[559] Gon Girl

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about “spiritual” exercise. It’s a word I perpetually put in quotes because I think our general working conception of the word is as stupid as our best efforts. I think when I attempt to employ it, it has much to do with a phrase I employ sometimes, “seeing the truth between the lines.” It’s the thing I’m always searching for when I write. It’s that elusive point or theme I chase around the page. It’s putting all the pieces of a puzzle together where the picture is an impression or feeling or “vibe.”

I perpetually look for inspiration. I started wondering what that really means. I already have goals. To the best of my knowledge I’ve employed the most practical and efficient methods for achieving them. The pressing reality remains. Is there not some other way I could go about it? Is there not something more I could be doing? For every action you have to consider the fallout, which has stayed my hand from diving into motivated, but perhaps fundamentally wasteful behaviors I’d be tempted to claim are moving me forward. A random odd job would dull my spirit. I have to seriously consider if knocking on perceived rich people's doors is sending the right message, because I’m not above oddball things like that.

Again though, that use of the word spirit. That impressionable and egotistical “you” hesitantly looking for acknowledgment in the face of cold infinite impartiality so defined by it’s very perception of measurement. One of the reasons I watch so much TV is that I find myself genuinely more empathetic towards the characters and their struggles than I do the lazy hoard of cows “getting by” and “adulting.” I find not just inspiring lines and new tattoo ideas to consider, but a genuine invigorating and wise ethos in a well-crafted show. These characters ask more of themselves in the span of an episode than I think most people do in several years.

Connecting with a “spiritual” dimension is what set my house parties apart. We cultivated a crowd over time. I set a pace. We set the conditions for behavior that people pretend they’re not capable of. Regardless if the bad actors decided to eventually resent everything and tear it all to shit, I can never forget the impact that setting had on my conception of friend or what is possible with the right crowd and right set up.

I suppose it’s merely unfortunate that when people pursue their “spiritual” side or claim they have achieved some measure of it, it’s often couched in smelly hippie shit and pseudo-scientific health claims. I have a friend who’s “practiced reiki” because something something healing energies. A large reason we maintain that friendship is because I’ve learned to bite my tongue better. But I suppose it’s the kind of example that she sets that begins to speak to what makes me so upset about other people’s attempts at pursuing their spirituality. Why pretend that’s what you want if you’re going to start with bullshit?

For the majority of people, life is immeasurably stressful and often terrible. It seems this is the first hard and fast rule before you ever get somewhere worthwhile. In my estimation, literally nothing is better by fooling yourself. What you think you’re helping when you’re lying is poisoning the well. In some small measure, I’m hurting my friend if I don’t even offer a passing comment about the joke that is healing people by playing hover hands. I break windows of self-reflection by playing along at family gatherings I want little to nothing to do with or in inviting myself into homes that have done nothing but invite stress and drama into mine. This isn’t some naive ethic of the loner or child, all you have to want is the truth.

I have a friend I recently blew up on because I got tired of their game. This soft spoken toothy grinned go-getter has all the makings of a future politician. When I complain my friends don’t write, he does. But at the same time, it’s hard to trust any conclusion he’s ever come to. When the opportunity arises to try and be clearer, he avoids it. When pressed to accept the weakness or contradiction of his examples, he ignores them. When his “inclusive,” “polite,” and “reassuring” atmosphere is challenged, he does the exact same thing every other person does, and that’s blame me for being mean and run. After 10 years of talking to someone about religion, politics, or ethics in general, you need to see them crack even once.

But that’s not the reality of the spiritually deluded selfish world. That world creates edicts. That’s a world where I’m forever and always defined as the problem for my style so the words will always get ignored. It’s better to call me confusing than ask about what confused you. It’s better to call me mean, than embody the feeling my sentiment tried to instill in you. When you deny yourself that extra realm of communication, you subvert all capacity to ever truly learn or grow. It’s why I generally hate outward professions around holidays when you know they’re superficial or forced. Checking in is nice, 200 uncapitalized “happy birthday” messages should see you all shot.

