[882] You're Standing On My Neck

I'm going to do my best to put a lot of distance between how “I” might use or understand a word, and how “we” colloquially approach it. I'm also going to try to tie those definitions to a broader picture of what I see as a problem with “politeness.”

T.B.L. is the most emblematic of blogs where I've echoed this.

Certainly, we need a sense of decorum or rules. We need to know that by and large we're going to be met with a helpful or polite tone when we engage one another. Your server shouldn't be cussing you out anymore than your insurance agent because of a normalized social contract. There's a baseline for “moving things along” and getting things done. None of what I'm going to try and argue is ignorant of this necessity. None of what I say will be a referendum on how you feel about your willingness or ability to be polite or under what circumstances. I will not be arguing it shouldn't exist or is “wrong” in an explicit manner.

I will try to argue that how “we,” at least in U.S., understand this politeness is warped and does more harm than good. I will argue that I think there's a fundamental lie that goes routinely ignored at the bottom of our conceptions of “politeness” or “civility.” I think the heart of that lie is personal to each individual, more than some faux objective analysis parsing opinions on tactful engagement.
I've referenced the phrase, “Bless your heart” in the past as emblematic of the lie I'm speaking to. You're neither seeking to bless someone's heart in saying so, nor making an attempt to empathize. It's shorthand. It's common, easy, and considered a “polite,” perhaps Southern, way of implying there's nothing left to say, there's something wrong with you, and conversation or players currently involved are not going to be able to handle it. Bless your heart, and good day.

We know when we need to “escape” a conversation and sentiments like this are employed. As someone prone to “ranting,” I see the reservation and stress start to set in as the words are searched for from someone not used to me. I can appreciate when they signal the flow needs to end, and don't consider it “lying to me” because they are feeling overwhelmed, bad, or incapable of helping. I, too, encounter people who have many many words I don't know how to deal with on top of my already complicated head space.

I think one of the varied and complicated reasons I don't get “help” or “conversation” when it gets too “deep” or “convoluted” is because the mechanisms for doing so effectively have been eroded. I think “critical” thinking has reduced to “reactive scrutiny” for a generation or more. Ideas simply aren't shared or understood. They are default “fights.” They are stressful. They are personal. They threaten our sense of being. And the larger the threat they became, the more refined in our dance moves to avoid them. We implore people to not hurt our feelings, don't name names, and don't dare scar an interaction by what's actually happening. In fact, nothing can ever be happening! So there!

It's old news that people criticize form over substance, burn straw-men indefinitely, and never feel more proud or smug than when they can tout their dodging and bullying as righteous defending. That doesn't make it okay. It's “normal,” at least in our culture. It's so routine as to become something for which we're perfectly blind. We take for granted rules for engaging information and each other like we do shopping or our health. It just is what it is, and by god, here's where the person taking them for granted pivots to my opening “this isn't what I'm arguing against” points like I didn't bother to get out in front of them.

I worry that people don't pay close enough, let alone any, attention to what these habits of politeness or decorum are doing. If you're unable or unwilling to see a difference between practically functioning with these habits and “how to engage with the world,” I think they supplement your responsibility for respecting deeper truths. I think you begin to think being polite or following rules is the be-all end-all. I think when you're pressed to engage that, very broad, “deeper truth,” you react viscerally. That reaction is because you're not willing to build it into the balance of your concept for politeness. Your feistier will, perspective, or impulse is subsumed verses incorporated.

I'm pretty regularly accused of aggressively asserting my impulse. I'm oriented towards the “fight,” to be sure, but I've tempered how I go about doing so over the years. It's perhaps easier for me to recognize the rolled-over conciliatory moves, which I happen to often find gross and disingenuous, even when I often agree about their efficacy and appropriateness. The issue is when I try to drill down on any one specific situation and shift the introspective burden onto you. That's when the politeness goes out the window and the accusations flow. That's when the fight (you knew I was aiming for all along!) begins. It's unfortunate and familiar.

I think a lot of us are dramatically and chaotically more angry than we let on. I think every single person I've ever deigned to share a blog with could write as much or more than me. I think every single friend who has shared with me the depths of their depression and anxiety knows what I'm getting at in my fever-dream or drunk blogs. I think on top of the things we might intimately be able to share of our experience, there are a dozen “normal” things related to family or insecurities or shitty living and work environments plaguing you more than me as well. I say again, for the several thousandth time, I hear NONE of your opinions about your existence unless they are in the form of mischaracterizing something I said, or immediately sharing and hovering over the “unfriend” button when you can't be bothered to unpack why you're doing so.

You're not “handling” me by avoiding anymore than you're handling yourself by pretending things don't drive you fucking crazy like they do me. Also, you can't accuse me of mindlessly bitching and never going anywhere, mostly, because I try to work and create things that combat “my” issues big and small. When you put up an unflinching resistance to examining your habits, it signals to me that you're not just “disagreeing” or being “different” in how you're engaging the world, you're denying it. You're shitting on the very idea that we could get somewhere better and build better habits. I demonstrate, through writing if nothing else, my desire and thought process. I try to get more specific. I try to account for the panic.

