[358] Effective Text Message

If I can communicate the 20 different angles I’ve considered approaching this blog from in a meaningful way, hopefully it will serve to amplify the theme, which is in fact, communication.

Information is always being conveyed. No matter how much you’d maybe like to hit pause or hide away, your very status as a person is telling something to somebody. It’s not just that you talk, it’s how you talk, who to, and what about. No one cares that you have hair until it looks like you spent time making look nice or are relaying a message about just waking up. The trick seems to be creating your own message verses allowing people to hear only whatever it is they’re telling themselves about you.

I, rather frequently, state my goals. Whether it’s monetary achievement, personal gratification in different kinds of friendships, or forcefully asserting ideas about conversation and awareness of various things I consider problems, my agenda is rooted in more than leaving you with an impression that I may be a hippie because of my hair. And, while I don’t always act like it, this leaves me with a concern over how, if, and when I try to communicate something. The why is obvious, because in theory, if I’m effective, “things” will get “better.”

So I’m immediately drawn to people who I can talk to. People who don’t flinch at how I say something and actively pursue the reasons I said it. People who can step back and help prepare the word soup without threatening to drown me in it. People who aren’t afraid to put any and every idea they may hold dear on the table to be scrutinized. This fundamental principal, this habit, I think is a prerequisite to anything even resembling “progress.” Some might say it’s to be scientifically minded.

Well before you start to bother talking to other people, you need to be aware of what you’re telling yourself. How that dialogue gets started and the reasons you develop to preserve it can be vastly complicated. Even as someone who puts out what he thinks, generally sober minded and after much forethought, I can still find myself burdened by previous ideas, habits, or ruts that I dug myself in the past. I have to go back and read my own reasonable position to refute the craziness I’ve allowed my head to go in the moment. To change an automatic overtly compelling response like that is incredibly, if not impossibly hard.

So then my dialogue about that response has to change. I have to better identify which feelings or thoughts are worth reading into. I’m starting to play in that stupid emotional realm again now, so when I get jealous, am I really changing my ideas about sex overnight and looking to protect some societal notion of integrity about relationships? No, even if it seems like it would feel really good to fix the shitty feeling in the moment. It’s acknowledging, not irrationally capitulating. You don’t fix a car spinning out by frantically turning the wheel the opposite direction. It’s prompting me to think about where the butterflies are really hiding.

And it takes practice. A lot of all the time daily awareness to when you’re overselling yourself on a story. Doubt is an uncomfortable place until you realize the things you’re basically sure of came out of a healthy skepticism about them. Your reasons get stronger and can stand up to deeper scrutiny. Your goals get a little more polished. Your analogies become leaves on the wind; watch how they soar.

I understand that if it can go wrong in me, it can do the same in others. I will forever be embarrassed by my first violent blood bath stabs at writing or conveying a message. Naturally, if I conceive of most people as the incorrigible dramatic miscreants that I so glaringly resembled at sixteen, I understand why they might take my words, meticulously etched upon my family’s finest parchment, and want to light them on fire. Change is hard, but sometimes it’s only as hard as you’re willing to make it. Incorporating a new idea doesn’t always have to feel like life or death...of your personality, character, or credibility.

There is the context of your mind. The one ingrained in you by virtue of being human, the one bombarding you with advertising and social cues, and the one you cultivate with your inner dialogue. And they’re all competing. We’re still fight or flight mammals but with little reason to generally fear for our lives. We’re tapped into an infinitely growing list of “everything” with a point and click and are prompted to decide something about it all. This very independently of whether or not our opinion is needed or necessary. It can be more than a little distracting and destructive to try and build a mental or social framework to fall into while getting swallowed up by this hole. It’s like an animal that keeps growing more and more hair until you can’t cut enough to identify it’s a dog. Find your inner dog.

There is a social context. There are still plenty of terrified atheists and gay kids who don’t want to get the shit kicked out of them for swimming too hard against their family or society’s current. You wouldn’t consider it a good thing for them to, upon escaping that climate, retain ideas about their deserving of hell or them being evil and disgusting. But that happens, in less extreme, but just as compromising ways. I constantly poke at and speak against religiosity for this reason. The hair’s a knotted mess. Those tangled webs of arguments and empty definitions are where my concern for effective communication came from. And no, it’s never private or personal, you’re always saying something.

