[849] Build Me Up, Buttercup

I'm gonna try to write in the morning, before my brain works, something I rarely do, but I don't yet want to be noisy.

Let's get the easy stuff said. I'm starting a new job. It's a bad idea. I'm only doing it so I can occupy as many of my waking hours with the pursuit of money. I tend to hover around $2000 in debt at a time. This is usually with another paycheck for $1200 coming in and mileage reimbursement in the wings. It's hard not to spend money on somethings that have saved me $600-$10,000 recently. I've found the utility of debt and the ability to see things like my new shed getting deconstructed and transported keep my thoughts from being occupied about all I can't yet do.

As far as bad ideas go, I feel like I'm trying to accelerate doing them while I still have the energy. I'm not “old,” but my body definitely is stiffer, I've managed to maintain a relatively consistent sleep schedule, and even with hours of massaging and stretching, there's a wobble to my knee and muscles all through my back that will provoke headaches. If I'm going to get tight and achy, I want it to be after I've cut the roof off a shed, dug a trench, or cranked a come-along all day removing saplings.

I'm incredibly tired of waiting. If I tried to parse out all of the “bad” decisions I've made that I had to account for before I got my own house in order, so to speak, it's time for the experiment and thrive portion. I paid off the tax debt. I got the essentials flowing, I've kept the bills incredibly low, and inch by inch I'm seeing the land morph into the playground it always could be. Even against the backdrop of my despotic fatalism about being alone and angry, I even found a partner! Increasingly, I already bought the right tool or toy and now my Amazon wishlist is things like a tetherball pole and baseball netting. Yesterday, Allie and I discussed where to stack the roof pieces so as not to get in the way, blissfully aware of the irony of the remaining 4.5 acres around us. Space is continually occupied by ideas for its future.

While I haven't fallen fully into “the next paycheck” trap, it's definitely a degree of comfort I don't want to get comfortable operating in. On balance, my job takes up an incredible amount of my time relative to what I get out of it. My bad-math estimation is that I'd have to do it for half as long at my current paid rate or to get paid at least one and a half times what I am for it to feel mildly worth it long term. The fact that I'm flirting with making $13 an hour instead of $21 plus mileage and overtime is a testament to how much they are willing to take advantage of you under the guise of presumed “passion” for other people's welfare. The best case manager or social worker you've ever met is getting fucked squarely, except maybe in Colorado.

Making less money and having a consistency to my schedule might allow me to focus on all of the “little” things. I ordered 10 books over my vacation and opened none of them. I have plenty more to go as far as prepping the ground underneath where we put the new shed. I've got 100+ tabs open of things to read and research. More money has psychologically given me more license to make what might be distracting end runs around things I should be barreling through. You know who you don't spend a day calling when you're broke? Building movers. I've eaten more Wendy's in the last few months than I have in the preceding 10 years.

As well, all of the “stuff” we're accumulating, the expanded space isn't quite set up yet, so it's getting a little tight. While there's a degree of normalcy now to trying to use the bathroom with a chainsaw or yard equipment between your legs, it's not ideal. And with any house, you're always prompted to do a series of small house-keeping tasks that perpetually manifest.

Tentatively, I'm planning to get the shed set up, finish out the bones of my earthen-floor extension experiment, and play with ways to turn my hole into a pool (that's what she said). A place to woodwork/prep out of the rain would be super swell. Content in the knowledge that I had enough money to get by, pay in advance, and everything on-site to do half a dozen things at once without going into debt would be even better. I need to pick an angsty blog from February or April to remind myself that “slow” for me is lightspeed with regard to normal. I envy billionaire efficiency though.

I'm trying to think of things as a puzzle more than as a series of burdens. I'm searching for the right fit, not aimlessly at the mercy of the mess in front of me as I wait for it to assemble itself. As a function of the poorly accounted for structure I've been bred from, I plugged myself into places that aren't quite right that stabilized a certain structure and painted some kind of picture that wasn't depicted on the box. How to safely deconstruct and reconstitute is the figurative and literal project.

