[717] Safety In Numbers

I have a sense. There have been different instances over the last few days that have reinforced it. It's as if a big puzzle were constantly shifting, and then here a piece, there a piece, and as they slide in, you get sudden “ah ha” moments. It's a mild reassurance. It's a degree of comfort. It feels like understanding, and whether it actually is or not doesn't seem to matter.

A consequence I blame on getting old is starting to see everyone as a child. “Big” and “important” and “dramatic” things lose their shine. The connotative value of the life or death scenario that's playing out at all times loses its ability to provoke a sense of urgency. When I talk about having a foot in the grave, whether I were 5 or 50, it's still true. It's not some screaming insecurity or genuine fear as one might experience as they're actually spiraling out of control on the highway. It serves as a kind of reminder that in order to maintain a kind of persistent motivation, it needs to be rooted in your ideas.

As far as reminders go, I'm now living the firsthand experience of the kind of “safety” the “normal” world craves. If I stay polite and fill out paperwork, I could do this job indefinitely. Every home broken or saved isn't really on me, no matter the “faithful” lip service. When people trust you an inch, they give away miles of their lives with information for you to work with. I can make their lives easier or harder, throw their mistakes in front of authority or bury them, or maintain a standard of care and authority, or bemoan getting home a little later than I'd prefer. It's the same kind of choice you make every moment of every day even alone watching TV and reading, but it's dressed up with “consideration” for people's petty egos.

I'm reminded that I'm good at it. As “friends” found their safe spaces and stopped flirting with the idea of drunken hook-ups with me before finding a spouse, they liked the guy who could talk about anything and not judge them. They liked when I had a plan to entertain them or went out with the agenda to help them get laid. The energy it takes to keep a party flowing is 10 times more than to encourage a person struggling with addiction for a few minutes every week. Writing blogs takes me longer than the paperwork for a dozen families might take to fill out. I could choose to complain in greater measure and slack off, or I can place this job and its relative impact into my giant bag of life experiences that engender that much more credibility when I bother to opine.

It's in watching people rationalize in real time their inadequacy that sense of reassuring calm comes over me. Oh, right, this is why when I first started writing I was obsessed with discussing non-maliciously manipulating people. They give themselves over, all the time, every day, with every chance you give them. I choose to take to the page and lay out every possible detail for you to twist or learn from me, they pack a handful of sentences with how they'd like to be treated and understood the rest of their lives. They tell you how they're going to fail or how they justify. They imply things they know you understand.

And in the world of “implied understanding,” I thrive. Big and tall well dressed and well spoken man? It's night and day going to the bars in that outfit verses my normal tattered shirt and cargoes. I feel like an infomercial; it's just that easy. It's why I got bored with it initially and stopped whoring around. It's why conversations of potential malicious toying with the dynamic can creep up too often if you're not paying attention or no one is around to hold you accountable. Lucky for me, I keep sharing my writing.

There's also the reason I'm persistently angry prevalent as well. Particularly of my smart friends who didn't become doctors. You know it's that easy too. You could budget better, or organize, or try and create something new. You have the time to speak to big whole-world issues. I'm “busy” too now, except, of course I'm not. Just like we found the time to party in spite of college and still graduate. The “real world” is the magnified insecurities and fears never dealt with, not this looming mediocre fate one needs to suffer in solidarity. Remember, my biggest complaint isn't “failing” at the things I try, it's having no one to try them with, and it's not for lack of asking.

Alas, in the parallel normal world, I'll find all sorts of people! Yes, I'm sure soon I'll have co-workers inviting me to lunch or after a flurry of a few busy weeks that bank account will have me nonchalantly talking about actually making good on a few cross-country visits. Is that what I want? Well, sure, I wanna go chill with Hatsam and Wendy, no doubt. Is it going to be what I need? Is it going to speak to what gnaws at me every day I don't see a road to achieving? Hardly.

I feel I've moved a little too far away from that sense though. The pieces falling into place have everything to do with having lived, to some degree, through a similar scenario before. I've been in many random places and homes before I started doing it for this job. I routinely gamble with how much I should or shouldn't say so negotiating the space between me and a “problem” client doesn't register as intimidating. My fundamentals and outlooks are clear, so the wordy details get a little less important. It's easy to see how “playing by the rules” makes you think of ways to support a family or plan for trips months in advance that come without notice and are over too quickly. There's an extremely powerful cultural flow that isn't all bad.

My concerns remain the same. It can arrest your perspective. You work yourself to death. You make excuses and apologies. You get too polite. I let my “jaded” sensibilities breathe in writing, and perhaps it's a testament to a measure of wisdom to rehearse and release here so blowing up in real life becomes less likely. There's still a fuck ton broken and that we're not paying attention to. You know how little I've thought about Trump? I'm just busy enough writing a report that he's the furthest thing from my mind. Not terribly long ago, I was railing about the creeping fascism arresting this country. That's still true. Bill Maher calls it a “slow moving coup.”

I think my anger towards “friends” and confusion about my relationship to them is in taking for granted they could transcend this flow to the same degree I try to. They could see past their paycheck and bills, I supposed. They wanted to take chances and live differently. NOPE lol. God, I'm a fucking moron. They're as happy to capitulate to normal feelings and obligations as the next guy. They didn't take my blogs as predictive prophecy, THE BASTARDS lol. My anger seems more a mourning in that light. It was the comfortable “school lie” like this comfortable “work lie” keeps paying as long as I keep singing their gospel. You play along long enough, you might get a shot at affecting some “real change” (you know, because they're the guardians of the “real world”) and your name will go up in lights...or a plaque or something.

I still want to be what's underneath. I'd rather never be known and watching my impact unfold than be handed some award and be expected to give a polite speech about how the system really isn't out to get us. I'm not full on conspiratorial wing-nut believing every junk piece of “alternative” media, nor am I a buttoned up rule bloviator, but it seems I've exercised a degree of competence across layers that no single one is ever going to speak to. You don't care if I'm a “good” social worker. You want to see me build secret rooms in my playhouse and whether or not I can “revolutionize” some industry or way of living. You know why you want to see that? Because I want to see it of myself. I speak to what I actually want, even when I'm exactly confused or wrong in knowing how to get there.

I just wonder if you've taken enough time to know what you're really built out of. I'm still fitting in pieces some 717 blogs in, but what's stuck has really stuck. I keep shifting into different versions of familiar, and fairly fucked up, worlds. Breaking out is extremely hard. Doing it alone, I suspect more and more, is impossible. How many times have I advocated for a “culture” level change? That means I see myself shaping more than our professional or interpersonal relationship. I want to shift the tides of life itself. That takes a level of creativity and people signing on that you're willing to concede to the Scientologists? Even Waco managed dozens of people. I can't get one or two?

I suppose it's that every playbook is already written. I'm nothing special, I'm just reading. I want my story to be interesting and encompassing. I want the people in my world to view themselves as equitable characters and not incidental pawns or tragic failures filled with hopes and dreams about what they'll get to read about me one day. I want the kind of help that's actually people helping themselves. Because they're not, and you, the majority of the time, aren't actually helping. I can't stop people from doing drugs, or beating their wife, or from sexualizing children. I can learn and approach the topics in ways that could improve the culture that essentially acts like profiteers on their behavior. Be it emotional profiteering in lazy ill-informed donations and inflated budgets or actual cash grabs in sneaking in as many “extra” 15 minutes as you can plausibly defend in billing.

Who's side are you on? Your own, and therefore mine, or the end of some passive agenda? You do remember you've got a foot in the grave too, right? You know there will be plenty of struggle left over for your kids, excuse me, puppies, because none of you want to admit the dire circumstances you're living under which are constantly at war with your biology. What's it gonna take? Because when you're not the one acting, shit's going to happen to you. You're gonna get sick and old. You gonna have enough money? You're gonna wish and pray and try to remember the good times. Is your small donation or encouraging facebook post gonna prop you up?

Do you want to be the bigger and better culture, or just ride the one you've been given? Doing so doesn't mean you're thinking or have figured something out. It means you're already dead. Don't fool yourself into thinking there's a dollar amount or number of friends that will ever count if that's your umbrella. And you certainly shouldn't think of me as anything but a faint eccentric memory of our youthful folly. My begrudging ignorant pragmatism isn't condoning the larger picture in hiding behind the perks or recognition. My obligation remains. My real anxiety isn't being tangibly spoken to. Are you better off than me?

