I consistently feel gross when I watch someone's tragedy on a reality TV platform. My first impulse is to ask, “Where would the soul of our country be if we couldn't find deformed or ugly people to sing for us?” There's been at least one trending story about “The Dr.s” basically stringing along someone who's face was eaten by cancer. The struggle fodder for a “look how we can fix you!” narrative. It's the general and pervasive sense that “people,” in their struggle or talent are a kind of redemption that will save us all. We can't talk about “exploiting” people we're “uplifted” by. We can't ask questions about who's getting paid what and by what standard they're judging. We'd rather cry in solidarity for the voice of an angel we'll silence in ourselves in a second if it kept us looking “normal” and “average.”
We're not out of the woods because there are stirrings of excited Left rhetoric and sense seeping through. The consequences of our obsequious relationship to what's shiny and full of feels is still the beating heart of our internal narrative. Trump backlash is not a substitute for knowledge, and game shows are not a substitute for genuine empathy through shared struggle. The scars or boils are still there, but we'd rather pretend not to look. Another story of a veteran who had no one going to his funeral made its rounds before thousands showed up last minute. Good thing we're so inclusive and accountable to the living in the meantime.
I'm restless. Like an old and worn pattern, I find a smidgen of positive feeling for my potential and the future, and like an addiction, my head pounds with wanting more than I have in front of me. Part of me is concerned that I've genuinely managed to render “positivity” as a form of good feelings into malady. I can't handle believing in myself and not watching myself carry out what's on my mind. I can read the book on how to build an underground house for $50. At 11pm on a Monday, I kinda wanna be outside digging, at least two shovel-fulls enough to know I don't really want to be digging.
It's at least a two part problem. One, I can kinda solve this way. I want to talk. I don't want it to just be pressure behind my eyes. Taking action, sometimes horribly wrong and distracting for distraction sake, is the second often sought solution. It's immensely gratifying to see even slivers of progress on something, whatever it is, whenever it registers as progress. I don't want to achieve one more episode. My eyes are strained from reading before I started this. I don't know that I'm tired enough mentally or physically to not just find myself like this trying to write myself into an excuse to shut down.
That part I try hardest to forget is how fast I work relative to other things. That's something I kind of appreciate about the State. It's slow by design. It lasts because it takes an exacting understanding of its various machinations, and you have to literally dedicate enough of yourself to appreciate it or it will eat you. The private world is where you get the Wild West potential and narrative. I've moved to the Wild West, and my obligations and training are all to do with the “real” kind of world. I know there are alternatives. I know I'm of the spirit and capacity to make big dramatic overnight change. I know not all change is good change, and I don't want to treat myself like an angsty loaded weapon.
What I see is like trying to describe the parties, or, at least what the parties were to me. You had to be there. You had to hear THAT person tell a certain kind of joke. You had to taste the once-in-a-lifetime concoction from the blender. I could build things that only I could build! My house could be a greater extension of my identity than some floor plan or generally accepted convention. I could have something to sell in that it's individuated and wise beyond some hippie arrogance or the purview of an introverted recluse. A number of times I've echoed the line, “be the change you want to see in the world.” And I could! I could do it every night after work. I could do it all weekend. I could do it in the rain or cold. I could build it into my hopeless budget that pretends I can't be debt free in a year.
Can you not see how every waking moment isn't at least a mild hell not being able to do so? Do you realize how much deeper I will breath when I'm NEVER told to turn down my music or TV show again? When I can make little Insta-stories of holes getting deeper or walls going up or materials I've found to recycle and create something new with? What more could you ask for than the freedom to express yourself? I mean, once you've accepted you're going to bother to keep on living and are honest with yourself about how little a “helping others posture” does for you when you've no idea what it is people really need. It's a process.
I don't think it's that I'm impatient either. I think there were people inventing and creating and devouring well before we had “instant gratification” as if that's what Googling and YouTube are providing us. It's almost instant, and I wouldn't equate placation with gratitude. I think it's that I'm indignant. When I start having more examples testifying to my myth, I'll be that much angrier I couldn't get people to help or play along. I'll have that much more judgment and resentment for the paths people pursued out of fear or weak approximations at adequate judgment and criticism. That anger certainly has to blend into the mix of the pain behind my eyes. I'm perpetually scowling at a world I'm dying to work incredibly hard to exist more parallel than perpendicular to.
What? 9 days I'm back to “even” brokeness after paying off the credit card. 2 weeks after that I can take half my check and do who knows what with. 2 weeks after that I start contemplating paying the rest of my car payments for the year, or internet bill, or for the means and supplies to build a garage. 2 weeks after that I send a stupid text or facebook message to a friend I'm probably still not going to see despite some wiggle room. How quickly a month and a half goes, and I'll be, maybe, settled into my must-be-cleaned space, weather providing, most days getting used to the idea that I'm the only person in the country without a gun.
If I build it, will they come? No, but at least I'll have built it.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Thursday, January 24, 2019
[772] Teetering
It's the sense of anxiety when everything has been going well for too long. It's the friend's story that comes to mind when you're reading about the “life lies” people start out telling in small ways which come to subsume their existence. It's the depressive episode and pending financial ruin you may casually scroll past on facebook as someone chooses to share something more than their latest vacation pictures. It's the edge between chaos and order.
I've spoken before about always needing to know that I can “lose my shit,” in a manner of speaking. The randomness that accompanies each moment is where my last vestige of icky “hope” ever resides. The sheer ignorance of not knowing who I'll meet today, what I'll discover online, or what flash of inspiration I might get after the random array of experiences mash and condense is as little of and the whole of why I bother to keep living. Well, that, and handful of Marvel movies and television series I'd like to complete.
In less dramatic and foreboding terms, that precarious place is what general “society” seeks to undermine. Terms like “the middle class” and “the state” are meant to instantiate the idea of immovable forces of stability or conservatism. I would guess that most of us get paid every week or two. The implicit assumption that you're going to persistently wake up on time, not crash your car, slog/enjoy whatever it is you're doing, and make decisions for your future self in every committed act of your current moment. To get that long-term job you have to commit to four or more years of school. If your caregivers had any “sense,” they made your transition into doing so a “natural” one.
There's been a random array of terms floating around my head. “Natural” is one. “Expectation” another. In our seemingly demonic capitalistic and hedonistic society, a return to the natural seems to get a lot of buzz. Let's get back to the old ways of doing government! You know, when they were “sane.” Let's return to the earth and chuck as many babies as we can to erase even the memory of bath water. I was asked what I expect to work on and get better at in doing at my job. They want to know how to keep me, but because they're wise enough to know we're always failing, how do we codify a target? Let's protect the authority of a mini-manager worker bee reinforced or undermined in each, hopefully mechanized and consistent, decision to make the state's will be done.
The horrifying and, hopefully solid attempt to tie that last 4 paragraphs together, truth of the matter seems to be that it's always an unknowable chance encounter. Did you arrive at a good place just because it feels that way, or is it the last good sensation you'll have for the discernible future? Many things are going right and wrong at once influencing your “now.” Maybe every feeling of things going well is because you've made yourself incapable of seeing how they're not. Maybe even after you ferret out the lies at the center of your being you're not strong enough. Maybe the new job isn't going to help, the new partner another flimsy and fallible shield, and the time invested never found the decency to even teach you anything.
