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?
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?
