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.
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