You don't have to write pages on pages and feel like complete shit. You don't have to remotely agree with my elevated levels and “word twisting” to find out where you're coming from. You do have to signal, at some point, that what I'm speaking to is remotely relatable, reasonable, and, if only eventually, understandable, so that we're not just two crazy people talking past each other. You have grant me the license and understanding to positions you've raised that I already agree with, and then move onto what I've put forward. You can't do that when modern cultural “polite” metrics are the means by which you're going to engage.

In league with this is the endless open-interpretive sea of “favors” and “good will” that comes along with interpersonal relationships I have no patience for. My neighbor offered to tow my truck. He won't say out lout how much money he wants to do so. This will be the last time I allow him to do me any favors. He has a “polite” way of expressing his desires which I don't find polite. It doesn't express his wants and leaves me wishing I'd just paid the premium to hire a tow company. He's not explicitly “wrong” in his 52-year exercise in communication, but it's not truthful, it's truth-ish, and I don't find it helpful, fair, or productive. I'm not wrong for my disposition, but I'd be wrong in matter-of-factly expecting him to conform to my disposition. So would he. He's not likely to self-obligate himself to that understanding, nor is anyone subject to the rules of “politeness” currently employed.

It's a problem big and small. Who's on board with neoliberals negotiating with the fascists and domestic terrorists? Yes, we employed Nazis and there's a practical necessity for obligating the hopeless and angry to new work and rebuilding. How quickly did we “politely” just try to forget they were Nazis? Did that do us any real favors? Did that instantiate a healthy and rounded perspective to pretend “it can't happen here?” We know Germany is a living memorial with reminders everywhere of how badly they fucked up. We can't stand to face our shitty facebook comments! We habituate making “me” the enemy for pointing out when your words don't seem to match your otherwise forlorn or angry body language, tone, or word choices.

It's important for me to differentiate a sickness from a symptom. I need to recognize something as a tool verses a hasty fix. You should feel skeptical when something feels familiar. You might be rehearsing a pathological response, or you might be employing a failing strategy in your understanding of how things are playing out. I explore my hiccups in argumentation and conversation for that reason. I practice trying to keep it impersonal. I think our culture is deeply sick and we're all poisoned by it in different ways. I don't think we're getting better if we're content to remain on different planets in how we talk about it.

[881] Whoooosh

I have an hour.

I've made some calls, changed supervisors, attempted to coordinate getting my car towed from my neighbor who used our morning conversation to pitch me on buying his plot. Now, I have an hour before I'm off to a home with Trump literally mounted above the TV and every propaganda sign running down along the sides.

I have an hour “to myself” or of “free time” in which I'm writing, because I feel like most of my “off” hours consist of hours like these. They are sandwiched. They consist of the mid-stream catch of thoughts, not the ones I managed to remember after I got home. There's still things to do today. I'm not shaking off the fog of just waking up, and I'm not worked into an exasperated tizzy trying to piece back some picture I can recognize.

One thing I've dramatically underappreciated about myself is how much I need something to look forward to. All of the chaos kicked up by the proverbial “shoulder shrug” I tend to get in response to my complaints, inquiries, or asserted goals is often mitigated when I know I've got something I genuinely want to do or know I'll have the time to approach correctly. I don't want to pack in 7 articles to read in this hour, even if I look forward to reading them. I'm not going to start toying with raising the corner of my little room, I'm liable to cut open my work clothes.

I differentiate “tasks” or chores from things I'm looking forward to doing. Paying attention is work, so even reading things I want to, it's a task or chore to remain remotely informed or in touch with some level of art or media appreciation. Getting my room built was what I looked forward to. Mitigating all of the details to not have it flooding are chores. Cuddling up to watch a movie Allie mentions is something to look forward to. Marathoning an arbitrary list from some ill-informed pseudo taste-maker is a chore.

Whether it's work or home, I like to create a flow. It's a psychological state of doing instead of thinking about the doing. I don't want to think about erroneous details on top of coping with whatever stress comes along with being around annoying people. I don't want to start a project on the land, only to be missing any means of addressing issues without a 2 hour foray into town. Flow only happens when you have the details accounted for. Do you know when you're going to input your notes? Then you don't have to think about when you're going to. Do you know you have an array of screw sizes and the drill bit heads on hand? The tools then lend themselves to experimental fixes when the first plan inevitably goes to shit.

Without flow, life looks like a series of stuck or stopping points with way too many words employed to describe what's going on. I'm writing to hopefully continue my flow. I'm searching for more things to look forward to as my dumbass species ensures we keep needing to lock things down. I have my plan for the rest of my evening. I've confirmed my usual supervised visit for tomorrow. I've got my supervision setup for the day after. I don't know what the hiccups will be, from prolonged unnecessary conversations to the weather or, god forbid more car trouble, but each of those can or should have ways of being mitigated.