[716] Chance Encounters

If I can't find something to write about, does that mean things are okay, or that I'm dead inside? I don't feel dead, but I certainly never trust that things are okay. I know, I know. It's not either/or. It's a false premise to begin with. I don't write for the exact same reason every time. “Dead inside” is a vague characterization I've used to mean actual stagnated capacity for feeling and general jaded indifference. “Things” being “okay” or not has nothing to do with digging up something specific and coherent to talk about. I'm no less in a ponder-worthy situation that I'm finding hard to explore without all the palpably raw push of a headache or anxiety.

I'm “normalizing.” I'm getting too old to fight too ferociously. I'm skeptical enough of my posture and where it's gotten me to begin exploring new paths. I'm taking on a matter-of-fact approach to how day to day life operates, and why it's reasonable and expected people should behave that way. Free alcohol at a fundraiser!? No, put in a few dollars and sip a tiny cup. Mingle. Try not to hog the watermelon pieces. Meeting canceled? Congratulations! You just got paid to do literally nothing but try and cross your fingers. Want to talk about big plans and realms of influence over time? A few short years and handful of conversations with the right movers and money makers and acceptance is practically guaranteed. It's everything I've ever said it would be.

A persistent theme in Byron's assessment of me is that I should figure out a “work/life balance.” In my view, he's operating under the presumption that I don't have one, or the one I have is one he can't recognize. I'd prefer a “meaning/practical” balance. I watch enough, lounge enough, find cheats for turning my job into the “incidental” thing that doesn't preoccupy my mind as much as things I'd rather have in there. I don't find a lot of meaning in my life unless I'm building the tools to form the culture and crowd I want to create with in the future. Finding cushy jobs and self-assured associations can do a lot of work in obscuring how meaningless your life registers. I want it constantly scalding my temples.

It's meaningful to have lived it. I have to try and fail. I have to grow exhausted. I'm not hell bent on self-destruction or “the hard way” as some kind of bravado and ego driven ethos. I'm attempting to explore old themes and ways of conducting a life with a modern bent. I appreciate the excesses of capitalism while I stress the word excess. It's a false narrative to think of things as “falling behind” when I'm focusing on reading vs watching vs listening, so whether it's picking 5 things from each category to do a day, or powering through a chunk until the end, it will always be too much and an ever-fleeting source of inspiration. What matters is that it feels like a choice instead of an obligation or punishment. I've read myself uncharacteristically sad. I've looked at a 35 episode backlog as a weird thing to burden myself with.

My criticism of the “normal” world has much to do with how I feel it's molded people to stop thinking or talking like they did when I knew them in school. It remains a source of mild fear that I'll do what I think I'm going to do, and still get everything I want normally put aside as a regret or pipe dream. “If only I had the time to play the piano!” So they sell it instead. “If only I had the money!” I'd like to show what mild sacrifices and a proper budget can do for your savings in a year. I don't have the added obligations of a spouse or children, which I'm told are significant contributors to why the world looks the way it does.

I choose a certain degree of pain. I want to work through stomach-dropping feelings of contemplating the people I care about finding intimacy and connection with someone else. I want to act better than that feeling. In comparison to the amount of things I'm lax about, the self-imposed difficulty I actually choose pales in comparison. I wouldn't mind being primarily vegetarian. Everything I read suggests better health and longevity. I forgo the “pain” of prepping meals or learning new recipes to make it seem more palatable. I want to know the consequences, personally, of being the CEO sleeping on the factory floor to handle issues at precisely the moment they come up. I believe the testimony of every ex Amazon or Tesla employee who described a level of danger or slavery, because it's a familiar feeling I harbor within myself. You don't get to Mars or take over every industry on the planet feeling comfortable getting paid to do nothing.

What's most striking isn't things being exactly as I thought they would. What's been weird, and again this has developed over time, is the flat acceptance of any premise. Let me unpack that. I've been compelled to accept, one way or another, every step of my life that's gotten me to this point. Every mess that befalls business creation, every shit or broken relationship, every job I didn't give a shit about, and every purely mental criticism of my insistence to meticulously chronicle it for the last 5 people on the planet who can stand to read me at length. I go to a fund raiser, okay, this is who I am, polite tiny cheese piece eater. I hop into a co-worker I've never met's car, and can proceed to have a good conversation for several hours. It doesn't matter what else is going on, that's where we are. My opinion doesn't matter, as long as the task is being observed as “correct” by enough of those watching.

A line from Waking Life has been creeping into my head lately. The whole paragraph goes, “When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that's what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.” Those last two lines have been echoing.

I think intuitively I act like this is true despite everything I might do to the contrary. Nothing is more dynamic or full of potential than a person. Nothing is so seemingly contradictory yet consistent. Nothing can choose to obsess and find itself so conflicted it can go properly mad. I'm studying people in all of my TV shows. I'm distilling people down to trends and attitudes in taking in histories and philosophies. Disorganized people are going to get me killed because they and their considerably worse conceptions of what it means to be a person are held accountable to self-destructive gods removed from their own.

It's not a secret why I'm “naturally” suited to deal with the social work field. How many times have I heard concerns over “burn out?” Dozens. Wide-eyed idealists join up thinking they're going to help! Who knew that your good will and faith don't counteract meth and generational abuse? Everyone except you. Me though? The one with one foot in low-key reasonable parenting and one mentally and emotionally abusive? I know the reality on both sides. I know the abject futility and the undying support. I know the world is both, all the time, all at once, in everything we do. The choice to observe yourself in terms that are “better” or bolstered by the evidence isn't “bias.” It's work. It's a fight. I can do my job better than everyone, and internally be at a fever pitch running the opposite direction. It's a concert, not a contradiction.

I think to myself that I want “the best.” It's a bad characterization. I want the most meaningful. I want the friendships that observe the same fluidity of conversation as I can manage with strangers. I want the the reality of the good and bad acknowledged and worked with, not taken for granted and swept aside. I'm not gonna “pray” things get better. I want to identify and turn things into markers and tools. Whether it's my experience or money, this is just another waylay in my generally dismissive and combative take on so-called existence. Just like tomorrow will be, or the next year if I choose to regard it as such. It's why writing reminds me how often my words are betrayed. How full all the “nothing” I've been doing really is. You know how easy it is to talk for a few hours when you've seen every episode of every favorite show of your new acquaintance?

Perhaps I've been a perfect moron in not wading into the world of “working-people” beyond the measure of barely-sustaining McJobs. I argued I found utility in them at the time. I might not have softened a few choice edges that would have seen me fired or quitting early. I might not have had a choice at all and am still tumbling down a probability matrix looking nothing like how I would've designed it. The point is, the moment is either bearable or not depending on whether I can see options and freedom as a result of what I'm doing. Money is options. The nature of this job provides plenty of drive time freedom to watch or listen at my leisure. Learning there are new people worth talking to and making jokes with at length pulls your selfish head out of your ass long enough to take a look around.

If we take that Waking Life paragraph, I could perhaps soften how I consider the ever-falling away relationships in school or life. If nothing else, it was meaningful at the time, and it sucks you changed for the worse, or my ideas about you did the same. I think it's a cheap trick to try and consider people in your life as mere chapters of your sordid past or interpersonal hurdles on your way to self-actualization. I've previously likened people to songs. I suppose I don't understand why the tent just doesn't get bigger. Why the “love” people endlessly drone on about can't find its way into anything than the mouths of the world's biggest hypocrites or handful of genuinely earnest. Why thousands of polite acquaintances are better than a handful of deeply rooted working connections.

Did you hear about the Pokemon Go meet-up in some big city where hundreds of people showed up, the game crashed, and they all went home? This phenomenon hitting every nostalgic and future-tempting button, uniting old and new alike, big and small town, and it didn't actually seem capable of connecting people. It wasn't quite augmented reality. It wasn't quite social. It was a time-intense spectacle. It was an in-group qualifier. It was a chance to be popular for no reason. The people were secondary. The “shared interest” category would read “myself.” What makes you love Pokemon or yearn for the past are deeply human points of potential connection that capturing the same rare bird will never be. But we're still hunting.

[715] Rev Run

I’m still fascinated by traffic.

Traffic is a man made wave carrying, not just H20 molecules, but entire individual stories and intentions all over the world. There’s traffic everywhere I go. Driving to drug studies I’d be lost in the sea of cars clogged in the bleak and concrete of Chicago suburbs. Driving through Fort Wayne, I feel as though I’m right back in The Region with fatter people and more to eat. Evansville rings the same. It’s probably an Indiana thing.

I know the math that plucks “stars” from the sea. I know calling someone a star to regard them as something special and different is an irony we ignore pretty heavily. Without the media coverage, we find stars at every level. People rocket to the tops of their industries. People have a way of navigating social waters or difficult situations like no one else around. A family man can be the star of his castle. A child can always burn brightest in the eyes of their parent.