The fact this is a blog changes how I write. The fact that it’s geared towards people who (should) know a ton about me and might have been privy to a conversation or ten that provokes blogs slants the message. I think it’s important to know how to write cited detailed analyses rooted in history and evidence. I think it’s just as important to power through lines of reasoning, however potentially absurd, and find the true heart of how and why a message will resonate with you or how and why you’re going about explaining yours. If you’re not appreciative about the prospect of being wrong, when it’s the prerequisite for learning anything worth knowing, how do you respect yourself? How could I take pride in what I do, or call what I write work?

It’s lucky for me that the loudest messages are, not coincidentally, the easiest to hear. We all tend to react in predictably angry or fear based ways if our foundations are rocked. I know when you’re going to fuck the girl you shouldn’t to spite your ex. I know how you’re going to deflect or blame me for picking at your faith. I’d bet there’s an arsenal, conscious or unconscious, that you’d be dying to enlighten me about my ideas or behavior if I pursued something about you too aggressively. This, the glorious fight/flight entanglement both to fend off the present threat and then to flee, perhaps in breaking the relationship, so as to never have to deal with such an unpleasant line of thought again.

I say let them run. It simply communicates to me your hapless and likely hopeless, circumstantial existence. The mountains of ideas you move and impact you hope to have on the world will be helped by those left behind. All 5 of them.

[357] Balancing Act

This should be brief, I mean, I wrote the title before the blog.

I just finished an article about the "used-to-haves." The people who had a basic job and could pay the bills on time. This woman took vacations and got pedicures. Now she's living paycheck to paycheck and feeling the desperation of not knowing what the future holds. She says there are many like her and they won't forget. They'll use their education and ensure their kids understand that they're not meant to live like the poor. She calls what's happening not a recession, but a theft.

I wear a yin-yang symbol every day to beat into my head the idea of balance. Every time I want to cause a scene or go on some shitty rant about the things I hate, it helps to keep in mind that I'm doing it from a pimp ass computer. Likewise, when things look rosy and amazing, there's probably someone shitting in your cereal. As a result, when I hear her message, part of me thinks her and her kind had it coming.

There are any number of things you choose to be persistently willfully ignorant about under the guise of keeping it together. How many times did she ask herself what it meant, beyond making her bosses look good, for her to work at that company? Whether she rode the slow burn to poverty or it happened “all of a sudden” would depend on how thoughtful she was about the idea that getting fired happens. An unpaid mortgage is firstly unpaid and your middle schooler hasn't graduated college.

One of the first pieces of advice from SCORE, the old guys who've owned businesses in town and now disperse their wisdom for free, was to get a loan. They said “leverage” was the way to get open and start doing business. Until you're open, after all, you don't have much of a business. I decided to stop going to them for help. I want to be in control, balance my ability and effort against what I stand to make. You can't do that from a hole.

But that's something easy like finances. What happens when you dig yourself a psychological hole? What happens when you're stuck on a loop about “the American dream” or “the importance of a degree” and you fail to see the reality? I think that plays to why we don't see a huge revolution. I think people are trapped, concerned with how it should be with no attention or capacity to understand their role in it. I was told “get a degree” and heard instead “waste money,” “pursue a job structure you don't agree with,” “impress people who don't deserve it,” “consign yourself to the idea that this is the best way to learn.” Lucky for me, I appreciated what I was getting into and balanced it against what I got out of the house.

The reality as it seems to me is that much of what we engage in is done for arguably “no reason.” It's what was already there. It's something to presently focus on. You're actually trapped, or feel trapped, and what you're doing distracts you from that realization. It's killing time. It's framing a “respectable story” to tell your parents and friends. It quiets you with a false sense of predictability. Desperation claiming noble sacrifice. Complacence struggling daily to look like allegiance.

As a result, the consequences are taken for granted. We don't see people standing for much anymore so, holy shit! That's why no one is standing! Your cog self in the wheel of the machine didn't care what the machine was making. You simply had your place. And your place afforded you comforts and entitled you with an opinion on what to expect. How you spin or why you spin don't matter as long as you're spinning.

No one bothers to expect exactly the answer on the other end of the equation.

[356-3] Ding, Going Up

As with most things I write, there's ample opportunity to get more specific. This will likely make more sense as a third part to a trilogy in line with the last two things I've written.

