[768] Feel So Real

I anticipate this being such a bad, boring, and redundant blog, I'm not even going to bother sharing it to facebook where anyone might actually see it. If, by chance accident you've clicked your way to it, it's your fault if you try to suffer through it.

Thus we're brought to our theme. Blame. I certainly feel blamed for nearly everything. That's a great and ignorant way to start. An “everything” statement. Whether people have fun or not. When I have “friends” or not. Whether I decided to “mature” and take responsibility for the path my upbringing set me on. When people say things to the effect of “it boils down to the individual,” I think they mean it boils down to the handful of people “everyone” feels comfortable blaming for “everything.”

Elected or monetary leaders take a different kind of blame. That's too easy and prescribed. Of course, it's their job, if not explicitly, than as a natural end of their wealth and notable consequences they wreak. Billionaires deserve blame in similar measure to politicians. You can feel and see changes, for better or worse, as immediately as any over-arching conception of society can.

The other kind of blame is for people with clashing dispositions with norms. They get the emotional blame. They don't claim eminent domain and destroy your land. Instead, they describe the shared space or relate to that domain in ways that makes you feel as though someone has slashed and burned your land. Sometimes, it's antagonistic. Sometimes, it's just a survival strategy. The world is out to kill you, after all, and it takes a specific and small percentage of people who can play with that fact every day without breaking.

I've re-read a few blogs from the last year. The constant theme is me feeling less in control, being “broken by the system,” as I capitulate to jobs I don't want or time spent doing things “beneath” me as I wait, and wait, and dream, and wait some more as excuses are offered about why I can't move. In this instance, I mean literally move. I've said it before as well; when I had time, I had no one care to help. When I had money, I didn't have the space. Now that I have the space, my time is further occupied, and I was compelled to eat up more of my money than I cared to in needing a car or in doing necessary house fixes I was ignorant of.

If I had a ton of motivated energy, it would eat me from the inside. It's got nowhere to go. I took acid over the weekend at 2 in the morning out of boredom. I put together a little schedule of “minimal standards for engaging the world” like reading 10 pages, 1 news article, 1 comic, playing and walking for 10 minutes, and stretching, just so I can squeeze in a remote semblance that something “productive” is happening in my otherwise killing-time posture.

I know I desperately need to go out and make new friends. No matter how much I don't like people at large, the general strategy of meeting everyone and picking out the 2 who don't suck isn't the wrong one. It still results in generally good times more often than attempting to beat the dead horse of who I've surrounded myself with currently. Do I blame them for never wanting to do anything? Or, can I blame them for leading me on that it might be they just don't want to do anything with me? I feel like I'm thrown bones here and there. I'd rather be alone.

The line I appear to be stuck on, from those past blogs and what still rings in my head, is that I miss believing in things. I miss having the hope I could maybe have a life with someone I cared for. I miss thinking that your time and effort equaled what you could expect to take out of it. I miss writing with a sense of ignorant passion that it was going “somewhere” if only to a mental place that would allow me to keep outputting the intensity it would require to learn everything and take over the world. Now, it's like pressing my back against the seat of a roller coaster, pretending I'm making it go faster.

“It's just a ride, it's just a ride. No need to run, no need to hide. […] It may feel so real inside. But don't forget it's just a ride ”

I have a trigger happy startle reflex. It's a piece of the reason I have to focus on things like not clenching my jaw or experiencing spasms of grinding teeth. Long ago, I was trained to always be on alert, and the feeling of impending doom and danger has never gone away. I was shopping for mouth guards because I'm tired of the unnecessary tension in my temple. I was envious of a monk I read about who was given a test to not jump at a loud noise (he knew was coming) and he stayed cool. I bring up this reflex because it's an example of me being “primed.” When I jump, it's not something external's fault. That is, it's my mom's fault, but today, you'd hardly get points for “scaring” me anymore than you would a squirrel.

I think people at-large are similarly primed to react. Instead of facing how and why, they blame whatever scares them. They blame the “negative” influences that refuse to perpetuate their delusions. I think there's a disconnect between imagined circumstances and worth, and playing dress up. I think you can engage with the world, and everything about it that wants to kill you, and not be “negative.” I think my disposition is old-hat and cliché in different cultures. I think if I ever manage to find the right pocket of people who use language and recognize, both on and off paper, what I have and am preparing for in the future, every lazily hurled scornful sentiment will one day register as a fleeting memory if remembered at all.

I've wanted some version of the same things for 15 years. I want my own thing. I want my own space. I want to be loud. I want to have a sense of independence and autonomy. I want to pick my friends or at least the people who I'll give the chance to fail at being friends. I want to be able to have the time to focus on things that could grow to be more than hobbies. I want to experiment. I want to discover a resting state that isn't half concentrating on trying not to be tense. I want extremely first-world selfish freedom and access to pursuits I bought into related to the story of American Exceptionalism, and I have an array of wholly unexceptional masses to navigate through on my way there.

I want those things because I want to find more people like me. I want to create an environment. I want to prove that there's nothing “negative” about being realistic about the degrees in which things suck and the amount of work it takes to make them suck less. I want to protect a space that works overtime in disabusing the excuses and lies that protect useless flitting-about existences. I still retain the power. No matter how despotic of spirit I get, the land is mine, the house is getting complete, and the car will eventually be paid off. I can budget. I can choose to work more. I can force myself into finding new disappointing groups to interact with until the one-in-a-million person clicks for a while. I can record my effort and be as redundant as I want to be until I find the line or sentiment that keeps me going one more day. I will eventually remove myself from suffocating mediocrity.

And that becomes an alienating thing too which people will resent you for. Forget aggression. When people see you excited and enthusiastic, knowingly or not, they find ways to pick at it. They know you like them? Time to cite the depression and not answer texts or come hang out. They know you had an idea to save money and eat better? Better blow you off at the time and wait 3 months so they can implement your plan with someone else. They know you have a few solid things you like to do that are fairly inexpensive and low effort? That's okay, I'd rather go out with people I've had more shit to say about than you ever could.

Is it better to hate from a distance? Is that genuinely a “good” thing to have a looming resentment for everyone around you as opposed to voicing concerns or opinions? People seem to like it this way, even if they hate each other. They sure get to appear in more pictures together. The “negative” kept at a safe distance. I think this is more an American thing, and I think it's horrible. Just like you can't escape either, it's a million piece puzzle with numbers to match where they connect how we got Trump. Don't face your racism, elect a white nationalist. Don't tackle your fear and bigotry, beat your chest with your gun. Don't admit you're stupid and poor, blame the poorer and desperate. Don't help and believe in things, find poster children to blame, endlessly.

I think I'm tired of being blamed for making sense and pointing out inconsistencies. At least I don't lie about my circumstances. When you want to bemoan the circumstances that have me sleeping on a couch at 30, that never erases the house waiting for me and land I'm begging to occupy. When I finally got pushed against a wall, I used my degree. Whether I practice for 8 hours a day or only read 10 pages, I'm a composite of hundreds of books, thousands of articles, and achieved some technical sophistication that's outpaced the majority. I am an exception to many rules. I have a good reason and good history to believe as much or more awaits me.

When do I ever hear this from anyone else? Or, they do something in secret and save their struggle so there's more room for the social media story. Or, they keep their goals contained to more “realistic” and palpable responsibilities. “Why, yes sir, in 5-10 years of slogging along, I'll have quite the 6 month travel fund, huzzah!” Maybe that speaks to an important distinction. A sense of urgency. When you “know” a certain path, say the collect a regular paycheck path, is going to work for you indefinitely, you adopt a concept of yourself to match. “Oh, I could never achieve that without at least another 6 months!” Not so much doing the math or theorizing other sacrifices or experiments, just spit-balling you're “stuck” for another safely anticipated period of time. I can't operate like that.

I don't have the money or level of health insurance to get “seriously” sick. I don't have the resources to rebuild if everything burned down. That friend who's about to die unexpectedly in the next 2 years I'm almost certainly never going to find the time to visit if I keep at the paycheck-to-paycheck pace of modernity. Not to mention, I don't want to just visit, I want a working and consistent relationship with my friends. I want my time back. In many many ways it was better being bored and alone awash in study money than it is being mildly engaged and ensconced in a regular work environment. I'm getting more stories, and everyone isn't the worst, it just simply isn't “me.” It's another game and procedure I find distracting and haven't figured out how or if it speaks to the whole in a more helpful than harmful way.

I don't move enough. I fidget, and toss, and drive, and tap, but I don't flow. My moment doesn't carry into enough breathing examples of what I should be doing, so it feels stuck. I'm left to be airily amoral waiting for a cue from a god I don't believe in. I've every excuse to lounge and enjoy and excuse and blame, and when I get up and look for agency, I take myself down errant paths evading the feeling that it's more and more seconds eroding in service to fluff. I appreciate relative stability. I like being fed and warm. I'm trying to set my house in order. It's as messy as I'm letting on, and I'm trying to deal with it. Don't be so negative.

[767] Lines In The Sand

Convergence! Too many things all tying to a theme equals, gotta write. You may or may not be familiar with Chris Gethard. I'm not, but for my constant immersion in media. I clicked a random episode of his show I've never watched. Then I clicked somewhere in the middle of the episode. Then I watched as a caller from Bloomington, Indiana did his betting game on air. That's what brought me here. Of all the gin joints in all the world, people literally call into that show from all over the world, I found the one serving Bloomington gin, on a whim, while I'm arguably in the middle of 3 entirely different things to watch.

Next thing. I had a dream that was straight out of Interstellar. I was doing something innocuous, like brushing my teeth, and at the same time, doors were opening on a subway, a bird was flapping it's wings, and some other picture I can't remember was moving in sync with my movements. This, I take it, is because I started reading a book called “Now” about how science is trying to understand what that means. We have particles that can flow backwards in time, we all agree on the lengths of different things no matter our individuated frames of reference, and we all pretend to have a grasp on our butterfly-effect waves we send into the world. It was almost like a mini-acid trip dream that felt oddly reassuring that I was part of the machinery.

