[544] Earth Wars & Tie-Fighting

Other than being dramatically angry or drunk, a prevailing motivation to write is the attempt to tie together absolutely random ideas that pulse away and refuse to dissipate. I consider it my subconscious trying to breakthrough, but it's only learned to use the language of complete words very recently. Much as a mother might be able to know her child wants to eat from a “bah” or “umm” that signifies its favorite food, the relationship I've developed with the back of my head is always attempting to understand and care for the baby poised to scream or cry at any time.

Let's lay out the random thoughts. I'm struck by how many people want to dress as stormtroopers. I'm bothered by the idea that someone would think I believe I'm a “secret misunderstood genius.” A further sentiment from that douchebag was that “everyone in my life views me as toxic.” I saw a tattoo that said “forever” that was 1/3 on its way to fading out. My precisely sharpened and longer nails make me think my right hand is a girl. I caught an article headline that said “80% of millenials think of themselves as leaders.” I'm at the front door of being genuinely concerned that I don't believe in anything.

Challenge accepted. The tattoo seems the easiest. Of course it was written on a white trash hand attached to a white trash dude standing in a McDonalds line. If there's any group more in need of the idea of consistent belief in something, it's the bad-tattooed financially insecure ya'll crowd. The fair amount of low income apartment complexes I've lived in or next to somehow have the theme of yelling at each other all night with kids who don't have school in the morning. The crowd with several hundred pictures of their babies or dozens of status updates about how their boyfriend is the most special in the world. General lack of class and tact. Not even managing the high-brow nature of this paragraph.

What to make of “forever?” It's a cause for insanity, provided it's coupled with consciousness. I'm managing to drive myself crazy just reading into peoples' motivations or lack thereof; trying to conceptualize my place among the herd. Is it because I wasn't raised to be a stormtrooper? Mind you, these people don't even dress up as the special red or black ones. They just want to be the light-saber fodder with a few lines. I go into movies reflexively comparing myself to the main characters. In the human storyline, will there be more references and deference paid to the stormtrooper than Luke Skywalker? If conventions and Halloween have anything to say about it.

I recall going on a quest to find a Rey action figure because I thought she was pretty badass. I think it's only a positive thing to move depictions of heroes into the realms of the underrepresented. But again, what if every stormtrooper was a woman? People would be upset that the girl wasn't the hero nonetheless. We have an inclination to root for and popularize heroes, who even all together across all Star Wars tales and games would never be able to build or maintain the collective power behind the Death Star. I suppose it's fitting for me to see myself in Rey given my slow transition into a girl that's started with my right hand.

You might be unaware, I've grown out my nails to play classical guitar. Even being on my own hand I can't help but think of femininity when I look down or see how I have to adjust in using my phone. When I hear the tap on the screen or how long it took me to get used to typing. I then started to think about other ways in which I might be turning into a girl. I started insidiously, considering games of emotional manipulation. I can recognize when someone likes me, but could I turn it into gifts and attention? Even if I tend to believe in myself, it's not really my game to do that. The gifts part at least, because I think I'm extremely girl-ish, as it's depicted classically, in trying to gain attention.

The problem is that I go about that attention in conflicting ways. I talk loud. I write introverted thoughts in explicitly extroverted ways. My hair is a little too on the nose. I'll stay exceedingly quiet during studies and garner the kind of attention that has people feeling insecure about me thinking I'm better than them. One wonders if they'd feel worse knowing I don't really think of them at all, let alone feel the urge to make a comparison. I'm catty like a fierce bitch. I seem to only ever really get along with older women as well. They're the ones who like my comments on political articles. They're the ones I can sit around the table at a wedding with. They're the ones flagrant about their opinions and flirtations as I am a few too many shots in. I just get to act out with this big dumb boy body and they get the freedom of being society's “invisibles” because they're no longer considered a sex object. I'm not saying our stations in life are fair, just worth considering in making comparisons.

Do people regard the old wise-ass lady laughing too hard as “toxic?” Hardly. She's a gas! She's a loveable Golden Girl who we want to see get away with a certain kind of verbal murder so we can aspire to that level of honesty and laughter when we're on the verge of dying. Maybe I've skipped the line? Is the wisdom from grandma “misunderstood” or a particular kind of sage “genius?” It seems to me it's usually bred from simple experience. Trying a hundred things, watch 99 fail, figure out you're still alive and remember what kept you that way. You get too tired of being stressed out so you make the jokes. You see what keeping up the facade did to your happiness and relationships, so you stop pulling punches. You feel yourself pulling up to the hard eternal stop sign, better lay on the gas.

