[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.

[1263] Much Too Much

“There’s just so much going on.”

This is one of the most common refrains I hear from clients and friends alike. Friends are either working, navigating children, or in a worst case dealing with something health related. “The world” is often invoked along with the idea and all of its “stupid people.” Whether we simply call it “stress” or a sense of being “overwhelmed,” the sentiment is such that, whatever the ask, task, or invitation, it’s “too much.” If they’re feeling vaguely hopeful it’s “one day.”

 

They’re not wrong, in the broadest sense. In American society, at least, what might have been “simple” or “normal” aspects of a life worth living have turned into privileges and class-warfare. The things I get to do are a direct result of the sacrifices of things my parents could take for granted. The fun things I do or buy always feel like indulgence. They always feel like “I don’t really need,” because I’m playing an emotional hedging game. Will I regret the T-shirt or burger more than take solace in my ability to afford them, if only barely or occasionally?

 

I don’t feel old, but I had a good long moment while I was driving home yesterday where the idea of “38” seemed like an incredibly long time to have been around. “Pushing 40,” as they say. I’ve never wanted kids, but if I started tomorrow, I’d be 10 years older than my dad when he started. I’ve, still, never had a job for longer than 2 and a half years. I own plenty of shit, and I’ve got extremely hard in the “experiences” lane of affordable shows and trips.

 

This morning has felt like “a lot.” I was tired enough on the way home yesterday I pulled into a parking lot to nap. I got home and went to sleep, waking up at 2, and now feeling…well, that’s why I’m writing. There’s things I wish to accomplish. There’s things I’m extremely annoyed have been forced upon me to combat. There’s things akin to chores I’ll try to do later. My contacts are acting up. I’m itchy. My mouth and throat are dry. I want to sleep more, but I’m not convinced it would happen.

 

What’s on my plate?

 

I got pulled over for a broken headlight, and it turned into a, likely, illegal search. It’s been expensive and stressful figuring out how to request all the records related to the stop. I’m getting bounced around departments, inane pushback, and seemingly no matter what combination of words I use or attempts I make does it lock in that I want all records that pertain to me, the officers, the dog, and the stop. I spent 10 weeks not getting paid by the state of Indiana, just long enough for this to happen while my insurance had lapsed, and now I’m having to spend hundreds more, on top of a ticket, to combat an abuse of power, technically, from the same entity that delayed me getting my insurance paid.

I also got an alleged traffic infringement from a camera on the highway. Per A.I., their own filings contradict their claims, so I’m also operating pro se and trying to piece together what I need to push against this surveillance state bullshit and machine claims that will eventually track and tax us into ever further forms of internally punishing psychosis.

 

I’m still working on civic-mirror.com. I have the Claude Max now that lets me work like I needed to work to get it where it is, but it’s a huge undertaking, and I’m feeling increasingly isolated and sensing overwhelm when I try to pick a lane to focus on developing. I wanted to use my experience requesting these records to build a “spine” for others to follow when they wanted to do the same. That’s going to involve parsing something like 45 emails, clarifications, and redirections so I can develop steps 1 and 2. That’s 2 police departments in 1 county in 1 miserable state on one, tangible, practical issue.

 

I’ve reached out to online-form systems for attorneys. No surprise, they didn’t respond in the time window they said they would. I got a call back from a pro-bono office who doesn’t handle my kind of case, but, of course while driving, managed to find a charismatic 70-something lawyer who functionally hi-jacked the call to talk about an array of things she wished to share about her life. It’s the mental labor of trying to find and then navigating the pieces of a puzzle destined for a messy or unclear picture that feels heavy.

 

I have some form digitizing to get done, some spreadsheet re-organizing, and perhaps a single individual session with a client. I need to put away laundry and buy toilet paper. I’m not seriously obligated to do any of it but for what I claim about my values and identity. When I’m not tired, aggravated by my eye, needing to shit, and digging out the useless anxiety of my alleged obligations, I’m exceptionally capable, motivated, angry, and excited about the prospect of pursuing my goals until their failure point. When it’s hard to feel that, I write.