The third thing is a meme picture a friend I haven't really seen or talked to in a while posted about getting better at dealing with stress. It postulated either she was getting better, or just not giving a shit anymore. She's posted another one about one day having the money to actually live like the person she really is. Massive red flags go off in my head any time I relate too closely to what I consider “throwaway” sentiments and cliches about life. I promise, if you dig through blogs I wrote towards the end of high school and start of college, I say constantly how often I want nothing to do with the regular struggling Joe narrative and pull-cord sentiments of the old and lazy.

The fourth thing is just me recently musing on a kind of ethical style. As of late, I'm realizing my ethics, so to speak, have morphed a bit. Anymore, I wait to consider something as ethical or not in the moment. I have some loose standing presuppositions, like don't murder perhaps, but otherwise, I'm kind of waiting to see what I see or feel what I feel before I allow something I'm doing to register one way or another. It's not amoral, but it's not specifically speaking to a moral either. Sometimes I feel justified in driving like a dick. Sometimes I want to throw the gum wrapper on the floor. Sometimes I want to be as polite as can be while you unload your pointless and boring life story. I didn't know what I was going to pick until it was happening.

The more I find myself under the “rules” of normal society, the more I find myself wanting to play with boundaries in other ways. I know, barring everything, what kind of person I am and what I need to be doing in order to not lose my shit. It is an impulse I not only refuse to try to kill, but one I revel in as a kind of personality drug. It's the levels of obscenity or pretentious air. It's the complete blunt disinterest in things you purport to care about or find funny. It's a harsh boundary, but it's my boundary. But this raises old questions in a new paradigms.

What's got me here? Why is there little to no emotional investment in the grand standing narrative example I might be setting for the world? It's old news me calling myself an anti-particle, villain, or self-indulgent loon. Have I truly been shaken hard enough that I can't conceive of the “proper” thing anymore? Is my restraint more a hamstrung choke than wise and measured practice? Can I refrain from floating too far away from anything making sense?

I've had several opportunities over the last few days to lay into people who've objectively mislead me or had me on the receiving end for the consequences of their unforeseen circumstances or disorganization. I've been letting it ride. When I thought my job was going to get a leg up on me in monopolizing my thoughts, I picked a “morally equivalent stress relieving” course of action that seems fair enough and has me continue to get the job done. I think that just gave me the insight. When you start to scoop up points of corruption into your perspective, you're forced to make little negotiations. Why not eat more sugar when everyone's got so much candy and cookies and donuts they bring to the office, and why, you didn't have breakfast! That last call was super annoying and technically cut into your break. Better sit in the parking lot for 20 minutes and talk or smoke it out.

Perhaps what I conceived of as my morally backed insistence to work outside the confines of normalcy is decaying after being subjected to the regular world. Recall, I have a job paying me more than I've ever made, just got a new car, have spent kind-of wildly on some things for the future and in eating out so much, though not so much lately, and this is the place I've always conceived of as “losing.” That car is debt and a substitute for the rent I was trying to escape. Those indulgences I'm always and forever going to be doing alone, and my job, for as noble as it exists in the minds of those around me and for the odd amount of power it grants, has nothing to do with where I saw myself at this point in my life. I don't have it “bad,” but I don't have it “me.”

So if you're not you, what's the moral? I'm the walking embodiment of unrelenting revolt and provocation who plays dress up and juggles crazy stupid people's lies. Play along? Remain patient? Stay in the moment until the next check comes? Go overboard in giving handouts to the dumb and needy that you know in advance they're psychologically incapable of figuring out or sticking with? That's the rub too. I've been reading more about people. The dirty facts about how we treat ourselves do much work in tempering my will to chase “helpful” impulses I might have to pretend inform people. It doesn't mean you can't try, but it does mean if I don't feel a genuine impulse to try, I'm not going to. I never believe the show I put on for myself.

[766] Deuces

I'm searching for a car. This entices many things I do not like to happen all at once. Leaving aside that I know next to nothing about cars, brands decide to shit the bed for some years and certain models have fatal flaws that you can find if you want to dig through 7 quasi-reliable ratings pages per each make year. They all basically resemble the same few things to me. I'm the same person that thought I might get a used but reasonable beater when I turned 16 who's main concern is getting from point A to B. But as you're no doubt aware, many cars, of all shapes, ages, and sizes, occupy a wide array of potential in that space between.

I find it default overwhelming and frustrating. Not least of which because even the people who I know who seem to know the most about cars differ seemingly arbitrarily. Ford? Shit, but such and such model from x year can be great! KIA? Garbage, but totally affordable and 2013 wasn't terrible if you can stand to look at it. I had a Mini, right? BMW! Oh...you caught them on those junky corruption years, so your brand new car will blow the transmission, have its back hatch rust off, and 7 other things you'd never believe should go wrong with a car less than 5 years old. I've legitimately only ever believed in Tesla, in big part because I think Elon Musk is the kind of obsessive autistic type that couldn't produce total shit on purpose or it would kill him.

I think about the slogans. “Built to last!” “Built Ford tough!” “Unlike any other.” I recently watched Russell Brand's latest stand-up show, and he reiterates how we're perpetually beat over the head with bullshit wording and advertising and politicking to the point where any degree of sincerity, even the world's biggest fuck up like Trump, we'd be ravenous for. It's my inbuilt disdain for anyone who's forced to be put into a “lemme sell you something” posture. Let things be for sale. Let me buy them because they're actually good or useful. You can take it a personal route and think it dishonest and disingenuous to flout all of your best traits and pictures on a dating site while you lure someone in to lie to them for a few months before the cracks start showing.

I crave a form of stability even while occupying an intellectual attitude that everything's always changing and nothing is forever. At the same time, I occupy, as this book I started on the physics of “now” points out, every waking minute of my conscious existence. This remains constant. Each ounce of pain and pleasure trapped by my choice to hold or capacity to relish. I can build environments that persuade this persistent moment something is more stable and consistent that I'm otherwise exposed to and enagaged with.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

New section days later.

I've spent the last 3 hours looking at and playing with my finances. No matter how you shake it, If I can escape the specter of rent, I'll have 50% of my income to do whatever the hell I please with it. Well, that's not precisely true. I'll be able to pay in advance on my car loan, or the same with back taxes, or make 1 kinda-large and unnecessary purchase each month with little to no repercussions. My finances are dead even in me being able to work for a year at the “normal” pace of eating and drinking what I like and enjoying some moderately priced entertainment and paying off all the bills and becoming debt free, or I can hardcore mode it, spend every penny on bills and Ramen noodles, and be done in like 8 months. This also barring any pursuit of extra income.

I need something real to look forward to. I like playing my guitar and reading. I like to play some video games or moderate exercise. I NEED TO CREATE. Or, at least, I need to trick myself into thinking my expenses are speaking to my creations. I can't tell you how many times I've dreamt of digging holes. Why? Because a big enough hole is now a pool, or a fire pit, or a drainage system. Instead of my sitting stupid with too much energy on the couch while I debate whether I want to waste money on seeing a movie for the sake of leaving the house, I'd be blasting one of the thousand I have on my projector while I kill so many itch birds one shovel-full at a time I'll hardly be able to believe it.

I started looking for a different job, as if I don't basically enjoy this one, or like there was something “better” than the “even” state I'm in now. I don't plan to leave. I just wanted to see what my disposition might be situated for now that I've allowed Lifeline and DCS to pound me into this glob. I was also inspired by a story from Jennifer Lopez, or it happens with plenty of celebrities and famous-adjacent, about lying about their credentials and getting the job anyway, making some change or endearing themselves as one more in their infinite series of positive loop footholds. I can't help but think I'm “hindered” by my sense of...morality? Fairness? Wisdom? As if my current, arguably great state, was handed to me, and I've been searching for and missing some gimmick this whole time. I know, very well, better than that, but it feels that way nonetheless.

I'm increasingly sensitive to the idea of our capacity to zero in on the negative and have it allow a disproportionate affect on our attitude and well-being. I feel like I've exercised against this generally for years by writing, but even more, I want to tap into that next level, “Who do I want to be like that I'm not” when it comes to seeing people who seem to have something figured out. Patrick Stewart comes to mind. I struggle to think of who would follow him.Tom Hanks?

Part of what makes me insufferable is my ability and willingness to bear down on the present moment. That was the motivation to get all my shit done “now” and independently. That's reading past eyestrain or depression levels. That's playing until your fingers fail. I repeat, NOTHING ABOUT LIFE IS LIKE THAT. You get your paycheck every 2 weeks. Someone's not going to call you back for 3 days. A miscommunication or 12 will see the month-long task take over a year. I can't. I can't operate like that. You have to go to a place that zens-out and rides along in order to survive, but holy fuck, when I reach for my shotgun posture, I mean, I'VE BEEN 30 FOR ALMOST 6 MONTHS. And while that's sorta-true, but at least a month off, it's that mind frame that presses you to get shit done BECAUSE DEATH IS WAITING.

I have nothing new to say. This was told to me during a drunken verbal battle I have no idea how it got started. It's true, but the problem isn't that I need to reiterate. The problem is that the underlying problem never gets addressed. The problem is that efforts to address it bleed out over months and make it look like I don't have a goddamn clue. There's never anything new to say, from anyone, save a few physicists. But it does need to be constantly addressed and rearranged and brought into our collective consciousness. I certainly need to see myself dying to climb out of my bowels and stomach as I waste away on a couch pretending I'm not allowed weekends.