Maybe there isn't anything to “figure out.” Do I ever really figure something out in writing? I sometimes gain a temporary resolve as I set sail on a thought process about things so specific as to be perfectly arbitrary to anyone else reading. I don't know that you can “learn” yourself to a “good” place. The monk, stoic, or enviable dispositionally biased example are always human. Every utterance you can take about as far as your own. Or, don't make idols. The “cool” cats have as many examples that would hurt the brand as anyone else.
“Radical” is another floating term. The radicals on either side of the political arena. Those willing to allow bat-shit into their moralisms. The “radical act” forever enshrined as the sheer ability to pick otherwise. Radical is localized. The rebels have always and will always exist. The counter-culture exists across literature and history. The revolutions are on a cycle mildly less predictable than the phases of the moon. “You can't say that!” Don't kick me off the ice barge, no matter that it's been set adrift. That's a nice description of the war going on for your mind. The faux-stability fighting against the faux-capacity to dramatically alter the course of events. Alter in a manner you'd prefer, that is. We can always quickly and easily destroy.
I'm looking forward to the weird places I might get into when I'm alone. I don't know what motivated this beyond falling asleep and waking up too early. I think a line I'm about to fall on either side of has made itself a little clearer. Or maybe I had something to do with it. I don't know, but I think I'd like to try walking a new precarious edge for a while, as if there's more than one.
I've spoken before about always needing to know that I can “lose my shit,” in a manner of speaking. The randomness that accompanies each moment is where my last vestige of icky “hope” ever resides. The sheer ignorance of not knowing who I'll meet today, what I'll discover online, or what flash of inspiration I might get after the random array of experiences mash and condense is as little of and the whole of why I bother to keep living. Well, that, and handful of Marvel movies and television series I'd like to complete.
In less dramatic and foreboding terms, that precarious place is what general “society” seeks to undermine. Terms like “the middle class” and “the state” are meant to instantiate the idea of immovable forces of stability or conservatism. I would guess that most of us get paid every week or two. The implicit assumption that you're going to persistently wake up on time, not crash your car, slog/enjoy whatever it is you're doing, and make decisions for your future self in every committed act of your current moment. To get that long-term job you have to commit to four or more years of school. If your caregivers had any “sense,” they made your transition into doing so a “natural” one.
There's been a random array of terms floating around my head. “Natural” is one. “Expectation” another. In our seemingly demonic capitalistic and hedonistic society, a return to the natural seems to get a lot of buzz. Let's get back to the old ways of doing government! You know, when they were “sane.” Let's return to the earth and chuck as many babies as we can to erase even the memory of bath water. I was asked what I expect to work on and get better at in doing at my job. They want to know how to keep me, but because they're wise enough to know we're always failing, how do we codify a target? Let's protect the authority of a mini-manager worker bee reinforced or undermined in each, hopefully mechanized and consistent, decision to make the state's will be done.
The horrifying and, hopefully solid attempt to tie that last 4 paragraphs together, truth of the matter seems to be that it's always an unknowable chance encounter. Did you arrive at a good place just because it feels that way, or is it the last good sensation you'll have for the discernible future? Many things are going right and wrong at once influencing your “now.” Maybe every feeling of things going well is because you've made yourself incapable of seeing how they're not. Maybe even after you ferret out the lies at the center of your being you're not strong enough. Maybe the new job isn't going to help, the new partner another flimsy and fallible shield, and the time invested never found the decency to even teach you anything.
Maybe there isn't anything to “figure out.” Do I ever really figure something out in writing? I sometimes gain a temporary resolve as I set sail on a thought process about things so specific as to be perfectly arbitrary to anyone else reading. I don't know that you can “learn” yourself to a “good” place. The monk, stoic, or enviable dispositionally biased example are always human. Every utterance you can take about as far as your own. Or, don't make idols. The “cool” cats have as many examples that would hurt the brand as anyone else.
“Radical” is another floating term. The radicals on either side of the political arena. Those willing to allow bat-shit into their moralisms. The “radical act” forever enshrined as the sheer ability to pick otherwise. Radical is localized. The rebels have always and will always exist. The counter-culture exists across literature and history. The revolutions are on a cycle mildly less predictable than the phases of the moon. “You can't say that!” Don't kick me off the ice barge, no matter that it's been set adrift. That's a nice description of the war going on for your mind. The faux-stability fighting against the faux-capacity to dramatically alter the course of events. Alter in a manner you'd prefer, that is. We can always quickly and easily destroy.
I'm looking forward to the weird places I might get into when I'm alone. I don't know what motivated this beyond falling asleep and waking up too early. I think a line I'm about to fall on either side of has made itself a little clearer. Or maybe I had something to do with it. I don't know, but I think I'd like to try walking a new precarious edge for a while, as if there's more than one.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
[771] Not Giving Away My Shot
There's no escaping trying to capture this moment. First, “rent negotiations” sends my head spiraling after what's arguably been a prolonged period of uncharacteristic passive aggression. Then, I decide to do better. Now, I'm sorting through how to proceed. As a not-human, I think it's important to explore how this parallels and differs from my seemingly similar experiences of the past.
If there's a trope cloud hovering over my life I wish I could shake, it's the saga of roommates. From living with people who grow to resent you, to random people, to literal mental breakdowns, the surprises in expenses, the being left responsible for the shit they leave behind or bills they decide they're no longer responsible for. I've had everything beyond any evidence one of them has stood over me and watched me sleep. Relationships with roommates seem to mirror relationships between people who seem to have chosen to be with each other, and so there's at least an angle to depersonalize it.
My closest and perhaps longest friend and I have generally managed to avoid that kind of mess of human crap. He literally lived in a mess of his crap in my tornadoed living room for a while, but hey, it was his space at the time. Now, having lived together in the ever-falling fallout of my last living arrangement, familiar bells start to get rung. I'll skip right over all the ways roommates can manage to get under each other's skin and try to dive into the meat.
It's safe to say I've felt on the brink of madness given my desire to move out to the land. I want to stop calling it my garage or shed, and start working on and refining my home. I've sacrificed incredible amounts of time, money, probably health, and even the idea that I have much control or value but for what toothpicks and Popsicle sticks I can cobble together in so many labored motions.
So I hate my car payment. It doesn't matter that I can afford it. I hate it. I hate car insurance. I hate interest. I hate the new plates and reading the title in the bank’s name. I hate my job. I don't hate my job, but I hate my job. I hate waking up early even with little expectation to be on time. I hate driving to houses where I might have to bathe in anti-bed bug spray before I enter them. I hate listening to tired, angry, helpless liars hide their abuses and crimes. I don't hate it because it's hard, or I'm bad at it, or it doesn't pay enough. I hate it because it's not me out on the land learning how to make soap or build a pool.
This hate I try to mask, but for everything I've ever written. I try not to let it affect how I engage with people. I try to stay basically quiet and “even.” When you no longer feel that way is when you appreciate how hopeless a task it really is you're engaging in. It has to come out. There's a higher-order truth that underlies your existence that needs to be reckoned with, be it in entertaining your most horrifying and terrible thoughts, or in some physical manifestation of stress or pain. It's there. It's going to win something, eventually.