Whether or not they can or should is the mess we get into on the whole. If you're stopped or stuck at needing basic necessities, obviously life feels much worse than it has to and you're looking for who to blame. Whether you actually parse out what's your responsibility or “the world's” is anyone's guess, but I'm solidly in the “you won't parse that out” camp. What I choose to hold up as worth looking forward to in light of that becomes an ongoing and difficult task. Can I help myself? Can I find the will and desire for increasingly minute pieces of a complicated puzzle? I still believe I need to escape the country and in the next thought consider what details I need to consider for a soffit. It makes my stomach knot.

These kinds of hours are a lot of directionless contemplation. Could I settle in to watch another episode? Should I do some light cleaning? There's different modes of thought and mental prep that make any option feel more or less appropriate. We're not like flipping switches triggering on “do the dishes” or flipping to “dig a hole” in an instant. I think this is an important point that I'm not sure I have enough words to elaborate on more, but here's a seed.

When I'm doing “yard work,” my habit is to start one thing, and find myself picking away at other little things. I might drag over a shelf, start stacking things on it, grab the rake, and decide I need to spread out an ash/dirt pile. While doing so, I'll cough, grab my wholly inadequate face mask, and while inside notice a misplaced box of screws. Those screws now need to be returned, and the table they're sitting on better arranged. I trip on the hose, pull the hose into a coil, and realize the head needs replaced, where one might exist on the “wrong” shelf, so I return to the new shelf I'm filling up to designate as a place for hose heads like “this” one. Add in little construction things and whether or not different equipment has been gassed and primed, and over the course of a few hours, I'll do a dozen things, and only planned to do 1 or 2. The area will look nice, and Allie will come home wondering why I have a sander in my hand and am going on about my plans for the fire pit.

It's a clusterfuck up there that generally translates toward the direction I want to go. It's a kind of natural selection applied to my thought process. I drift in the direction of my available resources, time, and oriented thoughts. I'm almost perfectly ambivalent about any one thing I might do until it serves a particular purpose. Why complete the fence until the neighbor is uncomfortably leering? Why spend the money in service to (x) without some relatively quick turn-around and satisfaction with regard to (y)? There's always "everything” to do, and I'm not “just doing” things to remain busy or distracted, I'm trying to get to that flow space. I'm trying to work in a manner that suggests purpose and foresight.

I think my personal exploration of my process speaks to the whole because we don't know nor are inclined toward one thing over the other. We have many catastrophes at once. Who's in charge? We celebrated and elected people who said “no one” on purpose, and worse, we'll break everything you might use to try. We based our potential flow on a giant mythology about who we are and the influence we have on the world. We transferred our agency and capacity for self-reflection onto that mythology. There's no flow but around the drain. There's not a framework that you can do a dozen-pieces-at-a-time kind of yard work style. There's no trust that the effort is going to translate to an appreciable amount of positive feeling or status. An election is not a switch that will flip all of that around.

Leadership is important. I think that premise alone has been degraded immensely. “Managing” something is not the same thing as leading it. People who attempt to manage me get burned severely. People who join in the leading mindset to proactively address something find me the easiest person on the planet to work with. I'm not a series of problems, but an agent of interpretative and creative problem solving. Whether or not you, I, or the environment we're in has the resources to address those problems meaningfully is the often shitty circumstances that say, “No.” You shrug your shoulders and stare blankly as a manager because no one directed you to do anything. You learn to accept what you must, while thinking otherwise as a leader. You're still trying when you lead, despite a level of implied victimization or martyrdom.

I want a kind of “total flow.” I want enough money to move on quickly. I want enough connections to know exactly who to call. I want enough plans that can be spoken to in big or little ways every day. I don't want to be digging myself out of constant panic. I don't want to get lost in petty personality battles or left to decide to what degree I'm willing to manipulate or entertain your complex. I want to wake up and get to work, not desperately cling to my agency in spare moments or hours. I don't want to stack an impersonal stream of information on top of my sense of futility in an attempt to suppress or suffocate the truth of the pain of my deepest despondency.

I have about 20 minutes. I'm going to take my borrowed car to a visit in my neighborhood. I'm going to demonstrate that I'm capable, safe, and worthy of ensuring a child gets to see her father. I'm not going to get paid “enough” to do it. I'm going to get home later than I want to. I haven't discovered what I'm looking forward to, except I'm pretty sure Allie plans to make breakfast for dinner, so things are probably alright.

[880] Victim Eyes

Honestly, for what has felt like a building and building for months, my brain is on fire. I feel as though were I ever able to re-learn how to cry, maybe I could be persuaded to shut off the endless conversations with myself and inability to stop digging. Digging, that is, unaware if I’m trying to reach bottom, some treasure, or just to back fill a hole I’ve previously dug.

I get a lot of ideas about what I’m going to do when I’m on the road driving home. I get home, blow them all off, and then do things like start writing this, or eat when I’m not that hungry, or settle in for a sped up show I’m half-paying attention to. I have hours of my weekly work to record. I have a calendar to establish. I have details as it pertains to home maintenance to finish. I have to keep talking. The obsessive button is stuck on, and I can’t help myself.

I can’t help myself. I think this is the point of no return for people. You either reach that point and break down, or you humble yourself and look for the right kinds of help. I can’t help myself. I don’t have enough information. I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the language. I don’t have the time. I might not even have the best or most appreciable grasp of my own problem. No louder does the point of swallowing, “I can’t help myself” sound as it hits your stomach than when other people are helping you.

