[650] Man, Over, Bored

I am infected. I'm infected like grandpa who can't help but to refer to them as “the blacks.” I'm an Olympic judo master who knows your neck might be broken if you come at me from behind. I'm a horse that will turn left or right just by you draping the reigns across my neck. I've an underlying habit, a notion, and drive always accelerating, and I can't put the energy, the stress, and the training anywhere meaningful.

I've always considered myself hard to diagnose. Even if I'm in a “depressive state,” which I almost certainly am, just like the most heated anger, just like the quivering sadness, I'm going to pick it apart. I'm going to whitewash the churning inhumanity that wants to turn me inside out. Sure, I have nowhere to go. Sure, I'm as close to an “adult” as I've ever been with my dead-end job, resentful living circumstances, and actual debts with an opened-ended payment schedule. And sure, I wrote a 3 page poem making a case for suicide.

But isn't that right there the point? I think so little about everything around what I'd actually like to be doing. I understand the danger I might cause to someone at the wrong place and time. I'll be as quick or quicker to ridicule and diminish any level of strife I might be experiencing because something something Niger's next. It's that it's very hard to be actively destructive. It takes a lot of energy and time. When everything around you feels destroyed already, now it gets easy. Now you just have to play along.

This only speaking to my ongoing lamentation with life in general. We don't have little boxes made of ticky-tacky anymore. Now we have seas of apartment complexes and The Real World's number of roommates. It'd be dumb to romanticize the suburbs, but there's no denying you live in a different world when you're responsible for your shelter and land. When the onus is on you to feel useful and learn how to take apart the washing machine. When you can decorate with more than a dollar store skeleton on your door for Halloween.

The land represents a sort of last frontier for me. Remember, getting a “regular job” and going into debt and hating my life were a last resort for a reason. There's still a measure of freedom and growth and creativity that can be explored there that never not ever will I get on a delivery run. So, of course, it's getting cold, and my car wants to act up harder and harder, and I obligate myself to poor taxes because everything fucks and gets fucked in compounded ways. Do you know where the real me is? Apparently able to have a smooth and charming completely blacked out conversation with a girl for 45 minutes. He was right in front of me!

I feel lucky when I can latch onto a few quotes. Willie Nelson apparently said, “If you fail long enough at something, you become a legend.” I think that's my goal with writing. Suck so much at getting anywhere or helping anything that some naive cave dwelling humanoid who stumbles across a pile of my droppings can mistakenly call it the find of the century. In this scenario I've made thousands of copies and distributed them through crazed ramblings in the streets spitting through my dangling gray hair.

I use the word naive a lot. That either means I see the same shit too often, or there's a better word lingering. I suppose you can only be naive when you actually believe something and there's an objective means that will summarily shut you down. Then you could reduce any hope or chance anyone ever believes in to a measure of naivety. That might be unfair.

I'm just always waiting. I don't know if it's a psychological hole or what. I'm waiting for what I already had. I'm waiting to start something real again. I'm waiting for a measure of control and security that underpins actual progress. It's like I'm stuck in a fog of incoherent political babble. Bloviating bullshit bolstered by bastard bitches. And I listen and scroll. I take in a book. I watch all the TV. I return to my article reading to discover I actually had already figured it out before. I've nowhere to go and nothing that matters. Just sit, and wait, and try to avoid provoking jeers from the “other” accidental roommate.

I could use some help in figuring out how to blame myself. Recall I spent over a years rent and utilities in the last 3 months trying to get the house livable. I've contacted 25 different contractors or meth-heads with varying and fleeting degrees of success. I can't stop my car from blowing up. I won't really be headed in a good direction if I adopt too high of a car payment and insurance charges. I'll never let myself live it down if I actually manage to have a heart attack or rupture something serious by spending too many hours working. Not like I'd have the health insurance to keep me out of another hole that would dig me in. I make more money than many of my age group's “big boy” jobs with all the extra time to resent my own self in not knowing how to spend it better.

I'm just a mouthpiece at this point. Even my “little” goals like learning different instruments feel impossibly far away. I was supposed to be able to practice any time I wanted out in the middle of nowhere, you see. Now I just chauffeur a few around as I slowly beat my car into submission one drum rudiment at a time. I've been toying with getting a gym membership again. You know that smooth conversation I got into? Well, apparently that girl was down to mess around and I quickly decided she should go with my friend who was on leave and started to walk home. The sex drive is under attack! I haven't lost the charm and smirk and jokes, but...eh, if you ever once thought you had something real, that shit kind of sticks in you. One more worthwhile and fun distraction being slowly led out to pasture.

I'm trying to find a way to breakdown that doesn't negatively affect you. That would be something. Crazy self-hating people do that cliché thing where they go on the attack. It doesn't take me getting sad or losing my mind to argue against all of your Snapchat and Instagram lives. Before it started affecting me so directly and consistently, I've offered enough of my suspicions regarding the Giant Lies by which you all conduct yourselves and charade I play in trying to glean the runoff benefits. The art would be in making you feel good about it. Not relieved, of course you'd feel relieved, but good. I don't want to you to feel like I'm a lifted tax burden, I want you to feel like you had a good trip.

That's not quick bullet after a drunk night and angry blog. In fact, that's not any method that might've sprung to the front of your mind or perhaps have envisioned for yourself. That would take some sleight of hand and real magic shit. Think of the preparation and coordination. Now, You Don't See Me Too.

But enough about my imminent death of my ideals and motivations which is considerably worse than the loss of whatever embodied phantom I might resemble in the halls of your mind. It just happens when the rest you want has nothing to do with sleep. Like, I'll sleep better when the lies aren't winning. I'll want to get back up when I can meet a day that's going to give back what I put into it. I want to feel myself believing in things again, not the bare minimum survival of helpless kicking in the air. I really really miss me. I miss seeing the future I wasn't going to be dragged into. I miss feeling like an advocate with clear and present examples to refute your pessimism and negativity charges. I'm just an old guy with random pain flares, dwindling friendships, and compounded obligations. If the situation regarding cooperation was dire back when I first mentioned it, I've well tumbled over that cliff and am hoping not to break every finger trying to cling to the wall on my way down.

