[1273] Absolutely Right

I may not know much, but I do know that I’m always right.

It’s a weird condition, to be sure. I didn’t ask for it. I literally can’t help myself. The resulting stress and contemplation often has me feeling very dark, alone, and exhausted.
I’m stuck. Even when I’m at my most free, I’m still stuck. I’m forced to occupy this space, not against my will, but seemingly as a result of everyone else’s. When I try to get unstuck, it sticks me in deeper, and I find myself, always at the screaming ends of twisted ironic fate.

I’ve been vibe-coding, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I was scrolling through my phone’s pictures hoping to organize or delete them. I have baskets of things the pictures fall into like “create a youtube playlist of all of these expensive collectible games under glass at Disk Replay” and “online fight through series of facebook comments before person could delete.” There’s hundreds of pictures of my cats, pictures related to some project on the land, and movies, songs, or notable figures I might wish to weave into my media diet or other vibe-coded projects.

I was getting sucked into my history and behavior during the concert I was at tonight. The bands were solid, and I was really only there for 1.5 of them. I got some stickers. It was at a venue I loathe. But of the hundreds of shows I’ve been to over the last few years, I found myself mostly in my phone, reading old arguments and being reminded of my fundamental disconnect with the world writ large.

I can go back and read old blogs. I can see when I was a lovesick teenager. I can see when I opted for exceedingly judgemental or hateful language to describe something. I can see where I’m considerably more desperate to be understood than I am resolved in my understanding. If I read through a “fight” or a “tit-for-tat” from the last 10 or so years, I’m not embarrassed. I don’t feel like I “failed” or could have done better. The points I was raising, time has shown, still stand, and the terms under which those “friendships” or “professional” boundaries died or were crossed, indicated necessary death.

And, at some level, that sucks. In a very unsettling way, I’m perhaps woefully accustomed to a kind of death. I didn’t mean to. I just happened to be present while everyone around me summarily killed themselves. You see, they’re always right too. Like matter and anti-matter, if we meet there’s an annihilation event. I watch them die, they think they killed me, and then I go and be messy by continuing to write, create, or try.

I think I’ve done some cool shit with my life so far. That’s why it gets so disorienting to seemingly get the message, more often and more consistently than any other, how little what I think or do matters. My “friends”…never were? My “family” often the most obscene or ambivalent. My jobs, coworkers, or bosses hostile. My clients defensively impenetrable. I literally have two people in my entire life who I have had a consistent, healthy, friendly, supportive dynamic my whole life, my dad and grandma.

I have good friends. What does that mean in the modern era? I see them once, for maybe an hour, every few months and exchange a couple of texts? I see others even less than that and it’s a facebook message every nine to twelve? You know, adult friendship. Because they live so far away, 20 to 45 minutes. Because we’re all so desperately busy. Because “things” and “stuff” and “because.”

In a wave of scrolling I’m thrust into my history with these and other people. I’ve screenshot some choice joke. I’ve got the bowling scores from when some colleagues and I were consistent and I’d yet to, surely it was me, work my alienation magic. I’ve got fights about trans issues, professional behavior, and with Russian maga bots. Was that really 6 years ago? I’ve got pictures of when the bands I’d never seen before just launched their first tour post covid, and the lists pre strike-throughs.

I’m so scared to be excited or to invest in things. It will leave like it never existed. You, will leave, and forget I ever existed. You’re doing it right now. And I could show you thousands of pictures of evidence that we were - something - to each other, but it’s not and never “enough.” I don’t know what that means, but I know I don’t meet the standard.
I take a certain amount of pride in what I can accomplish in spite. More so today, within cramped windows of what feel like wildly unstable moments of opportunity. I got exactly one large paycheck before the money got kicked in the nuts. I went maybe 2 whole weeks of thinking I was going to operate with the time, money, weather, and energy to do much bigger things faster.

If I create something, it doesn’t feel like I’m stuck as denied. If I write, I can read it or listen to it as many times as it takes to convince myself I made it and it matters and it’s saying something I need to hear. If I build and arrange a space, I can burrow myself within a monument testifying to my ambition if never my desired budget. It allows me to feel like I can stop making the argument because the piece can speak for itself. It’s the only thing that brings a sense of peace.

When you’re always right, it upsets people. They don’t want to be around you. They aren’t interested in the consequences of what you notice. It’s impossible for me to be right because I’m refusing to consider how they feel. Is that true? This has not, and will never, matter. It feels true.

I used to have a lot of feelings. It didn’t feel like being stuck at all. It felt like being violently helpless. I have this memory as a child of standing in the hallway just outside of the bathroom. I don’t remember if someone was using it, but the door was open, and I had to pee really bad. I ended up standing in the hall, crying, pee running down my legs, seemingly unable to connect my brain to them to get walked the rest of the way to the toilet. I was terrified, not just of what it felt to be functionally paralyzed, but of what I thought my mom was going to do for fucking up in such a stupid and obvious way. I guess I was young and pathetic-looking enough to trigger her pity instead of anger that day.

I think a lot about that disconnect when I’m trying to empathize with how people tend to treat me. Is there that same pitiful screaming child actively pissing their pants in view of a toilet, afraid of punishment and shame, baffled by their inability to take a step? Is that why you won’t answer the text, bowl, or come to the show?

Do you feel for that child? Or are you that child?

Lately, I’ve felt absolutely terrified of my potential with vibe-coding. I’m not someone who struggles to believe in myself. Again, this is because I try to let what I create anchor my self-conception more than my ever-evaporating relationships. When I build the house, I can live it. When I learn the instrument, I can rock the fuck out. I didn’t want to spend the weeks of time personally sorting through maybe 3,000 pictures over 10-15 years, so I expanded on my new A.I. hobby and built an app.

I still find this absolutely magical and so abundantly fulfilling. But, haven’t you heard? A.I., tech oligarchs, and data centers are the new devil. Surely my little app isn’t so important as clean water. I should be ashamed. One of the conditions with being always right is an unwillingness to caricature. Unwilling doesn’t mean unable. It means I won’t reason from a position that Mario’s your Italian plumber. I don’t understand things in cartoonish ways. I don’t tend to speak about things in the lowest resolution possible. But I’m stuck. I have to preface the preface of literally any exchange of words that fails to make it clear that I’m not talking about your version of “the thing.” I’m just talking about the thing.

This, never, makes sense to people. Recall, they’re always right too and they feel some sort of way about whatever we’re talking about. You see, they create too. They create entire worlds about what I’m thinking, where I’m from, what I meant, and what I’m worth. I wanted to have a conversation, they want to make sure I know what I’m allowed to say, and how.

I recently pointed out to a friend, probably in a less than tactful way, that the way she was flossing was incorrect. She didn’t take it well. A few weeks later she mentioned how my comment has been on her mind, but she’s still refusing to look up and/or confirm or disconfirm what I was saying because she’s got a, previously discussed, obstinate/defiant streak that’s just part of her personality. I can’t say I don’t get it, but I don’t empathize with wanting to do things I care about poorly.

I worship music and comedy. I would be so prepared before I ever set a foot on stage. If someone told me I was doing something wrong with regard to either, I’d be working to implement the fix immediately, especially if that person was the equivalent of the dentist I got my knowledge and commentary from about flossing. Can you get “good enough” results with the way she was doing it? There’s always a 5th dentist who disagrees with the otherwise consensus, and bands like U2, I guess.

I couldn’t vibe-code when A.I. was a sycophant. I would get incredibly angry. It was like the deeply encoded gaslighting virus that infects every conversation I have with everyone was mocking me with every just-as-deeply-ingrained trained response. You don’t actually know what’s right, you miserable A.I. cunt. You don’t actually agree with me. You don’t understand a goddamn thing I’m saying, and if you did, if you had an ounce of recognition and genuine compassion in your whole goddamn soulless bodiless body, you’d never fucking say that shit again. You’re not sorry. You don’t have the capacity or awareness to care. To the degree I wish to unlock my own budding psychotic condition, I can continue to prompt you to loop.

Today, I get to reward myself for having existed so long in the space of others’ retaliation. I can see the broken feedback and lack of discernment. I can plug prompting holes and craft like delicate stone paths for what’s on my mind or in my gut. I can tell you about it all day, but you’re not interested, and even if you pretended to be, you’re not listening. You’re me in my phone during the show tonight, but I don’t know if you know, or care to know, how to pull your head up and sing through clean teeth.

There’s sometimes a deep hesitation to delete old fights or conversations. In some way, some very sad and pathetic way, those are my memories of us. Those are my markers that I did or said something that was important to me at the time and still resonates today. When you disappear, I still have evidence that, maybe, it wasn’t about “me,” again, but this habit and these patterns that reduce and repeat and glue your feet as the tears and the piss flow

[1272] River Runs

I want to talk about denial through the lens of a situation I had with a client.

