Where's the 'ol mind headed this morning? I've been scrolling through the approximately 2000 movies I've downloaded, sprawled them across my hyper-defined television screen so I can see hundreds at a time. I started saving larger file sizes as I've grown less concerned about saving hard drive space. I've gone through and edited every one to just display the name (maybe in its native tongue in parentheses) and year. Today was otherwise me blowing a hole in the idea of spending very little money this pay cycle because, not just with insurance, but my plate registration has ballooned. I watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, bought some tools online that will help me lay linoleum, and spent too much money eating out. Yesterday I bought tires, almost wholly paid for by $150 I got through my work health program for doing a screening and taking a survey. I've cut out a very comfortable, practical, kind of existence where, even if debt remains, it's reasonable to think it will be gone in months, as always.
I'm still fighting the desire to trot faster as I approach that evenly-broke home, not unlike what I'm told horses do when they return to familiar surroundings. I can taste the liberation that paying the internet bill for a year will feel like. I can see the foundation for the next room of my house. I can taste the needlessly expensive drink after I've dragged myself out to a bar, alone, and slowly digest my deliberately expensive meal. I'm old enough that 3 months doesn't feel like 3 years, but I'm mentally arrested by the notion that even a day is too long! When I lay off even the hum of urgency, I just feel broken, old, and tired. Like, I don't know if it's psychological, but the random pains and weird little spells, like I almost passed out doing yard work the other day, that shit is real.
During the movie, there were a lot of scenes where this relatively famous movie star was alone, singing to himself, rehearsing lines, or otherwise working through his brand of existential crisis. He marries a trophy wife seemingly on a whim. His best friend is his stunt guy who he seems to show just-not-quite enough respect sometimes, but you're confident both men know who they are to each other and themselves. I saw myself there. Too much money and time to worry about things that aren't worth worrying about. Getting into arbitrarily dangerous situations and wishing nothing more than to ingratiate myself to a neighbor with something I want. It didn't look bad, but it didn't look good.
I'm finding myself asking more about what it is I want. I think fundamentally I want to dick around. I want things to be fun and creative. I've been thinking about the kinds of excuses I've used to not do things. Why don't I write music? I don't want it to suck. Why don't I do stand-up? There's so many voices out there already. Why don't I just read or watch at least x amount each day? I hate splitting my attention. All of it comes with the presumed idea that with focus and time, I'd readily dedicate enough of myself to any one of those endeavors to make a respectable stab. More simply, I just feel like what I want to do when I do it, and don't when I don't. I don't really need a reason or excuse beyond that. I don't know why I want one.
I want reasons, right? I don't want to be a mindless mass of impressions thinking my first idea is my best and most convincing idea because it's first. I want to dig out a beating heart that will go right along pumping the reality of my how and why even when I'm not looking. I want to continue to tie together the long story of my actions into the kind of future I imagine. It's a future I'm starting to live in already. I need so little to keep me on track too. Let me get my floor done, and I'll spend 2 days riding that high. Let me get the grass mowed and things will really seem to be picking up around here! Let me get things a little better organized or cataloged.
So much of my time I feel is sucked up by “transitional” periods. Can't just wake up and do anything strenuous. Can't just be done with work without the drive home. Can't clean and organize without adding to the trash yet to be burned and laundry still needing to be done in town. That is, my experience is still mostly dictated by things that have to be done more than I've chosen to do them. They eat time and mental resources. They cost money. They leave me talking about them at 1:21 AM, instead of going right to sleep or discussing some new interesting thing I've explored or built. The movie tonight was a reimagining of the past. I merely rehash the present.
I think about the notion of “everyone being a critic.” It's why I'm not actually worried if music I create sucks, or it takes me longer than I believe it should to get a laugh trying stand-up. I watched some writers pick apart a book which they loved, but they had to voice how it seemed to short-change black women, maybe. One of the critics is like 300 pounds and looks like an overstuffed prize at a haunted carnival. Was she moving the needle for the broader culture forward because she appeared on VICE and offered her salient opinion? How is anything that anyone says in criticizing art valuable? I don't mean you can't question norms or ideologies, more than, what has it ever served to talk about the, literally everything, any single piece of work can't or didn't do? I've honestly never understood that as a criticism. “That's a great song! But not enough bass...” “I kept wanting to read more and more, couldn't put it down! But did he have to be so cliché?” Umm, hello, there are cliché people and perhaps the masterful dose of them is why you kept devouring.
Sometimes artists have reasons, sometimes they write parody songs. They're all driven to create in the face of their hits and misses and the millions that have come before. That's what I want to focus on. Whatever the medium, I don't want to stop desiring seeing the world around me change or watching my ability increase. Even if it's just recognition, oddly enough, as I promise you being open to watching everything does not mean there was anything that stuck. There's certainly irony in the fact that I wish to be saying something in the things I create, but I'm willing to accept impressions from everything until something arrests my focus. I think it's a testament to a few things. One, there's only so much you can really focus on even if you have myriad interests. Two, a lot of shit really isn't worth that much time and attention, and sped up is going to give you the same takeaway. Three, it's comforting to think that most people, most of the time, are going to have as nothing an attitude about me and impression of what I create as I have with them. If my recent lesson in celebrity and sordid past of making people hate me very hard are any indication, I'm going to call the third one aspirational for anyone who shares the language.
I know I've been too comfortable for too long. I'm out of practice in being hyper-vigilant and motivated and accountable. My day job lets me be lazy. My transitional time was influenced hard enough by my general flighty thought and action patterns before life's obligations. If it were up to me, I'd get done writing this, spend the next few hours playing guitar and watching something, sleep in, and try to make some headway on taking inventory. But nonsense safety staffing and mandatory training beckon. I get things delivered to the office because the self-imposed surcharge to persuade the mailman to come to the house until I can build a large enough box annoys me. I've signed up for some 30 hours of sitting around a smelly ward for those with developmental disabilities in what some might describe as a cynical cash grab as I'm not paid enough to “entertain” the kid who seems to only get in trouble when he's bored. Yeah? Well, take a number.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
[809] Man About Town
I feel sort of obligated to account for my time in California while on
vacation. This is something I booked in March, extremely suspicious that
I would make it at my current income, patience, or general “alive”
level given my inability to trust that things will go too well or turn
out as planned. I had safe flights, the second with 2 free seats next to
me to stretch and layabout. The weather was the epitome of perfect. I
saw amazing bands. One of those bands called me out to come up on stage,
dance, and make out with a random girl who crowd surfed up to join me
(all of which was on their instruction, and I suspect we both knew the
kind of pawns we were in their sick entertainment game) jk luv u #lessthanjake.
