[614] Ego Brain

There’s been way too much going on the last few days and my mind has put my body into a kind of reservist state where I forget to eat and can’t enjoy doing anything until even a remote plan can take shape.

There simply is no real good way to be “homeless,” in my opinion, and every little thing you take for granted in how your day to day operates has to be reevaluated and attempted to be made a plan for. I always have places to stay, in a sense, but couch or floor dwelling has its drawbacks and neighbors start eyeballing how long the outsider’s car has been there. As long as I have gas money I can get around in my crappy car which also has to make me money, at least for the next 2 months, in a greater “at random” fashion. Can I persuade Byron to cook large enough meals at once that I can just take shit to sit with me in the car so I can stay on all day at ClusterTruck, or will his crazy people find a way to ensure I’ll be bleeding an extra 5-10 a shift or navigating friend’s kitchens until they get annoyed with me?

One of the things I’ve generally tried to do is always have at least my shit contained in something I’ve already taken care of. That’s pretty much been blown right out of the window. I’ve got a closet at Byrons, my cheap option for getting the truck towed fell through so now it’s actually double what I was anticipating to get it out there, scattered items in the garage itself, and little faith I could get my truck unstuck if I barreled it through the field and parked next to thing so I could run a few things temporarily off the generator. At the garage where I cannot shit, shower, or sleep yet.

Two conflicting forces are bubbling up. One, the “of course it’s doable, just what’s to be done next” thing, and the sheer stupidity of what made me have to go about things in this way. And for what? Because people I know are content to get fat as fuck playing video games and spending money they don’t have on pizza and cigarettes? Because it’s much easier for you to take care of your own conception of happiness, if you dare call it that, than support something trying to be bigger?

But it’s worse than that though. Like, I don’t expect people to GoFundMe because I’m so noble and spirited and deserve anything. I expect people to see “us” as a whole and think about what happens when collective small contributions over time accumulate and spill over. The whole exercise of this land and cussing out ticks and ping-ponging in between where to sleep after the next 2 nights is part of a long term chain of sacrifice and investment. Things take time in general, let alone when we’re in the kind of cultural death spiral we see today.

Is it just more real to me? The instability of it all. People have worked for more years than anyone I know has been alive and been canned immediately. I had to pause a documentary interviewing a bunch of people who’ve had one tragedy or huge perspective shift after another move them into becoming travelling vandwellers. They couldn’t afford their lives anymore, their house burned down, the market tanked their job. Most of the lives I see around me are great as long as you want to live in an overpriced apartment with 2 to 4 of your friends and acquaintances from college for the rest of your life. I feel burdened with the little bills I have, let alone loans, and still would rather deal with the bullshit one month at a time of developing a canvas than shuffling myself into rooms clicking about all the time.

There’s hard and fast personality differences here I’m sure, but come on! I’m looking at people I’ve had intelligent conversations with and fun times. They all make considerably more money than me. What’s the trajectory!? What’s the goal? And because I know there isn’t one, why the fuck not!? One of the people in this video says you trade comfort for freedom. It’s certainly comfortable to have an easy place to do all of the normal things billed to you, but you’re extremely limited in your freedom. You can recreate them on your own terms, and then some. If all you’re going to do is spend money on the latest video game equipment and maybe acid festival, you’d think a garage in the middle of nowhere would look like a dream.

I feel like I’m looking at the modern city version of a hillbilly. “There ain’t shit to do, so we shoot, and mud, and do drugs.” I can be as bored with what’s on offer to my income bracket as the next guy, but I still conceive of myself as having considerably more to offer. And no, not to “the world” in any sense beyond the individuals in it I respect and call friends. I need more equality. If you’re not doing something, or already supporting, at least something as cool or big as me, I’m just sort of put off. There is absolutely no reason the story of how I get or got to wherever I do has to include what I’m sure are going to be a few ridiculously annoying and pointless months. But that’s precisely it. No one is reasoning where they fit in the whole and don’t share my conception of togetherness.

I think there’s another distinction here to be made as well. Some people say shit like, “I was born to be a baseball player!” Whatever the profession or hobby, this celebratory illusion is often used as an excuse to bypass any larger social responsibility. You were provided an easy path that, maybe you actually kind of suck at or are very average, statistically speaking, and it has nothing to do with a prenatal decree. I wasn’t born to do anything. I happen to have a brain that operates in a way that takes in more information than most in my experience care to bother with, and want to see it ordered in a way that makes sense. That’s about it. I could turn that on any field...many fields...and when I say, “I was born to be a farmer!” You’ll know I’m totally full of shit if you’d only kept count of how many times I’ve said I hate outside.

So if I’m not born to do anything, why pursue things the way I do? Well, that “ordered sense” brain keeps screaming it at me. I can be prepared without going over a cliff with “preppers.” I can learn to grow my own food, and know while I might be able to speak to industrial farming practices, am in considerably worse shape to do something about them in a real way than Monsanto. But, I’ll know who’s in control of those sorts of things at Monsanto, and then maybe go from there. My obligation is of course to me and mine, but I can’t claim that on a laptop any of us built. I don’t even have the obligation to kids. Do I want to be my dad or step-mom taking care of them 24 hours a day for 6 years when they have a stroke? Would my job allow me to leave for that long? Will I have saved up enough money or have anywhere to take them?

What bugs me most is that everything in between what I’m trying to accomplish, that these people seem to enjoy, IS STILL TOTALLY DOABLE. I don’t know if I watch as much TV as they play videogames, but if that’s your thing, GREAT, but DO ANYTHING ELSE IMPORTANT TOO! Maybe this is something I’ve gotten really wrong for a long time, but is it my job to lobby friends for what I perceive to be their excess funds and time? That not only feels crass, but small-minded, as I know people have all sorts of shit they might be paying for in the background, even if those things never got in the way of their new VR headset, or increased rent payment, or cigarettes and delivered pizza. Our standards of living aren’t set terribly high I think is the point here. Basic sanity requires some shitty food and distractions? Okay, here, NOW HELP ME DO SOMETHING REAL!

2 days left. I have to haul the majority of the kitchen to the dumpster. Take a handful of things left in the rest of the house to my car. I’m debating if I want my computer so far away from me with nowhere really practical to set it up anyway, but, I built that shit and it’s rather nice to be subjected to garage life. I could really use a non-leasing having pantry Hatsam scenario right now. Pay nominally to have a corner so I can get to work easy enough without blowing gas. Maybe I’ll just get curtains for my car, take cat naps, and start it for the air conditioning from time to time. You know, because I’m speculative or crazy or eccentric or something. Not making the relatively small sacrifices in advance to be more comprehensively practical going forward.

Part of me doesn’t like anything about this blog. I’m not feeling bitchy and feel like that’s all I’ve got. There’s a dozen trains of thought about how to proceed, and primarily they all center around ME, doing MY thing that has little to do with anything particularly comfortable or ingratiating. It sucks to recognize yourself. It sucks to have big goals. It’s tick bites and judging. It’s taking in all of the horribleness to come right now, so that the moment, if never “perfect,” is at least as complete and ordered as you can make it for now. Surely I’ve made “progress” right? I’ve accumulated wealth, space, more practical opportunities to address an already too long goal list. I can make more connections and offer more opportunities. I can answer phone calls and emails. I can play your video games and watch all your favorite shows. Is all I’m doing merely “different?” Because I think it’s something more. And I think it's the kind of more that we’ve basically forgotten how to recognize in this country in particular. It is a small, so small, group of people who even act like they’re part of something more.

At the end of his new show, Jim Jefferies says, “I think we can all do better.” I don’t. If you’re not forced, you’re not going anywhere.

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One of my biggest problems is that I'm as tired of hearing myself speak as you. I could write thousands of blogs needling in on a topic, and none of them will pass for the joke I tell at bowling, or thing I create, or offer or favor I do or commit to. If the internet has done anything terrible, it's that we're reduced to talk. Crowd-funded initiatives that seem to build things or save people don't feel real in equal measure. You don't really know where your donations are going. You can't be thanked with a hug.

Another inspiring thought drawn from Jordan Peterson is when he relates the idea of the not existing without a body. What do laws amount to with institutions to enforce them? The inert matter we're made of is just that. To actually exist and be of any worthwhile consequence is to manifest as more than an idea or noise. I've gone so long not even peaking at the peaks of what I want to manifest, I'm reduced to endless commentary about what I'm sat around.

Now this in between quasi-homeless realm is going to reduce me further. I'll be a collection of stuff scattered about, but mostly disengaged with. I'll be “driver.” I'll be the uninspired slowly typing dreg, noticing the same old rocks, whistling the same tune and beating the drum of “one day.”

[613] Short and Sweet

I think I'm going to enjoy this blog because it has everything to do with pride.

Nothing will make me perk up than having real niggas in my life. Let it sink in. I roll with and amongst people who feel what I'm about. I have what? 63 people on my friends list? How many people exist in life? How many people you think a cordial manipulative fuck like myself might ever deign to talk to?

Just make it real for you. On the list of phrases I'm gonna say until I die, you're not an accident. Fuck you forever if you pretend I'm an incidental force in your fucking life. You need to have considerably more pride in your being than any lowly human should pretend.

With that stated.

I pledge to do work. I pledge to always try to create. I have an inkling that you're the kind of mother fucker that respects the game I'm playing. That's the long and short. Whatever I achieve or majestically fail the fuck out of, I don't think your opinion will amount to, “Well, he was fucking retarded, so duh.”

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

I'm old enough and shit-under-my-belt enough to know you're not like Ponzi scheme afraid of me. I also know that I would never ask for anything I did not give you a comprehensive primer on how you would be an investor for, good or bad. Long story short, I have no qualms about comfortably claiming I'm not an asshole who wastes money.

On the real, it's for you! Dudes, I don't have this land because I give a fuck about a million dollars or relative financial security. I just want you to know when shit goes to total dog shit in our completely and unbearably fucked up circumstances we were born into, you're good. That's all it's about. We're not fucking retarded and can create all sorts of profitable things. But my god, why would we pretend the world operates any better than our worst days?