[649] Cuntsequence

I want to be very careful. The intent is to shy as far away from “mere complaining” as possible. My instinct is telling me that given the nature of the subject matter this will take some time to try and do well. I have to talk, but I’m wary that my “have to” mechanism is slowly breaking down in potentially hazardous ways.

Maybe we start with an “inspirational” video someone posted about something Elon Musk said regarding “never giving up.” Depending on the degree of fanboy (it’s always boys), you can find any degree of problems throughout Musk’s life that he conquered which in turn can serve as your own motivation. You’re bullied now? Well, wipe the blood from your nose, your future is in the stars! One might envision a tongue-in-cheek inspirational poster saying something like “How many rockets would you crash in order to achieve immortality?”

Our culture is nothing if not full of the idea that we can piggyback other peoples’ accomplishments. Their troubles are more “generally human,” and thus if we tap into our immortal connected spirit, everything gets better.

I’m losing that thread.

To get it out of the way, I don’t have problems. I invent problems. I adopt problems. I impose problems. I anticipate having problems in the future, but I don’t have problems. My mind is annoying, but if the worst I have to do is this, hardly a problem. No one is forcing me to eat like shit, work too much, or swallow anymore than the next guy in some abstract denunciation regarding the problems of capitalism.

Perhaps I can’t tell the difference between whether I’ve lost something or if I’ve never had it. I like to consider myself a man of consequence. I put my time or my mind to something and “things” find a way to resolve themselves in ways I sought. That means, more often than anything else, chasing away waterfalls of crappy people and circumstances that get in the way. It might be said that I’m just a persistent shit shoveler more than I have some particular talent or tact. That’s what this is, right? Shoveling one scoop of my dumping mind. I never know how big the pile is.

My living situation is shoveling shit. Whether it’s the shit of passive aggressive bitchiness, the being ignored or lied to by, pushing dozens, of construction people, or the fake concern and regard my job has for its “independent contractors.” I can strive and thrive, I can huff and fling. I can kill time and get blackout drunk and say things I don’t remember or believe. Why? I’m living in increasingly “there is no cause and effect” terms. I’m holding no regard for people with shortcuts and quasi-racist sentiments. Sober me would have said it was entitled idiotic white people who signaled to the rest of the developing world that they should be like that too. Blackout drunk me has a grudge against all of the Indians who don’t tip, and apparently takes it out on an Uber driver.

Worse than my lazy degradation into, honestly, I struggle to call it racism because I don’t care about Indian people anymore than I do others, but let’s run with it to make the point even greater. I don’t even care. I’m not worried about being perceived as a racist, let alone whatever lazy inanities I was spewing blacked out. I’m trying to care. I’m trying to figure out why I should give a shit about anyone, especially ones I don’t know, and I can’t. My efforts as of late are being served nothing but shit on a stick and resentment and sneers, it must feel like it’s my time to get on board.

And yes, it’s as lazy and typical and obviously morally defunct as anything and anyone else, and I don’t care. Add back into the equation me thinking of myself as a man of consequence. What happens then? What happens when it’s “not just a joke” anymore? What happens when my intentionality and break down results in actual harms? I’m not poised to hit the streets with a tiki torch angling to beat someone up, but what if I break something important? What if I do the equivalent of laying down under a train speeding over my body in an attempt to “get something back” about what’s missing in my experience or lack of meaningful action? It’s worth noting as an aside how, in these moments, I respect absolutely no one who doesn’t bother with the details for why they’re not “sharing their life” with someone else. I don’t need the provocation.

I can feel my eyes changing. I’m seeing myself in the lonely old men in the beater cars in front of mine. More cliche than thought finds its way to my lips. I’m not just eating like shit, but doing so voraciously, with an energetic spike that sees plenty of happy big bellied dudes with a litter of kids and no shame. If that were my goal, staying “in shape” is likely only to alienate me from the increasingly goofy-looking, fat, and lonely population.

I don’t know that I deserve to be angry at myself. Everything I do is about “the future,” besides drinking. It makes sense to have a house without bills and rent, right? But that’s not what I’m allowed to talk about. I have to talk about being lied to. I have to talk about being “too much” in needing a floor to sleep on. I have to talk about drunk nights out when all I wanted to do was go bowling. But, even when you wait, even when you plan, even when you give them a week or more, I know how to get 9 people to not go bowling that said they would. Or, I know their work is more important, their meal prep, their mis scheduling, their waiting to hear back from, their other thing that usually happens around then.

There was a thread about being the friend who “always texts first.” Apparently there are a lot of lonely sad extroverts with terrible friend groups. I’ve heard at least a dozen times the last week about how hard it is to make friends as an adult. Quickly follows is some placating sentiment about fluidity and maturity that never speaks to the heart of it. Was something lost, or was it never there to begin with? Do I think it’s a coincidence I’ll probably never be invited to another “friend’s” wedding now that I’m no longer with my ex? By the numbers, I’ve been “loner” me for considerably longer than whatever romance I attempted to make out of my time in college.

That seems to speak to the deepest compulsion. You want a family, even if it’s a bad one, even if it’s a lie. I want my TV families. I want the best for my dad and stepmom even if their surrounding family generally suck. I want to believe the laughs were genuine, the parties weren’t bad excuses, and the plans could actually come true. Is that the world we’re living in? Is that just the world being thrust into my experience, corrupting my otherwise persistent nature?

It’s that I’m fed up with having to rely on people. Cross my fingers for a big tip. Be strung along by white trash incidentally, barely, more knowledgeable and having of the time to get shit done I need. Talk down to the man-child so I can inhabit his space. Be constantly ignored by anyone fleetingly actually capable. I’m living at the whims of the weather and precisely ZERO people I respect. I want to be blacked out of that world. I want to tear down the idea that there’s anything left of a responsible reliable actor who’s capable of navigating it. No one is. No one should be forced to pretend they can. Money doesn’t work, trust is a joke, hard work gets you heart palpitations and one giant cramp consisting of your whole body. What’s the fucking point? Judge me, get angry, give your lazy opinion in reaction to mine. It’s meaningless, directionless babble that only hurts when you’re dumb enough to keep playing along.