[848] So Close To Scoring

I've finished two thought-provoking books in the last week that I want to riff on.

The first, The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, is basically the pinnacle of what you ever could know about our current understanding of trauma and how to treat it. The second, Can't Hurt Me, Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, by David Goggins is one man's story of overwhelming amounts of trauma both inflicted upon and self-inflicted.

Goggins' book I like because it transported me back to the obsessive focused place I was in when I decided I was an “entrepreneur” and had to “simply do” whatever was in front of me to get to the end. It didn't matter if it was ten or two hundred phone calls. It didn't matter if it was early or late. It didn't matter if I didn't have the money or got hurt. Goggins ridicules the word “motivated,” which I understand. I wasn't motivated. I was convinced. I knew the end and what it had to look like.

Living like that is analogous to the faithful. It's an irrational endless push towards an end that is hardly as defined as you'd like to claim. It's the infinite well of justification. It's a pious position on top of your hill. And, as physically manifested in Goggins, it will eventually knot you up until you die. It's an invigorating and intoxicating drug and mythical place where your goal is the only goal. If you occupy it, you are practically guaranteed success. The catch is the narrow definition of that success and a craving for your next fixation.

I appreciate how Goggins discusses things in intimately personal terms. He's talking about his literal psychosis and uses the verbiage that works for him. He doesn't want you to become a Navy Seal or beat the shit out of your body. He wants you to understand that there literally is no excuse and the fear or laziness that permeate all of the little things will run you if you don't run yourself. You have to orient yourself to what is difficult. You have to sacrifice comfort. You have to organize around the things that speak to your deepest insecurities and honest desires. When he was on the verge of death, he felt at peace reflecting on what he had achieved and why. We should all be so lucky.

I think recognizing that capacity in yourself is important. I don't think you need to be cranked up to 11 at all times. I don't think you need to destroy your body and relationships. I don't think that even were you to achieve world domination, it matters much if you were in a blacked-out haze awoken only by the license you give yourself to describe your position at the “top.” I grew more zen about the idea of being “better than everyone.” I can be me. I can't be you. You, absolutely, have important things vitally important to me being the best me. That calloused mind place about you and your effort alone has no room for other people.

Modernity is born of countless calloused minds. Before we could flirt with horrid ideas like “safe spaces,” every single one of us knew there was no such thing, and we knew it because the death and pain and struggle of survival was playing out in real time. Arguably, a huge portion of impoverished or targeted groups kept that “real” spirit alive, while the comfortable and entitled among us pretended the world ebbed and flowed with our first-world posture. For those not markedly defined by, or interested in getting a handle on early trauma, the rest of the world is going to look like a very foreign and hostile place.

That's what we are. We are traumatized by life itself. There are many languages to describe it. There are a dozen schools of thought currently competing on the best ways to treat it. And, frankly, we're babies who've just babbled out the concept of trauma, and are struggling to translate its true consequences.

Just like you can only know the conversation you're having with yourself, the varying kinds of trauma and how or who it hits are infinitely complex. As such, when people tell you to de-escalate, be kind, or otherwise find the “love” for your neighbor that you might for your dog if not yourself, it's an appeal to actually learning what it is you or they are mad at or hurt about. I might be able to reliably predict a handful of pathological behaviors or conditions associated with certain kinds of trauma, but that doesn't mean I appreciate the holistic environment that would lend itself to healing or preventing further damage.

This is where we wade into the undulations of culture wars. We disregard the trauma of being raised Black in The United States. We eventually get the violent disregard thrown back in our face. Ironically, even when it isn't violent, we're fascinated with those who are, almost as if a guilty conscience is trying to keep everyone on the same stupid playing field desperately justifying.