The idea of having “no rules” in a relationship sounds retarded, at first. It comes from a point of shared selfishness. If you want the other person to do as they do and that's what you like about them, what's the point of undermining that by dictating what they should do? It seems unfair and petty. You can do a lot to suppress the feelings you have about their behavior, because after all, it's your problem as a result of your mutually agreed upon no-rules understanding. But, at that point, it's likely not healthy and not really what you had in mind when you said “no rules” in the first place.

At the intellectual level, everyone just “is.” There is no intrinsic specialness other than what you choose to feel about yourself and your happenstance existence. This isn't a very constructive or human place to come from if you seek to form social bonds or convey “real human messages.” And, arguably for most of my life, that's been perfectly fine for me. The handful of times I allowed “emotionality” to guide my rationale or actions, they went remarkably bad. And lest you think I only reference my small window, the reports from others are consistent, to one degree or another, with my experience. It's significantly easier to “trust” people to simply be their degree of cluster-fuckery, and navigate those waters as they rise and fall.

So you develop a language to accompany your behavior. I adopt a lot of terms revolving around coldness, distance, detachment, being mean, playing games, sociopathy, and brazen disregard for the emotional states of other people. It's a well-rehearsed, and constructive for my purposes, set of conditions you'd do well to understand what I mean when referencing them, if we're attempting to get along.

At the heart of it is a reflection of superficiality. It's the overt impression I've gotten from overwhelming examples of asking about and getting more than I bargained for. There's not been an experience where it's been worth “trusting” people or looking vulnerable. So why would I pretend I'm concerned with opportunities to engage in those behaviors? Why would I consider your emotional appeal? I can't argue from a position where things have gone well when these things were at play, so I'm intellectually locked out of the kind of conversation you might be trying to have. I, in times of emotionality, have been met with recurring themes of dismissive, taken for granted, or abusive responses; you eventually learn to find a way to “shut it off.”

Now, I still don't necessarily regard this as a bad thing. Lucky for me, I really like being “mean.” It's fun and fulfilling to explain things in terms or have an understanding of the world that either delights people in how dreadful it sounds, or turns them off so completely I learn quickly they aren't worth bothering with. Yes, while selfishness can evolve and mean many things, the bad kind doesn't go away completely. I'll take those opportunities to be personally gratified.

Here's where things get tricky. What happens when you're not super keen on being crazy selfish all the time? What happens when it's not about you it's about us? Emotions in and of themselves are not bad things, but I've thought for a considerable amount of time they should inform, not dictate, how you behave. So what happens when I don't want to play the cold manipulative game, and am being informed from the guy everyone forgot worked here, that something needs to change?

I certainly have a construct, a set of ideals or relative rule structure in which I conduct my affairs. It stands to reason that if they've served me well, rules in and of themselves are not a bad thing. Appreciating the rules is different than seeking to use them for control. And self-imposed rules hopefully come from a place of deep appreciation for why you conduct yourself a certain way. It's why I'd rather detach when I have too long periods of “fuck everything” verses continuing being around and making it people I like's problem.

Certainly the underpinning philosophy behind open relationship things is a sense that you have more to give, or recognize what others offer, on top of, or in conjunction with, what you have. It's greedy for the right reasons. Some people are just sluts, I truly empathize, and make it more about sex and “spreading the love” that way, but to me, that seems fundamentally hollow. Others have a deep pull towards different people or personalities and want to play those feelings out wherever they take them. And there's any number of degrees in between. Regardless of the motivation, you've missed the boat if you're not communicating what you feel and what you want. Hopefully, having that backed with an underlying trust. Expressing, not excusing.

And I think there's a shaky ground in that “between” realm that doesn't get enough acknowledgment. I think having built a pretty big network of “people I get along with to one degree or another” when something happens that seems to undermine what I thought that relationship looked like, it helps justify the lack of feeling or investment even further. Everyone seems to be out for “the idea of The One” and anything you had gets swept under the table because they found a proper title. It's humbling (is that how you spell humiliating?) how people you've spent nearly every day with for months can express how lonely they feel.

It should be clear by now that it's not “trust them to fuck up how you expect” or “communicate what you want them to hear.” I've, until relatively recently, found little to no inclination to do anything but those. I didn't know how to appreciate the kinds of places “emotional” people were in, in the same way. Or if I had, I didn't give it the weight required for a change in the decision making process.

It goes back to previous themes I've mentioned. What matters is your being intentioned. What's on your mind and why. What example you want to set and what kind of behavior you want to reward. Can you see, do you feel, the utility and perhaps meaning in actually trusting or actually communicating where you're coming from with someone else. Is there something about together that better informs you about being alone. I'm not using question marks because they feel more like directives.