The reality is such that once something takes off, it shoots to the moon. Some stupid idea, some experiment, some trendy blog post. If you've laid the groundwork and prepared for all the coming potential, someone's begging to discover you or collaborate or exploit. The tools for gaming the systems of attention and marketing are as detailed as you could ask for and dirt cheap. But you have to be on the move. You have to be paying attention. You have to say, over and over again, who you are, what you're about, and what you hope to achieve, and then get to work.

[765] Clench

I think I'm losing control. Something I never quite understood was when people would be “stressed” about things they had no control over. I've definitely found myself at the bottom of a dark and dead pit after reading way too much terrible news about the world, but I suffer from the delusion that I can do something about it. It wasn't the terribleness in and of itself, it was observing myself, day after day, doing shit like delivering food or watching the blood shoot from my arm, somehow still thinking that “just around the corner” I would be all...”it.” The many steps removed you might be from “doing genuine good” while you're engaged in the things I have for money are as despotically described per your degree of hatred for capitalism or sympathetically understood by how much we all seem to have to pay the bills.

 

Importantly, up until I've adopted these “real world” jobs, I felt in control. When I needed to drop out of my “gigs,” I could. I picked to work back-to-back shifts because, again with my delusions, I thought 2 or 3 concurrent sources of income could be maintained on fleeting hours of sleep. I was “happy” enough to make the drives 6 or 7 hours away to try and get into drug studies. Whether I used my stays to sleep most of the time or read more in a week than I could in a year, it felt like I was steering myself into chosen icebergs.

 

Now? In place of my quick spasms of grinding teeth, I appear to have a perpetually tense jaw. I'm flirting with the “headache for no reason” thing I had growing up in my mom's house. I'm getting extremely lax in my caution against ridiculous meals and the amount of money I'm willing to spend on them. The stakes don't feel as high. The reminders and the language of the “old” and “settled” are surrounding my every waking moment. I'm not “randomly” interacting with “my kind of people,” be it for their off-kilter eccentricities or hopeful and naive language about what they want to accomplish.

 

For the variety of aberrant and “crazy” I may encounter throughout the day, it all speaks to a kind of underlying sickness that needs a cultural breed-out program more than haughty middle-management.

You see, it's not just that I feel less like the arbiter of where I'd like to steer this ship, I'm watching myself play out the drama of the people's lives I engage with. Intellectually, nothing I encounter in these people's lives is “mine,” in a very important sense. Practically, I have to suffer the phone calls preventing me from getting something else done. I have to stress out about my car not making it across some backwater Indiana road. I have to take in the array of poverty and neglect scents. I have to feel the waves of denial and hatred pour out of insistent liars about how they perceive their family members and how they engage in the world.

 

I get it now. I don't want to recall my last hour explaining in detail how I managed a crazy situation, but not unlike writing, it feels like I don't have a choice. It's this, or bite through my jaw. Only now the stakes are higher. I take in too much crap into this kind of job, you can really fuck up someone's life. A fact that doesn't bother me at all, but a real consequence if I felt I was flirting with forgoing paying attention at all to how it's eating at me.

 

This is the kind of job that people can treat like they’re on a mission. I get the impression that whether they want to admit it or not, there's a little tingle in their downstairs about the power you have and it's almost throwaway amounts of good will you get from people who can't imagine what it's like to do your job. I think we should make an extra $20 every time someone tells me they wouldn't want to. But, there's a case to be made that via your “proper upbringing” and capacity for de-stressing and organizing, you may bring some good into the lives of people who desperately need it. My last meeting of the day, I caught a look from a mom who showed the mildest hope that I had told her something new and potentially powerful that apparently the legion of caseworkers and people they've dealt with before had not.

 

I know I'm a more positive influence than negative. For however terrible I may make you feel after you read something from me, I don't then go into my work or friend life and attempt to act dumber than I am or meaner than I feel. There are a fair number of people as or more competent than me in their different fields all, I'm assuming, experiencing their version of isolated personal hell as they cling to the drops of positive difference they make in the world too. Isn't that the problem? I don't operate under the presumption I can help anything. Like most things, I consider it something of a happy accident after enough probability waves can be tricked into flowing a different direction. By that same token, I can, at the very least, practice dismissing all the waves of shit that wash over me. I can function as a buoy that the errant parent or child can cling to for a moment before they inevitably drown, fine, nature of the game. I can't let all the rest start to surround me and make me okay with a level of complacency that I'm finding exhausting in a way too many work hours never has.

 

Job shit combined with that life irony of thinking I finally got something accomplished land-wise and energy wise, still waiting, doesn't make for a good “in the meantime” story either. I waited for months of good and honest work before I paid in advance to get this final piece completed. You'll note I'm not typing this from my heated and electrified home in the middle of nowhere. Is it inexplicable or egregious yet? No. Does having to “hide” my plastic drawer with clothing in it in Byron's room for apartment home inspections feel like a greater indicator as to the state of my life right now?

 

I think it's a blessing and a curse that I don't believe what I'm not doing. Maybe it's a relationship that doesn't quite click until we start talking and I realize you haven't killed yourself either in a similar way I'm attempting to avoid. I literally have my own rent-free place and land, and without the work done and me sitting there drawing inspiration about how to classy up the place, it's not quite real. I could be doing a great many deals of good service in my disposition and dishonestly-described “poor” work ethic, at least by comparison, but you're hard-pressed to persuade me otherwise that I'm not mostly going through the motions of semi-direction with regard to things that are mostly thoughtless complaints from the ignorant about the ignorant. And in the spirit of moral or litigious propriety, I have to treat everything like it's at least a touch on fire.

 

The State worries about “burnout.” They don't want your baggage to become client baggage or reflect badly on the work available to the public. They'll shuffle you between counties. They'll let you seek out different positions. The last day of training was a serious examination about self-care. I think in order to be truly burned out, it takes a level of both investment and disenfranchisement it's impossible for me to achieve. I take my job seriously, but the state of my moral soul and conception of myself is not in believing I'm doing any good or measured by the thank yous and tears. I can hate the fact that I've spent 3 hours of “overtime” in the rehashing and bitching, that my mind would do about something else anyways, but now it's consistently related to work, but not wake up 10 years from now wondering how I stayed there so long and on the verge of a breakdown.

 

As with everything, this too shall pass. Maybe next week I'll be home and not discover my stuff burned down or stolen, and you'll get a blog about how I plan to decorate or something. Maybe my mind will figure something out in my sleep about how to process and condense bullshit I don't have tonight. Maybe I'll have another sporadic removal and catch hella overtime that results in a check that makes me forget all about any particularly difficult client. Maybe I'm meant to just be disappeared for a while.

[764] Placeholders

When I'm working this hard to avoid writing, I guess I have to start. I think I kind of want to talk stupid. I also think I want to make that stupid talk analogize to movies and songs. (Neither of which I ended up doing?...)

I've been thinking a lot about relationships. I glance at my blogger page and see the tag “relationships” is 8^th from the top of 427 tags I managed to pull out as mild coherence reference points in my usual blog soup. They mean a lot to me, but apparently not as much as Jordan Peterson, though they're tied with Obama.

For the longest time, every single conception I had of a relationship was about what I could get out of it. Maybe I wanted to be friends with dickhead kids because I wanted their power. I could play the ethical know-it-all in school because of the attention and accolades. I would garner a certain type of crowd to create a certain kind of fun or that could be controlled in specific ways. Basically, I didn't simply “not understand” relationships, I didn't have any.

That isn't to say people didn't try to relate to me. My general nonplussed demeanor or mild excitement at mostly-playful delinquency many depressed and “finding themselves” people are consistently drawn to. It's easy not to judge someone you're not invested in. And people, whether they're comfortable admitting it or not, like when the confident person filled with praises and gifts for them shits on everyone besides them.

That was a big part of my dialogue in my romance language regarding friends. They were “different” because of some ill-defined disposition that could tolerate me for longer periods than most. To be sure, I still think this speaks volumes, but I think I was willing to give out too much credit, and I was doing it at an unfair expense to my own self-conception. I wanted actual relationships. As such, I allowed other people's stuff into and onto mine.

Other people, for as much as I don't generally like them, can be something of a huge motivation. There's people who self-sacrifice in extremely unhealthy ways, and people who do for others out of loads of guilt or fear of themselves. I genuinely want to reward people I consider persistently better than me in some aspect of their life I'm not doing terribly well at improving. Perhaps even better said, there are people with qualities I find as equally valid and important as and I hold, but I want nothing to do with behaving like them. Arguably, given how actively I've sought to cultivate my crowds, words, and direction in life, that's basically everyone.

Here is where I think the word “unconditional” comes up. This is around the space people start to throw out the stupid love word. Unconditional, of course, doesn't really mean unconditional as much as it signifies a kind of persistence and determination through what are hopefully healthy and manageable levels of shit. It's the divine standard by which to set your own inadequacy watch. It's the kind of irrational place a parent may occupy in service to their serial murderer son or wife's devotion thrice beaten a day year after year.

That kind of place seems to pair well with irrational pride. The more you are unduly boastful about something you don't understand or don't deserve, the likelier it seems you'll go down with it. To simply call it “ignorant” betrays the very real motivated energy it conjures in you. The “deeply personal” feeling is everyone's scream for things to matter in a way that transcends the ups and downs of their emotions or tumultuous lives.

In that sense, it's not “irrational” for your stomach to drop when you look at a picture of someone you care about who's gone. They were more real to you than you have the words for. Their impact could have made you feel in ways you'll never experience on your own. Sure, those feelings are playing on survival instincts and deep-rooted fears about the tribe abandoning you, but we're also intelligent enough to extract a greater ethos and example who's death we're allowed to mourn as well.

That's the “heartbreak.” It's not any one person and what you did or didn't say or the details of some regrettable fight. It's the timeless example you thought meant something “special” proving otherwise. Or the proud presumption you have the capacity and wisdom to know what example that relationship was really setting. Or the selfish resentment you have for the work it takes to remain vulnerable and honest. Or the pain of knowing you were working hard, unsure of towards what, to death, conscripted into a cultural fairy-tale.