Driving from the hotel to the training facility, you learn very quickly that Fort Wayne likes to speed. What doesn’t occur to them is there are about 90 stoplights between them and wherever they’re going 5 miles up the road. Speeding to slow down. Speed to cut off and then immediately hit the breaks and halt. Speed to knock the shit out of one of a myriad of potholes. Speed while they smoke, and put on makeup. This is a place where people are trying to get somewhere, and the reality in between doesn’t register.

This area also has an abundance of liquor stores and churches. I didn’t make a count, but when a thought like that occurs to you, it suggests it’s at least more liquor stores and churches than you’re generally used to seeing.

Traffic grabs me because that’s what I’m becoming. I get up early, put on uncomfortable clothes that flaunt sweat, grab my coffee and hotel breakfast, and make my way to presentation after presentation about how to treat LGBT kids like they’re people and not let it slide when a parent who’s just had their kids taken away tries to talk me out of reporting something that could put me in jail. The “standard” of interaction I’ll have to meet is 22 hours of facetime with clients, with apparently a gigantic backlog that’s increasing if I want to be a go-getter and shoot for 35-40.

The leadership, once I begin doing that, will start to tell me I’m “changing lives.” They’ll say they had a feeling about me and were waiting to see how it played out. I’ll get offered a company car. I’ll interrupt hanging out or free time with phone calls or paperwork. I’ll ask questions, in the way that I do, like when I asked a VP of the parent corporation if there was a finder’s fee for finding them a rich disturbed kid, who they cater to, to haul off to The Dominican Republic for 10 months at $5,000 a month. It will make people chuckle and uncomfortable, but they won’t be able to do anything, because it will speak to a truth they like to polish and my numbers will be undeniable.

If I get paid like I anticipate, it won’t be a daily struggle to squeeze the tips out of frat boys, but a weekly reliable paid in full to the professionals story of things that get done on my house. $300 here or there? Yes, please do. I could pick up some small pricey-enough indulgences like collecting cologne or springing for a nice watch. I’ll be able to put a plan in place for my week that I politely berate (hold accountable) my fledglings to where we work on goals and fill out paperwork together. I’ll endear myself to some, alienate others, get paid either way. I’ll think about getting on a healthy meal plan delivered to my door and expanding my gym membership to include a trainer.

I’ll even potentially have the time to have my weekends, or long weekends, to travel and visit. Instead of all day wasting away in a parking lot for a week, I’ll have hard and fast start and stop times to my “free time.” I’ll have stories for days about people suffering a circumstance I’m in no way approaching holistically or with the naivety of my employers. It’ll be routine. I’ll have my snippets about how Florida was rainier than I hoped, but at least there wasn’t snow!

 I will meet very many pleasant people. They will have their families form right before my very eyes. They’ll have their woes and story about what brought them here. They’ll tell me what they believe and use that tone for signaling discomfort for the topic or type of joke. “You see, what it’s really about.” I’ll be asked a dozen times if I have any questions, and I’ll watch them die a little inside when their 5th dad joke in a row fails to land

By any normal measure, I’d be fine. I fit. My cultural conditioning worked. I can sit still. I can play a semantic game as earnestly as any convoluted Christian. I’ll have money. I’ll garner praise. I’ll be able to merely mention my job and wear the gear to be regarded as a “good person.” My hairline, gut, and humor will grow to match the rest of the ensemble. All us jaded old-types will be in on the joke. I’ll disregard the implication of the 40 I guzzle down every night.

How long have you been enthralled reading my familiar story? Are you jealous? Do you wish you had that measure of security to look forward to? Do you wish you had a job that burns out the sincere do-gooder, but makes you laugh at the idea that there’s a single stressful thing involved at all? Is someone going to scream my hearing away? Am I going to be unable to leverage, “Um, hey, I’m the road to getting your kid back, duh.” Will I have to drive even half as long? Is a sick kid puking in the back of my car or filthy apartment my worst nightmare? Will I have to work as many days? Don’t forget, I organized my life where a McJob would pay my yearly bills in 1-3 months, and they want to pay me to be a professional adult.

I appreciate what I have. I find the value in the things that piss me off. I know there’s always work to be done, and when I want to improve, upgrade, or change something, it’s not because I’m living in some unbearable hell. I know that my skill or malleability is particular. I know my perspective has been beaten out of hundreds of thousands of words. I know that I’m the speeding Fort Wayner who dares potholes to break my axle. While most of us might find change uncomfortable, I find the idea of forgetting what really matters to me unbearable.

I didn’t/don’t read so much about the world so that I could put it on the backburner and become personally snug and “mature.” I didn’t get my ability to cut to the heart with a single question or tone by playing along. What Christian organization charges $60,000 a year to send some teenager looking at porn to another country because their rich parents are equally deluded and naive? That’s the question they feel when I ask if there’s a finder’s fee for luring another one into their trap. These righteous lambs spent half this “training” literally trapping us into a church sermon, pitch from Wells Fargo, and insistence we treat gay kids like they’re normal, but also “respect” the “different views” of their parents who act like you assume southern Indiana parents will. I chose to withhold telling them like 90% of my friends are at least bi, and I’m not trying to get fired for calling some old cunt a bigot.

I think my next tattoo, or set of them, are going to symbolize resistance. No matter how good I get at this world, or have already been, no matter how many rewards, no matter how relieved you feel that, “He’s finally figured it out, shut up, grow up, and get paid,” it’s wrong. I want self-sustaining creativity and new culture building. I want the old guardians of my ideals. I want to create the constraints to wiggle around in. And I want my focus to be primarily on the big evidence and trends. I want to shape the world, not pretend to save my region from opioids and several generations of child abuse. To be fair, I don’t want to deliver food, didn’t want to sell alcohol, didn’t want my spine tapped, didn’t want to finish college, or drive a cab, or do yard work, or probably the vast majority of things that constitute my life, so saying what I don’t want to do amounts to less than piss in the wind.

I’m still always going to be looking. I’m looking for the way out. The funds will, at the very least, fuel my business speculation. I am actually going to be “in the world,” so I’ll scrape together bits of information that may prove useful. I’ve learned I can still 9-5 and still get my TV shows in, likely the thing that will accompany my paperwork, which I’m sure I’ll streamline. I won’t get lost in this world. I won’t get comfortable. This cushy bed in the hotel they’ve comped? It’s not mine, and it’s over tonight. The food allowance for dinner? $15 and doesn’t include alcohol, the fuel of any proper social worker, or human in general. I want the gig that hires those who know how to responsibly drink while doing it and to sleep when I want for as long as I want.

The main reason this path has concerned me is that I’m aware I’m not an island. I can be shaped and persuaded like anyone. No one ever tries because they don’t really care or are too stupid, but it’s possible. My mind normalizes things pretty quickly as a what I take as a self-protective adaptation. It’s one thing to write pissy blogs, another to start creating new holes in my arm to pick at, or clenching my jaw until teeth wear down. I spent a year at CT. I swear I started there yesterday. Every happy memory of my past was yesterday too. Tomorrow I’ll be 60, bitching about the nuclear fallout not-that-long ago that these goddamn kids are already forgetting! I’ll regret I didn’t do more or prepare or speak explicitly because I was a little too busy, a little too selfish, and too old to fight about things I know I can’t change. Then I’ll wheel my lonely wretched body out under the sun and burn to death like that Furyan in The Chronicles of Riddick.

It hurts just enough. Like pants too tight in the waste. Like a neck propped staring at the wall projection. Like the cut in the eyes and the tongues of the pretenders lecturing you on their nobility and morality. Like the indignity of turning your head and coughing. Like the disrupted quiet as you crumple the remnants of your calorie mistakes. Or the hum of traffic, beckoning.

[714] I Believe

As far back as I can remember writing, what provokes me, what’s an ever-present theme is the idea of “belief.”

It’s tied closely to “faith” and “hope.” It’s what provokes “I feel.” It’s got at least one book by Michael Shermer which I can’t remember if I’ve read. It’s the basis of a basically functioning brain. You have to believe the bed isn’t going to disappear when you jump into it. You have to believe in your relationships so you can make long term goals. You have to believe in yourself and that the things you care about hold value. You mess with belief at your great peril. 

In thinking the god I don’t believe in is every ounce of ironic and laughing as Al Pacino might suggest, I’ve not only had my mind flooded with Jesus Christ Superstar for weeks (having watched every commercially version available), watched a documentary on Tony Robbins constantly pushing love and general ethereality so-named “God,” but have started training with a company that is deeply rooted in religious ideals - meaning prayer before meetings, offers of “what scripture says about that,” and ninja gorilla training on how to maybe-ever-oh-so-subtly sneak a little Jesus into a life that’s recently had a child taken away. 