I think having experienced a hint of how it can work has at least made me a tad more sympathetic. Ultimately, what gets you to the other side is being able to struggle through the words and feelings, hopefully with someone who doesn't betray your process. Who are you shoveling shit with when it inevitably hits the fan? When the pains of jealousy, doubt, or existential nihilism subside, did your mind go back to “I wish they were here lying next to me watching this movie.”

And it's not fair. That's almost exactly the point. Picking someone or adhering to new rules for someone else's sake is to prop up and celebrate that us example. Presumably, at least for me, because you advocate for what it means and feels like, and not so you can look down your nose or garner false pride in clinging to something that staves off crippling anxiety and loneliness. It should perhaps also not allow you to forget or ignore what else you have or want and why those still mean something to you.

If you're brave enough to talk yourself over a cliff, you'll be able to appreciate what survived after the landing.

This is part 3 of a series: Part 1 & Part 2

[355-2] Totes Jelly

I don't think I've devoted an entire blog to jealousy. I should get on that now.

With the foundation thoughts for ownership in place, jealousy seems to follow rather naturally. What is jealousy then? I can tell you the most recurring theme in talking with people about their relationships is some form of jealousy standing vigilant looking for any and all excuse to leap forth and take action. Whether it's your creepy boyfriend looking from across the room or your list of rules about who to text or hang out with, everyone seems to have some form of rules they want their partners to play by to help dignify the specialness of their relationship. No, they don't all have to take some creepy or overbearing form and there are plenty of people who find jealousy endearing, but I think there's a deeper story.

Now, turns out, I tend to think you have a hard time reaching a kind of “ground floor” of a personality or individual nature when you're adhering to rules. A Christian who is virtuous for fear of hell holds no more water for me than a faithful spouse who simply doesn't believe they know how to get away clean with cheating. You need to develop your own reasons. You need to actually feel the depths of your “soul” (icky word) and then start trying to honestly recount your experience. I think you should find the most ground in the idea of things changing, and then put yourself to task figuring out why.

So, as a rule in relationships, I don't deal with rules. No matter what my potential feelings on a matter may be, I let them happen, yet what makes the most sense to do is my decision. This allows jealousy to be kicked in the balls, in a sense. I think unlike sadness or anger, jealousy has a terribly “personal” character. You can externalize the others. I'm mad at you, I'm sad they died. Whatever you may be jealous of harps back inevitably to something about you. Given that I've lost practically all capacity to be insecure, let's see if I can describe what feels abstract.

I have a hard time describing how and why I feel jealous or when it kicks in. I've been jealous about damn near every person I've “hooked up with” as it's crassly understood when they get a boyfriend, for example. Why? Is it like an intrinsic man thing to fundamentally feel some kind of claim on women you fool around with? And, even if I make it “go away,” it usually has everything to do with the distance or the distractions of the present moment. In a sense, it's like there's always a lit candle. It may just have something to do with taboos and struggles people tend to have when it comes to that realm, and the idea that they decided to get with you, it's like, awesome no way!

The romantic in me, (right? It's struggling to work it's way back from the grave) likes to tell the story of the endless amounts of people I hate and find ugly as sin. The idea that there are even a handful of opportunities to find people who are mutually attractive and versed in interesting things to talk about is like a godsend. It would be quite a shame to think they would get with someone “lesser” or who would not sort of feel the same things about them if and when their situation changes. Like, I do a lot of work trying to figure out where I'm coming from, some lost boy pining for the pussy I find it hard to be compared to even figuratively.

I think there's a huge part of me that doesn't want to respect or acknowledge other peoples' feelings. Let me explain. For as emotionally retarded, quick to insecurity, anxious and fear laden declarations of “love” I've come across, I've all but lost my capacity to believe damn near anything people say about their relationships or where they're coming from. When someone “woos” one of my friends, I'm immediately defaulted into thinking “the worst.” And it's not just because I'm mean, it's because people are normal. People are polite. People want to believe. Even when they know they shouldn't.