Interpersonally, this is the underlying kind of hatred I view in people. The one they always hate me even more for antagonizing. I don't want to be hated in secret. I want you to be able to let it out, as petty and hurtful as it may be. Remember, I'm not human. I have 5 minutes and a meal to get over it, or what else are we really doing here? My attempts to honestly relay where I'm coming from adopt the hate word plenty. This leaves me vulnerable to a kind of disregard or disrespect. How can someone so uncomposed be worth too much consideration? With so much to pass around, what of him are we really to take seriously?
I've always been a fan of the Greek Gods. I liked the idea that they acted like people, could actually hurt each other, and were like Divine White Trash. They're Gods, after all. Incredibly powerful, practically eternal, and a persistent analogy and lesson. Me, in leaning towards the idea that every individual is tantamount to a God, clicked with those stories. And now, when I feel like I've hit a significant height of grievance, I try to remember that I'm a God too. I'm no more at the mercy of the corners I feel backed into than the ultimatums or the lazy and incredibly tasteless words. I get to choose how to use my lightening.
That’s what has me always return to writing instead of driving my car over a cliff or borrowing Byron's gun to just get it the fuck over with. Don't you know? I'm to blame for my stuff getting stolen. That's the line I get to think about, or has wedged its way in tonight. I didn't buy the right kind of lock. I didn't find the right builders fast enough. I didn't check on it every night, ready to shoot or samurai chop whomever I may have come across. Because of course I am. Just like I'm responsible for this government shut down. Just like I'm responsible for every misfired neuron addicted to sugar and every second I stay up later tonight than my, simply poorly controlled, brain wishes to allow.
We worked out that Gods could be bargained with. They can be bought off. The mightiest politician and business mogul all have numbers underwriting their pathologies, and my situation is no different. I lost things monetarily when they were stolen. The “tension” of this shared space is all of a few hundred dollars that were poorly negotiated from the onset. The apparent lack of tact I've exhibited in carrying previous roommates' feelings inevitably carved out more. So, yes, I'll keep worshiping money and the chance to have more of it than you. I'll buy your silence. I'll retreat to the farm and build walls and install cameras. I'll find the price it takes to stop playing the dumb games.
Because that's what they are. Incredibly small and weak games. We will cut each other up for emotional damage points when the heart is that we want a little more space or money. When we discover that's not what we really want, it gets even smaller and even weaker. You know why I want to be left alone? So I can actually play a game that's worthwhile. So I can focus on what can be instead of reimagining and adjudicating the past. In the span of 3 days I had one friend tell me they'd be pumped to come out and help me build things, they just need to be shown how, and another tell me it's my fault the things I moved out there got stolen. I think I'm playing the wrong kind of game with one of them.
I'm literally proud of myself that I'm prepared to eat as much shit as it takes. I leave. I remove myself from the equation when nobody feels they have anything to account for but their perspective of me. Always, fine, you are right. There's always someone considerably worse off than me. I've met or read of many a car-sleeper. I don't need to type this on a big screen. I don't need a California King size bed. And I don't need the flak about why my life looks like it does. I don't need friends trying to “save” me from my earnest desires and goals. I don't need a slew of regular-Joe bills and a title. I don't need the facade, and with my dying breath I will profess my hatred for the million tiny negotiations it takes to exist on the edge of self-annihilating hypocrite.
I believe feelings inform. If I'm not a suicidal person, and the idea of blowing my head off or punching something or just generally destroying feels good, if nothing else, it means the situation I'm in isn't a healthy one. I didn't break anything or scream. I threw a White Castle cup of water against a dumpster, and then I picked up the cup and threw it away. Clearly, I'm not one to be messed with. The idea of my “best friendship” was offered as the stakes if I didn't capitulate to a roommate setup for next year that would cost me more money, drag me away from my goals, and downplay how, if Duke told me tomorrow I had power, I'd be cutting the hole in my wall for the air conditioning before I ever learned how to properly install air conditioning.
Does that sound terrible? To humans, sure. Who gambles their friendships like that? You do it all the time, but you don't state it explicitly. Me though? I know what he wants. He wants money and space. That's nothing. That's boring. That's the kind of petty reserved for politicians and pathological first world. I want money and space too, but my conception of how to get it and the work required doesn’t live or die based on how I feel about a friend in my living room. Our friendship has always been transactional. That's why it lasts. And when he doesn't think he can profit from me anymore or I believe he's cashing too high of emotionally tolling checks, it will cease as arbitrarily as it began. I'll just be telling him to get his hands out of my fucking wallet instead of his fucking pockets.
I'm disappointed, mostly. It's characteristic of life's tragedy to watch people change in ways you're not crazy about. I certainly desire large amounts of money and a degree of “power” to be sure, but I'm not so reflexively keen to wield how I might go about getting those things against current allies. The bossing white-guilty townies around and blow to the pride from not winning the election has made changes. The finding a new marginally-motivated white boy toy is an all-encompassing saga. And here I am, about to leave. You'd think, if he were human, that might cause him to lash out and seek to control the situation in unhealthy ways.
No matter what, keep speaking the truth. That's the only way out. If things need to die, don't deny death. If things change for the worse and people who've never caused you to feel a certain way all of a sudden do, talk about it. Own it. Those feelings are yours. Your face in front of their face doesn't have to be there. And that's okay. Especially if you're me. Did you hear? I still have my own rent-free tiny house and a million ideas I want to play with out there. I even have a friend who said they'd be wickedly excited to help me build it. I should put more time into that game.
If there's a trope cloud hovering over my life I wish I could shake, it's the saga of roommates. From living with people who grow to resent you, to random people, to literal mental breakdowns, the surprises in expenses, the being left responsible for the shit they leave behind or bills they decide they're no longer responsible for. I've had everything beyond any evidence one of them has stood over me and watched me sleep. Relationships with roommates seem to mirror relationships between people who seem to have chosen to be with each other, and so there's at least an angle to depersonalize it.
My closest and perhaps longest friend and I have generally managed to avoid that kind of mess of human crap. He literally lived in a mess of his crap in my tornadoed living room for a while, but hey, it was his space at the time. Now, having lived together in the ever-falling fallout of my last living arrangement, familiar bells start to get rung. I'll skip right over all the ways roommates can manage to get under each other's skin and try to dive into the meat.
It's safe to say I've felt on the brink of madness given my desire to move out to the land. I want to stop calling it my garage or shed, and start working on and refining my home. I've sacrificed incredible amounts of time, money, probably health, and even the idea that I have much control or value but for what toothpicks and Popsicle sticks I can cobble together in so many labored motions.
So I hate my car payment. It doesn't matter that I can afford it. I hate it. I hate car insurance. I hate interest. I hate the new plates and reading the title in the bank’s name. I hate my job. I don't hate my job, but I hate my job. I hate waking up early even with little expectation to be on time. I hate driving to houses where I might have to bathe in anti-bed bug spray before I enter them. I hate listening to tired, angry, helpless liars hide their abuses and crimes. I don't hate it because it's hard, or I'm bad at it, or it doesn't pay enough. I hate it because it's not me out on the land learning how to make soap or build a pool.