I want to go back to learning. I want to sit in my box all day, read terrible things about the world, spend all my money on my projects, and be left the fuck alone. You know how hard it is to get there? Want to take a guess how many steps it takes to be left the fuck alone? Wanna know how many thousands of dollars and stupid conversations and hiccups and cancers you have to cure? I can barely listen to anyone but myself anymore. It’s a loop or a marble sorting game of debased emptiness. And I’m a man of consequence. I put it all here. What do I expect from the equally disorganized idiots who won’t take an active role in their self-destruction?

[648] Family Treason

I’ve been thinking a lot about family, and more specifically, in the context of media. As far as how family does or doesn’t operate in my own life, I think I’ve refrained from seeing a connection that helps explain my approach to who I’ve let in my life and why. Let’s talk this out.

TV is reliable. For hundreds of episodes you can tune into the same faces. No matter the levels of betrayal or craziness, the characters return to each other. No one is ever too dimwitted or angry or caring or wacky. They serve a purpose and have a role. They play off and round out until you get a picture of something that persists. Modern Family is never going to seriously discuss divorce nor is Blackish ever going to have Dre wake up to a burning cross in his yard.

TV isn’t just reliable in that way, it’s what we flatten out with a rolling pin to make it easier to consume. Depression can be touched up by endearing quirks and not-too-off-color jokes. Obesity gets a backstory of excuses and room to understand. Entitlement sits at the head of an overflowing dinner table. Rage gets redirected towards off-screen or low-tier entities you’re not invested in. Every time a TV show tries to get “tough” and “deal with the real issues,” it is, by being designed, serving to undermine the stated goal in service to the reason it ever became such a powerful reflection in the first place. We care about the story, not the truth.

Think about what happens when a character dies. When a “beloved” character is ripped from our expectations, we revel in the surprise. Game of Thrones is nothing if not for its “shocking” deaths, now so numerous it’s a built in joke and expectation. If half the cast were killed in the opening episode of the new season, the show would go on. Our TV families are expected to go through everything so we don’t have to. Let them negotiate peace. Let them forgive. Let them cope.

TV is an indirect measure of where “we” collectively reside as a culture. The ever-expanding diversity of television and networks acts as though it speaks towards a measure of progress or that we’re hearing new and marginalized voices. I don’t think so. I think we’ve always been prepared to hear the black story, or gay story, or woman’s story, because the story absolves us of any real responsibility to any real relationship with someone who’s black, gay, or a woman. Somewhere, deep down, are more representations of different people a good thing? I think so. Is it the kind of work that traverses deep cultural divides and fosters togetherness? I think not even close.

There’s a weird irony constantly at play. The closer you look, and the harder you try to capture, the more likely you are to corrupt. I’m criticized for my “direct” nature. I hate dancing around pleasantries and speaking in code. People often think I don’t understand the kind of mistake I’m making. Our culture is predicated on that indirect approach. You don’t tell the girl you like her, you feign like you’re not interested. You don’t tell the boss to go fuck himself, you accomplish something that impresses the person above them. TV is a natural extension of this. You don’t make a gay friend, you reference something funny Cam said to signal you’re not an overt hater. You can’t be racist if you love watching Insecure.

The writers are usually trying to accomplish something real in any series that takes itself seriously. They lived those moments. They had those almost exact conversations. They didn’t have the lighting and the timing, but here’s as close an approximation to what happened when I came out at Thanksgiving, where’s my Emmy? But they wrote the episode. They lived it. They did the work, so you don’t think you have to.

It’s the indirect pose that I think gives us our baseline ideas regarding our own families. People put up with the worst kinds of abuses. They shoulder the responsibility when nothing is ever returned in kind. Family sticks together, right? Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. At the end of the day, all you have is family. It works for the Mafia! If you weren’t paying attention. I was told growing up, “You’re brothers, you should love each other.” No doubt a sentiment passed to my father as earnestly as he tried to pass it onto us.

But where is the love? I don’t recall a single week my entire life me and my brother got along particularly well. My dad’s siblings have done everything in their power to resent and take advantage and steal from him. My mom was all forms of abusive towards him well before she got around to taking things out on us. But we’re family? Right? My dad and stepmom are currently shouldering the major portion of the fallout from my uncle’s recent cancer diagnosis. A task I wouldn’t put into the hands of any of his siblings were he on the receiving end. If it were an episode of TV, my dad would be the resilient everyman who’s capacity for forgiveness knows no bounds, and my uncle might see the light of his actions previously for just a second before dying off serenely surrounded by tearful, artfully suggestive of caring, family.

I tried to be more explicit in my concept and approach to “family.” I started picking friends. Where I screwed up was in the assumption family in and of itself meant anything, let alone that anyone would hold similar ideas to me as to how they would function. I think this is a major component to my confusion and frustration regarding my relative expectations about them. I had said out loud that they weren’t going to be playthings, they were different, I choose them to be as good or as bad as they are and we can all agree that this is how it works. I tried to cast a show that didn’t know it was filming. I directly dictated a puzzle that could only fall apart after it slid together while no one was looking.

Here I think about your “first love.” I certainly didn’t expect to be taken for a ride, and then I was on it. My “second love” did exactly the same thing, but it took a lot longer. I was paying attention this time. I was fighting back. The puzzle didn’t start with the edges and fill in quickly, it slipped a couple together here and a couple there until I saw a completed picture with nowhere to go but back in the box. It’s easy to be with someone when you’re letting whatever it is be. Then you turn them into your TV character with predictable, reliable, patterns to reinforce a feeling. That feeling has to be a good one, as I persistently learn my very presence instantiates negativity in many people.

Part of what I considered me “maturing” was adopting the ability to let people be who they were. The problem is when they don’t know, or don’t care, to figure out what they are. I’ve said a number of times that for as much of a roller coaster as I think I’ve put on display in blogs, “I” still remain “me” in some perverse impossible to nail down individuality. You’re not writing this, I am. It seems that the indirect habit applies as much to our own experience as much as anything else. We already know our eyes are a lie. We slowly lose the ability to hear and taste and smell. Why not forgo the mind it takes to pay attention and make choices? You don’t have to be you as long as you surround yourself with people telling you nice things about who you are.