I've had the thought that as the world seems to be burning down in a more countable and palpable fashion than all of the “war-on” rhetoric could ever convince me of, I feel more stable. I don't know what to make of this. It's almost like the turmoil around me is giving me a chance to prove that the way I've attempted to organize my life is proving vital and important. When the world shuts down, where are you living? When the food goes bad, what can you grow? Where the streets are filled with violence, what's the refuge? When you're feeling stifled and looking for a way to express or create, do you have the money, time, room, help, or visible reminders that you're making progress? I used to stare out of my security cameras and see a dirty block path in overgrown weeds. Now I see a driveway, airstream, and recently laid out floor for a home extension.

I regard my place in life as less a description of “progress” though, and more a vibing on a personal theme. My anxiety about ever experiencing peace and comfort notwithstanding. I have a level of person I desire as company. I have a nature of conversation I prefer over others. I have an assumption of work in service to a kind of life I want for myself and others. I've said several times over years, I'm already at the top. I was at the top when I had all of my time during drug study life. I was at the top being able to drink and whore around in college. Hell, I was at the top having a Mini Cooper in high school and in every instant that resembles when I heard on the marching band field “Everyone play this next section but Nick!” because I was loud and clean and setting the bar. I was less interested in how to get everyone to my level, but I was also 16.

I try to walk the line of comfort and appreciation for where I'm at, while throwing myself into the next challenge. Tomorrow, I have to start deconstructing a shed I got a killer deal on. It'll be hot, dangerous enough, a bit of a drive, and involve problem solving I hope matches the tear-down I did for my shed-turned-bathroom. Then I get to remember that with one primary tool, an almost perfectly inept and dramatic stranger, and two days, we got that shed moved the same distance. Oh ya, I can say to myself, it's been worse and also confusing or complicated, and I got a bathroom out of it.

I don't know what the analogous road is for you, mostly because I never really hear people's desires anymore after they've been self-shamed into complacency. The forever-point will be that you can literally start today. I always need help and want to enable you. It will not necessarily be easy. It won't happen overnight. What I gather from the most prevalent story though is that it isn't going to happen at all. I hope things like protests and pressure and the anger and resentment that drove/drive me make their way into the story of why you're operating the way you are in any one moment. You don't need to be irrationally faithful to hold yourself accountable, speak honestly, learn where to fit, or turn and face a fear.

My “fears” for lack of a better term are as straight-forward so to be rendered pointless (like, not wishing to be sick or hurt) or abstract enough I struggle to know where to begin a description. I fear “not proving.” And to be sure, I mean to myself. More than afraid though, I'm curious. I'm obsessed. I'm convinced. The fear is missing out on the game. I've got FOMO for my own life. The intellectual part of me knows it's going to take years, the experimentation, and learning how to fill in where I fuck up, but I can imagine tackling the “better problems” of having “more fundamental” pieces to my envisioned future. How many “if only I had!....” sentiments can your mind ring out when you've already been given the world?

That's where I probe for peace in the infinite now. I already have all the pieces. I'm living in the future. What I “really” want is probably something simple, like to pour concrete and see the wood and dirt look a little different. I want to ease the stress and drama for those I care about and share memories and food (or be willing to buy you more food as I don't really like to share food). I want the “mildly-drunk Nick P.” sensation to rule most of my moments and remain open and flexible and challenged to creatively solve before mindlessly venting. I want to perceive the changes in service to feeling better or living, and amplify them. And when the memory or violence of trauma can be utilized, viciously defend my creation.

But right now, the vast majority of my nows, are very good if not for a great many others. I hope I can be part of translating and building a perpetual better now.

[847] Chains

I am not free. It's an excruciatingly obvious thing to state. I am bound by some mess of internal moralism, physical limitations, and every practical reality of my setting known and unknown.

Freedom, for as often as it is invoked, is extremely complicated. The naive wish to “be free” summarily dismisses the negative consequences. If you want the freedom to be an asshole, you are free to take a punch. Interpersonally it's easier to understand, adding to the irony when you hear a young person on the beach during a pandemic say “fuck em.”