It's a small world, you guys. 6 degrees of separation. You do what you do well; that shit has global implications. I draw implicit power from the idea if you and I aren't fucking it up, the rest of the world is just around the corner. Logically. Fuck hope. If me and mine figure it out, we're not removed from the world at large.

As I was incessantly, berating into Hatsam tonight, don't ever pretend, don't you allow yourself a fucking moment where you forget that you're my fucking friend and it's for a transcendent reason that begets that whole of existence. I could hate things more. I could shit on and criticize life to a greater degree. What the fuck are you doing in my world? That's the fucking magic! Own it.

I'm not hopeful. I'm not angry. I'm not shit but wildly enthusiastic about the lives I've been privileged to know and cheerleade for. It's up to you whether you want to fuck it up or not.

[612] Sloppy Drunk

My god, do I hate hangover days. I really wish drinking wasn't fun. Of course, I don't need alcohol to have fun, but it's like driving fast or riding a sketchy carnival ride in that there's the particular rush from engaging in a quasi-calculated dangerous situation. Enough pills or NyQuil can help me escape the psychical repercussions if I give myself a day pass to not leave the couch. The truly unfortunate part is the impossible to shake mental implications.

I have as much a lizard brain as anyone else. I spend a lot of time trying to cultivate a human veneer of having a fair portion of my shit together, but as a lot of blogs I've written hopefully point out, I at least perceive myself flailing in the dark as excitedly as the next guy. Things I try to put to bed bubble up as each shot trickles down. I'm left cramped and dehydrated trying to squeeze out even a vague memory of things I said in the last few hours of the night.

One of the things I really liked about parties and alcohol was it seeming to bring out what people were afraid to deal with or say sober. Maybe a difficult talk couldn't get started because there was too much inhibition. Maybe the flirting and tension could take a back seat to just getting it on already. The phrase, “drunk mind, sober heart” rang true for me and I used to be able to get reports of all the praise and love I showered on my room full of friends while I was blacked out.

I sense more has changed than simply my capacity to process alcohol as efficiently as when I started drinking. More crap has built up in my subconscious. More major disappointments and broken expectations have made it where I can no longer trust that blacked out blanket of love to descend on whomever I'm pointed at. I find that unfortunate. It's as anxious as I can get the next day even if I'm fairly positive the majority of my conversations were nothing but polite.

I'm in a 10 steps forward, major leap back process as far as my head is concerned. I stop having physical reactions in looking at a picture of an ex. I put more positive words than negative ones out about how I choose to remember our time together. A few pleasant conversations happen. But it's like small cracks in a windshield. It's the distance and distractions that were contributing to a better perception. It took my mind shutting off my conscious state to apparently have a drunk phone conversation and send texts about all the cliché things drunk exes text each other.

Interestingly enough, I'm considerably less concerned with whatever I said than I am with the idea that it wasn't the truth. I don't think we should get back together. I think I was palpably hurt by the dishonesty and I'd only be encouraging a cycle of emotional abuse. Something more insidious about my brain or biology is reacting viscerally to the idea of rejection several leagues removed from how I actually think and want for my life. Isn't that really fucking weird?

The implication is that if it's already hard enough to face obvious problems with obvious solutions, what happens when more of you is being driven by your blacked out brain than you can even identify until you're blacked out? This is the place I speculate people's depression is burried. This is why 2/3 of deaths from guns are suicides. It only takes a moment of peaking behind that door for shit to go terribly wrong.

In drinking, I'm also able to access a part of my being that I enjoy seeing in other people. I call it feeling “normal” to just keep the flow of whatever conversation going or give out hugs and handshakes like an undiscerning child. It can be pretty annoying to be “Nick P.” the hyper involved in everything and nothing in particular who's constant stream of ridicule and criticism literally needs to be impaired to slow down. I can recall like it was yesterday the first time I felt the reality of, “taking the edge of.”

I think it's important to state that I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of being a pining loverboy. There's nothing wrong with getting entangled with other people and there's no exact science or time frame for how long wounds take to heal. It's just incredibly annoying. It makes me hyper cynical to personally experience playing the game and get that intimate knowledge about why I don't buy it. Finding someone that taps that deeply into your psyche doesn't make me advocate or encourage less discerning people to do it as well.

It's not even precisely right to say the whole affair or the darkness of hangover days makes me feel sad. Haunted is the better word. The knowledge that it's not if, but when, your coping mechanisms will break. That you could be acting in any number of ways in utter spite of yourself and not even be aware of it. I start to resent my own happiness. I can't just take the win. Hanging out with friends becomes an opportunity for my head to race down the path of what happens when trust and joy turns to shit, even if there isn't a better group of people I'd rather be drinking with.

The best you can do is try. I don't turn on people until they figure out why they want to turn on me. I don't soberly text people I shouldn't nor materially alter my world to reflect back to me my most beleaguered thoughts. So far I've managed to keep writing away the demons before they've manifested as something monstrously more destructive. But I know I'll never shake them completely. I still need to be insulated and shaped by better examples and environments. And I could stand to hire someone to take my phone away around 1 or after the 7th shot, whichever comes first.

[611] The Flood

Bout that time again. Weird feeling, not quite but mostly the same words. It would be so cool to be able to nail this down. There's like a pressure from my temporal lobes that the perfect words would release.

I can't count the amount of times that it happens. Every single conversation can or at some point seems to go the same way. Perhaps you start from somewhere that makes sense. Inevitably the “wrong” thing gets said, and a whole new reality is spun from the divergence.

And it's not like “we” don't know or see when it happens. You're in a pissy mood and run amok with something innocuous your spouse says. You flatly condemn words or opinions you've defaulted as unacceptable. You take things out of context. A quote showed up on reddit about how specialized knowledge and vastly different uses of words ensures that people will default to their feelings when their minds prove unable to cope with it all. It's an exceedingly predictable, common, and destructive phenomenon.

I recall some of my conversations, or sigh “debates,” with religious apologists. How many times can one hear them say, “You haven't even looked at my evidence!” that doesn't understand the science, or the history, or the logical fallacy, on and on before you go mad? Evidence for them isn't something independently verifiable across ages and cultures that speaks to a common story. Evidence is the very fact something exists! An apologist they like writes a book, they aren't concerned with his incorrect premise, and frankly don't even care if you've read the book. The fact that the book exists as “contrary” means listen up you smug atheist, you haven't figured it all out!

We substitute the latest findings and new lingual gymnastics, but the same conversation has been going on since, one imagines, we've had the words to attempt to conceive of something like gods. I think it was in reading The Portable Atheist where I really started to feel exceedingly stupid trying to rehash arguments written on parchment thousands of years ago by some wily scribe or thinker that, no shit, didn't end the debate.

So then I ask why? Why the same thing endlessly? Why the same feelings even in different circumstances? Why the same excuses? We're supposed to be adaptable. Our environments aren't nearly as likely to kill us as in the past. We have genes that can turn on and off after a number of years experiencing different environments. We have ancient structures in our brain that are going to bias us with millions of years of evolutionary baggage, but we have plenty of examples of people who, in one form or another, attempt to combat their lowly monkey status.

Take science. You literally cannot conduct it by infusing any level of the math or biology with your shitty opinion. You can interpret results any which way you like, but the chemistry isn't concerned with your opinion. The math doesn't need a soul. Millions of people pursue this with primarily the same brain as the violent racist, and terribly afraid, chest beating Republican ideologue. What have they figured out that these people can't? Why have they figured it out?

You may react reflexively that this is something of an incongruous comparison. I don't think it is. An open and honest pursuit of truth, in any field, is preferable to an emotional reaction stemming from any number of irrational fears and brain stirrings. We've crystallized our cultural decay by attempting to crown anti-science as the rule of law in a shrieking revolt against shadows in the dark. We deny the threat of white terrorists and institutional racism. We pretend guns keep us safe. In the highest offices in the land, and with the entire world agreeing, you still can't get the head of environmental departments to acknowledge climate change as human caused. When I say things like, “It can't get worse,” I mean the next step is uncontrollable accelerated death, because things are already dying, drowning, and burning, just not as fast as they could.

I claim often enough I'm concerned about communication. I pick words that I think lead us astray and tear them apart into all of the pointless ways we employ them. No, you're not “helping.” Sorry, I doubt the depths of your “love.” Funny, a dozen of invites to shared Google docs folders and terrible communication reminds me of every “start up” project I've ever been in. Every time a loaded word imbued with cultural privilege is employed, someone's looking for their back to be patted. I can't stress it enough, whether they actually accomplish anything or not, often while they're actively harming something, to the degree of pride they claim the extravagant implications of their descriptors, they don't just get a pass, but are celebrated and promoted in a kind of hysteria.

I reflexively want to say it's more often about protection. People want to protect their conceptions of themselves because it's uncomfortable to be forced into a realm of experience you didn't choose. Except, that's letting them off the hook. Rape comes to mind. You're not going to get a more unasked for situation dropped into the middle of your life. People are then called survivors. All of the emotional turmoil that comes after such an affair is one of the only times it's appropriate to say there’s something that needs protecting. A violent reshuffling of someone's sense of self is not a battle of egos or words. I simply don't have sympathy if my ideas suggest to you it's time to cry rape.

Truly, listen to the language though. Start counting the instances of people popping off like you’re plugging a dick into people's mouths, ears, and asses, and then triumphantly racing to the top of a mountain to claim your dominance. Talk about oppression by bringing up someone who's got it worse off than your opponent. Nope, you've just downplayed and dismissed their being, fool. What do shell shocked Syrian children know about my great-great-granddaddy's experiences as a slave? And we're off the races for who can spiral away from any supposed point the quickest.

Keep in mind, we're talking well before we even breach what happens when people just choose to outright lie and repeat it so often it takes on a life of its own. We're still in the realm of people presuming to have a “civil” conversation with each other. The do-gooder with the best intentions who walks up to an atheist and asks, “Please, sir, tell me honestly, what are your problems with God?” Incidentally, the same person opining on abortion, “Well, I don't believe in murdering babies.” Right out of the gate, the horses legs are broken. God's a forgone conclusion. No matter what you think, you have to start as a murderer or at least accomplice.