While I said I wouldn’t criticize what I’m a part of until the end of this week, I can still talk and reflect on what I’m hearing. And what I’m hearing more than anything is, “I believe. I truly believe. I believe with all my heart. I believe in our mission. I believe I was called. I believe you can change the world. I believe every conversation I ever get into has a purpose and a meaning and that we all have something to teach each other. I believe we’re going to grow and grow and that it’s not for us to explore the details behind why our reach is increasing, and we should be able to do such a good job, we’ll work ourselves out of business!"

I’ve known what religious-minded people believe for a long time. It’s why, barring severe brain damage, I’m going to die without adopting a sky daddy. I don’t “believe” I’ll never believe in God. I speak in a way that always allows for brain damage. 

But then it begs the question, what do I actually believe? We can leave aside that I don’t behave as if my car runs on milk or that the bed will jump out of the window before I jump in it. Maybe it’s first better to think about what I used to believe. I know I’ve talked about that before with regards to what I believed growing up as a kid about my family or school. I don’t know how much to just lump those in with general childish naivety or if they had a special hold on me that really fucked with me when they were broken. Wouldn’t they everybody? Aren’t we actively watching the consequences of people’s broken homes and expectations play out in real time? 

But right now, what do I believe? I believe in myself. I believe I can lie, and play along, and make money. I believe that, if nothing else, I will at least find myself alone, in my field, with too much saved up and too much time to read, watch TV, and play music. That’s so true to me, when I use my third eye, so to speak, I see myself there, just being okay, doing whatever. It’s a kind of baseline belief because I have immediate access to my thought process at all times. I don’t have to convince myself I’m as good as I’ve already done. I try incredibly hard to thrust lies from my life, so even the delusions I have left retain a contentious bibliography. 

I believe there’s little I could do that would make my dad leave my corner. He’s nothing but an anchor for what I believe as his ardent stance in service to family. In the same vein, but very different, I believe my best friend will always behave in the ways I might anticipate for myself. Stated differently, I believe me at my worst and best, and I know how to navigate either. 

I believe we’re not going to make it. I think “something” could survive over an extended period of time, but “we,” as a species, as capitalist selfish befuddled apes, not for anything but a cosmic second. But I also believe it’s the best thing you can do to fight against that anyway. 

What would I have liked to believe? What do I think would have made my picture of the world, not so reflexively “negative,” a word and view I still vehemently disagree with, but one where I’m able to constantly like and share and offer “good vibes” that don’t rub people so raw? I would have liked to believe any time I was arrested by love, that those feelings suggested more than biology. Of course it’s grand to think of security or a partnership or a way to express trust and intimacy. Is it the reality I felt was built to last? You don’t tell a girl who’s mad about you, that you know is wifey material, that she’s going to be the one to leave you on day 2 of you guys ever spending a considerable amount of time together. And certainly, not believing it’s going to work doesn’t make the time together bad or register as a relief when it’s over. 

I’d like to believe that I don’t have to carry whatever angry water I have for my mom. I’d like to believe a phone call and “deep appreciation” for the pain that’s been caused could get us talking towards some kind of, at least basic courtesy, of a place. Do I believe that can happen? Well, sure, anything can, but I don’t just not believe it, I don’t even want to believe it. I don’t want us to be reconciled to people who don’t have a capacity to hold themselves to account. I don’t want people who believe in themselves, in their own innocence or lack of responsibility, at the expense of the whole world. I’m not okay with pretending that’s okay. I don’t want that to be a statement about me as an example I set for anyone else. 

I’d like to believe that “things are just around the corner.” I used to. I thought I’d be 5 years down the line of a moderately successful coffee endeavor that kinda sorta ran itself. I’d like to think I’m one person who isn’t abject shit and a waste of time away from seeing my appeals online who wants to join up and get started. I want to believe that even in this new job, I’ll hit it as hard as I’ve hit everything, and maybe next month I’ll be wildly surprised at the “ease” I could have been working to get twice as much. But I believe it’s always in the romanticized past. I believe that’s where most of my friends are. I believe it would take nothing short of a lottery-adjacent offer to get anyone to come play for longer than lunch or a weekend.

If you’re a believer, you think all of this is just God speaking through me. You caught this blog at the EXACT right time, and try as you might to fight, certain lines just stuck with you today or came up as relevant like a proverb. I don’t get credit for thinking or sharing. I don’t get to differentiate my thoughts and language. I don’t get to take responsibility for my actions when they seem to contradict. I don’t get agency. I don’t have ideas, let alone ideals. If you believe, I don’t exist, and thus am absolved of my sins. So why not you as well? You as my witness, you who would condemn me with every sweetest profession, you who speaks without saying anything. This is the word of My God! So sayeth, Me.

[713] Before I Go

Ford knows I'm capable of making a litany of dramatic, damming, and maybe unduly despotic proclamations, either provoked by alcohol, the hangover day, or just waking up on the wrong side of existence. Someone that does that too often it's hard to take seriously when they describe the “plight” of what they're experiencing. I'm sure many clinically depressed or mood disordered people were summarily swept up in dismissive and condescending cultural normative understandings. Before we derived a concept of “mental health,” there was nothing to “get” or “fix” about a mope, nor shared language that might help discern a real problem from the really self-indulgent.

 

That said, I want to be dead serious. Right before I take off on the trip to do my “training” to start this job, I want to speak about the bottom floor of my fears about proceeding down this path. I want to say yet again that I think it's a problem. I don’t think what I'm doing is quite more a mistake than a solution yet, but that it can become so if I'm not paying attention. I don't want to become the person I'm imagining by finding this kind of lifestyle too compelling. I'd like to remain a noble savage.

 

The environment I'm going into will be “normal.” They want business casual. They operate between 8 and 5, with several breaks in between. They'll pay more than I need, but never really enough. I know their language. I know their tone. I got their degree. I'm significantly more the product of their relative stability and comfort than I am the things I've attempted to do in striking out on my own. But I stress, the reason I wanted, and argued, and sacrificed, and put myself through sketchy and painful things was because I was overwhelmed by what I saw as the self-immolating tendencies of that world.

 

I don't want to be good enough. I don't want what's handed to me. I don't want what isn't fought for. I can ride the coat tails of those who came before who prescribed their version of “the good life.” But that isn't me. I'm not business casual, early riser, or under the illusion a drug-addled household that abuses children is going to benefit from my 5 point plan and hour a week consultation. I'd love to be wrong about that, but the “impact one person” is a narrative I've long derided. I'm going to be contributing to a culture with overriding behavior I disagree with in the only way I know how, exhaustively.

 

Whatever scary or horrifying things I've ever said about suicide, they were usually due to a reflection on the world, not the internal one I was harboring. I don't wish for this to change. I don't want to be out-of-body watching myself go through motions, spend money, and recycle the worst kinds of conversations. When that happens, I'll want to die. So, whether you believe me or not, this is what I'm flirting with in this kind of life. My will to live is going to depend on how I can fit this into a larger paradigm and not let it become me. When I don't feel like I have options or like I'm moving away from having to do things how I desire, we're entering dangerous waters.

 

Without trying to sound too disingenuously selfish, to be sure, I've felt at the end of the “labor” rope for quite some time, even and especially in a job that I was able to leave “at-will.” I so happen to have a will that turns an inch of freedom into over-indulgence and the smallest notion of captivity into a life-sentence. It's important to understand that different things do this to different degrees. But that goal across levels is to find a way to reject them completely. That's me still moving towards a completely off-grid and sustainable lifestyle. That's still in the pursuit of knowledge about how the world churns in spite of how many “busy” or “tired” claims come flying in.

 

I think I finally feel a measure of guilt. Guilt that I've been broken. Guilt that the norm is proving “right.” Guilt that for as good as I consistently say I have it, and read about relative to the rest of the world, I'm not able to carry the ball forward without weathering a potential game-losing fumble. I'm still willing to entertain the idea that this happened at precisely the moment it “should.” As I have the land, as my bills are fleeting. I can take on the burden of paying particular attention to my mind and fitting in with hopefully a giant monetary resource from doing this job like I know they aren't used to people doing it.

 

I'm willing to be surprised. I'm willing to take the risk. I know it's not all bad. But the fear is no less real. The consequences no less damning. I'm not allowed to be comfortable. Comfortable is death.

[712] The Wrong Way

Disclaimer: little bit drunk.