I'm thinking about freedom right now because I don't feel free to enjoy my last night of vacation. Tomorrow, I'm back to using the vast majority of my time and brain space mitigating poor, ignorant, and stressed out people's problems with the handful of meager tools allotted to me. I get to dream about figuring out a way to automate Word forms to exponentially increase my time doing even more sideways and fundamentally inadequate ways to be a part of the system. I get to wake up earlier than my body positively responds to to field questions like, “Are you happy to be back?” yuck yuck.

While I was “free” this last two weeks, I read exactly 0 books after ordering 10 from Amazon. I got my concrete pillars installed this evening, finding one reason or other besides the weather to prevent me from doing so sooner. I played no video games if you consider Rockband actual guitar practice, and while I'm not filled with absolute dread at the idea of returning, I know I'm going to be working very hard to play into my “take over this organization” vibe so I stay out of the realm screaming “none of this matters and isn't helping.”

The kind of freedom I desire I don't think I've ever had. When I had money in the bank, I didn't have land. I have land, but still bills. The projects I add to my plate are supposed to be in the name of fun and experimentation, and let me tell you, it takes doing it, stepping back, and reflecting on what you're desperate to forget how hard it was to learn, before that fun and experimentation feels like a wise decision. My time this last two weeks has been about finding a resting point and continued escape from thinking about work. It wasn't about enjoying what I had, it was about running from what's coming.

I don't feel bad insofar as I got caught up on a ton of shows and actually did accomplish a fair amount of pretty strenuous work. If anything, starting vacation having provoked myself into the takeover mindset probably set me up to “fail” at vacation regardless. I'm returning to a field that is still far and away the easiest thing I've ever done for money. I, occasionally, actually help people and provide a reasonable and calm tone with good information to a situation that, even after dealing with us, never managed to find its way. The work matters, but still not to me, or at least not yet.

I'm exhausted and invigorated by the work I did today. I look properly Peruvian with the amount of sun I've gotten. I go to Lowes almost every day. We actively discuss the dozen things we want to create every day. The reality of a consistent paycheck keeps sounding the alarm. The “practical” fact that insurance, and debt, and health matter bookend every consideration. My model is still built around money. I still have not separated my physical presence and engagement from my ability to collect. I don't want to lazily invite anyone to park and rent, but freedom to waste as much time on a video game or getting really good at clean picking technique does not happen until I don't have the harbinger of “labor for someone else” hanging over me. Not labor, just for someone who doesn't care, who will never care, how efficiently or smart I can be.

How do I get to prove it to myself? Taking over DCS would hint at it. These home improvements are reminiscent of the efforts it took to get the coffee shop going. Sooner than we both think I'll be making statements like, “Oh, you can't build a home extension in a week? All you have to do...” I spend a lot of time thinking about the under-considered expenses and investments of time before I run headlong into things, but there is something invigorating about making a snap decision and drilling down until it's done. For all of the effort it's taken to organize these free books for Amazon, I didn't spent my break listing them. I suspect it's an almost impossible to profit endeavor. I'll truly be “free” when I think it's a good idea to knock something like that out.

I really think I'm going to have to be obnoxious in my takeover. I need the thing above the thing to focus on, like an overwhelming desire to embarrass or shame and spite impulse. You think I'm trying to make things “better,” while I chuckle and go “No, I legit just hate you that much.”

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least nod my head to the idea of how haughty this whole sentiment and blog might come across in the midst of what will hopefully be a cultural shift in ensuring Black Lives Matter. I want to live freer of obligations and search for “fulfillment,” and black people would like to get around to being allowed to live at all. This isn't lost on me.

