[777] Full, Mental

It's not like I have to write every time I feel a little panicky, but when it seems to be coupled with a few other persistent thoughts and themes, might as well explore, right?

I keep thinking about what it means to “take something for granted.” The innocent understanding of it is just about not thinking about something. There's only so many things you can hold in your mind at once, so as long as your heart keeps beating and your feet keep moving, maybe your morning walk can just be about getting in the steps, and not an occasion to freak out about who's going to jump out of the bushes. Colloquially, it's the rendering of something or someone important to the functioning of your life as smaller or less than they're worth. It's someone feeling maliciously forgotten. It's someone abusing their position or resources.

As with most kinds of inescapable problems, I try to build it into my general behavioral framework. I don't know when you think I've taken you for granted, but I will know if I did or didn't pay you for your time or effort. I will know if I asked for a birthday gift, and had no intention of buying you one. To me, you can skip right over the grey of who you're hurting or who might hurt you by just being consistent and deliberate in whether or how you go about asking something from someone. You'll always need to, no matter how delusional any individual is about their personal sovereignty, and it can either be an honest exchange or gamble.

I'm hoping to exercise less and less the need to ask in the first place. It's a backwards thing to do for a co-mingled and aggregating species member. At the same time, the implicit survival lessons that got us to this point can no longer be taken for granted. It opens your mind, forces your mind, to consider things that you would otherwise never see coming. What happens if there's a flood and I can't escape the country for a week? What happens if the unknown unknown creeps in and threatens the presumed future? Whether you're at the day to day slog of the practical, or knee deep in your dream, there's always something coming.

I'm going to be relatively distracted and rehashing the arguments I plan to make when I contest my ticket from the other day. It was an unknown unknown. I didn't expect to get a ticket. I didn't forget there are cops or that you're supposed to stop for buses. My morning simply shifted a little, I left a little later, the traffic was a little heavier, and a variable I haven't been primed to think about in months if not years occupied fatal seconds. Grungy, dusty, beater-car me never got ticketed. Dressed down, new red with tinted windows and pea coat was matter-of-factly handed a ticket. Do we take for granted the sharp-dressed man sees the best side of everything?

I think a great source of panic comes from never forgetting that there's always those fateful seconds where things can go horribly wrong or amazingly right. People are starting to get their tax refunds. I always thought those were something of a myth, and now I might be able to actually be “evenly poor” like I had planned to be last week. That thought alone had me feeling generally mild-mannered and liberated earlier today. Then I started doing the math. I subtracted the credit card, the ticket if and when I lose contesting it, the pending labor that will almost certainly be 5 instead of 4 days, and the food I've yet to buy or things like floss and toothpaste I'm running out of. I started to theorize a little bit about which of the dozen projects I could put a little money towards, or maybe just go buy a few more pairs of work pants.

The poor person in me knows the money is being targeted. If it doesn't go to something that makes some kind of sense, I'll get pulled over again tomorrow and be out that much more. If I try to sit on it, I'll get a knock on the door from an uncover debt collector a dentist from 4 years ago decided to settle old scores with. Some new tax or problem or supplies will be absolutely required, and I better get used to the taste of recently thawed and dry chicken. The money is always leaving, as a poor person. The concept of “investing” is a nonstarter. The idea of “passive” income and ever having remotely enough time or the resources to create something new or build up enough credibility and skill to make bank off your brain will never happen.

This is the point I never want lost. I'm still fighting to be able to fall asleep and wake up when I want. The freedom to be noisy and decorate or build as I please are one thing, but being able to do them at all hours of the day and night are another. The “real” dream is still a ways away. I think that's a large component to the panic. When does it get better? Will it even? Will I get to be a silly little pipe-dreamer rambling on to the youth about how crazy it is out there, and to think twice about flying too high? The routine is how you eat up your time too. I have court dates weeks from now. I have 45 days to submit each individual report. I have a concert I'm headed to in a few months which I'm already at, because I know what my days basically look like, and I know I don't exactly want to be that present in every moment of them. I can know intellectually it's all a game, but what's at stake doesn't feel that way.

In some ways, I feel my time would be easier if I was actually kinda lost. If I “just wanted to explore” career options or, “gain experience” for the life I planned to live when I was 35, it wouldn't feel desperate and imperative things happen “now.” The “problem” is that I know what I want. I know what I want to see. I know what the environments I put together can breed. I know the dollar amounts required and time investment. I'm intimately familiar with what my mind and body is and isn't doing during times things are going wrong or right. The law of diminishing returns is playing a big role in the amount of words or information I could keep bringing to my circumstances. I need the next steps.

One thing that's certainly getting old is the bizarre nonsense realms my head wants to go when I've exhausted all material logic as to why things look the way they do. Questions like, “How shitty was I in a past life?” or, “Would a charity donation kick off a butterfly effect to help me next week?” If you ever want to plug the hole that would make you desperate and reactively empathetic, just consider the impact and lifestyle of psychopathic greed has allowed dozens of individuals to revel in spite of hundreds of millions. There is no cosmic justice as far as I can tell, as no even quasi-functioning rich person could amass the number of mental, physical, or social problems as what routinely plague the poor.

I can't lose sight of that “freedom” though. I promise, I'd rather be “bored” and reading or playing alone than feel chained to my job. If I didn't have a fair degree of leeway to pick my own adventure each day, I'd never last. And I'm only going to allow myself so much guilt in not completing all of the books and articles I want to before I just say fuck it and lock myself in some form of library for a month. I don't think I've had two years pass by both slower or faster than these last two, and neither of those options feels good when I consider why. Constant work, constant delays, constant dancing on the fence of meaningful consequences as I tumble between negotiated practical concerns. That may be what life is, but that's not what I'm going to allow mine to be for very long. I suppose it's reasonable to panic over whether or not I even have a choice.