I try to be unscientifically scientific about it though. If I had 1 text to go out and do something for every 100 I sent out, I'd be surprised. We can include facebook messages and things like “checking in” and whatnot. As a person who doesn't believe his own bullshit made up stories about what people do or don't think of him if he hasn't asked, I consider it more a story of our era's psychosis regarding what we're burdened by than some personal statement about me. As always, I wish it were about me because I'm an egomaniac, I know I barely register, so I seek an explanation for the external forces. And just to cover my ass, if it is about me, well, you only have yourselves to blame for not saying anything.

I adopt that burden of conceiving and re-conceiving of “friendship.” If I consider us close, it gets to me if I see the last date on our facebook chat was 2 months ago. 2 months is a considerable amount of time. Yet, it definitely doesn't feel that way if you're not really doing anything new nor expecting your experience to deviate from your current norm. Mind you, even with 59 friends, I still only manage to talk to a handful on any sort of quasi-regular basis, and those mostly include roommates, my dad, or people who comment on things. I didn't even opt to invite myself to hang out with a few this evening let alone drive out to a party a few hours away.

Those decisions weren't an accident though. Because merely claiming “friend” status via facebook or feeling “burdened” by lack of conversation or contact isn't really a root distinction. These are friends who instead of watching movies and crawling around their bowels, play a lot of video games. If I don't care about those games or know anything about their shared job life, we're not friends on the kind of page where we'd both get something out of me being there. The party is with people I work with and semi-regularly accost drunkenly via email when I think about all the work that has to be done to get my map in order. I don't know that I'd settle in nicely and “blow off steam” or carry on in polite conversation with strangers. The heart's gotta be in it.

Mine's just not. It's not that I don't believe in what I'm doing or don't see paths forward or anything resembling sad pathetic people who go broke between studies for ridiculous reasons. I just don't feel. The things I want or think I can achieve are still too far away. I can have little manic spurts. When I first got wind of the land I had a few solid hours of heart racing and excited talking, but even that could have closely resembled anxiety worried something would go wrong and I wouldn't be able to get it. This map, having something tangible to play with, and seeing the thoughts that arise as I put in different kinds of articles, has me seeing a price tag more than revolution. I see my vanity in wanting to be extremely capable of forming arguments and knowing details in a way generally reserved for geniuses and the autistic.

Because, who am I kidding? If you don't have the time to read, what good is me organizing for you all that you never could access anyway? If you're like my friend I argued with the other day and think “entitlements” is an adequate catch-all phrase for a lazy argument regarding how we reduce the federal government, when have you ever given a shit about the historical shifts in party platforms that fed your parents ignorant dialogue they've passed down to you that serves no function but to obscure and impede progress? People talk about the partisan divide. It's a language divide. It's a priorities divide. It's the obnoxious and lazy against the obnoxious and motivated. Because they can cultivate self-satisfied ever-confirming windows into the world via the internet, your tool can't get through. It's the impartial flow of power's realm now, egged on at all levels of violence.

Do I think I'm a genius? Not even remotely. Misunderstood? Basically every minute of my life. Because when I get the chance to explain myself, people seem to be on board. When I give them the tools to act like me, or give them the positive and reassuring attitude, they eagerly adopt it. Were I not so keen to make debasing comments on my situation and the nature of my relationships, I could see a lot of people discovering the wisdom in devoting a large amount of time to the consumption and contemplation of media and the arts. But as it stands, it's me, and now Byron essentially, who are implicated in running the contrary game. It's great to have a partner finally, but 2 people does not a village make, yet.

Who do the stormtroopers follow, though? The one who can use the force. I'd bet the most reenacted scene that every stormtrooper engages in is being choked out by Darth Vader. He's there even when he's not. You stand at attention when he shows up, and it's his voice in your head about where to point your weapons. I've proclaimed my willingness to be the villain before, and in the real world where the lines about the dark and light aren't handed to you, I know I serve a greater purpose than to develop lightning fingers and blow up planets.

