I think about reliability because, more or less, my life is fundamentally so. I tend to fuck up in pretty consistent and reliable ways. I tend to inch more and more towards goals I set out to achieve long ago. My assessments of the people in my life tend to stick to my reliable predictions of their behavior and how it will impact me. I navigate the unexpected with about the same vigorous bitchy enthusiasm muddied with too many words time and again. I can always access my most boarish and antagonistic personality traits and I’m every inch of overt alcohol provoked sentiment and sexuality that’s every ounce of too much. I traverse the darkest days the same ways and extinguish the highest highs before they become too persuasive.
I don’t know that other people, in general and in the majority, understand themselves to the degree in which I do. This speaks to one of the roots at the heart of all of “my” problems in life. It is 7-9/10, no exaggeration, my experience that when you say you’re going to do something or feel like you’re in a particular state, that is not what manifests. And it’s mostly in the little things. You’ll call me at 4? No, you’ll call me if I text or call you, maybe a few times, leading up to 4. You have my back? No, if you’re having a good day and discover a little extra cash you’ll find my problem or situation tolerable for an indiscriminate amount of time. You want to help? No, you want to see me succeed or create, which, cool, I guess, and in your experience of not feeling supported yourself don’t want to look guilty of behaving the same way.
Maybe you’re not that bad, but then you’re particularly egregious when it comes to the big things. Then, you’re the kind of person with huge dreams and a million ideas, but then while I’m harping at you about joining me in the field to cut the wet grass and sweat and dig ticks out of our legs, all the motivation you had last night or maybe a week ago got lost somewhere in transit. This is the class of people who are also very specifically or deliberately contributory in ways that, very maybe can help, very maybe. I don’t know how else to speak to that which doesn’t denigrate, but speaks to the level of haphazardness.
To be reliable is to have and meet expectations. Or, it’s begrudgingly my entire life from the moment I decided what I should expect from myself. In order to adopt that kind of posture, you need solid definitions of what that looks like. If I carve out what “friend” means and how I need to behave towards one, we’re talking a relatively involved long-term process. If I try to personalize it for your being, I’m often setting you up as more of a utility, like turning on the water and electricity. Yes, sometimes they get polluted or go out, but having access or paying for them is undeniable. If I just like who you are or what you’re doing, then I make it about whether or not you’re achieving the expectations of yourself. It’s like 3 or 4 or my friends are doctors right now? These people have the right stuff whether they want anything to do with me the rest of their lives or not.
I like that I can rely on me. I like that I know my thresholds for exhaustion or mental pain. I like that when I’m finally tired or bored enough of playing in ignorant feeling-laden realms, I can turn back on the Nick P. from my childhood that born the fury as it’s become manifest today. It’s the utility of being able to observe and shift. It’s the capacity for shaking off naive regrets. It’s keeping the larger goals as perpetually in the moment as I do death. Nowhere to live? I guess the car looks cozy enough. Reality of minimum wage and place in political and social history kicking in? Well, maybe these godforsaken ticks in the middle of nowhere will start to feel preferable. At an introverted nihilistic dead-end in your thoughts and actions? Holy shit does that reflex to crack jokes and be goofy work incredibly hard to keep you talking and expanding and connecting. When you fail me, when you fall out of love, when you innocently, I guess, kinda lie to me about what I can rely on you for, when you get too sad or too fat or too angry and judgmental or too old and complacent or too scared and conservative, I’ll be doing me.
I like it because it speaks to an inevitability. I hate it because it leaves me never with an excuse. I like it because “me” is referenced in hundreds of blogs over years for me to search for a road no matter how far off into the woods I’ve wandered. I hate it because it makes me think considerably less of you in general. I say often enough that “I don’t expect anything of you than to be yourself.” To the degree that I’m confused about who you are, which is usually your fault for being confused about who you are, things in my mind about you tend to go to shit. You’ll garner significantly more praise and smiles from me the less I expect from you. Like a dog. Lay down, I’ll rub your belly. I was gone too long, I understand why you shit indoors.