I've been more conflicted about my insistence that people talk back. When they do, I appreciate it, but even from the one's I know who have the best intentions or are “trying to help” they focus on the wrong things or don't follow up when clarification is added, or in the event it's a stranger, mostly ignore what's actually been said to criticize a single word or sentence in a paragraph they misquote, somehow. Like, the words really are here and copy and paste is a thing. If I said each of us was a drop in an ocean, but thought our actions were poisoning the ocean, am I saying “society can't change” or that we're poisoning ourselves? That's up for debate with your average “I don't really care what you actually said” pretend reader, who also thinks analogies and metaphors are bulletproof pieces of evidence for adopting a cheery disposition. If the single word “poison” can't be carried though, a generalized discussion about the state of society becomes next level abstract and ridiculous.

Lately I've been using what I used to consider fairly ignorant words like “every” and “always.” It's just that this is what's increasingly the case. Every conversation I get into devolves the same way. Always I can find the emotional floor that has lost all capacity for malleability or reason. Every topic is in some way off limits. I'm always met with a lazy cliché or terrible metaphor. Every single word in something I write will be ignored so the person on the other end can hone their internet doctor diagnosing skills. The best thing I've come up with to combat this is more silence. Part of the reason I struggle with shutting up though is that I work really hard to manifest what I think in the real world. I'm a person of consequence because I refrain from exhibiting the violent hatred and threat I absolutely feel from the world around me. I listen closer to you than you listen to you, literally. You'll contradict yourself line to line or paragraph to paragraph. And then every time I point something like that out you never admit or own it, and always use it as an excuse to blame or label me.

How does one not shit the bed nightly with a brain contemplating ignorant emotional vitriol at the helm of the levers concerning our survival? It's only the intimate knowledge I came up with regarding myself that gave me the super power to see through you. Jordan Peterson talks about the difference between tragedy and evil. One can site any number of tragedies that we're subjected to by simply being alive. But evil is a choice. Evil is the disregard you have for who you are and your capacity to sow the seeds of our collective demise. I can't choose my racing heart or defeated nihilistic gut grumbling. But I choose to throw a leash on it by writing. I choose projects and pursue a lifestyle that speaks to my place in the whole and desire for a community that operates better than what we're currently doing. I could ignore and make excuses for everything in my head that wold love to just sit and eat and watch and hate and scream and give up. But I'm not a tragedy and don't take pride in choosing evil.

I've avoided it until now, but I must say it's the ironic heartbeat of all existence. I think this often illustrates itself most prominently in my relationships. I'll have “friends” who talk to me when they're having doubts or feeling shitty, but will actively pursue time spent with the people or situations that create their anxiety. They cozy up to mutual friends who, let's put it as, regard them with less than the respect I would say a friendship needs. Me, one form of monster or another for a social faux pas or comment that one time way back when that ensures I won't get a text back or reply in a message without a week of hounding. We can move away from this sounding like a personal pity party.

The ones who want to “help” people stop getting abortions create a not-adopted child crisis, mental health crisis, state budget crisis, demonize condoms and sex, stigmatize the wrong groups, and hinder the adoption and understanding of the scientific fields that help better manage pregnancy. Some of the most dramatic professions of “love” that have been sold to me were the most abusive relationships you could ask for and came with more restrictions and covenants than a strip club trying to open up next to The Vatican. No quicker path to finding a complete and utter moron than the amount of memes proclaiming how smart they are. And never will you find the most unstable crazy fucks than to the degree their “empowered” “healing” “courageous” mantras stream their different feeds. We can't tell the difference between insecure uninspired attention whores and genuine talent with a message, but they'll get at least equal airtime or “thought” pieces clawing at the desert sands for a drop of meaning.

It's just such a stupid way to die. Every day? Every minute? Every moment you know the truth and instead play the game. For what? What kind of life is that? People call it easy. It's easy to lie. It's easy to offer pleasantries and wink and nod your way through what you really know about how politics or interpersonal squabbles or institutional powers operate. Come on! Don't you know pizza is code in the pedophile world! Bilderberg! Without a ring it doesn't count! Fertilized means soul! My struggle is the greatest most dogged struggle of anyone who's dared to struggle! Death panels! Science isn't perfect! You get to be an abomination and YOU get to be an abomination! Sugar by any other name is healthy and natural! [I was misunderstood in the science of some sugar alternatives] Cows don't get autism, so fuck herd immunity!

Okay, that's getting ridiculous, yet, in a string of ridicule and parody, someone would reference the 2 words “death panels” and give me a 3 paragraph lecture on how I shouldn't be so convinced or enraged at the lame-stream-media and maybe I'd be happier if I shut off the news. You know, the point. The point of this paragraph, nay the entire piece and I've just refrained from saying it out loud until now. Thank god someone had the insight and initiative to rip the beating heart of what I'm saying out and present it in such a way that's so much easier to swallow and understand. But I've got my prescription in hand ready to start my new life as a deliberately uninformed bag of joy. The right and proper fix to all of my problems that's eluded me for so long. If I had a medal, I'd beat them to death with it.

I don't even think I'm done. Because there's always the idea of “it's been done before.” I've said all or most of these sentiments a dozen and a half times before. I've used similar analogies. I've been equally frustrated at almost the exact same words about the exact same issues that someone knows exactly nothing about. And yet I have to keep writing. I have to keep pressing on the pressure in my head until all the words that comprise it manifest as something “better” than every fucking thing I actively fucking hate. Every word stands in defiance of every example I see as contributing to our demise. We need better tools for combating our stupid speech. Be free to say it, but understand it for what it is; it's getting us all killed.

Every time someone betrays me, I try to speak to the truth. Every time I'm anxious out of my mind sitting and listening to celebrities talk about their shitty movies instead of working on something I care about, I try to relate to the contradiction truthfully. Every terrible demon in my head that's learned how to be cruel and take advantage and manipulate, I try to count one by one until I can build a big boring reference book in service to a perspective that doesn't leave me crying like I've been irreparably violated by them and so it's your fault. I count every resentful comment and tantrum and judgment and odd look and condescending comment or flippant dismissal of what I've actually worked to say or do as a new coat of polish on the prized gem of truth. We'll engage with gibberish more intensely than a single line from someone like me, covfefe. (If you misspell that, Google will “correct” you.)

And it's never enough. It's one unnecessary death after another until it gets to you, and if you're a Republican congressman, you'll criticize the shooter's lack of training and aim to be such a bitch he couldn't even kill you! before you call your shitty positions or guns a problem. If the world were literally flooded by your poisonous decisions, you'd sit back, resolved, knowing that you deserved what's coming and if every moment before your last wasn't spent considering how you've drowned everyone else, why bother starting now?

[610] Everything Is Awful

I’ve been mentally running from writing this since the moment I woke up. I want you to actually respond and do work to persuade me otherwise of what I’m going to argue.

The first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone. No, it’s not filled with invites to lunch or that “things” started to make sense. I scroll through my dozens of news sites to see how the world is falling apart. Millions of refugees struggling to find a home, basic services or health care, and then the story of a teenager killed for being Muslim tops that particular bad news cake. Apparently it’s only the news organizations I follow that track every day, literally, every single day, something you care about getting attacked or protections for it repealed. Arizona was hot enough today to prevent planes from landing.

My first question is, where should our focus be? If you’re living at least as broke as I am, is it correct to keep our heads down, share a handful of articles, and keep trying to pay the bills? I want to know. Is that the appropriate moral and responsible adult thing to do? Is our best effort little pains in our hearts and “outrage” when we find the time to read? Are we making the appropriate sacrifices in service to our very humanity?

My second question, should we be giving a shit? Are the refugees your problem? Is climate change your responsibility? Is our completely fucked political climate something you need to be changing? If the answer is no, tell me. I’m not kidding. I need to figure out who you people are and where you exist in this world.

To both of my questions, I contend our focus should be on systemic change that attempts to account for everyone. Accounting for everyone doesn’t mean you need to train to become a shoulder to cry on for billions of people. It doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice every penny and live as destitute as the worst off and therefore unable to help. It doesn’t even mean you have to feel one way or another about someone “other.” But if you’re going to act like for a second you’re not one amongst the whole, I need to understand why your privileged existence is to be preferred.

Increasingly I think it’s a story of sacrifice. The amount of forgone indulgences I’ve set aside in service to building a place that allows me to contribute at a larger scale. If I can live out of a barn, maybe I can create 30 similar barns for people fleeing war. If every unwanted baby in the state of Missouri is destined to be an inbred meth head in and out of prison because mom couldn’t make it to the only abortion clinic, I should be able to organize some of my time around figuring out how to dismantle or subvert the links in the chain that reinforce the perpetually oppressive story. The world’s too hot? I want to know how many carbon capture factories it takes to stop things in their tracks even if it’s impractical just to say we’ve ruled it out.

The tipping point for writing this was Jon Ossoff losing. In typical lazy idiot liberal fashion, they funneled money from all over the country, created a ridiculous dialogue about how close things were, and then they go down in glorious flames by 5 points. You can’t just throw money at shit, leaving aside the times I’ve showed what a waste it is to give to unaccountable charities absent mindedly. Millions of dollars and expectant naivety thought we’d “get a real gauge” on how people were reacting to Hitler 2. NO! IDIOTS! People are reacting the exact same way they have been for the entire years long campaigning. Doubling down, avoiding, or drowning in existential dread. What a coincidence! The Monied Liberal thought he could fix things...with money!

I don’t think we have a clue, a direction, or a purpose. I think fundamentally, baseline humanity, whatever happy story of puppies helping people play golf or deaf girl can sing on America’s Got Talent videos or unbearably dumb and fuck you meme you create, I feel the ship not just sinking, but getting pulled by Cthulhu.

What do you want to be doing when it gets real bad? How can you look at what’s going on in almost every other country and think we’re immune to the wide-scale accelerated demise of “normal?” How can you look at how actively our country is being attacked and think it’s going to just get better somehow? Do you really? Do you think “the smart people” are really out there prepared and wise enough to steer our irrational collective self-destructive conscience back?

I hate it. I hate facebook celebrating all the time. I hate happy pictures and hobbies. I hate shitty life-affirmations and “funny” “ironic” bullshit masquerading as more intelligent or above it all. What were you trying to do to save the world? What happens when the mountains you want to climb are closed off because a new federal law prioritizes some oil or other natural resource business interest? What happens if you need an abortion and end up dying because you didn’t realize how the rot affected the hospital in your “good” neighborhood? What happens when you wake up and can’t eat your favorite food or drink your coffee because the plants that are needed just can’t grow anymore?