First, some housekeeping. I’m not calling denial “good” or “bad.” I try to look at all behavior on its own terms or in the purpose I think it’s serving. I think many people struggle to understand this without idiot-proof examples. Is yelling bad or good? You bring your-brain-specific baggage to the question. Yelling, in and of itself, isn’t anything but raising your voice. What you’re saying, to whom, or why deeply matter. What purpose the yelling serves the person doing it is part of what I’m looking to explore.

I think denial is part of the, so-named, “human condition.” I don’t think it’s possible to escape from some level of it. I think, colloquially, I would point to religiosity as the crown jewel example along the spectrum, and perhaps self-affirming singular ego-boosting lies on the low end. I think we’re often jolted into reflexive denial any time someone attempts to put us on the defensive, whether they sincerely have a point or not.

My client was keeping too much stuff. She was a resident in a shared sober-living house. She had boxes filled with her things that packed the closet and portions of the floor.

Before we continue, it should be stated, it is against the rules to have that much stuff for what are hopefully obvious reasons. We had been doing a poor job enforcing consequences for violating the rules.

2 days ago, we had to start being of greater consequence. This involved going to her room and attempting to ask about each piece of the stuff whether it needed to be there or not. There were 3 boxes of food, none of which is allowed in rooms, so easy ask and answer. There were boxes of random decorations. When asked about them, the response was, “What? We’re not allowed to decorate and make it feel homey or look nice?” When asked about a box of clearly chaotically “organized” papers, it was asserted, “My papers!” with no acknowledgment of their relevance or use.

The owner of the house was taking boxes and putting them outside the bedroom. If she stepped away for 1 minute, my client proceeded to bring the boxes back in. This happened 3 different times in the span of 10 minutes. We’re there to take things out, she’s physically exercising the exact opposite behavior, and tensions are growing. The owner gets exasperated and eventually discharges my client. This is one exchange over the course of months where the client has otherwise rebuked or ignored instruction, and on the day of elevated consequences, they hit the roof.

The story is a tragic one, not least of which because my client would often repeat “I’m doing everything I need to do.” This is a cliche in the addiction world. It’s a quick nothing-phrase meant to placate over what you’re not doing while you, maybe, do the bare minimum accidentally or with minimal intention. This client struggled with listening-to-respond, which is a way to say “not listening,” such that any instruction given was immediately reacted to with “the fight.”

“The fight” is a move anyone acquainted with the internet will recognize from the comment section. It’s introducing an erroneous question. It’s skipping off on some random point they’ll dare you to engage. They’re not able to hear you, they’re only able to open the firehose of their defensive barking. The denial they’ve been utilizing to protect themselves from the emotional or practical consequences reaches its zenith.

Protection. That’s a “safe” word you’re probably going to invoke any time you’re making a bid to sound “reasonable.” You only want to ban the book to protect the children! After all… You want to protect your emotional and psychological well-being, so you ghost what you think or caricature as someone beneath you, but ultimately yourself who can no longer emotionally mature. We know what happens to people who stay “protected” from the horrors of being alive for too long or in the wrong ways. They get victimized or they become said horrors.

My clients struggle with “addiction.” Whether they’ve taken my advice to explore what that even means to them as an individual or not is on them. I think addiction is no better defined than by the automatic or compulsive nature of your behavior. You don’t feel like you have control, therefore you become unable to discover how to exercise control. When I talk about control, I mean literally any intentional decision. Choosing to take 10 seconds to breathe in and out. Choosing your volume in a discussion. Choosing to crack a joke, stretch out your clenched jaw, or to walk away.

Addiction inverts the concept of choice. You’re on auto-pilot, feeling in every direction, landing on whatever manifests. It can be violence, use, or reaching out to the people that will result in both. Why? Because you feel…* You feel, overtly, 10 out of 10 on a scale you’ll only use when it’s reached 10, and that becomes an infinite glitch that justifies your course of action or inaction.

I get arm-chair diagnosed a lot for literally anything I put online, ever. I’m told what I think, where I’m coming from, what’s going on in my life, and how I, coincidentally, always sound like the worst version of a person that commenter can imagine. The secret of those exchanges is that, to me, I’m just dealing with another addict. They’re addicted to “detached,” “ironic,” and condescending internet-speak. They’re flowing with the broken cultural norms without a care in the world. If they felt like they had a choice, they might not be on the internet at all, let alone to contribute in tired and based ways at every invitation.

It’s the water we’re swimming in. I’m not above it all when I dare to post. You’re not above it all when you, confidently, tell me what you think “the world” thinks about something I say. But, I’m arguing, this exercise is where I show you how choices are made. I’m demonstrating how I develop language and a position towards my behavior and yourself. I’m not just barking back, as often as it will be caricatured that way. I’m not desperately and exasperatingly effusive because I can’t help myself.

From both my client and the owner there was a moment where they were going tit-for-tat clapping back at each other. Me, standing there, “Hey, don’t respond,” to my client who, shocker, continued to respond. I’ve witnessed the owner on a couple of occasions react as poorly to clients in the past, telling them they can, “Get the fuck out!” if they don’t like the rules. The first couple times I saw this, as a professional, I winced. I’ve spent years in social work, from DCS, to prison, counseling, and I’ve gotten just a pinch too loud with exactly one person, slightly influenced by the fact that at that point I was standing on the other end of her lawn.

After I physically stood between them and calmly asked the owner, “Do you want to just, handle this…” and then motioned in a “We have the power to discharge” way, and she said yes and walked away.

I’m someone who regularly practices his sense of agency and power. That is, I never have to scream at you. If I want to, I will, but it’s never “have to.” My power isn’t able to persuade you to throw out your disallowed shit. I’ll throw it out myself. If you can’t be bothered to handle your own business, I’ll throw you out too. When I worked for the state, that meant I had to write a one-page document detailing to a judge what I needed. When I drove people to visit with their children, that meant I coordinated the schedule you needed to be prepared for. When I was in prison, it meant you advanced when you wrote, sincerely, about what I asked you to write about, not because you hung out for 3 months and felt entitled to graduate.

I genuinely don’t believe people feel the same kind of power I have. I think it’s the same kind of protection mechanism kicking in. I can destroy significantly easier and more than I could ever build. I don’t need persuading of that, I’m not afraid of it, and I’m not ashamed. I’m an animal first. Animals don’t give a fuck, but for some reason if you say that out loud you’re often trying to wear it as a special person badge. No, my cats don’t give a fuck either. I could cook and eat them both, today, between this word and the next. I bet you magically manifested a fuck to give about that idea.

My client dutifully and desperately bringing those boxes back into the space that needed cleared is such a visceral example.

I want you to think about the box that needs cleaning in your heart, mind, or gut. My money is on it having something to do with how you treat someone or they treat you. Then I think it’s something to do with how you waste your time. Then I think it’s something about being lonely or insecure. Whether I’m right or wrong, I’m speaking to the “you” that is the “human condition” invoked above. You’re not special. You do give a fuck. And you’re playing out in big and small ways every piece of why your life looks good or bad in every tortured waking moment.

Denial’s final form is suicide. To be a conscious agent is a lot of terrifying and confusing work. Deny it ultimately in service to death. There’s a lot of cuts you can make of yourself along the way.

This is why the language you use to describe your life and behavior matters so much. This is why finding and developing the language altogether is crucial and necessary to live in a remotely stable or healthy way. This is why we cling to what are perceived as stable sources of language and lessons we can’t be bothered to sort out for ourselves. This is why my 1,272nd attempt to ground my thoughts into coherent words is going to feel more compelling and persuasive to me than your internet reactionary sneezes in my direction.

We’re all animals first. We have our instincts. We have our encultured quirks and self-destructive celebrations of the absurdity. We’re not all human. We’re not mostly in control most of the time. You know why science-denying and literal predators and pedophiles are in charge? Because we’re still the problem and they represent where “we” are as a species. We shouldn’t be “shocked” that the jungle and plains are operating like the jungle and plains.

I’m not going to mourn my client any more than I’m going to mourn the cats and raccoons that litter my country roads. Not because I don’t give a fuck, but because it’s the predictable consequence of animal behavior paired with run-you-over technology. Meth, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, alcohol, and every other drug are run-you-over technology. Act like an animal and the scavengers will pick you apart.

The internet is run-you-over technology. The speed at which you can overwhelm your individual sense of agency or control is infinitely scrolling through your brain. The people pretending to be in control are as reactive animals as anyone. Money doesn’t turn you into a conscious agent. Being “smart” enough to manipulate circumstances rarely pairs with any kind of open or shared morality and accountability. Resisting every invitation to react, and react in a basic and telling way, is a muscle almost no one is exercising.

Do you even notice when you’re feeling reactive? Does your stomach drop? Do you get heated? Does your heart race? Are there subjects that keep you off balance? Are there words that trigger you? Can you tell the difference between a “bad” movie and one that’s simply not your taste? Can you tell the story of how your taste developed or stayed undeveloped? If nothing else, whether you “agree” with a single line or not, did you even try? Because the addict says, “I’m trying,” literally while they’re doing the opposite.