Important to me in defining my “spirituality” is achieving again that sense of community. I have to know nothing about consciousness to know it works better together. Piecing together the random thoughts or shows or books and one-liners I’ve heard each week is practice for when I go out into the field and start looking for people to pluck. My “singular” and “simple” goal is to establish a sustainable environment built from my intention, perspective, and will indefinitely. I think the “cultural” approach to our ignorant and life-threatening nihilism needs a holistic approach untampered by naivety and marketing.

Truly, the only thing that keeps me going is maintaining and recognizing the truth. It is sad, sick, and depressing to piss away your youth, so while I have the energy I’m looking for ways to keep my mind and body exercised. Without even noticing you can consign your life to an empty dictum that makes decisions for you and codifies your value in money or “productive hours.” I’m not filled with anxiety or angst because my day to day is on fire, except, it is. Even when I’m fed and marathoning a show, my environment is boasting about a nuclear arms race, going extinct, and melting away. If I don’t think a protest sign or letter to my congressman is going to do the trick, here’s me waving the flag for roundabout maneuvering.

I believe we don’t get along because we’re a society of liars. I prefer to go down alone than with someone telling me we could never drown. I’d rather break the friendship, I’d rather have the fight, I’d rather get you as angry as you could ever get now, so I can drop the dead denialism and not fall into your trap later. The pure joy, and the brilliance of the vision made manifest are what you’re after. You wish you laughed as hard as me or talked as excitedly. I wish you did too. I wish you struggled even half as much to believe in what I’m pursuing as I do with you to just recognize and speak. No, I don’t mean “be happy for me.”

Even the most insignificant side character can be given the time to show how they contribute to the complex story. I find myself pivoting between who I think it’d be coolest to be in a great story. Why don’t I feel that way about the people in my life? Do I blame them or the conditions we were born into? Is it a generally stupid ego driven exercise that just robs them of their humanity, or did they sacrifice it well before I got around to thinking about them?

There would be a real danger if I ever work up and thought I had some kind of monopoly on truth. It’s available to anyone willing to look at it. Independent of your meager perception are habits and behaviors that suggest you’re at least pointed in the right direction. If all you’re doing is acting, I notice. If all you can do is clam up and scapegoat, I don’t trust you. If you devote hours or years of your life to the facade, you may not even be able to recognize how deep a hole you’ve dug yourself. You’ll still feel it when the spit I let drop hits you, you'll just be calling it rain.

[558] Different Strokes

I no longer think I fundamentally believe in conversation. I don’t think it serves the purposes people purport. In fact, I think in a majority of instances, it tends to make situations worse. Despite this, I think conversations all follow the exact same patterns across all topics, and it’s one of the greatest disservices we perpetuate against ourselves to not explore and acknowledge how things break down.

I want to distinguish what I hope to explain from “persuasive rhetoric.” You can take classes that will coach you in polite engagement with your Congressmen who deny climate science. It’s where you go to learn not to assert facts and truth, but instead hide what you want to do in language they understand. This whole game I’m hoping to avoid. It’s not my contention that people can’t be convinced of things or that they don’t operate under “different rationality” that takes into account the protecting of their oil money donors.

I contend that we never start on the same page. The presumption of a shared language keeps the initial ground for conversation obscure. After all, you’re under the impression you read English. These lines are passing by and you’re hoping I’ll get into the meat or towards a point. This is precisely where we screw up first. You have assumptions, unconsciously or otherwise, that you take into reading this. If we know each other, the weight of your opinion about me remains. If we don’t, and this is on a public website, 3 paragraphs in I can already hear Youtube vine compilations calling your name.

Words are not concrete, literally and figuratively. You may it take it for granted that words are wide, but when you use them, you have a pretty definite feeling for what you mean, even if no one else does.

“People can be rational.”

Leaving aside that there are volumes of philosophical and psychological works that deal with that “simple” premise, the gist of it is that we should be able to relate to each other. It’s a huge should. I certainly don’t agree with it as a premise because I carry philosophical and psychological baggage to my conception of rationality. I get picky and say “can” has nothing to do with it. I can take a shit. I can watch TV. I can vote for fascism. So? I would never propose an idea to you that I wanted seriously discussed by insisting “something can happen!”