 

It’ll be an hour or 2 before the offices I need to call will even be open.

[1262] Too Bright

It’s not your fault.

Is there a more compelling idea? As an animal seemingly most suited in any environment to blame something reflexively, if not instinctively. We’re terrified of getting blamed and ostracized. We can’t be held responsible for the things we say, do, or believe. Literally anything else was and is always the reason.

I think this habit is a sickness of consciousness. We didn’t ask to be born. Existence itself is the victimizer, therefore, anything that exists genuinely feels like “the reason” or an ongoing perfect excuse ready to be deployed into any unwelcome moment.

The more abstract and loose your language, the easier to iterate. “People,” “life,” “things,” “they,” “it is what it is.” The more familiar or culturally accepted your cliche, the easier it goes down in your audience. The easier you convince yourself of the wisdom, purpose, and factuality of your own pseudo-position.

For some reason, we can blame infinitely, and feel blamed infinitely, but redemption only needs to happen once. You’re the evil character in the movie or across the entire franchise? Just throw the emperor over the ledge once and we’ll get right to shedding a tear for you. Heaven is infinite, no? We, conveniently, outsource the obligation to forgive or be redeemed.

In sports, there’s always the next game or the next season, if you get fired, a lower stakes team or less popular region. The stakes are artificially high, but unless you’re an acutely unlucky player, almost never is it life or death. The ball bouncing wrong might result in an own goal. Millions of fans will be happy to blame you. Your intentions, training, perspective, or any millions of details about the physics and weather that speak to why a ball might go one place over another are summarily ignored. Why?

Your feelings aren’t your fault.

That’s what the fans say, just not out loud. How they feel about your place is their right! How dare you question or contradict or protest in this moment of your colossal failure that you, too, have feelings, and aren’t at fault. Just because it happened to be your foot doesn’t mean you weren’t trying to kick it elsewhere!

And no one is prepared to hear you. If you’re from Columbia back in 1994, when you returned home, they killed you.

You catch it? “They” didn’t kill you. A single person did. A single person with a grievance about money they didn’t even need. A single person involved with drug trafficking. That single person was never brought to justice, only experiencing a relatively mild headache of brief incarceration.

What do “we” learn from this? Nothing. I, at least, already know people die for nothing and no reason and are perfectly content excusing away their actions indefinitely. What does that do for how and whether I engage the world?

I’m big on trying to not be like “everyone” else. I spend a lot of time clocking patterns of thought, speech, and behavior, and consciously try to do “things” or “it” differently. Writing is part of it. You, probably, don’t write, let alone consistently. You don’t spend the time trying to sort your thoughts and look for pitfalls or patterns that could help you stay oriented. If you do write, you might not do it with the intention of trying to orient.

I write so I can distribute blame appropriately and locate the point at which it enters the chat. Once you know better, you’re to blame. Every explicit fascist and “ho-hum” fascist is to blame for Trump, death squads and concentration camps, and the precarity with which we have rested the system altogether. They, in literal violent protest, knew better. They know you’re not supposed to lie and be racist. They know there’s math and experts that do hard work to keep us safe and coherent. They know, even if they have broken stupid brains that can’t critically think, they know. And the last decade has been a campaign of trying to pretend otherwise.

You know you’re dumb, or lazy, or dishonest. You do know. I do not trust you when you tell me you don’t know, or when it takes the shape of asserting what you claim to know or want, but your actions don’t match. You make a lot of wishes, and don’t do the kind of work that renders them into what they involve in reality.

These feel like big swing statements, right? Except, it’s not that complicated. You want more time, but you don’t make time for anyone but work or things that feel like obligations, but in fact are choices. You say you’re lonely and want friends or a partner, but spend no time acting friendly or developing what you’d bring to the partnership. You want your feeling appeased. You don’t want to do the work.

