Obviously he’s going to go down as the most influential person in my life of the last year or more, but it’s the confluence of forces over the last day or so that has me starting this, and not just the dozen or so times I’ve heard Jordan Peterson discuss hero myths or the impact of one person. Concurrent to Peterson’s Psychological Significance of the Biblical Narratives lecture series I’m watching My Hero Academia. A few moments ago I caught a commercial depicting John Cena tearing up as he read thank you notes from the people’s lives he’s changed.
Wednesday I attempt to check into another drug study. It would pay $5500 if I get in. The screening my heart rate was 100 BPM, the highest it can be without either being immediately booted from screening or having to do a repeat. I felt calm the entire time. I feel more calm than not in these days preceeding check in. I have little to nothing riding on whether I get in besides THE WHOLE WORLD.
I’ve been moved lately to double down on the narrative of “being alone.” If I don’t get into the study, it’s back to the salt mines of delivery driving where I calcify muscle knots and move $100 or $200 at a time in the several directions I need to go. Whether it’s erecting a greenhouse, getting water pumped, creating a driveway, or finding the right equipment to keep the grass cut, there’s a hard and cold path forward that encourages my car to not break down and has me sinking into my car seat until we become one.
Part of what kicked off the anxiety and string of failing studies was the unknown reality of what I’m currently sitting in. I wasn’t car dwelling then. I still had rent to pay. I had just dropped a ton of cash to get the land in the first place. I hadn’t worked 3 jobs at once. I didn’t have a structure out on the land or any of my shit moved. In other words, all of the terrible circumstances I was facing, I’ve fixed. The dramatic climax of so many pillars I thought were in place collapsing around me has culminated in me sucking at playing a trumpet in a hot car as I wait to not get tipped by inconsiderate frat boys. Sure, my car can still break down at any moment, but I can afford the tow.
I have the intractable problem of actually believing in myself. I’m not worried about failure in and of itself. I’m terrified I won’t be able to set the examples I preach. How fast I work and how quick things can change is absolutely real to me. The impact I can have, particularly in the viral world, is immeasurable. The only way I can sell that is to give people something tangible to latch onto. They don’t know how to shake the shackles of bills. They don’t practice collaboration. Sustainability is a buzzword of the modern zeitgeist. They don’t even know how to verbalize and represent their real problems. As many heroes as I can read about, as many noteable examples out there that exist, there’s still really only me to try what I’m trying and do what I’m doing.
That is fucking nerve racking. It’s nerve racking because it has nothing to do with “belief.” When I wanted movie moments, I created the environment for them. When I wanted a business, I stayed on the phone and showed up every day to see it through. When I want to create a little sustainable oasis that gives me a platform to dick around across my diverse interests, I’ll do it a few hundred dollars at a time at the “most humbling” jobs imaginable as I collect stories from you about why you can’t reach your goals.
I’m a big believer, in a sense, that you create your own reality. I don’t mean to embolden people who live in outright denial of their failings and take pride in defaulting to misrepresentations in order to protect their feelings. I think when you work to give yourself a frame of reference that can accomplish “anything,” then in the act of making your world manifest, reality becomes yours. I constantly ask people to pay attention to who’s world it is they are inhabiting. Are you perpetuating the dialogue handed to you by those who want to keep you set where you are? Are you completely incoherent because you haven’t even taken a stab at even defining the words you use to base your life on? It’s important stuff. It’s necessary to cultivate your individual to as close to a T as you can.
My individual wants to move fast. I want to attract the kind of people who are motivated and excited to work and experiment with me. I’m the incidental loner. It’d be great to wake up each day to get moving on something together. You’re not the people who are going to do that with me, no matter how many appeals I make. I’d have to drag you. I’d have to account for what I suspect would be an increasing number of expenses as time went on. It’s been long enough that I’m not just blindly crying to myself in the corner about no one willing to play with me. You’re not the playful types, and that’s okay, I used my “hope” and “love” blinders to pretend otherwise.
I’ll never shake the “anxiety,” which I think is the wrong way to think about it, of my responsibility to myself or the world at large. I’ve failed 4 or 5 screenings at what felt like critical times. I’m still trying to see my head back in a stable place and trying again. My last study, which was truly critical, they NCSd (not clinically significant) my heart rate to keep me in, meaning I wouldn’t have had my moving truck or garage. I can’t be stopped. I never let up on myself. And for as long as it’s felt for me to gain forward momentum on things I’m doing, I watch people fade away at the same time. When “the last 8 years” becomes a throwaway line on my story of accomplishment, that’s 8 years you didn’t use to get started or learn or figure out how to stomach failure. I worry that eventually I’ll grow to resent the people around me and not want to contribute to “helping” them with anything if the occasion arose. I think they’d be too far gone to care either way.
I think a larger point has to do with what you practice every day. It won’t be enough to “finally” be frustrated enough or to have a psychotic break and “realize” something I’m doing or talked about was “truer” or “better” all along. I’m just trying to practice what I preach. I don’t have any more of an answer than the things I create and can point at. I can try to relate the headspace that drives me there. I can put a frame around the “crazy” that motivates moves that sometime befuddle me. But I can’t account for you anymore. I can’t pretend you’re anything more than the endless struggle or regrets or sacrifices in service to...well, I don’t know, you don’t talk about it. I know you don’t think you can save the world, and I know you probably feel obligated to keep the bills paid. So I don’t know you.