 

I'm not “anti-capitalist.” We have any number of voices railing against the dangers of not owning your labor and grasping that the exploitation involved with having a chosen few owning the resources and means of productions is generally shit. As an allegedly “smart” person, I wholly understand that were there literally a machine that drove society, very obviously most people would not be equipped to operate it. 

 

I have a hard time conceiving of myself as anything but incredibly selfish. Truly, is there a single fuck given about anything I deign worth complaining about? Oh, I'm the kind of overweight that can be fixed in 2 months. Dear god, in 3 months of getting a “bullshit” job I'll make more than 90% of the people on the planet per week. Let my dumbass subject you to a bullshit diatribe justifying my TV watching. For real, I'm the epitome of a self-involved goddamn joke of a human being. I hate it. I don't know how to fix it, even if your mind has rushed to a dozen “fixes” I'd probably disagree with.

 

My concerns really are big. I want a backdrop that doesn't need excuses and rationalizations. I want a picture we can take pride in thousands of years after we're gone. Of course nothing but my blogs even pretend to live up to that ideal, but it is the standard nonetheless.

 

You know, fuckers, when you dig into me, you're not going to be surprised. I talk until I want to puke about my ideal kind of life. I own every failing moment and use it as a point of scorn and condemnation for what should be. Are you under the fucking impression that you aren't shit!?

I don't even need to win. I don't need to be proven right. I already know what I know. I understand you more than any asshole ever should. My instant rapport with everyone I ever meet is a sign. My ability to understand, digest, translate, and reconfigure is a gift. You will all burn before I forgo using it to its potential.

 

I think I should just die in a car accident tomorrow, but I know it's not going to happen. I have an insane... legit, that shit is insane...I have an insane amount of power I've kept myself hidden from for a very long time. What gives me the right? Where do I get off? Every fucker reading this who knows anything about me is absolutely convinced they know what the fuck I'm talking about. Swallow that amount of bullshit and then think to give me shit.

 

What happens when I “just take?” It scares me. I don't want to be a cliched megalomaniacal historical example. But, what happens? What if I don't just take every inch of what I can do, but every micrometer? I feel myself moving there. I think it's what's next. I'm at the cusp. I'm the person you know who can do anything. Is that okay? I don't want to be as sure as I feel. I don't want to commit. But dude, I'm almost 30. Why shouldn't I just take everything? It can't be right, right? But I will. My opinion of me aside, I will.

 

I don't want what's been given to me. I don't want to exercise my understanding. I want a girl I get along with who will actually stick around. I want to explore my entrepreneurial goals in due time. I want to emulate the safe-enough environment for kids to grow up in that I did barring my insane parent. I don't want to feel responsible for the whole world. I don't want to to know how to shift the balance of power every moment. I don't want to curl my chin and tear up at the prospect of being more than a whiny little bitch in blogs. But it's me. It's mine. I'm going to take it, and shape it, and dictate existence. That's what I'm here to do. I'll do it drunk. I'll do it through TV shows. I'll do it bitching and complaining about everything conceivably possible not worth complaining about.

 

I hate it. I hate what I have to do. I hate that you're not going to help. I hate the presumption. I hate the fear. I hate the obligation. I hate the sheer dread of doing something stupid that derails any tangible example of the fact. But you know what? Fuck you. I don't give a fuck if I die tomorrow and fail. I at least went down knowing my shit and what I'm about. You can get fucked. Bitch ass niggas frontin like they ever fucking understand shit. You're my fucking friends, right!? God fucking forbid! You ain't there. You don't want it. You don't give a fuck.

 

Imma take it. Look out. Joke ass novelty as it will register with your punk ass. It don’t even fucking matter.

[711] YITV

I was recently asked why I watch so much TV. I proceeded to give a 10+ minute answer as though I'd been rehearsing it for weeks. I've discussed it before, but maybe not in a comprehensive way. I'm also kind of bored of watching TV at the moment, see myself staying up much later than is necessary, and figure why not break into the night with something light.

Like any habit, it doesn't start in a vacuum. The road is paved with dozens of things I've attempted to do instead. I'm as easily pulled away from a show as there is a suggestion to do so. But when all else fails, one thing remains certain. There is always something to watch.

Before it was TV, it was reading. If you're not focused on fiction, that will bring you down in a hurry. During drug study life, I had all day every day to read about the world. I made sure to sleep through the day and start reading sometime in the afternoon, but the idea is the same. Now, your busy and adult friends who might share an article or two every couple of weeks are up against your 5 a day that you've distilled down from the 25 or 30 you read that day. This means you have nothing in common to talk about, and when you do opine, it's at a level of derision and detail that little miss “helpful sharer” didn't want to engage you at. Low mood and active alienation isn't sustainable.

Before reading, it was the clinging to the last strings of hope for “together” things like consistently dancing on Tuesdays or trying new things at cheap enough spots around town. I had weeks and weeks of events rollerskating, ice skating, water sliding, movie going and hosting, sports and lunches, which week after week were either ignored or started to look like some increasingly desperate move to cling to youth more than anyone's genuine engagement to spend time together. The burden of getting older and adopting new responsibilities I'll say killed that, but I think there was a considerable amount of no longer wanting to fake what I wasn't actually faking taking hold too.

Before that people were actually around to just hang about and do nothing or anything with. Before that was coffee shop and business fervor. Before that school. Then back to partying, before school again. Then work and school all the time. The point is, there's been stages and differing degrees of focus at each one. Would I rather everyday be able to build or create at my leisure? Duh. Would it be nice to engage with people who want more for themselves than what they can scrape together or lie about over drinks? I'd kill every former conversational partner for a shot at a single one.

But why has TV persisted? It's my personal Elizabeth Warren. What can you do at basically every level of mental involvement? Sit around, or walk the treadmill, or do some yoga, while the moving pictures talk at you. I'll of course focus in on something quality, but the rest is to help keep my mind from attacking me. I need to be engaged in something, might as well be a show.

You might be wondering, why do I have to be engaged? Why can't you sit back and relax or enjoy yourself? Mind you, this is usually where we spring into judgments on my character, but nonetheless, I wonder, what makes you think I could get more relaxed? I've been a “sit and stare” kind of person the majority of my life. I was glued to my video games as a kid; at least my memory of being so wants to leave me befuddled that I developed any athletic ability. I grew up poor enough where loading up on free library movies and binge watching TV were the thing to do well before the term “binge watch” came into the popular lexicon.

Admittedly, I also like TV worlds considerably more than the real one. It'd be dope as hell to have a huge extended Modern Family where our hijinks would never overtake how we care about each other and eventual resolution. The deep mystery and high stakes of The Americans is as close as I'll ever get to play spy. Violence and the wonders of mysticism in Vikings makes you want to believe in destiny. Stories, be they in TV, movie, or comic book form, are actually going somewhere. They're going to be there each week. They're going to end. You can rely on them in a way the regular world will never provide. The Challenge and Impractical Jokers are going to make me laugh, every single time. Brockmire was suggested to me out of the blue, and my gut hurt all day from laughing.

TV also functions as sort of my last remaining bridge into anyone bothering to connect with me. I post a poem about another lonely and sleepless night, easy to forget. I post that Legion is perfection, now we're cooking with gas. I had an old show FlashForward on while I was delivering food, and wouldn't you know it, the guy handing me the bags remembered that show and liked it back then! It's easy to debate the superiority of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D over anything DC. It's considerably harder to debate the intricacies of the Marvel Civil War and what lessons those characters might impart to how we conduct our lives.

Given that I watch so much of it across different times and genres, TV is still a huge source of inspiration. You know what I never found googling different “green” ways to live? A water system they set up in the ground of a desert home on Homestead Rescue, also suggested to me be someone else who opened up via commenting on what I was watching at the time. TV gives me lines to explore whether I can be a friend or family member like what's being depicted. It keeps me constantly turning over in my head what it means to be an actor and whether any pursuit of fame or being seen isn't fundamentally corrupt. I get to lose myself in a way that makes me think of both Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman who both have decried not wanting or not being good at being themselves.

As a window into the soul, if you're not out amongst the people, you can infer what they're like. Reality and soap opera TV overwhelming? I bet there's a mathematical formula that could consider the TV variables that would have spit out Trump as president. Does it get easier to see through people's motivations when the hype machine cup runs over and the praise outweighs what you can pick out on screen? Constantly. You don't need “The 25 Best Shows this March” to watch. That you can get that, and 25 more lists as long or longer seems to speak to not just me having an overwhelming amount of time to watch or desire to connect.