And when I say the worst, I mean shitting on ideas I had about my friend. In that, “how the fuck could they not see this this and this” and I have to sort of choke down new little negotiations of how they're going to register in my life. I've seen friends go after other friends out of spite, and “win”. God could that be unpacked for days but this is no time for pointing fingers. I've seen a sense of pride across faces in recalling their “number.” And I've seen so many girls after years of finding typical guys start to develop a lot of demoralizing habits and ideas about what they want from their next partner. Certainly not in every realm, but in very important ways, whomever you're with, I shouldn't be able to say that I would be (am?) a better friend to you than they are a boyfriend.

I think it's partly a pretentious thing. I think that I hold myself and our relationship in such a high regard, that if I can't stomach the other peoples' personalities who you like, it's like an affront to what I thought existed between us. It's like, I'd rather be treated like a whore-ish dog than be persuaded that there's something more between the people I fool around with or call friends. And there's a world of confusion as to how I understand how you understand your relationship with someone else. Yes, I'm pretending it's even my business because I had some naïve thoughts about the level of involvement friends might offer their perspectives.

What's interesting, is that jealous feeling goes completely out the window when I like the guy. Or, perhaps better said, basically know where he's coming from. Granted, this is damn near impossible to understand about most people most of the time, so I'm always gonna be stuck making shitty comments from time to time. And it's not enough to simply say something like “well, he makes me happy.” Happy is a fickle and cruel joke played on relationships. Happiness is a trick. It's the easiest set of causes and effects. Identify things you like, do said things in varying intervals that provoke happiness. I want people in your lives that make you work, think, and you both come out disfigured with the battle wounds of being human, not “happy.” For my sake, if I may beg, please be specific.

I've always considered jealousy important for the amount of information it can prompt you to think about. It's why, while I'll always lament it, I won't let it dictate rules. I won't pretend I own anything, I won't pretend it's going to stop me from treating or caring to the degree I do. What I need to do is either figure out how to better respect where people are coming from when they engage with what I would consider, let's put it politely, hopeless-where-it-matters types. I know that it isn't fair to friends or even the ideas I have about them. It's my cut-and-dry attitude of how I engage with said hopeless types that bleeds over into undue expectations of friends.

I suppose I find others' sincerity shallow. If they manage to be sincere at all and aren't outright lying to get by or get what they want. I'm sure there is no intrinsic difference between me and anyone, hopeless or otherwise, that people are choosing to relate to. I think I just find more value and meaning in calling out all the ways it can be bullshit. I see a lot of emotional thieves looking for the language and the payout without the work. I hope to cast a giant shadow of doubt. It lets the people with real things shine.

This is part two of a series: Part 1 & Part 3

[354-1] By The Ones We Think We Love

I'd like to talk about the idea of ownership. It's embedded in our language and culture. Certainly one of the first things children learn how to say is “mine!” You have your family and I have mine. You have your things and your clothes and any number of ideas that are yours. You own them outright. Right?

A recurring theme in my childhood was hearing my crazy cunt of a mother say things like “you're my boys, I brought you in, I can take you out.” Now we also got read to us that book with the kid playing in front of a toilet that said “I'll love you forever, my baby you'll be,” so it was a mixed bag. But the ownership theme still carries. All this really did was confuse me growing up. I didn't really focus on what my identity was, I was just whatever emotional state I was put into. I'd argue I was, not with her intention as she's not that smart, conditioned to continually focus on me in relation to her. This opposed to what it meant to be the obnoxious little kid I was.

I think her sense of ownership over us made her feel a sense of power, as little else in her life she could control. My mom's fat. The handful of times she tried dieting, all I remember was the week it was a bad idea to steal a chip because she was actively counting them. When she gave up trying to control that, it was back to stealing chips without a slap or pissy mood the rest of the day. She worked for one of Chicago's top attorneys as a legal secretary for like 10 years and was dumped the second that attorney got appointed as a judge. She also grew up with a shitty abusive background if you're looking to sympathize because god is it easy for me to continue a shit stream and start losing the point.

She loved stuff. She had a closet the length of a wall too packed for the clothes to move and shoes along the bottom to match. If you didn't get her a diamond or Swarofsky crystal for Christmas or her birthday, she would find a way to be angry for weeks. To me, she built a little empire of things that she could reflect on and try to find value in. She had no control. She didn't even know how to begin defining or practicing control. So she added to her external environment and developed overbearing and borderline (ha) abusive relationships at home and with her friends.

Did not expect to run with that for so long, but it's so explicitly easy and spot on.