I miss my relationships that went bad to the extent I allow myself to forget what got them started to begin with. I long for days of old when I pretend I made the mistake of pulling a trigger I never intended. Relationships need people willing to discuss and respect each others' decisions. This is as true between you and every insane-but-savable Trump voter as it is you and those difficult friendships or relationships that blew up for, probably, wholly ridiculous and nonsensical reasons. Check the record, I've never said, “I'm done talking about this.”

My best relationships aren't just time spent, but people who seem to respect that the time we have is limited, and the person in front of you is all you're going to get of them. My deepest sense of connection is when I allow that sentiment to embed itself into my moment. When people talk about things like “no expectations,” the wrong and lazy way to understand that is as the shirking of responsibility. No expectations needs to be making a plan, while knowing you can't control the weather. It needs to be something akin to that AA mantra about having the wisdom to tell the difference between things you can and cannot change, and then drilling down on how or if you really want to. It's me knowing I could blow thousands of dollars getting nowhere trying to create and be independently wealthy, and can only expect from myself to act as well as I can to the extent of my knowledge and ability.

That's the kind of leeway it gets easier to grant when you're older. I'm still a top-notch shit-talker, but if my first impulse was to roast everyone at the office, dear god. As life has felt both more and less in my control, I'm not so quick to throw people's baggage into their face. I still think I prefer to relate in that kind of “mean because I like you” space, but I understand I live in the wrong place for too much of that. I want room to “fail as a person” as much as anyone else. I'm significantly less apologetic or insecure than what's normal, statistically, but I don't want to believe in lost causes, thinking we'll cobble together some misshapen gluey Popsicle stick existence together.

I'm not sad people who want to leave, leave. My first drunk instinct isn't to blow up ex's phones. I don't think I'll create the same (it'll only get better) magic of parties. It bugs me to think that I didn't matter to them as much as they did to me. That my kind of “fucked up” is “too,” but what I accepted as them presumably only someone better than me could really understand or they could bother with in perpetuity. The things I like about them seem to lose out to the things I hate. It's parts of them I think they hate as well, but only they're allowed to suffer them on their own. Their depression wins. Their insecurity reigns. Their conspiratorial gossipy child runs amok. I don't end friendships in screaming and pissing matches inventing a dozen explicitly untrue things to say about you before never talking again.

The things people use to lament me are the things I take pride in. I like having worked for my views and methodical needling down on things. I like being sexual and fighting jealous impulses. I like cussing, and being blunt, and “rough” messy friendships where everything is at once a crisis and immediate celebration that it will all still be over soon enough, so relax. I like knowing what part of the imperfect whole I'm getting more comfortable accepting, and discussing what needs to change. There's a gigantic hole at the center of how we conceive of each other as “right” or “the one” or “best.” This isn't to dismiss people who's styles and experiences mesh more than others, but it's to allude to a lost spirit of entanglement. The kind that happens when “what if you can't get divorced” or “this child is yours forever” enters the picture.

I'm still celebrating. Every forgotten name from my parties frequently lives on in the spirit they conjured in me. Every lost friend or girlfriend occupies at least words on the page, even if the swirl of their influence will never fit neatly into a waffle cone. And I'm still working to create even better and refined circumstances to build the fleetingly small amount of relationships with impacts worth considering and preserving indefinitely. That's the kind of friend I want to be, and misfired regrets over people less willing than me serve no one and never recognized me to begin with. And I'm just the smallest part of everything else we're missing.

[763] Unwritten Rest

One of my favorite free things to do is play with my Personal Capital finance management page. When I think I've spent some exorbitant amount on something I shouldn't have, I expand the dates and track the context. That expensive meal? About $5 a day on average. Wasting money on a gym membership I rarely go to? Less than .05% of all my expenses over the last 2 years. $23,000 towards rent and the big catch-all label “home maintenance” over the same period? Money I'll never have to spend again once I'm done.

 

I like to remind myself as often as I can how luxurious a life I lead no matter how hard I've worked or what I aspire to in the future. I didn't work myself to death in my 20s, and I think it speaks to why I had someone recently guess I could be 24 after I shaved. But now my thoughts are shifting into the kind of mind space I might be able to inhabit. I've craved that kind of security to “not have to think” about things. I wanna know if everything burns down, I've got insurance. I want to know that “retirement” will be a kind of choice and not desperate negotiation. I want to be the friend or family member who has that “secret” ability to swoop in and remind everyone that we have it better than the majority of the planet.

 

More than any degree of further personal gratification though, I want to go back to world building. I want to be able to have the freedom I had in college to cultivate environments and projects that I can plug people into. I want to compel by my increased access and expression verses being a desperate pitch-man walking a delicate tightrope about implausible futures. I want the freedom to fail, and I've materially already paid for that freedom at this point. That means, a driveway will be needed, but it's not a requirement to survive. I can paint and beautify my house, but it's not like I envision judgmental house guests particularly soon.

 

I talk pretty flippantly about how “long” it took to get to this point. I act like I didn't get an enormous amount of free time and experiences with things in the intervening years. For better or worse, I still enjoy knowing a little bit about everything. That's a luxury and hobby I've been able to engage in basically nonstop. I've more playthings and distractions than most would ever engage with in life, let alone by the time they were 30. I feel I've got a hard-enough fought middle ground environment that lets me appreciate what I have while not being naive about the power and difference money makes to your disposition and prospects.

 

This is a thing that irks me about watching YouTube videos trying to compare and contrast opinions on haves verses have-nots. The poor person inevitably takes solace in some personal characteristic of theirs or sense of family that “would never change” no matter the amount of money they had. The rich person makes some wholly unaware comment about how frugal they are in not buying something like a drink after arriving at Chipotle in their $100K car. I see a sense of denial and ignorance in both mindsets that I hope to avoid as I start to express myself differently as a result of my hopeful freedom.

 

They say money exacerbates you. I feel in recent years I've been brought to a relative heel, but I could see me slipping into some form of arbitrary nouveau hood-riche dilettante. I have something of a humanitarian-esc spirit and would find it great to create something that was sustainable and genuinely helped “things” and “people,” but on the same token, I've become several degrees more removed from my feelings of believing in what I can change, how, and the indefinable impact any one person's perception of it may be. One can remain skeptical if this is my attempt to run away from what will arguably be my increased responsibility to “the bigger things,” or if I actually feel that way and won't give a damn after I get mine and my circle is taken care of.

 

That was a big motivator in thinking there was any intention to reach beyond. “My circle.” Who's in that? Me and Byron routinely joke about how we can't seem to work together on a shared goal and mostly glean tag-along benefits from our individuated lives. My dad's in my circle. I stopped being so gushing in my “all of my facebook friends are the REAL MVPs” nonsense. How much do I want to contribute freely towards instead of seek to employ or exploit? My sense is it's a fairly smaller ring than the past. Keep the supply of goodwill low to increase the demand, like any emotionally manipulative parent. Because isn't that my angle? I've had enough middle-aged women inquire about my prospects for having children, implying my fatherly quality I assume. Will my fatalism regarding relationships usher me into the kind of surrogacy Byron maintains over his charges?

 

The fact that this specific change has happened so “slow” is not a testament that everything needs to be that way. That's the thread I'd hate to lose which I consider an important part of my personality. I still want things fast and to happen over-night, no matter how physically trained I've had to condition my body to not meltdown over them not doing so. I want the “empire” tomorrow, even if it takes next year. I want my experimental businesses to be branches off of every paycheck that would have otherwise went towards rent or car maintenance. I want to hang out tomorrow, not in six months after my floor is insulated and I can flush my toilet. The walls continue to come down. The “excuses” for as valuable and reasonable as they are, will be gone. And once every one of mine are missing, I'll be coming after yours.

[762] Fisti(n)cuffs

I'm about a half hour away from the end of BlackkKlansman, and want to take a moment.

I occupy a weird space. To be sure, unless the person my mother told me she cheated with was mixed or black, and I'm not actually my father's, I'm not actually black. A large proportion of black people in my life have said things like, “You're darker than my dad,” or, “Nah, you ain't white,” or “I'm so confused by your skin,” or “You know you my nigga” alluding to a kind of empathy with “the struggle.” As such, I've always felt a kind of solidarity and awareness that I've certainly occasioned to ignorantly betray. No less, when I go to the symphony, giant white crowds of very comfortable rich people make me uncomfortable in a way “being the only white guy” at a black friend's Thanksgiving does not.

That baseline reality that seems to permeate black culture is precisely what I gravitate towards in storied depictions of that struggle. There's something deeper about the language, the danger, and nature of the consequences in this movie, just like there's brilliant dialogue and entire worlds to chew on in a show like Dear White People. You can't shy away from things and exist as a “real” black person in this country. People are out to kill you for dumb-ass reasons and you are disproportionately affected by racist policies and a history where you're considered inhuman.

It's that deep hatred that can't be escaped. It's the pride and perpetual insistence of a damning and degrading narrative. As a purely intellectual question, I'm baffled at how anyone could be so sure and so loud about anything, let alone that degree of hatred of someone because of the color of their skin or how they dressed or talked. As a person who's been at the receiving end of someone's sheer irrational hatred and ignorant pride, perhaps that's the kind of desperate and low place real people connect with across differences.

I understand hate. I understand how much work it takes to fuel flames for people or a world that disappoints you at every turn. I understand the stress and headaches. I understand that there will never be enough words or screaming matches to account for how full a heaving chest feels when you want to obliterate the oppressive force, and yet that force never leaves. I've said I've wanted to kill things or certain people. I felt relieved the day Scalia died, naively enough. There is an immense waterfall of hatred spewing from as many corners as you choose to look.