How the fuck are you optimistic? How are you so violently against looking forward at the sheer wall of shit that’s in store for us? For your kids you don’t even have yet who won’t hear the dire warnings from the billionaires and scientists cautioning recent grads. If you have the money and feel comfortable, how superficial are your friendships that you’ll want to watch them die in some horrific fashion? You gonna take care of everyone? Or is it just gonna be unfortunate and ho-hum death comes for us all when they can’t afford the pills?

I just don’t get it. You know I’m helpless alone. You know you’re helpless in your stressed out middle management or hourly wage. You know your fucking vacations and toothy smiles don’t matter. You know the million and a half ways you’re implicated in perpetuating the terrible system. So where are you? What are you thinking? Am I the only one not resolved to die with what I have now and less than I could achieve in the future? Did I somehow infect myself with the capacity to give a shit about kids drowning off a coast in a way that wants to help through more than my tears and prayers?

Things are bad. Things are really, excessively fucking bad and we don’t have leaders or help. We have impassioned speeches filtered through naive mediums. We have crossed fingers and some of us have cash we think we can rain down to put out the raging forest fire. Am I really the only fucking one freaking out and trying to approach the world ending pragmatically? Well, not the world. My world. Our world. The one where you get a peaceful death bed scene pumped full of drugs so your hopefully loving family look like angels or snowmen or something before you go. The one where you can even entertain the idea of a family let alone one that will be able to see half the animals that won’t exist anymore or places that used to be covered in snow.

Am I fucking crazy? Should I have taken my money and stayed in a modest apartment always roommate hunting, but always able to pay the bills with ease, kicked back in a mess of books and TV shows, cigar in hand, proclaiming to anyone that will listen, “Ah, yeah it’s crazy, life comes at you fast, we’ll figure it out though, can’t be helped, c’est la vie, to alcohol! Have I showed you my hobby? People are generally good so that’s good. What can I do? I’m only one man!”

Why wait for it to get worse? Why 5 years from now will you be ready? Why 10 years from now might it be enviable to live in a tick-ridden field out of a converted garage because things are so expensive or exclusive it’s even more than it’s currently not possible to afford. Right now it’s already too much. You’ll never work enough. You’ll never save enough. You have no salvation. Why am I fucking wrong for wanting some audience participation? Why shirk the mutual goal? What am I missing about your joyous love affairs with your jobs or pastimes that’s going to make anything better? Why do you make me think you’re capable and care about so much more? You need to tell me what I’m doing wrong.

[609] Held Harmless

I’m destined to fail. That’s how I need to phrase it first. And I’m destined to fail because of what I’m failing at already. I don’t have a community. I actually don’t even sense communities. I’ve been something of a one man show for so long that I’ve internalized a sort of fatalism about it.

It’s one thing to point to the simple things like always needing doctors or people to collect the trash. Large communities run right up against everyday problems that become very large very quickly. But what happens when you scale it down? How much more can you get away with without a community and still make a case that things are basically okay?

Small example, I’m looking for parking. I haven’t exhausted every avenue, but even trying to text the handful of people I know regarding it, precisely one responds. I don’t even know people with driveways, or one’s with dispositions that care to answer texts attempting to help me with a practically throwaway problem.


But it’s been a longer standing issue than that. I remember having a group that used to go dancing on $2 Tuesdays, before dancing was outlawed. I used to get at least a handful to show up to the events and get-togethers I would create before they all moved away or it started to sink in just how broke and tired they really were. I’ve leaned on the phrase, “You can’t make new old friends” before to try and differentiate an allegiance or spirit you might conjure with history, and I think it’s been to my peril. As if on the other side any of the half-drunk acquaintances I impress at the bar truly give a shit the next morning.

I’ve been having these feelings of just starting over. Not moving for the sake of it, but moving away from everyone who can’t even be bothered to respond to a text with, “no.” I don’t like the people I’ve tried over and over again to get on board with any number of things. I’m tired of being told one thing before someone disappears or flaunts the exact opposite of what they told me. It’s not as if I’m under some illusion that it gets better in a different town or state, but at least it’s not the same people gutting me one empty-headed prick at a time.

I think about the amount of things I’ve offered or tried. Small time mutual savings or investment account. I recall a friend needing a plane ticket for a wedding or something, and everyone was eager to foot the bill. Come help me build super cheap random things and get a working knowledge of sustainable practices out on the land. Not cool enough I guess. I’ll buy the drinks! Come out for an hour or 2 any day of the week. Can’t be bothered. Bowling? You hate it. Not everybody, but certainly most everybody. I’ve had this ridiculously naive goal of creating or re-creating a community that no one wants to be a part of.

I can blame myself for exhibiting too much “hope” that once enough evidence built up they’d change their minds and get on board. But phrased that way, we’re pretending that’s how people make decisions politically or religiously in the exact same manner as they conduct their life. I got my spine tapped twice so I could afford land. I couldn’t exhibit a greater personal pain in service to the larger picture, literally, I broke my nervous system for weeks. I’ve invited people to live here and out there for free or next to free. These are people who habitually cry about money. These are people who feel their creative and stimulated lives dying. These are young enough people with the wrong kinds of health concerns because they sit all day and eat like shit. These are people I’ve let talk considerable amounts of unfair shit about me that’s mostly gone unanswered, because I oriented myself to focus on their better qualities.

I was talking with my dad this weekend about how every day is the work towards what you believe in. I had to train myself to be patient enough to see my goals at the edge of my fingers for sometimes years, but I didn’t lose sight of them. I guess the ones who figured out how to really help themselves managed to escape this soul sucking wanna-be town. My excuse is perpetually, “no one cares to help me.” Perhaps I should have focused on getting the fuck away as a means to really help myself.

So I have to be contented with the spotty communication and what feel like lengthy discussions to somewhere ill-defined, because my new partner made the 2 hour drive and actually showed up. I have to keep telling myself, “they’re just busy” or “they don’t think they have an answer so didn’t bother” instead of something more personal and catty. I have to keep being reminded that people have their lives and informal meet-ups and placid conversation supplements ours. I need to go.

I feel I’ve been working to allow other people to breathe as easy as I do in being able to even marginally attack the “big everybody issues.” I didn’t count on people not wanting to breathe. Everyone with a job doesn’t have money. Each day free offers a better distraction than something I put on the table. I find myself helping, talking to, or spending the most time with people that don’t even seem to really like me, I guess, because at least they’re honest about it? Or at least their poorly executed or selfish goal still constitutes a goal, and I’m beyond starved to see fucking something get done.

Alone in a tick-ridden field with a .9mm protecting my shit in a broken moving van is as tangible a salvation I can claim. Then after enough months or years of delivering food for $4.50 at a time I’ll have enough to “fail forward” on something I won’t be able to achieve anymore alone then than I can now. If only I could have fucked up and had a kid so I could temper my dreams and goals earlier, right? What am I doing?

[608] The Last 2 Days

Sooo much.

Maybe I can address this by doing what I think hasn't been happening. I'm writing to try and explain different manifestations of intelligence. I'm writing to anticipate and search for how I might approach more efficiency in conversation in the future. I'm writing to try and draw a line between what I think people have claimed about me and their feelings about my style of communication and what I'm currently up against and what it's prompting me to react like. There, so if something seems oddly phrased or too personal and you had to be there, it probably fits well-enough into one of those three categories.

I could have gone the other direction. I could have started with the first thing that came to my mind or one of the dozens of topics that created infinite rabbit holes of conversation between me and my partner I've found to help work the land. She's warned me that her brain doesn't shut off, she remembers practically everything from childhood (besides names and numbers), and that it's never about just one thing no matter what topic. She's said that her friends' most often offered comment is, “I'm exhausted” when they get to talking. I had to pull that card and say I was exhausted too.

I think a hallmark of an intelligent individual is their ability to be able to juggle more things in their minds at once. It's how you get crossover innovation between fields. It's the genius level expression we see in art or math. You have to be able to take the endless stream of any and everything you might ever have encountered and put it down into something workable or relateable. That's going to vary between people, but my suspicion is that most prefer a kind of step by step guide or an idea of the end game to a topic. Surely we've all been on talking benders that lasted all night and went across every topic and it was just about vibing with the room and maybe being distracted from the rest of your life. But what if every conversation you had, all day, were those kinds of talks?

I write blogs so I can find the point. Overwhelming myself with information just no longer fits with my psyche and approach to achieving a goal. I know there are infinite details that can be considered. I know there are rules, and zoning, and confounds, and maybe big government will roll through and proclaim imminent domain. In a very important sense, to me, absolutely none of that matters if you don't have an answer to how you're going to get the grass cut. And then once you have an answer on how you're going to get the grass cut, yes, there are 10 other ways we could do so, all things being equal, what's preventing us from just picking one and moving on?

I think it's backwards to believe that intelligence constitutes or predicates philosophy. You can have an approach to life that castrates various potential manifestations of your intelligence. Your philosophy is what will help your mind choose what's going to be more or less representative of you. That philosophy can come out of a torrent of horrible experiences. It can be forgone conclusions about the nature of your brain and attitude about it's ability to change. It can be a patchwork quilt of different prejudices and pop culture implications that you'll never wise up to.

My philosophy is rooted in attempting shared experience. Of course we'll never know each others' full stories. Of course we won't be able to see the web of thoughts and reasoning that brought you to a particular conclusion or phrasing moment to moment. Of course YOU always feel like there's a point to what you're saying or your good intentions will come across. It takes something more. It requires better definition. Even if you get along across many metrics, there can always be another bridge built. Getting to what that bridge should look and sound like is as diverse as the people building it.

The shortcut is to just feel. The shortcut is to scream or cry with the crowd, tap into your lizard brain, and speak the language of the masses. It's to tell me again that people hear what I say in a negative way. It's to tell me again that people hear what I say in a negative way. It's to tell me again that I'm a negative thinker or person who doesn't seem to care that people hear what I say in a negative way. It's to take this as your clue that if there's only one thing I know about me, it's that I know that many people hear what I say in a negative way. Because they're not concerned with me or what I said, they're concerned, solely, about what they feel. But this blog has generally less to do with that and more to do with how we choose, if we're really choosing, to communicate with each other.