I wanted to pick my family, but they had other plans. I still want the people I desire and look out for and heap endless praise and resources at to represent more than time spent in school together or partying or blood. And because I’m me, I know what I know and recognize what I’m after. I’ve done the work. I lay my TV characterizations of who you are to rest and try to engage the human who’s at least as convoluted and contradictory and confusing as I am. We have to be on the level. We have to choose each other. It’s an impossible and miraculous feat that most are barely willing to get a glimpse of.

The sickness is that you can attach yourself to an endless array of things and people that do nothing for you. They don’t help. They don’t teach. They don’t challenge. They leach while they let you leach. They hide you from yourself by making you all about them thus hidden in return. You can’t share with those resentful of you. You can’t save someone by cutting the noose when they’re dangling over a cliff. Here you get to make what you think is my fatal flaw. You pop into action and focus all of your time and energy. You advocate and celebrate and encourage. You take from the very finite yet always giving well of energy to keep the television on.

I don’t feel like this often, but I’ve been ashamed to think that I think many of the people I care about, the ones I would consider family, are cowards. I’m usually immediately fashioned into some kind of “that guy” who’s coming in hot or “doesn’t get it” or is so stubborn I’m only able to undermine all of my best intentions. But I’ve given those ideas room to breathe. I’ve talked them to death and invited commentary. I can’t function as your character who represents the things you don’t feel you have the permission to say. It makes me feel cheap and inhuman, and it’s dishonest. I can inspire, but I can’t substitute. Just like all the “nice” people in my life I envy aren’t going to determine my attitude to new acquaintances.

When I think about the amount of times some relationship in my life has “failed” and put it in terms of who the person is verses who they’re projected to be, a lot makes sense. I’ve “failed” many fuck buddies by not blossoming into “husband material.” They used to be friends, but now they’re fuck buddies, because when I wasn’t a character, they wanted nothing to do with me. By trying to accept certain friends as “who they are,” I came across as the overconfident judgmental blowhard who doesn’t leave room for anyone else to breathe as I offered scathing commentary about all of “them” out there, so how couldn’t I think those things about my friends as well? Our familiar familial connection turned to static. TV-me doesn’t have friends and family. TV-me is trapped in a time warp oozing Howard Stern in his 20’s energy. Off screen, we assume he’s okay with his books or his shows, wearily shaking his fist at the fall of man.

I’m not a character. More importantly, I’m not your character. I’m never going to treat you like you’re one of mine. I’ve chucked the longing and sentimentality and gone back into my selfish obnoxious preservation, but that doesn’t mean you’ve been demoted. That doesn’t mean I don’t suffer your cowardice or dishonesty in service to my attempted “maturity” with regard to our friendship. Because that’s just how you are, right? I say mean things, not you. Your brother is your brother, not me. Your story is the one you’re picking and fighting for, not a theme and skin that feel “good enough” for you to ride things out. You have things to say; you’re not a cordial parrot with teeth. Now there’s an animal fit for the screen.

[647] Fast & Frivilous

Free association, go.

Me, too. Every girl who’s ever lived has experienced sexual harassment. My theory, something something stupid apes mired in millions of years of evolutionary history. What I don’t think will happen is anything resembling “it getting better.” Share. Keep sharing. I think the guys who sexually harass will say, “Remember when Tracy said she was sexually harassed? Let’s see if she’ll post another status.” This isn’t to sandbag my female friends, but I think statuses like that are part of that cultural mythology I hate. Let’s pretend we haven’t figured anything out about where we come from or how to do cause and effect. Everybody playing along? Okay, cool, now pat ourselves on the back.

It doesn’t get better. If getting older has allowed me anything, it’s the impossible to ignore perspective that adults are just dumber children. Children, we like to say, don’t know better. Adults just don’t know better with dozens of more excuses as to why. Key word, excuses. They can read the statistics and ignore them. They can hear the morality parables and scoff. They can cry and laugh with hundreds of characters across the ages and turn right around into feeling like the loneliest most self-important thing that ever did live. You’re not finding your dream mate. You’re not getting that financially secure. You’re not going to status update away eyes from your tits or lecherous creeps from going too far. Do you want to help, or is the camaraderie of collective mockery what it’s really about?

While I’m not going to hold a candle for the dead or carry on like I’m somehow trying to defend sexual assault, I have my own crosses to bare and naive flickering flames too. I don’t mean to dismiss any shot you take at solidarity or in “bringing awareness” as completely pointless. But I can’t help feeling it’s mostly pointless. Like being a TV or movie critic. Hundreds of negative opinions just like yours aren’t going to stop them from making Fast and the Furious movies. There are deeper financial and cultural perspective qualifiers at play of greater consequence. Are you willing to look for them, or simply admit to yourself it’s not really worth having too strong of an opinion about a movie that’s not made for you?

“Sexual assault isn’t movie preferences, asshole.” Nothing is something it’s not, so fuck ever making analogies, right? They’re influenced by money, no? The richest are rarely prosecuted. The poorest are completely ignored. There’s a resource allocation underbelly that gets completely bypassed. Do you know what prevents sexual assault? If you don’t have an answer reflexively, it’s a wonder what links of support for educational and data driven advocacy groups could do instead. I’d like to see discussions about better ways to condition or reprimand that doesn't devolve into petty dissections of one particular idiot’s lack of tact. But, don’t let me carry on too long, I’m not of the opinion that “anything” gets “better.”

Recursive problem solving. The idea being that you use a past solution to a problem and apply it to the next set of problems until they’re all solved. For those who think the universe is some kind of simulation or algorithm, think of how horrifying that process could be. An impartial universe with no connotative care for “sexual assault” running through every lamentable sexual experience between every person who has or will ever live. Only to find out what? What any one individual could have told it from one unwanted sexual encounter.Yet, don’t we seem to adopt a stupid computer-like approach to solving the problems in our own lives? We address the lies with more lies. We claw at the wind and then ball up our fists to give it a good whoosh. We run from difficult questions and feelings into ever-complicated problems that leave us lost in a new rush of questions and feelings.