I don't even have to believe in my cause. I just have to embody the consequences of my dramatic betrayal filled life. I have to take my talents or understanding of the force and make them my own. Oh to be infamous, or an icon, and leave it at that. To finally be appropriated seems the highest form of flattery. If anyone seems to empathize or deeply understand then, well, good for them I guess. But the story of how I get anywhere or anything in life will have nothing to do with how I sell it, how you interpret it, or whether or not some lame qualifier applies to my position in the echelon. It'll be because that's what I picked, and I waited around for something that seemed appropriate to happen. The rest is a story of “uhhh” and “mmbrm” bubbling in the back of my head keeping me from looking respectable or productive. As if I've anything to live up to or could provide what isn't already available.

[543] Meandering Brain

I'm very “blah” and it's in between other “blahs” so I'm just doing that stroll through the blah of my existence and thoughts to hopefully discover something a little bit more than “blah.” I doubt it will be much worth reading.

I was once told that I was a self-actualized person. This was supposed to distinguish me from the people who harbor every downtrodden excuse to explain away their existence and lack of achievement. One of my go-to cliches is to say, if only eventually, I tend to get everything I've ever really wanted. I don't think this plays too closely to some idea of beging, borrowing, and stealing to do so, but I've been willing to to do 2 of those when desperation or boredom took hold.

Is it such a good thing to get everything you want? It's certainly not that I've never been denied. It seems like a question with at least 2 layers though. Say you want to “survive” so you'll figure out how to manage a paycheck and feed yourself. In that same spirit, say you're willing to work endless hours at any job to save and live cheap so you can afford some toy or vacation. It's the noble sacrificial level. Then there's the psychopathic sense. So cunning and premeditated, you'll negate all consequences in service to your acquisition. You leave people crippled and retain no excessive memory of them.

Try as I might, I still never manage to convince myself of “pure” socio or psychopathy. In fact, I pretty-well hate the words as I find them clunky, all-encompassing, and dismissive of the ever-evolving emotional capacity (or lack thereof) that works out in real-time how to account of personal, psychological, and social reasons for how to respond. What used to be “survival” looks “psychopathic” in a modern civilized society. Shutting off an emotional response to maintain sanity will register as plainly “sociopathic” as anything you couple with some harm it has done you.

In any event, I don't take my lack of “emotional cues” as necessarily insidious or problematic. I think about this when I hear someone's, generally bat shit, interpretation of my being. We all retain the capacity to be unrelenting monsters. It's simple decisions. In the name of decency, we choose what superficial lines we'd like to walk to maintain a particular aura. If yours wants to be a little whiter or shinier than mine, it doesn't grant you special powers nor a brilliant perspective that makes you correct in attempting to assess me. I can barely assess me, but I'm probably not a simple-minded asshole who just loves to cuss real loud.

“Self-actualizing,” if I am indeed such a person, seems to be always in process. I wanted land, so I acquired it. Every study I did was in service to the longer goal and game. I don't want to do studies. I don't want a normal job. I don't even necessarily want to spend most of my time in cousin-fuck Indiana regardless of the comforts and freedoms it will afford me. I always preface it with “unfortunately,” but my goal still resolves to a communal identity. One way or another I'll need to figure out how to keep myself surround by friends. It remains a very selfish goal for those who think I'm being sentimental.

It seems a very loud idea to me that people like to be told what to do. They like it especially when what they're told to do doesn't interfere with what they think they want to be doing. You won't get the stone-cold sober person to drink who's still reeling from the emotional trauma of their alcoholic parent. You will get the shy person absolutely obliterated and making out with the cute person they saw across the room. I apply this metric to more important things. It's very Field of Dreams; if I build it, they will come. If I create an oasis in cousin-fuck Indiana even I want to live in, your excuses will diminish. If I reduce my bills to a few hundred dollars a year while I dick around experimenting with business ideas, the door will remain open for you to work along side me.

I feel I have to consider these things in a more concrete fashion now that I've found this land. I'm a restless person. I have to even accomplish stupid things like watching movies and TV shows because cheering for hours over the Cubs I find mind-numbingly boring. But soon, I'll be digging and building. I've already watched a movie on laying concrete foundations and have started compiling numbers for farmers who have equipment I've never heard of that helps them maintain that much space. By July I hope to be out of here, alternate work days with study stays until I can discover something to profit from that doesn't rely on confinement.