I write a certain way for a certain crowd. I write for me, but then for friends and a handful of persistent strangers. I hope that when I speak it doesn't seem like I'm attempting to take you to school. I try to relate one idea at a time, hopefully in service to a theme or three. If I approached you with 20 different things that could happen out on the land, you're not going to feel particularly comfortable investing or giving me money when I've found 20 ways to not answer how it's going to be spent. This sort of feels like my dilemma that, after enough semantic clarification and yellow brick road skipping, works itself out over the course of very long explanations.

With luck, a short example. One problem with the land is weed control. We've posited goats. My neighbor's been willing to mow with his tractor and bush hog. We'll spray weed eater all over the place if we have to. She came up from Kentucky premised on the idea that she would “van camp” out there and walk around and get the lay of the land. Well you can't really walk around in all that bullshit, so that plan died. While we've discussed dozens of different avenues and how to be proactive in approaching zoning or getting things done “now!” on “go!” We failed to execute even showing up to our first board meeting on time or being able to walk the land because, per my perspective, we never even bothered to answer or plan around getting the freakin' lawn mowed. (We'll merely allude to the email and phone complications that got in the way, and the 6-8 hour delay in even leaving the house for shiggles.)

I'm not feeling bad. I'm not feeling stressed. I'm not disappointed or have any fundamental doubts in my partner. I want to make that clear. There is much good news. She does have many good ideas and connections and after a 20 minute rabbit-hole of an explanation of something we may someday do some time, come to what I've figured was full circle and spoken to something we hadn't found a solution for yet. She's given me the task of selling, for a commission, these heat pads that she gets for free for life because a former company tried to screw her and a judge was on her side. She's suggested paying to get the moving van fixed and flipping it into a drivable tiny house we could charge enough for. She's talked about kicking the coffee van back in gear because she has a way around expensive insurance and knows nothing like it exists in Louisville. All potentially immediately profitable lines of income, and manifestations of all this acquired potential, I can't pull off by myself.

In no way shape or form do I not value that she showed up. I'm not moved to talk shit or criticize how her brain operates. I just don't want to be a terrible or rude partner trying to get my “one line, I get it, what are we actually doing now though” across. There's people who can talk. And then there's people you're not sure how they're taking the time to breathe. With my inevitable ability to make people feel “negative” (a topic she and I discussed several times at length, of course) I don't want to have a mission creep of instances where I just had to pull a full stop add up and suggest I'm not listening, don't understand, or don't care. For those of you familiar, this is what I'm constantly being accused of (because questions are the devil), but now we're talking long-term investment money and day to day operations management. Translating me was always the job we were going to give to Byron.

I feel like much of what we'll accomplish will be like in the anime Golden Boy. This bumbling kid gets himself into scenarios that are awkward or seem way above his head, and by the end of the episode he leaves everyone in awe with his sheer brilliance in how he completed the task or navigated the personalities, and it's hard to say he ever explicitly planned to do so. It's a short fun anime, but it's also anime. I can at the same time disavow the business school prescribed 5 year speculative joke of a business plan and still think we should be able to line up a dozen things to do for each of those dozen ideas we discussed that allows the shape of the future we're trying to build resemble each of our halves responsibility to it. Two thunderous thought clouds need to combine and rain down on flowers we picked and planted, not a field of weeds.

I feel like a wish has been granted, and it never happens like you think it will, no matter how carefully you thought you could phrase it. After 2 days of practically nonstop communication and ideas, it's not that I don't understand or recall much of what we discussed, but we're still pretty-well relying on the good will of my neighbor to himself mow or let us borrow his tractor to keep the grass down to, not even the true height we'd really prefer. Or, to my mind, we still don't know how we're getting the grass cut.

[xx-12] Let The Shoe Drop

A lesson that took me a really long time to feel okay with, let alone have examples of me actually learning it, was that if you don't know what to do, it's okay to do nothing. As a simple idea, doing nothing isn't good or bad on its face. I constitute a fair amount of my current life as “doing nothing” no matter how many movies I watch or blogs I write. The ethos of doing nothing is about maintenance and respect for what you currently have.

You have to dig pretty far down into something I've written where I'm complaining about a specific person verses “this is wrong with humanity.” Very rarely do I ever feel genuine hatred or disgust with myself and instead I try to explore what the path to being all I want to be really looks like, and what I'll do with the power when I have it. When I have money that I’m worried about wasting, ideas about myself I don’t immediately think are fair, or a rocky interpersonal situation I’m not sure how to navigate, often it’s best to wait and do nothing.

The problem is that today “doing nothing” looks a lot like constantly being engaged or entertained, but is the active forgoing of any larger responsibility than to be placated. It's the months of the same video game. It's working yourself to death for the sake of it. It's retaining a pinch of dignity that at least you're not wildly ill-informed, even if nothing in your life suggests you'd make a real move towards a fix.

Arguably one of my biggest complaints about modern society is how they actively attack their ability and frankly duty to respect what they have. Whether you have good friends in your life or your health or a car or some vision that you believe your current actions in some way speak to you achieving. I find instead that people are “happy” to distract themselves. They get bogged down in abstract politicizing of hardly debatable things. They timidly go from one superficial relationship or suffer some ignorant power dynamic until it's on to the next one, and if you don't exist at their exhausted and exploited level, you're setting yourself to be bitten by their unresolved resentment.

Of course, when I say “you,” I mean anyone that they wish they could be more like but refuse to practice their habits or respect what they're doing. Now that it's a pattern that has happened twice to me by the same person regarding the same things, I feel comfortable speaking to it plainly. Colin stole from me. Colin stole from me because he believes money is more deserved to be used as he pleases instead of what he obligated himself to. We'd all love for this to be the case. It bit me when I fucked about with taxes. It's caught up to many of my friends in paying back loans. Life is hard, give me my cigarettes and pizza, “oh well” other guy.

Now I said the instance has happened twice. The specific and real failure is that of being true to your word and then an exercise of cowardice. The reason I have a more expensive than I wanted it to be broken van in my parking space is because 3 or more months before we were deciding whether or not to move out, both Colin and Byron said they'd sign the lease and make for the transition out to the land easier. In some poor or miscommunication between Byron and Colin, I find out relatively last minute that actually I'm about to be out on my ass alone or struggling to find random people to occupy a space we were all trying to eventually move away from.

That's not the conversation that happened though. Instead, I was given “the original” plan between Colin and another friend of ours about living situations. You know, a conversation I was never privy to, and one that has nothing to do with leaving me thinking you're going sign on to the lease. Instead of just saying, “Byron said something confusing and disconcerting, how can we work this out?” Colin obligates himself to another lease, leaves me in the dark, and I have to become the nag that drags out why I'm the last one to know I don't know who I'm going to be living with or whether I'm going to be.

So Colin moves out. He pays the last month's rent, but the bills are due. He's made it his pattern to pay the bills last, a week after they're generally due, and in this instance decides he wasn't here so he's no longer obligated. Man, it'd be great if it worked like that! You know how many weeks I've been gone from the house at studies? Several months collectively. And for those of you who think it's wildly expensive to rent the power it takes to keep a computer on or food in the fridge, I'll gladly show you my electric bill breakdown. Did I complain about the thermostat fuckery? Did I refuse to pay when the water bill actually went up with me gone? Of course not. I signed up to pay bills, then I added the obligation to studies.

The bills are in my name. So, as Colin pointed out, I get fucked regardless if I don't want to make up the difference between me and Byron. Great point, really shows a respect and focus in your work attempting to justify. Add the irony that he's stated out loud his desire to contribute more in the toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent sense, but never really found the gumption. 80 / 12 is is $6.66 a month, for anyone curious.

So Colin lays our friendship at the feet of $40. For him it might be a negligible write off that annoys me, but truly isn't a big deal. Except, friends don't steal from each other. Friends relate honestly when they're scared or confused by something and don't just let things fall through the cracks waiting for my inevitable attempt to address it, only to have the circumstances thrown in my face. I attempt to give freely. One of my plans was to literally build a dwelling for both Byron and Colin after figuring out all the things I did wrong in the one I built for myself. No one in your life is going to feel that way about you or offer as much. The lack of respect you show yourself, I feel palpably for who I wished to be for you.

Now, this is a pattern that certainly goes well beyond Colin. Back when I bought the alcohol and me and Hatsam cleaned the house or cooked food, the resentment built up there and spilled over too, of course in my lap. Things that were never a problem became problems overnight. People that claimed friendship and happiness and good times all around had mad shit to talk the next morning or in the shared mouth-breathed air of the dorms. I know how it goes. Especially as we keep getting older and feel more and more like who we wish we were has made a solid attempt to slip through our fingers.

Simply, I still don't care if all you can do in service to your tortured life is find ways to backhanded slap me. I'm not losing friends. You're losing an opportunity. Clearly time spent together means absolutely nothing, but you'd think in practical terms, you'd bleed me for all of my naive dreaming and investment before you thought $40 was worth it. I think the strategy of grandfathering in people who after college still find themselves tired, broke, and mostly espousing their proclivity for video games is certainly my fault. I'm not free, and the payment is respect. People who steal from you don't respect themselves, and therefore cannot respect you.

Who's out there waiting for me? Who's waiting to find their moment to blame me for their shitty decision making? Who's going to tell me it's just that I talk so mean or am some endless list of impossible character flaws that you were scared I'd light you on fire if you were honest? Come on people, get it out of the way early. I haven't named names since the Julie/John fiasco, and I'm sure 75% of you don't even know who those people are. Like John, Colin gave me an ultimatum. I'm picking myself and the standards I hold for my behavior and relationships I wish to keep and respect. Good luck in the world you create for yourself.

[607] Sit, Stare, Stars

There’s a line from Jordan Peterson that’s been in my head for the last few days. Paraphrasing, it goes, “We don’t know the upper limits of being our best selves, of persistently focusing on doing the right thing and being totally efficient.” It’s usually following a point of how real and how quick we allow things to degrade. Someone with a drug habit spirals out of control. Violence erupts and cuts irreparable holes through people’s lives. The devil is real, Christ always remains...well, floating far enough out of reach.