I've managed to find some truly break-out interesting things or worthwhile people as well. Sometimes the musical guest sends shivers. I can hear about everything, but seeing how someone talks about what they worked on can spark my interest to add it to the queue. It's a feedback loop. Is 90% of everything James Corden does or says on the show throwaway things to sleep to? Sure. He's also an incredibly charismatic geeky fanboy who's enthusiasm has bled onto me numerous times. I don't need to see the same jokes recycled across The Daily Show, Colbert, The Opposition, Real Time with Bill Maher, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Our Cartoon President, and The President Show. I like discovering lesser known but influential people Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper interview who reside at the level of whose works I want to map. Colbert acts as a barometer of “Joe Everyman” morality and sentiment. Long-form discourse at every opportunity is invaluable. Samantha Bee reminds us of what The Daily Show isn't anymore and does a lot of actual fund raising and awareness causing real change. And watching others' catharsis is an invitation to keep tabs on how people are working through what I perceive as suicidal circumstances.

TV is a search for a voice when no one cares to read what you're actually saying. It's attempting to pick up the pulse of what “the world” seems to be craving, be it the apocalypse in so many versions, or redemption, or family, or cheese, or just to abuse the safe and familiar. What to make of people patting each other on the back for “discovering” that as long as it's the black people who are rich and there's a fight for the crown it can be called revolutionary! At some important level, what we're creating is a testament to what we genuinely feel and think right now. Is our media landscape a reflection of something that amounts to more than a cultural psychosis or blindness? How broad are we looking? How willing are we to explore not just “that” something got popular, but why? What am I saying in watching so much TV? Well, pick a blog. Or pick up the bones of what I used to say and work towards before I leaned on my supplement.

I used to love saving shows to watch with my ex. Such a stupidly simple and common thing that says, “I want to spent all of this time with you.” I found considerably more laughs watching Archer as a group when we visited Colorado than I tend to on my own. I've watched shows I can't stand, and in describing why, turned friends onto them who've said it's now one of their favorites. In broadening my horizon of what I was willing to watch, I got to understand why my dad advocated for Friday Night Lights and plan to check out Lillyhammer because he used the same tone. I've gotten songs stuck in my head and discovered casting and production trends that I consistently admire and never would have found otherwise. You drop the right show name anywhere on the TV web and you get likes and nods out of the woodwork. It's a huge connective tissue of influence and ideas we take as for granted as water.

There's also a healthy dose of my obsessive tendency to “watch everything” at play. I tried to quit watching Arrow and The Flash cold turkey, and succumbed to the sunk-cost fallacy. Why watch 6 seasons and 17 episodes of something if you're not just going to get to the end, especially if you've been speeding up the playback and barely paying attention already? If I'm going to lock in, or at least feel the pull to, the things I do, the visual media environment is where I've carved out a large enough chunk of meaning that I do not find in the rest of my life. And while I have to be dragged through a job, or the struggles of home building, or the failures of interpersonal interaction, I can hop on and ride as many fanciful, dramatic, or life-affirming tales as are running.

My “balance” isn't between “relaxing” doing something like mountain climbing or camping and the everyday stress of real life. I'm always flirting with sanity verses insanity. I'm strung out on meaning verses emptiness. I need engagement against rotting. I'm proof positive that there are way more hours in the day than you might be willing to bother with. When you're stuck in this moment, and you can't seem to pursue anything “more” meaningful, whether it's words coming out here, or words coming in from media, something needs to happen. I'm still not prepared to stare at the ocean or a stream unless I'm tripping acid, and mountains are still giant piles of dirt. I envy whatever you're getting from wandering around and looking at those things instead.

[710] Hush Puppies

There's more to be said in the exercise of doing away with traits and people I don't want to be like. As I've sat and let the idea marinate, it's worth noting that my initial pull towards the friend group/s I enjoyed had more to do with things I was attracted to than the hundreds more I ignored. I've since gone on to demonize my “niceness fetish” and dismiss the merits of mere intellectualism. I suppose overall, I was responding to a way it made me feel included. There were also individual acts of solidarity or just being a dope person that I admired. I liken my conflict to the person who's got a wholly irrational raving lunatic parent who voted for Trump and carries any number of conspiracy theories, but their memories of childhood were that of a caring and supportive person who's not actually the devil.

 

As well, I was thinking about why anyone would or wouldn't want to be more like me. As the biggest dealer of shit talking about everything, including myself, I could probably go on for several pages about just what I've said or thought this week that would prompt someone to stay away. I think I'm more interested in trying to figure out what sparks certain and significant changes in people more than trying to put them into little boxes of acceptable or not. At the same time, there are definite behaviors that I know I've improved upon, that have seemingly been betrayed in the people who've fallen out of my life.

 

I don't want to be the kind of person who rushes to get pissed off and delete you because I go out of my way to misinterpret your words or think you're getting unduly personal about characterizing me. That's a pretty solidly consistent trait in the people who find themselves wanting nothing more to do with me. They refuse to talk. They turn every polite invitation into the most damming assumptions about my motivation, or they literally invent things I haven't said or done to draw a line in the sand. I don't know that you should treat anyone like that, let alone a presumed friend.

 

The last few days has been memories of who I thought were the best kinds of examples of people turning for reasons I associate with the worst kinds of people. Increasingly, they seem like the best kind of cautionary tale of not having figured even your basic kind of “life shit” out. It's why I'm incredibly suspicious of overly nice or engaged people. What are you trying to hide? What gives you the impression that shit is appropriate? The same goes for “real” mother fuckers who act like they're the first, the best, or the hardest. The choice to play passive aggressive pretend time isn't outside their reach.

 

I think a reason I'm semi-obsessed with being even remotely reliable is that it's one of the most mentally distressing things I have to deal with. I even mean “reliable” in the most despotic sense, in that, if you're going to be a certain kind of asshole, at least stay that way. I have friends I know are always going to be insecure 13 year olds. I have friends I know are going to remain way too open-minded about psuedo-health and mysticism. I have friends who are absolutely never going to light up and be the kind of person I saw in college without someone like me around cultivating or forcing. I know this. I accept this. Just like I'm always going to be saying loud or obnoxious things, I'm always going to be willing to talk about anything for as long as it takes, and I'm always going to be on the attack.

 

The thing I'm not able to work out on my own is whether people want to be like themselves. I don't really like that I've learned how to “do nothing” really well. I'm unable to frame that in some positive affirmation regarding patience. I don't like the impact of my meaningless jobs on my disposition or body. I don't like feeling as though I've made increasingly disproved statements about what I can get done or when. I don't like breaking workout or reading streaks. I don't like when I'm completely sold on the most damning things I might say about someone when I would melt at the opportunity for things to be okay again. What's okay if you're the only one who sees the problem, or at least think it trumps whatever they believe to be the problem with you?

 

I guess I just don't understand. I don't understand years in service to a relationship that's as easy to break as an “unfriend” button. I don't understand testifying and fighting in trying to accomplish something, and then sacrificing it on the alter of comfort. I don't get what's so dramatic or hard. But then, it's only confusing to me because I treat my life in pretty dramatic all-or-nothing terms. My “normal” is incredibly dramatic for everyone else. But even “all-or-nothing” is a kind of shorthand way of speaking to a level of intensity or sincerity more than some moral line. I think it's a sensibility encapsulated by the best kind of relationships, be it parent to child, spouses, or to a cause. Here it might be easier to say it like, “doubt doesn't mean failure” or “there's more at stake than how you feel” or “the good outweighs the bad.”

 

I might just be too much of an idealist. I think it's always up for grabs and negotiations never close. How could they? Ideas change all the time, perspectives are rocked. You could, of course, attempt to work through imagined scenarios and adopt practices of those you admire, but for most it's get tossed between the unexpected and unimaginable. And I, being the alleged mastermind or manipulator, know how to infiltrate and mold. I can supplement what people lack. I can start taking back hearts and minds. Instead of being confused why people don't debate and decode the mess of what I say, I can do what I just did in the local political landscape; rearrange power and nestle into beds people lay down for me. Is that a better and more moral use of my time? I could make the argument either way, and I doubt I'm going to find a context that helps me fix anything in advance.

 

I don't want to fall into my own hedonistic hole of what was easy to do or create. I don't want to stop being suspicious of my own motives or think I'm not blind to important changes happening in me. The best I can do is to not treat people like I've been treated. The best I can do is use my perspective and understanding of power to unable people more than I'm crippling or silencing. Because that's what I feel like. People want me quiet. I'm certainly never going to be that.