I had good expensive food. I just came from a less than ideal concert
situation so I was better prepared with water, Tylenol, sunscreen, and
decided to play modern and get touristy and take pictures and videos. I
even snuck in a trip to a botanical garden because I was told I should
go by a friend, and took pictures there as I hoofed around and listened
to people playing the various on-site pianos.
It was another glimpse into the kind of life I feel I'm pushing towards. I get nervous and clench my jaw thinking about whether or not I'm going to take an extra 20 minutes on my lunch break to work out an existential crisis. Get called to dance with my shirt off in front of thousands of people and kiss a random girl? I want that to be my just-another-Tuesday, because in a real way, that's what it felt like. People were calling out my name, asking to take pictures, hug me, or just generally were smiling and high-fiving me for being a part of the experience and playing to the moment. I got to live in one of the loudest ways how little a shit I give what people think, and how I wish we could all have fun, and it was exactly representative of what's screaming to come out all the fucking time.
The amount of times I've envisioned myself on a stage, giving a speech, or otherwise just being unduly popular or attention-getting is innumerable. One of my first, not being a child, dream jobs was to scout and sign bands and run an all night practice venue. I'm not the person who gets a treble clef tattoo, but the raw emotion that catching the right song at the right time can bring you back to is an invigorating drug, and a powerful force for uniting what are otherwise miserable and immature people. It's a stark example of personality breaking through “it all sounds the same.”
I'm really not moved enough to say much more. I had a good time. I was alone, per usual. My AirBnb was more uncomfortable than I was anticipating, not because of anything wrong with the host, but because you're staying in someone's house. I go into random houses for a living and don't blink, but I leave shortly after. I want to be able to wander. I want to see more of my favorite bands before their planes crash or addictions catch up. I want to enjoy the weather. I want to keep catching 15 minutes of fame across different exploits of my personality and interests. I think a lot of celebrities and how many traps gets set for you after the point where “everyone” knows who you are. I liked people calling out and whispering comments. I'd like if they judged the shit out of me and tried to troll. The busy-ness of pushing against opinions and wading through the fog of thoughts into action is a kind of always-on game I could keep playing.
It was another glimpse into the kind of life I feel I'm pushing towards. I get nervous and clench my jaw thinking about whether or not I'm going to take an extra 20 minutes on my lunch break to work out an existential crisis. Get called to dance with my shirt off in front of thousands of people and kiss a random girl? I want that to be my just-another-Tuesday, because in a real way, that's what it felt like. People were calling out my name, asking to take pictures, hug me, or just generally were smiling and high-fiving me for being a part of the experience and playing to the moment. I got to live in one of the loudest ways how little a shit I give what people think, and how I wish we could all have fun, and it was exactly representative of what's screaming to come out all the fucking time.
The amount of times I've envisioned myself on a stage, giving a speech, or otherwise just being unduly popular or attention-getting is innumerable. One of my first, not being a child, dream jobs was to scout and sign bands and run an all night practice venue. I'm not the person who gets a treble clef tattoo, but the raw emotion that catching the right song at the right time can bring you back to is an invigorating drug, and a powerful force for uniting what are otherwise miserable and immature people. It's a stark example of personality breaking through “it all sounds the same.”
I'm really not moved enough to say much more. I had a good time. I was alone, per usual. My AirBnb was more uncomfortable than I was anticipating, not because of anything wrong with the host, but because you're staying in someone's house. I go into random houses for a living and don't blink, but I leave shortly after. I want to be able to wander. I want to see more of my favorite bands before their planes crash or addictions catch up. I want to enjoy the weather. I want to keep catching 15 minutes of fame across different exploits of my personality and interests. I think a lot of celebrities and how many traps gets set for you after the point where “everyone” knows who you are. I liked people calling out and whispering comments. I'd like if they judged the shit out of me and tried to troll. The busy-ness of pushing against opinions and wading through the fog of thoughts into action is a kind of always-on game I could keep playing.
Monday, July 15, 2019
[808] The Grey
It's pushing 2 in the morning. I should probably sleep, I've got work tomorrow, and I've got plenty to try and make-up for rest wise with the mild drinking and disrupting of my sleep pattern from the day before. But, I'm making the decision to write. No one's forcing me. I'm not acting in defiance of sleep. In many ways, I'd rather enjoy sleeping more. This is important to me and something I designate as a function of my being and mental fortitude. This is evidence I'd like to remain oriented and must share. This isn't something I apologize for, nor will me being a touch extra tired tomorrow be a surprise.
As a “mature” adult, I make decisions like this every day. Eat shitty expensive food, or don't. Drink what will become unbearable stomach acid and likely puke session, or don't. Speed, or leave a little earlier. Spend a few more minutes picking better suited pants, or continue to sweat in the expediently bought corduroy because they fit and they're here already. You can probably safely assume that, in one form or another, I'm going to make it to work, or haven't run out of personal days, or anticipate the coronary episode in my future if I don't eat better and up my cardio.
How do we designate maturity? Let me first explain how I see it manifest. Maturity is distance. You are mature when you put away “childish” things, and behaviors, and start to gain a kind of resolve to wherever it is you are in life. “Life's not fair” doesn't maintain throwaway slogan status as your parents may have used it on you while you were throwing a fit, but becomes a badge and tool in your “I get it now!” toolbox. You position yourself away from your friends who don't conform to the comfortable spot you've cut out for yourself. You position yourself away from your parents and all the dreadful mistakes they made in raising you. You put the hobbies or interests that would otherwise haunt you at a safe distance away from your responsibilities.
Maturity also seems to manifest as silence. Children whine. Mature adults stare with dead indifference or pity and condescension. You maintain silence for atrocity because it's all been done before, and will happen again. You're silent about any growing list of obligations because it's seriously long enough already. You're silent about when you make mistakes, because it's a lot more professional and common courtesy to blithely drape a sheet of faux civility over the not-quite conversations about nondescript, yet somehow galling, indiscretions. When asked to take responsibility, for anything, you never lead with, “good point” or “while that may be true,” instead opting to redirect and probe for the mistake happening over there.