On the societal level, I agree with his sentiment. I’ve argued as much that “we” don’t even really exist and it’s mostly just a helpful illusion psychologically distressed people rely on to quash loneliness. Personally though? I can definitely think of instances in my life where I’ve done literally all I was capable of doing and was able to see the consequences. When I sometimes fell asleep with my guitar in my lap, I started to see my fingers flirt with those crazy speed and sweep picking videos that barely look real. When I spent every waking moment reading about how to argue with religious people, I found myself internalizing details of not just the bible, but dead languages, specific branches of biology, and concepts in physics I had no business co-opting to beat someone over the head in an “argument” with.

I’ve described myself as an all-or-nothing kind of person in the past. You don’t go from nothing to coffee shop in a few months without it. You don’t choose to approach projects I hope to see on the land if you’re anything less. You don’t watch more media than Roger Ebert before you’re thirty even without speeding up crappier things. So I at least have a glance at what happens when you’re approaching the upper limit of efficiency or mastery. And you know what happens? You get bored as fuck.

I enjoy mystery and complications. One of the reasons I’m in love with Attack on Titan is that it is so damn good at keeping the anticipation peaked in every episode. I find it absolutely fascinating when a story’s very world can build intrigue. The Man in the High Castle comes to mind. Just mysterious enough to transcend the potentially gimmicky premise. When the work is taken seriously and you feel the love the creator has for what’s happening, it tends to stick.

Hand in hand with the mystery, I like sincerity. I like seeing off-camera sexual tension play out on. I like seeing people who genuinely like each other play in their roles together. Firefly sticks out. Community without Chevy Chase being a foreseeable dick. A sincere person or story is absolutely deadly. They will rob you of your life while you are engaging with them. The question is whether or not you would have paid anyway for such a memorable experience.

So I worry about myself. I do things like put 40 or 50 articles in a folder and sit on them for a couple weeks. I have the time to read them practically and literally always. The titles at least sound interesting or it’s an author I know I like already. I’m still compiling the thousands it’ll take to demonstrate what I want with my map one day, hopefully soon. So what am I doing? Won’t there always be more articles? Just like there are 4 or 5 hundred shows I have downloaded I haven’t even watched the first episode of. I have 50 books on my Amazon wishlist I barely even order 1 at a time even when they’re four bucks.


I’m trying to avoid that bored feeling. I’m trying to not be a heartless machine watching a whir of pictures and words stream across my face without the ability to focus in or find something meaningful. When I start to read, I read everything. When I need specific information tied to a problem or argument, if the book is in front of me, it’s read. If I need to get through 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls so I can have a 7 line conversation about the new season with one of my friends right after it airs, I’m team Logan.


I’m waiting to see if I found someone who operates like me in approaching this land. And I’m genuinely scared of what might get created. At one level, I know who I am with too much money and time, but I’ve always had some very tangible poor person problem just around the corner. What am I doing when I’m totally focused and totally funded in getting my site going? What is it like to never worry about car troubles? If my life starts to look anything like how my head operates with regard to digesting, translating, and manifesting information in some form beyond blogs, what the fuck then?


The fucked part is that I still absolutely believe it. I haven’t spent a single day since I decided what I wanted believing it wouldn’t happen eventually. And if my random shots in the dark on Craigslist for someone better oriented with a broader perspective who’s equally capable and motivated as me managed to work? The fuck kind of story is that? Where do I get off getting everything I ever wanted? And if she falls off the planet and disappears, it’ll take longer, but it’s still going to happen. I feel I’m about to start the speed run portion of my life. What kind of bullshit am I going to have to deal with coming down from what’s poised to be an immeasurable high?

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100 people are likely burning to death this moment in London. I wish I was ever allowed to complain.

[606] A Million Ene(mies)

There's something deeper going on in the recesses of my mind that I haven't been able to describe yet. There's a ton of blogs that make allusions to the feeling, but it's this particular kind of sense that I get on that hangover day where the depressive qualities of alcohol mix with whatever I did and said, good or bad, the night before. Incidentally, today there's a further reaching comment I'm looking for regarding the whole of existence and my general approach to life.

Nothing is so beyond your control than the circumstances of your birth. Babies enter a reality of the ground exploding around them in violent parts of the world. They catch preventable diseases and die shortly after. Some get horrible parents that mentally, sexually, and physically abuse them before passing them off to other family members that do the same thing. The silver-spoons might occupy practically another planet. If you're in the vast majority of “the middle” you maintain a kind of identity that's just over the horizon if you can work hard enough or catch a break.

There's a disconnect. There's a fundamental dishonesty about our lives and natures that we do everything in our power to ignore. We pick the exact opposite words and behaviors, every time, across all topics, in order to keep the lie going. The petals of self-respect and self-worth we've picked are threatened by an endless procession of tornadoes of words you don't like and terrifying realities you don't deserve. The orientation of our personal narratives assumes a true north, divine inspiration, or moral blessing.

I feel like it would be hard to stop a list of how it plays out. We know school shouldn't cost so much, if anything, but will stay in it indefinitely. We know our eating or smoking habit makes us sick and depressed and poor, but hey everyone's got vices! We claim deep emotional connections to people who routinely abuse and disrespect us. We're chanting “Make America great again” to a drunk mentally handicapped elephant wielding an out of control chainsaw. We're personally justified in everything we ever do or say, but refuse to even act like it's possible other people know better. The responsible and loving caregivers are exploited. The ones who try to budget and allocate resources wisely are thrown under suspicion as crackpots and impractical. It's you desperately needing a real hug and finding people who blame you for pissing themselves because you squeezed too hard.

I draw so much inspiration from Jordan Peterson lectures. In one of his discussions with Joe Rogan he calls Joe a monster, and that's why people like him. He's not unduly aggressive and ignorant in his honest pursuit for clarity of mind and connection with his guests. He's fearless in his jokes, and it doesn't hurt to be the size of a truck if people want to attempt an ignorant way of disagreeing with him.

We refuse. We outright refuse to believe we're monsters. It is never, not ever, our fault. We didn't misunderstand. We weren't impatient. We're not responsible for voting, or not. We can't be blamed if you didn't read our minds. We never meant to cause the problem you're accusing us of. And yes, WE, because it's never ME who does anything without the power and backing of the impersonal mass of the self-righteous dispossessed. Were we not so humble and meek we'd be unable to write the God-given dictums that instill the undying faith in our judgment of your hell hound barking.

The revolution is personal. Accept that you are the monster. You failed. You're responsible. You started screaming, I didn't pull your cord labeled scream. You perpetuate racism by closing yourself off to the idea that it can be addressed in tangible ways. You subvert women when you couch your sentiments first in the language of denigrating men or masculinity before pretending you're addressing pay disparity. You thrive and celebrate your victimhood and play pretend at the kind of assured condescension that you envy and admire. You crave power for its own sake. You want revenge and to make other people feel as terrible as you do. And you want to be congratulated for it. You want to be crowned the victor and surround yourself with people even more afraid than you of dropping the pretense.

You have it good, and you hate what you have. You don't even have it good. You have it the best anyone in life has ever had it EVER. You're going to live longer than EVERYONE. You already have and are only going to accumulate more wealth than EVERYONE else. You have access to practically all information you could ever need to do anything. You are never hungry. You haven't worked harder a single day in your life than what most people have to every day to still barely get by.

Your inability to deal with the overwhelming amount of hatred you have for your squandered resentful life is why you lose your shit around people like me. I ridicule myself routinely. I treat shit like shit. I remain consistent in my commitment to transcend instead of excuse. I know I'm a monster. I know why I don't choose to act like one. You don't. That is a choice you make for yourself every moment of every day. You lay down on your cross, and recite your mantra, and pray you never encounter again demons like me. Demons who don't hate you, but you see hatred anyway. Demons who talk in hushed tones, but you say your ears are bleeding. Demons who've done the work and devoted the time to turning over the stones of their demonic nature which you throw to the bottom of the ocean in spiteful denial.

I'm not going to hand you your identity. I'm not going to play the role you need me to play. You're not my victim. You're a slave to your bad ideas. You pretend that because “we all think this way” they aren't or can never be bad ideas. With an inability to speak for yourself, every terrible bit, you substitute a voice for the masses that [no way!] share your agenda. I don't speak for “white people” or “men” or “college graduates” or “the global 1%.” I speak as the ongoing amalgam and puzzle that is the Nick P. storyline fighting its way to the front of my head. I'm not lecturing you, I'm decoding me. Conversation isn't compulsory, nor do I strap you in and drag your eyes across the page. Regardless, no amount of reading me, ignoring me, judging me, or hating me is going substitute for the work you refuse to do to be responsible for your person. It seems a sick statement on the nature of reality that you'll never really know you're doing it right until the majority treat you as their sacrificial lamb.

[605] Race To The Bottom

Dear fucking god is there no way to approach this in a good way.

I don't even want to be writing. In fact, I think I'm going to pause here, go to sleep, and see if I still give a shit tomorrow morning. (6:48 AM)

1:15 PM (morning)

I'm not racist. Or, of course I'm racist. According to different people, I'm too blind or entitled to even see how I embody their idea of racism. What's more important than anything is that I don't have the same struggle. In not having to deal with the same issues, daily, at random, I have absolutely nothing to contribute to a conversation about race. My perspective isn't simply not needed, it's disrespectful and disingenuous by default.

What I know regarding any oppressed minority population is that you don't need the language we have in the United States to feel and act in consequential ways. I doubt a single Hutu called a Tutsi a nigger before chopping them with a machete. The “inhuman other” circuity worked just fine without a meditation on the power dynamics that have shaped white and black relations. That situation took a Rush Limbaugh type radio program. In that regard, the language we employ absolutely matters and absolutely can contribute to horrible circumstances.

My problem with discussing race is the same problem I have in discussing nearly anything. People want to have it all ways. The more specific you attempt to be, the less visceral and human they feel and your attempt to find common ground becomes an attack on their identity. In the U.S., whether it's spoken to enough outside of black circles or not, that identity is that of a perpetual victim. It's a skin color that can get you shot for no reason. It's people taking the low hanging fruit in insulting you online. It's being denied equal access and opportunities because of your name.