If you’re not dogs, then everything's your fault, at a minimum, to the degree in which I think everything is my fault. If our friends see each other but once a year, maybe, and it’s filled with bullshit platitudes and cliches about the good ‘ol days, that’s on you. You stayed holed-up in your small world blowing up your small problems to encompass your “life.” You stayed selfish and allowed your conception of “personal growth” to mean significantly more than it does with regard to your responsibility or what people might rely on you for. When you want “our” world, instead of yours, that’s what you pursue. That’s what you sacrifice for. That’s what measures your tolerance for risk and reward. This is why I need categories of friends and family. The vast majority of you are in no way willing or capable of being a Hatsam or Byron or my dad, as far as levels of reliability are concerned. (Even if one of them has sacrificed me in service to placating a fuckwit at the moment.)
It’s important to note that I’m only talking “selfishly” about myself and to the extent that anyone believes or cares that I’m trying to work and create for the benefit of more than myself over the course of the rest of our lives. I already had a fuck ton more money than most of you and I spent it all on space that could comfortably house, entertain, and potentially sustain you if “shit” gets even more “real” as the groups of people smarter and more specialized than me seem to suggest it will. And at least you fuckers at least like camping or going outside. I understand that in people’s lives they may have their own “I’ll always be there for you!” person they’ve never brought up to me or exhibit their proclivity and capacity in myriad other ways from donations of time or money across all of their interests and concerns. Cool. So how long can you, and you alone, sustain it? I started writing this after pausing in the middle of another beyond brilliant lecture of Jordan Peterson’s. He has so many intellectual heroes and absolutely amazing book recommendations, and I’ve gotten to the point where I hear a lot of the same analogies or stories and examples he likes to use across lectures. I’ve discovered some of his patterns. He points out that in order for something to be called “true,” as good a method as any is to see how and where what you’re claiming exists across time or disciplines. That some of his heroes managed to come to the questions and conclusions in their eras or with their limited scope but for imagination and intellectual rigor is mind-boggling for Peterson. Their answers are reliable. Their truths are transcendent. Their work reverberates throughout time into Jordan’s mouth and, often and scarily enough, as echos of things I’ve expressed at one level of abstraction or another over the years as well.
The more often I watch this phenomenon play out, it helps convince me there’s a right way to express the truth. There’s infinite ways to describe it or approach it, but the reliable and correct way has a signature. It’s someone’s “individual brilliance” that shines the brightest light on your own. It’s an articulation that wows and assures and pacifies all at once in its grandiosity. It’s the place at the end of the day that you recognize you’ve done an incalculable amount of work to understand in your own way as that person understood it in theirs. Is your time spent working on those truths? Are you surrounding yourself with people who provoke you to push your boundaries and expectations? Are you feeling motivated and creative? There’s a fundamental reliability in dreaming and knowing you’ll find a way. I want to do it with you, but mostly anymore, I’ll be fine simply showing you what I was getting at this whole time. *Bonus Blathering* The Edge of Chaos and Order I love talking about relationships. It is a source of perpetual intrigue to consider how two entire worlds of different people navigate each other, and then discuss the magic they create or disasters that befall them. I like when I get to learn peculiar and specific things about the players involved, but I also like to practice and rehearse things that I've figured out regarding my approach to relationships, and how they may parallel with the other person I'm talking to.
One of those well-rehearsed examples is the idea of honest communication. No matter how many times I stressed it in my own relationship, my ex wasn't honest with me. My "ideal," which should be read as a practical approach attempting to account for reality, was to have an honest relationship first, whatever baggage and connotation you put into "girlfriend" or "open relationship" second. What I'm learning is that this simply doesn't seem to be a skill you can learn without a considerable amount of work or, presumably self-respect.
