I'm growing increasingly unsettled by
how much of my life constitutes a form of circumstantial spite.
No matter how old I get, I feel what I've been bred for. I'm as white working-class middle-income cliché as they come and had every expectation drilled into me about how to do even better. After pushing 29 years, I'm some form or another of what a non-discerning author has to say about “Millennials.” If you broke me into parts, the easy boring way to say something about them would be about how the past shapes us and we couldn't improve without mistakes. Snore. I find that I've taken my repulsion impulse and crafted a borderline extreme alt-personality that plays up everything I ever thought I wouldn't be or didn't want. There's something to be said about “maturity” and personality changing over time as memories condense and life becomes familiar, but it's more deliberate.
Attacking head-on will bog me down, so maybe I can just point to instances and behaviors. I'm old enough, and have had it be a problem long enough, that I know eating like shit or right before bed burns a hole through my stomach. In a forgone conclusion about my inevitable death anyway, I still make the same shitty decisions on a regular enough schedule to warrant mentioning. That approach to life and my body is a learned behavior. Eating like shit as a kid was ignorance and the environment (parents and grandparents encouraging norms). Eating like shit now is like my version of smoking.
I think about how I learned to be so “mean.” Often I borrow a line about the amount of people who've been abused or grew up in shitty households that don't turn into the kind of monsters that raised them. It's a grand celebration of my mother's cruelty every time I get a phone call or visit from police for something obscene I've said. In the same breath, I don't know what situations warrant more vitriol than when I'm actually moved to spew it. But the “coldness” I have towards all of the emotionality I'm accused of not understanding used to be out-of-control compulsion easily taught by and inherited from the pro.
I think about doing studies. I can't think of a more opposite approach to how I envisioned my “work” life than to discover how to get paid for sleeping and watching TV. I never shake the anxiety about all of my “wasted” time, even if I'm reading or doing something I enjoy. Underneath me is an inexhaustible work horse. The path to the most money required taming it. And unlike 16 year old me who could work 2 jobs, one running the entire shift, and then march in band, when I dip back into that overdrive, I come home needing the massager to work out the mounting kinks. I made $450 in 3 “days” with ClusterTruck (most of it spoken for and just getting back to “even” after my car shit the bed again) but still feel guilty when I'm home if there's a chance to pull in just a little bit more by staying on for 10 or 11 hours instead of 8.
School used to define me. I absolutely thought my road to anywhere I wanted to get in life was going to be through my approach and love of learning. I visit the grave of my strangled joy at being in college almost daily. I was so unbelievably saddened by the reality of “higher education.” Probably no singular experience shaped a kind of “fuck everything” attitude than slogging through it and getting my degree. I love the train wreck in slow motion imagery as every piece of my working future had to get replaced as it tumbled off the track in a violent blaze and cacophonous rancor.
More molding came upon the chance to do the coffee shop. It didn't matter that we made money. All that matters is that forces who don't care about you will conspire to fuck you, and even when you've attempted to account for everything, one or more of those things is a lie you had little choice but to rely on. The first opportunity I got to do something, finally anything, (that wasn't partying) that could potentially and aggressively speak to me and my values and ability, and it was no less subjected to a will and circumstances much greater than I could contend.
It's not my intention to simply write off everything I've experienced as some massive ball of negativity. Nor do I think every important lesson I've worked into my being I'd be better off without or want to learn an even harder way down the line. I just want to be careful that I'm not “stuck” in a kind of “opposite autopilot.” I mean, I'm attempting to move and build on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere in a state I absolutely hate. How much potential do I really see? Is it possible I've driven myself to a kind of crazed loner who's only shot at peace is as close to isolation as you can get without getting lost in the woods or desert?