We’re not on the same page. Rationality, let alone the conscious agent claiming it has it, needs rules. Rationality needs to be contingent on something besides “merely existing.” The neighborhood cat is rational in that it doesn’t routinely dart out into traffic. Does a cat that does run into traffic get stripped of its rationality? Or is the conversation more coherent when you set down rules and reasons for its behavior? The cat isn’t “more or less” rational because of how long it lives avoiding getting hit.

I feel pressed to keep discussing animals, because people like to pretend they aren’t animals. I was literally told that people can’t be trained like dogs. It was never walked back. The idea being that people are “better” or “more rational” than dogs and that by virtue of it being rude to equate the two, there’s nothing else to be said about how they behave. I honestly have so few words for this; if you don’t see how it doesn’t work, just stop reading now and never read anything I write again.

You are not rational. I am not rational. We have incomplete malleable mounds of meat that will happily carry on in whatever direction they’ve been set. Without knowledge, without intention, without understanding, they can just “be” and in a world that needs knowledge, intention, and understanding, that “simply being” is negative. It’s the idiot smiling at the row station when all hands need to move us through the storm.

For one reason or another, I posit undue sympathy, apologists for this lazy and simple non-rower will get very indignant if you’re not happy about their goofy smile. They’ll insist, “He has so much potential!” They’ll say, “His arms are so big! His capacity to row is so great!” The moment you call him a lazy stupid smiling idiot, they’ll attack you! He’s not rowing and they’re attacking you! The storm is coming, we’re going too slowly, and you’re to blame insisting this idiot needs to get to work and they need to stop protecting him.

That barely describes the disconnection in how we discuss things with each other. It’s so needlessly tired to keep blaming me for sounding angry or shitty. Angrier than your fucking fascist President? Angrier than your state representatives who want to bury fetal tissue? Am I shittier than the people who made money speech and don’t believe we share the environment? Because those are the stakes. It’s life and death whether you can figure out how to pull your head out of your ass and recognize those who aren’t rowing for what they are. Dead weight that ensure we’re going to kill ourselves.

I will never feel sympathy if you can’t do that. I will never change my mind if you can’t put the square block through the square hole. I refuse to be gaslit. Because that’s what you’re doing. In service to your own dogma, you refuse to call out what the real problem is. You can’t see it because you predicate your whole window into the world on it. “It’s not my responsibility, God will save me.” “I was taught this way, and it’s the only way I know or respect.” “My feelings deserve to be heard! Especially because I honestly cry myself to sleep each night worried about what will happen to all the white children forced to mix with the little nigger scourge!”

I think I’ve just been lying to myself the whole time. I mean, I was able to stop discussing religion with people. But perhaps it’s for everything. We already know thermometers don’t work when you represent oil companies. Why should this stress me out any more than it seems to those poor thermometers? If they could speak, right? Imagine the smear pieces of the elitist condescending hot heads who just need to understand not everyone’s been socialized to see the merit of discussing things in Celsius.

I’m not wrong. I’m justified in my anger. I’m not going to apologize for being smarter or more informed than you. If you don’t know how the brain works, keep beating your dick to the idea that humans can’t be trained, and trained to do the wrong thing. If you think your definition of “rationality” is all-knowing and perfect and that you’re the only one with the capacity for wisdom, here’s the keys to the crazy pants building, I’ve literally bought 5 acres in the middle of nowhere because I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with you anymore. You’ll spend your entire life watching people live and die by the bat shit proclamations any ignorant monkey who hasn’t had their face rubbed in enough shit can make. The alternative is to run and pray any hitchhikers desperate to get away as well won’t need to be shot before you get somewhere safe.

[557] Untitled

I’m full.
Often it’s almost unbearable.
My head might be packed with ideas or snot.
The veins through my scalp and temples pulse with too much blood.
My throat is clogged with a fat tongue flapping too enthusiastically.
Hot air fills my chest and pushes my diaphragm.
An array of foods with too many calories fight their way through my stomach and intestines.
I’m packed like a suitcase that’s never coming back.

I’m abundantly aware.
I saw what you saw.
I found the loose change as we walked through the mall.
Yet finding the dollars to perpetuate my state proves elusive.
Their state lives on; mine remains a memory.
It’s a memory of what I wanted and how it has had to change.
It’s a memory that dims each year.
It’s a memory constantly under attack from the beat in my head meat.
It plays me like I used to play you. It knows me better than I know myself for it knows nothing.