I have my maturity called into question pretty regularly. You can't be a teenager who works their way up to management, graduate college, organize hundreds of people, keep all of your bills paid, build a house in the middle of nowhere, be trusted to protect other people's children, start and run a break-even business, remain open to connection after betrayal and heartache, or choose to pursue and hold precious a level of pragmatic idealism long dead in everyone you meet, and be considered to have a handle on how this whole life thing works, let alone yourself.
No, to be mature, you have to feel as smugly complacent in the resolved decision making of the broken horses around you. You have to “get it,” that the only thing left to achieve is the ingratiating of yourself to as many power brokers or gift givers around you as possible. If you can keep making friends, maybe you'll get invited to the lake and parties. If you can let go of how the past has impacted you, you can reemerge like a phoenix ready to tackle not just your past trauma, but the idea that anyone could ever wrong you again with this impermeable identity rooted in the stern gazes and relaxed shoulders of those ready to die.
I think the fluidity with which people change is like sleight of hand, but they don't acknowledge how much practice they've put in to trick you. Where once they may be encouraging and full of energy, you missed the years of times they whispered to themselves how something was no longer worth pursuing or how tired they are after work. When you found yourself taking for granted you could trust them wanting what's best for you, they were in the back, with a calculator, trying to make the math work for the relationship turned academic exercise. One of the surefire ways I know things have dramatically changed and/or need to die? What I do regularly or wear on my sleeve is thrown in my face as something I'm completely unaware of or don't practice. Hey Nick, I know you maybe write every week or two in insane depth as to where you are, and I definitely caught the last 15 statuses where you talk about feeling anxious or dead inside or just generally put-upon by a million-mile an hour brain and difficult circumstance or relationship, but have you ever considered trying to get to the heart of your trauma? What's that? 807 blogs? I mean, that's a nice warm-up, but when are you going grow up and do the real work? You wouldn't have to write so much if you just gave up.
Coupled closely with this is the idea that you would ever have to feel bad in “defending” me. If I'm not worth defending, don't. If you've been in a position where you were defending me, thank you. If you weaponize your support for me, it's no longer support. It doesn't exhaust me to be friends with you and I've literally lost “friends” for reasonably sticking by people who deserved it. If you agree with the naysayers, pick them, and then either discuss whether or not there's something that needs to change with me and why, or drop the act. If it's not a shared “of course” we're going to look out for each other, what are we doing?
I'm not interested in what counts as “maturity” in the vast majority of what I observe. I don't need self-satisfaction like so many empty accolades and titles with nothing tangible left to do on my plate. I don't pretend like I haven't ridden the wave of my bitching to ever-increasing levels of comfort and long-term stability. Every drunk and bitchy blog will exist alongside the ones where I talk about fabulous weekends with people I care about, the amount of years I've paid my bills in advance, and as I'm surrounded by more and more of the things I want to learn, sell, and create. My concept of maturity takes many many words, elbow grease over rubbing, and a kind of forthcoming dare to press your luck in service to overcoming what you're unsure or scared about. It's a kind of consistency in nature and expectation that doesn't change not because it's dead, but because it's so useful and meaningful and “loving,” it wouldn't know how to be anything else while remaining honest.
Maturity, so named and understood, is also about forgetting. I don't mean real forgetting, I mean forgetting how to recognize where someone like me is coming from in how I write and what about. Forget the anger and pain. Forget the obligation. Forget the dream. Never forget how you've been wronged, because you'll always need ammunition to try and remind me of what I'll never be forgiven. Everyone play the forget game so we can pussyfoot around the egregious nature of existence and consequences. People hate that I genuinely forget them. They hate that I exist, for as rounded by, independent of, their existence. This happens when people want to make a name for themselves in criticizing me, not accounting for and affirming themselves. Or, suspiciously, they find great resolve and purpose in conquering me! You know, how the hero of the story always shushes and runs from the dragon.
No, I'm not mature. I'm 30, almost 31. I'm the collection of demons in my head and physical shared realities manifested from the anxiety and spite I have for everything around me. I'm consistent in a way you refuse to be, and I'm accountable to a higher order than your mismanaged words and petty expectations. Remember, I'm always made to accept and move on very regardless of my wishes, work, or opinion. I don't rehash the past for the romance, but to extract the lesson plan. I don't reminisce to revel in the naivety. I don't remember your weaknesses so I can forge the weapons to reduce you to dust, but because I continue to draw motivation and inspiration in who you were or what I believed about what we could do in spite of them.
I'll find substitutes. Do you hate that about me, or you?
As a “mature” adult, I make decisions like this every day. Eat shitty expensive food, or don't. Drink what will become unbearable stomach acid and likely puke session, or don't. Speed, or leave a little earlier. Spend a few more minutes picking better suited pants, or continue to sweat in the expediently bought corduroy because they fit and they're here already. You can probably safely assume that, in one form or another, I'm going to make it to work, or haven't run out of personal days, or anticipate the coronary episode in my future if I don't eat better and up my cardio.
How do we designate maturity? Let me first explain how I see it manifest. Maturity is distance. You are mature when you put away “childish” things, and behaviors, and start to gain a kind of resolve to wherever it is you are in life. “Life's not fair” doesn't maintain throwaway slogan status as your parents may have used it on you while you were throwing a fit, but becomes a badge and tool in your “I get it now!” toolbox. You position yourself away from your friends who don't conform to the comfortable spot you've cut out for yourself. You position yourself away from your parents and all the dreadful mistakes they made in raising you. You put the hobbies or interests that would otherwise haunt you at a safe distance away from your responsibilities.
Maturity also seems to manifest as silence. Children whine. Mature adults stare with dead indifference or pity and condescension. You maintain silence for atrocity because it's all been done before, and will happen again. You're silent about any growing list of obligations because it's seriously long enough already. You're silent about when you make mistakes, because it's a lot more professional and common courtesy to blithely drape a sheet of faux civility over the not-quite conversations about nondescript, yet somehow galling, indiscretions. When asked to take responsibility, for anything, you never lead with, “good point” or “while that may be true,” instead opting to redirect and probe for the mistake happening over there.
I have my maturity called into question pretty regularly. You can't be a teenager who works their way up to management, graduate college, organize hundreds of people, keep all of your bills paid, build a house in the middle of nowhere, be trusted to protect other people's children, start and run a break-even business, remain open to connection after betrayal and heartache, or choose to pursue and hold precious a level of pragmatic idealism long dead in everyone you meet, and be considered to have a handle on how this whole life thing works, let alone yourself.
