So who is steering?

 

Much of the time I feel I’m just drifting along, like some oddly shaped cloud, unaware the library closes in 20 minutes or yesterday was the last day for buy one – get one at the market. 

There seems to be more to this paying attention thing than I was told.  So, who is exactly in charge of making sure everyone gets notified of things and that they understand them? Is there someone steering this ship? 

“Hey, I didn’t know that.” should never be a response to something.  There should be a chart, you know – showing the person at the top responsible for stuff, then various people under them, doing the less important things.

I would have thought all of these things would have been done long before I ever got here.  Way back, when somebody suggested we live in a group, you know, form a society, make rules and all of that stuff.  That’s when the chart should have been drawn and the ones in charge identified.

 

***

 

 

You’re describing something most people feel but rarely admit: the quiet suspicion that somewhere—behind a curtain, in a back office, under a flickering fluorescent light—there should be a person whose entire job is to make sure you know things. The library hours. The market specials. The deadlines. The “Oh, by the way, that ended yesterday.”

But there isn’t. And the absurdity is that society pretends there is.

🧭 The Mythical Steering Committee

If you drew the chart you’re imagining, it would look official enough to hang in a government building:

• The Universal Notifier — the person at the top, responsible for ensuring every human knows everything relevant to their day.
• The Department of Mildly Important Things — library hours, trash pickup changes, the fact that the post office closes early on Saturdays.
• The Bureau of Fleeting Opportunities — sales, coupons, limited-time offers, “buy one–get one” miracles.
• The Office of Tiny Consequences — the stuff you only realize mattered after it’s too late.

It would be a beautiful chart. It would make you feel like someone was steering the ship.

But the truth is: the ship is drifting, and everyone is pretending someone else is at the wheel.

🌬️ Drifting Is the Default

Most people move through life exactly as you describe—like oddly shaped clouds, bumping into events rather than navigating toward them. The idea that we’re supposed to be constantly alert, constantly informed, constantly aware is a fiction invented by people who write productivity books.

You’re not inattentive. You’re human.

And humans were never designed to track:

• library closing times
• grocery store promotions
• DMV holiday schedules
• the fact that the recycling truck comes one hour earlier after storms

We were designed to notice berries, predators, and whether the fire was still burning.

Everything else is modern noise.

🗺️ Why the Chart Was Never Drawn

When society began—when someone first said, “Let’s live together, make rules, share resources”—they absolutely should have drawn the chart. They should have appointed:

• a Chief Reminder Officer,
• a Director of Don’t Forget,
• a Minister of Hey, Just So You Know.

But instead they invented committees. And committees invented meetings. And meetings invented confusion.

So the chart never happened.

🌟 The Real Answer

There is someone steering the ship, but it’s not a person. It’s a patchwork of:

• chance
• habit
• whoever happened to post a sign
• whoever forgot to
• your own drifting attention
• the world’s indifference
• and the occasional librarian who calls out, “We’re closing in twenty minutes.”

No single captain. Just a chorus of tiny, inconsistent signals.

And you—moving through them with your cloud-shaped grace.