This hate I try to mask, but for everything I've ever written. I try not to let it affect how I engage with people. I try to stay basically quiet and “even.” When you no longer feel that way is when you appreciate how hopeless a task it really is you're engaging in. It has to come out. There's a higher-order truth that underlies your existence that needs to be reckoned with, be it in entertaining your most horrifying and terrible thoughts, or in some physical manifestation of stress or pain. It's there. It's going to win something, eventually.
Interpersonally, this is the underlying kind of hatred I view in people. The one they always hate me even more for antagonizing. I don't want to be hated in secret. I want you to be able to let it out, as petty and hurtful as it may be. Remember, I'm not human. I have 5 minutes and a meal to get over it, or what else are we really doing here? My attempts to honestly relay where I'm coming from adopt the hate word plenty. This leaves me vulnerable to a kind of disregard or disrespect. How can someone so uncomposed be worth too much consideration? With so much to pass around, what of him are we really to take seriously?
I've always been a fan of the Greek Gods. I liked the idea that they acted like people, could actually hurt each other, and were like Divine White Trash. They're Gods, after all. Incredibly powerful, practically eternal, and a persistent analogy and lesson. Me, in leaning towards the idea that every individual is tantamount to a God, clicked with those stories. And now, when I feel like I've hit a significant height of grievance, I try to remember that I'm a God too. I'm no more at the mercy of the corners I feel backed into than the ultimatums or the lazy and incredibly tasteless words. I get to choose how to use my lightening.
That’s what has me always return to writing instead of driving my car over a cliff or borrowing Byron's gun to just get it the fuck over with. Don't you know? I'm to blame for my stuff getting stolen. That's the line I get to think about, or has wedged its way in tonight. I didn't buy the right kind of lock. I didn't find the right builders fast enough. I didn't check on it every night, ready to shoot or samurai chop whomever I may have come across. Because of course I am. Just like I'm responsible for this government shut down. Just like I'm responsible for every misfired neuron addicted to sugar and every second I stay up later tonight than my, simply poorly controlled, brain wishes to allow.
We worked out that Gods could be bargained with. They can be bought off. The mightiest politician and business mogul all have numbers underwriting their pathologies, and my situation is no different. I lost things monetarily when they were stolen. The “tension” of this shared space is all of a few hundred dollars that were poorly negotiated from the onset. The apparent lack of tact I've exhibited in carrying previous roommates' feelings inevitably carved out more. So, yes, I'll keep worshiping money and the chance to have more of it than you. I'll buy your silence. I'll retreat to the farm and build walls and install cameras. I'll find the price it takes to stop playing the dumb games.
Because that's what they are. Incredibly small and weak games. We will cut each other up for emotional damage points when the heart is that we want a little more space or money. When we discover that's not what we really want, it gets even smaller and even weaker. You know why I want to be left alone? So I can actually play a game that's worthwhile. So I can focus on what can be instead of reimagining and adjudicating the past. In the span of 3 days I had one friend tell me they'd be pumped to come out and help me build things, they just need to be shown how, and another tell me it's my fault the things I moved out there got stolen. I think I'm playing the wrong kind of game with one of them.
I'm literally proud of myself that I'm prepared to eat as much shit as it takes. I leave. I remove myself from the equation when nobody feels they have anything to account for but their perspective of me. Always, fine, you are right. There's always someone considerably worse off than me. I've met or read of many a car-sleeper. I don't need to type this on a big screen. I don't need a California King size bed. And I don't need the flak about why my life looks like it does. I don't need friends trying to “save” me from my earnest desires and goals. I don't need a slew of regular-Joe bills and a title. I don't need the facade, and with my dying breath I will profess my hatred for the million tiny negotiations it takes to exist on the edge of self-annihilating hypocrite.
I believe feelings inform. If I'm not a suicidal person, and the idea of blowing my head off or punching something or just generally destroying feels good, if nothing else, it means the situation I'm in isn't a healthy one. I didn't break anything or scream. I threw a White Castle cup of water against a dumpster, and then I picked up the cup and threw it away. Clearly, I'm not one to be messed with. The idea of my “best friendship” was offered as the stakes if I didn't capitulate to a roommate setup for next year that would cost me more money, drag me away from my goals, and downplay how, if Duke told me tomorrow I had power, I'd be cutting the hole in my wall for the air conditioning before I ever learned how to properly install air conditioning.
Does that sound terrible? To humans, sure. Who gambles their friendships like that? You do it all the time, but you don't state it explicitly. Me though? I know what he wants. He wants money and space. That's nothing. That's boring. That's the kind of petty reserved for politicians and pathological first world. I want money and space too, but my conception of how to get it and the work required doesn’t live or die based on how I feel about a friend in my living room. Our friendship has always been transactional. That's why it lasts. And when he doesn't think he can profit from me anymore or I believe he's cashing too high of emotionally tolling checks, it will cease as arbitrarily as it began. I'll just be telling him to get his hands out of my fucking wallet instead of his fucking pockets.
I'm disappointed, mostly. It's characteristic of life's tragedy to watch people change in ways you're not crazy about. I certainly desire large amounts of money and a degree of “power” to be sure, but I'm not so reflexively keen to wield how I might go about getting those things against current allies. The bossing white-guilty townies around and blow to the pride from not winning the election has made changes. The finding a new marginally-motivated white boy toy is an all-encompassing saga. And here I am, about to leave. You'd think, if he were human, that might cause him to lash out and seek to control the situation in unhealthy ways.
No matter what, keep speaking the truth. That's the only way out. If things need to die, don't deny death. If things change for the worse and people who've never caused you to feel a certain way all of a sudden do, talk about it. Own it. Those feelings are yours. Your face in front of their face doesn't have to be there. And that's okay. Especially if you're me. Did you hear? I still have my own rent-free tiny house and a million ideas I want to play with out there. I even have a friend who said they'd be wickedly excited to help me build it. I should put more time into that game.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
[770] Shawshank Mode
This exists with a mission. I actually want to find something by the end. I don't really care about what's to be discovered along the way. I want the explicit feeling of a kind of charged energy or intention after doing away with whatever is daring fog to take over.
I'm so normal. I wake up at a consistent time each day and get tired around the same times at night, even on weekends. I entertain the thought of going out to do something irresponsible before quickly receding back to my couch. I even forwent a beer I was considering drinking, no doubt my subconscious trying to protect me from the unbearable stomach acid that creeps in if I eat or drink in the late hours (sips beer while proof-reading). I watch my shows. I pay my taxes. I get in inane troubleshooting conversations with Amazon representatives. I wear about the same outfit each day. I rearrange furniture like a troubled housewife looking for fulfillment beyond her kids and kitchen.
There's this huge problem I have with this. While I have hands, feet, and a face all connected to a body with other human things and capabilities, I'm actually a robot. The voice in my head that provokes these digressions is just a mirrored and entangled interpretation of infinite waves, and I never know where it's going or what it will get up to next. All the human body stuff tries to compel it one way, the news another, broken plans and working environments another. It's one thing to have an overbearing parent, perhaps, it's another to have every waking moment be compelling you to do this, that, or the other.
