[336] It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing

I've been inside a kind of deadness lately. It's not sad or dramatic. It's flat. Maybe it's just a special kind of tired. I'm not sure, but all I know is that it's a special kind of non-feeling. To generally run rather tepid when it comes to things, then to get excited, is very much a high. It's not a terribly lasting high, but the contrast is noteworthy. But when nothing seems to register, even if it's for a short time, it becomes noteworthy as well.

A few examples. While everyone is naming their new babies after a fictional pair of meth dealers, I can call it a pretty good episode. While I'm assuming there's an invigorating passion to spend the next several months flying new machines and blowing people up, I'm reminded I have 2 video games I haven't opened and a 3rd I've been playing for months and might be half way through. I think about how quick, although I know it's not that quick, friends seem to pass through your life and really really want to press people to figure out why or why not I should be someone in their life. I see more people getting shot up and think “of course...onto more pressing concerns like dick cutting pictures.” I'm getting back into business and realize that whether it does or doesn't work, I'll know what to do.

It's all just stuff that's happening.

To the point on friends, I don't like to feel as if I'm treating them as passing acquaintances. It influences very much what I do or don't and how I engage with them. I can believe that it can be viewed as a kind of insecurity. Like, just act natural Nick P! It's your friends after all. But I understand relationships as work. Me, natural, doesn't treat people as people. So I need to dial back natural for better things like respect. I deliberately hinder my mind of thinking of friends as “marginally intentional beings with fleeting pithy feelings I need to deliberately navigate in order to achieve x, y, and z.”

In that instance, I'd rather be misunderstood as a bumbling idiot killing the mood or deliberately awkward, instead of understood as someone who would treat you that way.

I'm certain this is hard to understand, mostly because it has everything to do with me and nothing really to do with you. It's the odd ways I can be made to think or feel and the work my rules do or don't help with that. To say I take my friendships personally is to say I have as much invested in the story I can tell about myself as I can about our relationship. It's an ever-present conversation during a high stakes game.

I don't think winning belongs to the smart, or loud. Sincerity wins. They believe you when you believe you. It's less what you say than it is they believe you. Feeling this deep in your gut and knowing what it means is what necessitates my “anti-behavior.” If I can't make you aware of a path I see, I might find myself on it and not terribly comfortable, nor necessarily convinced against, what it means if I keep following it. So help me keep dialogue open. The more I can fumble over words and persistently go nowhere, probably dunk, in person, the less I can recede so far into my head that I can't hear anything.

I want to feel normal, but not at your expense.

[335] Put One Foot In Front Of The Other One

Now, I believe myself to be at the perfect level of drunken introspectiveness, thus making everything I'm about to write simply magic.

You know how I like read about world affairs and post the “best” links I find to summarize how basically shit a lot of things are? I know like ex military people and my “old” friends are into that shit, but does it click with anyone under 30? I can't really tell. It seems like minimum wage jobs and shitty papers will always take precedent to (just tried to drink a beer without taking the cap off) what's actually happening in life. I wouldn't mind a “I follow current affairs!” comment either, because I need to better gauge my overall people may give a shit meter.

I went to ballroom dance call-outs today. I will always be amazed and intrigued by the people who just sit down next to you and want to start a conversation. It's not that I can't, it's just that I'm bad at pretending I care right now. You may be super cool. I just don't know why yet and that's why my body language would suggest you're shit. You're probably not shit, but fuck me, I'm bad at pretending I care. Gimme a minute. But I think what we did at ballroom dancing is part of the epitome of what you're supposed to be able to do in life. Meet random cute people and shake your ass for no reason. It's kind of the best you can hope for and it's totally awesome.

So by the rules of obvious and duh mother fucker, why is it hard to figure out “global action plans” that don't involve killing everything? Like I said before, it's always present in my mind. Having fun and doing nothing and “wasting” money all exist with the backdrop of how I conceive of our species treating itself. Sure, I got to dance with a tiny hot girl (amongst other hot girls) and could turn on the flirting if I wasn't sweating like a goddamn fountain. But in what real world does any of that shit matter?

I wonder, and frankly hope it doesn't happen, if I'll ever start to take “myself” too seriously. I see what happens to public intellectuals that spend so much time researching and writing and putting their moral foot on top of all the bullshit. I can't say I see the kinds of change they're likely hoping for. I can't see their personal understanding doing much of anything like moving big chess pieces of culture that need to change. I suppose I'm trying to justify my apathy. If someone who gives a shit doesn't care....hahahaha just keep laughing.