Here's an example. I recently picked up a washer/dryer combo from Coatsville, IN. The guy was nice, a kind of outdoors man's man. We shoved that thing on the hood of my car, I went to pull out the steal of $100 to give to him. He hands $40 back and says he's a Christian, he's just happy to see it gone, and that “I don't mean to sound faggy, but do you mind letting me know you got back home safe?”

What do you call that? Complicated, to say the least. Is this the kind of Bill Maher “house nigga” comment, but for gays? Do I think this guy's disposition would have changed wildly if I got out of my car with a lisp and said I worked in something he considered perverse as opposed to child welfare? He literally gave me a discount on what was already a steal. He put out to a stranger that he cared that I got back safe. Do we call it a deep abiding hatred for gays, or a confused cultural aversion to something he doesn't understand? Do we react by ridiculing and sanctioning?

I understand hate, but I've never been proud of when it hits. I don't brag about the relationships in my life that have managed to end terribly. I don't routinely work in to conversation how insane my mom is, how shitty the conversations with ex-friends have went, or persistently espouse some level of violence towards all of the people in power I legitimately think are trying to kill me each day. For me, these are incidental feelings of being mashed up with people we barely ever understand or are given an opportunity to work productively with. But then it seems it's one thing to understand your own capacity for hatred, and another entirely to forgive it. And god forbid you practice apologetics.

One thing I persistently worry about is that “impulsive” decision to break something that feels fragile. I want to get it over with. I hate the anticipation of betrayal. I hate the idea of putting yourself out there and believing in something while someone else was just waiting for their opportunity to flip. Hatred pragmatically addresses that too. It preemptively blames people before they get the chance. You get to emote all over the place and proudly profess cathartic rage for all the “others” and “idiots.” This is about as close as I can figure in describing the thinnest of lines between hate and fear.

Fortunately enough, I've spent enough time writing that I don't walk around like a ball of rage anymore. I still pretty fluidly claim to hate things, but not in an obsessive and deeply painful way. All the tragedies of conversation I've neatly packed into blogs or examples. All the dreams stalled or things stolen occupy intricate webs of justification and pithy perspective. My fragile sentimentality is reserved for brief lucidity during infrequent intoxication.

How do you contend with hate? Is it embodied in the all-encompassing abstractions of identity politics and storied victim-histories? Is it individual instances of poor judgment more or less spurned on by a deep abiding racial or sexual hatred? Is it the general lashing against all that makes you afraid and that's hard to understand? A call for peaceful protest or truth and reconciliation isn't to deny these forces or their consequences. Asking for the conversation and the acknowledgment of pain is not an encroachment on freedom or rights. The effort in life should be towards mellowing of that hate impulse. The dialogue should be calling it out for what it is. And people who are actually filled with hate need to be reminded as often as they can that that's what they're full of. That's the face of their “Christian love” or “purity of intention.”

Stay cool, my brothas. We're already dead. Some of us just know that a little more than others. And everybody's terrified.

[761] No Problemo

I'm looking for a problem.

Usually when I start writing, there's something pressing. My head is posing a problem. The mash-up hasn't turned into a brilliant display of abstract art only I can decode. Increasingly, I'm finding it hard to figure out what's on my mind. I'm no doubt still thinking. I'm still pressed to do certain things or maintain my principle framing of issues. But, it's changing.

My singular focus for the last 2 or 3 years has been to “settle” my land. I'm literally a few hundred dollars away, and for all intents and purposes my mind considers it done. What's my biggest indication? I've went and seen 2 concerts, went out with friends 2 weekends in a row, and didn't think twice about fixing my car at the same time I bought the supplies to finish up the bones of the house and labor. I eat out nearly every day. I'm buying things like belts without metal so they'll stop fucking with me at the detector when I go into court. I'm deferring funds to preference and prevention.

The nature of my overarching problem isn't to establish an inexpensive place to live from which to spring forth all of my creative endeavors anymore. Now I get to pick and hopefully balance. Now I get to wait for sickness or an accident to bleed me dry, except, if I can stave it off long enough, I'll also have insurance. I'm eking over the edge of “hood rich” status, after what feels like a lifetime of making the joke, and I'm looking off into the abyss.

I could try and make a problem out of my past. No old person finds you interesting when you do that, and no young person is smart enough to grasp why their current behavior will make them feel like you soon enough. I could complain about the price of equipment or paint as I refine the grounds and move from “survivable” to “humble abode.” I'm already starting to micromanage some of my social behavior. I'm realizing that 25-30 “this is my life in the service industry” crowd are very different from “I got too tired working myself to death and being pretentious so I got a 'real job'” as I've described myself. I don't actually want to smoke or snort myself to an early death or get into a slew of self-destructive flings with line cooks.

I also don't want something necessarily approaching “normal.” I'm not comfortable making the statement, “If I don't have kids by 35, I'm going to (x)” as I overheard in the office about hitting the sperm bank if not knocked up by 30. I'm not above the practical considerations with body clocks nor do I root against single moms, but the idea that a kid is simply part of the calculus instead of the ethos or opportunity kind of creeps me out. I want my house to grow to fit exactly what I'm asking of it. If that includes castle towers and a room akin to a ball pit, but with pillows, so be it. If I end up raising some exotic animal who nobody realized were doper than cats and most dog breeds combined, I'm open to the possibility. But I promise I'll be okay if I don't have a lemur at 32.

I want to believe I've sort of “wised up” in taking the Jordan Peterson advice about having something stable before you try to be all creative. I've pretty much always known I'm not the starving artist type, either because I enjoy showering or am not that creative. The idea of living in a band van for months, or with 20 hippies in shared space we shouldn't enter while Venus is at 22 degrees has never rang as particularly appealing. I've always known I could “play-along” with the “adults” and do precisely what I'm doing now. I took it for granted the people I used to cavort with knew as much about themselves as well, and didn't think basement dwelling was the long-term vision.

I think perhaps my new overarching goal is to find where things meet. First, and I hate this, it would speak to the irony wearing a yin-yang for most of your life and never finding that balanced place. You know, the eternal underlying drum beat of existence kind of irony. Second, it's something that I think manifests from throwing yourself into competing forces. What's the middle ground, in these divided times, between my liberal hippie idealism, and my deliberate move away from an ignorant caricature of my neighbors just now? Surely something to discover.

But even more than that. I liken the kind of problem I'm looking for is the one rich people have to deal with. Athletes that grew up poor are often kind of dumb, but they know they want to “give back,” but their contributions, if not personally gratifying, do little to nothing to stem the tide of systemic problems. So what's their responsibility when they can no longer play or aren't getting as much coming in as they may feel needs to go out? Using your voice and platform remain important, but practically, how do we get rid of rich people guilt? When can we agree they deserve to keep it all?

It's not precisely in money, but this is the question I ask of myself when it comes to how I feel. When do I actually feel like I deserve happiness? I mean the kind of happiness that isn't derived from me making fun of something or having a wildly good time punishing idiots. When do I just get to believe in the relationships I've made or the friendships I want to preserve without the guilt that I'm going to say or do something to fuck them up? Does it ever reach some kind of “unconditional” stage? Is it a worthwhile or tangible problem to try and adopt to tackle? Is it something I can even address individually, or as my increasingly suspicion, through some roundabout reshaping of how I conceive of myself?

Back to rich people; they get addicted and abused. They're born unhealthy and with bad philosophies. They're people, exacerbated by their wealth. The point where that wealth meets survivable existence seems to be nearly out of reach. Do we selfishly hoard what we have and try to wait out disaster? Like any group or class of people, they seems to swim together in their own fog of similar pathology. The servers all drink together after work because they're all sore and angry and been through every kitchen in town and hooked up with every waitress that would have them. The rich all drink together because nobody understands them, the degrees of their brilliance or depravity, and after all, life is short, so enjoy it.

What do I aspire to be in acting or accessing like the rich via the methods of the poor? I envy the third-world areas who are getting to build their houses out of plastic blocks made by this Spanish-speaking company that has zero interest in internationally shipping me said blocks. Talk about a freaking cost and effort saver. Would choking down the aesthetics and emulating “moderate,” by global standards, entitle me to something else? Or is that just a stupid word altogether and we're literally, at all times, deciding what our balance is? I found the company, did the work, reached out, got the land, and every other piece that would go into getting my own Lego house, what else should I expect?

That whole mechanism has been fucked with, though. I'm not talking about my new starter-house on a little acreage at 22 with my college-educated job where I made $55,000 starting out. We've instilled a “poor dad” mindset in people. Live day by day. Buy things verses invest. Don't expect your skills or interests matter for shit because you're fundamentally taken advantage of. I've clawed my way back into asserting those interests in fact do matter. I don't want to be afraid of financial ruin and be subconsciously dictated to seek out as much as I can get before it all gets swept away. I want the kind of stability that comes with building the disaster into my life. I want to be able to roll in and out of anywhere.

The problem will be keeping it together after a series of too many wins. I'm going to fall under the same delusion that genuinely thought everyone was having as much fun as me at my parties. All the while I'm working out what to do next or who to include will engender resentment and insecurity. All the potential and excitement I'll have to be the sole cheerleader for and bearer of the majority of the work and direction. I'll say a million and one times what I advocate for and who I like and what we can achieve, and I'll watch as a shadow and insular mockery subverts my best intentions. And then I'll return to the same question, is what's been created worth what's being destroyed? Does this lie at the nexus of worthwhile pursuits and insights in spite of it all?

I mean, I'd throw the parties again.

[760] Half Breed

I really wasn't expecting to start writing right now, but I came upon a thought and can't let it go.

 

If I think I can, I want to.

 

I “struggle,” I guess, with why, despite everything I know full well I could or should do, and completely believe in my capacity to do so, I still kinda want things to burn. The feeling, in and of itself, doesn't feel like a “moral” proposition or question. I'm reminded of someone once saying you shouldn't be afraid of heights unless you want to jump. I'm not afraid of heights, per say, but there's a genuine intrigue I have about falling, or jumping.