No, to be mature, you have to feel as smugly complacent in the resolved decision making of the broken horses around you. You have to “get it,” that the only thing left to achieve is the ingratiating of yourself to as many power brokers or gift givers around you as possible. If you can keep making friends, maybe you'll get invited to the lake and parties. If you can let go of how the past has impacted you, you can reemerge like a phoenix ready to tackle not just your past trauma, but the idea that anyone could ever wrong you again with this impermeable identity rooted in the stern gazes and relaxed shoulders of those ready to die.
I think the fluidity with which people change is like sleight of hand, but they don't acknowledge how much practice they've put in to trick you. Where once they may be encouraging and full of energy, you missed the years of times they whispered to themselves how something was no longer worth pursuing or how tired they are after work. When you found yourself taking for granted you could trust them wanting what's best for you, they were in the back, with a calculator, trying to make the math work for the relationship turned academic exercise. One of the surefire ways I know things have dramatically changed and/or need to die? What I do regularly or wear on my sleeve is thrown in my face as something I'm completely unaware of or don't practice. Hey Nick, I know you maybe write every week or two in insane depth as to where you are, and I definitely caught the last 15 statuses where you talk about feeling anxious or dead inside or just generally put-upon by a million-mile an hour brain and difficult circumstance or relationship, but have you ever considered trying to get to the heart of your trauma? What's that? 807 blogs? I mean, that's a nice warm-up, but when are you going grow up and do the real work? You wouldn't have to write so much if you just gave up.
Coupled closely with this is the idea that you would ever have to feel bad in “defending” me. If I'm not worth defending, don't. If you've been in a position where you were defending me, thank you. If you weaponize your support for me, it's no longer support. It doesn't exhaust me to be friends with you and I've literally lost “friends” for reasonably sticking by people who deserved it. If you agree with the naysayers, pick them, and then either discuss whether or not there's something that needs to change with me and why, or drop the act. If it's not a shared “of course” we're going to look out for each other, what are we doing?
I'm not interested in what counts as “maturity” in the vast majority of what I observe. I don't need self-satisfaction like so many empty accolades and titles with nothing tangible left to do on my plate. I don't pretend like I haven't ridden the wave of my bitching to ever-increasing levels of comfort and long-term stability. Every drunk and bitchy blog will exist alongside the ones where I talk about fabulous weekends with people I care about, the amount of years I've paid my bills in advance, and as I'm surrounded by more and more of the things I want to learn, sell, and create. My concept of maturity takes many many words, elbow grease over rubbing, and a kind of forthcoming dare to press your luck in service to overcoming what you're unsure or scared about. It's a kind of consistency in nature and expectation that doesn't change not because it's dead, but because it's so useful and meaningful and “loving,” it wouldn't know how to be anything else while remaining honest.
Maturity, so named and understood, is also about forgetting. I don't mean real forgetting, I mean forgetting how to recognize where someone like me is coming from in how I write and what about. Forget the anger and pain. Forget the obligation. Forget the dream. Never forget how you've been wronged, because you'll always need ammunition to try and remind me of what I'll never be forgiven. Everyone play the forget game so we can pussyfoot around the egregious nature of existence and consequences. People hate that I genuinely forget them. They hate that I exist, for as rounded by, independent of, their existence. This happens when people want to make a name for themselves in criticizing me, not accounting for and affirming themselves. Or, suspiciously, they find great resolve and purpose in conquering me! You know, how the hero of the story always shushes and runs from the dragon.
No, I'm not mature. I'm 30, almost 31. I'm the collection of demons in my head and physical shared realities manifested from the anxiety and spite I have for everything around me. I'm consistent in a way you refuse to be, and I'm accountable to a higher order than your mismanaged words and petty expectations. Remember, I'm always made to accept and move on very regardless of my wishes, work, or opinion. I don't rehash the past for the romance, but to extract the lesson plan. I don't reminisce to revel in the naivety. I don't remember your weaknesses so I can forge the weapons to reduce you to dust, but because I continue to draw motivation and inspiration in who you were or what I believed about what we could do in spite of them.
I'll find substitutes. Do you hate that about me, or you?
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
[807] Broke Fix
I just wanna babble a bit. I was thinking about, I guess it’s a compulsion, to break stuff. I don’t mean good things or for the sake of it, but I like to shake what might otherwise be considered a foundation. You call me a good person, I want to speak a little more obscenely or dissuade you in some weird or creative fashion. You don’t like the word “retarded,” even if I haven’t used it in years, I’ll pick it back up like it’s literally been anchored off the tip of my tongue. It’s really rather annoying to try and put the propensity in its place.
“Extra” is a word that’s evolved for modern use. You’re so extra right now. Added discomfort or useless words used to bolster a point to nowhere and to no one’s benefit. That something so new could seemingly embody a good portion of where I feel I mentally exist is rather intriguing. There’s always room to find or change words to capture how to go about alienating yourself.
I was also thinking about how many families seem to immediately warm to me or present me significantly fewer problems than I hear for people generally. I get pissy assholes, but people seem hungry for normal or polite conversation that apparently DCS is in no way associated with. The moment you tell me explicitly it’s going to be a dramatic or crazy situation, I’m almost positive it’s going to be a throwaway day where everything gets signed and we’re shaking it out politely. I feel like a principle ballerina who’d rather be swimming than dancing. But you’re so good. But, just, nah.
I got mildly tipsy the other night. It led to a mild hangover today. Mildly drunk me is a place I said that I’d like to operate under for long periods of time. My aching body says provoking nonsense suicide ideation during a hangover is a terrible strategy. I also get ratcheted up and enthusiastic and whatever happens to be pressing on my mind I vomit out immediately. I manage to find deliberate and usually awesome phrasing, but the timing is always ridiculously wrong, middle of the night, or I’ve provoked myself to text someone I’ve got no business talking to and who’s wanted nothing to do with me.
I think the scary part in all of it is the “I don’t care” part. I’m at war with that feeling. The list of things I don’t care about seems to grow by the second. And it’s important to note, broad not caring isn’t the absence of care, it’s just an extremely narrow sense of what’s worthwhile. I don’t get to “just” not care though. I act. I impulse. I need to make sure that if and when I’m not caring, I can direct the energy away from too much consequence. That usually involves pointed focused instances of caring, to tie up loose ends or work perhaps, and then off to the coping mechanism abyss. I care about the image, at least.