I wanted to be a cliché. I wanted the program as it was sold to me. I didn't want to have to look at the one or two friends doing something resembling what I wanted and think I look like some crazy mouthpiece to over-intellectualized despotism; too blind and ferocious to notice the froth and beard resemble more mangy dog than wizened priorities and resolve. I wanted the “safe space” for my brand of over-achieving and smarm. I would have reveled in the usual praise and accolades with my picture on the wall or extra nod of acknowledgment for my insight about the last quarter. I would have been one of my uncles, owning too much hobby shit, while living somewhat modestly, and finding more room for innocent alliances through sports or gentleman's clubs.
To say it out loud makes me think like the disembodied soul attempting to write my story. Who'd want to read that shit? They could just pick up my uncles' books, right? “He worked non-stop” is the same simple way to describe scores of Asians who end up dead each year from overdoing it. “He did well in school” doesn't even get me Ivy League credentials or a claim to valedictorian status. I hear stories almost daily of 8 year olds raped by multiple family members, kids O.D.ing on mommy's Aderall cocaine mix, and babies getting their dicks punched...and while it's fairly disingenuous to draw a comparison between abuse and its effects on children, I'm willing to concede none of those things happened to me so I probably lost some kind of excuse battle there.
There's still a very large and very compelling sense ingrained in me that draws pride from the credentials or the cash. It's not in a “make it rain” or “I insist you call me Dr.” sense either. It's that I started to play a different game when I saw how easy and, well, sad, it was to compete at that level. Growing technology and trends only made it look all the more unpalatable. Paris Hilton makes money from being dumb and looking pretty? Funny and intriguing when you're young and it's new. An entire generation raised on turning cameras onto themselves being obnoxious or wasting their time completely changes the concept of “earning money.” Every year the smartest professions are being replaced by new algorithms and machinery that render all those years of struggle in school mute. Why kill myself to become a doctor when even if I were the best in the world, my very humanity would bring a higher probability of your death than your latest super-smart phone tracking your vitals?
I never got to close the circle on that “normal” conception of my capacity or where I fit. There was a time I used to be as pretentious about the shows that I would watch as I was when I thought a peanut butter and honey sandwich was an appalling affront to decency well-beneath me who's certainly not poor and deserves normal jelly! My embarrassing mindless mother just forgot to buy me another meal ticket! (I could be a difficult child) Now, of course I'd put honey on most things and watch more shows than likely nearly all the people who get paid to write increasingly pointless reviews for Rotten Tomatoes.
I have no sense of “normalcy.” Nothing is consistent. It's probably more that nothing has ever really been consistent and I'm just more attuned to it, but still. I don't know who I'm living with EVERY YEAR for the last 10 years. I don't know how much money I'll have month to month, let alone year to year. I don't regularly practice just one instrument, let alone one or 2 songs to get them to a point of mastery or performance worthy. I haven't worked the same job for longer than 3 or 4 months, besides doing studies or the coffee shop, in those years as well. My “social cohort” moved all over the country. The online world grows increasingly younger and inane. Value is measured in commodification and trending hashtags. I can't even live modestly and make nearly no money without inviting problems from the IRS or greedy rental companies. I don't even eat or sleep at the same times each day.
And I got confused about the appeal of a large stable quiet field away from it all? It's a wonder 200 families and friends depicted on screen draw me in to familiar worlds I might hope to anchor my thoughts in? Shit, there's what 5 years of a relationship was probably speaking to as well. If only we'd played on each others' heart strings and opted for manipulation games instead! I could have avoided my motivations and shock from the 3rd rail labeled DESPERATE FOR STABILITY.
I've done my best in trying to document what about me has declined or grown, be it in my descriptive capacity or actions. In that sense I feel lucky for as concrete as one could imagine, without numerative quantifiers, relative shifts and what motivated them. It's hard to overstate the components and impact of a genuinely stable foundation and what it takes to build something lasting and real. I'm a fish without a school. In a sea of words I've found myself drowning. My leaky boat made of an “expansive perspective” being rowed with an “inexhaustible will” is supposed to get me to shore in a contest of my own invention. I see plenty of circling beasts counting on me not getting there.