What if this time next year I not only have a solidly lived in place, a budding green real estate venture, a workshop, a brewery, and enviable vertical hydroponic garden/greenhouse? What if I start sowing the seeds for several potential income streams? I imagine my days will still look a lot like they do now, I'll just be dicking around with those things with a movie in the background. Less we forget about the map. How long do you think it really takes to compile the information I'm after? Even Adam Ruins Everything spoke to how hard it is to learn anything about local politics just by simply going to Google. I'd put money on the idea someone is out there creating a quasi-parallel system as to the one I want. It speaks to something I read about once in undermining the “revolutionary idea” idea. Things arise around the same times in different spots and then forces take over that turns one popular and kills the rest.

Switching gears a bit. I feel myself growing resolved to superficiality. I haven't been moved to really contact or talk to anyone. Each time I start reflecting on parts of my life I considered pretty good or what I'd want, I'm reminded they were built on lies. I figure it's my responsibility to keep carrying the torch for meager and over-burdened truth, even if it's the one that keeps putting distance between me and you. I'm not particularly convinced you much care either way.

Part of me has flirted hard enough with the idea of just sitting pretty. I don't have to sign myself up for the work it'll take to develop the land. I could just forfeit the earnest-money and barely feel a pinch. I could not just massively overpay to see Green Day, but do so in Italy. I could buy a new car or develop a sense of style. There's just that nagging fact that those things aren't the goal. I'd have them already if it was, as that shit is easy. It's just stuff. Tickets and bills. I've spent the last couple years washing myself of any former go-getter creative glory so I could cope with study life and basement dwelling. I need to learn, create, and build. I need to force a ridiculous heart-racing smile to my face as people cock their head and think, “Wait, what are you doing?” I'm way more obnoxious and motivated than anything I've done in recent memory can attest to. I miss me.

Just the idea that so much of it is still predicated on staying healthy and getting into well-timed studies is annoying. That's my paycheck to paycheck. My life still isn't belayed by collective ingenuity and resources, it's capitulating to for-profit medicine motives. I'm still a cog, one way or another. The one upside is, even if I never get into another study, now, worst case scenario in life, I have to learn how to camp, because even a McJob would still afford me my time, which is always in need of protecting.

Guess we'll just have to see how it all goes. I'll know what it feels like when the real goal has been achieved. It's this weird about-to-break-ground feeling that leaves me feeling “hopeful,” but I'm too old not to feel sober about the process. And even when I find the people to start playing along, they're going to find a way to fuck it all up anyway lol. Oh well.

[542] Accountability

Every second writing this will be a waste of time and effort. This exists because we can't escape our pasts. If you choose to read it, it will be because you sought it out, as it's not getting shared with anyone who didn't ask for it. I have so many words it leaves me struggling to breathe normally, thus, a measured pedantic screed will suffice as a kind of metaphor.

I don't believe you're the worst thing you've ever said or done. I'm very much of the mindset of the Norwegian countries where, even their worst offenders, the warden will tell them, "One day, you'll be my neighbor, I want to make sure I can create the conditions where we'll be able to exist together." As such, I've never put too much stock in dramatic situations. People get angry. People fight. People are bored. I've borrowed quotes from philosophers discussing man's propensity to be a general asshole for myriad reasons.

This provokes me to play a little fast and loose with what I often refer to as "pissing matches" online. Every once in a while you'll get some big gaming identity or subculture icon to post their 10 minutes discussing some complicated feud and claim to be the realest and most truthful in their accounting of who's getting fucked by who. Then, presumably, it disappears into the ashes of the internet and identities get to move on. If you're a public figure, you get to crafting, if you're some random handle, your comments and fights buried.

Well, that's what dogg724 is for me. The random handle in which I can say my first name, but keep from bringing other people's identities into things. (Note, there may be unlinked names next to comments from the old days of discussions on Myspace, but nothing that was private back then nor is less than what facebook allegedly requires of you today.) Now, when saying stupid things and getting into fights about who has better spelling, you just get to be idiot dogg724.