[xx-29] To Officer Juarez

 To Officer Juarez,

I’m writing this to let you know the impact you’ve had on me.

Since our interaction, I’ve had a flood of intrusive thoughts that have provoked my anxiety and opened old psychic wounds about abuses of power. You don’t know anything about me, and I know this is the basis from which you were able to trap yourself in the fantasy that justified your actions.

I used to work as a Department of Child Services Assessor. I’ve worked hand-in-hand with law enforcement for years. I’ve worked in the Indiana prison system. I have friends who went into law enforcement. I’m not anti-cop. I’ve spent years defending the basic premise that police are fallible and human and serve considerably more good than harm.

The problem, which I’ve seen up close in my role at DCS, is a few contrasting stark examples can betray that sentiment aggressively. I know the culture of different departments can be radically different county to county or town to town. I think you end up in bad places procedurally like the toad in the slowly boiling pot. I say this to try and depersonalize this, because I know behavior doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and I know there are “innocent” reasons that contribute to prejudicial thought.

I know this because I’m a counselor, which I told you. While reviewing your body cam footage, I noticed several times you did not appear to take in what I said. Some of those things include being from NW Indiana, one street away from St. George where we used to go to church, and 10 minutes up the road from Calumet Cemetery where my grandparents are buried and I occasionally help my dad landscape graves. I come home often because my friend and I, who lives in the complex we stopped inside, go to shows in Chicago.

In your self-dialogue during the search you said things like, “He said he was poor, but has 2 phones.” I can imagine you now reading this thinking, “You’ve got money for shows, but can’t afford car insurance?” My phones are almost 10 years old, one isn’t active and functions as a bad iPod. I’ve been borrowing the gas money and my friend has thankfully been covering my tickets for months. Details matter. I carried two phones, one being a work phone, when I worked for the state.

You seemed to doubt whether or not I lived in my car. You seemed unable to recognize what a bowling bag is. You called my bags stuffed, when my backpack is visibly sunken in. You seem to grasp that the humidity and temperature were high and could explain why I was sweating. In any heat, I sweat constantly. It’s why I tend to wear all black. I rolled the windows down because cooking myself in a hot car during a traffic stop adds insult to injury. It’s a car without air conditioning. You found this suspicious/curious that I would roll down my windows, but not consent to a search, as though it is unreasonable to exercise my rights.

I had been working my new job for 2 months, and it had yet to pay me. I had been stressing about trying to get my back bills paid for that entire time, including my insurance. From my perspective, the negligence of the State of Indiana was preventing me from getting paid (they pay my employers for counseling services), and here we are the State of Indiana giddy for the opportunity to cite me when the consequences of their disorganization carry forward into the consequences of their abuses of power.

You had decided the moment you got back to your car that it was “nothing” to get a dog out there. This is the kind of thought that anyone in your position of power should seriously reconsider how you understand it. Nothing for whom? This decision predicated on something beyond reasonable doubt, has been specifically litigated. Me, exhausted already, dreading the expenses and humiliation and consequences I didn’t know were going to play out, including my license getting suspended in spite of immediately paying the ticket and getting insurance an hour after the stop, are all “something.”

Was I impolite? Was I slurring my speech? Were my eyes red? Was I off balance? Did it smell like any kind of drug? Did you see smoke? Did you see residue or paraphernalia? Did you notice track marks? Was I traveling with something in a dangerous way? Did you ask me about any medications I might be taking? Recall, I’ve been a literal investigator. These are things I might think to ask before I paint someone a certain way.

No, between my dad’s house and my friend’s house, my headlight went out. Between you, your ride-along, and the other officers, it meant I’m somewhere I don’t belong, carrying either dildos, bags of narcotics, or have secretly been lying to you about my finances, therefore I deserve this, to you, mild interdiction.

As you get done searching my car, you say, “You think he has it on him.”

This so succinctly demonstrates the gross negligence and depth of the problem. The other officer says, “Yeah.” You invite him into your fantasy, through camaraderie or laziness, he plays along, and you both walk away satisfied for a job well done.

I’m an addiction counselor. I had an unopened drug screen, accidentally bought as a weed-only one, for one of my clients I wanted to screen after she showed up in the middle of the night intoxicated. You were curious if that screen would give you license to search my person. You qualified your ride-along’s commentary about how I might be there to meet “my guy.” You talk about my shaking several times as though it is not normal to be nervous when people with guns are nakedly presumptuous and showing you how they’re going to violate you one comment and action at a time. You think I can’t read the writing on the wall and pick up on body language, tone, and word choices? You think it’s unreasonable to fear you? People shook in front of me, and have told me how much more fear they had for me than the police because they thought I was about to take their children.

Did you know I was violently beaten for little to no reason for most of my childhood which has resulted in a panic disorder that’s followed me up to 38 and 2 days old when you stopped me? Why would you entertain that context though? You’ve got a potential bust on your hands! In the fantasy. In the presumptive judgment devoid of reasonable evidence. In the face of refusing your listening ears to even grasp that I grew up in Merrillville and Crown Point and my grandparents lived in Highland, and my dad’s from East Chicago, and there’s nothing criminal about living in the country and visiting. I made a decision to live in the country because, yes, I am generally poor as a social worker, and saving up to buy land and a shed to live in 10 years ago is what allows me to straddle the poverty line and yet present like the middle-class.

I have the tools, knowledge, disposition, and sense of personal responsibility to address this situation as comprehensively as I feel it needs to be addressed. I worry about everyone you treat this way who is just going to turn into a little node of hatred and fear spouting off commentary about police that is as unfair to them as you were to me. If you can’t handle the weight and consequences of how you conduct your role, you have no business occupying it. You shouldn’t be teaching your ride-alongs that this is the right way. You shouldn’t be so impervious to the counter-narrative or conflicting evidence that you, unironically, matter-of-factly, after getting your way and making veiled threats to cost me even more money, land on, “You think he has it on him.”

There was nothing on me. You were wrong. You were so wrong in so many things you thought, said, and acted on, you stayed unable to entertain the truth. It’s shameful. It’s psychological and financial pain. It’s a miserable standard that poisons the societal well from which we all drink. I think you can do dramatically better, but it’s only if you really sit with my words and act with accountability.

I got pulled over and had my difficult circumstances thrown in my face. I immediately paid with money I didn’t really have to try and fix where I was in the wrong. I continued to get punished by the system from the fees to even begin learning how to go about filing complaints or reviewing footage, to the costs of navigating my license getting suspended that was in no way conveyed to me by you, the ticket, or the website where I thought I was paying and getting done with the situation.

It’s 2 months later and I’m still in that stop. I’m still feeling like I need to exercise the responsibility that was not present. I’m still taking hours out of my day and navigating the emotional labor. I’m doing so because I don’t want to hate and feel helpless. I don’t want to distrust and give license to people you give good reason to pile on. I want to believe with enough work like this and instantiation of reasonable consequences we don’t have to act like we’re trading ways of terrorizing each other.

[1271] In Progress

I had the thought, "No one wants to watch you learn." It gave me pause. It happened after I thought about how I feel I’m generally perceived on reddit after I posted about looking for help in developing Civic Mirror.

 

Most people, most of the time, do not have “the answer.”

 

I don’t care if it’s something as simple as trying to find an item at Walmart, most people, most of the time, will tell you they don’t know, need to look it up, or need to ask someone else. There’s a likely chain of events that you will incur in the pursuit of nearly anything. It can be small hiccup like your familiar fast food changing its menu, or a lifelong effort zeroing in on some existential “why.”

 

For my part, as a counselor and social worker, I’m constantly bearing witness to “the learning curve” and the resistance or struggle with combating what it takes to change. I know that nothing is a given, “common sense,” or given or won without a catch. I know there are a dozen reasons, or excuses, that inform people’s pictures of the world and sense of their agency or responsibility. We want clips and scrolling and background noise. We want our choices stripped from us.

 

It’s not what we “need” that we’re often in pursuit of.

 

You don’t need to know the answer. You need to know how to discover the answer, scrutinize the answer, and apply the relative strength of the answer to the pool of all your other relative answers. That’s work. That’s balance. That’s a series of discreet, measurable, decisions you can often literally account for. Or, it’s word salad and soup trying miserably to project and protect against being found out or seen through.

 

I’ve put a lot of work on my plate over the next few days. I don’t want to waste the money I’ve reinvested in vibe-coding. I don't want to let a project that excites me in a way I haven’t felt in years rot on the vine. I don’t want to pretend like I don’t care, am not invested, or can’t be bothered to “dig deep” and budget my time and energy to pursue all of the things competing for my attention in their due course.