Be real! That's the goal right? Be that like jaded voice that doesn't get blamed for being jaded. Just say those things. Be the constant stream of shit that everyone can get a whiff of when they feel themselves taking too much for granted. It's tough dude. How do you practice an innate wanting attachment to things when you are infinitely prepared to let them go? The word genuine takes a very long walk. You can't justify laziness anymore than you can in achieving dweeb status about “some issue in particular.”

I guess you just get used to making excuses, UNBEARABLY IRONICALLY. Because we all just tryin' to live n shit, right?

[334] Windows Into Our Minds

It's infinitely humbling to read old rants. I hesitate to even dignify them as “blogs” as if that has a modicum of associated respect. I'm also starkly reminded that there's always something more to say. Every person that enters the conversation, every random interaction or some fight gives you an opportunity to be challenged and reflect. Probably the most amazing thing is how many times I read the words “I hate” or “fuck this or that” without feeling the kind of crippling emotions, at least persistently, that I might not be incorrect in saying, most of my friends seem to deal with.

That's what I wanted to tackle head on a few days ago. A drunk conversation that didn't really start because agreements were made to not have those kinds of conversations drunk, needed to end up somewhere. I don't think I'll ever do the talk about other peoples' sadness or stress well. I can listen or offer my perspective, but I feel like for all my cynicism and hatred, very little if none of it is self-directed. Yes, you can rest assured that if I say I hate you, I do just in fact, hate you for all the big and little shitty things you are. I didn't see something I didn't like in the mirror and say “someone needs to be told what a worthless fuck they are today.”

As with most genuine, large, institutional or intimately personal problems, I'm irrationally concerned about how little I think I can do to help. Literally, all I have is my “good will” towards the people I like. I know there are several feel good books out there that would suggest that just “being there” or some similar sentiment is all you may have to do to have the biggest impact on someone's life. If you'd like to believe this, then you have to start making decisions about how many people and to what extent you're going to be there. If you think this is kind of bullshit, then you just try to keep the happy times going with your friends and cross your fingers all the shit doesn't hit the fan at once.

Like, I've already written a blog pondering why everyone in my life, 4-5 years ago seemed angry, depressed, or anxious. For those of you not tracking my groups of friends, rest assured there's been a fairly large changeover, and I find myself again under a similar contemplation. Now you may congratulate me on my capacity for cynicism and despotic outlooks and finding such well-equipped crowds to indulge me, but that's incorrect and dickish. I'd rather see this as more confirmation that there's something larger going on psychologically and socially that isn't addressed or understood enough. I feel somewhat desperate to grasp this “large fucked up thing with our heads.”

I can only hope people aren't insulted or put-off in how I try to talk about it as well. I'm acquainted with the word depression, but I've only been able to engage with the darkest places it can take my friends fairly recently. My pop-sci answers or advice from high school “worked” in that no one I've engaged with ended up dead, which is hardly a reliable metric of success. I'm anxious because sometimes I genuinely don't know if I'm going to blurt out an obviously inappropriate epithet. That has nothing to do with the anxiety that makes you question every single social interaction you have and measure it against whether you should bother to continue to exist.

So then maybe I can finally offer my speculation on the ways and why's these pervasive and debilitating emotional states exist, and if any of them ring true, it could click with that one person who doesn't think I'm ridiculing them, calling them a liar, trying to undermine what they feel or have been through, or think I'm offering some definitive answer to what seems like some kind of evolving social virus only the blissfully naïve seem to be able to avoid.

Let's start wide then move specific. Overall, I think there's a huge familial and social institutional problem. I think modern conceptions or aftermaths of families left a lot of scars on people from my experience. I'm sure they only learned how to scar their children from the ways their parents scarred them. They of course were hurt by a turtle, and then it's turtles all the way down. There are cliches about not ending up like parents abound and who can't find a movie where someone is “shocked” they just did exactly what they swore would never happen to them. I took divorce as an opportunity for two Christmases. I've had people explain to me they'll never believe in love after their parents split.

Clearly, “looking back” and only feeling the pain of the relationships that have gone bad in your developmental years might be a predictor for how and whether you are close to people in the future.

I think we fail dramatically in the social institutional realm as well. I can't go a day without hearing what the “right” or “best” kind of ANYTHING to do or buy is. This goes doubly for relationships. The perfect boy or girlfriend does this for you, buys that for you, feels only these things and despite all odds love will conquer all. Also, before you get to deal with your relationship, you have to look a certain way, feel a certain way, be into the cool new things of the day, and sit at the bar society has raised for you. Every corner is a chance to not be good enough, smart enough, or acne-free enough.