Things changed. A friend and I were googling ourselves to gauge our online presence. By chance, I come across a person I got into it with on reddit. They post a (not selectively edited, they swear!) description of their perspective regarding our interaction. Fair enough, I've got the copy/pasted conversation posted on reddit as well, you'll never guess, but they contrast. Well, more specifically, mine's copy and pasted from our reddit inboxes, his is skimming through 12 years of my public journaling to string together why I'm a nutcase.

Again, all well and good, except he decides that to protest actions he believes I took against him, he'd tie my name and location to it. Now I'm not dogg724, for better or worse, I'm a stupid pissing match and a handful of paragraphs where I use explicit or racist language. Wonderful.

I don't know how to escape. He's already prompted me to erase most of what I've posted to reddit because the messages and drama was getting too stupid. Now, he brags about keeping tabs on me, apparently worried I'm going to share his information? It's worth noting, I don't know who he is! A user who liked my shit, I suppose thinking they were coming to my defense, took his publicly shared picture and posted it. The ensuing shit-storm was comments on legality and suing and character defaming.

And it's not even "simply dumb."

It's dumb because two grown adults would spend so much time behaving that way. That part is simple. I have all the time in the world to dig my embarrassing regrettable holes. But then it's dumb for the reasons you hate to hear children fight. Who hit who first? Tommy did it! No it was Ashton! Either they have terrible memories, or self-interested liars behave predictably. For my part, given my propensity to share the potentially horrible and ridiculous things I've said from time to time, at the very least, I don't find uppity weirdos online something I'm moved to suppress.

The brunt of his contention seems to be that I was harassing him. In him trying to police my advice to someone about torrenting, and him not liking my rejection of his plea, he immediately went after my writing, maturity, etc. and at one point told me to delete my hard drives because he played golf with someone he was going to persuade to sue me...? He described a dinner party with his friends where they printed and acted out my blogs because they were so ridiculous! It's a terrible read, though regrettably I didn't save that part, but we go back and forth for some time about who should hang up the phone first. All the while, the word irony guts itself and desperately looks around for someone to understand it one last time.

When I try, I adopt something of a stoic philosophy. I assume he's as bad as my worst caricature of him. I assume one day I'll be in front of a judge reading back some terrible thing I've said and making the case that I'm more embarrassed and ashamed of the waste of time than words will ever express. Then I'll meet my bogyman and I'll finally know who to get the fuck away from if I ever have the displeasure of bumping into them in our small town.

This is such an old issue. It's that I just popped up on this page about me a few minutes ago and I might liken it to a form of exceedingly mild PTSD. A flash of the stupid contradictions and assumptions he used to justify trying to intimidate me. The messages from other redditors warning me about what he's done to them before I wandered in. The idea that he boasts about "checking in" meaning I have to assume this will provoke him to create another fake reddit name and pull from his go-to cache of cliches to try and berate me.

I won't let him take writing away from me. I won't pretend context doesn't exist. I won't stutter from reciting whatever bullshit is presented to a court while we parse who's personal information is where and whether an admitted idiot with too much time on his hands should so eerily resemble a "legal professional" who "just keeps tabs" on those he diagnoses as dangerous. Me, I put our stupidity on police radar. I called the game over, and yet, my name, like some ugly torn flag is firmly planted into his fantasy about who we are to each other, and all I can do is what?

I want to call and let them know that the post exists. If you want to record information, there's no reason to make me easy to find and hide behind the guise it's "just for the record." I've been searching for something to write about for some time now, and I did not expect this to be it.(paused) Again, I've contacted the police and asked for guidance, as I don't know how to stay quasi-anonymous with my name and general location blasted against his selective reading and memory.

People, please, learn from my mistakes. Make sure you have the thick skin to ignore the self-righteous trolls. Some peoples' bladders are never empty, and you'll find yourself facing real-world absurdity.

[541] Emergency Break

When and why do we think we’re in control?

As with many things, my thoughts initially shoot towards religion and the phrase, “Give it up to God.” Being a confused and afraid mammal who has habituated the experience of random violent death for centuries, it’s easy to see the psychological necessity in couching your disposition in something grander than you. Feeling responsible is a stressful burden that has little to do with keeping alive and getting on.

I’ve done some reading on the randomness. By virtue of your birth year or place you can fall reliably into all sorts of categories you might insist were yours to choose. I very much think control is mostly an illusion. The issues being, why is it such a powerful illusion, why do we seem to prefer it, and what would it look like were it true that we actually did control anything?

