Charybdis
Essay Posted: 766 words
There are a thousand charybdi that I face each day. The whirling arms and tempestuous waters never stop swirling. The fear of Her was the unceasing activity, the waves that never rested. There was no relief from Charybdis, you are doomed as Aeneas to row until you escape, or until you are consumed.
It feels dramatic to compare my life to the legends of the whirlpool at the toe of the boot. But, between Scylla and Charybdis is a tough place to be. Everyone pays attention to Scylla, the tragically poisoned nymph. Meanwhile, Charybdis lurks beneath the surface, pulling you into her undertow until there is no escape and you’re well on your way to ruin at her very center.
Yesterday, I opened up the computer after returning from a week away at a trade show. It was a good week, and I’ve got a notebook full of prospects to chase down at some point. We’re busy, I told my coworkers, but if we focus and execute, it’s doable. I’m pushing myself twice as hard, the next three weeks, before the baby comes. If we focus and execute, it’s doable.
“When there aren’t solid things that I’m feeling I bottle everything up inside and save it for another day. And then more and more time goes by and I’ve barely written at all.”
— May 27
“Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
— Matthew 6:25
I started this post a month ago. Since there, there have been two false alarms. The baby still is not here. Work is still nuts. People are really interested in what we’re selling, because we believe in the product.
We’re not just here to make money, we’re here to serve churches, and people can pick up on that. I can make the web a better place. I can swim out of this whirlpool. If we are earnest and we are sincere, good people will reward that.
I started this post a year and a half ago. The baby is one. The big kid is seven. There’s another baby coming. As funny as it would be to never finish the post, to keep adding to it, year by year, something needs to come out of it. What better proof of Charybdis herself than the fact that it’s taken a year and a half to produce something? This blog sat dormant for longer than it’s taken to draft this post.
I have lost interest in work. We’re here to make money, there’s no real way around that. All I want to do now is write and raise the three little Zs. Can somebody pay me to do that? Why do we need money anyways? Why am I not a self-sufficient farmer (leaving aside how ridiculous that question is when living in a city of three million)? How am I rich enough and spoiled enough to soliloquize about these fantasies for year after year?
The whirlpool is real, and I’m more determined than ever to swim through it. Like I just wrote this week, how freeing would it be to throw this Macbook — this marvel of modern technology — into a pond and watch it slowly sink into the algae, leaving no trace that it had ever existed? How freeing would it be to throw away the feeds, and the optimizations, and the audiences, and just start swimming like hell for the edge of the whirlpool. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe we’re all already too close to the center.
In which case, come quickly, Jesus. I’ll keep swimming until you do.
I was an enemy but You made me a guest
— “Lesser Loves,” Songs of Lament, by Bifrost Arts
You spread a table in the wilderness
Beside the waters, You filled my cup
O how I have settled for lesser loves
Photo Credit: Charybdis and Scylla by Ary Ernest Renan (1894).MUSÉE DE LA VIE ROMANTIQUE PUBLIC DOMAIN
P.S. This post is an excellent example of the thorny chronology issue on the web. I’ve chosen to date this post to June 2023, when it was first started and largely drafted, but it could have just as easily been dated October 2024. Can I apply it to a range of dates? Can I make it show up multiple times? Per my last blorp, this post is a great example of something I’d like to hand-curate, regardless of the date on it.