I don't think it's a very conscious thing, but by the rule of “practice makes permanent,” I have to think reinforcing shitty ideas about yourself or the world you live in doesn't beget positive feelings or insight into wellness. But that's the thing, it's always reinforced. Your friends will tell you you're doing well because they don't “feel they have the right” to speak about something “they don't know enough about.” Yes, things like a shitty relationship. But who told you that friends can't “obtain rights to more information about people willing to share with you?” It took years of my “prying” into peoples' lives before I just became “that guy” and people opened up presumably because I didn't shatter the world with their information.

So fuck our shitty families and fuck the people telling us things with their fucking agendas and consequence blindness. Great.

Another wide view institutional failure is how we react when we clearly recognize things are wrong. Just take meds! Of course in the modern age you can play with your brain chemicals and all will be well in a few weeks. Just keep taking your meds of course, or we might have to face the real significance and nature of the problem. For those who can't or won't take meds, I don't blame you, there's your not-a-doctor friends doing everything they can to remind you of why you should be happy or not anxious. Or worse, they don't believe there's even a problem and carry on like it's a phase or like a bad cough. And what is the afflicted person do then? I bet they don't feel motivated to “bring down their friends” with their problems.

Some people can talk things out. Some people can run for miles and find clarity or at least distraction. Sometimes the medicine actually works. None of these kinds of “solutions” explain or speak to why so many suffer to begin with.

As always, the best I can do with my opinionated, angry toned rants is try to start a conversation. I need as many inputs, as are relevant, to paint a picture that hopefully people can learn from. When I look at the angry or immature things I've written, I still think there's no substitute for just laying it all out there. You don't want citations and rationality when you're explaining how shitty the fights are with your ex-girlfriend, but if you describe the situation in the same words years later, you might not have learned anything. When peoples' pain is expressed today, it's glamorized and commercialized; equated with an exhaustive list of pseudo-real problems. You're expected to “frame” yourself. Make what you feel and do presentable. Ludicrous.

When you get specific, you've got every variation of the big problems as you have personalities. The happiest and saddest person you know could be the same person. People who are merely stressed or going through a tough time hijack the language and blur the lines between “sometimes I want to die” and “all the time, sometimes I want to die.” Sometimes you just really like to smoke weed, sometimes you don't know how you'd function “dealing with it all” without it. I wish I could recite the laundry list of things I've known people to self-medicate with, but I imagine you have a fair idea already. Can you blame them? When and why is it worth bumping the pot-head up to problem smoker?

For me, I just see them as bandages. But who's cursing a bandage for not giving the body a chance to fix itself? I certainly can't pretend to know someone else's mind, but if my concern was for more than myself, I'd want to talk about the big problems and whether there's potential for big solutions, not just go numb to it all. No, I am not trying to equate depression or anxiety medication with drugs. Nor do I necessarily expect people to look beyond themselves if what they're suffering from makes them unable to do so. I just want to separate lazy entitled bitching and indulgence from genuine pain.

And, as always, for me the best thing to counteract the waves of self-loathing and drama is to get out in front of it all. I still don't know if it doesn't work for other people because of different personality types or for lack of effort. Before I get too involved in hating or criticizing myself, it just seems easier and worthwhile to point the finger at as many obvious targets or responsible parties as possible. But mostly, I don't want you to suffer. I don't want you to feel like there's no one to talk to or no one willing to spend the time. While I'm not in your head, here's me prying open mine, take anything you like.

[333] Fools Rush In

I want to run with a more positive idea. I often refer to how people behave and what they engage in as circle-jerking. Their avoidance of fact and reality perpetuating a mental stability and happiness that throws caution to the wind and whose goal is the bad kind of selfish. Surely, from a big picture, this is all we can expect as there is no grand determined right and wrong and the idea of “holding on for dear life” is as effective as anything else. I want this to stop ringing as such a bad thing for me.

I don't so much have a problem with what people do. I don't care if you are the best heart surgeon or video game developer. I find an “equal” kind of happiness in thinking I can get my heart repaired as enjoyment from a compelling story. I would take this a step further and say that maybe finding any form of artistic expression, specialized hard fought experience that gives you a rare and valuable opinion, is one of the noblest forms of purpose.

What's really bugged me is the lack of consciousness and awareness. When you say something without the opposite of, or what would make it wrong, ringing in your mind at the same time. When you pursue things “because.” When you judge and blame, and feel everything while forgetting your responsibility or role.