Sickness seems the first and obvious culprit in seeking out control. You can draw a causal line from feeling sick and a treatment that makes you better. Fear can accompany being sick especially depending on the degree. So exhibiting control can reduce anxiety. Finding control can help you feel empowered. It’s not hard to imagine why someone enjoys feeling powerful.

Zeroing in on that sick person though, are they in control? They couldn’t stop themselves from getting sick. (No secret, they won’t stop themselves from dying either.) They didn’t invent the life-saving drugs or surgery. In the U.S. they might not even be able to pick their doctor or whether they have insurance. They didn’t design their immune system or generally structure the environment in which they live and work that might beget specific illnesses.

As well, despite myriad meditative claims to the contrary, they don’t usually control their predisposition. Some people are prone to freaking out, breaking out, or hyperventilating. Some will get grossly depressed. If they try to distract themselves, the annoyance only feels louder. The more words of encouragement, the harder the pain throbs. You feel the anger grow, the sadness wears on you. Given the opportunity to speak you can give an itemized account of how this universe is designed to fuck you. Over enough time you genuinely opine on the relief you’d feel if you died.

They call it “practicing medicine.” Just as you practice and interpret law. The wiser professions know there is no uniformity, reliability, or control. Sometimes the medicine doesn’t take, sometimes you can’t find a judge on a sympathetic day, so learn how to accept. And perhaps there’s the bridge into the more important attempt at behavior. Are we “accepting” anything?

Once more into the religious breach! Because what happens when you don’t accept the Word of God? Eternal hellfire. Setting yourself to the task of rationalizing incoherent contradictions and myths is of eternal importance. You’re so infinitely not in control, that if you refuse to accept and repent your sins, the punishment will never end. It’s an amazing analogy.

So you’re not in control and desperate to accept. How might you reach acceptance? You might be familiar with the stages of grief. You might dip into the philosophy of the stoics. You might just get so bored and exhausted exposing yourself to an idea that you couldn’t be bothered to care anymore if your very life depended on it. Is one method to be prefered over the other? Are they overlapping habits all to do with the business of accepting? These questions aren’t really my concern though.

Certainly it seems we are very wrong-headed in thinking we control the world “outside.” I don’t know what diseases are waiting for me left behind from the unwashed masses. But we seem to get a fair amount of positive feedback in controlling each other. The battered-wife of my blogs deserves a raise for how often I employ her. We shift entire generations into specific fields and habits through school or the military. There seems to be something funky about consciousness that suggests malleability through intention. Yell “stop!” to someone running at you, they often might, while the boulder rolling down the hill flips you off as you get squashed.

As a point of frustration then, the times when they don’t stop charging at you are when we employ the cliches and pay the deferences. “Well, he plum knocked me over! I’m so small in comparison. Nothing I did was going to change this outcome.” The phrase, “I can understand the reasons, I don’t accept the actions” might be relayed. It’s only when you attempt to provide an absolute answer that you slant towards “rationalization” over deeper appreciation for the forces at play. When you need something concrete, it seems acceptance, let alone control, is forever off the table.

We seem to talk a lot about being accepted. As a social animal, not having a place where people engage with or celebrate things about you leads to anything from developmental issues to entire breakdowns of government. We want to be accepted for our “faults” and “differences.” We want someone to fall deeply in love with us at our worst, so when we bestow our best, we’ll know they deserve it. Acceptance is the gateway to an imagined perpetual bliss. Or, maybe not imagined, depending on how hard and fast you’re willing to accept things, per a stoic prescription.

It’s muddy when we, again need, to be accepted by someone who isn’t having it. In some way or another I’m sure the next 100 blogs will tie into my experience with a long-term relationship. I very much knew why I wasn’t a relationship person and had to have this one sort of creep up on me. People seem incapable of treating me beyond a certain way. I’m a novelty. I’m very fun until I’m very annoying. I’m very smart until I’m extremely exhausting. Now, I don’t find this a problem, the vast majority of people do. I’ve accepted that. I feel I have very little control over my disposition that I don’t pair with phrases like “killing my soul.”

