[830] Prō-vidē-re

I'm super sleepy and full. I've had nothing but a series of scattered lines and thoughts I considered for blog titles flitting about my head. I'm not sure how I'm oriented lately, and I think I need a meandering meditation.

Sometimes I get the weirdest songs stuck in my head. I don't know what they're associated with. I couldn't just start singing them unless they were already playing up there and I happened to notice. It'll be the chorus to some 90s pop song that I'd never hear but for the themed bar night I might attend. Worse than that will be commercial jingles or show intros of things I've barely or never watched. It seems explicitly random.

“Random” is something I think a lot about. I find the more untenable the notion of random becomes, you're willing to swallow increasing piles of bullshit in order to piece together a story. I could tell you explicitly, a dozen times, that each line in this blog will be the random array of noises clunking around in my head, and if you found a common theme by the end, you'd rather consider me “deep” or “insightful” than both of us almost perfectly arbitrary.

I watched a pseudo-science “documentary” that talked about the connectedness of all things. “Quantum” is thrown around a lot, as well as a special dignity to the emptiness we're all mostly made of. I'm finally experienced enough in my media watching that I can see the dozen signals in something that's bullshit before I get to the end. (I still apparently fall for IT test scams at work though). The lone scientist who claims to have unified physics who can't get a single colleague to appear in his film is a solid indication. Using the words “sacred geometry” anywhere will tell you too.

I've certainly contemplated the degree of my feeling connected or not and its impact on my behavior. Basically, I don't feel it. I know intellectually I am connected, but that connection is shaped by the “honest” ways in which we can connect our shared experiences. This is the whole complicated mess of the appropriate use of language and degree or capacity in which one can or should bother to infer anything for which they can't conceive in themselves. I want to believe my starkness or frankness is the right kind of “powerful honesty” that lends itself to the world getting better organized, but I don't feel it reciprocated. I don't experience the gain in any form but the story I tell myself and occasional “I appreciate that” sentiment from someone who's probably lying. I can put my house together, mental or physical, slowly, one brick at a time, functionally alone. (Shout out to my followers!)

I've been to the gym a fair amount recently. The majority of each week in fact. I'm the good kind of sore. For as on-again off-again I've been about the gym, I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering now. Maybe I just have a super in-shape girlfriend I don't want to be too fat for? Maybe I'm subconsciously thinking it'll only be for the 3 months I've signed away to history where, at the end I'll be out of debt and beginning my adventures in hood-rich status? I like pretending that every day, no matter how light the workout, I've lost weight or trimmed an area or two. I like not huffing and puffing and the mental clarity to juggle the different obligations I have to different families. I dislike the smell and general state of the gym locker room.

I was told I didn't have the minimum experience required for the job I applied for. I knew that going in. On paper, I'm a vagabond. In life, I've managed more people and disparate variables than the jackabouts who've climbed the corporate ladder for 25 years mostly with the strategy of explicitly not managing people. I didn't want the job. I want the license or requisite power to be of meaningful consequence in a medium chosen for its utility more than any ideal.

It's the next night and I've picked this back up.

It's suitable that I should carry on and get distracted while revising a line about not connecting only to be met with a facebook conversation yesterday. Today was very flowy. I had achievable goals, just hard enough, that occupied a lot of time, and it's 10:09, I'm home, tucked into my chair, and looking forward to playing with my new toys.

This “vibe” for the last two weeks has been a sort of “full void” so described in Waking Life. I swallowed the idea that I'd be “freer” in two months, and each day has kind of connected in a way that's made sense. I haven't even considered grinding my teeth, I'm allowing for the plethora of small disappointments I have with people brush off like they're only as good as those examples, and I'm stoking the kind of flame that had me burning to do everything every day with the due focus and enthusiasm. It's still going to take some doing, but I felt at home several times today. Out in the cold picking apart a scrap wood pile, getting in a few episodes of One Piece while doing the laundry, and even now, doing what I primarily do at home in sitting and staring at the screens, feels more complete.

Money is a huge component. I feel free when I can chase my energy and ideas, and if I can't sink that $300 into the right tools, I feed on myself. Knowing that functionally, 3.1 or 4.2 checks are going to register the same to my disposition but for how the intervening time is being occupied has me feeling less “hunker down and wait for crisis” and more “gotta google how to...because I'm starting tomorrow.” It's hard to really stress the importance of being able to smooth over your existence with money. I haven't met a single family with their dozen relatives all itching to call the DCS hotline on them I'd rather trade places with when they're poor and miserable.