“I coulda been something!”
I could have been a king.
I could have been awash in luxury.
I could have been a thing.
Yes a thing to be passed around and praised and drank from.
A bottomless well of hope and inspiration.
A thing you could caption and memeify and transmit over the air where I could fly and disappear.
I could have been an abstraction always up for interpretation while the jury’s on strike.
I could have tried.
I could have tried harder.

I lost my stories.
I’m back on the first floor digging the grave I call my basement.
It’s hard work shoveling so much shit up and over.
I’m dirty, but it feels good to belong.
I’m tired, so I appreciate the darkness.
My swollen muscles can relax when I no longer think I’ll be able to climb out.
I lost my heroes.
I sent them on a trip and they came back distorted.
They got the shakes and don’t walk so straight.
They get loud in all the wrong places.
They don’t smile in fact, they barely have faces.
No more revolution.
No justice or league to keep the peace.
No tomorrow.
Just no.

[556] Wait But Why?

I want to discuss a question that I promise doesn't bug me. I want to discuss it because it comes up over and over again with, I can only assume, every one of my friends at one point or another. I don't find it insulting or necessarily hard to understand. I think its roots can be explored and I have a few ideas I think are plausible.

“Why are you friends with Nick?”

To be honest, the best answer I have for anyone being friends with me is because they see an important part of themselves reflected back. I've fashioned myself for a long time as something of an expression of almost pure id. I used to point to monetary benefits when it came to pimping out the house or my access to a car and willingness to chauffeur people around. That stuff is always weak and superficial of course, but for the pragmatist it might be easier to look past my mouth.

Perhaps I should slow down though. It's a question I'm asking just as often to my friends about who they associate with. Say you come home from work and have nothing positive to say about your coworkers, my first question certainly rings with the memory of your frustrations before you hit the town with them. It's easy to blurt out the question of friendship when you've no context for the long history a pair or group might have. At the darkest end you could be asking about the pure emotional or tangible extraction someone is getting out of stringing their prey along.

With regard to me though, I find it gets a little more complicated for the ones asking. Say they asked Kristen. Sweet, innocent, Kristen. Their mental model for her didn't jive even remotely with what they think of me. The confusion, though superficial, speaks to those disingenuous mental shortcuts unthoughtful people take when considering potentially complex human beings. In other words, it's a failure of imagination more than necessarily something insidious. This crowd would make sweeping generalizations about open relationships or draw an uncrossable line that protects their judgment from your explanation. Childish, boring, moving on.

Then there's people who genuinely can't appreciate for a moment my brand of exceedingly dark humor. I make the spousal abuse or cancer joke, they're looking around the room at all the people not up in arms or shuffling me out the door. These are moralizers. They seek less to protect their judgments than to impose and control with them. Flippant or funny disarms those who want to move against you. If they're fuming in the corner and you get even one person to crack a smile, their confusion rests in the disconnect between their pseudo-reality where things are good and make sense, and mine where I guess I'm just trying to hurt people or something. Who could befriend such an untamed beast?

The excessively hilarious one is when they ask Byron why he's my friend. There's almost no words for the level of irony. It's hard to explain knowing someone who basically inhabits your brain. In the deepest possible sense that I've encountered in life, it's like asking why you would bother liking yourself. Our style differences are not brain or disposition differences, but the clean cut politely spoken professional that holds your hand or speaks your language is a jarring contrast from the curly haired ripped jeans despot cursing for what you're positive is absolutely no reason.

Objectively, were I to give reasons for someone to be or not to be my friend, well, pick your favorite drunkest and craziest sounding blog. It's not that I think I'm special or particularly worse or “crazier” than anybody else, but there seems to be a key to my madness. I know my shit.

There's different ways to know your shit, and not all of them are equal. For many, confidence springs forth from their resolve to accept their lot. Whether it's their average or lacking look, motivation, or general mental state. I find it no coincidence that OKCupid matches me highest with every punk rock looking girl with dyed hair and a septum piercing who's rebel attitude and crass jokes make her the life of her small world...if she can be bothered. Smart people in general get a whiff of how they can run something and settle pretty nicely into “know their shit” status.