 

I think about this with regard to the kind of company I sought to keep. Inevitably, if you aren't a certain kind of person, we clash. If I think I can clash with you, I want to. Whether we've been friends ten minutes or ten years, I'm rarely if ever wrong with my instinct that dictates to me how I could snuff out whatever it is we have pretty quickly. But it gets a little more complicated. I, obviously, don't just go hunting down the right moment or forcing the “inevitable,” right? Just like I don't routinely jump from buildings.

 

A simple answer is to do with self-preservation. You don't burn down your tribe. The more complicated answer has to do with what I recognize in you that I respect. Are you going to lose your shit in your ardent insistence that you have to misunderstand something I say? Are you going to shift gears after too much “wokeness” training and start pretending I'm just ignorant and hate-filled by telling the wrong joke? Are you going to allow some insecurity and years-long resentment build up into another fateful social media fight that leaves us never talking again? My general bet for those I allow on this page is, “no.” I like people who I can't provoke to the same degree I don't think you'll provoke me. I will die never seriously using the words “that comment went too far.”

 

To the degree I wish to understand or engage with you is closely tied to whether or not I want to fuck with you. I find it flattering if you think I'm interesting or funny, but my egomania already accounts for those things. The more “you” you actually are, the less I feel I need to do things to pull you out. Why do I want to pull you out? Why don't I just trust that whatever's being presented is to be respected? I suppose I dehumanize you as I believe you've dehumanized yourself, so I don't feel particularly guilty. I can respect a real person's boundaries.

 

People think it's like a self-defense or belligerent pride thing, but it's pretty much horrible to be right about people. I want them to be dynamic and shifting in loud, hopefully positive, ways. I don't even know why I want this, but I do. Presumably, we could use more “quiet and humble born and raised here with my normal job and wife I'd never cheat on” kind of stories, given the current landscape. But I distrust those depictions are terribly honest to begin with, and that reality by default is a wonky interesting series of things out of left field we try to ignore or downplay. I just saw Michael Buble and James Corden choke up and dance around discussing the cancer Buble's kid didn't die from. I take it the myriad ways kids can die, and the eventual death of their being regardless, wasn't considered before bringing them here?

 

And think about how many people would be enraged and “triggered” by that last line. Am I being “deliberately provocative?” Or do I think it serves no purpose to pretend we don't know what we're doing in introducing children to the world? The blind selfishness and fear is how you corrupt their little souls before they even begin as they adopt the same habits and fears that stir the shit as they get older.

 

I recognize every single day as a chance to swallow a little more reality and a chance to regurgitate it as something we can better contend with. We need to violently shake from our heads the idea that the mere mention or acknowledgment of a force in the world we find displeasurable means there's something wrong or immoral about us. Just like I can talk openly about my potential for destruction and recognition of your “triggers” and not make a game out of pulling them. Or, at the very least, invite you into the kind of game where you don't allow yourself to be subjected to them.

 

If you rehearse your imagination, you can play out all of the terrible scenarios in advance. An instinct for provocation can be trained into the same kind of boringness as approximating cliché personalities. It itself becomes one. Then you can choose to take the greater responsibility for the attempted anchoring of your disposition as it looks to map the world around it. Ride the waves of your influences verses splash in people's faces. This started on something of a tepid premise and “ah ha!” thought, and I picked it up a few days later about 3 paragraphs ago, so these are the kinds of whimsical places we get to go when I want this blog to feel done, but done not unlike a half shit.

[759] Snap

I'm writing because I don't want to. Specifically, I'm writing because I don't want to write about Trump. But it's worse than that. I don't want to write about Trump, but I don't want to write even more about a sense of conviction I've been experiencing. I don't want my Trumpian conviction of my perspective to win the reigns of how I steer my life. I don't want the totalitarian sublimation of my experience to occur.

 

I feel like I'm being hammered. Just yesterday I was the one actively seeking out every possible news article on every possible thing with their despotic and terrifying prospects for our future. The intellectuals I respect or who've had track records of getting things correct were all singing similar tunes. Mind you, they still are, but I was getting the brunt of the 20 page in depth interviews and hundreds of hours of their speeches. Even if you're just grazing the news landscape, you're probably familiar with the percentage of animals we've managed to make extinct, domestic terror is at an all time high, and in practically every “advanced democracy” some form of right wing nationalism or extremist position is setting the pace and agenda.

 

At work, I get to hear example after example of ingrained and proud ignorance do everything in its power to tear down the systems in place trying to help as well as their own stability. Little helpless kids I interview eventually lead to their parents which now get to act as visceral reminders that someone I've encountered or thought positively about is getting routinely abused or indoctrinated, and the best I'll have for most is a superficial plan that acts as a kind of prayer to incriminate deeper if they again fall into our net.

 

The all-encompassing nature of work is another kind of pound. Mind you, I don't describe the things I do above because I'm a “normal” person who's looking for an excuse to breakdown or loses any sleep. I can spend 7.5 hours a day, exceedingly easily, interviewing kids, talking to idiots, or bouncing between a courtroom and places to go to lunch. That's the point. I have my “distraction.” I have my “obligation.” I don't need to pay excruciatingly close attention to my teetering society because I'm going to be slowly breaking down an idiot's intransigence over the next few months who's doing everything in their power to lose their child.

 

How often can you really sit and think on what it means that this touted symbol of “freedom” and “Western Civilization” is being steer-headed by 25% of radical fascists doing irreparable harm? That the whole of the human experiment is threatened by those who, routinely, celebrate the chance to kill each other en masse or applaud those who are in fact killing each other already? We're under the spell of those so possessed of their...I struggle to even call them “ideas” as I think those reside in people with the capacity to think independently and recognize objective evidence. We're watching, not just the failed-to-learn lessons of history, but the active dismemberment of even the capacity of how to learn and protect or cherish to begin with.

 

I really, truly, believe that. I don't think this is an “election” issue. I think it's a group psychological one. I think it's a biological one. I think we've so massively outpaced our ability to cope and rationalize, that the deathly serious and violent irrational forces that killed or else are behind all of the proud ignorance. It's with that same blindness we charged into the battles that our ancestors came out on top of. We're not contending with “nationalism,” we're provoking survival instincts that are fully capable of destroying everything in their path. They're dying to prove it.

 

I find myself too actively cheering for “collapse.” I want ignorance to suffer, but my same exhausted sentiment is going to speak to that much more undue suffering for “the rest” who won't deserve it then anymore than they do now. Maybe we all don't deserve extinction, but the idea that we wouldn't vote, or pay attention, or stay awake at the wheel will not go ignored. Jordan Peterson phrased it brilliantly in another interview of his I watched recently. Reality has a way of snapping back when you try to bend and distort it.

 

Reality, so named, remains the word at the center of all of my interests. It's what I always hope to discover in writing. I was right, for example, that I didn't want to talk about Trump. I had to. His insane reality has beaten on my door from the moment I shut off whatever I was watching 2 seconds after the Mexican crime and rapists comments. The insanity of humanity I had a front seat for when I “debated” religious fundamentalists. I didn't need to take that class again. I also didn't feel particularly ignorant of what's physically happening in the brains of the “conservative” and the ideologue. It's a large pile of individually easy to understand forces.

 

What's the reality underneath? To me, it's the antagonistic force. The blunt force trauma of proud ignorance doesn't provoke me anymore. The idea that not only might I never be able to overcome it, but that it's going to obliterate everything I care about, that provokes me. When I have a fantasy land of little elves running around my chest working hard to dig deeper and deeper for a cavern suitable enough for my sunken heart, there's a problem. What's the larger pattern? If I hear the same idiot “reasoning” from the same “youth” just in a different language and a different country, what's my take away? When I see the same story reported about war-ravaged Africa or the Middle East, what didn't my parents get from the message when they were 30 that I'm supposed to in order to keep the flag of progress waving and flame of hope lit? What does it say about your prospect of “hope” when you find yourself empathizing with the feeble, yet communal, delusion of the faithful?

 

Faith is one of those words I've heavily lambasted. I define it as belief without evidence. The ability to trust in, not something simply “unseen” or “unproven,” but often demonstrably false. Faith is the “bless your heart” polite “fuck you” to life's otherwise terrorizing circumstances. Jordan Peterson has a different definition. He says that faith is believing in the “best possible outcome” from telling the truth. It's the conviction that no matter the consequences, you won't get a better one by delaying or distorting the circumstances. It's another of his ideas that's stuck with me for quite some time, because I think it's also something I deeply believe.

 

“My” truth lies in my ability to use as many words as it takes to talk around a sense. I'm made of the same incredibly dangerous and full of potential forces as every balls-out ignorant person I meet in life and on screen. I imagine myself in different hats attempting to mold myself to whatever crazy forces might show up at my door. I try to plan for navigating a whole host of futures I would consider less than ideal to downright terrible. I try not to let how I actually behave in the world manifest as an expression of my baseline hopelessness. It's true I will act in spite of it. It's true that I think the worst is yet to come.

 

I just don't know what more to do with it. That seems like the kind of epitaph on my living grave. “I don't know what else to do, so come what may.” I feel I'm sort of defaulted to a form of detached Buddhism or something; I'm “enlightened” by the prospect that my eventual death will lead to a cosmic balance to all of life's indignities. I'm at once entirely responsible for the world, and utterly detached from it. I'm a conduit for waves I can barely perceive but for their dramatic retellings in the labored voices of those drowning in them.