And then the irony! I've got no direction! I pick a direction, and the weather tells me what to do. I set an obligation, and I find myself slowly start to resent things that make me happy. Don't turn your hobbies into chores in a weak attempt at being “productive.” No one cares what you're learning or how good you are at music, the cynic in me says. I care that I represent mediums in a way that matches how I feel about them. I don't want to be a shitty musician winging it all the time. I don't want to Bob Ross my way into skirting over the years of practice for something passable. I don't want to compile ever-higher stacks of notes and books I'll never be able to talk about with anyone outside of an online forum.
What do us non-humans do? Or, what did I used to do? That's just it. I did. I just did! I just searched for and bought land. I just went to drug studies and faced whatever fears or skepticism I had. I just talked smooth and went for what's now hotly demonized flirtations. I challenged and antagonized. Now? I sit, and wait. I felt what happens when you burn too bright too fast, and persuaded myself sitting and waiting was best. Then I tried to regiment that spirit into something “wise” and incremental. But I don't work incrementally. I work now.
It's incredibly hard to explain to people what you're attempting to create when it's the ever-fleeting moment. When it's the spirit of momentum and infused enthusiasm. When it's the “peer pressure” to be or do a certain way. I piggy-backed what I liked about friends in college into pressuring myself to achieve more and faster. That's the vital human component, something to push against, I need. I also need hands at work, but I don't have selection pressure. I'm now only that thing that people think maybe has a better than chance shot of doing something interesting one day. In my head, I was maintaining an idea that whatever I was working on was exactly what I needed to be doing, and doing fast, right now, and whatever it cost it cost, time or money wise.
There's obviously holes in that strategy, but it also carries a certain kind of wisdom about not holding back and taking chances as they're afforded. Each new “normal” obligation I add to my pot, the less I get to be “at the ready.” It feels dumb to spend $500 for ten hours of website work when that puts me up 2 and half car payments. That's a problem. That's why I have my tiny house, so come hell or high water, that problem is designed to be phased out.
I don't “relax.” The reason my jaw clenches is because my natural non-human state is in devouring information, churning through people, and forcefully asserting myself all over the place. It makes me think of when people criticize my writing as though there's something to be gained from bemoaning the compulsion. You know how little shame I offer the drug addicts I talk to? There's an underlying guiding principal not being addressed, not mere decision making gone awry.
For some reason, this feels like the time to differentiate suffering from making yourself suffer. You can make yourself suffer by just restricting your diet. You suffer when you're starving. I'm not making myself clench my jaw. I'm starving for something no amount of regular paychecks and comfort can provide. And just like the populations starving for healthy food or non-destructive work and play environments, without huge investment, cultivation, and a fair amount of luck, there is no way to resolve in a healthy way. Here's where the stoics or Buddhists detach. I only detach as things and people become dead to me. I'm not entirely convinced this is the best strategy.
So what do I do? I could just keep writing and writing and writing. This is one of the few times I'm notably at the kind of “current moment” space I always want to be. It's this, or when people are freaking out or yelling at me. Talk about a weird wake-up call there. I'm the guy who's an embodied contradiction, right? So when you're flipping the fuck out, I'm having the best time possible. I'm certain I learned this as a self-preservation habit after enough crazy exploits with my mother, probably.
I have to stop writing at some point. I've got 60 books on my Kindle. I've got hundreds of comic book histories to try and get lost in. Those 15 games I bought for my PlayStation I've managed to complete less than half of one of. There's always something to do, right? There's always ways to leap right out of the moment and keep pretending you're going to find the right inspiration from the obscure line in a song or someone else's characters.
My concern is remaining outside of the realm of doing dramatic and rash things. It's not like I have a hankering at this moment, but it wasn't that long ago I took acid on a whim at 3 in the morning. Nothing bad happened, but neither did anything particularly good. I just managed to like The Beatles less. It was another petty attempt to externalize the responsibility for finding what I need and, no shit, it didn't work. To think we have such a stunted culture that you can have any number of rising YouTube personalities and celebrity types feel very good about pumping out mantras of having goals and making dreams manifest, but no one gets around to discussing what happens as things linger on the vine. No one deals with those who simply can't get what it is they need. If there's a will there's a way? Horse shit. It's like “life happens for a reason.” Yeah, maybe it's a bad one, as you can have any number of terrible ways you fill a hole.
Even in the “down” time my life feels trapped in, I search for that “productive” angle. Here again, irony, as I mock the idea of finding inspiration from a line, and that damn BuzzFeed article on burnout struck me in rethinking my “on-ness” as pathology more than productivity. I've always kind of been like that. But then, I've always been finding ways to cope in becoming mildly-ocd, neurotic, and, as I'm learning, maybe overcoming PTSD. I'm very slow to label, despite the many on offer, and I'm all-but prohibitive in my advocacy for constant medication. I think I have my shit, you have yours, and there's always a conversation about how to shovel it together. Not every veteran jumps at loud noises and I stopped dodging people moving to scratch their face or brush hair years ago.
The main thing that concerns me is that I'm starting to get headaches again. I'm sure they're partly from finding every wrong way to sleep on a couch, but even after the stretching and readjusting, I'll get them from just the...stagnation...of sitting doing whatever it is I'm doing at work or home. It's the old constant screen-time story coupled with the tragedy of soured expectations. It's the tunnel vision of praying towards the God of Payday. It's the professional-speak dressing up the mess of “state minimum standards” as “responsible 360 investigation.” You can be doing good work and doing well while still be doing the wrong thing. That isn't lost on me. There is no amount of deference paid to my job title that will feel like someone reacting to the environments I'd otherwise prefer to be creating. And that's even with one client calling me “the coolest guy he's ever met.”
I need an obsession. I feel best lost in something I can devour. I don't need it to even be something I like, but it has to be a degree of meaningful involvement that I find myself basically doing it all the time. It was supposed to be the fucking land! Manual labor has so many concurrent benefits, and I thought I was going to be ankle deep in so much dirt. One board at a time, one trip to Lowe's at a time. One weird but workable way of transporting something that has no business in a vehicle my size after another. Then the moment when you stand back and eye your handiwork or attention to detail. I don't want random “skills” or credentials that might maybe one day speak to something, like when I got my real estate license or in attempts to learn coding. I don't want to be the foremost expert on Marvel trivia or Smash Bros combos. I don't want to keep making failed attempts to ingratiate myself to the weird pockets of townies who technically share my interests, but in no way jive with the kind of non-person I am.
So at least we're pushing out some of the things I don't want to do. I still want to watch TV, but that usually has a hard and fast stop mechanism built in when I can't be bothered to focus my brain or eyes anymore. I do want to keep going to dance classes, which, after months of berating, I've dragged a friend into. I do want to keep planning interesting visits with friends in driving distance, and maybe one day be bothered to coordinate rides from airports. I want to keep writing away the fog. I'm not depressed or particularly sad. I'm comfort fog. I pay bills. I eat. I watch. I am not I, just American fallout. I really do want to play my guitar more. I look forward, more than most things, to being able to just be loud. I'm very likely going to make one of my “personal care” or “toys” expenses be as many online training and theory classes as I can find.