Then there's bookworm types. They can learn every fact in the world or the particulars of their job, but if you tried to turn them inward you're begging for a substance problem or major depression. The isolated academic types speak a very particular language to a particular crowd and understand the world through an endless stream of books and theories that help shield them from any personal insight that might leak through. Maybe think of Ben Carson. A man who could literally save your life by cutting into your brain, but can't figure out the deadly consequences of playing with fascism.

Then there's that last page of self-help books kind of knowing your shit. When you've therapied to death your past trauma or daily anxieties and you stumble from one realization to the next until you float out to sea on a contemplative island. This speaks to my brand. I'm not just confident in many things I do, I've done or will do a lot of work in explaining the story of how I got there. I'll do it to such a point that you'll start questioning why you got upset in the first place. I sit so deep in my own world that you'll start blaming me for your back pains on the seat you chose.

This is the best explanation I have for people I've know for years or managed more than an acquaintance with who just go radio silent. I was simply comfortable with our dynamic, refused to read minds even when they were begging me to, thus I am to blame. This helps me explain people who actively spoke out against me with, to my knowledge, no if even negative provocation. The girl roomy who re-befriended our other roommate who choked her while disavowing me, who threw him off her, will always be illustrative. She fashioned herself as someone who knew shit, but when faced with the reality, she's just choking against the wall, and how dare someone like me step in and remind her.

The irony of being my friend is that I'm exceedingly transparent and easy as hell to disarm. Well, that is, if you're a person. If you're an insecure husk who's needlessly provoked, I'm a nightmare. If you have an opinion of yourself that you value which allows you to see through my superficial behavior, we get along seamlessly. And yes, this is in utter spite of any and all of the worst shit I can be or have done. I'll always find it odd and unfair that people approach me as if my day to day is setting fires or seeking out people to make cry. At bottom, the reason I'm making you uncomfortable is because you're not comfortable with yourself.

This means that when I make a racist joke, you haven't worked out your relationship to race, so you scoop from your general knee jerk impression of what you think “the culture” would do. If I insult you or your family, you might have deep seeded issues with your big ass ears that even 30 years on the planet never helped you with, and a friendly gathering over drinks is not where you wanted to cope with your thoughts about your dad. To be clear, there is more than a little difference between dark and cold jokes and being genuinely mean-spirited. It does exist. If you don't believe me, you're suffering from something I'm the absolute last person to help you deal with.

Never forget, if you're not laughing (which you usually are) I'm cracking the joke for me. I repeat that shit to myself when my mind wanders and lose my shit days later. I love my humor. I love it so much and it brings me so much joy that I revel in the resentment and anger it conjures from those who think it has anything real to do with them. Of course, when it does, when it feels real, you can take that as a chance for introspection or exploring context, or you can keep blaming me like my joyous coping mechanism will be cried or sneered out of existence. My best guess, it's here to stay, but feel free to slut shame.

It gets deeper though. Because a bad or mean joke is still a pretty wimpy metric for judgment, right? You don't have to know anything to be crass. The dirty part is feeling yourself concede. It's your smile betraying your indignation. It's your stupefied look as my half-drunk comment cuts you in two. You thought I didn't see your look? You thought I didn't notice the tone? You thought my questions weren't a bit leading? Did you think your posture found an invisibility cloak? Did you pretend there was something secret I couldn't figure out about you that I haven't already dug out of myself ten times over? That's when it truly bites.

Then you have no choice but to accept I both understand and legitimately disrespect how you're going about where you're coming from. There is no protest or negotiation. I'm not going to find myself enlightened about how I went about speaking to you. I'm not on your emotional level and that makes you feel bad. You haven't sought out my brand of knowing shit, and that makes me feel nothing about you besides fleeting frustration of a classist air. Engaging with that kind of person then becomes this exhausting negotiation and navigation of the febrile feelings. One I'm brilliant at when I adopt the style you're familiar with on Byron. I still just find it in me to always pick on children.

That's a hefty amount of rationalization there Nick, but why? Why does any of it speak to being your friend? What do you really bring to the table but bad words and explanations I don't buy!?