 

I have this problem when I'm bowling. You think this won't transition well, but hang on. When I'm “feeling it,” I keep my eyes focused on the part of the lane that nets me the most strikes. I have a little routine where I sit in the pocket and don't think about tripping over my toes or cranking my wrist incorrectly. Unfortunately, in some weird kind of way, in order for me to continue doing well, it almost has to feel like an accident or that I'm watching myself. I have to be deeply enmeshed in the song I'm listening to or conversation I'm having, and the strikes have to be an afterthought. My natural quasi-panic likely-disorder will kick in almost on cue the moment I start to care or “truly focus.” Perhaps you might call it amateur choking. Even when I think I know where to look, how to hold the ball, slide my leg, and prevent my wrist breaking, I don't seem to know what to do, and the “solution” resides in occupying my attention with “surrounding stuff.” The strike happens in the moment the ball leaves my hand. To take my mind off everything but that moment seems to be the relevant exercise in improving my score.

 

How might this scale? Is the fate of democracy won or lost at the moment you vote? Or, are there a million and a half other things that can be occupying your mind which ensure your vote means what it's supposed to? My disposition isn't mostly dictated by the insane and ignorant so much as it is the moment I choose to respond to them in the best way I know how after I've explored all the noise they seem to be creating around me. I don't need ideas I don't have to work for. I can't settle for “People are basically good” or “You have to believe” or “Just save one person!” It's always complicated. It's significantly more complicated than bowling a strike or keeping your eyes on the same arrow for each throw, right?

 

Again my mind is repeating the “underlying needs” line from my recent job training. Why are we at your door? Anyone can call in a report, but what's going on that you're not proud of talking about? Who might we refer you to so that we never have to come again? I have an underlying need. I need there to be meaning behind the things I do. I need you to recognize I showed up at your door, not the agency I work for. Better stated, I need to walk away with a perspective that transcends “It's just policy!” I need to know that your ridiculousness deserves what it's asking from me. I want to take away new windows into exploring the totalizing influence of proud indignant ignorance and how to engage with it a million different ways before the moment I have to open my mouth.

 

If I could fix it with a snap, it'd have to trigger something in me, not make them disappear. But like I said, I don't really know what else I should be doing.

[758] Read 'Em And Weep

There's something I do, not very often, but often enough that I want to talk about. I've sat on several Amazon wishlists with different groupings of items, sometimes for years. Things can range from a $1 book to a $3000 high definition camera. There's things meant to scratch the OCD-adjacent itch like American Gladiators DVDs which have no torrent presence but I'll be damned if it didn't feel like I was missing out on the ability to reminisce when I first thought to look them up. Just now, I decided to start adding up the cheapest used versions of a 50+ long book list and see how much it would be to buy them all at once. I got bored a little over half way through and decided against some that were pricier than they should be, marring the results and estimation, but it's probably safe to say it'd be about $500 or so after shipping to get everything. My finger lingered over the “place order” button when I showed the cart at $309.

 

A small point to be rushed out of the way is that I have $309. I have the $500 or more it would take to order them all. I have the money to do that, and pay rent next month, and pay for gas and food, and stay as perfectly comfortable as I am now, but with 50 more books in my life. 50 more windows or distractions on topics I've found interesting enough to note on a list and then carry on with my life in spite of. 50 reminders of all of the things I'm not learning about that inspired me, excited me, or prompted me to act in a world that I'm otherwise mostly dragging myself through without the narcissism of a proper depression. Yes, that was a deliberately provocative and ignorant phrasing, good catch. It made me smirk, so it stays.

 

The large point to be labored over and confused, I'm sure, is that I am, in fact, inspired. I'm inspired in my feelings of “deadness.” I'm inspired by the indignant and ignorant testaments to our impending demise. I'm inspired by numbers and whiffs of ill-conceived yet tangible “progress.” There's a lot of the world that, despite everything contrary I might conjure to say about it, I'm actively wishing to learn about, understand, and then build into a new expression of myself. Thus, this overwhelming empowering sentiment of self-actualization and connection becomes the most depressing thing. To have an “intellectual” mode of viewing all topics as “potentially interesting” or drumming up reasons to claim interest is a step removed from rushing to Amazon or the library to devour where thoughts were pushing you.

 

I had to individually delete each book from the list. I had to see the title of something I want to be intimately familiar with fade into the background of my “one day” life, even if that life is maybe mere months away. I had to get the sinking feeling of “what if” my car or my guy working or some inconvenience pops up and the $300 or $500 could be better spent. Right before the book list I was reexamining heating/air conditioning units. A $1000 one of those might make a survivable difference where the flow of ideas might be a lower-order need than the flow of blood.

 

More and more I want to be the quasi-hermit just learning or just experimenting. I find myself growing increasingly fascinated with the infinite potential and particulars of what it means to be truly individual. The only path to wrapping oneself up in a tough blanket of understanding seems to be in the tireless pursuit of understanding as many pieces of the infinite sea of variables as you can pass through your consciousness. I'm already a fairly provocative and particular beast. Who am I after those 50 books? Who am I after trying and failing over and over again?

 

It's a different kind of energy. I got something of an adrenaline rush dealing with a particular kind of ignorant client. I was “excited” at the prospect of being what's going to be a pretty dramatic and severe consequence to stone-cold ignorance in a way that life rarely provides. At the same time, it's not lost on me that this isn't the kind of excited I want to be. It's also a kind of weak co-opting of State power that could arguably pass through anyone with my same title. Yes, the professional world let's you jiggle around details, but picking your weapon in a war you've been conscripted into seems fundamentally at odds with the kind of individual liberty or choice that would sustain meaningful interaction with the world.

 

I want to give myself up. I want to serve myself on a platter to the ideas that want to take me as far as they are able. I want to lose myself in the argument and effort and find myself in pieces scattered between pages. I don't want to hear the back of my mind chanting “gotta work for the weekend” and “working 9 to 5” as I feel defeated cracking a book I know I'll have to put down, no matter how good, so I'm not too tired for my job in the morning. I don't want to pretend “broken” is the same thing as “tempered.” I'm playing the game Red Dead Redemption and recently learned how to lasso and break horses. It's in the person who's riding you's best interest for you to forget you're as large and kicky as a horse.

 

My compulsion to sit and play, or read, or sleep, or just talk and eat forever are also provoked by my genuine feeling that we aren't going to make it. I want to enjoy my gilded age. I want my head put through as many word washings and tumble cycles as I can get my eyes and ears on. “People,” as that abstract concept or mass are always going to provide you the same things. Carving out your individual person is an every-moment kind of task. It's why I'm thankful for writing. I know I'm awake and “mildly annoyed.” I know I have an image of a video game bucking horse flashing in front of me and am I'm exhausted by Trump-esc ignorance, unyieldingly proud, and see first hand its deadly effects personally and culturally. I know I want a nice little dopaminergic rush from spending or to feel like something is happening that finally has to do with me, and not what I'm otherwise compelled to be doing.

 

I think, at a certain point, you get to be justly complicated. The concept of “listen to your elders” comes to mind. It's hard to say someone who's been around for 2 or 3 times longer than you have is going to be summed up. In theory, we should all be filled with layers of wisdom and in/dignity to be poked and shaken for insight, but those “sparkly” people running through the halls trying to turn on the light in every room might be garnering your attention for more than bombastic or selfish reasons. Enough obituaries have read “He/she was a point of light, the center of their family, the beacon etc” to the point of absurdity, but I think about it initially more cynically. An individual, almost by definition, is a brand.

 

If I were merely a machine, and I produced “content,” you'd have nearly 740 pages of whatever you want to call it. Was Anne Frank a “good” writer? Doesn't matter. Is Viktor Frankl's voice unique? Can you feel a line from Dostoevsky in your bones that sounds worlds apart from one of his no-name contemporaries? These famous individuals are manifest in various and insidious ways, but they thrive and live on in the people who adopted deeply personal genuine understanding from what they were attempting to convey. Ignorance and relativists may want to bicker of “true understanding” verses “false understanding,” which to me might indicate they're in some of the furthest places one might inhabit in their ability to understand much of anything at all.

 

If I were merely a machine, I have a consistent and powerful history of drawing out such deeply ingrained reactions to my being as to engender some of the harshest and most incoherent judgments. Simply, I'd provoke noise. At the same time, I make a lot of noise. I raise the concern. I ask for the fight. I talk too much and too loud. I try for the next boisterous laugh. I seek out other noise makers to fill the air when I need to breath.

 

We're currently caught in a psychological hole and feedback loop where noisy content stokes the flames that power the insecure engine away from individuated self-expression. That line is a convoluted way of describing our collective death. I said recently I'm not interested in dying if I'm going to bother with life. It's that much clearer to me now why I want to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books and secure my tiny shell that everything can burn down around.

 

I'm already breaking through, but I'm not enough. So much of me already exists and fights for its sole voice. I'm taking shape, as quickly as I can through writing, and as slow as it takes to get a driveway, or build a library, or pluck a sapling. Maybe I'm too hungry in wanting it 24/7. 2 weeks at a time is 26 monopolizing moments. That's dangerous and deadly. 8 am to 4:30 pm was agreed upon without your input. The base of my current orientation I consider corrupted, which means it has an expiration, and eventually I'll talk myself out of it. But I also know that argument is essentially dead without help from another individual or statistically unlikely empowering circumstances enriching me.

If it's still somehow lost on you, this is me fighting.

[757] Natural Disaster Artist

I’m so “mildly everything” right now as my mind shoots between past thoughts and recent experiences that I think it’s time to dig.

I’ve finished my “training” at DCS. As the time went by, people loosened up more and more and those true colors started leaking through. Dress got more relaxed, pretty grievances started to surface, and the reality of our collective situation was no more epitomized than when a group presenting a mock case got reprimanded for their parody lyrics after being encouraged to be creative in their presentation on the very last day. It’s The State, ladies and gentlemen. I’m surprised you didn’t see the stick up its ass from miles away.