I fashion myself a pattern seeker. I try to hurt myself in ways that make it so I don’t hurt the same way again. This stops me from viral empty status sharing. This stops me from reflexively throwing 5 bucks at Puerto Rico. This stops my allegedly liberal or woke heart from bleeding out. Do I avoid all stupid patterns? Next time you catch a drunk blog, obviously not. Am I trying to fix anything but myself for its stupid feelings in the moment? Not really. Do I think you’re trying to fix sexual assault with a status update? Of course not. Do I think you want to reduce the care or concern you might have for the issue to the level of disregard I have in posting a drunk blog? God forbid.

It can only come from a selfish place. You can hunt down the kind of men that are exceedingly unlikely to make you feel violated, but the others aren’t going away. You can think you’ve spoken up and been brave and advocated for a lifetime, but you’re competing with structures in the brain older than trees. I’m not speaking as to whether shitty behavior is justified, nor do I think it is. I am trying to shine a light on the fast and furious forces that will continually profit until there’s nothing sexually motivated left on the planet.

[646] Identi-please

I’ve written the first few lines of a dozen different blogs over the last few days in my mind. When that happens, it’s like an animal is scratching at the door to be let outside. You assume it has to pee, but it could just be restless or saw the neighbor’s dog and wants to play. My simple-minded dog brain rarely distinguishes some level of “suffering” from “boredom” from “overwhelmed” from “exhausted,” so I dig my toe into the dirt and meander around a point until I can land on a hard description.

The last 2 days have proven as great or greater a measure of progress on getting my house done as the last 2 and a half months. I still find myself at the mercy of my “basically by myself” programming which seeks and finds Craigslist morons instead of asking around the circles of people I know. Consider, it takes me reaching near breakdown mode before I think to ask a coworker or text a friend. My ingrained assumption reflexively dismisses the idea that the people I come in contact with are good for anything. Perhaps more specifically, good for what I need versus what I think I might be able to get out of them.

A large portion of my mental space recently has been ruminating on how I find myself, again, annoyed and put off by people’s terrible communication. They don’t show up on time. If they make a definitive statement, I know precisely what is not going to happen and exactly the steps they aren’t going to take to ensure nothing happens. People ignore me until it’s convenient, or they’re on a meth induced fervor, and then expect me to meet their conditions after they’ve strung me along or lied about something.

And then another reflex kicks in. I tell myself I don’t deserve this. I’m pressed to statements about not being able to find a single reliable person in the entire state. I’m impressing upon acquaintances my relative impoverished state. None of it, by approximation, having really anything to do with me and who I try to be.

I had the thought that I was perhaps losing my subjective self. My company is so routinely superficial or self-destructive, I’ve nothing to reflect upon that isn’t a level of complaint or frustration. I meet kids at the bar. I have 2 minute pass-bys at work. I make the same endless appeal for grabbing a beer or help on the land to general silence and indifference. The one person acting closest like me to show up and get shit done, reinforce the idea that my goals and projects are as achievable as I’ve been describing? My dad. He shows up, we work, I almost have all my walls. He’s agreed to drive me to the hospital Tuesday should I prove unable to navigate constructing my solar array.

There isn’t enough “there” there for me to really be moved one way or another. I used to think people grasped how special it was to have more than a handful of friends, actual friends, to hit the bar with. That of course dwindled out. The “celebration” reduced to edge dampening and pleasantries over bummed cigarettes. Receding deeper into my gut is that loud and excited pursuer of all things. It’s a weird place where, maybe I want to make you laugh, maybe I’m actually more concerned with setting you up to be disregarded after whatever I’ve said. I’ll call it being lightly poisoned by my new favorite phrase “middle class mediocrity.” You don’t need to shoot for the moon or experience a belly laugh, a chuckle will suffice.

I took off work a little early. I’m losing the “pride” of making as much money as soon as possible. I met a kid at the bar who immediately talked about how much money he wants to make and that’s why he’s in school. I just felt a little sad for him. So much enthusiasm and he didn’t even try for a more rounded or meaningful answer. I, still, want considerably higher amounts of money too, but I’ve learned I can barely buy friends a beer with it. I can pay people just enough to provoke a blowback that disproportionately impugns my time and patience.

Increasingly I’ve been taken by the idea of wanting the struggle. A character in the show Better Things described her father getting older. In normal life, you’re used to framing your troubles as something you can keep working to make better. As her father aged, he just kept getting more broken until he was gone. I think I treat my day to day life like it’s an aging person, while normal middle class mediocrity sees the potential for a fix for everything. Today I could die with sworn blood oaths to loathe certain actors in my life. Today I could meet an incredible person I’ll somehow regret not searching harder for and finding sooner. Today I could be reminded of the endless opportunities tucked underneath the waves of endless pretension and scorn. The newest, shiniest, or most terrible thing all just one more crumbling piece falling away. An arbitrary up and down eroding.

I’m going to go grab a beer now. I’m going to pay more for it than it’s worth. I’m going to scroll through my phone and stare too long at a hot waitress with all the tact it’s impossible to do that with. I’m going to do it alone because I’ve been trained to know better than to bother inviting people without weeks of advanced notice and mild pleading. Then I’m going to return to my car, drive to the top of the parking garage, and sleep until it’s time to go to work again tomorrow for another $150-$200 I kinda need to maybe move an 1/8th of an inch in some direction I doubt amounts to more than a prayer or fart in the wind. You know, real me shit.

[645] Blink Drive

Because I don't spend much time “doing anything,” I do spend a lot of time putting myself through thought experiments. It's one of the few ways I can trick myself into feeling more than the low hum of my general existence without alcohol. Then I poke around for what moved me. When you're busy, it's hard to zero in on where any one feeling may be coming from. Some very long days working became better dealt with overnight when it occurred to me I wasn't eating enough. But on days like today, where my car has died again, I'm forced to exist in a space that doesn't really want me here, and I can choose to read about the world, watch tv, or mindlessly scroll through pictures, I decided instead to do the thought experiment game.