It speaks to my personality. Why do I keep making the same kinds of jokes with the same “inappropriate” themes? If it gets a rise out of you, you may not be aware of the role it plays in your life. If you feel bad before you wonder why I said something, it's an opportunity. You can either learn something about me, or yourself in the context of me, or I can learn I don't necessarily want to be around you. Win win. But even when it's just delving into a person's life, it's the same search.

I don't have something deeply invested in anyone else's relationships. Maybe I want to fuck around with your girlfriend, but that plays significantly less a role in how I talk to them or what about than you'd care to believe. And don't let me pigeon hole the word relationships because I mean it to be about any and every one you choose to have. Sometimes it's a happy accident that you had the best parents or grew up with the best friend. But it doesn't have to be that way and I think it's downright destructive when you try to force something to work beyond all evidence to the contrary.

It's never been enough for me to “just do it.” I can't just have a girlfriend or just get a degree, or just own a business. It's genuinely more satisfying to rot if I don't understand my motivation. I don't quite understand the point is all. I don't understand getting invested if you don't believe in something and if you're going to believe in something, you damn well better make sure you know why. “Why” is the privilege. Why is the only thing we do that nothing else does, as far as we know. Knowing why seems to hold a special kind of dignity. This would explain why so many people claim they really do in fact know why!

You can set yourself up to do better. Musicians who just pump out albums because they can or there is some unreasonable expectation from their label surely feel the criticism from betrayed fans. Look at a Youtube channel that was brilliant in it's first 100 episodes when the 16 year old had nothing but time and creativity until they got a sponsor and had a quota. When you know why you're doing it, you know why or when you should stop. The example you leave won't be a brand, it will be your intention. You can say “because I'm an entertainer” not “because I had no choice.”

“Why” opens up the world of choice. It makes you contemplate any moment. It makes you constantly have to justify and reinforce that what you're doing is in line with who you are or how you actually think. It can obviously be a paralyzing force as well, which may not be a bad thing. Maybe you do more than hesitate to do something stupid and just decide to appreciate why you shouldn't do it. Or, of course, knowing explicitly why you did something stupid is just as satisfying.

I think a lot of people don't like the word or find an easy way to answer it because they constantly arrive at “I don't know.” As if that's a terrible thing. To not know something and at least be aware of that fact is better than charging head first into the darkness. It also can be a great place to start gathering more information so you can start knowing. I think the defensiveness kicks in about here. If you start to not really know why you believe in god, or love your partner, or pursued a career, BY GOD! WHAT ELSE DON'T YOU KNOW!? It's easy to claim something makes you happy when you haven't defined happiness or bother yourself with justifying that definition.

In this way I'm slightly worried about creativity and mass produced entertainment. I'd like to believe that you had to be “good” to start garnering an audience or leave a lasting impression. Anymore, as long as you can be talked about, it seems to suffice. You don't have the new take, the fresh look, the next big thing, or even make a fair point. Things just are or aren't “marketable.” They mesh well with this eras buzzwords. They have a look that resembles that big thing, oh you know from a month ago, but with bigger tits.

I think the more whys you answer, the more you can flesh out your personality. You can do more things that speak to your subconscious, your feels as translated through your thoughts. One of the ways I avoid staying in a perpetual state of distress and hatred is to remind myself of how little I yet know. That's frustrating in and of itself for sure, but as much as I'd love to point a million fingers, I always sink back into my gut knowing it's not the whole story. And if I can't know the whole story, what theme should it carry that makes it one worth learning from or telling?

And it's this “Human Story” that I want to contribute towards and have people take away from. I'd love to inflate the theme with air only I can blow. If I'm even remotely different, let alone different in an “important” way, whether you catch one thing I do or read everything I've ever done, I'm nothing if I'm not speaking towards why. If I'm a process it's a fools game to consider yourself with the beginning and end. I'd rather be an example than left up to interpretation. Spilling paint on a canvas isn't art. I would hope that why they did it was compelling.

[332] Cynics, Save The World

There’s utility in being a cynic. You don’t have to waste time playing pretend with the other children. When you’re government is fucked, it’s easy to recognize that it’s not in fact a democracy and there is little hope. When you see how we handle foreign relationships, you don’t have to guess that the impacts will be many and lingering. Before we get too far, it may help to have George Carlin in your head as much of this is written after a morning spent contemplating his prescriptions.