My clients “want to stay sober,” but they don't want to keep a daily journal about how they’re feeling. They don’t want to speak up in group. They don’t want to put the order of operations together that builds a coherent budget, hours they need to work, timeline for getting their kids back, or opens a discussion with a boyfriend that is significantly more boy than friend. You don’t want to stay sober, you want to have it your chaotic, incoherent, entitled own way. You want your insecurities or sense of being overwhelmed painted over by a story of your effort instead of the consequences of a lack of it.

Post modern internet, we’ve never had the “lack of information” excuse. We don’t just know, we have a dozen deep dive evidence-flowing documentaries about every angle of any given issue. We know all the things inflicted upon us by our corrupted officials and acutely small-minded thinking. We know the bad guys. We know the dumb guys. We know the lazy guys. We know what we’d have to do to make it right. We’d rather do nothing, complain, and criticize those who continue inviting us to the real work.

[1261] Imagine Me And You

One day, I'm going to take every seemingly vague concept we have and build a measurable scaffolding. If it's measurable, we'll call it "real." If it's real, we'll decide on thresholds for calling it "fixed."

Racism
Sexism
Patriarchy
Trans-phobia
Christo-fascism
Islamophobia
Violence

I think, most days, across most issues, most people have a "null" or "non" opinion unless provoked into citing a lazy cliche or repeating whatever they last heard.

This results in an endless nonsense loop of "talking past," "interpretation," and "post-modern obfuscation."

Words are loose. Perception is loose. These are unavoidable. The closest thing we get to "objective" is the collective convergence and ongoing scrutiny. All of our observations added up gives us a moving target, but a target nonetheless.

This means if you're unwilling or unable to add them up, you're functionally not and never talking about "anything." You're not sharing anything. You're not able to situate some goal or claim you have about "the thing" you never reasonably established or made available to anyone else in the first place.

This is the self-justification and ideological possession of what will eventually get us all killed if we don't grasp the nature of it.

Religiosity
Anger/Hatred
Genocide
Values
Morality
Justice

Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.

You have extremely vague approximations of how to conduct yourself and what you're made of. You get sick, things snap into focus. Someone presents a problem or obligation they say is yours, you often dutifully fall into a worker mode that tries to solve it.

You're not allowed to "just exist." you need to work for a living. You need to find a spouse. You need to be into the artists or news channels everyone is talking about. "You" need to be "Us." And "We" are an amorphous ever-justifying narrative exercise. We are what "everyone does" or "anyone would."

The linguistic traps are the air we breathe. The circular side-step of accountable logic is baked into trivially necessary survival. "Have a nice day!" You just checked out of a grocery store with inflated prices owned by a family that refuses to pay its workers more than the "market values."

Is that "nice" for either of you because the job isn't hard, you didn't have to hunt for food, and "all things considered," no one wants the nihilistic take when they are "just trying" to eat or pay the bills?

How often we get away with invoking "the world" or "people" to make a point about either. It's incoherent, but the point was never about coherence. We get high on self-justification narrative exercises. "People are...!" whatever you need them to be in the moment. "The world is just....!" Whatever antagonizes the feeling in the moment.

I think I understand why monks are silent, and when they speak it's something of a seeming contradiction or parable. There's a process by which you can snap things into focus. A king who says we'll cut the baby in half and give both of you claiming mothers a piece. The one who "really cares" says "Fuck that! she can keep him!" And is thus rewarded with the baby.

Anyone can make a claim. The truth of it is an ongoing story pocked with extremely telling reflexive utterances. Maybe both women genuinely care about that baby. One was willing to sacrifice her relationship to it for the baby's sake. A wise king engineered a scenario to illicit impossible-to-discern otherwise information to help him decide.

What about you? You're not a master manipulator of your scene or deciding life and death, right? Or, you're hyper-aware of how that's exactly what you are and it induces all sorts of denial, paralysis, fear, and a doubling down of the self-justification narrative exercise. How do you know?

Catch yourself when you're using cliches.