As much as I hate this language, I don't know how else to say it. I feel like “the universe,” having not gotten its clues through to me in any other way, just added numbers for me to stare at as evidence that I need to slow my thinking down and keep pillaging whatever it is I can make of my circumstances. No doubt I'll miss it and end up reincarnated or something until I figure it out. That's another idea I hate as well. I read a few short stories suggesting you eventually live through every life that's ever been, and by the end you get to like graduate to God-level or something. Fuck all that noise. What a useless idea that you need to be every gassed Jew to figure out why you shouldn't do that or every starved child before it sinks in surrounding them in greed wars was evil from the get-go.
I do find it striking that I manage to remain dead even, basically always, with regard to how I manage my finances. It's easier to make adjustments bi-weekly than think to myself I need to save for 6 months to buy (x) which may or may not be relevant by then. I didn't hesitate to spend the 15 thousand for the land. It was just math. 3 years of rent and utilities? I'll take the permanent spot. I didn't blow that money on indulgences or trips. My life generally stays about the same with or without extra money until certain conditions and thresholds have been met. If I had $50,000 in the bank, we start playing a new game. How long would that take? In theory, less than 2 years, if I never eat out, don't drink anything but water, don't buy anything new or fun, pay special attention to how I use my gas pedal, learn to love my functional clothing, and just generally adopt the mode and mindset of a poor kid who's stuck where he is with no expectation of moving.
Then what? I'm 32, accumulated a solid amount of personal and sick days. I've let the land basically stay static so as to pay off taxes and the car. I've cracked a few times and still pay for the gym or bowling I sporadically attend. I'm very tired and increasingly arthritic. I watch the seasons pass. I just float along with the sea of my circumstances. Surely, the world around me will resent that if I'm saying I'm dead at 30, to “waste my youth” as one of my co-workers expressed recently, by not appreciating 32, it will be as much or more egregious an offense. (She was upset I took a dance class...? I genuinely don't get it.) The over-arching story of my life could still start with the BuzzFeed-esc line YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR TOTALLY REIMAGINES HOW PEOPLE LIVE CLICK TO FIND OUT HOW as I thump my Thomas Jefferson fact about writing the Constitution at 33, so there's still time. And surely, every day in between won't be devoid of reading or surprises or morning laughs at the insanity my coworkers bring to safety staffing. It won't be bad, it just won't be right. One must always leave out the details and get airy and flip to really sell the angst.
The truth is that I've been slowly making myself accept that story. Whatever you practice, you reinforce in your brain. The headaches are literally my brain molding to better cope and deal with a measure of complacency and “acceptance” as the alternative is pounding forlorn pain for what can never be. If I can fight back the in-love impulses that wretched my stomach and ratcheted my brain, I can snuff the palpable but mild disdain for every waking moment I'm not exuding the spirit of an overzealous teen-spirit awardee. You know, using grit and grinding my teeth in a way we can all respect. Of course, I'm always going to be looking for the hard out. I'm always going to try to talk myself into the poor financial decisions, like this New Orleans trip that just got canceled because I'm tired of feeling like I'm never caught up, and I don't need to spend $300-$400 for 22 hours in a car and a weekend of stranger's tits. It's something to do, not what I really need or want to be doing.
So maybe that's the motivation? Stay vigilant against all of the means that would seek to distract you. I didn't hesitate to turn down smoking, drugs, and booze before the moment I no longer did. I can just turn monetary temptations into the same thing. Keep the eye on the prize. Stop pretending like it's a good idea to blow half a paycheck over a weekend just because you can if you're only going to be thinking about your car debt or next room on your house. What's the reality for me? I'll sacrifice nearly everything and everyone in an effort to keep clawing at some goal or in alleviating some problem. There's probably an excessively long conversation discussing whether or not that's doing me any favors, but I think the evidence is fairly on my side when I feel better doing me.
There's always the rebranding and reimagining of the past. Remember #yearofbeingboring? That could easily be #yearofwatchingthebestmovies or #yearoftoomuchusefulinformation. That’s the fun and arbitrary nature of it all, after all. Do what you want, just don't try to bend the truth so far it snaps back and knocks you out. Again I return to the idea that maybe I'm just meant to be more alone, hunkered down, and disappeared for a while. Maybe every connotatively sad word I use to describe it sparks a kind of perpetual revolt and opposite feeling in my audience, sparse as they may be, their waves of influence no less compelling. It's clearly not my job to speculate or pretend I know the future. So, as with it all, right now, I just need to stop.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
[769] Holier-Than-Thou
I have a superpower. It's true. I have
something that sets me apart from the rest. Wanna know what it is?
You might already know. It has to do with mind control. I can't make
people dance like a puppet. I can't brighten their day with a subtle
linguistic or body maneuver. No, my superpower is more insidious.
You'd think it would be a consequence of “negativity” or me
touting my diligent pursuit of knowledge, but those are just habits.
My superpower is the ability to not just make people merely dislike
me or be annoyed. I provoke longstanding and downright hatred.
To ring in the new year, my general antagonism in the past played a nice reminder as to why I don't get along. I may have talked about him before, but a friend of a friend came out to visit maybe 2 years ago. We proceeded to get drunk on winery tours. This fellow had a story about his dad being unable to grow some plant, to which I responded, “Is he dumb?” The timing and tone was that of a joke, but, as a normal wretched person, instead of hearing it as a joke, he heard, “I think your dad is dumb.” These kind of distinctions are always of the sort that get us all in trouble, but me more frequently. To speak to the fickleness of his offense, 2 hours later sitting around a restaurant table, I switched gears and started asking in “earnest” about his time spent in Africa with bomb-sniffing rodents. The report from our mutual friend was that he had changed his opinion and decided I was actually great and maybe worthy of friendship.
This same person, through facebook algorithm-fuckery, had him and one of his acquaintances appear in my feed. I spoke against some downright illogical or destructive claim (think healing potions) to which he felt he needed to step up and defend his friend. He called me out for, in his words, “showering at the Y” and discussing my housing plight, both more and less severe, but still ongoing. I tagged our mutual friend in congratulations for finding a pet project with teeth, petty and disingenuous as he may be. That's the extent of our history. A day-drinking adventure where he got to highs and lows, and a facebook comment. Turn to last night, when I asked to tag along to his ex-girlfriend's house, I was denied. The reason being, he hated me, and had polluted the mind of his ex about the kind of person I am, and my friend didn't think it appropriate to test the polite face she might put on.
I'm consistently struck by how easy it is for me to find myself in this position. I don't have to steal, hit, or bring up a single thing about you personally, to be a kind of all-encompassing frustrating focus in the mind of someone. I've explored this enough to pretty comfortably say that it's never about a particularly off-kilter or dark joke or comment you made. I know in a very complex way most people's issues have as little to do with an “individuated me” as they do with insecurities and projections of their own generation. It's why I struggle to take it personally, no matter how demoralizing it is, when I can't play along in crowds deemed too sophisticated for my tenor.
I thought that I might be approaching these kind of scenarios in the wrong way. I must be hurting people. As such, don't I get to claim pain as well? Aren't I offended and scorned when I'm not invited? Aren't my feelings worth considering? Don't you just feel grossed out right now? Find better friends. Don't interject yourself into scenarios not meant for you. Enjoy your time alone. My current struggle is to literally embody moving away from “the masses.” This is such unbearably old news, the reasons I'm drawn back into it I can barely grasp.