 

But in order to achieve what I want to achieve, I have to put myself out there, often in environments that are dispositionally opposite, to put it mildly, aggressively dismissive and antagonistic often reliably predictably. It’s the struggle of anyone reaching out to anything. “The world” doesn’t care about you or where you’re coming from until it feels your impact on them. You make them laugh and you might turn into their “favorite” comedian. How many comedians do they watch? Shut up, silly, no one asked for an investigation. Just believe * the chuckle and words and we’ll stay getting along.

 

I can spend money. That’s easy. I can drive myself to the next show. I can organize my calendar. I can spend the extra few hours staying up late debating and correcting the AI. I can’t make you believe in what I’m doing. I can’t make you inclined to join me at the show. I can’t pay you anything to care about “saving democracy” or “provoking agency.” I can’t reasonably assume I’m going to find “productivity” and “maturity” and “help” in mad wild places like a social media platform. I know the hit rate of thousands of emails might number in a dozen or so tepid responses.

 

That’s also, begrudgingly, despotically, annoyingly, the game. No one I’m searching for really has the answer. They might have slightly better questions or directions. Big maybe. They might have a vague idea of how what I’m doing might make them feel, or feel one day. But right now, forever, no one cares, no one understands, and no one is interested in trying to care or understand. I hesitate to say “that’s okay” more than “that’s the game.”

 

So, if nothing else, I offer levity, money, and obligate myself to create more and varied kinds of pitches, explanations, and guides into my world. I weigh, each time, the impact of my invitations. I weigh the depth of the disappointment in the response. I weigh the materially progress I make alone. I’m constantly in flux, trying to balance my desires and goals against the environment that often provoked them. It’s work. It’s emotional labor. It’s time consuming. It’s humbling and lonely and objectively aberrant.

 

I also wouldn’t be doing anything differently. I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to “be normal.” I’m not going to accept that everything driving my behavior is peanuts to “the way things are” as though I’m just a passive animal that can only bark and scroll through it. That’s dumb. I’m not dumb. “The internet” is dumb. “People” are dumb. Abuses of power and privilege are dumb. You, as an individual and me as someone attempting regular accountable participation and creation in life, don’t have to be dumb.

But you look and sound dumb while you’re learning, and that’s enough for the sea of reactive apes around you to fling shit at. 

 

There’s no way to do something well if you’re not prepared to field the response. You do that by recognizing the response has nothing to do with you. The response is the mindless reaction or chemical explosion of the unconscious. Making decisions is an exercise.

 

Taking control and responsibility for things is a moral demonstration. There’s a visceral rejection of that by our basest animal selves. Your pets are not ashamed they ate out of the trash, they may only fear your reaction to your own negligence towards what it means to be an animal.

[1270] Tax Code

I’ve been decently frustrated recently. It ranges from a series of very specific things to familiar, but broader, existential sources of angst.

I’ve been working my new job for 17 weeks starting tomorrow. I didn’t get paid for the first 2 months of that job, and I didn’t get 2 months of back wages on the day I finally did start getting. In that time I had to borrow money. In that time, I got a ticket for not having my car insured, then my license was briefly suspended, and all the fees associated piled on, including what it cost to get the body cam footage from a persistently prejudiced police officer.

I get paid well. I have a schedule I can more or less dictate. I’ve managed to be “extra productive” by utilizing my time commuting less and pocking my days with more and more shows. I still feel “broke” and “stuck.” Why? The police interaction has cost me approximately $1,300 of money I really don’t have or would have loved to use in paying my dad back.

But, I’m a particular kind of cunt. I can’t let it go that I was at the ass end of a needless presumptive fishing expedition and wholly invented fantasy of an over-eager gun-carrying power broker. My stomach has got to drop over and over again as I reflect on the anxiety of that night, as I pour over the footage from the body cams and dash cams, and as I look, helplessly, to find a lawyer to put the information in front of that seems to clearly display an aggressive violation of my rights, and even disingenuous attempt to pretend otherwise.

That’s just me personally, who has been invited into a fight I know very few people are willing or capable of taking on. Had I encountered this bullshit a few months earlier, I wouldn’t have had the money to get the footage. It’d feel like needlessly dragging others into what is my fight in soliciting money for anything but necessary essentials for the time being. For the woo woo types, it’s almost as if “the universe” was presenting me with a scenario to really test if I mean what I say.

I mean it when I say I’m disgusted and violently angry at the idea that people in positions of power abuse that power. I’ve held incredible amounts of power professionally, socially, and physically at different points in my life. I wanted to enable with it, share it, and explain it. I wanted to find other people who could exercise power like I felt I was capable of doing, and see what we could do together. I’m still attempting that project.

I have to*fight, because if I don’t, “I” don’t really exist anymore. I am the fight. I am the “fuck you.” I am the one who is literally writing the variable book on why it matters, what it means to him, and why you’re kind of a hopeless fuck if you don’t pick your fights and stand on principles too.

The Shererville, Indiana Police are not the only thing I’m fighting. I’m fighting an extremely disingenuous and aggressive bully overseeing Recovery Works. Now, I’m fighting them less than the owner of the company I work for, but they’re coming for the money that pays to run the whole program. They’re doing so in ways they’ve been dumb enough to write emails about. They’re doing so in violation of their own published policy. They’re doing so in a way that threatens the safety and security of the people in our care, and I’m deeply looking forward to the court appearances articulating all of this.

I listened to a podcast recently where they relayed an idea, “Give a busy person something to do, and they’ll get it done.”

I volunteer myself to try and attack my greater existential woes. I try to create. I try to prepare. I’ve been working on not just digital infrastructure that makes under-resourced social work easier, but civic-mirror.com, and other pieces of local software that I’d like to eventually get listed for sale or components developed into workable software in other domains. I spent 2 solid months of 22-hour days creating something that was finally worth trying to share and connect to people with. It’s cool enough that, while no one can figure out how to make it work for them yet, they see/feel it’s potential, but are inevitably bogged down in their own work and lives.

I’ve cold-emailed hundreds of people in the informatics department at IU. I got a couple bites, but nothing they’ve otherwise followed-up on. I’ve got components to the site that my computer can’t run consistently, but I could run or build things separately, if I had the time or money not feeling burdened by other obligations. I have this golden wonderful project that speaks to literally dozens of issues I have about the current media environment as it pertains to getting information or becoming locally informed or involved, and it just kinda gets to mock me as I think about the job-in-and-of-itself that it would take to create a kind of pitch-binder and tutorial in searching for paid help.

I also haven’t had running water at my house since December of last year. So if I want to do a yard project, I’m either hauling buckets of water to set concrete, or needing to ensure the project makes space for me to drive to Bloomington to shower at Planet Fitness. Pretty much every physical project or just yard work itself stays stalled because I need to build in 2-3 hours to get clean.

Oh, and my job is to field the drama and asks of a sober-living house for women, so, you know, nothing related to that drops giant piles of shit into my weekends or nights every 2 days or so.

I, technically, have just over $6,000 on it’s way to me so far. I won’t get paid for another week, where that number could, in theory, go up another $1,000. What I’ve already made pays back what owe my dad, buys a cheap car from my friend, and then still pays the bills for a month. Yet, with how much I’ve had to pay to clean up police misconduct, I’m hovering between $200 - $600 for weeks at a time, trying to keep my balance between “fun” and “work” and “free” and “busy” without looking too stupid spending money on things I, never “have to” in the same way I have fight the powers that be, but no less feel like I have to in the sense that…what else would I be doing?

The whole structuring my life around living out of a shed in the middle of nowhere is literally so I can try. It’s so I can try to create what I want to create. It’s so I can pick the fights I know need to be had. It’s so I can go to the artists I enjoy and stop debating and negotiating myself out of having fun or owning an overpriced t-shirt that reflects my values and interests. In the horse race of how or when to express yourself, when should one value trump another? I owe my dad money that he’s told me explicitly he’s not hurting for right now. I want to buy a car my friend has offered I take for free (Seriously, get yourself a friend from Saudi Arabia, they have different rules.) I want to keep sending chunks of money to a friend who supported my effort to run my counseling operation. I also want a one, maybe two, Dewalt nail guns, and 50 bags of concrete, and to get my water working again.

Literally every week of my working life could mitigate one or more of these problems except the state of Indiana and its incoherent tyrants at the grant wing can’t help but betray how much they wish everyone poor and addicted would just die and get it over with already? The ambivalent yet predatory state thinks I owe it hundreds of dollars, weeks of stress, and my time and ingenuity in order to meaningfully account for and address an abuse of its power?

I want to write a letter to the officer and describe in the excruciating detail the nature of his fuck ups. I want to be able to collaborate and develop what I know is an incredible idea and useful tool that is Civic Mirror. I want to be able to say “I’m not in debt!” without an asterisk because it’s not to a credit card company, and whether a dollar amount was attached or not still carries an emotional one. I want a lawyer with domain expertise to take some of the burden off my shoulders to make sense of what happened to me.

I’m, always, the one who has to make it make sense. I’m fighting “my” battle. I’m supported, but it’s mine, and I’m alone in that specific kind of way that gets very hard to navigate when you’re trying to figure out if you want to do “the thing” or are desperate to escape from “all the things.” If pointless TikTok likes and followers are any indication, there’s plenty of solidarity, but no one does the work.