I panic when I need help. I don’t want to waste your time or money driving to help me only to discover I forgot it was Saturday and our plan is foiled because the shop my truck sits at is closed. I don’t want to think about you moving things around in your garage where you said I could put mine while we work on it. I don’t want to think about driving your friend-of-a-friend’s car in shitty weather or the potential accidents. I don’t want to feel this burden to pay you to bother with me at all.

The whole concept of “help” or “equal exchange” throws me. It nags the sense I’ve developed for getting taken advantage of or taken for granted. I can know full-well how eager I am to please and wish to contribute meaningfully to what someone else is doing, but I can barely cope with the idea that my neighbor would offer to let me use his tools or tow the truck for me. I have to fight to believe that anyone would just lend me their knowledge in helping get the truck repaired. It’s unfair to them and my best impulses. It’s an irrational fear that my worst most selfish instincts are getting something for nothing.

There’s very few people I think I have a grasp on what I mean to them. I’ve also invested in people who my presumed understanding in no way matched how little I in fact did. I get this wave of appreciative emotion if someone is willing to pick me up when my car dies. I expect to be left to shiver if it’s cold, pay a shit ton to be towed, and it’s probably going to be raining, so when good will or friendship enters into that disaster-construct I bring, I’m overwhelmed. I want to believe it’s not anymore of a “burden” or “problem” for someone to “deal with me” than I would if any of you genuinely needed something from me. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my relationships and experiences are based in lies.

It’s probably why I’m so moved to constantly write. I can’t trust my perspective, so I have to keep investigating it against the good and bad things that happen. I have to keep my decisions and expectations in some kind of check, or my mind is otherwise begging for an excuse to spiral. Nothing ever feels particularly balanced, which is why I lend myself to taking on too much or being hopelessly optimistic that with a banal but persistent focus and work ethic, it’ll all manifest eventually. I’m dodging people’s chance to help me as I view them as attempts to emotionally leverage or manipulate. I’m waiting for the problem to compound, and be left worse than if I just had to fix things alone. Like, imagine your friend’s tire popping in coming to pick you up.

I guess this also speaks to how little trust I have for anyone. I’m probably going to replace my tire, come pick you up, and go buy another tire. I feel at the butt of, “Well it popped while I was coming to get you!” kind of arguments all the time. Someone else not terribly well-off in a position to afford a new tire uses their dire and dramatic life to assign blame; repeat ad nauseum. Why run the risk of provoking that response? Why attack your already feeble understanding of the ways in which anybody might be allowed to help you? You can completely avoid a food fight if you never invite them to dinner.

Whether you wish to regard it as a kind of super power or extreme liability, I’m positive I’m shaped by some series of chemical flourishes and imbalances that send my spider senses into a frenzy. Most people tip me off the wrong way. The ones who haven’t then have to surmount my “intellectualizing” of their presumed living-failure state. If they’re either suffering the same kind of symptoms, dispositionally aberrant in their niceness, or prove themselves in some kind of fairytale fashion, then I might take a chance in asking for anything or “more.”

I’m tired of losing or failing for bad reasons. I make the distinction between my clients where there are those who are poor and trying, or poor and cunts blaming everything but themselves. If I broke my car joyriding or off-roading instead of side-hustling, I’d feel less inclined to argue my job should find the language or responsibility to collaborate and shoulder some of the burden. Not even my friend, my fucking job that profits 10-to-1 off the work I do for it. My job that doesn’t pay me enough to not find side-hustling necessary. People shouldn’t be made to suffer because of judgment or indignation unless it’s their own.

None of us ask for the myriad things that seek to shit on or influence us every day. We cope by detaching. We cope by downplaying and parroting. We drink or get way into our hobbies. We overburden sentimentality. We work ourselves until we’re too exhausted to think. We don’t feel helpful, and at least for me, therefore can’t trust help offered by others. We recognize the problems as bigger than our daily buckets of water against the forest fire. We know we haven’t run enough to even escape the boulder’s shadow, let alone had time or energy to ponder the size and origin of that boulder.

Knowing you need help and being able to find it are two different things. I know I need help. I know I can access certain kinds of help for certain kinds of things. I’m not entirely sure if some things related to my thoughts and compulsions can really be helped, medication aside. I don’t know that I want to be numb or hazy when calm or worked-up, the threats are real. Whether they constitute threats to your life or reduce to daily negotiated realities, they’re shaping what you can see out of yourself and other people. They’re living and breathing the ongoing reality to navigate.

I try to “think” away my panic. I try to write my feelings into a corner where they certainly consider what that good cry might feel like, indefinitely, until I’ve ground my teeth down and conjured a new headache. This contributes to my desire to compulsively act. STOP THINKING I plead with myself, GO DO. And what is there to do? March and yell? My homework? My detailed little fixes rounding out my selfish little space I’m only entitled to provided the wrong people aren’t paying attention?