I provoke harsher and sketchier fear consequences. I start to poke at things that matter. Thankfully, I don’t so much do it to people I like, but the second I do, I seem to recreate the world around that decision. Not so much for me, but for them. It’s as if they were at once so not invested in reading about how I operate, yet so dramatically invested in it that a betrayal of what they expect becomes the rally point for all future interactions. You could be close to someone your entire life, but the moment they kill your pet rabbit, that’s pretty much going to be the center of whatever remains of your dynamic. Pressing that metaphor further, even if you killed that rabbit barreling down the road with your ridiculous and hard-to-manage personality, they’ll act as though it was an intimate neck snapping as you stared it in the eye.
It’s interesting how much I allow myself to give the people I interact with the benefit of the doubt. One, I think I say this every day, I’m not the police. I didn’t sign up to punish, I’m a manager. As well, it’s not generally hard to see how and when people are lying to you when they do it several times a day about ridiculous things, but there’s nothing any of us can do about that. I, maybe not swallow, but take in “personal truths” about people’s relative responsibility to the circumstances of their lives, and caked or speckled with bullshit, I get why the story sounds the way it does. I need civility and compliance, and otherwise, I don’t really care how you talk about it until something you disclose triggers a child safety issue.
Changing up a bit. I don’t know if I super-fucked my sleep or my diet or what, but this week has been about as long as I’ve ever had of a week. I’m not waking up right. I’m not settling into drives. I’m not enjoying my morning coffee, shitting all at once, able to figure out the happy middle between raging hellfire sunlight and obnoxiously noisy and ill-pointing air conditioning. I was feeling a touch crazy at lunch and started conducting an imaginary meeting in an empty conference room. My mind needed significantly more to do than the minutes leading up that decision were providing. I went to the library and then Starbucks and sat down for some intro physics reading.
There’s this aching emotional child in me that pines for a kind of romance about my life and the people in it. It’s like a part of me who had one really good acid trip and then proceeds to advocate way too hard for the utility, nay, necessity that everyone does it too, even when the absurdity is laid bare immediately. What faculty is that? What purpose does that serve? How do you shut it off? Do I like when the people I relate to seem to be there and we enjoy each other’s company? Sure. Have I not, as close to literally as a basically functioning person can maintain, cordoned myself off in a cave because I can’t seem to manage the psychological load of “hope” or genuine belief in things continuing well-enough indefinitely? How many knives have I put in the words “friend” and “love” while remaining perfectly unmoved to dig up old language to replace the equal-sized holes they left in my heart?
I had a friend once tell me she missed the hangover. She expected whatever degree of shit she was going to feel, and like routine beating from an abusive husband, the kiss with a fist ends up better than none. If that doesn’t testify to the knots our brains can form, as if first-hand experience with battered wives couldn’t do it for you, I don’t know what is. It’s at extreme depths and on the thinnest of edges that we find meaning and inspiration, whether you provoke that place from jumping out of planes, or live the kind of interpersonally dramatic life you’ll never see on TV. I can write a pretty cool song or poem when I’m actually sad, not sitting around bored and angry wishing I were sad enough to provoke the creative impulse. Just like actual anger pushes me to behave in spite and actual tipsy emotional dams breaking mean you’re going to wake up to either a heart-warming or annoying chunk of text.
More and more I feel as though I’m watching myself. I’m deconstructing the expectations for myself I’ve ridden to this point. I’m a step removed from feeling the fallout of playing new friendship games or pressing on old wounds. I’m trying to step into a kind of time flow that allows me to pop back in when I’m only a few hundred in debt, some annoying bumps at work have smoothed over, and I’m finding myself much further along in a book or project than I was anticipating. I think it’s a new form of coping I’ve been practicing; transitioning away from clenched and re-awakening OCD-adjacent behavior. My mind might finally be attacking that fire that makes me so willing to be annoying until whatever’s done is done. I might adopt that solemn timber of the rebellious punk-rock rebel turned soccer dad. That could also just be my inner whore figuring new ways to play to the ladies in their 30s crowd. It’s unclear.
Much as with this blog, I’m toning down the volume on the question, “What do you want to do?” and just doing. I thought I’d be lucky to get a page when I stared, and I still don’t quite know what I’m trying to say. I’m just saying it. I’ll keep reacting to the responsibilities of my life as they present themselves, and I’ll flow right into choices to mock them with as the impulse beckons. I’ll keep writing like no one’s reading, or the ones that pretty much know what they’re in for. The ones I can’t “trigger.” The ones who, were I to ever get my shit together and have a place to plug them into, might be here by the afternoon.
I think I’m done now.
“Extra” is a word that’s evolved for modern use. You’re so extra right now. Added discomfort or useless words used to bolster a point to nowhere and to no one’s benefit. That something so new could seemingly embody a good portion of where I feel I mentally exist is rather intriguing. There’s always room to find or change words to capture how to go about alienating yourself.
I was also thinking about how many families seem to immediately warm to me or present me significantly fewer problems than I hear for people generally. I get pissy assholes, but people seem hungry for normal or polite conversation that apparently DCS is in no way associated with. The moment you tell me explicitly it’s going to be a dramatic or crazy situation, I’m almost positive it’s going to be a throwaway day where everything gets signed and we’re shaking it out politely. I feel like a principle ballerina who’d rather be swimming than dancing. But you’re so good. But, just, nah.
I got mildly tipsy the other night. It led to a mild hangover today. Mildly drunk me is a place I said that I’d like to operate under for long periods of time. My aching body says provoking nonsense suicide ideation during a hangover is a terrible strategy. I also get ratcheted up and enthusiastic and whatever happens to be pressing on my mind I vomit out immediately. I manage to find deliberate and usually awesome phrasing, but the timing is always ridiculously wrong, middle of the night, or I’ve provoked myself to text someone I’ve got no business talking to and who’s wanted nothing to do with me.
I think the scary part in all of it is the “I don’t care” part. I’m at war with that feeling. The list of things I don’t care about seems to grow by the second. And it’s important to note, broad not caring isn’t the absence of care, it’s just an extremely narrow sense of what’s worthwhile. I don’t get to “just” not care though. I act. I impulse. I need to make sure that if and when I’m not caring, I can direct the energy away from too much consequence. That usually involves pointed focused instances of caring, to tie up loose ends or work perhaps, and then off to the coping mechanism abyss. I care about the image, at least.