So think about what you think you own and why. All of your things, all of your friendships. Are they yours to even have? There's the idea that we allow ourselves things to the level at which we think we deserve. I think this can be illuminating when you reflect on your life. The types of personalities you contend with. The amount of stuff you've accumulated and why. What does it mean to you? What does it feel like to take on all that you've projected into something, or someone?

For an ego maniac, I've a hard time considering myself special. My cold analytic mind breaks myself down into the sum of it's part just as I do other people. My thoughts are an amalgam of the books and shows and music and interactions that I've had. All as particular as they are to any person, but cultivated within a set of boundaries. Often, my “novel take” is your ignorance of a previous influence. The only thing I have is my deliberate intention. Even if something accidental happens because of me or to me, I can't call it mine because I didn't even know it existed until it screwed something up.

So how much of what we own did we deliberately set out to? When did we want to feel that sense of power or pride and not just happen upon how good it can be when it falls in your lap? How hollow our achievements that fall like dominoes.

I love my stuff. I take as much joy out of using it and flaunting it as the next person. But it's stuff. It's stuff I can't make, barely understand, and if not for the utility, it'd be relegated to wherever pogs went. My ownership of said stuff is weak. It doesn't matter. It's a terrible measure by which to judge someone or metric by which to judge yourself. It's not that you own a guitar, it's how you play it.

But what about people? If someone tells you “I'm yours” what do you do? ” Is it the same thing as pursuing the person of your dreams and capturing their love? Is it a sense of pride, power or listless exhaustion that makes you throw yourself into someone else's arms and claim game over, you're theirs?

I wonder if the other person is even capable of taking “it.” Your love, your devotion and promises. I don't think it's their opportunity; it's not theirs to take. In a real sense, it doesn't exist for them. They feel what they believe about your love, not “your love.” It's not a thing. You have to be doing it for you, even if, if not especially because, they're the one in mind.

It's not that fateful moment you decided to declare your intention that sums up and rounds out the rest of your life. It's the moments every time you keep a promise. It's the ones you make every time you say that stupid word love. I don't know how to give myself or own someone else. All I know how to do is decide and spend my time. If I said marriage, if I said “I'm yours,” (as I've described it), or made a promise forever, it'd feel not just like I'm lying, but lying without purpose, for the sake of it.

You're not my friends. We share perspectives and ideas and I'm lucky to have found you. Kristen isn't my girl, she's simply who I'm going to pick over you. It isn't my family (not everyone, obviously) that I'm ashamed to look at, it's a crowd of people I spend next to no time around, circumstantially sharing some genes.

Of course it could be argued I'm flatly ignorant of the emotional heights and interpersonal achievements of you “normals” and it's all a very simple equation involving birds and bees.

This is part one of a series: Part 2 & Part 3

[353] Not An Optimist

What's your impression of our [US] country? I ask in earnest because I'm about to offer mine. This will be heavily characterized by my thoughts after watching “Inequality For All” by Robert Reich.

If you want a history lesson of inequality, this is a movie for you. You will learn how and when wages stagnate. You will see parallels from the 1930s to what's happening now. You will get every number your heart could ever want regarding GDP or value. What you won't get is really anything to do about it. This is unfortunate because Reich knows his shit, is data backed, but most importantly, he's in the minority of anyone who seems capable of fixing things.

This doesn't mean he doesn't know how. Many people know how and I'd argue that he's one of them. But his method isn't rooted in what appears to be the actual state. His version for fixing things is to rise up and realize that we make the laws. We create the government that structures how free enterprise works. If we would only take it upon ourselves and remain optimistic, because history is on our side, things will eventually play out for the better.

For my part, I'm in no way an optimist. I don't acknowledge that we have a real government. I don't know how you can have a Supreme Court with justices that rub elbows with the Koch brothers. I don't know how money or corporations are people or can speak. Gerrymandering exists. Lobbying exists to the tune of investing 150 million to make 1.2 trillion the next year. We can't change the laws because we literally don't have people who speak for us. The best we are is an angry mob in the streets.

I really want to drive home how unhappy I am that the “optimist” attitude seemed to be a selling point from the film. Reich travels the country listening to peoples' stories of hardship. Working 2 and 3 jobs to pay the rent and barely feed the kids. People shacking up with friends or back home. He knows that technology and cheap labor over seas means that there is no new jobs just waiting over the horizon. These people have ideas about starting families or one day finding a better job to maybe afford a house or better car. These people should be rioting in the streets. Optimism in this context only serves to slow things down.