Maybe I need to explore why just saving enough to last a year or two wouldn't work either. I genuinely want to say my bills are paid for a year. There is little reason, it seems, to do so. They can get their money when they bill me. But, the act of billing me is nagging perhaps? Like, fuck your monopoly. Fuck it taking 5 days to process. Fuck me for not being off-grid yet. What would I do with a year of vacation that I didn't do in two weeks? Property taxes aren't exactly rent, but they are due just like any bill, and can't be paid in advance. Of course there are a dozen things I want right now that are also $1000+ and interrupt the thought, and I'm definitely paying off credit card purchases in service to all the new tools and toys instead of car payments. Why bother sending my internet company $1,287?

I think I still desire to be the kind of person who can, and say that he did, because I know people aren't. It's the pretension. Who pays their bills for a year? Hood-rich people? Mind you, I could throw it on the credit card too, and still use the cash from a paycheck to do whatever. I want more indications of my fought for status. I want people to appreciate the organization and time spent in service to statements like that. I want them to want that for themselves so maybe they'd free up their time and help me make even bigger statements.

We can circle right back around. Saving time to have it to do with what you please. Allowing your brain the time to think about anything besides the next obligation. I fill the void with at least consistent acknowledgment that I'm surrounded by books I haven't read and instruments I haven't learned. I still look forward to being a trumpet student and feeling comfortable spending the grand it would take to re-pad the tenor saxophone. I suppose I don't understand how that isn't your goal if you “want to live.”

If and when you actually have a goal, which I struggle to believe about most people, you don't get it usually without the focus and time and struggle for something just beyond your reach. If you've vocalized it at all, and it's something like “ I want to learn to dance!” and you're not taking dance classes, clearly it's speaking to something deeper. The collective goal-orientation of Black Lives Matter is encouraging, but does it have the habit of achievement or the incidental luck of the country being on lock down so the protests look super cool?

I've watched most people with stated-ish goals do exactly the things that would obligate them to their version of The State kind of environment. The paychecks allows for higher-end feasts to tear through more voraciously than any day-in-the-life otherwise, but was the goal fancy dinner? I think this shit is incredibly important to talk out too. I don't begrudge someone having less than the whole “take over the world” kind of language I employ, but is it unreasonable to point out that taking over the world involves the exact same skills and perspective required to even get a handle on your own life or social circle? How do you get the time without being more efficient? Where do you grow without connecting with those with knowledge that compliments yours? What heights can you climb without sacrificing a series of common comforts?

We all get to die and be free from daunting praise or harsh criticism. In the meantime, we're not even free to feel good about things that are good because a large enough portion of how our lives are organized is catastrophically bad. What do you think it really takes to address that situation without habitually taking on more and more responsibility and intending to dominate it?

[846] Vroom Vroom

There are several mini topics that I mostly just want out for posterity. Let's get organized.

I start back at work on Monday. Another one of my hasty schemes, maybe starting a moving/salvaging operation, was foiled by a lack of information regarding the severity of the damage to the truck I planned to use. Also, the world closed down, and every rural get-by person is collecting scrap and pallets, so I suspect there's more competition than you'll find accurately measured in online researching. I applied to one job, of course that I don't want, but that I trick myself into believing might be a good thing after I fantasize for five minutes. I got an immediate rejection which I then used to elevate my indignation for the dismissive, inadequate, and condescending place I believe most “managers” are coming from. I vowed to give my future applicants the courtesy of at least 5 minute conversations if they were timely, polite, and provided an extended context of their competences.

As long as I'm still working at DCS, I'm plotting to take over DCS. I'm planning to do so by being overwhelming in the amount of work I put in, and reformulating the flow of information and task-management through something that cannot be denied without severe repercussions. I currently do the work of at least 5 people, and I'll be shooting for 25-30. I won't be claiming undue or exorbitant overtime. I plan to collect data in a way the State is unwilling or unable to do so. I'm going to try incredibly hard to keep the generally broad and all-encompassing task balanced against my otherwise cush circumstances and continued work to escape the gravity of the normal world. On vacation I've managed to field 2 phone conversations related to work that I feel aggrieved by, but remind me that the integration of the task and my life is going to be thorough and I need to be very zen about how I conceive of it.