I provoke harsher and sketchier fear consequences. I start to poke at things that matter. Thankfully, I don’t so much do it to people I like, but the second I do, I seem to recreate the world around that decision. Not so much for me, but for them. It’s as if they were at once so not invested in reading about how I operate, yet so dramatically invested in it that a betrayal of what they expect becomes the rally point for all future interactions. You could be close to someone your entire life, but the moment they kill your pet rabbit, that’s pretty much going to be the center of whatever remains of your dynamic. Pressing that metaphor further, even if you killed that rabbit barreling down the road with your ridiculous and hard-to-manage personality, they’ll act as though it was an intimate neck snapping as you stared it in the eye.
It’s interesting how much I allow myself to give the people I interact with the benefit of the doubt. One, I think I say this every day, I’m not the police. I didn’t sign up to punish, I’m a manager. As well, it’s not generally hard to see how and when people are lying to you when they do it several times a day about ridiculous things, but there’s nothing any of us can do about that. I, maybe not swallow, but take in “personal truths” about people’s relative responsibility to the circumstances of their lives, and caked or speckled with bullshit, I get why the story sounds the way it does. I need civility and compliance, and otherwise, I don’t really care how you talk about it until something you disclose triggers a child safety issue.
Changing up a bit. I don’t know if I super-fucked my sleep or my diet or what, but this week has been about as long as I’ve ever had of a week. I’m not waking up right. I’m not settling into drives. I’m not enjoying my morning coffee, shitting all at once, able to figure out the happy middle between raging hellfire sunlight and obnoxiously noisy and ill-pointing air conditioning. I was feeling a touch crazy at lunch and started conducting an imaginary meeting in an empty conference room. My mind needed significantly more to do than the minutes leading up that decision were providing. I went to the library and then Starbucks and sat down for some intro physics reading.
There’s this aching emotional child in me that pines for a kind of romance about my life and the people in it. It’s like a part of me who had one really good acid trip and then proceeds to advocate way too hard for the utility, nay, necessity that everyone does it too, even when the absurdity is laid bare immediately. What faculty is that? What purpose does that serve? How do you shut it off? Do I like when the people I relate to seem to be there and we enjoy each other’s company? Sure. Have I not, as close to literally as a basically functioning person can maintain, cordoned myself off in a cave because I can’t seem to manage the psychological load of “hope” or genuine belief in things continuing well-enough indefinitely? How many knives have I put in the words “friend” and “love” while remaining perfectly unmoved to dig up old language to replace the equal-sized holes they left in my heart?
I had a friend once tell me she missed the hangover. She expected whatever degree of shit she was going to feel, and like routine beating from an abusive husband, the kiss with a fist ends up better than none. If that doesn’t testify to the knots our brains can form, as if first-hand experience with battered wives couldn’t do it for you, I don’t know what is. It’s at extreme depths and on the thinnest of edges that we find meaning and inspiration, whether you provoke that place from jumping out of planes, or live the kind of interpersonally dramatic life you’ll never see on TV. I can write a pretty cool song or poem when I’m actually sad, not sitting around bored and angry wishing I were sad enough to provoke the creative impulse. Just like actual anger pushes me to behave in spite and actual tipsy emotional dams breaking mean you’re going to wake up to either a heart-warming or annoying chunk of text.
More and more I feel as though I’m watching myself. I’m deconstructing the expectations for myself I’ve ridden to this point. I’m a step removed from feeling the fallout of playing new friendship games or pressing on old wounds. I’m trying to step into a kind of time flow that allows me to pop back in when I’m only a few hundred in debt, some annoying bumps at work have smoothed over, and I’m finding myself much further along in a book or project than I was anticipating. I think it’s a new form of coping I’ve been practicing; transitioning away from clenched and re-awakening OCD-adjacent behavior. My mind might finally be attacking that fire that makes me so willing to be annoying until whatever’s done is done. I might adopt that solemn timber of the rebellious punk-rock rebel turned soccer dad. That could also just be my inner whore figuring new ways to play to the ladies in their 30s crowd. It’s unclear.
Much as with this blog, I’m toning down the volume on the question, “What do you want to do?” and just doing. I thought I’d be lucky to get a page when I stared, and I still don’t quite know what I’m trying to say. I’m just saying it. I’ll keep reacting to the responsibilities of my life as they present themselves, and I’ll flow right into choices to mock them with as the impulse beckons. I’ll keep writing like no one’s reading, or the ones that pretty much know what they’re in for. The ones I can’t “trigger.” The ones who, were I to ever get my shit together and have a place to plug them into, might be here by the afternoon.
I think I’m done now.
Monday, July 8, 2019
[806] Just A Little Bit
Earlier today, I wrote another redundant blog about the nothing of my day to day. I was sitting in the hospital, killing an hour, after an appointment fell through. You know the story, not enough time to focus on anything particularly meaningful, long enough waste to stoke perpetual guilt over all that I’d rather be doing. It’s not even worth sharing, and will likely be a hiccup I throw on my chain on Blogger, biding its time to waste a stranger’s.
Now, I’m occupying a highly anxious state, listening to questionable sounds outside of my house, as I resent the things in my house mocking me. Right now, I don’t feel like I can “have it all.” I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time playing catch-up and justify. There is no song in my heart that provokes me to play my instruments, even as I can be as loud as I want. My space, being mostly organized and a thousand percent cleaner, doesn't beg me to plaster over screw holes or sweep up the dust in my bathroom corner.
I come home, mostly eager to sit and watch, maybe get through a chapter or two. My horizon has collapsed into the extra early I have to be up to go to court. My prospects continue to lay in one more paycheck than the week before. It all feels very bleak, very meaningless, and very lonely. This, of course, is in direct contrast to my experience over the preceding 5 days. Wednesday was the day I got to pull the trigger and make the drive I’d been looking forward to. It was one long continuous day until driving home on Sunday where things fluidly went from one impossibly worthwhile and valuable experience to the next. I was sharing time with someone I cared about. What else is there?