There were several “strong” personalities, including mine, in the class. I got to watch with the wisdom of knowing what happens already, as how I managed to integrate myself, or not, into different conversational circles. Again, older people like me. I stayed polite in playing games I find incredibly boring or biting my tongue on what would otherwise be an endless stream of jokes and commentary. There’s a handful of people I could see inviting to parties or hanging out again, but we’ll see if they’re still employed and answering their work emails even 6 months from now if I so conjured the right situation. I wasn’t so much about trading numbers.

One particularly wordy and jokey person decided to send an email out to the group about how she really enjoyed everyone and that the cohort will leave a lasting impact. I intend to getting around to writing a goofy poem in response to it. You couldn’t ask for a better example of the people who want to kind of act out using it as a shield because they really do care in more ways than they’ll let on. She also invited everyone out to drink on the second to last day, though I’m unsure who decided to attend.

With the end of the traveling, I get to settle into my townie rut. I can start regularly maintaining engagement in my distractions and practices. I can start finding my rhythm and how to disrupt it with inappropriate levels of overtime. Before that was my first foray into living that “travel a bit and visit friends” kind of life. I’m writing this from my bedroom at my dad’s house as I’ve been sort of marooned in the region after a miscommunication. Tomorrow I venture to a play before a very late drive back. Today has been needlessly spending money in an effort to distract myself and stay out of the house. I’m pausing work on the land for a month or so, so sneaking in video games, books, and a vanilla caramel chiller get to scratch spending itches.

But seriously, I’m trying to figure out how to get to the good stuff. I’ve been considerably more “functionally dead” as time goes on. I routinely envision myself strung up by my fancy belt on a door handle. I still have very little desire to connect with people in general, let alone anyone new, and even seeing some acquaintances in the mall, I did basically everything in my power to pretend I was trying to get their attention before walking the other direction. I’m an odd duck.

Part of that behavior is feeling so insular that people are again becoming flatly what they can or can’t provide me. Another polite conversation about the nothing either of us are doing or plans neither of us care about isn’t what I need. Seeing people you went to high school with get married and mall walk early Saturday morning is the kind of kick in the teeth to how “easy” it is to get comfortable and sit still.

I think a lot about people’s relationships. A trainer asked the question of our cohort, “How many of you are on your first love?” and nobody raised their hand. He was making a point about change and how hard it can be for not just our families but us as well. I make the more cynical point about the kind of desperate illusion the love story is and the power it’s had to drag us up to this point. But it was funny to see the people who didn’t know why they were in Indiana, but moved their because of their boyfriend, or who had stories about being the mom at 17 and 40 year old grandma taking tips on how to relate to their spouse from one of our book sections, or the 26 year old talk about his time in marriage counseling and girl with a 1-year old who very clearly wanted to be drunk as shit and still in college once the wheels started coming off of our group’s general civility.

It’s just lost on everyone. It’s lost that you can be forcefully and proudly yourself, and still build your life and relationships from there. Old people find themselves there sometimes by default, so they jive with me. Take no prisoners. Be honest. The “professional” world has an obligation to keep things obscure and lightly touched because they’re wielding enormous power. Society at large needs something of a baseline, sure, but if Trump has taught us anything, if you don’t protect and fight through the uncomfortable truths, you’re not just harmed by the lies, but utterly overwhelmed to the point of threatening extinction.

I have a mild post-traumatic response when I think about my stuff that got stolen. Concurrently, I have an overwhelming feeling that I don’t want “stuff.” I come in through the garage at my dad’s house and see stuff up stuff piled up. It’s been through several garage sales. Some of it is semi-useful some of the time. And this house is filled with stuff that was supposed to serve later purposes or be a part of my step-mom’s craft business. This house isn’t breathing with the lives this stuff is supposed to enable. It just feels heavier and heavier and hard to maneuver around.

That’s what my stuff was. The pieces to the coffee shop. The toys and collectables I’ve saved since childhood. The books the thieves opened one box of, threw around, and then decided they’d grabbed everything worth taking. I’m sitting with the weight of a piano I have to figure out how to pack into my space. At the heart of the acquisition of my stuff was to help enable me. I never opened a single Marvel Legend as I figured they’d be worth something one day. The same rationale left some QVC comics my grandmother bought me as well, also gone. The time and money and effort it took to get that stuff not only into my life, but onto the truck, and out to the land, just gone. My effort, my plans, and my wisdom-seeking investment behavior nullified.

Here I think about help. If I had help to establish my place earlier, I could have been out there. I could have protected my stuff. I could have made my little empire a few thousand dollars richer and extended my online sales presence. You know, the true noble goal of existence. I could continue to draw from the desperate insecurity of the past that provoked me into getting that stuff and investing myself in it when there was nothing else. I could go on and on like fires and hurricanes aren’t routinely wiping out entire lives by the thousands. I can pretend I give a fuck about them like I do what happens to me.

I guess there’s the irony. The utility and training it takes to pretend. Pretend hard enough and you’ll donate to charity and take up a noble profession. You’ll believe your just desserts in heaven are for a life well-lived and hasn’t been you jockeying to garner favor. I’ve heard a number of times from different trainers, “I have a passion for this work! It really bugs me when people are just here for the paycheck!” Because they require the nobility and dignity of their position to understand and orient themselves in the world. It’s beyond their comprehension that you could give zero fucks and do better by virtue of understanding the nature of the game. They don’t know honesty and compassion without reward, so when honesty and compassion show up brazen and “creative,” they instinctively shutter at the thought anyone would dare pay someone for their time and effort when a heart can bleed all on its own. Fuck them.

What’s funny though, I can’t really pretend. When you’re willing and able to see what I am, like the obnoxious, and older, and melancholy, that’s when my star shines. There’s a reason I seem to attract a litany of girls with severe depression and anxiety. There’s a reason I draw such visceral reactions to being consistent and persistently forthcoming in how I feel. I recognize the pretend game as death, and if I have to keep bothering with being alive, I’m not interested in dying. I only imagine myself hanging from my belt, I don’t make plans.

I keep thinking we’re, for several generations, irreparably broken. Whether it’s people feeling creeped out at the idea of picking up a phone or the obnoxious individual haze of pursuing things for the sake of things, perhaps my harking for the time spent in college becomes less about some romantic togetherness and friendship ideal, and more a recognition that that’s all there is. That’s when you’re allowed to be an individual and bounce your process off other processes. Friends are an incredibly positively selfish thing to have if you’re using them right. But what do people do instead? They pretend. They play house. They pose for Instagram. They make it incredibly hard to ever see each other again because it’s time to look for the next thing.

I don’t know what I want anymore. I wanted the struggle, and that’s been subverted by the proper form and process. I wanted to be engaged and creative, and now I’m searching for hobbies like I’m trying to pack in extra curriculars before applying to college. They say to pay for experiences, not things. What if you don’t know how to? What if your experience is so marred by your collective psychosis that no matter where you go, you’re paying for the same thing over and over until you go mad? Why do I want to be lonely and bored in a foreign country anymore than I want to be sitting alone in my field contemplating whatever there is to buy after a driveway?

Today has been one of those exercise days in really hammering down the hardest and most depressing points. I tried to be proactive. I got some slime to fix a slow leak in my tire. The head popped off, and I end up deflating the tire more. I got a magnet phone holder so I could stop precariously dancing with my fumbled phone while driving, only to lose a piece of it, somehow, into a black hole that opened in my lap. I could see the pissed away money flutter about in the aggressive wind. I was told to “ignore the barking” and “say hi, it’s about respect” as if I don’t regularly say hi or need lessons on respect and haven’t been routinely and unceremoniously ignored by the person I’m supposed to say it to for years. My working self gets to watch the step-white-trash retard in my basement play video games, still without a job, not paying rent, pissing all over the toilet, as the expectations of my household remain shackled. It happens too regularly for there not to be some metaphysical-esc being out there zeroing in on the points where the exact opposite of what should be said or did in fact happens precisely then.

I’ve been heavily restricting my diet lately too. Each day I’ve gone with a can of tuna and 4 apples. I don’t really care what you know about health and weight loss. The results are pretty dramatic even after less than a week. I’m interested in what happens when I add exercise. Part of me wants to be “default” attractive again so I can try to remain silent and/or “buff and dumb” for places like Tinder. Another part of me wants to get as close as I’m ever going to get by way of analogy to addiction. If you need meth as much as I need food, and I’m over here refraining from the hundreds and hundreds of options with my growing and growing bank account, I get to retain even less sympathy for you, and I might stumble upon some insight on how to steer your attention and behavior into another direction. If that fails, at least I’ll be skinnier and saving money regardless. But it seems, as with most things about me, it’s another behavior engaged in out of spite.

Ah ha! That was the last piece I wanted to fit in somewhere. In reminiscing about my childhood, I wonder sometimes if I was born “bad.” I don’t have a lot of insight into my childhood. I don’t have access to pictures. I don’t have family videos. My dad isn’t particularly detailed or forthcoming when I ask him about it. I still don’t talk to the cunt that bore me. I find the proposition intriguing for the consequences of pairing a bad kid with a psycho mom. Maybe it’s not all her, or her mental deficiencies’, fault. Maybe I say things like, “I don’t like helping people” or “here’s another justification for relative sociopathy” or revel in the taboo and precarious while enabling whatever pathology you have on offer because I’m bad. Maybe the world constantly signalling for me to play pretend with them has nothing to do with me as a person and everything to do with a subconscious self-preservation response about the natural disaster that is my being. If there’s a louder message I most often hear besides “you’re not a person” in so many forms, I’ve not caught it.

The insecure put me down. The scared turn what I say or do into personal affronts or redefine their laughter or buy in as something “mean” about me. The jealous avoid. And it isn’t even about them. I’m the storm. I’m a knotted ball of cancerous karma keeping myself stuck between personalities like theirs and an unforgiving world in the face of my best efforts and investments. They’re blips in my blogs and I’m still the writer. The work gets to be here even if I’ll never be.