I was talking earlier about drive and what all there is left to achieve. It's a cliché to mention that after you achieve something, what comes next is the new series of plagued thoughts. I read old blogs wishing desperately to be able to shower and shit in my own home, wash my clothes, and walk on something besides a tick paradise. The idea of who you really are underneath and what you could really stand for does a lot of work in destroying your ability to appreciate right now. As a function of getting a paycheck consistently, I think about the next thing to buy, not how amazing what I just got really is or how much time I could spend appreciating it. This is a bad habit. What's important to maintain is the willingness and desire to move “forward” significantly more than retain guilt that right now you're doing pretty good.

This got me thinking about the singular focus I've exhibited from learning about religion, to creating and running the coffee shop, to making my home an appreciably comfortable spot, one hand-mopping session of drywall dust and violent curse for insects at a time. My goal of “taking over the world” is severely hindered by how much I enjoy my present company. This is a good thing. As much as I want an engine for change and accountability on my terms, I want to enjoy building it, talk intelligently about how to get there, and keep the nature of sacrifice out of the realm of martyrdom. That I've used the good majority of my time off to simply not think about working for DCS verses things like reading, playing video games, or even building reminds me how much I like to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I need to make a mantra out of “I'm not actually that hindered by money.”

I helped spread and pour concrete and put together a deck on a hot day, and it was more fulfilling than my last several months at work. If I don't find a way to make it mine, whatever the task, it becomes insufferable. If I can't put it in my context, hotly negotiated and bulging at the seems, it doesn't matter what it is or how hard or easy it is assumed to be, I cannot carry on without withering. I want to be exhausted in service to things, but not stupidly. I don't want to be pinched until I pop, make excuses so that I no longer appreciate the meaning of words, nor pine and moan as though I'm not fundamentally a radical force capable of radical decisions. I can always give or take.

This makes me think of the protests. I want them bigger. I want them meaner. I want them smarter and to be of consequence in a way I believe we're broadly still too dumb to know how to do. I want the power taken, because it will not cede on its own. If I only fussed and wrote signs and witty facebook posts until my blue face scared the cows away from home, I wouldn't be voting for a better sheriff. If I wanted others to appreciate the different eras of protest and revolution, I might provide free text for people to learn what's gone right or wrong. A fuck ton of people rallied in Bloomington, just like every other integrated civilized place for something the vast majority want and can absolutely get. Do we wait until peaceful protesters are getting gunned down en masse by shadow private armies?

Context, big and small, must be persistently navigated. I wish to change the world by getting a firmer and firmer grasp on my small corner of it; whether it's my head, the exercise of my time, or the goals I attempt to adopt within the confines of my jobs or hobbies. Right now, my context, so often tightly focused on “me” and “my budget,” innocently enough didn't cut my yearly bill obligation in half now that it's being split. One paycheck now equals about 6 months of security. Do I still have to work 4 months if I want contacts, insurance, a gym membership, and to overpay for tires or car repairs? Sure. But I can survive on Ramen, books, and keep the lights on for 6 months every 2 weeks. The options to explore remain open, the trend line is in the right direction, and no matter how insufferable any given day may appear things are about as objectively good as I can account for without adequate health insurance.

What's next with more help or organization? Who's in the quarter of an acre next to us helping pull saplings, stashing away their cash, and realizing that $50 just bought them a month of time they'll never get back? Whether it's the self-actualization and incidental ego-stripping that hopefully comes with working, growing, and increased perspective and connections, the question is whether or not we're going to figure out how important it is to focus NOW on the things we should have been doing 10, 20, or 200 years ago. A revolution can return you to exactly where you are if you don't keep control of the wheel.