I’ve brought it up before, but it bears repeating. My fancy house and dreams for the future were all about filling them with people I gave a shit about and living it up. My ideas to collaborate on “anything” were because it doesn’t matter what did or didn’t succeed more than we would be tapped into something together. You can do anything when you’re doing it with someone or for something greater than yourself. You find the energy. You create the means. Your instinct revolves around “yes” and “how” instead of comparable complacent terminology.
My anxiety stems from knowing in my bones how little I matter but for the relationships I keep. I don’t treat my body well until I need it to behave as an example for someone who wants to operate theirs better. I don’t invest that much in the myriad things I’m watching, until you want to talk about it or suggest it. I don’t play music unless it’s a part in the band, and even then, the band should want to say something besides “I’m old and lonely, but super friendly.” I want every single second, bitching second, suffering second, to speak to the achievement of the long perfect moment you can inhabit when you’re doing something, anything, with the right people.
To that end, it speaks to why I last longer in jobs where I don’t hate coworkers. It’s not an “in the trenches” sentiment, as much as it is literally, without YOU, I don’t really care to come in, make my coffee, offer a tired sentiment, and pretend what I’m doing is that complicated or dramatic, even on the days babies die. One of my coworkers went on vacation, and I started applying to different jobs. Culture is what’s sticky, and the more intentional you are about the form and personality types you want to be a part of yours, the dream-adjacent scenarios can then manifest. I’ll never stop referencing my parties for that reason. Everyone was invited, and then got whittled down.
Something I need to stop doing is putting arbitrary obstacles in my way under the guise of being “busier.” I was flirting with taking a night shift job for a month or two. As if you can do my job drowsy and keep the proper demeanor. As if I did it particularly well at 23, better at 28, and now 31 is going to show you what it’s really made of. Asking my boss to explore overtime options is the same kind of thing. Might I get a 5% version of something I really want to do? Sure, possibly. Will the amount of time I spent fretting over looking like a jackass be worth it? It’s already been a joke learning experience as the help, again, I try to enlist ignores me, and skills I need to do it alone require enough uncompensated time to be all-but useless, saving sentiments about every little thing mattering eventually.
I could focus with my dearest. I was there watching the movies, on the drives, at the pool, in the bookstores, at the night market, walking the streets, at the parade, sleeping the morning away, sharing dinner, and discussing ideas from the books we’d like to read more of. I’m still there. I’ll know my life has reached the highest goal when I’m in that kind of space indefinitely. Time marching on, but, work will end and new questions will feel like opportunities instead of obligations, and we’ll move right along together. I suspect this is the kind of fantasy romantics entertain, less articulated, as the details of how to achieve such a state get subsumed by “love” language and well-wishings written on the wedding boards.
I wrote that terrible blog, a waiting and bitching reduction, and emblematic of my state of mind as I carry out my pragmatic duties each day. I certainly can find myself hating the sound of my voice hard enough to choose silence, but then I provoke a kind of steaming pot scenario. The one thing I say many hours later becomes a kind of devastating hopelessness that some annoying chirping could have teased out politely. Or worse, it internalizes as my jaw clenched that much harder, brow furled, and posture cramped and cranky. I want to remain open and excited at the prospect of how to engage my time. I don’t want to live off the memories of a week here and there. I dismiss the idea that life is this painful negotiation of choking down and coping no matter how often I find myself in that state. We’re forged from the eruption and expansion of what may be described as an infinitely clenched universal jaw. We should be infusing with life and internally combusting constantly.
Even when I disappear for a few hours, I miss myself. I miss looking at my wall of instruments and thinking I could be more than passable at them all. I miss thinking it was the most important thing in the world to play very fast and very clean. I miss thinking I could single-handedly build or learn anything if I just took my time, and no matter how terribly defined the directions (goddamn you shed plans). I miss thinking I would come home, and know that by the time I got to the bottom of the hole, I’d be ready to fill it with wood for a raging fire, pool liner, or layer for an earthen build. When I’m not around, I’m tired. I’m too contemplative. I see only the things left undone verses what’s made it this far. I see how it can be extinguished and what I’ll be left to pick up after. I’m no longer my own cheerleader after I realized there’s no team, stadium, and my ass isn’t flattering under the frills.
I think mostly unconsciously, this not-secret thing involving genuine human connection and basest desire at the heart of all self-contained existence speaks to why social work and social life play out in predictable ways. Gotta find someone, right? Love the one you’re with. Find the group identity within your range of attractiveness or status very regardless, if not specifically so, of their actual value as individuated human beings. Pick your poisoned passion. Hang in there, baby. Forgive and forget as long as you promise to never do either of those things, and drone on about the importance of your cultural or familial ties. What a show indeed.
It’s important to me that you know all of the mess in between. Whatever you think about me, I didn’t get there without getting through; and that through is my endless torrent of horrible terrible thoughts before I stumbled into something barely respectable. I don’t get back to playing my instruments without all of the terrible blogs, and lesser terrible ones. I don’t make it into work tomorrow until I’ve read this through half a dozen times and decide I can put myself aside a few more hours to make a little more money and help keep a 4 month old out of the hands of a meth user. I need constant dives into the well before I find drops of life-sustaining water.
I want your process to be as humbling, terrifying, and accountability-seeking as possible. I hate that I have to sound like I do when things aren’t going how I think they should. I hate not being able to carry on and feign any more appreciation for my regal circumstances than I have. I don’t want it needlessly complex, or easy, or disingenuously isolated and selfish. I want it meaningful. I want it tapped into energy and intention that circulates and reinforces. You don’t associate “explosion” with “eventually,” and the fact that I can go from dreading, clenched, and plodding to dialed-in, calm, and contented by mere good company is as large a hint as life can give you. What are your friendships, your crowd, or your family speaking to? Is it the story only you could tell together, or the collection of basic-bitch Bed Bath & Beyond plaques for you bathroom?
I’m not special, but I’m asking you, begging you, to allow me to be.
Now, I’m occupying a highly anxious state, listening to questionable sounds outside of my house, as I resent the things in my house mocking me. Right now, I don’t feel like I can “have it all.” I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time playing catch-up and justify. There is no song in my heart that provokes me to play my instruments, even as I can be as loud as I want. My space, being mostly organized and a thousand percent cleaner, doesn't beg me to plaster over screw holes or sweep up the dust in my bathroom corner.
