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.