As it is my habit, I start to lean into the wind of topics that become “hot.” I piss off a black guy, of course I want the next 10 black people's opinion the next day. I'm not particularly surprised by what I found. In fact, every time I seem to approach something I'm not qualified or allowed to discuss, I end up finding fairly quickly a slew of people who seem to understand me. Also, I find a ton of different ways to get told how wrong and backwards I am on something. They generally play out in familiar ways.

Bloomington is a fairly diverse setting. You can start shooting the shit with someone from Ghana or Brazil or Nigeria over a cigarette outside the bar. As such, you can find exceedingly different conceptions of race from black or mixed people who don't even quite understand “the black experience” to the emotional degree of someone who grew up in this country. It's not a secret that they are often the most sympathetic. At the same time, maybe I've just been spoiled by the circles I grew up in, I roll with black people who don't seem to conceive of their lives in flatly race based terms. It's not that they ignore or don't experience racism, it's that they're as happy to make their identity about their work, relationships, hobbies etc as I am.

It's not the hard irony of people who contradict themselves in the same sentence, but I suspect it's a point that is lost on many people when discussing race, everyone is different. Literally every single person is going to give you a different answer about their experience regarding some racist ass shit someone did, racist ass shit they grew up with, or racist ass comments and behaviors they have to navigate in their daily personal and professional lives. There isn't, nor will ever be, a single conception of “white” or “black” that unites everyone you presume to fall under that flag. Black Lives Matter in a relatively short time has managed to get involved in politics and force a conversation this country absolutely needs to have. They've also attracted total nut jobs who've been given oversight and quasi-legislative powers in Canada who make racist hippie claims regarding divinity and the amount of melanin you have.

It's only in specificity and definition do you get anything resembling sense. Bill Maher got into his trouble for calling himself a house nigga in response to a congressman suggesting he'd love to see Bill out in the fields with him. The world gets set ablaze. As someone exceedingly sympathetic to people who make the wrong joke, I understand why someone with what he has to lose would apologize, but I still think it's stupid as shit to think Bill Maher is at the heart of our racism problem.

Here's a fairly often shared sentiment I get from black people. “Well, it all contributes.” In that way, the racist joke is tantamount to redlining, is beckoning the death of another unarmed black male, is the sneers and comments from introducing yourself to a setting where you don't belong. I think this is a slip in reasoning. I think this disavows nuances. In practical terms, I think this actively creates barriers to building coalitions of people who are sympathetic and agree with most everything you'd say regarding race.

People notice differences. I think it's outside of how many approach race to think that some of the most “racist” language or behaviors someone might employ are precisely them treating you equally. Calling you black when you're black isn't racist. I've seen white people get uncomfortable when I say, “I don't know his name, the black guy, you know, the only black guy here so it's obvious and easy for us to recognize what I'm talking about, said he'd meet you on the corner.” It's frequently white people who are uncomfortable or ashamed to even acknowledge color. I think that's a harbinger for the “sly” racism in a way that saying “the black guy over there” is not.

In a further sentiment regarding noticing differences, that's human. That is going to happen, all the time, every day, to absolutely anyone that your internal judgmental machinery has denoted as “the other.” That is a long-standing in-built survival mechanism that I don't believe for a second is going away. Is it terribly helpful when you're trying to have a singular connected conception of people working and living together? Fuck no. Is it something that millions or billions of people in one capacity or another manage to get over in order to remain civil and survive together? Absolutely. Voicing difference isn’t necessarily divisive.

One thing I wish to make clear, I don't presume or pretend to know anyone else's daily bullshit or hardships. My interactions with cops, while too frequent, have gone over exceedingly well. I've never been followed or stalked thinking I'm about to get raped walking home. I'm not an invisible old woman who society doesn't think exists because the mainstream doesn't want to fuck me anymore. I'm not physically or mentally disabled. I don't get routinely called names unless I go out of my way to stick my neck into situations “no one invited me to.”

My night consisted of hours spent talking to complete strangers about the oppressive circumstances they grew up under, the cancer they overcame, the world travels they've experienced, secretive medical work they aren't allowed to talk about, and eventually experiences with race here and abroad. One woman even tried to hook me up with her sister. And I forgot what I discussed with the Oliver Platt looking 21 year old. The sun-raising race conversation ended on the person I was talking to getting heated and loud. Our stumbling point initiated on a difference we had regarding how much credit you should give people. I give them none. He thought something in the vein of “society will figure things out eventually.”

I pretty well forget precisely how it broke down, but I think I was arguing against a violent response to something and found myself saying, “Did Martin Luther King Jr. tell anyone to get violent or fight when they sat at white counters or marched in racist towns?” The black dude walking away turns and screams back, “And what the fuck did that get ANY of us!”

[604] Bonus Points

I’m 28 years old. In 1 month and 17 days, I’ll be 29. I don’t know how many of your grandparents might’ve died in their 60’s, but I’m just about half way to the point where when you see in the obituary “So And So, 64” you kinda shrug it off and figure they were old enough, even if you aspire to make it longer. For the sake of talking quicker, let’s say half my life is over.

If half your life was over, how much time would you devote to insincerity? How many pleasantries would you offer? How many times would you apologize? I’ve had some friends for 20+ years. Think I’m going out to a $2 Tuesday and gonna make a few more that last that long? Think if I get stuck in some office or meet people in travels we’re gonna stick like the ones who’ve made it this long?

When half your life is over, if you’ve been paying attention, you can get a fairly solid hold on yourself. I do think I actually know why I call you friends and other people acquaintances. You all share wildly improbable and respectable characteristics that I don’t just require, but think are flatly fundamental in the pursuit of honest relationships. When that fails, we fail. Can the criterion get a little wobbly from time to time? Sure. But, just as with attraction, I think friendship is signified by something deeper than mere claims to it.

Seriously, who actually wants to be friends? Friends ask favors like needing to help move. Friends have emotions and hurt your feelings too. Friends have habits and ticks and annoy the fuck out of you. These are obviously cynical descriptions to get to a deeper point in that friends are about resource allocation. I think you deserve my time because, be it in your silence, or attempts to engage, I’m confident enough it’s from mutual respect. If and when that gets exposed as untrue and it fails, so be it.

If right out the gate we’re going to fail though? Well, have you spent half your life unable to figure out the best kinds of people you need in it? For me, that’s ones who can talk and speak to their individual circumstances. I don’t really tolerate scaredy cats and dolls with pull cords. This is often seen as cold. This is also to be distinguished from a “style” of speaking about things with obscenities. I also don’t really care to “fix” my tendency to antagonize those bad habits if, conditional, you want to claim friendship.

I say it all the time. There probably won’t be a time not to say it. A lot of us haven’t seen or really talked to each other in a minute. If you’ve got a shitty living situation or developed some mental discord and I try to roll through with cash and fun times and my manner I took for granted is cool, you really really really want to either figure out how to fix or talk about it early or get busy running away. I’m confident and earnest enough as it is, let alone if I find myself with even more cash and time to start molding environments more deliberately.

So, whatever things warnings like this bring to mind, you’ll get bonus points for addressing early or voicing after reading something I wrote. I’m half dead. I need to force your hand before I lose the capacity to experience anything ever again. You can cry about it, but I’m about to die about it.

[603] Unaccompanied Minor Incidents

It usually comes without warning. Often enough I’m browsing and something pops into my feed that I wouldn’t normally see. A social justice warrior makes a seemingly obvious statement about complicity, then a friend goes to like it. Amens abound. Circular statements about racists saying racist shit being racist shits pile up. Then, as I’m literally moved by my destructive morality to do, I start asking questions.

More and more I feel like I’m part of a special sect of people born to defend an ancient truth that few will ever be find themselves capable of handling the power. It goes by many names, but as I can’t help but to keep getting older, the more it just seems like it’s “being an adult.” I’m well aware that it’s presumed adults who’ve championed every last horrifying and deadly unnatural tragedy that has ever befallen the planet. And yet, I still think the reason that there’s anyone here at all is the sore, hunched, and punctured backs of the adults insisting on a direction.

There’s an idea that there’s “many kinds of intelligences.” It’s used as a way to help bolster the esteem and merit of different skill sets and interests so we can all occupy a plain of mutual respect and acceptance. It’s an extremely flawed idea, but it’s gained traction and many people see it as a more legitimate stance to hide behind to avoid their inadequacy. I think it’s a perfect analogy for how posturing “adults” consider themselves in relation to one another.

“Don’t tell me how to raise my kids, my daddy beat me, I can beat them.” “What do you know with your fancy degree? Science isn’t perfect!” “He can’t read or write to save his life, but he can take apart a car and put it back together in record time.” So it goes, you’re just as good as rearing children as your potentially abusive parents, by your only standard, you’re good. Years spent in service to a craft is reduced to a throwaway comment regarding the tentative nature of reality. The ability to repeat similar patterns and recognize shapes is a fine substitute for literacy.

Presumed adults get into the habit of making definitive statements. “Racism is bad and we need to end all racism!” Who could argue? More to the point, I’ve given myself license to react and emote and even destroy if you dare. That’s what I really wanted to do anyway. Before I cared about racism, I needed an outlet and an excuse. Are you volunteering?

And of course because I’m, whatever, too often for my spirit, I do. I do it for the same reason I imagine most responsible adults would step in to prevent a group of kids from starting a fire in the wrong place. Maybe the adult is older, maybe the kids are rougher teenagers. Is the guy trying to get his ass kicked, or is he compelled by his experience with consequences and responsibility to say something? Has he seen enough terrible fires that whatever chance he’s taking will always be less dramatic than the fallout of what’s been set up by the teenagers? Yes.

I don’t go into conversations attempting to fight like a firefighter who knows there’s something to put out and people and animals to save. Conversations are not fire no matter how often you insist they are. They can be dangerous, are often precarious, and rarely are productive. My sense and experience says if you’re to have any hope, start by getting specific. Start identifying. Maybe wait at least 5 responses before you tell me to go fuck myself or adorn me with fancy medals with every demeaning label you’ve ever heard. I’m suggesting the fire is on the head of a match we can use to illuminate instead of drop into a bucket of gasoline.