I only feel “at home” in those imperfect expressions of the consistent ideals. It’s only when I’m working in service to ideas and people I believe in that the insecure doubt and panic are erased. Yard work becomes a joy, because a better future accompanies each shovel-full. You can feel genuine enthusiasm for other people’s junk as it now represents a learning opportunity or larger commercial presence. Misunderstandings or open questions feel like they deserve your attention and are capable of being brought to a resolution. The next disagreement is a chance to refine an exacting appreciation for where you’re headed together. You’re encouraged by and to figuring out what needs helped and where. The reciprocity is built in, not baselessly expected nor poised for abuse.

I feel abused. I feel like I’m made to continually explain how I could get less black eyes if you’d stop installing so many pointless doorknobs, and right at eye-level. We both refrain from saying the quiet part out loud about how many you’re regularly throwing at me. I’ve learned that when you tell people that’s what happened, they’ll let you borrow a screwdriver. Or they’ll accuse you of dragging good doorknob installers through the mud. Or they’ll tell you to crank your head back so you take the blow at a point that bruises less easily. The victim in me panics, distrusts, over-analyzes, and wants to instantly burn things down. The vast majority of the time, the victim doesn’t make the rules or dictate my response.

[879] First Response

The theme is familiar, the layers are many, and the word is “responsibility.” I’ve said a fair amount about responsibility already, but a mild “crisis” today has put it back into focus.

In the past, I’ve said things to the effect of “I’m always responsible” or “it’s always up to me” or “it’s always my fault.” I’ve lamented how often people were happy to thrust responsibility on me for starting the party (no one who attends can be bothered to take any or start their own), making the comment (no one with ears should feel attacked or uncomfortable), or otherwise forcing my will, perspective, or intention onto an otherwise perfectly innocent situation (no no, *you absolutely are negative*, just too proud, defensive, blind, judgmental, etc to see it).

A few days ago, my car functionally lost its breaks. I took it to a shop nearby, two days later, they hit me with a $4500 bill. I’m a social worker. I’m already in $2000 debt. That shit ain’t getting fixed at that shop for that amount. As it happens, I work for a company that has company cars. You’re able to get one after 90 days. Whether or not that actually happens is based on what has previously been explained as a messy and imperfect system. They have cars sitting around, but not the keys to pilot them. They have every aspect of their business online, except the sign-out for who needs an available van and when.

I live an hour from work. Yesterday, I was assigned a new case in my neighborhood. I went to what should have been a 30 minute run through of house-keeping paperwork. It turned into a 3 hour marathon attempting to persuade a pedophile idiot that his overprotective wife was not “losing her rights” by not being allowed to attend the supervised visit. It’s 8 pm by the time I’m done, 10 minutes away from my house, 50 from the office. I went home. The rule is to have non-personal cars back at the office each day.

Allie would have picked me up. I could have told myself a story about the ups and downs of social work and how this was just a “tough day” that went long and I can focus extra on “self care” over my Friday/Saturday weekend. I wouldn’t have inconvenienced a worker who needed the car today, who texted me to explain the details of his plight, only to find himself apologizing to me when I explained my struggling experience to mesh with the same scatter-brained conception of management and accountability that seems to plague the social work field. When I told him I tried to get out ahead of today, weeks ago, he said, “Oh! I know exactly what you’re talking about!” relaying the familiar feeling of attempting to anticipate something and do better, only to get shit on.

I did try. I explained that my work truck is just that, one I work with. It was in rough shape before I put two thousand pounds of space heaters in it. It's needed brakes, calipers, rods, and a general inspection for a minute. I return to, I’m a social worker already in debt; a fancy well-running truck is a fantasy us poor people don’t indulge. When it breaks bad enough you have to take it to a shop, you pray it’ll only put you another month behind. I told my supervisor I was on track to spend $600 a month just in gas to do the job. Not anything extra, like commuting, or taking mini trips across the state trying to bilk the mileage reimbursement. Just the picking up and transporting between visit locations and getting to clients. I also offered to pay a premium on what it already costs to have a company car for personal use.

“Yeah, it sucks, but you just have to deal.”

This company was happy to send me on the road with other people’s children in a car that was not mechanically sound. It worked “well-enough” for a couple weeks. They were only concerned I had the right insurance, another extra expense when I didn’t carry enough. I’ve had grinding brakes on other vehicles for many months before. It wasn't even on my radar that they would just give out, as they did when I was alone and pulling into the work parking lot. How terrible of a thought can you conjure as to what could’ve happened in bad weather or on the wrong turn?

When I said how much I put into fixing past issues with my truck, my supervisor turned it into a pissing match citing $1300 for one past employee’s misfortune to my $800 several months ago. He relayed a story of not having spare keys for vehicles that were used by two employees on vacation. Whether or not spare keys could be obtained was beyond the point, he could only think to pile on to the disorganized sentiment as evidence of our mutual futility. When I learned of the bill, I relayed it to him immediately, and explained there was no price point I could currently entertain that was going to get it to bare-minimum status. His only question, “How soon can you get it fixed??” felt like a slap.