No matter how old I get, I feel what I've been bred for. I'm as white working-class middle-income cliché as they come and had every expectation drilled into me about how to do even better. After pushing 29 years, I'm some form or another of what a non-discerning author has to say about “Millennials.” If you broke me into parts, the easy boring way to say something about them would be about how the past shapes us and we couldn't improve without mistakes. Snore. I find that I've taken my repulsion impulse and crafted a borderline extreme alt-personality that plays up everything I ever thought I wouldn't be or didn't want. There's something to be said about “maturity” and personality changing over time as memories condense and life becomes familiar, but it's more deliberate.
Attacking head-on will bog me down, so maybe I can just point to instances and behaviors. I'm old enough, and have had it be a problem long enough, that I know eating like shit or right before bed burns a hole through my stomach. In a forgone conclusion about my inevitable death anyway, I still make the same shitty decisions on a regular enough schedule to warrant mentioning. That approach to life and my body is a learned behavior. Eating like shit as a kid was ignorance and the environment (parents and grandparents encouraging norms). Eating like shit now is like my version of smoking.
I think about how I learned to be so “mean.” Often I borrow a line about the amount of people who've been abused or grew up in shitty households that don't turn into the kind of monsters that raised them. It's a grand celebration of my mother's cruelty every time I get a phone call or visit from police for something obscene I've said. In the same breath, I don't know what situations warrant more vitriol than when I'm actually moved to spew it. But the “coldness” I have towards all of the emotionality I'm accused of not understanding used to be out-of-control compulsion easily taught by and inherited from the pro.
I think about doing studies. I can't think of a more opposite approach to how I envisioned my “work” life than to discover how to get paid for sleeping and watching TV. I never shake the anxiety about all of my “wasted” time, even if I'm reading or doing something I enjoy. Underneath me is an inexhaustible work horse. The path to the most money required taming it. And unlike 16 year old me who could work 2 jobs, one running the entire shift, and then march in band, when I dip back into that overdrive, I come home needing the massager to work out the mounting kinks. I made $450 in 3 “days” with ClusterTruck (most of it spoken for and just getting back to “even” after my car shit the bed again) but still feel guilty when I'm home if there's a chance to pull in just a little bit more by staying on for 10 or 11 hours instead of 8.
School used to define me. I absolutely thought my road to anywhere I wanted to get in life was going to be through my approach and love of learning. I visit the grave of my strangled joy at being in college almost daily. I was so unbelievably saddened by the reality of “higher education.” Probably no singular experience shaped a kind of “fuck everything” attitude than slogging through it and getting my degree. I love the train wreck in slow motion imagery as every piece of my working future had to get replaced as it tumbled off the track in a violent blaze and cacophonous rancor.
More molding came upon the chance to do the coffee shop. It didn't matter that we made money. All that matters is that forces who don't care about you will conspire to fuck you, and even when you've attempted to account for everything, one or more of those things is a lie you had little choice but to rely on. The first opportunity I got to do something, finally anything, (that wasn't partying) that could potentially and aggressively speak to me and my values and ability, and it was no less subjected to a will and circumstances much greater than I could contend.
It's not my intention to simply write off everything I've experienced as some massive ball of negativity. Nor do I think every important lesson I've worked into my being I'd be better off without or want to learn an even harder way down the line. I just want to be careful that I'm not “stuck” in a kind of “opposite autopilot.” I mean, I'm attempting to move and build on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere in a state I absolutely hate. How much potential do I really see? Is it possible I've driven myself to a kind of crazed loner who's only shot at peace is as close to isolation as you can get without getting lost in the woods or desert?