That's it. That's as robust a first step as you need. Catch when you start a sentence with "people" or "the world." Notice when you invoke "they." Count up the amount of "I can't just..." You'll start to see how often you let "we" and "us" dictate your worth, capacity, potential, or agency altogether. You'll start to feel, viscerally, how often "no one" is talking about "anything." The secret behind why we struggle so hard to cohere as a human race or vestige of an American culture won't be a mystery.

Our technology, or lack thereof, used to compel more of a mono-culture. Our baseline self-justification mechanism could only go as far as our local tribe. The punch in the face of letting it get radicalized could happen much sooner and was materially felt immediately.

We've stretched out the feedback mechanism. The most horrible thing you've ever heard or seen is on a loop to seemingly no consequence. It's tailored to your "interests." Its back is marketed from for more attention and more clicks and more shares. The less anything means something, the more it can manifest in its infinite capacity to distract, incite, or become monetized through your attention.

"We" can never fix what you as an individual can't notice, correct, take ownership and responsibility for, and demonstrate for those in your local, and thus global, tribe.

You have to speak deliberately, for yourself as much as for anyone listening.

You have to stop giving your time to things that do not serve you like a mother willing to let you go.

You have to make demands from and pull power away from those incentivized to make the problems worse.

"Nothing" gets "better" if you can't understand or be bothered to accept how you're contributing to making "things" worse. You don't have to spend money. You don't have to click. You don't have to do anything but catch yourself in the act.

If enough of "us" do that, and count those instances, and dial up or down our behavior in service to "fixing" or "changing" something, like magic, we'll get the world we practice.

It's not hard. It's not complicated. It's not moralizing, theorizing, or experimenting. It's accounting. It's noticing. It's doing, or not doing, and refusing to pretend we're "trying" if we aren't.

[1260] Crowning Achievements

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

I consider myself a "high-achieving" person. What does that mean?

I have to lead with all the questions, or perhaps assumptions, that follow this kind of claim.

"So, what? You think you're better than everyone else?"

"You think you've achieved something, but what about (fill in amazing person/thing)."

"Oh, another person seeking attention and validation."

"That doesn't sound like much/enough/worthwhile to me."

"So then why can't you fix (fill in thing they know about your life.)"

"Me too! Wanna be autism/ADHD buddies!"

While it might be unwise to make unfair comparisons, it's a different exercise entirely to contextualize something. There's classics like measuring your education. Just by getting a degree, I'm in the "top 38%" of the U.S. population. Whether or not that means something you, or me, or anyone who might hire me, is a world of different questions. My degree didn’t matter for a decade, or anything to me at the time, and then it mattered a lot for things I never saw coming.

I like to use choice examples from my history to "argue" and "attest" to what I think is most indicative of the claim. I think they represent me in the "best" light, and what I'd want anyone to know about what I'm capable of. I have many classics.

In 2nd grade my teacher had a system of filling out these worksheet transparencies for $1, and paid out for every time you could recite a growing number of U.S. capitals. I bled her dry.

In 4th grade we had timed math quizzes where I routinely got done the fastest and was only remotely occasionally beaten by a kid named Jonathan.

In 5th grade I got rich on in-class currency and ran out of things to buy, so started distributing my surplus to the rest of the class, not knowing we were having one final end-of-year multi-room market day. I also completed the day’s homework before the first day’s bell if my teacher made the mistake of listing what we were going to do on the board. Me, Natasha, and Amy had an “extra” class.

In 6th grade, I read every book on the library reading list and passed every computer test, and when the assistant librarian protested against me moving on to reading the 7th grade books, the head librarian told her to kick rocks. Her "fuck you" face turned me off from bothering.

In middle and high school I was in honors classes. I was first chair in band (though, not section leader for marching band, because my band teacher is the same kind of smart-ass I am). Our jazz band won state. I graduated "early" (because we switched to trimesters my senior year, but I only had 5 of 6 classes so I got to come to school late, spend 3 of those classes in band (doing whatever I wanted for 2).

I worked 3 jobs simultaneously in high school if you understand the slave labor that is marching band. One, cart-boy-who-could-push-Target red cards so well I couldn't cash in all the food and CD vouchers I earned messing up your credit. I was promoted twice to management at my first job. I could clean theaters and close the concession stand quicker than anyone the entire 2 years and 8 months I worked there.