When it's explained to me my impact on others, importantly, I'm never offered a way of contrition. I can never be forgiven. In order for something like that to take place, I'd essentially have to become a different person, presumably through traumatic brain injury or self-delusional spiritual revelation. My apologies wouldn't be believed, nay, haven't been. My asks for routes forward go ignored. My indifference to the bites and claps back are perhaps the cherry on the mountain of offense. How dare I not be phased! How dare I reconceptualize and breakdown my response, or lack thereof, into another whine session.
How does one get my superpower? I didn't come to it by way of nuclear accident. As far as I can tell, apart from being comfortable with a degree of obscenity I think most genuinely comedic spirits jive with, all I do differently is write. I take the time to actually observe the process of my being. I deconstruct and blurt out the pieces. This habit is universally hated save a few very specific domains. If you're going to be a psychopathic titan of your industry, parsing out precisely how you're going to do something lies at the foundation of your effort. Having an exacting sense of how and why is the heart of the most dominating structures society has to offer. I'm finding that in a social work job like mine, the dominating and explicit tone is a natural remedy for the abject chaos many I encounter embody. You don't get to be a crazy abusive meth-head in my presence, or else. You don't get to scream and railroad the conversation, or further interventions will take place.
I'm not getting to the meat of the hatred though. It's got too many layers. For some, they let things foment for years and pick some random instance to call crossing the line. That's the girls who fell for me that I didn't turn into husband material for. That's friends who, in lieu of a discussion about their relative debt and poverty and creative or collaborative ways to address it, savagely horsewhipped their hobbies and became overtly sensitive to a perceived critical tone where it didn't exist. Some it just takes seeing even the remotest confidence in yourself or how you go about the world to seethe at the idea that they'd be the one finding themselves while you presume to have figured it all out. It all speaks to that either/or ignorance where “realistic” is equated to “negative” and you're not allowed to voice (or even not voice!) something resembling the contrary. I've literally run this experiment in deliberately remaining silent or picking moments to interject explicitly affirming things, and a friend, unprompted, claimed “I bet he thinks such and such damning thing about what we're doing.” I fail before I begin!
There is of course something to be said about your reputation preceding you. There is considerably more to be said about a propensity to lock people into little boxes and treat them unfairly after you feel you've been burned. I feel wholly disrespected, judged, and explicitly hated by people who, when you break it down, I struggle to feel how they're justified even remotely for that level of response. It reminds me of when I had my Ipod taken in high school by an assistant principal whose car I subsequently planned to blow up. I still kind of want to, but are any of you going to get on board with that course of action? Does my lingering years-long irrationality deserve your respect and understanding? Don't you understand? He took it while I was doing homework in an empty hallway outside of my 2nd period class because I was so smart, I didn't have to go to school the whole day! The nerve of his targeting one of the best! Fuck his car!
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
People consider that line to be about kindness or charity. They don't follow it. Moreover, they don't take nearly as much shit as they give. You know what I would not hold against you? Everything you already do that I don't. AND YOU HATE THAT. That's the heart of it. I genuinely understand you as weak and fickle, and don't take too complex a route in explaining what that looks like. Then, I proceed to pursue my dreams, live like a king, and maintain the creative and demeaning edge that confounds and belittles. Even when I'm hurt or “offended,” I understand those as weak approximations of incorrect thinking. Even when you throw years of shared experiences under the bus, I detach and conceptualize, and pat your head and say it'll be over eventually. I own where I'm failing, or again, it's not that hard to understand what I can and can't control and you don't have any answers as to how to move faster or smarter. And arguably, you can't hate so dramatically that which you don't understand as something you're intimately familiar with. You know when you sound dumb. You know when you lied. You know what the apology should look like. But that would only strike another “win” in my column for the game I'm not even playing.
I make the same “bad” jokes about myself as I do you and talk about my own life in “harsh” terms. I take the literal most “private” and embarrassing things about myself and break them down. I can't stand when people invent things to hate me for, so I don't do that about you. I wish I was invited to as many things as I've put out invitations for. I wish people were offering me opportunities to save money and create and live sustainably. I wish I had a 3 page blog to read about every one of the people I wanted to keep in my circle (Bezos requires his top management to write essays). I don't want to be lied to, so I try not to look or sound like anything more or less than I am in the moment. When it's your turn, you ask me to be as facebook-promotional and Insta-famous and picture filtered and as “positive” as the donations I'm asking for instead of a birthday present. You want me to justify, not actually be justified. As long as the moral ambiguity of our actions can be maintained, we're all safe. Stop rocking the boat.
Fuck you. I tell myself “fuck you” when I feel I've sat and complained and not done enough for too long. I say “fuck you” to the idea that I can dwell on how hopeless it feels to be at the mercy of car debt, the weather, or a strained capacity to deal with the creeping rotten air between us. If I'm so bad and all I am is the rehashing word pile of things that either plainly exist and shouldn't be controversial, or sentiments that don't even register in the minds of the adults or Europeans in the room, maybe you're more dramatically fucked up than even I'll ever be able to speak to. You want me to kill you, because you're responsible for why everything's dying. The meth-head gets that, so please authority, sublimate me. You refuse to acknowledge the bullshit you're addicted to. You hide your shame like you're wise and capable enough to handle it alone.
There's never any one instance of “waking up.” “Being present” is standing to be counted for the eternal war over the forces that would tell your story for you. The fat people who wanted to lose weight started when they were genuinely inspired on a Wednesday in August; they aren't the ones rushing to the gym today. It pains me to think about what becomes of the person who never finds the reason to stop turning me into the enemy. It's pitiful to not understand hatred as a fear-ridden fluke from more evolutionarily dramatic times, and it's not a righteous platform for dictatorial policy. I'm not saying “it” or “you” can't get better, but you won't. And as long as you keep letting me retain the dialogue describing the ongoing consequences of that truth, you'll maintain it was my rules and my faults all along that destroyed everything. So be it.
To ring in the new year, my general antagonism in the past played a nice reminder as to why I don't get along. I may have talked about him before, but a friend of a friend came out to visit maybe 2 years ago. We proceeded to get drunk on winery tours. This fellow had a story about his dad being unable to grow some plant, to which I responded, “Is he dumb?” The timing and tone was that of a joke, but, as a normal wretched person, instead of hearing it as a joke, he heard, “I think your dad is dumb.” These kind of distinctions are always of the sort that get us all in trouble, but me more frequently. To speak to the fickleness of his offense, 2 hours later sitting around a restaurant table, I switched gears and started asking in “earnest” about his time spent in Africa with bomb-sniffing rodents. The report from our mutual friend was that he had changed his opinion and decided I was actually great and maybe worthy of friendship.
This same person, through facebook algorithm-fuckery, had him and one of his acquaintances appear in my feed. I spoke against some downright illogical or destructive claim (think healing potions) to which he felt he needed to step up and defend his friend. He called me out for, in his words, “showering at the Y” and discussing my housing plight, both more and less severe, but still ongoing. I tagged our mutual friend in congratulations for finding a pet project with teeth, petty and disingenuous as he may be. That's the extent of our history. A day-drinking adventure where he got to highs and lows, and a facebook comment. Turn to last night, when I asked to tag along to his ex-girlfriend's house, I was denied. The reason being, he hated me, and had polluted the mind of his ex about the kind of person I am, and my friend didn't think it appropriate to test the polite face she might put on.