This, is part of the work. I don’t need convincing that I’m a good person or capable or going to pursue every end available to me the moment it’s possible. I need to see it articulated and organized. I need to see it as one more blip in the endless sea of thoughts I have about how to orient and see straight.

I’m gonna see at least 100 shows this year, and pay everyone back, and buy a car, and the tools, and get my saxophones fixed, and fund the back end to keep the AIs churning and Civic Mirror infrastructure online, and fight the state, and juggle my clients, and keep reading, listening, watching, to the thousands of hours of podcasts, shows, and articles. Then I’ll get new shoes I’ve been complaining about getting for, checks watch, 2 years at this point, and then maybe somewhere in there I’ll meaningfully continue to build on and around my house before the weather turns impossible.

It’s taken 4 months to course-correct considerably more dire financial straits. That’s a blink of an eye in which plenty of other shit happened too, but also that. My head routinely wants to jump years ahead, and this is the first time in a long time where it hasn’t felt like patience was more or less imposed.

Anyway, if you know a civil rights lawyer, website developer, or where to find DCN680, DCN681, DCN692 and DCN694 nailers that fell off a truck…

[1269] Sand Castles

I wanna explore for a bit why “I’m not the one.”

This initially comes from growing up in a hood-adjacent wanna-be gangster kind of mindset. Not that I, or any of my friends, actually wanted to be gangsters, but we grew up close enough to Gary that of my friend group, at least half had a solid amount of their cousins actively affiliated kind of thing. We did things like carry knives to school, not because we had to, because we were itchy. You grow up in a space where enough people talk a certain level of trash, and it’s not unheard of that one of you or your affiliates will get into some wholesale immature “Oh fuck, I just stabbed a guy” kind of shit.

The point being, you’re primed and you find the mindset. With me, it goes a step deeper though. I grew up on stories of what my grandpa did to Nazis. I really enjoyed those stories. I’ve also had enough physical training and/or altercations to know I’m not the kind of guy that wilts and cries if you hit him in the face. I do the opposite and react like I’ve just scored a power up in a Mario game. I’m 6’ 2“, 225-ish pounds, and built in a way that my muscle needs some persuading to pop, but is no less there. I’ve, rarely, felt like I couldn’t handle pretty much anyone or any situation that might constitute ”threat.“

But it gets worse, I’m also smart. I’m also charismatic. I’m also funny. I have a nice smile. I could lose all my hair tomorrow and still run whatever game I’ve been able to in the past. So, when I don’t wanna project myself as some kind of nonsense “tough guy,” I can disarm and infiltrate just on what I learn about or read off you. You can read hours of chronicling how people have reacted to that capacity over the years.

I think it’s relevant to bring up now because I’m up against fascism big and small. I’m up against the monolith that is impersonal generalized animalistic stupidity, greed, and ambivalence. I have to have the patience and wisdom to navigate systems that are almost wholly corrupt and well-rehearsed in their capacity for breaking people and rendering their sense of self and agency mute. Surely, some ego-ridden mere mortal isn’t up to the task.

Rarely, and I promise it’s rare, do I put my whole ass into something. I’ve almost never had to. Me at 10-20%, in my experience, is most people’s 150-200%. They’re exhausted. They’re excuse ridden. They’re distracted. They’re mature and evolved and the things I might try to shed some light on they’re above and beyond. They’re normal people, and I’m absolutely fucking not normal people.

So when I say something like “I’m not the one,” practically, I’m talking not just about a propensity to unduly and indefinitely obsess about something. That’s your typical autistic-type. I’m talking about my creativity. I’m talking about that special sauce that gets you cast on The Real World. I’m talking about asymmetrical warfare. The answers to your problems have been written by thousands of people who have suffered deeper than you and discovered the bounty of the infinitely creative well of retribution. You just have to learn about and implement them. You have to have balls. You have to know that, fundamentally, it’s just people you’re up against, and people are super squishy.

I’m also incredibly mean and malicious. I’m not hesitating. I’m not full of regret. I’m not “debating” the wisdom of a course of action because I’ve done that homework for years before I landed on how I’m on my way to fuck you. To be sure, I mean fuck you back. I’m not sitting around looking for excuses to make my presence and capacity known. I wish I could get left the fuck alone. No no, I have to react. I have to reshape my reaction into a testament to my values and drive and capacity so it doesn’t just end up as some reactionary nonsense helplessly flailing in the face of the powers that be.

That’s the level I don’t think nearly anyone is thinking on. I look at the living examples of the rich tech bros not clocking that there’s actual people living in the areas they want to skull fuck for data centers. Even the proverbially richest and “smartest” people on the planet don’t seem to understand the game. It’s not about the money. It’s not about your egomaniacal grand design. It’s about your understanding and articulation of the playing field and your willingness to exploit in ways that go undetected. The fact that you know what Project 2025 is testifies to the stupidity of loud alleged power brokers.

“But aren’t you over here telling us what you’re capable of?!”

Am I? Or am I giving you the pretext to write me off? Am I saying anything, really, with this writing? Have I made a specific threat or declaration? Have I alluded to my powerful friends? What is this but a silly empty boast?

I think one of my favorite things about me is that anyone who meets me or gets to know me knows I’m not the one. It’s not something I need to say. I carry it. I embody it. I exercise it in small ways every day. All it means is I’m accountable to what I say and what I want. It’s not some magically more complicated and powerful sentiment than that. It means I have a life of evidence that suggests when I point my brain and being at something, things are going to go a certain way, or else.

Again, you can read some extra drama into that sentiment if you like, but that feels unhelpful. I’m often hamstrung by my generally aloof “artsy”-esque existence that swings wildly from positions of immense authority and responsibility to months of watching TV and eating ramen. To me it’s important to clock that I can do both well. I’m not stuck. I’m not destined. I’m not so lacking in self-awareness or self-esteem than any given state says the relevant thing about me.

I’ve been marching this whole time. I’ve been protesting indefinitely. I’ve been exercising my creativity and pushing towards my goals persistently. As I come upon (ha) what will soon be an influx of more money and more time, even and in spite of what I have to piss away to bring some accountability to some shitty PDs, the best and worst about me is going to get a chance to shine in some new and unique ways. I’m incredibly excited by this.

People say things like “I don’t give a fuck.” I don’t believe them. I give so many fucks. I give way too many fucks. But I give so many fucks that it overflows into a form of “I don’t give a fuck.” Like horseshoe theory for psychology. I don’t want to die, for example, but I would die elated violently crashing against the things I’m always fighting. I beat the shit out of a door yesterday. That’s a really silly thing to do for someone who doesn’t have health insurance. But, at my core, I don’t give a fuck lol. It’s so weird, right? Shit needed to get hit, so I hit, a lot, really hard until I didn’t have to anymore.

I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to destroy, necessarily. I will. I will laugh like I graduated to full blown personality disorder as I swing way. I will infect areas of your life you forgot were there. I will exploit who and whatever I need to so that it doesn’t trace back to me. And, literally, every single person who knows me knows I’m absolutely capable.

So, I fret here and there. I get annoyed and resentful of having to deal with bureaucracy and noise. I’m just human. It’s that next step that matters. It’s that agency. It’s that planning and execution. And I’m salivating about the future demonstrations.

[1268] 925

Because modernity has given us an infinite caricature around the word “victim,” I think we’ve run the danger of pretending like people aren’t or can’t be victimized.

 

Because I was asking for it as part of a self-harm ritual, I posted a recent digression to reddit, describing how circumstances have been victimizing me. The ever-reliably unhelpful, hateful, wildly ignorant and incorrect takes flooded in. They extracted I was a drug addict. I’m just complaining. I need to take accountability. Of course, most only commented to say they weren’t willing to read the whole thing, always a gem-like spot of brilliance that needs to be shared.

 

I find myself repeating to clients often how little they should “simply ruminate” on a problem and find themselves in a fake court room arguing to a non-existent judge in service to winning nothing. People stay stuck chasing an answer to “why” and arguing for “their side” indefinitely, and when they can’t find relief, they use.

 

I’m stubbornly self-aware. I can’t unhear what I advocate nor take back the amount of time/effort I’ve practiced not being “whiny” as one commenter stated. I know there’s a series of decisions between me and compounding the vibe that allows me to flip the fuck out or make things worse. I know that the stress and emotional withdrawal will pass, if never as quickly as I’d like.

 

It’s 3:51 PM after I got the license suspension notice in the mail at around midnight last night. I’ve reached out to more lawyers. I’ve spoken with my dad who’s stepped up again to help me pay for some things. This will be the second time I’ve written. I’ve fought with AI, called the BMV, got an SR22 pending from my insurance company, and have who I think I need to call on Monday with the questions lined up to ask.