A reason I used to spend a considerable amount of time trying to define "friend" was that I took it for granted that people who stuck around for so long or related to the world in similar ways had not just the capacity, but willingness to keep being honest. I misled myself. Of course, because other people are fickle, "we grow apart" is as taken for granted as any other cliche. And it's not because there's an honest pursuit of respectable prospects at the opposite end of the human experience spectrum, what we're doing is substituting a shorthand for, "I just don't really give a fuck anymore, but I don't hate you and don't know what else to say."
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I’m that person who people pay attention to when they’re feeling a little lost or hopeless or reckless. They spend enough time with me to remind themselves why they’re not dating or marrying someone like me. They get a horrible thought or do something wrong, and they want to draw up a comparison to the craziest shit I can say or my morally blank assessment of their situation. I know this because I can recognize other people who serve as that kind of person for increasing levels of strangers. I play into a self-loathing cultural fetish that I attempt to force into becoming something real or personal. That isn’t really why they signed up.
It’s one of the truest statements about me, and next to no one can seem to figure it out. I’d rather have an honest “anything,” but the word is usually friendship, than a dishonest relationship. I just value honesty. If we need to separate, okay. If you don’t want me to come, tell me. If you need something I’m not providing, test me on whether I can do better with all the necessary information. This only happens with my most sociopathic or disinterested friends. Anyone with “too many feelings” always thinks it’s better to lie and create a bubble to burst later. They think tinkering with your capacity for trust and understanding is preferable to a difficult conversation. They are wrong.
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It’s one of the truest statements about me, and next to no one can seem to figure it out. I’d rather have an honest “anything,” but the word is usually friendship, than a dishonest relationship. I just value honesty. If we need to separate, okay. If you don’t want me to come, tell me. If you need something I’m not providing, test me on whether I can do better with all the necessary information. This only happens with my most sociopathic or disinterested friends. Anyone with “too many feelings” always thinks it’s better to lie and create a bubble to burst later. They think tinkering with your capacity for trust and understanding is preferable to a difficult conversation. They are wrong.
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The stakes have just never felt that high. Tonight, I apparently talked too long or said or did something that got someone to get the doorman to tell me I should stop. I wasn’t wasted. I don’t think I blacked out. I engaged in a number of random conversations, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which one I did particularly poorly. I even asked the doorman what I had done so that I could avoid doubling down on the mistake as I wasn’t even sure what he was referring to. But situations like that feel a specific kind of hopeless. They make you feel like your “even” or “natural” state that just wants to talk and drink is wrong on its face. Will whatever I did haunt me for a week and prevent me from carrying on in life? Not really. What will happen though is I’ll be a tad less enthusiastic the next time I’m feeling social because, perhaps I’m missing something dire and important that needs better paying attention to. Building that resolve of “fuck it” though is a double edged sword. I’ll still find myself at the center of a group of strangers chatting them up. I’ll still, occasionally, text the absolute wrong person, though that desire was entirely nonexistent tonight. Overwhelmingly I think, who cares? So I managed to accidentally piss off another person. So I got in a polite conversation with a door guy who immediately shifted to my “side” when he realized whatever they were complaining about, it certainly wasn’t my oblivious inability to be coherent or polite. I don’t want to marinate in a “fuck it” approach to life, but I’m getting precisely zero insight as to why my [style?] isn’t a proper way to engage with the world. I’m mostly just focusing on the 1 out of 10 random conversations that didn’t seem to go right.
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I have this weird in-between feeling where I don’t want to die, but I’m kind of tired of “doing life.” I’m tired of getting into interactions that just leave everyone uncomfortable. I’m tired of putting myself out there as “whatever” be it chatty and friendly or stoic and quiet reading in the corner. I’m starting to detest what I’m writing about because I’m not even sure if it’s about anything. For some reason there’s been a number of Seinfeld parodies or allusions lately stating the “it’s a show about nothing” idea, and it’s reverberating in my head. I’m a show about nothing.