I encourage you to explore this for yourself. You will never feel like me more than if you go somewhere that something “serious” is being discussed and start asking questions. Sincere questions. Polite questions. Questions even slightly off-topic but in a line can be swung back around. The very idea that there’d be any question served to the Definitive Adult is heresy and punishable by death. Your words will shrivel beneath their insults, if not just get outright deleted. Your character, as if you ever had any, will be etched in stone as the final sentiment of whoever manages to get in the last word.

You’d think as a psychology major I’d have a better understanding of it. You’d think I’d have some nice research papers and experiments that really round out what is actually meant by denial and its implications. You’d think my reading of emotionally immature parents and abusive dependent couples would make the interactions I have so often sit very well within an explanatory context that allows me to forgo writing a few pages after every incident. But it’s never enough. There’s a missing piece I’m calling “adulthood” that, dumb or smart, a very small group of people allow themselves. My persistent worry is that there’s no longer enough of them, or the environments that breed them, to keep the general business of living ship afloat.

[602] I Wanna Rock With You

I think some of you might find this very hard to believe, but I have good reason to suspect it’s true. Take a deep breath, as you exhale and feel a sense of calm come over you, hear me when I say, “I’m a romantic.” [Years ago in a different context, I claimed otherwise.]

Did you hear it? In my Nick P. voice? Did it come out coy instead of sarcastic? Was it like a deadpan readout from a computerized voice? In my own head I hear a kind of defensive pride. Like how dare you accuse me of being anything less! To think I’ve offered you so much and you know me so well that you don’t see my heart swell during those perfect moments in life or on screen! For shame!

I think my ideas regarding romance simply evolved. So for me, there’s romance in honesty. There’s romance in depicting the ideal even if it can never be achieved. I have yet been unable to stop myself from smirking when two “perfectly matched” pretty people in some movie have one of those intimate or heart-racing interactions as their budding relationship starts to unfold. I know the story after the fade to black never gets told. I know there’s a tried and true structure for the fight they’re going to get in 23 minutes before the end of the film. But damned if a hand brush in a movie theater or look into each others’ eyes on some isolated scenic route doesn’t crack a smirk.

But I beat things up, right? I have to take all the language you use to describe the world and exhaustively shit on it and how it does a terrible job in helping you think let alone orient your decisions. To talk of “romance” is to fetishize a level of effort and compulsion so antithetical to human behavior that we pathologize and idolize unrealistic standards and instill expectations that leave us lonely and jaded. It’s foolish children who allow themselves to be deluded by these fantastic depictions of love and healthy relationships and we’re as addicted to these constructs as a person struggling with a porn habit might relate to their raw dick and broken standards.

Snore.

I’m not saying any of that is less than true, but it’s definitely a certain flavor of truth that mostly no one but me gives a shit about. It’s not the kind of truth that creates friendships or leads to marriage. It’s that “wise bachelor” bravado that’s been around the block and “knows brawds” so’s to keep himself on the right side of these nit-picky feelings that leave most of his buddies a total wreck, eventually.

The kind of truth that concerns itself with the word “romance” is pure feeling. It’s a level of life-affirming assurance in something that deserves every depiction of it you can make without having to use words. Here I ring the bell of my glorious habit of destroying all that is beautiful and true by reducing things to words, but nonetheless the space exists for me to push past myself.

So how to idolize, respect, perhaps measure and speak to romance without cheapening it? That is, you can watch a movie in the romance genre or read a book you know will be a love story and still finding yourself falling. I should be able to approach with due deference. I claimed my concept of romance was “evolved.” From what? From what TV teaches us. I can’t just be on the park bench on a fall day. I can’t just find myself in a fancy restaurant. Big dramatic professions often are ill-timed and ill-conceived. Grandpa’s dying sentiment about grandma only took 2 minutes to shoot and leaves out the handful of times he cheated on her.

It’s our habit to seek foolish deception. The facebook pictures or status updates tell a singular story. Hopefully, you’re well into adulthood before you start to appreciate what was really going on between your parents growing up. Our favorite books and movies often have a relationship we’d kill to find ourselves in, danger and dragons be damned. We’re encouraged to not just seek, but perpetuate the story of what togetherness means by way of norms and hotly contest challenges as to what is “proper,” even moral, regarding deviations or expansions.

I claimed there was romance in depicting the ideal even if it can never be achieved. This is half right. My mind shoots to Before Sunrise. The 2 hour conversation and meander about Paris between 2 people who deeply connect. You can do that. I’ve been in conversations like that. I’ve stared longingly into eyes, arms around each other's waists, as the perfect amount of rain was coming down on our heads. I’ve found myself musing well into the morning with a cute acquaintance or ex-girlfriend. It can be the happenstance of the setting or you can put in a little effort and create a scene, but it can happen. But unlike the movies, you can’t just keep rewatching for the same feeling. You can’t pause on the unremitting excited tension. You can’t rely on the, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”

What a tragedy if you had to, no? The stale imaginative cliche on repeat? Sounds like torture. Life is more spontaneous, if you let it. Life lets you go even deeper. Life let’s you in on romance at all hours of the day and night if you’re willing to look and appreciate.

I claimed there’s romance in honesty. Well shit! You could be the most unabashed romantic person who’s ever lived to the degree you seek to be honest. I remember just sitting in the car coming back from errands or something with Kristen just talking. Didn’t have to go inside. Didn’t have anywhere else to be. Just sitting in the car talking about whatever at the time in the parking space. For me, romance out the whazoo. Couldn’t care to be anywhere else. Couldn’t think to want to talk to anyone else. Don’t give a shit about the topic. My general sense that tries to agitate or joke is taking a backseat to making sure car time rides as long as it can.

Or I think about the kinds of romance you can only experience within yourself. I watch a ton of TV shows, and inevitably there’d be a few Kristen liked as well. So I’d save em. Pretty straight forward courtesy thing many people do. But who talks about the romance in smiling to yourself every time she’s disappointed The Mindy Project didn’t go into their whole song for the intro music? The reliable sad, “Noooooo!” as it gets cut short. Romance people. Internalized appreciation for habits that have you feeling closer even if they’d never suspect something so “stupid” could make you feel that way.

Let’s take a breath and say out loud this isn’t a sappy round-about shot to woo her. If I’m gonna talk romance, I can only speak to what I’ve known.

For as much as I don’t believe in marriage or how people employ love and massively over blow in their whinging about sex, the romance quotient in me peaks when I see people I really like seem to really like each other. I don’t root for my friend’s marriages to fail. I think some ineffable marriage-esc thing is going on by such badass people finding and relating to each other and for one reason or another we keep picking the stupid options to celebrate it. Sure, there’s a level of romance in your picture together, but a facebook or Instagram world is a commodified world. What you have shouldn’t be passed around the trading floor.

As hard as it can be to cast the right actors with the right chemistry and experience to make you truly believe they’re falling in love in between every shout of, “Cut!” to conjure that kind of magic in the real world is a significantly greater feat. I had a professor once talk about how groups of friends all come up in school together, all sleep around with each other, and then decide to pair off around or after graduation. The class looked at him like he was crazy, but goes to show you a generational divide because I understood just fine. We’re constantly probing for that “spark” or memory that reinforces ideas about our own special place and the people we’ve met. No shame in going through 6 of “the one’s” friends, at least they retain the title.

I suppose that has to serve as well as it can as my transition to help explain my approach to relationships being open. It doesn’t hurt me the idea that you could be out making movie moments with other dope ass people. I want as many as I can get too. But of course the whole thing falls apart when your metrics for truth and appreciation don’t line up. How many times does the story break down with lines like, “If you truly loved me…” or “I deserve more!” like they’re negotiating the size of a piece of cake or pay at the end of the day.

For me, I think you deserve everything you’re capable of seeing, good and bad. If you feel doubts about your relationship rising up and pretend otherwise, you don’t get to be shocked when your spouse doubts it harder and moves on. You deserve to be hurt and confused and made to feel the smallest you’ve ever felt because an honest assessment of humanity and relationships guarantees it’s the people you grow closest to that are going to get you there. And right here, in the worst feelings, after all the time and risk, if your core is truly romantic, you accept that’s what it is and fall as fast and far as you can into the pit of despair together.

That takes balls. That takes a kind of work and perspective that jettisons out to space the moment the expectant and reluctant child shows up to press the play button on the Disney fantasy they’ve fashioned their life after. Everyone in your life will throw up their hands to keep you from looking beyond the screen as well.

People don’t want to believe they're absolutely not special AND the most special thing that someone has ever laid eyes on. It’s a give and take. Otherwise you get creepers idolizing and obsessing and people retreating into protective shells. To conceive of yourself as capable of turning any and every moment into something romantic is absolutely foreign to people as far as I can tell. From the hug while she’s chopping vegetables to the messages on the bathroom mirror to just knowing that eventually even after the fight you’re going to hear their key in the door coming home, your life can be one of the greatest romance stories ever told if you just learn how to appreciate it!

It’s the romantic in me that still knows who I am and what I strive for in relating to people. I don’t expect you to go out of your way and constantly reassure me we’re still good for each other. I don’t need gifts and a million pictures together. It’s like recognizing like. I see you over there knowing I’m the only mother fucker in the world who’s me and I’ll be damned if I ever figure out how I managed to find your cool ass to hang around. Also, we both ain’t shit, isn’t that great!? Our genitals aren’t magic! We’re insecure ignorant monkeys that sorta got our pants on today! How better to celebrate our bizarre and rare circumstances than with patience and forgiveness and acceptance? Instead we pursue the fantasy which doesn’t require those ingredients.

The drama in my words and exuberance with which I pursue my goals screams a romantic spirit. The deep longing I have to see everyone I’ve ever given a shit about prosper and cheerlead for what I’ve felt so deeply in the past keeps the fire under my ass and song in my heart. How does one weather the storm of despair if not for an intensely ingrained focus on an ideal? To then seek an honest assessment of what fell short that might prove worthy of a pause, not capsizing. I want so much for you to find the romance of a deep appreciation for the souls in the room. So much crap fades away if you can get there. Everything else opens up.