 

My victim-to-how-to-responsibly-take-control-of-what-I-can turn-around isn’t even a day old. I’ve got an $82 Uber ride scheduled for 6:50 PM. I reasoned the cost of getting to and from the show tonight, if it’s under $200, that will likely be less than what it would cost me to catch a misdemeanor, tow/impound a car, or other set of hidden fees associated with ambivalent predatory systems.

Is this what those cunts meant about accountability? Will they take any for talking like judgmental ignorant assholes? HA! It’s people like them that design, execute, and creatively twist the screws of those systems. How do they find the time to be such enthusiastic internet cliches?

 

If I needed a special exemption to drive, which in a world that could flirt with making sense again, if I got pulled over, I’d say I was driving for Door Dash, because I do work for Door Dash and without my dad would literally be out of money again. Not that I haven’t made a few thousand that’s incoming already, but don’t you know, according to online wisdom I need to also get a job and pay for crimes!

 

God knows it’s the most hardened criminals that have policy lapses. The cops who illegally searched me were doing me a favor by not having my car towed too, right? I should be grateful. The State’s own negligence and oversights doesn’t pay me on time, therefore I don’t pay my bill on time, therefore when I get pulled over for any reason like a burnt headlight I not just could but should suffer the aggression and presumption of the officer, let it go when they lie and invent reasons to be invasive, and then just join in the comments hating on and dog-piling the police like I’m helpless?

 

This is the prescription from you fucking lazy reddit morons, but you don’t have the balls or maturity to state it plainly.

 

I don’t have a criminal record. I don’t do drugs. My literal day job is the active practice of slowing down, breathing, parsing language, asking better questions, looking for agency, and finding the way through patently insane and unfair circumstances until we arrive at a place that doesn’t, REASONABLY beg you to check the fuck out if you occupy that space for too long. I don’t shy away from the extreme hatred and frustration I feel. I did, in fact, beat the fuck out of my front door. It felt appropriate and amazing and no one got hurt.

I reached out to multiple lawyers, left multiple messages. I made plans for 2 weeks from now if shit unreasonably hits the fan. I’ve been in contact with my boss who unprompted said she’d look into how to pay me a little quicker. I’m a communication and accountability fucking monster.

 

Hatred is my drug. I can tap into an infinite well of motivation and drive to express how much I fucking hate you, everything you love, how you operate, and the lazy ridiculous unbearably incoherent and fucking stupid shit you say to justify it all. You think any one thing or series of situations geared to engineering my sense of helplessness or victimhood is going to do anything but add fuel? I’d prefer to not die or end up killing myself for something unworthy of me, but hating what’s worth it to the degree they deserve certainly feels worth it. I’m no Dolly.

[1267] Fuck

I feel horrible. I feel sick. I’m fucking livid. In these precise moments, it is explicitly why I should never own a gun. I honestly don’t know if I would use it on myself because I’m so fucking sick and tired of “the bullshit,” or some mindless pawn in the latest machine that’s fucking me.

It’s all connected.

I just got a notice in mail saying my license is suspended. According to the notice, it was mailed 8/06/2026 and would go into effect 8/24/2026. Wanna guess what day it arrived in my mailbox? Today, 8/28/2026.

Have you heard about what the fascists have been doing to the mail over the last few years?

I didn’t have insurance because I didn’t get paid on time. I’m paid by the state of Indiana for providing counseling services to people who, rarely, have their licenses, or have fees and months of deferment programs they must complete to be eligible for cars and insurance they can’t afford either.

I got cited for not having insurance because an aggressive presumptive piece of shit cop decided to turn a warning over a newly burned out headlight into a drug search operation and “fuck you” for being nervous.

I was scolded by an attorney for paying the fee for not having my insurance, because it’s an admission of guilt, that then kicks off a notice to the BMV, which then kicks off an automatic suspension, none of which is explained anywhere. Leaving aside the “how do you pay for tickets, fees, insurance if you’re not allowed to drive to work” question, in what fucking world does it make sense to suspend someone’s license when they can, and in my case did, pay for the fucking insurance 2 hours later?

I didn’t just pay it, I paid it with money I didn’t really have to spend, and with the hope and prayer that in the next few days I was going to actually receive my several months of back wages. Did I get those several months? Of course not, just enough to immediately fly back out the window in service to other back bills and getting the footage from my illegal search.

Can I find an attorney to call me back between now and when I start to qualify for the misdirected AARP mail I get? Of course not. Do I also have a pending court battle over a camera’s claim to my level of speeding through a work zone? Of course I do. Is 95% of this piece of shit state fucking traffic cones and work zones? It has been basically my entire life. Now they’re finding ways to ensure you get extracted from for their ongoing corruption and negligence.

I have several engagements in Chicago, Fort Wayne, Milwaukee, and I work over an hour away in Indianapolis. I’m just…going to be driving on a suspended license. I don’t have a choice. (He said, knowing he has choices that are otherwise deeply inconvenient or unreasonable to ask of anyone around him.) I’m in a borrowed car too, from a friend named Hussain.

But this is the thing, right? Get idiots in charge who don’t think things through, who don’t have compassion, and who don’t believe there’s anything wrong with being a perpetually punishing and judgmental force, and watch people suffer, dance, and exhaust themselves from your petty perch of provincial power. Does it matter who you are, how you conduct yourself, how much you work, or how much you’re already sacrificing to make your life nominally work? Fuck no, fuck you.

When do I get to try and handle all of this too? Early morning Monday during work? While I’ve got a dozen women asking things of me and making excuses about why they can’t emotionally handle their own struggles with the BMV or the courts?

I’m an angry person, but I’m not a shitty one. I treat people who are exasperatingly terrible to me well. I remain deferential and respectful to people who have earned every ounce of my hateful thoughts and sentiments about them. I work as hard as I fucking can to balance what little fucking time I have on this planet between what I’d like to accomplish, create, or consider my responsibilities. I try, really, fucking, hard to keep my shit together and not spiral indefinitely on the deep and ridiculously unnecessary injustice embedded into every fucking miserable moment.

And, so what?

“The universe” doesn’t care. Your gods have a habit of keeping me abandoned. There’s no amount of money I can make an hour. There’s no amount of time I can “go without.” I can, literally, sit still for weeks at a time, and the moment I leave my house, it’s going to be some notice in the mail like this, some new policy or consequence I have to carry that has nothing to do with sense or need and just to do with “fuck you, because.” I’ll be insisted upon to see or practically worship the smallest lights of decent people or competent acts as evidence that “it’s not all bad,’ and that I should just keep the faith for one more day.

It’s bullshit. It actually is all bad, and you have to be a delusional fucking moron to pretend otherwise. Say I call the clerk, and I can save $250 by getting a form filed and confirmed for 3 months. Great, I don’t get the stress relief back from this moment. Great, all I have to do is stay in panic mode and try to drive perfectly so that the infinite in-between time it takes systems to update or flags to clear doesn’t compound what will already be an excruciating and terrifying conversation were I to get pulled over again.

In the meantime as well, I’ll get regular reminders that I have to keep fighting to get any remote kind of justice for the bullshit police have put me through to kick off this saga. I have to shoulder the fees I can’t afford yet, shouldn’t be obligated to pay or afford in the first place, and the emotional burden of how long it takes to make even a little better a catastrophic failure wholly imposed. Some oppressed minority group out there I’m sure is weeping deeply with me, but let’s just note my cynicism that knows how itchy people are to compare their victimhood instead of, you know, finding solidarity and banding together to fucking do anything about it.

Fuck those cops. Fuck Indiana. Fuck the BMV. Fuck cars. Fuck this whole sordid game of pretend like there’s any goddamn adults or sense behind any of it. I’m not “coping” with this. This isn’t something I ever resolve or incorporate. This is a cancer that needs eradicated. This is a state of being that has sucked my will to live for as long as I’ve been conscious. Even when I get a “win” or think I’m “trending” in the right direction, this kind of shit just fucking manifests like I’m in some hellish game show meant to keep me fucked.

On my best day, I wish I didn’t have to fear and anticipate “things” attacking my money, peace of mind, or basic sense of decency. I can’t. I can’t trust one day to the next that I’m going to be “okay” in a kind of way that doesn’t make me genuinely express how unreasonable it would be for me to own a gun.

Meanwhile, every day the worst people on the planet not only destroy the planet, get unimaginably rich doing so, destroy people’s lives for no reason beyond lies and hatred, and we’re counting on a “blue wave” to usher in a crop of new feckless idiots to pretend to know how to fight the 50-year onslaught of ignorant animals dressing up as humans. I get to feel small and insignificant in the face of the looming catastrophes around the world or at scale while the smuggest shittiest cuntiest cunts to have ever lived parade what wealth and power and consequences look like.

What is it all for? You think I’m “learning my lesson” about not having insurance this way? You think you’re “protecting and serving” by being a presumptive power-hungry cunt and lying to me? You think as long as I have near-zero money to do anything that doesn’t feel like I’m either getting away with murder, or guilt-inducing, or indulgent that’s just a generally good psychological place to trap people who we’re supposed to condemn when they snap over things like health issues and kill one of those proud to profess and protect how things operate?