India and China are emerging markets. Both have a massive amount of people that want the same crap Americans want. Do you think companies care about getting you a job so you can afford their crap when several billion people are hitting the scene becoming engineers and doctors so they can live up to the example we set? Things will not get better here. Legislation is dead because it's bought and paid for. Unless you find a way to subvert the current paradigm, you're absolutely stuck suffering it.

His point about history being on our side strikes another kind of chord. My perspective of history shows that there's very human things that go wrong at any time well before we decide to be responsible about the free market. Not to mention, in a global economy, we're still contending and negotiating with plenty of areas of the world who don't think as “progressively” as we pretend we do. If anything, history is teaching us that no matter how angry a group of people gets and does something to reform, with enough time, money, and influence, the rich will get their way eventually anyway, as if they weren't all along.

To me, we ignore an overall philosophy. We don't appreciate that greed, is in fact, bad. People are fundamentally selfish. Even if it's private and they don't try to justify it with bastardized interpretations of social Darwinism and Ayn Rand. When you stop talking about human capital and consider yourself to be wealthy because of your manipulation of law and percentages of pensions, things go to shit. I don't know why we pretend that this is not what's happening. I don't know how people forgot to be human. I know the internet is distracting and poverty in this country looks different than in others. But why did we volunteer to be so stupid about it?

Reich's movie isn't going to do anything more or less than a Michael Moore one. A few people will learn a little more about how we're getting royally fucked, but it's not prescriptive. It doesn't identify bad guys because it doesn't believe there really are any. It's just “capitalism's” fault. It's our fault because we haven't crafted the correct amount of laws. We're talking about the Secretary of Labor under Clinton with all his information and influence and practically zero ability after 30 years of the same mantra able to shift the underlying tide. So what, we put one person like him in Congress and cross our fingers?

I look at all of my broke friends and their debt. I look at the ones who even with jobs are making what a teenager at a shit job would make even if they got “specialized” training. How many of you are just around the corner from a white picket fence and a kid? I look at the laws that have track records of keeping the country perpetually screwed over many years. I look at the smart people who aren't doing it any better than the next smart person.

This is why I think we're fucked. Just because your county or town does something a little different or manages to find a small piece of pie does not mean anything about the overall system. It doesn't mean people are smart enough nor inclined to figure out how to call out the real people making real decisions that take real food out of their mouths and really cause a lot of harm.

I live in the now generation. I don't even want to talk about things like gay rights or abortion because it's tantamount to discussing the merits of slavery. We shouldn't have let them go. I don't need pundits telling me tired, broke, and word for word arguments from 30 years ago that don't work. I think fuck them, stop giving them a voice, fix it and move on. Just “be happy” and wait for history to take over doesn't work for me.

And fuck pretending that everyone's an innocent bystander. You can listen to Jaime Diamond explain that Wall Street is STILL doing the same things that crashed the economy in 2008 today, in front of Congress, and nothing gets done. He gets to stay rich and his bank lives and we'll be the ones living the consequences of it for, if we're lucky, just under the majority of our lives.

Finally, economists have this habit of talking about growth. We need growth. We need people to buy buy buy. If we don't the economy slows down, people don't buy, we don't have taxes, we don't invest in infrastructure, everything starts to go to shit because it's broken and people are dumber. Granted, this is how it's worked since the 70s, but I think it's because people haven't figured out how to subvert power. When I hear growth, I hear pollution. When I hear buy, I think back to when I learned that the idea of an identity being wrapped up in what you buy being crafted by companies back in the 50s. I think of mental health and priorities when you attempt to “Americanize” billions of new people to repeat the process.

Maybe we look at what it could be like if we pulled out. Maybe we create things independent of shitty decision making from rich assholes who deny you the right to be educated, healthy, or even basically functioning. They only win that game if you allow yourself to play it.

I'm not happy nor optimistic because I don't know anyone who really experiences what we have in this country who is. Maybe I should just get more rich friends?

[352] Two By Two, Hands Of Blue

You know, I like the idea of picking someone. I hate marriage, and I barely grasp what it is most people try to sell me is their relationship. But to me, picking someone has little to do with either of you, and everything to do with intention. Intention is what matters. When you give a shit is when you see shit manifest.