There is little I disagree with when it comes to Carlin. I don’t think we’re going to last. I think we’re addicted to things we don’t need that don’t work and don’t matter. I think this is a circus where the “happiest” amongst us look on in sheer wonder and awe at the kind of display you couldn’t ask for if you tried. He observes and reports, much of his act is memorization feats essentially word for word the astounding dialogue of our times. I think we’re infinitely selfish, in the bad way, and it’s all about squeezing whatever little satisfaction we can out of everything and everyone, consequences be damned. I think it’s every bit as bad as he states if not worse and we are in the throes of our inevitable demise.

Yet, I’m unable to detach. Maybe it’s because of my age or my wide-eyed naïve ideals. Maybe my definition of “hope” is so small and penetrated that a goal becomes so modest it’s barely a goal worth having. Sure, I want to let go and ride it out and watch, but I think in particular with me, it would have dramatically destructive consequences. Carlin can let go and feel like he needs to talk. I’d let go and start saying “I don’t see a reason not to.” But we’ve known for some time how and why I keep myself in check.

I want to believe there is a not so hidden genius in his method and advice to just detach. There’s still some level of irony in not caring about anything “but.” It’s a psychological necessity sometimes, sure, but it’s not the only, or necessarily the best means by which people are happy or found some level of contentedness. I think he knew that and that’s why he kept getting on stage. I also think he knows that when you reach rock bottom you start to figure things out in a different way. Whether you need to drop off and not care or vehemently disagree with him, you’re still going to end up in a more thoughtful and attentive place, exercising that brain he believed we’ve all taken for granted.

But let’s go back to being cynical. Only when you cut out the bullshit are you capable of identifying and addressing a situation for what it is. If you call it a problem, you’ll know better how to fix it. If you call it a shit show, you’ll know better where you want to sit. You’ll never catch me seriously wondering what a god thinks about my sex habits or the Reese’s I stole from Wal-Mart. I think you can easily assume that, but more-so, I’d be completely useless to you. I wouldn’t even accidentally come across something “new” or insightful or ever make an awesome metaphor again. You didn’t come here for bullshit…usually.

Because I haven’t just sat on my rose-colored glasses and effectively threw them into a wood chipper, I feel a sense of overall clarity even when attempting to explain my confusion. At the very least, I’m not making it up. I’m not sad or pissed off for no reason and likewise for when something feels genuinely hopeful. Carlin talked of a phrase “when you scratch a cynic you see a jaded idealist.” I think an intrinsic property of being an idealist is an inability to let go of the ideas you think will actually work. No real idealist gives up because they are painfully stuck with a brain full of ideals. It’s a burden and work. When it gets to be too much it seems to be a passive aggressive taking of the reigns to describe how you’re going to just sit back and watch it burn.

Carlin stated that he doesn’t even know if he’d be the same kind of person if he started his career today. With the kinds of technology and rapidly changing environment, who’s to say his perspective wouldn’t have been carried a little farther. When you saw something as a 20 year old in 1960 is not how I saw something as a 20 year old because I got to see what you saw when I was 15, plus 50 more examples and how and whether potential solutions played out all over the world. I can’t so easily set into “this is how it works” when I know how to change it and change it quickly.

I think it’s the cynic that knows how people think. They know what to say to make people think. They know what you feel when your thoughts take you places, and they know how you avoid them and what it would take to make you unable to avoid them. I think people recognize that they need to be saved and can’t do it themselves because they don’t have the correct language or attitude. They’re too stressed, they’re too afraid, they’re at the end of not just one horrible decision that has created a hole where adopting an “I don’t give a fuck” attitude isn’t enough. I think people say save me and the cynic says you aren’t worthy. You are the problem. You are what you’re afraid of. And who’s admitting that? Not without a smile and laugh, that is.

We will live and die by our superstitions, our allegiances to branding and the status quo. And we’ll do it slowly using soft language and remaining “decent enough” until our time runs out. This is convention and it’s why I hate convention. It’s why I’m always asking why and asking YOU why and wanting to know more. You may not care about the consequences or want the short term fix, but I’m compelled to call-out a junkie.

The nicest way I can put it is that I want the species to last for me and mine. It’s sheer ego. I want my kids happy and healthy. I want my friends recognized and admired for what they are. I want the big human middle finger staring in the empty abyss of space for as long as I can, and I want to know that it’s mine. As far as I know, I’m the only kind of thing on this planet that can appreciate what it’s flipping off. Anyone else along for the ride is just circumstance. “They” can’t be fixed, nor is “the world” broken. It’s every intention, good or bad, and if you want yours to last, that's what needs to be accounted for.