Where's the mute button for your
brain?
My computer fans hum. I have an incredibly fast computer for the relatively little I put it through, but I seem to have missed how to make it not sound industrial. They're a great analogy for my head.
I'm back in “the grind.” I spent the whole 11 hours at work basically comfortable. It was not because I packed enough or adequate food. It wasn't the solid tips and mostly shorter runs. The weather ensured I'd start feeling frozen if the car was off too long. No, what gets me through brain dead monotony is the week leading up to it where I reinforce the idea that it's what I want or need to be doing.
I greatly admire Derren Brown. If you don't know who he is, you're not British. Derren demonstrates in the greatest fashion how suggestible we really are and the lengths someone can push you to. While I doubt someone's taken a month to program associations into me, I can feel the urge grow a little stronger to eat the same food someone's brought in or catch the latest movie getting all the buzz. Just because I fundamentally disagree with “everything” (even when I don't) doesn't mean I don't experience the pull.
There's no stronger pull than the story I give myself. If I can convince myself that the next month or 2 or 5 is a part of a massively liberating life lived with reckless abandon story, I can shut up and marathon The X-files and brush off waves of non-tippers. If I “really really really” want to see something I think can be accomplished quickly happen tomorrow, like were it not for the snow maybe my solar panels set up, it's hard to make it another 5 minutes. I mean, I've only recently been introduced to the wonders of credit cards. Foolish me for almost 30 years thought if you didn't have the money now, all hope was lost.
I have a problem keeping a consistent narrative about myself. Anymore, I feel I mostly consist of a very specific general impression I wish to espouse. If that doesn't sound like it makes any sense, it's because it's a series of completely easy sentiments that don't have a word to describe them all at once.
My computer fans hum. I have an incredibly fast computer for the relatively little I put it through, but I seem to have missed how to make it not sound industrial. They're a great analogy for my head.
I'm back in “the grind.” I spent the whole 11 hours at work basically comfortable. It was not because I packed enough or adequate food. It wasn't the solid tips and mostly shorter runs. The weather ensured I'd start feeling frozen if the car was off too long. No, what gets me through brain dead monotony is the week leading up to it where I reinforce the idea that it's what I want or need to be doing.
I greatly admire Derren Brown. If you don't know who he is, you're not British. Derren demonstrates in the greatest fashion how suggestible we really are and the lengths someone can push you to. While I doubt someone's taken a month to program associations into me, I can feel the urge grow a little stronger to eat the same food someone's brought in or catch the latest movie getting all the buzz. Just because I fundamentally disagree with “everything” (even when I don't) doesn't mean I don't experience the pull.
There's no stronger pull than the story I give myself. If I can convince myself that the next month or 2 or 5 is a part of a massively liberating life lived with reckless abandon story, I can shut up and marathon The X-files and brush off waves of non-tippers. If I “really really really” want to see something I think can be accomplished quickly happen tomorrow, like were it not for the snow maybe my solar panels set up, it's hard to make it another 5 minutes. I mean, I've only recently been introduced to the wonders of credit cards. Foolish me for almost 30 years thought if you didn't have the money now, all hope was lost.
I have a problem keeping a consistent narrative about myself. Anymore, I feel I mostly consist of a very specific general impression I wish to espouse. If that doesn't sound like it makes any sense, it's because it's a series of completely easy sentiments that don't have a word to describe them all at once.
For example, I never want to be told to turn the TV or my music down. How many places or circumstances on Earth does that exist? I want to go a step further though, and be able to play instruments whenever. Practice constantly and never piss someone off or have to travel somewhere special. Once I have those things, I'll feel really good. I also want to work for a weekend, and spend that money on literally anything. Whether I make $50 or $500, I want to know that I won't have a second thought about the drinks or the trip. As long as I still have to pay off my house, I can't quite be there, but even still, the remaining balance is less than 2 years rent at where I stayed for the last 7.
That's the floor. When the floor is there, I want to get into the specialty things. If I get a business and have employees, I want to be able to compel people to adapt to me instead of the other way around. If I want you to write, you will, or you won't get paid. If I want the job done today, you will, or you won't work with me. I want to compel people to act as efficiently and reliably as me so that I can insulate myself with people who's words I can more or less trust. Trust, insofar as I've conditioned the trust into them.
Bringing up trust makes me think of this line in the Christmas special of Victoria. “Men don't give you their hearts, they only loan them.” As I've watched nearly all of my relationships, friendly or otherwise, dwindle into informality, I can't help but to think of this kind of relating to people and that which good parent's seem to espouse. What keeps a parent pot-committed or “hodling” longer than the most wizened bitcoin enthusiast? Or, what's the glue that makes one person become your “best friend from childhood?” The rest relegated to wherever those people go.
Is it just a story as well? Another line from that special was when a gay character asks a woman who knows he's gay to marry her where he says, “There's different kinds of love.”
I've wanted to write something better about those terms that seem all-encompassing but retain a certain pragmatic use and undying cultural relevancy. I've said before there's as many kinds of “love” as there are people. If love is as much a function of that story-telling tradition and spell of a compelling narrative, it stands to reason the “deepest” and “longest” loves are those who's story isn't about the pain and precariousness of the moment as it is about who they want to be when they die. Things like “honor” and “freedom” make considerably more sense that way.
Perhaps that's what got me over the hump of expecting anything from anybody. I don't want to be the angry lump on a hill recalling the money you stole or the lies you told. It doesn't mean I'm not going to keep you safely boxed away while I'm alive, but my worst feelings and reactions to you are not who I want to be. And truly, they're not what I mostly conceive of you as.
Maybe it's here I've discovered what the first half of this has to do with the second. I'm still “forced” to work, like I'm “forced” to reevaluate and tear down unhealthy social dynamics. I'm this automaton who's tasted the freedom and good-life, but got dragged into being a reactionary force. My good builder didn't appear until after I'd wasted time and effort with the idiots, so poof goes money I thought might be a modest savings. One disaster after another with cars makes it so I can't even reliably get to doing the thing I don't even want to do in the first place. I put myself out there to try and learn from or rely on “experts” who leave me hanging. The healthiest and most uplifting conversations I get into are resolving some conflict in my dreams with people who I'll probably never talk to again.
Seems a simple difference after all. You get into a relationship with yourself expecting everything to be as terrible as it can be or as amazing as you wish, then you can keep your head on. You extend the same courtesy to your friend or spouse, and vice versa, you stay together forever. You find a story about your job that takes you beyond the demeaning and exploitative power dynamics, you can stay there for years as your mind keeps occupied by what truly matters. Are you lending your heart to a fleeting infatuation? Can you write your way out of the corners you've been shoved into? It's the difference between the active acceptance and resolve, and reactionary pain. I wish every moment my capacity didn't feel up for grabs.