I wanted to be a cliché. I wanted the program as it was sold to me. I didn't want to have to look at the one or two friends doing something resembling what I wanted and think I look like some crazy mouthpiece to over-intellectualized despotism; too blind and ferocious to notice the froth and beard resemble more mangy dog than wizened priorities and resolve. I wanted the “safe space” for my brand of over-achieving and smarm. I would have reveled in the usual praise and accolades with my picture on the wall or extra nod of acknowledgment for my insight about the last quarter. I would have been one of my uncles, owning too much hobby shit, while living somewhat modestly, and finding more room for innocent alliances through sports or gentleman's clubs.
To say it out loud makes me think like the disembodied soul attempting to write my story. Who'd want to read that shit? They could just pick up my uncles' books, right? “He worked non-stop” is the same simple way to describe scores of Asians who end up dead each year from overdoing it. “He did well in school” doesn't even get me Ivy League credentials or a claim to valedictorian status. I hear stories almost daily of 8 year olds raped by multiple family members, kids O.D.ing on mommy's Aderall cocaine mix, and babies getting their dicks punched...and while it's fairly disingenuous to draw a comparison between abuse and its effects on children, I'm willing to concede none of those things happened to me so I probably lost some kind of excuse battle there.
There's still a very large and very compelling sense ingrained in me that draws pride from the credentials or the cash. It's not in a “make it rain” or “I insist you call me Dr.” sense either. It's that I started to play a different game when I saw how easy and, well, sad, it was to compete at that level. Growing technology and trends only made it look all the more unpalatable. Paris Hilton makes money from being dumb and looking pretty? Funny and intriguing when you're young and it's new. An entire generation raised on turning cameras onto themselves being obnoxious or wasting their time completely changes the concept of “earning money.” Every year the smartest professions are being replaced by new algorithms and machinery that render all those years of struggle in school mute. Why kill myself to become a doctor when even if I were the best in the world, my very humanity would bring a higher probability of your death than your latest super-smart phone tracking your vitals?
I never got to close the circle on that “normal” conception of my capacity or where I fit. There was a time I used to be as pretentious about the shows that I would watch as I was when I thought a peanut butter and honey sandwich was an appalling affront to decency well-beneath me who's certainly not poor and deserves normal jelly! My embarrassing mindless mother just forgot to buy me another meal ticket! (I could be a difficult child) Now, of course I'd put honey on most things and watch more shows than likely nearly all the people who get paid to write increasingly pointless reviews for Rotten Tomatoes.
I have no sense of “normalcy.” Nothing is consistent. It's probably more that nothing has ever really been consistent and I'm just more attuned to it, but still. I don't know who I'm living with EVERY YEAR for the last 10 years. I don't know how much money I'll have month to month, let alone year to year. I don't regularly practice just one instrument, let alone one or 2 songs to get them to a point of mastery or performance worthy. I haven't worked the same job for longer than 3 or 4 months, besides doing studies or the coffee shop, in those years as well. My “social cohort” moved all over the country. The online world grows increasingly younger and inane. Value is measured in commodification and trending hashtags. I can't even live modestly and make nearly no money without inviting problems from the IRS or greedy rental companies. I don't even eat or sleep at the same times each day.
And I got confused about the appeal of a large stable quiet field away from it all? It's a wonder 200 families and friends depicted on screen draw me in to familiar worlds I might hope to anchor my thoughts in? Shit, there's what 5 years of a relationship was probably speaking to as well. If only we'd played on each others' heart strings and opted for manipulation games instead! I could have avoided my motivations and shock from the 3rd rail labeled DESPERATE FOR STABILITY.
I've done my best in trying to document what about me has declined or grown, be it in my descriptive capacity or actions. In that sense I feel lucky for as concrete as one could imagine, without numerative quantifiers, relative shifts and what motivated them. It's hard to overstate the components and impact of a genuinely stable foundation and what it takes to build something lasting and real. I'm a fish without a school. In a sea of words I've found myself drowning. My leaky boat made of an “expansive perspective” being rowed with an “inexhaustible will” is supposed to get me to shore in a contest of my own invention. I see plenty of circling beasts counting on me not getting there.