Are you noticing a pattern? I'm not talking about friendships, helping anyone, being a "good person," or anything I'm sure most people were better at while I was "doing me."

In college, I got disillusioned because I couldn't take classes where I had read every book on the syllabus and showed I had pockets of more knowledge about things than a T.A.

I threw parties like you see in the movies, designing a house layout for multiple kinds of entertainment and debauchery. I "won" a shot club party I'm still a little confused how I survived the next day. The average number of sexual partners is between 6-11 in a lifetime for men, so I'm 3-5 times sluttier, and don't plan to die soon.

I play 2 instruments well, 7 passably. I'm competent enough to utilize tools in a way that's allowed me to tear down sheds and turn them into rooms to my house. I've started several, technically broken-even, businesses, a non-profit, and otherwise worked 25 different jobs ranging from delivery boy to child welfare assessor. I've gotten certified in forensic interviewing, my real estate broker's license, and to cab drive. I've written at least 1,260 times trying to better understand myself and where/whether I belong.

I've seen 1,815 days worth of television and movies (sped up, no commercials) of 2,190 shows and 4,116 movies. I've seen 1,147 comedy/music/theater performances during 467 concerts/shows, with 882 artists at 137 venues in 41 locations. I own land, my house, 2 working vehicles. The furthest I’ve been west is California, north Montreal, south Florida, and east North Carolina.

I think many people would think about what they have or haven't achieved in terms of their family. I've functionally cut most of mine off. My longest relationship was for 5 years, and I think it's true that we probably spent the back half of it breaking up. I've never seriously wanted kids. Until my mid 20s, I had very little, if no regard, for how I spoke or carried myself in how it made you feel.

My mom was physically and emotionally abusive. My dad's the nicest person I know, and my grandma held the title before him before she died. He's also an iron-worker, Harley rider, and grew up with a WWII veteran household where both my grandparents worked in the steel mill. A certain work ethic and expectation has been instilled. My grandpa spoke 4 languages and killed Nazis. I barely understand some Spanish and really hope I’m contributing to the world in a way that prevents us from having to kill Nazis again.

I had no control over being born "cute" or "smart" or "talented" or into a free post world war country my grandparents immigrated to. I can't reasonably lay claim to those things. I certainly haven't even spent most of my life passably "wise" or "nice." I could follow certain rules and procedures to what were, in the past, more predictable ends. The abuse from my mother had me pretty-well trained not to play with certain kinds of fire. I graduated around the financial crash, within the neoliberal march towards "globalization," and concentrations of wealth more extreme than has ever existed. I grew up alongside the internet, long enough to remember before it was thing, when it used to be cool, and can now mourn for what it's become.

What "I" could or can achieve on any given day of my life is extremely context specific. Are girls fucking me if I'm not 22 and we're both at least tipsy? Thankfully, yes, but who's going to pretend that wasn't an extremely specific set of conditions that juiced the numbers? Do I graduate college if my dad didn't get settlement money and it was paid for before it began? I went from honor student to learning how to party I felt so betrayed by college, not because I was sheltered or couldn't hack it; it showed me why it was beneath me and how it was a waste of time and money.

I got into social work at 30. The wanna-be entrepreneur who found himself out of a home due to deteriorating communication and relationships with past friends was proving bleak. I started getting put in charge of transporting people's children to supervised visitations and recording/reporting how those visits went. I transferred to the State, where now I was tasked with investigating physical and sexual abuse allegations. What I said had to make sense in court. I had to invite myself into your home in a way that would keep you liking and talking to me. I never found the work itself stressful.

Now, I'm a CADAC II addiction counselor who has been told on more than one occasion I'm better than previous therapists my clients have talked to. I'm not a therapist. I've shadowed other counselor's sessions. I'm inclined to believe them, if only because my approach I feel has little to do with "me." I listen and re-frame. You either do the work or not. I'm not engaged or entertained by trying to judge you or pit our experiences against each other. If what I'm talking about doesn't make sense to you in your terms and within the context of your life, I might as well be speaking bad Spanish.