I wish every day I was more like the people who seem to be generally supportive and caring about what others are doing. The people who can use “passion” without irony and smile super bright because, I don't know, you saw a tree on a different mountain this weekend. I think about what it would take to get me there. I also think about what anchors me in aversion to acquiring the ability. Immediately it's apparent to me “all the things that aren't done yet that are more important.” My mind registers “escaping” into the woods as “too easy” and therefore “bad.” To be sure, of course the picture isn't that simple, but I have to start somewhere. More interesting to me is when I consider where I'd have to be to not care about the “bad” feeling. It's usually after I tell myself that nothing can be fixed and nothing matters.

Days like today are a microcosm of my “year of being boring.” Even if I've been mentally preparing to make a big payment to get my car fixed again, I'm not under immediate threat of dire financial circumstances. Whether I work all day for the next week or just enough to keep making shed payments, I'm still not going to find myself in ideal social interactions or make consequential steps in something entrepreneurial. I'm forced to believe, no matter the money, no matter the motivation, no matter the time, that nothing can be fixed and nothing matters. I actually had the thought that part of me secretly wanted my car to cost more because then I no longer would have to be burdened with the choice of where I should spend my time. I don't know what to make of that beyond a kind of exhaustion with my perceived levels of general freedom. Perhaps a dramatic scaling up of that is our current political climate. The gun is to our head.

The goal is to provide yourself with a road to adopting something you don't think is a good idea. The ideal realization is to do it in a way that doesn't make you resolve to a nihilistic cliché. I don't want to get bored with opposition and then let that be the metric by which I can see your point of view. I want to understand what puts you doing what you're doing over what I'd rather be or think we should be doing together. It's something like the idea where, if every selfie replaces a page of Nazi history you could have read, “we're” not going to fix the backdrop under which I trust your smile or see the wisdom of your vacation. Again, it's not linear or as directly causal as I've presented it, yet the general mode of being seems to be resolved fatalistic escapism. Easy enough to understand, hard to respect, anymore than I “need” a few $7 beers after “forcing” myself to drive all day.

Another thing I've tried to persuade myself of is to lean towards more “traditional” behaviors and advocacy of marriage. Here though, it's not exactly the same feeling of opposition, but a kind of disgust with myself for throwing what I've learned under the bus. There is no facebook montage version of the cutest, most well liked, and most respected set of couples. They are human. They have brains and life experiences at least as prone to driving them towards everything I've experienced and into a “reduction” of statistics of the billions who've come before.

I start having to denigrate myself when I think about getting married. “Oh, you're just as susceptible of being afraid of being alone as anyone else, might as well settle down.” Is there an indignity in fearing being alone? No. Is it logical to think companionship in and of itself speaks to your real problem or longing? No. “Oh! you don't want to be a dirty old man staring down a new crop of 18 year olds as long as you live in a college town, do you?” Well, yeah, kinda, I do. Hot shit is hot, oh well.

In order for me to advocate for marriage I have to morph my conception of what it symbolizes. To the degree it's understood as evidence of commitment seems such an obvious joke. Obviously I'm not persuaded by sanctity, sexual fidelity, or to be used to justify ugly children. For me to be an advocate, it would have to be so everybody knew I was doing what the person I put first in the world wanted to do. I've said a number of times if my ex had asked me, I would have said yes. I can see the point of having a goal to as often as you can put the needs of the ones you care about above yourself. To the degree your marriage means that is the degree I understand where you're coming from. Quick, hurry up and tell me that's in fact what your marriage really means...

I find it funny, and I don't think it's an accident, that often enough when I use some theoretical example in my writing about the “ideal” person “doing what they do” I actually have that person in my circles. I've made the “best video gamer” caricature before, perfectly unaware I had a friend who was in the 1% of the world at like 12. I'm always trying to point out the doctors and “unbelievably nice” people as models for the rest of us to live by, and overwhelmingly have that crowd who's, at the very least, refrained from deleting me from facebook. Long ago, I was made aware of how much I am attracted to or tend to move towards the people who have what I'm missing. Perhaps better stated, are comfortable doing and being what I gave up a long time ago, but still see why it's needed. I'll need the outdoors kids when most of my money can be positioned behind extravagance or food. I'll need the contended loving descriptions and looks after I'm looking sideways at an iffy one night stand.

I think there's an overarching theme at play. It's again the difference between the freedom to choose and being compelled. If the hobbies you love are all that you could afford. If the love of your life is the only one who would have you. If your celebration is a desperate escape from the history and literature and responsibility to be more of consequence. That's what always remains unclear to me. I run headlong into fires I create or otherwise. I do it because before the fire was lit, I did the work of preparing the plan and my mind to carry it out. I don't want to find myself writing when I'm old about all the things I did out of desperation or fear. I don't want to have a thousand questions about my impact, framed in ways I can never answer, by planting their roots in someone else's shitty opinion. Maybe I'll never know “what it all means” or what dumb words you'll pick over the dumb words I chose instead, but I'll always be able to at least watch what it's doing to you, and what it's doing to us. I'd rather close my eyes.

[644] A Quick Fuck You

I think for all the work I do to obscure definitions and try to provide context and whatever else to obviate a point, I’m a veritable king at definitive statements.

I like nice people. Even if I think you’re naive and dumb, I like that it’s nice. I like when you match your word to your actions or goals in life. It’s never really a secret to me how I want or need to behave in service to some proposition or idea. I know what’s nice. I know what’s good. I know when you’re fucking it up.

Let’s beat it again, why you’re my friend. I might be one of your 1000. You’re one of my 70 or so. I think the world doesn’t get better if you don’t figure out your own “little” world. That’s the trick though, right? It’s not little. I fucking hate everybody. If I don’t hate you, you’re of dramatically more consequence than anyone with their idiot heads could ever guess. I need to figure out how to get to YOU.


I think this is one of the ground floor conceptions of my potential brilliance that is rarely if ever acknowledged. Consider that when you think about your circles.

I know I bitch. I know I bitch a lot. I know that I can take something quasi-innocuous and blow it up for months or years. Not the point. The point is, YOU ARE THE IMPORTANT VARIABLES.


I don’t like or love accidentally. I don’t front. I don’t play. I’ve lived the consequences of my own disposition. I’m not theory. The real fucking magic is what happens when you snort me.