I'm consistently struck by how easy it is for me to find myself in this position. I don't have to steal, hit, or bring up a single thing about you personally, to be a kind of all-encompassing frustrating focus in the mind of someone. I've explored this enough to pretty comfortably say that it's never about a particularly off-kilter or dark joke or comment you made. I know in a very complex way most people's issues have as little to do with an “individuated me” as they do with insecurities and projections of their own generation. It's why I struggle to take it personally, no matter how demoralizing it is, when I can't play along in crowds deemed too sophisticated for my tenor.
I thought that I might be approaching these kind of scenarios in the wrong way. I must be hurting people. As such, don't I get to claim pain as well? Aren't I offended and scorned when I'm not invited? Aren't my feelings worth considering? Don't you just feel grossed out right now? Find better friends. Don't interject yourself into scenarios not meant for you. Enjoy your time alone. My current struggle is to literally embody moving away from “the masses.” This is such unbearably old news, the reasons I'm drawn back into it I can barely grasp.
When it's explained to me my impact on others, importantly, I'm never offered a way of contrition. I can never be forgiven. In order for something like that to take place, I'd essentially have to become a different person, presumably through traumatic brain injury or self-delusional spiritual revelation. My apologies wouldn't be believed, nay, haven't been. My asks for routes forward go ignored. My indifference to the bites and claps back are perhaps the cherry on the mountain of offense. How dare I not be phased! How dare I reconceptualize and breakdown my response, or lack thereof, into another whine session.
How does one get my superpower? I didn't come to it by way of nuclear accident. As far as I can tell, apart from being comfortable with a degree of obscenity I think most genuinely comedic spirits jive with, all I do differently is write. I take the time to actually observe the process of my being. I deconstruct and blurt out the pieces. This habit is universally hated save a few very specific domains. If you're going to be a psychopathic titan of your industry, parsing out precisely how you're going to do something lies at the foundation of your effort. Having an exacting sense of how and why is the heart of the most dominating structures society has to offer. I'm finding that in a social work job like mine, the dominating and explicit tone is a natural remedy for the abject chaos many I encounter embody. You don't get to be a crazy abusive meth-head in my presence, or else. You don't get to scream and railroad the conversation, or further interventions will take place.
I'm not getting to the meat of the hatred though. It's got too many layers. For some, they let things foment for years and pick some random instance to call crossing the line. That's the girls who fell for me that I didn't turn into husband material for. That's friends who, in lieu of a discussion about their relative debt and poverty and creative or collaborative ways to address it, savagely horsewhipped their hobbies and became overtly sensitive to a perceived critical tone where it didn't exist. Some it just takes seeing even the remotest confidence in yourself or how you go about the world to seethe at the idea that they'd be the one finding themselves while you presume to have figured it all out. It all speaks to that either/or ignorance where “realistic” is equated to “negative” and you're not allowed to voice (or even not voice!) something resembling the contrary. I've literally run this experiment in deliberately remaining silent or picking moments to interject explicitly affirming things, and a friend, unprompted, claimed “I bet he thinks such and such damning thing about what we're doing.” I fail before I begin!
There is of course something to be said about your reputation preceding you. There is considerably more to be said about a propensity to lock people into little boxes and treat them unfairly after you feel you've been burned. I feel wholly disrespected, judged, and explicitly hated by people who, when you break it down, I struggle to feel how they're justified even remotely for that level of response. It reminds me of when I had my Ipod taken in high school by an assistant principal whose car I subsequently planned to blow up. I still kind of want to, but are any of you going to get on board with that course of action? Does my lingering years-long irrationality deserve your respect and understanding? Don't you understand? He took it while I was doing homework in an empty hallway outside of my 2nd period class because I was so smart, I didn't have to go to school the whole day! The nerve of his targeting one of the best! Fuck his car!
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
People consider that line to be about kindness or charity. They don't follow it. Moreover, they don't take nearly as much shit as they give. You know what I would not hold against you? Everything you already do that I don't. AND YOU HATE THAT. That's the heart of it. I genuinely understand you as weak and fickle, and don't take too complex a route in explaining what that looks like. Then, I proceed to pursue my dreams, live like a king, and maintain the creative and demeaning edge that confounds and belittles. Even when I'm hurt or “offended,” I understand those as weak approximations of incorrect thinking. Even when you throw years of shared experiences under the bus, I detach and conceptualize, and pat your head and say it'll be over eventually. I own where I'm failing, or again, it's not that hard to understand what I can and can't control and you don't have any answers as to how to move faster or smarter. And arguably, you can't hate so dramatically that which you don't understand as something you're intimately familiar with. You know when you sound dumb. You know when you lied. You know what the apology should look like. But that would only strike another “win” in my column for the game I'm not even playing.
I make the same “bad” jokes about myself as I do you and talk about my own life in “harsh” terms. I take the literal most “private” and embarrassing things about myself and break them down. I can't stand when people invent things to hate me for, so I don't do that about you. I wish I was invited to as many things as I've put out invitations for. I wish people were offering me opportunities to save money and create and live sustainably. I wish I had a 3 page blog to read about every one of the people I wanted to keep in my circle (Bezos requires his top management to write essays). I don't want to be lied to, so I try not to look or sound like anything more or less than I am in the moment. When it's your turn, you ask me to be as facebook-promotional and Insta-famous and picture filtered and as “positive” as the donations I'm asking for instead of a birthday present. You want me to justify, not actually be justified. As long as the moral ambiguity of our actions can be maintained, we're all safe. Stop rocking the boat.
Fuck you. I tell myself “fuck you” when I feel I've sat and complained and not done enough for too long. I say “fuck you” to the idea that I can dwell on how hopeless it feels to be at the mercy of car debt, the weather, or a strained capacity to deal with the creeping rotten air between us. If I'm so bad and all I am is the rehashing word pile of things that either plainly exist and shouldn't be controversial, or sentiments that don't even register in the minds of the adults or Europeans in the room, maybe you're more dramatically fucked up than even I'll ever be able to speak to. You want me to kill you, because you're responsible for why everything's dying. The meth-head gets that, so please authority, sublimate me. You refuse to acknowledge the bullshit you're addicted to. You hide your shame like you're wise and capable enough to handle it alone.
There's never any one instance of “waking up.” “Being present” is standing to be counted for the eternal war over the forces that would tell your story for you. The fat people who wanted to lose weight started when they were genuinely inspired on a Wednesday in August; they aren't the ones rushing to the gym today. It pains me to think about what becomes of the person who never finds the reason to stop turning me into the enemy. It's pitiful to not understand hatred as a fear-ridden fluke from more evolutionarily dramatic times, and it's not a righteous platform for dictatorial policy. I'm not saying “it” or “you” can't get better, but you won't. And as long as you keep letting me retain the dialogue describing the ongoing consequences of that truth, you'll maintain it was my rules and my faults all along that destroyed everything. So be it.
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