cynical enough!), I’m extremely anxious about asking anyone out, I have an intense personality when one-on-one, I am intelligent (which for certain people can be off-putting), I’ve been overweight, I’m average looking overall with no style, my clothes are practical but not cool, I have uncovered answers to many life questions so I appear arrogant when I’m merely informed, I am an extremely picky eater, I dislike the outdoors and physical activities and prefer staying in and nesting instead of going out, always, I am sometimes absent-minded, I lack interest in what I am not interested in and my interests are generally narrow (though deep), I’m more of a grasshopper than an ant (as indicated previously) and am therefore not rolling in cash and resources, I have one other significant appearance issue which I will speak of another time, and I am attracted to a limited set of women (any age, but must be petite).
Just a few things in the way.
On top of all that, I only have a limited number of spoons.
Some people seem to have a large pool of energy to draw upon. If they have two free hours at the end of the day, they can decide to do more chores from their task list.
Other people have a much smaller reserve of “go juice”. If they do a handful of onerous tasks at the start of the day, they may have no more capacity for accomplishing anything else productive, no matter how much free time they have left.
So someone created the “spoons” metaphor – I have no idea why they picked spoons, but they did. People with limited capacity for accomplishing tasks are said to have only a certain number of “spoons” – and each task they attempt uses one of those spoons up. When they run out of spoons, they are simply unable to be productive until they have recharged and gotten more spoons – which typically means the next day.
Some things I do don’t consume spoons – like watching something I like on TV. Other things, like catching up on billing and sending out invoices consume many spoons. Luckily for me, working on tech onsite for a client generally did not consume any. However, even things like trying to find a new game to play or a new TV show to watch consumes spoons, a nasty catch-22.
So I have to be aware of this as I move through my day. I have to make sure the most important stuff gets done first, else I might run out before it does. I also try to make my spoon use extra efficient – so that, for example, instead of pairing all my socks after they come out of the dryer, because I made sure all my socks are the same I could toss them all into a clean sock basket in the closet, and grab any two as I go. Find another fifty to a hundred time-savers like that and you require far fewer spoons.
Still, sooner or later one runs out. I usually ran out between noon and 2pm, and occasionally got a small burst later that day – but usually not.
Then the fun really began.
You see, after I run out of spoons, I still am well aware of all that remains to be done. It weighs oppressively on me. And in the case of finding a romantic love, I knew that until I get the tasks on that particular list done – write a profile, get new pictures, sign up for dating sites, etc, etc – I was unable to proceed, while I watched my life slip down the drain one day at a time. Once I hit fifty I was all too aware of the limited number of days I had left.
So when you have no spoons, yet still have something you badly need, and are nevertheless unable to progress on that front until you get more spoons, all you can do is obsess on being stuck.
Unless you can distract yourself – which is where spreadsheets come in. Not actual spreadsheets, metaphorical ones.
Let’s say that there’s a new video game I was excited to play. Spending my spoon-free hours playing it was a great way to pass the time without focusing on that being stuck feeling until I got more spoons.
In fact, playing that game might even give me another spoon or two!
Imagine that life is a giant spreadsheet, and every thing we do is either something we enjoy, or something we don’t enjoy that we do so that we can have something else that we want – like money. Which can lead back to having something we enjoy – like video games!
The things we do because we have to, not because we want to, are negative numbers on the spreadsheet of life. The things we enjoy – like watching our favorite TV shows, or playing video games, or whatever, are positive numbers on the same spreadsheet.
Generally speaking, the negative numbers are the things that cost spoons, and the positive numbers are the things that help you recharge.
However, once I felt what it was like to hold Denise in my arms, that immediately recalibrated all the values on my spreadsheet. I didn’t choose for that recalibration to happen, it just did.
Now things that before had been small positives were zero or had even turned negative. Things that had been large positives were now greatly lessened. Holding Denise was such a gigantic positive that all other experiences paled from comparison – not something I had any control over, it just happened.
Here’s another thing: when you have very little positive in the life spreadsheet and mostly negatives, that affects you. Sure, when you get up the next day you have some more spoons, so you can do stuff – but your attitude and outlook dip lower and lower because as the spreadsheet negatives keep rolling in there is little positive to offset them.
So in the spoon-less second part of the day, not only was I stuck thinking about how much I still had to accomplish to maybe (if I was lucky) find any fulfillment – but my overall attitude cratered deeper as each new day’s negatives further overwhelmed that day’s positives.
Before I became the Arbiter, I was a depressed, even partially suicide-contemplating man, often found going to bed early, crawling under my blanket, and just sobbing my heart out.
If I hadn’t become a Quantum, my story could have had a much bleaker ending. Until the Sunday the meteor hit, the life I lived was a continually unfolding tragedy, every waking moment, one that constantly made my normally happy-go-lucky soul defeated and ready to call it quits.
If that meteor hadn’t hit.