I've said it before, but it bears repeating, sincerity wins. I don't just dream about the best parties and making movie moments, I build them. I don't pretend to hold you in high or low esteem without having tested our relationship for what I hoped to get out of it. When I say I want the same mental and financial security for my friends that I seek for myself, I get my spine tapped so I can afford the land to invite people to as a refuge or for experimenting. If I call you a cunt, I think you're a cunt, but more importantly, you're probably actually a cunt. 

Whatever you hate about me, you can trust it. When I'm in an out-pour of goodwill and sentimentality, you can trust that too. I'll be dammed if I'm ever as confused as you about how and why I approach my relationships. At least as dammed as you, that is. And I think people like to be able to trust, as I very well know, nothing ever seems like it can be trusted. My worst self isn't some outward display of stupidity or negativity, it's when I stop inviting you in to read about it.

I'm a person who laughs until it hurts about his demons, routinely, practically daily. I put on display as much truth as I can discover in the moment. I work with and engage my contradictory and confusing nature instead of merely suffering it. You tend to learn a lot more shit than people ever want to give you credit for because they can't really see or hear you over their own issues. I might as well have a superpower in my capacity to recognize or disarm them. Why I don't use it to smooth everything over and make everyone happy, like they perpetually fail to do, is somehow baffling. As if I should sacrifice the path to my best relationships to their selfishly small conception of being.

I think there's any number of areas in your life you're wishing you could be a little more like me. So rarely do people give me a reason to believe the relationship can go both ways.

[555] Climate Silence

A series I find wildly inspiring is Years of Living Dangerously. It’s not because it ever teaches me anything I don’t already know. It’s that it takes a camera into the meeting room where climate activists discuss details and field questions from the masses. You can begin to peel away much of the nonsense that obscures why there is or isn’t action taken and the, in my view extremely hopeless, mental pits people fall into to protect their views.

A basic premise I assume when I go into an argument or approach learning about some topic is that everything is connected. When Wikipedia first arrived I remember clicking though every word I didn’t know and being fascinated about just generally learning and reading in no specific direction. To fluidly access windows and doors into worlds I’d never seen before held little utility but to keep me intrigued or distracted, but it’s a shared window that analogizes how our brains work.

A gentleman holds a presentation to talk to Texans about climate change. Their concerns are that “Tax feels like someone’s taking something away from me” and “If the oil companies’ costs go up isn’t it going to cost Texas jobs?” One person pointed the finger at China. The presenter’s father said, “We need fossil fuels” ten seconds before saying he’d absolutely use renewables yet does not have access to them.

Without fail, people think small and selfish yet don’t draw from the larger world to help fix their true concern. You can’t only care about your little farm and your oil industry job. The deeper truth, in the scheme of things, is that your job isn’t secure and the planet you inhabit will eventually force your hand. The gentleman whose conception of taxes resembles that of a child is going to have an even harder time dealing with these conditions because his feelings are always going to be in the way.

I suppose for me these scenarios make me think of hypocrisy. I’m every ounce of an armchair humanitarian. I try to move my mind into spaces that I think might shed light on better ways forward. I look at the motivated and urgent students holding meetings for their townsfolk and think it’s generally in vain. Stupid and insecure people have never been fixed with logical discussion of hundreds of variables to consider. They just have their feelings. In that the presenter brought his family along maybe spoke to his only real impact in that they’re sympathetic to him if not the world of facts.

To extend this further, this is why I always blame people for their silence. Your family and friends are moved by you. You’re responsible for them. When I write, even if I bitch until the day I die about not seeing your impact reflected in the social media space enough, I have to believe you take something with you into the rest of your worlds. In actuality, I could set up a table and grab a megaphone and recite statistics and urge people to care, but I’ve never seen the problem as a lack of that kind of quasi-activism.

The problem is that we don’t concern ourselves with the whole. We pretend one area of our lives is off limits. We think there’s dignity and safety in cordoning off the parts we’re scared or ashamed of. If I think I’m perhaps a hypocrite in how I exercise my time, now you’re hearing about it. If I’m seeing a connection about my concerns regarding fascism, ignorance, laziness, and quickly evaporating time and spirit, you get to know the roots of my disappointing study attempt. By allowing yourself a holistic view of your problems and place in the world, while you carry more weight, it’s also more powerful when you try to swing it around.