Our last staffing, my supervisor started leaning on the idea that the “sympathy period” for being a new hire was over. 3 weeks in, 3 completely and last-minute changes or additions to my schedule, and if I wasn’t making my hours, it was going to be a challenge to consider me full-time and allow for all the “benefits.” Last staffing he relayed to me that 3 people previously hired took 3 to 6 months before they had relatively consistent schedules. I’ve had exactly zero say in who I got, what times they were used to, or whether or not I could retain ones after they wanted to foist a problem client onto me after he’d chewed through 8 previous caseworkers.

So, disorganized, implicit threats, side-eye from my regional manager after I sent an email to our “I’m here to help new hires!” guy detailing my experience, and I’m sitting at home on my “day off” having spent a good portion of the day returning the van, answering texts, and writing emails in attempts to troubleshoot how to get a car from a company that contracts with a rental car company. My truck is still in the parking lot an hour away needing to be towed to...who knows where, and I’ve got two coworkers who are car savvy that might be able to help me make the repairs for 90% less money over a considerably longer period of time.

Where and what are we to make of the different levels of responsibility? We’re pretty reflexive in regarding how we exercise our care and attention as fair to good. From my little perch, I feel I have a responsibility to keep myself fed and housed, so I get a job. The terms of that job implicate me at different levels, from the reliability of my car, to my ability to regulate my mood enough to deal with the incredibly dumb or hostile in an ongoing basis. I have to attempt to communicate clearly to management and clients. I have to maintain standards of safety and timing. I have to be comprehensive and record every single text message I send. I have to make less than inflation-adjusted minimum wage.

I think, in spite of the ask or “requirement,” my responsibility stops at donating my car. It stops before any remaining health in that car is exhausted to anything beyond things that are making me money or getting me where I need to go. I think I stop wanting to take responsibility when the response to my efforts to mitigate problems at my less-than-accounted-for levels go ignored or are deliberately downplayed. I think I’m less inclined to take responsibility when I’m in an environment that trains the impulse out of you.

I’ve been a manager. I’ve been a supervisor. They’ve been at a “smaller” scale than all that is involved with social work, but I know my impulses and ideas on how I would try to fix something were a similar problem brought to me. I’d have asked or told me where to go to find out if paying a premium might work, not reiterated the policy (changed as recently as within the last few months in response to two idiots drag racing in company cars). I’d have offered to get you home if you were going to be functionally stranded at night having dropped off the car like a good policy soldier. I would have asked Enterprise for a goddamn spare key, or paid the expedited shipping to get it sent from wherever they were on vacation (and, goddammit, Covid, they shouldn’t be far).

Why would I do that? Because I’m in the business of parents seeing their children. I’m in the business of keeping people in their home and retaining rights. I’m trying to save time and money by keeping people from selling all of their worldly possessions to keep their kids in diapers. I’m not enabling you on aimless joyrides or feeling resentful that you’d feel so ”entitled” to be able to carry out your duties without losing money.

Here we hit the existential crisis. I see parallels in my day-to-day that are mere echoes of our cultural failings and reckoning. We haven’t figured out that things “don’t have to be this way.” It is entirely possible to pay people fairly. It isn’t just your right, but your duty to be indignant about being taken advantage of. We can acknowledge when we see problems coming and plan, like building dams to stop inevitable floods or refraining from building in the floodplain altogether. Increasingly, we can no longer claim ignorance about the grounds on which we’re building houses.

If you don’t know better, you can chalk anything up to “that’s life.” Richard Wolff explains that he used to give talks about “the system” and people would have blank stares. They had no idea it wasn’t normal to work 3 jobs, be stressed out and exhausted, and not have healthcare because “capitalism” and the ethics that come along with it were beaten into them their whole lives. Now, to someone like me, saying “duty” to describe maximizing profits to rich shareholders sounds beyond absurd, not matter-of-fact good business. Our duty is to each other, and we can’t pretend that we’re able to serve when we’re knee-capped by willful blindness.

We’re not paid enough. Our cars aren’t up to the hundreds of miles a week driving. You don’t have a problem of “morale,” you have a problem with “truth.” Maybe your organization is trying to grow beyond what it can pay for. Maybe it’s not making the right kind of sacrificing and elevating the right kinds of behaviors to deserve to survive. This is such a common and familiar theme, you can easily trick yourself into thinking it’s just the way things are or that there’s something universal about what failures humans are.

We’re now prepared to be crippled by our resilience. Every possible rationalization comes to a head. Every horror story shared not to sympathize and build solidarity, but to one-up and belittle. Think of the kids that need to be fed! Just one more week I need to make it through. Think of how bad that guy has it! My wage at least has “teen” in it! That’s good money! You’re not being responsible enough!! Pick up not just your emotional baggage, but the tab, and please smile after swallowing every offered platitude. There you go!

I felt on the verge of breaking on the ride into town today. The naked ass of “existence, so-insisted” was working its way past my eyes, into my brainstem, and down into my chest and guts. Again, my attempts at exercising responsibility and foresight were denied. Again, I’m made to play last-minute and wag-the-finger at the expedient and desperate move to not be compelled off the plank into the seas of endless sacrifice. Again, I’m met with the idea that I’m on my own, or at the mercy of how much I want my baggage to spill into the lives of my friends or family. Allie’s not a cab service. If you’re upset I can’t afford a nicer car, you need to spend some time alone until better thoughts start to hit you.