If I don’t die unexpectedly soon, I absolutely promise to show you.

What I like about me is the capacity to trust that you rarely find. Like, I trust my dad. I trust no one else. Even people I thought I could trust I do not where I thought it counted. But me? I’ve always been trustworthy of me. I don’t have to make the caveat “trust you to be as you are” as I have for other people. I know me. I know what I need to see and feel. I know you’ll be as excited as I am when I make shit manifest.

And I guess that’s enough. It is sad. But I guess it’s enough. I want more for you than you do. I want the world. You want...middle class mediocrity. I hate you for that, but I love you for all the shit that’s good that I want to put on blast and render what I hate about you mute.

I complain like it’s years. It’s days. It’s weeks. I’m on the brink of the start of myriad worlds of meaning any number of things. Guys. Wake the fuck up. All it’s ever been is right now. It won’t just be blogs and drunk ramblings. It’ll be my ass on the phone. It’s soon. It’s way sooner than you think. Are we friends? Does 16 year old version of you like you? Want to create with you? Want to invest in you? We’re dead tomorrow, get it through your thick fucking skulls.

I’m not even that angry, I’m just desperate. I want you to get it, and when you don’t, I guess it’ll just be me and Hatsam or Byron drunk begrudging you. So stupid and such a waste.

[643] Invisible Pants On Fire

Can you even know when you’re lying?

I first think of a courtroom. “Do you swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” It wasn’t until relatively recently that we could make definitive claims about the complete unreliability of “eyewitness testimony” and “experts” relating the “plausible degree of scientific certainty.” People were trained to detect patterns in blood and fingerprints. DNA is still considered practically infallible. Even in the best faith, with an entire profession and schooling dedicated to something, it can be an outright lie.

The persistent criticism to my use of the word “lie” is that, as long as the person doesn’t know they’re lying, it isn’t a lie. It’s this kind of smudge that creeps into reporting. During an interview, a person will outright lie about what they knew or who should take responsibility, shortly followed by the reporter saying something like, “But according to someone else, that statement may not be so certain.”

For some reason, we’re extremely put off by the idea of calling someone a liar. I can only speculate that it has to do with being afraid of being called out ourselves. The problem, if modernity is any indication, is that it gives us this false licence to regard most things as generally true. We succumb to the idea that because “everyone has an opinion” that it’s an okay measure by which to judge information. We’re complicit in our own laziness to look up or define a situation better, so we swallow the shortcuts under the overwhelming deluge of information from our online streams.

But this has dire implications. Your mental health and sense of identity is at stake. Social cohesion and the ability to trust are laid to waste. To abide by “any” information and be physically conditioned to normalize lies is to undermine your survival. But what if the entire time you’re testifying to your life and truth and purpose or perspective, and you haven’t the slightest idea that any of it is untrue?
In a discussion with a friend recently, I criticized him for language that I contended was flirting with “bat shit.” He came back with the idea that we should all think critically about the lies we’re told through the media. It’s an easy enough sentiment to espouse, and a considerably harder task to parse out when you try to get specific and consider the problems at the individual level. He, rightly so, wondered how do you even evaluate information in this landscape to begin with?

If we’re going to drill down on that sentiment, we have to first accept certain conditions about life that can’t be introduced to derail any possible road to coherence. First, nothing is perfect or complete. That doesn’t mean it can’t be complete “enough.” My car is a piece of shit, but if I let the less than 1% of the time it doesn’t work to dictate my opinion of it as “it doesn’t work,” I’m lying to myself and not going to get anywhere. Second, conspiracy does us no favors. “The media” isn’t a thing anymore than “big government” or “the deep state.” Any move to an impersonal mass of devious actors in the background, by definition, is without evidence or reason to introduce to the conversation. It’s also logically incoherent to think an extremely small group can account for the preponderance of forces affecting any one life or place in time. The CIA did do some background crazy shit. They often sucked at it. Who knew that even at the “highest levels” or “most secretive” areas, when you stock it with humans, you get human results. Do they have no impact? Of course not. Are they master hands? Only at persuading you to have a lack of imagination about the degrees of human fallibility.

This seems very basic, but it keeps coming up. Nothing feels real anymore, so you have to beat into people that an objective world still exists.

So what do you do when that objective world is morphed by your, divinely christened by modernity, subjective experience? Are you really whatever the news anchor said about you or what some combatant online has to say? Or are you a “staunch conservative” with principals and rationality who’s just as lost in the ideologue world as your liberal compatriots, who you assure me, you have the utmost respect for? 

Whether it’s your politics, or your movie tastes, I feel you have to approach with a skeptical, not unbounded into the relative abyss, mind. That’s it. Maybe you have bad taste. Maybe you have a poor conception of “the economy.” More assuredly, of course you do. You’re one idiot in a sea of hopefully greater idiots. The only thing that is going to help constitute you is a persistent attack on anything that seeks to destabilize the pursuit of finding out what’s true. Once you know the DOW is a useless metric by which to judge the economy, STOP REPORTING ON IT. Once you know there’s more than a few problems with GDP or “the unemployment rate” DROP THE CONVENTION. Yes, it takes work, it’s different and new and hard, but you help absolutely nothing by playing along.

I bring it up often in blogs. Who’s this "me," really? I’ve offered every voice on the spectrum besides downright mindless mania or psychosis. Am I the super-engaged smart guy who always has to try and say the next funny thing? Am I the violent sociopathic patriarch who’s hell bent on being overbearing and judgmental? I find it best to approach descriptions like that with a strong modesty. We’re processes and probabilities. We’re histories and choices. It doesn’t do you much of any good to wrap up anyone in a handful of cobbled together connotations from your chosen language.

But of course, people can tend in certain directions. It’s why I get pissy when I feel someone does a bad job of labeling me, because honestly, who’s going to approach their assessments of people with the same kind of deference and perspective I expect out of myself? My general being and life isn’t a story of a “negative” person. I can’t even recall the amount of times I’ve picked to keep refuting that assessment. For as fucked and stupid as the world is, it’s any wonder why people insist on foisting that shit on me and can’t see the environment in which we all exist. That’s the point right? They don’t even know they’re lying. They’re so used to it, I’m the problem, not a Nazi sympathizer in the White House. My judgmental attitude isn’t an attempt to better assess and navigate the world and my relationships, it’s an attack on the lie in their heart. Well, it is an attack, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong for attacking.