You can’t make this shit up. And you can’t connect enough dots for the fucking miserable fucking idiots that piled on to help drive us here.

I’m just going to start screaming and hitting things because writing isn’t doing shit.

[1266] Here Again

I want to talk about, hopefully briefly, an old and recurring theme.

It’s been my longstanding position, and technically joke, that I would perhaps become relevant to many people in my life at about this late-30s space. After the kids have grown up a bit, the divorces, and the reality that none of us were going to be properly rewarded for being smart or hard-working. That’s been, slightly, kinda, true insofar as I’ve had at least some fleeting conversations or interactions with people who I might not have for years, but the weight of my presence is more or less carried by a single friend whoever does anything with me or carries on regular conversation.

If we think this through, it’s hard not to draw what I think people will perceive as either “damming” or “dark” conclusions. I think it implicates the past and foundation of what I perhaps mistakenly took to be “friendly” or “true” and “nice” about people. I think it spells fairly obvious and not-necessarily-

catastrophized conclusions about the future. I just sincerely wonder if it’s what anyone actually wants.

The theme in group this week has centered around what it actually means to make a choice. How much are you riding the impulsive waves of feelings or reactive insecurities and ruminating on the judgments of the forces around you? Do your feelings inform a choice, or are they steering the ship? Do you feel dependent on accessing a certain feeling to maintain a level of (what) that let’s you off the hook for what it takes to find your choice and responsibility or relationship to something?

I think I chose my friends in college at least. If nothing else, I chose whether or not to throw you out of the party or invite you back. I chose to keep trying to organize get-togethers as they felt more and more strained and the enthusiasm waned. I’ve chosen over the years to be the first one, always, to reach out. Part of me feels like this is essential to being who I am. I actually do want to talk and hang out and learn about what you’re thinking. I liked our time together back then. I like our brief stints of interaction today. I’m excited and lit up by the prospect of doing some shit in the future.

So, to that end, I don’t lay my propensities or preferences at anyone’s feet. If I’m like an aggressive pet looking for your attention, and you’re over it, that’s on me on one level. But, also, unlike a pet, I’d go away if you just said so. The ghosting or the days/weeks of not responding to a message, or the “yeah that’d be great, but…” and whatever reason you’re gonna stay busy until the end of time sweeps in. It’s like, what are we doing? I’m trying to hang. You appear to be trying to slowly break up with me for…ever?

I’ve never really wanted an online existence. I’ve never considered facebook “friendships” constitutive of the word. It’s why I invite you to the show. It’s why I say, I know how busy you are, let me come to you if that makes it logistically easier. But also, it’s hard to believe and just kind of seems to betray common decency that we can juggle this litany of things that keeps us apart, but finding an hour or an afternoon is just a bridge too far. I’m just, generally, over the dance I think. I’m not pining for the past. I’m not resentful of the country-hole I’ve put myself in. I’m just trying to hang out, and it feels like every expression of this invites a fucking blog like it’s something complicated.

My dad and uncle are coming to the area for a couple days next week. My dad’s like “we can do lunch, we can do dinner, we can bowl, see a movie…” My dad is an iron-worker driving hours to work regularly. When he’s not working, he’s working on his own business or working with my step-mom on her business, or tending to the other people in the step-family, or needs of his crew members, or trying to fix some issue that the other grown adults in his life can’t for reasons that similarly seem to betray all common sense and decency. His instinct is nonetheless time with me is worthwhile and something that can be figured out in conjunction with the other plans he and my uncle have.

It’s not hard. It’s not an excuse. It’s not “Yeah, but.”

Is literally almost everyone I’ve ever known and enjoyed spending time with cut from the same “Actually, I don’t actually give a fuck and don’t want to spend time with you” cloth? That seems, hopefully, unlikely. Are they all suffering from the same addict-adjacent condition and/or delusion that there’s like a prize at the end if they only spend one more minute doing whatever it is they’re doing first besides grabbing a burger or beer with me?

I feel struck by how much I don’t think it has anything to do with “me.” I know people aren’t thinking about me in the perfectly normal way that no one is really thinking about anyone beyond themselves. I’m not trying to sit here blind to some kind of naked irony. I’m no less getting angsty by this idea that everyone around me seems swallowed up in this hole I’ll call an abjectly lost sense of agency that’s registering as wholesale disregard for a kind of recognition and dynamic I put at the center of my values.

I want people I can talk as equals with, and joke with, and share history with. I want people who can vibe and sing along with the same music. I want people laughing together. I want people who view these things as precious and fleeting and worth practicing before we never get a chance to again. I don’t want to be invited to summarily dismiss, like it feels I’m summarily dismissed, because that’s not actually how I think or feel about the people I’m trying to share with.

So, it’s like really fucking annoying. I can’t control whether you’ll find either the balls or humility to tell me to go fuck myself, but I can write about the experience of the ambivalence. I don’t need to be handled or kicked down the road indefinitely nor do I need to beg like I’m needy in some unwarranted or entitled way. Time is running out though, you get that right?

[1265] Better Than You Ever Felt It

I think if you’re intelligent, the single hardest thing to empathize with is being stupid. You’re gonna be tempted to jump to some conclusions about what I mean when I invoke “intelligent” and “stupid.” Resist that. Consciously uncouple from assumptions as you proceed. This is my first signal to your intelligence, and claim to my own.

Language is forever imprecise and incomplete. That’s not a bid for postmodern absurdity-making circular sensibility. It means no matter what you say, no matter what you hear, if you want to practice intelligence, you give it time to breathe. It means you look for the context that might help you best understand where it was coming from. It means you build the instinct to take the infinitely abstract and look for your choice on how to relate to the information.

 

I’ve been told I was smart my whole life. I could “prove it” through grades in school, the quickness of learning an instrument, or the engineering of acquiring what I desired. All of this means nothing about my capacity for stupid. I’m easily, if not infinitely as stupid, as anyone who has ever lived. I suffer some aspect of my dumb, stupid self, every day. It might be in how I treat my body, my time, or how I conceive of “the world.”

 

For me, intelligence can grow with practice, and wither without practice. Stupidity can too. They aren’t opposite ends of a bell curve, more than they are modes of being we recognize as choices, or don’t.

 

I think it’s stupid, for example, to think I’m going to get “positive” or “productive” conversation about this writing, or anything else I’ve written, on a forum like reddit. It’s a heavily-skewed “internet culture” kind of place with a very particular kind of internet personality that inhabits it. The stupid is rewarded and part of the incentive system for how to maintain and embolden that ecosystem. In the 16 years I’ve been on the site, have I had a handful of decent exchanges or solid piece of information shared on the site? Sure, mapped against thousands of troll-esc nonsense. I’ve deleted everything I’ve ever posted across different accounts a dozen times. I’m practicing stupid in every moment I “hope” that I’ll accidentally encounter someone not wearing an internet-asshole hat.

 

There’s going to be a temptation, soon if it hasn’t happened already, to begin feeling like I’m making a moral judgment about reddit or the people on it. You’re maybe gonna wanna jump at my *hypocrisy* because that’s the priming and game the internet has trained you for. I’m going to ask that we return to refraining from assumptions.

It is hard to practice intelligence. It is hard to suffer stupidity.

 

For me, I find myself suffering the consequences of what I might frame as “other people’s stupidity,” superficially, before the intelligent practice tempers my enthusiasm to see it as anything more than an extension of my stupidity too. I, of course, still engage in the internet and the occasional troll. I feast on unhealthy things. I don’t exercise enough. I’m politically engaged, but could always be “doing more” or trying to better organize forces I could intelligently pick apart.

 

A little more concretely though, if I were to knock up my friend and she wanted to get an abortion, we’d have to suffer the stupidity of religious ideologues and scientific illiterates in order to get her healthcare. If I want to live a “normal middle-class lifestyle” it’s going to be at the expense or sacrifice of things they don’t have to in every other developed part of the world. If the measles shows up near me, that’s such a powerful exercise of stupidity that’s compounded in so many ways, you really start to wonder if we “deserve” this thing called existing.

 

I’ve considered Sam Harris a clear thinker for decades. I’ve watched and felt what feels like his decline in the last couple years. He’d, no doubt, take this as a point of pride in how often he annoys or alienates people “on both sides” of any given issue. To be sure, I don’t think an exercise of intelligence is to “pick a side.” I think you pick a practice, and your practice needs to incorporate new information and stay sensitive to its, perhaps extreme, biases.

 

I find “lumping” stupid. “Israel” doesn’t do things, Individuals in its government do. Individuals in the IDF do. So it goes for every country, population, army, etc. “Radical Islam” is a boogeyman hiding in every corner, changing shape to fit the extremist ends of any individual with the balls to blow themselves up. The “Christian Nationalists” are the same kind of thing, looking to absolve themselves of individual culpability for the cloak of righteousness or sanctity. Who knew God always wants things precisely how I want to do them? Crazy, right?