The great irony is that we’re always all responsible all the time. We structure society to give a stronger resolution for obligations and responsibilities for those at the top, and they may or may not have a genuine aptitude or moral authority. As a piddling regular Nazi, it’s you who carries out the order. It’s you who accepts the conditions. It’s you who shoots deserters. I feel left out to dry. My friend offered to let me use a spare car he happens to have he’s been keeping for a buddy overseas. That’s not his job or responsibility, he chose to make it his job and responsibility. It’s still not. Nor was it his job to buy this asshole client a phone so he could keep progressing through his visits.

It’s easy to blame yourself when you don’t know who to otherwise. It’s easy to act like it’s not a big deal when you happen to have the fix or the ability to move past the issue quickly. This is why rich people suck. “Life,” as we’re made to worship through ritual excuses, doesn’t “happen” to them in the same way. Bad things certainly do, because life sucks, but they won’t be broken by a totaled vehicle. They’ll have nightmares about how long they were on the phone with an insurance company. This is why competent people get exhausted or a really dark bent. They don’t grasp they’re being taken advantage of, or don’t want to admit it, and become the loudest cheerleader that pretends they’re on “top” and everything is copacetic if you could just find that team spirit.

When I get the opportunity, as I’ve attempted to create it myself, I want people as partners. If I make more, it'll be because I do more, but we don’t have to pretend I’m benign in my desire or use of power and money. That's what we’ve done. We’ve glorified opportunists, exploiters, and psychopaths as “founders” with some kind of special wisdom because their thing happens to exist instead of someone else’s. What could a doctor (this company’s founder) who studies mental health have besides anything but the best intentions? Ask the growing amount of money coming from government contracts, because when I find out it’s a penchant for Fabergé eggs, I’m going to demand more than a basically functioning car.

I’m still operating under the pseudo-bearable plight and obligation to continually speak truth to power. I still believe that I influence people, they influence me, and though I may never see or meet them, what I say and how I say it matters. It matters now, it will matter later. In order to take responsibility you need the means, the tools, and the will and wisdom to discern how to go about it at different levels. I’m responsible for myself, my people, my home, and the ones I attempt to help as they exhaust my time and patience each day. I certainly “asked” for some level of drama and obligation by taking this job, but that ask was compelled by a whole lot of forces beyond my control that need to be spoken to as well. Whether you can actually do something meaningful within such a domineering system to change or corrode is the open question.

I’m going to try and fix my truck. I’m going to rely on my friends to help, pay just enough to keep the chaos in some makeshift car bay long enough to keep making barely enough to fix barely enough. I went into work with all of the equipment they issued me prepared to just leave it and get off the familiar wheel as quickly as I was able to recognize it. My friends’ willingness to unfairly share the responsibility is going to stoke my sensibility as well. Fuck the world that gorges on those sacrifices.

[878] Foul Balls

I'm going to try and write a blog from my phone. I reflect on a lot while driving anyway, but having chased out another "friend," talk of a coup, and a recent interaction with someone regarding my facebook available plot post, there's much to sort.

Underneath, I'm always me. I'm always mean. I'm always ready to engage. I've spoken to this before in thinking about Riddick and the scene where a character goes, "but the Furyan in me..." before aiding his kinsman and evaporating in the sun. I'm anchored by this sensibility. I'm considerably worse off as a person when I try to ignore or deny it.

The part of me that maligns hope resides here. When I want to believe I'm speaking to something important and universal, this part calls you all dead inside assholes ready to ignore or lash out. It doesn't fundamentally believe in anything beyond the anxiety certain thoughts and interactions provoke. It's constant. I think if and when people have that same constant sense about themselves, it's riddled with corrosive doubt about its utility and significance.

I think people are broken. I think this because I regularly see the same patterns in how they engage with the world that breed the conditions for their problems to get worse. They celebrate dishonest interactions. They shut out "negativity." They know full-well what "too much" means to them, but have no concept of "enough." They'll feel overwhelmed by anxiety, shut down, defriend, but they'll never find the language or motivation to address the heart of the anxiety. They never get enough of the cycle through bad emotions, self-righteousness, and silence.

I talk all the time. I talk calmly and professionally. I say fuck and cunt as often or moreso. There is a constant flow of thoughts I occasionally am not plagued by and can refrain from voicing. I've habituated relaying my experience, so it lets me draw contrasts and parallels to the crumbs of people's lives that they relay to me. I'm impatient with people who insist every conversation needs to immediately devolve into character assessments and accusations. I can play that game too, and it's boring, immature, and unhelpful. I'm ambivalent enough at my core to choose to engage stupidly, incorrectly, and often.

What's happened is that I've seen no evidence being less than a forceful insistent cunt gets anywhere. I simply don't believe perpetually appeasing feelings and stepping around confrontation is healthy or a strategy for long-term survival. The anger manifests regardless. It becomes intractable and maybe runs for President. It becomes the mechanism by which you tear everything down, now with zero mercy or perspective as to why or whether you actually should.