I don’t know what to do. I try to work all the time and always see the money disappear into repairs or the next expensive piece of living on the land. I try to sit around and watch TV and just feel guilty. I had to stop reading again because it all just piles up as a wave of sadness and problems I can’t fix. I feel lost. It’s hard to orient myself. Just as I stop doing one stupid thing after a night out drinking I pick up something different that I can’t really account for. My underlying psyche wants to embarrass or compel me. To do what, I don’t know.
I wonder if I’m in a lot of pain and just don’t know how to access it. So I “feel social” and spend a little too much trying to force any semblance of “normal functioning person” who can just have a conversation and move on before the light of conscious acts flickers out and I’m being asked to leave. I’m antagonizing. I don’t want to be. I want to feel like I belong somewhere, but that somewhere is always on the verge of having me alienate myself from it. Hour long conversation with your dad in the middle of the night? Clearly, I needed some stability.
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The fact that this is written in little semi-relevant to each other blurbs I think speaks to the fractioning of my mind. I think I recall that my grandmother on my mom’s side of the family was institutionalized for a spell. There could be some genetic “crazy” or sadness lurking in my mind that’s only exacerbated by my fledgling conception of my place in the world. It feels the most hopeless when I can’t even work. When the things I identify as important to me are always frozen. When opportunities for cash are closed off because I’ve become a mental case. My old shitty car acts old and shitty and I can’t even sit in a parking lot with the air conditioning on. I need to stop drinking in public, and I need to never be awake for hangover days.
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I’m stuck in time. I don’t feel progress. I can put myself into moments that happened years ago. Where did I go? Who did I become? What changed so dramatically that I can’t get the same kind of results? Or have I remained so stuck as the world managed to change?
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I have this weird in-between feeling where I don’t want to die, but I’m kind of tired of “doing life.” I’m tired of getting into interactions that just leave everyone uncomfortable. I’m tired of putting myself out there as “whatever” be it chatty and friendly or stoic and quiet reading in the corner. I’m starting to detest what I’m writing about because I’m not even sure if it’s about anything. For some reason there’s been a number of Seinfeld parodies or allusions lately stating the “it’s a show about nothing” idea, and it’s reverberating in my head. I’m a show about nothing.
I don’t know what to do. I try to work all the time and always see the money disappear into repairs or the next expensive piece of living on the land. I try to sit around and watch TV and just feel guilty. I had to stop reading again because it all just piles up as a wave of sadness and problems I can’t fix. I feel lost. It’s hard to orient myself. Just as I stop doing one stupid thing after a night out drinking I pick up something different that I can’t really account for. My underlying psyche wants to embarrass or compel me. To do what, I don’t know.
I wonder if I’m in a lot of pain and just don’t know how to access it. So I “feel social” and spend a little too much trying to force any semblance of “normal functioning person” who can just have a conversation and move on before the light of conscious acts flickers out and I’m being asked to leave. I’m antagonizing. I don’t want to be. I want to feel like I belong somewhere, but that somewhere is always on the verge of having me alienate myself from it. Hour long conversation with your dad in the middle of the night? Clearly, I needed some stability.
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The fact that this is written in little semi-relevant to each other blurbs I think speaks to the fractioning of my mind. I think I recall that my grandmother on my mom’s side of the family was institutionalized for a spell. There could be some genetic “crazy” or sadness lurking in my mind that’s only exacerbated by my fledgling conception of my place in the world. It feels the most hopeless when I can’t even work. When the things I identify as important to me are always frozen. When opportunities for cash are closed off because I’ve become a mental case. My old shitty car acts old and shitty and I can’t even sit in a parking lot with the air conditioning on. I need to stop drinking in public, and I need to never be awake for hangover days.
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I’m stuck in time. I don’t feel progress. I can put myself into moments that happened years ago. Where did I go? Who did I become? What changed so dramatically that I can’t get the same kind of results? Or have I remained so stuck as the world managed to change?