Any domain, the same story plays out. “You speak too harshly!” An entire generation growing up on coddling and historically unprecedented safety is driving us to the brink. We need a return of the old ways. “You didn’t think hard enough about your decisions!” No one’s offering anything else. What haven’t I considered? You don’t know? Then what the fuck are you talking about? “You’re getting so angry at me!” You should be angry at you. Am I “just an angry person” or is every single day of my life spent trying to persuade you that it’s extremely simple metrics predicated on self respect and responsibility that would shut me up until the day I die? I know the kind of people that behave in the ways necessary, and you don’t hear me complain about them.

Your personal self can tend toward objective measures of truth and an excess of words trying to account for and pay deference. Your sense of the world, or of yourself, doesn’t need to be perfect and carries with it all the liabilities one would expect. I don’t think anyone wants to do that work. I don’t think anyone really respects the amount of time I spend thinking and doubting and changing and writing hoping to get to a place where I can maximize the most out of my life and those I choose to have in it. Everything else is going to tend towards destruction and obscurity and the easy way out. Can you even recognize that? Can you figure out how little that has to do with any “opinion” I might hold?

I know when I’m lying. I didn’t always. I know when I should preface a statement with “If all goes perfectly” before I say I’ll have a house in 2 months. I know I said to my ex, “Now don’t take this shit the wrong way, because you know I hate the word, but I kinda love you too,” because both truths regarding my feelings and my hatred for stupid words can exist at the same time. The story and ongoing narrative of your place relative to the people in your life or history in general is constantly changing. Account for it. Capture it with as close to an approximation as you know for sure you’re not lying about. Anything less will bite you and hurts everyone around you. My smallest of small, seemingly totally inconsequential lies, find a way to creep back into my mind and cause problems if I don’t resolve them. It’s my experience people will outright deny there’s a giant lie at the center of their being in the first place. They aren’t an expert witness. They’ve lost the capacity to evaluate. And they refuse to understand the process before invoking the “scientific” nature of their opinion.

Just spend the rest of the day paying attention to how many times you might be lying. Think about how much you might have to rework in how you speak to the world and to your experience. Feel how stressful it is to be that person if there’s no one around willing to confer and do the work with as well. Then come back and talk to me about being judgmental or negative. Then try and give me a full account of your love and understanding. We’ll live or die as a species solely on whether we figure out how to take responsibility for ourselves. How much longer are you willing to be part of the problem?

[642] In Search Of A Problem

I want to write a speed blog. 

Right now, I’m a solution in search of a problem. I have money. I’m not sick anymore. I’m not hungry. Everyone around me generally remains shit, but that’s true regardless, and has little to do with me personally. I don’t have to be anywhere. I don’t have to work. I’m just waiting for more things to go wrong where I’ll have to begrudgingly fix them. 

I also can’t apply myself in any direction that isn’t “personal enrichment” where I won’t be making it worse. The things that need to be accomplished at the land, I can’t do alone. I’ve lined up people to do them, in fact, they’re already paid for, now the ball is in their court. I’m probably not going to “really” see my friends again until they start getting divorces, so I’m not obligated to show up somewhere and play along with middle-class mediocrity. I had the thought the other day about how many fewer weddings I would have ever attended or been invited to were I not with my ex. 

I’m probably going to go to work. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. I honestly forget that with my accounting style and amount of time I’ve put in, even when I’m “struggling,” I’m literally complaining about that specific day or that specific moment. I try as hard as I can to work in real time. If I have the “spare” $500, better talk to me right then, because either my car, some task, or a whim has their sights set on it. 

I also like about this particular moment how little I care about Vegas or Puerto Rico or Texas, or really anybody else in dire need right now. I think I’m finally persuaded that “my” impact doesn’t matter, or at least, hasn’t mattered as I felt it should for all of my knowledge and advocacy and whatnot. This will remain true if I get shot at the next concert I go to, or if I haven’t planned to get the fuck off an island with a hurricane heading towards it. There’s no reason for “us” to be suffering in the ways we are but for allegiance to greed and stupidity. We’re not helpless refugee children, so I’m not pledging my dollars to you any quicker than my sympathies will be played upon for them. 

The idea of being too keen to look after people has struck a chord with me as well. This notion that I can be a quasi-savior for everyone who didn’t see the catastrophe on the hill. That with my money or freedom or whatever it will sink in and “help.” This could be a solid reason people are defaulted to a kind of selfishness until it’s convenient. Overwhelmingly it seems you need to help yourself. You need to fix the obvious things about you before you can search for the unconscious plagues. Every single one of you is surviving well enough. If you wanted differently you’d be choosing differently, it is supposed. 

On a point about choices, I think about how many invitations to things I don’t get. I actually think about it quite a lot. This isn’t to dismiss the ones I do, but it does mean I invite people who I don’t suspect would ever think of me. This happens a lot, and I don’t know if I’m a glutton for punishment, or if I’m just crossing my fingers I’ll annoy the truth out of someone until they tell me to stop and go away. It’s the second thing. I want to annoy you for how annoyed I feel. 

I know I marked the transition back into a more high school version of myself a few months ago, but I think I still managed to forget some of the finer points to that disposition. I’m a train. I’m going to go back to not even pretending to be subtle about crashing into something, most often your disposition and opinion of me, and I’m not just going to feel less than nothing, I’m going to use it as fuel to crash even harder next time. And you know what? It’s going to make me look like the stunningly confident and knowledgeable popular dooshbag that’s attracted all the right people for the wrong reasons, and I’ll get lost in a little hedonistic hole for a spell. “

People” were a mass of impersonal overwhelming failures to me well before I managed to articulate it better. I suspect the “niceness” of my friend group in college had persuaded me to approach them differently for a while. I’m not going to fetishize nice people anymore. Fuck you, fuck me, I don’t care, I guess I’m back. It really doesn’t mean anything.