I come home, mostly eager to sit and watch, maybe get through a chapter or two. My horizon has collapsed into the extra early I have to be up to go to court. My prospects continue to lay in one more paycheck than the week before. It all feels very bleak, very meaningless, and very lonely. This, of course, is in direct contrast to my experience over the preceding 5 days. Wednesday was the day I got to pull the trigger and make the drive I’d been looking forward to. It was one long continuous day until driving home on Sunday where things fluidly went from one impossibly worthwhile and valuable experience to the next. I was sharing time with someone I cared about. What else is there?
I’ve brought it up before, but it bears repeating. My fancy house and dreams for the future were all about filling them with people I gave a shit about and living it up. My ideas to collaborate on “anything” were because it doesn’t matter what did or didn’t succeed more than we would be tapped into something together. You can do anything when you’re doing it with someone or for something greater than yourself. You find the energy. You create the means. Your instinct revolves around “yes” and “how” instead of comparable complacent terminology.
My anxiety stems from knowing in my bones how little I matter but for the relationships I keep. I don’t treat my body well until I need it to behave as an example for someone who wants to operate theirs better. I don’t invest that much in the myriad things I’m watching, until you want to talk about it or suggest it. I don’t play music unless it’s a part in the band, and even then, the band should want to say something besides “I’m old and lonely, but super friendly.” I want every single second, bitching second, suffering second, to speak to the achievement of the long perfect moment you can inhabit when you’re doing something, anything, with the right people.
To that end, it speaks to why I last longer in jobs where I don’t hate coworkers. It’s not an “in the trenches” sentiment, as much as it is literally, without YOU, I don’t really care to come in, make my coffee, offer a tired sentiment, and pretend what I’m doing is that complicated or dramatic, even on the days babies die. One of my coworkers went on vacation, and I started applying to different jobs. Culture is what’s sticky, and the more intentional you are about the form and personality types you want to be a part of yours, the dream-adjacent scenarios can then manifest. I’ll never stop referencing my parties for that reason. Everyone was invited, and then got whittled down.
Something I need to stop doing is putting arbitrary obstacles in my way under the guise of being “busier.” I was flirting with taking a night shift job for a month or two. As if you can do my job drowsy and keep the proper demeanor. As if I did it particularly well at 23, better at 28, and now 31 is going to show you what it’s really made of. Asking my boss to explore overtime options is the same kind of thing. Might I get a 5% version of something I really want to do? Sure, possibly. Will the amount of time I spent fretting over looking like a jackass be worth it? It’s already been a joke learning experience as the help, again, I try to enlist ignores me, and skills I need to do it alone require enough uncompensated time to be all-but useless, saving sentiments about every little thing mattering eventually.
I could focus with my dearest. I was there watching the movies, on the drives, at the pool, in the bookstores, at the night market, walking the streets, at the parade, sleeping the morning away, sharing dinner, and discussing ideas from the books we’d like to read more of. I’m still there. I’ll know my life has reached the highest goal when I’m in that kind of space indefinitely. Time marching on, but, work will end and new questions will feel like opportunities instead of obligations, and we’ll move right along together. I suspect this is the kind of fantasy romantics entertain, less articulated, as the details of how to achieve such a state get subsumed by “love” language and well-wishings written on the wedding boards.
I wrote that terrible blog, a waiting and bitching reduction, and emblematic of my state of mind as I carry out my pragmatic duties each day. I certainly can find myself hating the sound of my voice hard enough to choose silence, but then I provoke a kind of steaming pot scenario. The one thing I say many hours later becomes a kind of devastating hopelessness that some annoying chirping could have teased out politely. Or worse, it internalizes as my jaw clenched that much harder, brow furled, and posture cramped and cranky. I want to remain open and excited at the prospect of how to engage my time. I don’t want to live off the memories of a week here and there. I dismiss the idea that life is this painful negotiation of choking down and coping no matter how often I find myself in that state. We’re forged from the eruption and expansion of what may be described as an infinitely clenched universal jaw. We should be infusing with life and internally combusting constantly.
Even when I disappear for a few hours, I miss myself. I miss looking at my wall of instruments and thinking I could be more than passable at them all. I miss thinking it was the most important thing in the world to play very fast and very clean. I miss thinking I could single-handedly build or learn anything if I just took my time, and no matter how terribly defined the directions (goddamn you shed plans). I miss thinking I would come home, and know that by the time I got to the bottom of the hole, I’d be ready to fill it with wood for a raging fire, pool liner, or layer for an earthen build. When I’m not around, I’m tired. I’m too contemplative. I see only the things left undone verses what’s made it this far. I see how it can be extinguished and what I’ll be left to pick up after. I’m no longer my own cheerleader after I realized there’s no team, stadium, and my ass isn’t flattering under the frills.
I think mostly unconsciously, this not-secret thing involving genuine human connection and basest desire at the heart of all self-contained existence speaks to why social work and social life play out in predictable ways. Gotta find someone, right? Love the one you’re with. Find the group identity within your range of attractiveness or status very regardless, if not specifically so, of their actual value as individuated human beings. Pick your poisoned passion. Hang in there, baby. Forgive and forget as long as you promise to never do either of those things, and drone on about the importance of your cultural or familial ties. What a show indeed.
It’s important to me that you know all of the mess in between. Whatever you think about me, I didn’t get there without getting through; and that through is my endless torrent of horrible terrible thoughts before I stumbled into something barely respectable. I don’t get back to playing my instruments without all of the terrible blogs, and lesser terrible ones. I don’t make it into work tomorrow until I’ve read this through half a dozen times and decide I can put myself aside a few more hours to make a little more money and help keep a 4 month old out of the hands of a meth user. I need constant dives into the well before I find drops of life-sustaining water.
I want your process to be as humbling, terrifying, and accountability-seeking as possible. I hate that I have to sound like I do when things aren’t going how I think they should. I hate not being able to carry on and feign any more appreciation for my regal circumstances than I have. I don’t want it needlessly complex, or easy, or disingenuously isolated and selfish. I want it meaningful. I want it tapped into energy and intention that circulates and reinforces. You don’t associate “explosion” with “eventually,” and the fact that I can go from dreading, clenched, and plodding to dialed-in, calm, and contented by mere good company is as large a hint as life can give you. What are your friendships, your crowd, or your family speaking to? Is it the story only you could tell together, or the collection of basic-bitch Bed Bath & Beyond plaques for you bathroom?
I’m not special, but I’m asking you, begging you, to allow me to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)