And I had the naive thought that I would resolve myself to returning to a place of safe hedonism. At base, I am an idealist. I look up to a world I would prefer and relationships that feel empowered and flourishing. I’d rather have an honest superficial relationship than a grotesque obscure scar to pick at and redefine to suit poor judgmental ends. This often results in people “ghosting” me or dropping out of my life. They’re still “normal” and think if we don’t “progress” into some kind of long term emotional commitment, we’re just irresponsible abusive whores with nothing to gain.

It seems like if this is to be expected, I’d rather the people I eventually piss off or scare away to be “friends” instead of people I invest years of my life with. For me, the calculation is pretty clear. I need to invite less people into my life, for less amounts of time, to keep me on a path for how I can come to accept them. It’s in your favor for me to treat you like a liar. It’s with due consideration for our relationship that I upset you in the way that I upset you. I’m not going to be accepted by anyone who isn’t an annoyingly thoughtful quasi-sociopath, and that’s okay.

Mind you, the only reason it’s okay is because for over 12 years now I’ve talked out my relationship to life to in general. I know how to counter or engage different styles to the point of boredom. It’s a better story when there’s “drama” from a misstep. There’s potential from emotional fodder to provoke angles on blogs. I may not be able to control when the other person decides I’m no longer novel or worth the “effort,” but I’ve already written the story of our time together. At that point, where I tend to see a difference, is whether or not we accept a totality, not inevitability, of outcomes.

Less abstractly, if I delete you on facebook, I’m good to pick up where we left off if you text me. If the last time we talked it was some kind of blow out, most often 20 minutes later I’m over it and just wanting to grab lunch. If you find me an emotionless manipulative bastard who doesn’t listen and is completely inaccurate in my assessment of you, that’s okay, I just wish you’d accept that you can’t control me or how I relate that information anymore than I can control you. The only path is of mutual acceptance. The only road to acceptance is through active work to, actually, verses feeling like, understanding.

There’s the weird thing about consciousness. We do control our “effort.” We can make pains to swallow thorny fruit, or we can learn how to remove the barbs and keep the rewarding meal in tact. Much as I devoted like 7 or so blogs exploring the word “negative” when I thought I was unfairly labeled as such, it’s not that I disagreed that what I often have to say has little to do with all the beauty and magic I read about or experience in the world, it’s that if you regard my essence as a negative one, it’s a sign to me that you’re projecting. As a friend, I find a moral obligation in exploring where that judgment comes from. I’m one of the most hopeful and motivated idiots on the planet. Nothing I did would make sense were that not true.

Even when they grow to hate me, I send the drunk apologetic text. Even when I don’t believe in love, I stay with someone for years and write the sappy love letter. While I consider much of my family a mockery of the word, I’ll drag myself to “traditions” and hold my tongue about stepfamily exploits (at least to their faces). I don’t want 5 acres and a big house so I can sit and rot alone in cousin-fuck Indiana by myself. I don’t read about damn near everything in life unless I think I can discover ways to tie it together to actually help something. I don’t buy instruments I don’t want to learn, and I don’t unsettle friends I don’t wish everyday could figure out what it is they need to accept for us to better get along.

Ultimately, if you’re in doubt as to what or how to accept, draw from what you can’t. I can’t accept that “playing along” with conservative cliches and pleasantries helps anything or anyone. I can’t accept demonstrably destructive ideas, like ignorant blind faith, and either/or “reasoning.” I can’t accept that I’m as (fill in your judgment) as you think I am, and that means we can’t be friends. It’s a recipe for world peace if you go the opposite direction and allow yourself to understand someone. It doesn’t even have to be shared feeling and empathy. It doesn’t have to be on or with their terms. But there’s no truer indication you’ve learned to accept them than your own disposition. It’s your actual openness decreasingly described as a struggle. Your hopeful melancholy provoking jokes and laughter.

Until then, we’re all just beating each other up for things we’re angry we can’t control about ourselves. We’re unwilling to accept what we know or can learn, sacrificing for empty wishes and handed down ideals. At least for me, the decision to keep working towards that acceptance is always worth it. The random piles of shit that will be dropped on your head are inevitable. The constant misunderstanding and reimagining of conversations can be improved upon. You will die. Why waste your time degrading your self worth in pissing matches with people who are worth more? Why work so hard opposing yourself, foregoing the infinitely small, yet infinitely full of potential thing you can actually control?

What a waste.