Maybe then you’re not just poised for “dumb internet fights” you’re protecting shared intellectual space from complicit ignorance. Maybe you’re not busy and hopeless, but invigorating the mundane with your heightened awareness. For that, I think of the last concert I went to. An hour and a half was spent by most of the crowd waiting for the band to show up. I read articles and listened to a podcast. Yes, it was weird and yes I stood out, but staring at an empty stage for that long seemed even weirder. Much of what I think a person consists of is as much what they’re prepared to do and are aware of that they can do. I can read and listen and then rock the fuck out and then have a salient conversation about ethics on the walk back to the car. The superficially different realms are connected by my agency.

This means it’s always the right time. You can respond to this blog and we can talk for a solid week digging up sources and making plans. You can share this with your more motivated and talkative friends. You can seriously consider in a deeper way things you may feel hypocritical about or afraid of. Every moment, right now, the world is ours to engage with or ignore. If you’re not even aware of your larger obligation, let alone the endless utility you can derive from engaging as such, you’ll be the lowly conservative cliché who only knows how to feel their way about in the dark.

Guilt seems key. Do you wait for something external to force you and then try to cope and change? I suppose it’s anyone’s guess if you invite the pain in now if you’ll be able to alleviate it. I’m perhaps a standing example of that. I’m worried about the conversations I’ll be having with myself at 40 or 50 about my actions or lack thereof. Does my writing ever suggest I’m particularly happy or healthy lol? Of course I am, but I don’t take to the page to wax about butterflies. I think I’m better at coping and continually talking about soul-crushing and harrowing things, if only because of the visceral reactions I get from all the people who aren’t.

Or maybe you are, so do it even more. Maybe you have your own roundabout way of fixing something you see as integral to the general cultural problem, so let me know about it. I’m with Jordan Peterson who says the religious underpinnings, the moral truths and motivations that bound us together have been blown apart and it speaks to why we’re ravenous for Harry Potter or Marvel stories to help realign us. I love the idea of music being disparate harmonies speaking to something transcendent and spine tingling. That’s how I can retain respect for story tellers and musicians; when you tie your work to your honest struggle for an individual voice and perspective that retains all the humanity that birthed it.

Perhaps the myth is that there’s no telling your impact. I’m telling you your impact every time I write. It’s frustration. It’s loneliness. It’s denial. It is pain and death and fear that are hardly hidden by the next celebration. Part of me wishes it would at least be idealism so we could respect that an idea was even represented. If you hate to “fight” and “debate,” then just talk. Talk to your secret followers and admirers. Talk yourself in and out of emotional and intellectual holes. Talk to show yourself that you have something to say or shed some light on why you don’t.

[554] Study Me

I failed!

I failed spectacularly in getting that money. I failed because I don’t know how to control my heartbeat. I failed in forwarding my general existential strife to emulate people like Elon Musk. I failed my paralyzed body as it sat staring out to nowhere thinking about everything I want to do and be. I failed after 2 previous failures that at least had the decency to close the door handily immediately after screening and not let me in the door and into scrubs.

I’ve been mulling over how to approach this the entire drive home. I think it may be best to approach it as quasi-self-contained paragraphs that all speak to some aspect of my anxiety. The tricky thing about anxiety is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be irrational. It could prove to be all sorts of hazardous to be able to shut down your mechanism for being worried about shit. Unfortunately for my brain at least, I’m never just worried about one thing. I can’t just relax or distract myself because you, or the phlebotomist, or the doctor tells me to.

I’m still stuck on the screaming contradiction of my existence. I was in the lobby reading article after article about places Nick Turse has travelled filled with death and destruction. It was a buffet of information about just how fucked Hitler 2 is going to leave us. It was one story after the next of corrupt people, institutions, regression, hatred, and stupidity. It’s happening every moment of every day. It’s worse than you think, and then you realize it’s worse than you’ll ever be able to fully conceive. And my biggest problem in life is getting my heart to beat a little bit slower?

When framed like that it sounds ridiculous. Now home, embarrassed, mildly annoyed, but mostly just returning to my resolved meandering angst, I’m calling another study center tomorrow. My rent is still paid up for a few months. I still own the land that’s worth at least double what I paid for it. As far as I know, given that I didn’t make it to the blood test results, I’m still healthy. My worst case scenario is 4 few hour drives in bad weather; a feat many I know achieve before midweek every week.