[709] Value Shuffle

An exercise I've wanted to do for a while now is to, instead of dig into some nagging in my brain and unpack things as they flow out, actively dismiss things that I haven't chosen for myself and try to see if a different, if not more complete, picture comes from the shooting down. 

 

The idea reinvigorated itself after getting into a very dumb conversation about what representatives do and don't do and whether the government is obligated to listen to its constituency. Seems an odd angle, right? Well the person I was talking to did the most ridiculous thing to me in conversation I've ever experienced. They took what I was saying, adopted it, and argued that it was me all along who had taken up their position. I explicitly dictated, word for word, what they said in opening the “debate,” 10 minutes later, “I didn't say that, that's what you said” with completely zero awareness he had even done so.

 

The conversation was ridiculous for a number of reasons, but what stuck out was a discussion of what and whether we had values. His idea was that your representatives have selfish personal values, indeed values barely if even exist, and they don't align with yours, so they can never stand for you, thus government always fails or is corrupt. This man is going to be a lawyer. My position was that values do indeed exist and that it's important to identify them and hold your representatives accountable so you can in fact see your environment as a reflection of what you actually think.

 

To not get lost in the minutia of what I swear wasn't worth repeating, I stated at one point that the reason I'm not on Wall Street or pursuing money at any and all cost was a direct reflection of my values. In my exercise of shooting things down, the irrational market dictated by insider trading, algorithm, and at the general abuse of law and the poor I feel would be a bad place to really feel like me and set the right kind of example of the kind of person suited to usher humanity into the future.

 

A discussion of values is an inexhaustible one. Things overlap and contradict. They evolve over time. But I frequently wonder if my behavior and ideas about “friendship” reverting to a more basic selfishness are a reflection of the people in my life, at least how I see them online and in their intermittently shoddy behavior in person, speak to me wanting to play the dismissing game of what I don't want to be like. It seems an exercise where a lot of babies will get thrown out with the bathwater, but at the same time, if those babies were best suited for parties and a few outings, out the window may be where they belong.

 

Why do I shit on jobs like mine even before I take them? Why am I kind of angry about the chance to make more money doing less work? Why did I never want to be a middle-manager climbing the ranks to be shuffled around different stores one day? Why am I no humble farm hand, chiseled and calloused with a set of particular skills? If I'm so smart, if I've so many ideas, why did I choose drug studies and unreliable roommate after unreliable roommate instead of something more suitable?

 

First, I think for something to be respectable, it needs to provide me a challenge. “Playing human,” or trading on my tall white male privilege, as some idiots would describe it, is extremely easy. I know I can solve most day to day problems that “regular” people seem to entangle their entire existence with. What's considered a challenge, let alone a worthwhile one, is particular to each person. You have to find a sweet spot where you can actually achieve some end, but not take it for granted. So any job that doesn't feel like a challenge is immediately a garbage job to me. I believe this so strongly, I work garbage jobs, sometimes multiple at once, until they become a challenge that forces me to stop.

 

Second, I'm always looking for things that can amplify “the best.” The vast majority of tasks that exist or that people will pay you for are valuable for a select few. This means that when you exhibit your best, the value generated from it is transferred to someone else. If I'm doing something the best, I want the money for it, I want the extra time to pursue other things, and I want to figure out ways to enable others to get the best out of their effort. How often do you think an opportunity like that exists? Because in my experience, practically never. Now we have a proper challenge, and once complete it will be a shining beacon of what I actually value. Seems a good enough reason to avoid what doesn't seem to speak to that.

 

In practice, the vast majority of jobs that exist I consider “wrong.” It's not that I don't want to make coffee or pick up trash. I just want to be doing it for myself. So if it's not mine, it won't do. And that doesn't mean there aren't people out there who do like me or espouse my values. But it might mean I'm not located anywhere near them to join up, or they have some other baggage I'm not willing to adopt.

 

I think the difference between a society on the brink, and one striving for the future, is one that feels attached and responsible for their work. Not just in doing it or being busy, but in the larger story and ongoing consequences of what they're bringing into existence. It's downright wrong to hamstring people with non-compete agreements or strip people of benefits and make them agree to be fired for any reason at any time. Just because that's “normal” in employment contracts doesn't mean we're setting a respectable stage for future performances. I think people who feel like “wage-slaves” adopt slave ethics that rarely revolt, are too tired to get educated or organized, and worship the scraps of existence.

 

A huge part of why I don't do what you do is because I don't want to sound like you. I don't want work drama always on my lips, as I pretend it's not so bad, and even get angry at you for pointing out how often I'm only talking about work drama. I don't want to romanticize my week vacation a year from now or slip into high-voiced pleasantries as we all probe for how and whether we've changed too much to be cool to hang out with anymore. I don't want my dreams to take a backseat to bills. It can happen while you're not paying attention. One small measure of comfort will consume you, and you'll be shocked to discover that things aren't so bad if you focus on this little happy place. I'll never love a pet enough to take a thousand pictures of it. No matter how good The Cubs play this year, I still don't know a single person on the team.

 

Really, what's your “job” if you're persistently concerned with learning any number of details about some globalized problem, industry, or psychology, and want to create, promote, and organize in ways that address them across societal layers? I don't know, but I do know it'd be a shame to waste what I've learned or insights I've gained playing along with the environment provided. I need a new standard and paradigm. I need people who've cultivated their own and could share or contribute new tools. I want the conversation difficult, the tasks varied, but the problems so explicitly accepted and recorded the path forward tends to show itself along the way. Good luck, you “entrepreneur.”

 

There's a huge and whole discussion about sounding or trying to be “above-it-all” where both the emotional and robotic alike like to wade in and temper what they see as a lonely and out of control ego with an apparent blindness to his general lack of impact so far. It's enough to say, that attempt is misplaced.

 

My struggle is so much less to do with some abstract question regarding who I am or what I should be doing, as much as it is how to get more people involved. I want checks on everything I persistently get wrong. I want a measure of communal understanding, trust, and cooperation. I'd go crazy for 5 people I work with who consistently answered their phones. The problem seems to be the world I'm working in. I need to work in and on it at the same time. I need to make enough money or create enough space without losing my soul, and increasingly, I need to do it on timeframes that have already swallowed up the initial motivation. Now, instead of “friends,” I need to do it for “the people I don't see fucking me for no reason” or perhaps “the youth.”

 

I don't know. This feels especially all over the place and my eyes hurt. Maybe a line will be a baby you don't want to toss.

[708] Omission Creep

I can't seem to break through. While I'm concerned with sounding like I'm on an infinite loop, I'm more bothered that I can't walk away happy from the last several things I've written. There's a nagging deeper point I haven't been able to dig out.

I had the thought, I think provoked by some TV show, that by the character's explanation, I'm a perfectly terrible friend. I think I'm pretty clear an example of how “nothing changes,” in that I won't treat you differently or it shouldn't feel “weird” if we haven't talked at length. At the same time, I'm not the kind of “default supportive” that turns me into a like machine or cringingly enthusiastic commenter. Increasingly, I've been finding it harder to even entertain the idea of visiting or coming through on boasts about having too much time and money. I've gotten geared up to go see a show or think to myself I should create a group to try and do something, and then I fall asleep at a random hour or go back to watching some show.

In a big way, I've gotten burned out on the prospect of most of my relationships. It's not that I don't want friends as much as, the basis for which formed my ideas of what friends were is gone. Friends are now what my mom turned them into; a handful you ever barely speak to until you manage to alienate them one by one. I don't want to check-in and share stories of getting by. I don't want my “social” scene to be comfortably uncomfortable adults.

I was sifting through the paperwork for this new job. If I approach it even half as earnestly as I have everything else I've hated doing in life, I'm going to start making a lot of money. I'm going to start making a lot of money after already erasing the things that tend to cost people a lot of money. I don't know how long it's going to take, or how much I'm going to feel my work has consumed my time, but given, “I have nowhere to be,” even in a month or 2 I could start feeling the impact. And then what?

Sometimes you see online rich awkward Indian or entitled white kids advertise that they'll fly out whatever remotely cute girl is willing to talk to them. Their concept of “value” or “power” or “social” is so beyond more broken than mine will ever manage. At the same time, what if you find yourself wanting to be busy and rich more than mucking about social pleasantries? Do I blame them for wanting to get laid and having no or shitty male role models? Compared to being some parody of a past that never was, maybe they're on to something.

I was also going through some old blogs where there were some comments from old friends. One in particular called “What It Means To Be An Adult” had a former friend chime in with how I had such an awesome way of framing things and related a story of basically having to raise her parents. I was railing about how “adult” it is to be stressed out, too busy, massively in debt, and then so deluded as to lecture a child you raised for following your irresponsible example. The friend who commented? One who invented reasons to be angry at me and threw our living arrangement into disarray.