Like, even if she's not happy about it or ditches my ass down the line, I've picked Kristen (okay she picked me first). Like, you either do or don't know our dynamic and it really doesn't concern me to detail it, but if she decides to kick my ass down the curb later, I'll have been ever goddamn lucky to have even known her. She needs lunch dropped off, duh, I'm your man type shit. Date to the prom? Don't look to the stars because I'm already there.

I think that when it comes to having good parents, in an obviously non romantic kind of way, this is how you “should” feel towards your kids. Yes, even if you don't. You fucked, they're yours, grow the fuck up. I know what it is to have someone at my back, I think you're insanely lucky to have one, let alone more than one person there for you. I never understand parents who find it in themselves to burden their kids with issues they clearly don't even want to resolve. Adjust your fucking focus and be amazed at what falls in line.

I think this is how we should all kind of feel, kind of desperately, about all the people in our lives. I think initially this sounds a tad dramatic. I also think you don't begin to understand the word “appreciate” until you give people special status.

I wish I understood the heart of it, but I don't think I deserve my friends. Part of being “Nick P.” is having learned long ago what it is to feel by yourself and figuring things out that, at the very least, make sense to you. My friends are nice. My friends care. My friends, when they're sarcastic or dicks are still not “mother fucked the fuck up” when it comes to relating to life or other people. I understand there are plenty of solipsistic depressed people who feel the world will never understand them. This is not what I'm after.

My problem comes from understanding. Maybe you've been around when the guys in our group beat our chests and talk about what would happen in a fight scenario. We list our weights and heights and what we may have encountered in the past. To me, none of it really has ever spoken to the point. I would love to beat the ever loving shit out of someone. I would love to scare the people around me. I would bask in the glory of making a moment be one you never forgot about how you should never fuck with a person capable of doing such things. I'm not a tough guy. I'm not a brawler. I just get unduly excited about the opportunity to hurt someone in a way that sends a real message, albeit “justifiably.”

This is one of those aspects of my personality I contend with when I think about the nature of my friendships. I know I went to school with, and rolled with, the type people quite prepared to stab a mother fucker in a dire situation. I'm still not quite convinced it's the same thing.

But enough about my fantasies. Let's talk more about the people who consider me utterly retarded in regarding them in such high esteem.

It's a relative trend for my friends to experience any number of pretty fucked up conditions. I'd need more than one hand to count the number who've been raped or sexually abused. “Fill-in-the-blank” disorder spans across a few boards. Whether people need medication or therapy or are still in need of medication and therapy...I seemingly have a habit of finding people not like me.

And it's fucked because I wish they felt about themselves like I do about them. And they can't. Or if they do, it takes years and years of therapy. Like, I consider myself a particular kind of fucked up, that's fine. I don't want to kill myself. I haven't been fucked with by some adult when I was a kid. I don't want to puke or cut or really anything that would inhibit my general enjoyment of the generally shit circumstances we've been given. And how I may give a shit does nothing to override or contextualize where we're at now. It's stuck. It's stuck-ly selfish. I have no idea how to change it.

Or maybe I do.

When you pick. When you give yourself a chance to give a fuck about one other person, that's half the battle, just by sheer fact of population numbers. You only need half of all people to decide there's one person they're going to go out on a limb for. For arguments sake, everyone you could ever give a shit about, you'd theoretically go to the ends of the earth for. Let's forgo the idea we're buddy buddy Nazis in this thought experiment. Maybe you're huddled in a bunker or managed to be the last few people on the planet. But good people are good people, and circumstance provided you an opportunity and the path tends to look pretty clear.

And I think it's much about those “unsaid” rules. Like, no one has to sit me down and tell me to bring Kristen lunch. Even when she's pissed off at me or says not to come, she's wrong and I'm bringing her food. That's all you need, very regardless of a label. That's not marriage. That's not mutual fears of loneliness. That's wanting to feed someone you give a shit about.

Because all I have are my actions and time, I hold them in the highest regard. I may lead with “I'm bored” but it's way more “I want to be around you verses something else.” I hate to believe it about myself, but I know how to not know anybody. I'm not afraid of disappearing. I know to make “friends” if I need them. I know how to play along. My most meager friendship will speak more to the potential and future I see than any empty professions of “tell me how you've been” between the times we've seen each other. And this is only because I see you as quite independent and “legit as fuck” regardless of whether or not I check the fuck in on you.

So yeah, I don't deserve you and am always looking for the moment it all goes to shit and we stop being cool. It's not you, it's me. At least you got another glimmer of my perspective before we maybe never talk again.