But what does my mind do? It maps the delay in my plans onto the entire world. I’m here worried about working myself up and out of studies? What about the myriad travesties that had to take place for me to discover this kind of lifestyle in the first place? This kind of shit is a dozen steps back then haphazard lurches forward when a little luck and timing kicks in. These places were meant to take advantage of the mother of 4 who has to bring her kids to her outpatient visits. These are supposed to be for bored retirees and quasi-homeless people. The first time one of the girls taking my blood called it my job, I practically choked rushing to proclaim the joke of our responsibilities in light of someone like my iron working dead.

It’s only a tinge of guilt when I think it, but it still rings true. I feel so alone. I’m generally at the end of peoples’ priority list. No one is going to be a part of this land until I put up even larger amounts of money. My ideas and experiments won’t be able to be entertained until a half dozen or more studies are saved up for. And I’ll have to keep telling myself over and over that it’s not your fault. I won’t believe it, but I’ll keep telling it to myself because I know how fucking trapped we all are. I know how broke and paycheck to paycheck goes. I know the stress and uncertainty. Despite all the hell, what I never hear is the truth.

You don’t blog. You don’t share anything but pictures or often enough weird memes. I’m painting with a broad brush because I’m speaking to the majority. I see you coping, not thinking. I see you passing the time and spreading likes and congratulations, not collaborating. Every day it’s a reminder that I’m alone. No one is going to save me. If we’re living out the end of the country hurdling as a fireball from hell towards economic ruin and intellectual suicide, there’s like 2 or 3 really laying it out there leaving aside a spattering of writers. If I can’t live sustainably, make a fairly large amount of money, acquire all form of seemingly random skills, I’m going to be severely fucked. On top of that, when I see my friends who are still trying for that “normal job” or habitually avoiding dealing with the true depth of their precarious lives, all I’m going to be able to do is watch.

My heart didn’t really slow down from the moment I woke up. The week preceding this morning, I kept saying “if” I get in. The “if” felt so loud. It’s like I was anticipating sitting here after failing the entire time.  I then invent all sorts of scenarios that might’ve played out to feel better about it. Maybe my blood wouldn’t have had me pass anyway. Maybe it’s going to be a hella storm one day I’m supposed to drive down, so the universe intervened before my impending crash and death. Maybe I’m supposed to be back at that Podunk school teaching marching because some impression I’m to leave means more in the long term. Maybe there are 2 higher paying studies I can do at the same time I won’t know about until tomorrow.

Either way, the reason I’m always anxious and absolutely desperate to give myself options that aren’t dependent on something like my blood or heart is because…the world. The world where I don’t ever see your freak outs or parse through your reasoning and then our connection dulls. The world where we stopped drinking together. The world where even when I get everything I want, I’ll still be offering it to people in no position to take it. The world of fogged over eyes and wretched smiles as we see what life has done to us before we peak over our shoulders looking for a way out. No amount of money I make, buildings I build, or toys I acquire is going to fix that. I can’t make you believe in yourselves. I can’t pretend to know what risks you’re capable of taking.

Most disturbingly, part of me feels like I punish myself because not enough real things go wrong in my life. There’s not enough general anxiety for me walk in cool-headed and knock out studies like I’m not thinking about anything. If I wasn’t here writing this right now, what? I’d just be getting even more money to spend on things that aren’t health insurance or a better car? I’d most likely end up paying too much for a handful of things that get me no further in any real or monetary sense until the next study anyway.

It feels like a dream. I watched myself from afar fail the heart rate monitor. I wasn’t there cheering it on and working hard to pump the blood. It beat hard and fast without my vote. I had to do nothing but show up with my brain that attaches itself to an even more abstract future dream when it can’t even make sense of or control the present one. I can’t connect into a larger world than myself. The ones provided are lies or downright trying to kill me. Think I’m giving it up to a god? Think I sway with your subtle suggestions and encouragement? Think I just want to be distracted or drunk all the time? If all went to shit I’m sure I’ll always be able to find a couch, but in reality, nothing about the world I want and we need is happening without me. I don’t know if you understand it’s not happening without you either.

Is your heart racing?