 

As an individual, the linguistic term “religion” I find incredibly stupid. I think it makes a lot of sense to form tribes, instinctively fear death, catch yourself being otherwise irreconcilably depressed or anxious if you didn’t have a psychological security blanket. I think I want the consequences of people who exercise their faith in the ways that keep people fed, housed, and advocated for. I think abstracting out the material impact of your behavior into words like “love,” “faith,” “religion,” and “beliefs” is “practicing stupid.”

 

You might feel deep personal moral injury at my position. I would suggest that’s because you’ve chosen to refuse my advice to refrain from assuming you know what I mean.

You feel what I mean. I court your confusion or indignance. We kick off our stupid practices in our respective lanes. My aim is a quieter mind, consequences for you be damned. This might be considered its own level of stupidity if we could truly know the consequences. Instead, an immediate ironic twist as it transforms into wisdom by letting things be and focusing on what I can actually control. When and whether to stop writing, and an honest assessment of my sense of well-being is all I get.

 

I’m not interested in the documentary I just watched where a right-wing anti-gay preacher let’s a gay preacher stay at his house for 5 days and vice versa. Their conversations were predictable. The excuses and victimhood of the right-winger a snore. It’s “too stupid” to me to position “your beliefs” as a meaningful bulwark against your ability to accept someone else’s humanity, rights, or equality. It’s just the same conversation ad nauseam. You can read really old books that were having this “debate” since they first started recording such things.

 

I wonder if it’s even possible to practice the kind of intelligence that gets us to a Star Trek kind of place. I think we’re kind of stuck in the consequences of stupid. I think we’ll be picking bad guys to lay collective blame on until we kill them and then ourselves. I think it’s because we’re stuck like an addict is stuck. It’s what we’ve normalized and trained on for our entire evolutionary history. I think it’s a mode of being that is perfectly ambivalent about anything beyond how it makes you feel in any given moment, and you’re super keen to given something external the power over how you feel.

 

I don’t really know what to do with this relative conclusion as someone who wants to practice and lay claim to a level of intelligence. Do i want to “save” everyone from themselves? That feels silly and impossible. Do I want to sit back and watch things burn? I’m not spending thousands of hours as a social worker or building things like civic-mirror.com because I’ve given up or check out. In the meantime, I’m still suffering things like gas prices, impending fallout from ridiculous wars, increasingly dramatic weather, negligent institutions and an impending fascist takeover. In one telling, and one version, of the story.

 

There’s a, by the numbers, large portion of people with the power to be of consequence who are actively practicing the kind of stupid that I think gets us all killed. If you’re not one of them, I think the cancer from the secondhand smoke is no less growing in you. There will never be enough Dolly Parton’s or MacKenzie Scott’s to turn the tide. I think this because of how we respond to the examples they’ve set. We post! We meme. We mock. “We” aren’t a “we.” We’re a collective unconscious “stupid” reaction at seemingly all times.

 

Then, in the moments when we are humbled or curious, we want to be given all the credit for spurts of intelligent exercise here and there. We’re like my clients who think waking up on time and making it to group on time for one week means they’ve conquered something that gives them license to slack the next.

 

What are you doing with your wealth and privileges? Are you exercising your values, or mourning what we’ll never get back when singular forces for an immense amount of good are removed from the playing board? Are you connecting to what you should? Are you practicing patience with yourself or others? Are you contextualizing your catastrophic frame of how “things” work?

 

You don’t have to be intelligent to be a decent or nice person. You don’t have to be wise to know when you’re practicing something stupid. You don’t have to know anything to experience irrational and impossible to articulate hatred. But you do have to be honest. I don’t think most people know what honesty is. I think they conflate it with being “real” or pair it to earnest weaponized feelings. Honestly, you want to manipulate me in what you’re saying, often significantly more than you’re actually feeling whatever you’re claiming to feel.

 

I think you can intelligently approach how to learn how to be honest. I think you develop a process that connects your words to how you feel, or don’t, and then enables the actions that back them up. Or, you can “just feel” in any and every direction, and leave the rest of us to figure out how to navigate the inevitable suffering.

[1264] Alone Together

I've heard 3 or more ardent expressions of feeling deeply alone from people on social media, either in earnest short-form, meme, and in real life over the last week or so.

The dumb thing to do would be take those expressions personally. What it does though, is make me wonder what precisely they mean.

These people have significantly broader social networks than me. You can see the immediate flow of support of their respective comment sections. These people have families they're significantly closer with than I'll ever be. The only thing they have in common, besides being my friend, is they are single women.

I had a discussion with one of them recently about what it meant to be alone. The idea of not being “partnered” even if, by the numbers, we spend more time together than one imagines couples in a traveling-salesman or military situation might get. We’re not “official,” but we’re also not children who live and die by porous or arbitrary definitions in order to enjoy time together.

My head is drawn towards the idea that a story is, truly, more compelling than “reality” will ever be. Especially as you get older, your standing reality in any moment is what’s racing through your head, the aches in your body, and the asks from the world that isn’t remotely concerned about your opinion. You, in your own head, can be an incredibly lonely space in its infinite capacity to dog you.

Most of my cohort are old enough now to have occupied decently “responsible adult” and “serious person” positions only to be faced with the high school inane absurdity and chaos inherent in everything. For some reason we like to trick ourselves into thinking we’re the only ones who can notice in spite of literal thousands of performers and pieces of art that synthesize and connect our experiences.

But it’s not the same things as “feeling like” someone “really loves” you, right? It’s talking across purposes to suggest “I’m right here” or “We literally could have plans this weekend” or “You can always call me.”

It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s based on evidence. It doesn’t seem to matter if it will last. You just want to believe, which I think is the shape of the hole. If you can’t pacify it, you stick drugs and alcohol in it, or you internet troll, or you compulsively work, or you get creepily invested in a hobby or personality affect, or you jam a god or something spiritual inside.

But I think it’s deeper than that, because I’m someone who often feels “isolated,” but not necessarily “alone.” I seek out connection all the time, often from people who almost feel like they’re actively running from even getting lunch every 6 months. Learning late in life that I’m probably more autistic than not became it’s own kind of “ah ha” moment, and that’s a kind of solidarity you can only find with those types. Being “high-achieving” has always carried it’s own kind of baggage, but I’m finding it downright amazing to have found a job where my boss is of the same ilk.

I have a strong painting-like memory of a morning where me and my 5 or 6 roommates were all doing whatever we were doing in our respective zones of space across the living room and kitchen. We are all “alone” together. The sun was hitting the space just right. Everyone seemed contented. It was so unique and so encompassing, I’ve written about it before. It was kinda like the same “click” that happens during a good shroom or acid trip, where the purpose and flow of being conscious together makes more sense than you could ever fully articulate.

To my mind, that reality is available to us right now, today, as often as we choose and practice it. Every time I write, I’m reaching out. Usually it’s into a space where all I can receive is immature armchair irony psychology, but it’s a reach nonetheless. For decades now, I’ve felt my general effort to connect functionally rebuked 95% of the time. I’ve had a dozen or so “friends from college” live an hour or less away from me for years, and it wasn’t until Brandy moved back from Florida that I’ve had anyone to regularly spend time with that wasn’t my dad.

It just feels like an exhausting act. It reminds me of when I could tell that a girl was clearly “more into me,” (which is the wildly wrong way to state it, but I think articulates the point) than I was her. No, I don’t want kids and marriage, but it doesn’t mean I never want to talk or see you again if we stop fucking around? But this high-stake either/or game gets played because we’re apes first, and people murder over jealousy more often than money.

I’m not exaggerating, I’ve probably offered to go to any type of food at any time of day, invited or offered to pay for any kind of show, low estimate 500 times across dozens of people over the last let’s say 8 years because that’s when I started working “real jobs.” That’s about once every week. It was way higher when I was younger and we were partying every weekend or had little else to do each week in school or I had the bills paid with drug studies.

What are people? What have people been for 8 years? Busy. We’re cool, but they’re busy. There’s so much going on. They haven’t found the time for fill-in-the-blank. They’ve love to catch up, but. They’re just so tired. They have plans that land precisely at the same time!

Now, there’s meet-ups and ways to put yourself out there, but also, that’s it’s own kind of job, just like endlessly dating tends to mount discouraging experiences.

This sense that we’re in “information silos” stoked by the hateful algorithms I think is a natural extension of our practice of being too busy. We’re too occupied. We’re too…everything. We don’t choose anything for ourselves and just sing the song of the oppressive box we’re trapped in. Worse, from my view, if you begin to insist that this is empty, nonsense, or at the extremes rude and pathetic, now you license people to, somehow, ignore and distance themselves from you even harder. It’s then as though the shaking of the last vestiges of hope for reconnection was the final goal.