What kind of example am I setting in my lifestyle and relationships? I feel like that Poison Ivy friend. If we're close enough, I can keep you intoxicated and carrying on, but introduce something that obstructs the scent, you start to wake up and get angry that you'd lost control. If you don't have my influence, then your spouse, or work, or picture of a healthy normal person story takes over. The point is that I can feel the pull. I can feel “better” excuses for not seeing people than the ongoing costs of home building or surprise fuckery of my precarious “gig” jobs. I used to have all the time in the world, you see, but now I'm salary and the meeting Monday is mandatory.

I don't want to sit here and pretend the erosion of my social scene hasn't been an ongoing and comment worthy process for years. I also don't want to pretend I haven't always reminded myself of my capacity to flip and start in some new way of being in an instant. It just feels like I'm going to make it even harder on myself now. If I'm already emotionally distant or dead, I'm sort of tightening the screws with a whole new obligation.

The conflict is between living through examples of when “it” was “good” and certain things made sense intellectually and emotionally, and then putting either years or distractions in between them to end up in these isolated realms of existence. I really do think it's isolated too. You may be better about phone calling or intermittent visits, but the difference between having yourself surrounded daily by people you care about or used to care about, and seeing the facebook version, are worlds apart. More to the point, having people with a shared goal or vision for your interactions together is indispensable if we're to imagine there's a “societal” reason to perpetuate the species that doesn't solely come from Pixar or religion.

Part of my reticence from half-assing visits I think speaks to my “do it well or not at all” sense. It's open to debate the degree in which this is more destructive than helpful at this point. If I'm going to crisscross the country visiting, I want to do it all at once or all the time or at whatever interval I so desire. If it feels like a desperate stab to meekly “keep in touch” before receding back home for another year or so, we're already dead. If it feels that way before I leave, it's going to feel that way during the flight, through every shot, and on the ride home. I don't want to bring you “work drama” because that's all I've learned to talk about.

That's the baggage I bring into every interaction though, isn't it? I drop my entire world into your lap whether you're prepared to deal with it or not. Here you go, chugging along with your life, and I'm like, “Everything we're talking about is dumb!” What? Calm down, you think. If we're not discussing work or plans to travel next year, why, what else is there? If we don't don resolved mock pensive matter-of-fact smiles about our slices of life, how will we recognize ourselves?

I know there's merit to the status quo. I know a measure of stability and predictability are preferred against so many other potentially horrendous fates. I think there's just a world of atrophied potential between “adulting” and cliff diving. There's ways of interacting with each other, our pasts, and in service to the future, that isn't dictated by our paycheck, incidental interactions, or region we were born into. I hand myself over to things that become veritable all-consuming metrics under which to conduct my life, and then claim TV or book reading as passable excuses to keep playing along. I can leave my “gig” job at any time? It absolutely doesn't feel that way, and that's not how it affectively plays out in my life. How many excuses for shitty conditioned behavior can we come up with?

I guess I'm writing this because I don't know when I'll see you. I'm still lamenting hardly being able to see me, and I should stop pretending a night out or weekend reminiscing is what I'm after. I'm still having to double-down on mere money making until I get my shooting range, or greenhouse, or camping destination, or mapping program, or dozen other things I'd rather be doing as often as I've spent in school, drug studied, delivered food, or will pretend to be helping poor people.

The best I can do, for now, is my half-assed trying in service to the handful of people I don't think are going to surprise me with some bullshit. When they do anyway, well, you know, of course. It's okay to be acquaintances. It's okay to be nothing to each other. I know I've become way more committed to myself after I learned that's what people are. It's not what I like or want, but it's what I'm doing. I won't even claim it's who I am, but it's who I'll be. And as long as I forgo deleting my facebook, you'll get a front row seat to the destruction in real time.

[707] Funny Mantis

Forgiveness. Letting go. Acceptance. Living to help and give.

If you want a Family Feud style list of “components of a worthwhile life” these would make the board. They're sentiments related at the end of this documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. Taken together, you get any number of self-help books or religious cliches. I don't know that the process of arriving at any is that well understood, and if you're someone like myself, you might be openly hostile towards them.

Let's take forgiveness. To be honest, I don't really know what it means. It's one of those words that I think I know what it's supposed to mean, but I don't have a strong concept of it affecting me personally. I “forgive” things to the extent I feel I understand them. It's a depersonalized sense. I “forgive” the things you might say or do while drunk, for example. I “forgive” the consequences of mental illness or youth and inexperience mimicking mental illness.

The purpose of forgiveness is supposed to be...acceptance? God forgives you, so you get accepted into heaven. You forgive someone who wronged you, so you...I'm truly drawing a blank. You get peace? You don't necessarily understand them or their motives. You accept that potentially flat out evil intent? I really need help with this. Acceptance isn't like taking a package someone hands you. It's a shift in your perspective. In order to do so, you have to make a kind of mental allowance for its reality. Perhaps it's you seizing the day because you've accepted death more readily than anyone around you is comfortable with.

Frankly, I don't really forgive. It's very particular to when as objectively and sincerely as anything can exist gets maliciously destroyed. I don't forgive parents for terrorizing their kids. I don't forgive watching someone sacrifice and care, and you taking advantage. I don't forgive shunning opportunities to learn or try at better understanding. In a word, I don't understand what I've come to define as “evil.” Deliberate maliciousness. I don't expect people to forgive it of me, and I won't forgive myself when I think a line has been crossed. It's a physical revulsion point that prevents me from persisting too long on thoughts that would trap me in an evil place. It stays my hand and tongue.

I try incredibly hard to cope with an over-active mind and agenda while tempering myself with the stories of those who seemed to let it overwhelm them. I don't want to feel like deep in my bones my essence is tied to some fight with my mother or anxiety about not being rich or famous enough. I don't want to think I squandered chances to be madly in love but only managed to fall for myself. I don't want to operate under the illusion that I'm “helping” or “giving,” when the capacity and responsibility to do so might not even be mine. That's something to let go of. That's a hard truth to try and accept.

I don't actually know that I can or do help people. That's the truth of it. People can chime in or chuckle, but my impact is theirs to discern. I can try to do things that comport with my understanding of living a worthwhile life. In so doing, the theory is that that will help. It helps me to live cheap, so try to provide people a means of living cheap. I need to write, so give people the opportunity to watch that process and hopefully write for themselves. I want to create and learn at my leisure, well independent of the societal structure I've been conditioned to fetishize and promote, so meticulously accounting for that structure and how I might arrange my own needs to constantly take place.

I think if you “forgive” the things that drive you to want to do better, you run the risk of quitting and growing complacent. I accept that there's little reason to believe “love” or “truth” or some starry-eyed ideal about how to conduct life will win out. That doesn't mean I forgive those who seem to go out of their way to make it harder to try and be better. I don't fundamentally trust you, but it's always going to be me setting myself up to pay the price in trying. I don't try to say or advocate for the word “love,” but learning the pain of having what become limbs ripped off will always be raw.

Let's move on to acceptance. That's kind of the end goal in all of this right? The idea that you accept what's happened or is coming. In accepting, you can move with instead of against. Maybe you alleviate a measure of stress you've burdened yourself with about all you've yet to achieve. It just seems like a fancy way to scapegoat. “Accept me as I am!” some self-righteous tumblr page might declare. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Tellingly, I think to call it a scapegoat, and the phrase most associated with it is a request for God.

If we press on it, what can't you change? At some level, somewhere, what is fundamentally beyond your capacity to change? Surely it's giant astronomical events right? Unless we get weird and entangle some of your particles with particles residing in the center of stars. You are change. You're a mechanism by which everything changes in and around you. If anything, it's a kind of prayer and sentiment that should provoke you into the wisdom that you'll never achieve serenity until you bother with changing as much as possible! Courage is a choice, not a gift.

I think the world belongs to the people who take responsibility for it, and it happens to the ones that don't. While I'm accepting of the idea that there are many many people working in service to what I consider evil ends, I don't accept it as a matter of course or forgive them their unwillingness to try harder. When you go about life having no definition of what constitutes behaving in helpful or forgiving and accepting ways, it's easy to consider yourself as having mastered or understood them. How about this? I accept that there are things I won't forgive. I accept that I'm always as dead as I feel, and am running out of time to be meaningful in my own eyes. I accept that most of my friendships were superficial. I accept that the help isn't coming. And I accept that over and over again what I say and try to do will get thrown in my face, disrespected, and misconstrued, because I “forgive” animals who masquerade as human.