I like looking down on people. I was asked why I make a point of speaking to when people guess that I'm in my 20s. I like to believe it's an extension of how I approach life (both my parents were routinely told they looked a lot younger than their ages, so, you know everything in this paragraph will be bullshit.) But, my “stress” is a different thing than for most people. I'm not worried my kids are going to die, or have the same weight of bills. I try my best to forget “my families” as quick as I enter their lives. I like to think that people envy my general disposition, begrudging gym body, or the life I've tried to set up for myself after picking “easy” paths in that they were already laid out. I also don't think anyone gives a shit about my life lol.

I've watched chunks of the documentary Shoah at the gym over the last couple weeks. The pain or annoying parts of going to the gym don't really register when you're paying attention to the details offered regarding “the final solution.” Yeah, the shower seems a touch dirty...incoming imagery of bodies piled and falling through gas chamber doors! Life is as much that casual horror as it is the motivated self-serving story of your place relative to all others. Feeling little enough to keep on carrying on is different from feeling so small that you must destroy everything around you.

Arguably, that's what I see. People tearing each other down, not because they just have fun with it and it's part of what I consider my broad and unyielding parody on life, but because they're helpless. They're looking for the excuse to make a mess. I recognize in myself when that gets triggered, perhaps after a giant loss of respect for something, but I don't operate on that level at bottom or perpetually. What people who don't have the naked problem of generalized poverty and unalleviated trauma are slow to realize is how often they share the language of excuses and passing of responsibility. Like, fascism is winning, and not because it's the majority opinion, just the majority dishonest disposition.

That begs another exploration of “truth.” I'm still bothered by the idea of “personal truth.” What's personally true for me is the smallest selfish conception of how I keep the worst things about me at bay. It's not a guide to enlightenment or something worth being proud of. I find the regular world operates explicitly on personal truths. That's how you can offer invitations to people you don't want to show up. That's how you can pray instead of buckle down. That's how you can have the same water-cooler conversations every day. That's how the fiction of your ability to care or lead manifests as the language of other superficial actors and you advance in the game of basic bitch business as usual.

“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded”

Bullshit. At least, in the regular world it's bullshit. The regular world is about placating over those demands. If I demanded you live more sustainably, more humbly, and with an eye on a prize that pushed your knowledge and or ability to tolerate, after you move past confusion or laughter, you'd leave me alone to trod down your own path. We're in our 30s. We've been given the keys to the castle, and so far the demands are proving too much and we're watching it burn. We were given degrees, friendships, families with solid amounts of money, and we speak to each other occasionally in text or through likes. We bury ourselves in personal gratification. My game has basically degraded to a kind of pissing match to bury myself further and faster than you, and probably speaks to why it's taken me so long to find a path resembling the worthwhile expenditure of that much energy or belief in anything. I can barely remember the last time I met someone with a vocalized goal they actually then began to pursue.

I like to think I recognize that I've been given the world. I'm cush as fuck. I'm pretentious in ways pretty people can't fathom. I look for messes to introduce myself into, and casually approach taking things over because I literally cannot find people who, in their own fucking worlds, want the responsibility of speaking up or being blamed. In what universe am I applying to head a local office State agency? Your pathetic one.

I have been wondering what's underneath and why I wanted to stroll through. I found the anger. There's always an exasperated navel-gazing screamer in my chest who remains ironically clueless the tragedy he's watched played out in a familiar way. “Why don't they just do better!? Why don't they try!?” Maybe that's why I've managed to find my gym vibe and extra energy. Maybe I've finally been able to put that nascent regard for people as people back into the black box I'd rather beat them to death with, and it behooves me to again stop pretending there's any room for me and my manner with regard to them. Yes, they're too fat and lazy, stop inviting them and you'll stop empathizing and acting like them. Yes, they're too stupid or busy, get an insane jump on a dozen projects, and be confident in your ability to navigate them alone, not dejected like them who said “if only,” were given it, and then receded. Yes, people are trash, and the name of a sustainable life is recycling, not singing along with Oscar.