I suspect, if you've made it this far, at some point you got exasperated or annoyed with the examples I presented from my life in service to my claim. "Who cares?" "What does this have to do with anything?" "This isn't why I internet." That fundamental self-bias is the thing our institutions and traditions, often woefully, invite us to transcend. Give it up to God, right? "We're a family!" your creepy corporate overlord beckons. If you've dropped acid or done shrooms and viscerally experienced the oneness of everything, you might stay psychologically and dispositionally open to investigating just how this, and in fact anything, reflects some aspect of "you."

I think I'm moved to make something of an accounting of my sense of achievement because it feels like I'm on the verge of matching or beating where I've set the bar. I work for a company, and an individual, who I think has real promise of being a long-term business partner who I'm investing my time and resources with at functionally the ground floor. I'm paid an hourly rate that makes the all-encompassing nature of social work worth it. In weeks, not months, I'll be able to materially alter how I spend my time and what I'm able to invest in.

My problem is being perfectly convinced about what I'm capable of or willing to do. That's not a secret to me or anyone around me. My problem is how to get more people on board. I romanticize the college party days precisely because it was something that felt like "us" more than "me." For as many times as people have told me to go fuck myself (they phrase it as, "good luck"), naked tequila parties are a different animal if you're by yourself.

I think we're suffering an immense political crisis. I see up close every day how and why your "average person" cannot exercise the tools or mechanisms of their contexts. Their mental and physical health is poor. The jobs available barely pay. The "basic" life expenses can't be covered. The people who represent them, don't. I spend most of my days trying to speak to the nature of the context they are embedded in so they don't eat themselves alive with the story of what they aren't worth or can't achieve. Consistently waking up on time, getting to work, catching yourself before you say a mean or harmful thing, and allowing yourself to feel good, ever, are real meaningful achievable and worthwhile goals any day you choose to adopt them.

Today, I think it's less mysterious why I lasted as long as I did at DCS or why I continue to take jobs where I'm patiently and actively trying to quell the raging consequences of abuse and negligence that have manifested through my clients' behaviors. I don't know what we can achieve together or what you will go on to do once we sort out the "easy" things I got to take for granted as I flexed the edges of my context. I'm infinitely curious about how good things can be when we all find the right form of peace and prosperity that prompts us to achieve as highly as we can.

There's an order of operations. There's rules. There's a plane of mutual understanding we must all occupy to get there. I'd prefer, most often, we didn't have to be high and drunk to share it. I'd prefer it didn't pop up as lashing out in hatred or exhaustion for the wrong things. I think the more time we spend figuring out how much "I" am shaped by what we're paying attention to, the better chance we have to take responsibility for how we're spending that time and attention.

In the next 6 months, "I" want to have a robustly operational civic-mirror.com because I think I'll have the money to both buy the infrastructure to operate it, and afford the expertise to do it right. I want to have most of the tickets bought for the 100 shows a year average I'm trying to keep for the 5th year. I want to have my fence project completed. I want to be working a "comfortable" 40-50 hour a week schedule 4 days a week in what I hope is a growing partnership. I'd "like" to spend an obscene amount of money eating at Smyth in Chicago, and to seriously consider music/recording lessons.

I like the idea of centralizing what it means to achieve in terms of what you build or create. That doesn't pit "stuff" against a family or skill set. What took a meaningful sacrifice of time to get good at? What aren't you willing to trade for what you know or how you operate now? Are the examples of who you are or what you're worth part of a self-serving narrative, or demonstrative of your values and ongoing work? I want to make money so I can invest and distribute. I want to build accountability tools so I can see the things I want and need manifest within my lifetime and in service to the people I care about. I want to grow in my talent and capacity so I can connect with people who I admire for the work they've done in service to theirs. I want you to feel as capable of solving and organizing your universe as I do mine so we can see what they do combined.