I like to destroy. I don't like to destroy for destruction's sake, but I like to break things that need broken, and I don't mind picking up the pieces. I've shattered dozens of conceptions of myself. Depending on who you ask, they'll affirm I've brought down businesses that deserved it. I know that I've destroyed things I shouldn't have and don't want to mirror in my future. What I'm not is someone who tries to deny we're living in a perpetual state of creation and destruction which is wholly ambivalent to our preferences and intentions.

This speaks to why I hate victims. This is why issues that could be blocks in a coalition are refered to as "radical" and allies are in short supply. They never get over the idea that they are the most oppressed. Whether it is along racial, sexual, or financial lines, whatever your poison you can build a complex. You can insist, until you're red or blue, the universe has targeted you, your feelings matter the most, your view of the world is the most correct, and any lack of conformity is tantamount to oppression and tyranny. Unfortunately, none of those things will ever be true about you or your position.

When you couch your Identity in how small you feel, introducing the larger perspective is an attack by default. Telling you how unimportant you are isn't a boring circumstantial fact, it's provoking your deepest fears you haven't honestly engaged with. You might pay lip service, but you haven't gone to battle.

This denial plays out in familiar ways. It's uncritical. It surrounds itself in a bubble. It takes pride in turning the complexity of their issues into memes. It has nothing to offer but cliches and insincerity.

It needs to be attacked. Those who are severely traumatized need a steady routine, calm demeanor, and maybe medication. I'm not suggesting everyone needs beat over the head at all times. Are you so traumatized? Am I too much for you? I feel gross even arriving at the question. God forbid my words could break "you," or we're about as fucked as my most damming conceptions.

Switching gears a bit, I met a man about storing cars on my property. If he responds affirmatively to my offer, in a moment I could go from needing at least 2 months of job I don't want to paying off the credit card and then some. I could breathe a touch easier. I could finally say I've drawn ”passive" income. It would only come after 30+ empty, hateful, and unresponsive conversations that came before. The ratio is my concern.

I'm always looking for numbers that describe us in bids to keep things impersonal. When I first heard the sentiment about being lucky if you die with 5 friends you can genuinely rely on, I looked at all of my acquaintances with increased suspicion and coldness. When I see statistics on psychological dispositions, successful businesses, or even results to surveys, I attempt to draw a broad conception of where an "average" person sits or how much weight I should give an idea.

When I learned how to be genuinely enthusiastic about "small" things, it came with the growing appreciation for the aberrant nature of the examples I was setting. Fleetingly small portions of people start things at all, let alone see them through. Few people write, despite what seems like a flurry of words everywhere. Fewer people are listened to or actively shared or shaping the culture.

If 1/30th of people might speak to an appreciable change to my bank account, do we consider in depth what that means logistically? Can't one person or bad interaction derail your mood? Can't you be deceived by 5 or 10 who sound a lot like something you can work with? Mind you, no money has even changed hands yet, the number could be higher in how much shit you have to sift through for a small patch in your general quilt.

I consider my voice important because no one is relaying these kinds of thoughts to me. I have to find the practical light in the darkness. I have to prepare for the struggle, develop the coping skills, and denote why I'm not a victim of my disposition, infinitely small perspective, or worst impulses. I'm already comfortable with the inevitable confrontation, loss, or overwhelming hopelessness and precariousness of trying anything at all.

Until you can say the same, I'm not confident in your ability to "human." You can survive and drag the whole of our baggage around with you, but you're not affirming yourself in spite of it all. You can have habits that resemble a healthy and productive way to be, but your stomach won't settle, your breathing won't calm, and your environment will look like significantly more cries and condemnations than gardens and room extensions. You can be like the farm cat I intend to adopt, riddled with ticks and unaware you need a human to pick them off and get you vaccinated.

I've got 57 "friends" and falling. That's 52 to go before I consider myself extremely lucky. I'm demanding. I have expectations. I'm not just tired of the same appeals, empty conversations, and poor excuses for my 30-year-old cohort to find the balls (sometimes literally) to "adult" and do better. I'm as comfortable breaking a bad dynamic as I've ever been. Do the work. You are your own worst enemy. When I start aggressively asserting pyramid schemes, UFOs, or Qanon you can dismiss me with ease. When I'm imploring you to stop turning words into things that aren't said, share science articles that bolster your views, and find enough self-respect to represent yourself with something of more depth than a picture of Obi-Wan or Kermit, I'm not the problem, even when I call you a lazy fuck for doing so.

[877] Balk The Talk

Let's start what initially feels like it will be one of the most redundant things I've ever written.

The problem is dishonesty.

Always, first, and forever, the problem is dishonesty. Whatever your issue, whatever your concept of "oppression." Whatever your interpretation of "isms" or "ists" is. It's always dishonesty.

You can get hidden or blocked from something because you are a troll. Those people are easy enough to understand in their arbitrary behavior or antagonism. Conversely, you can get hidden or blocked because you have an exacting understanding of a situation that makes someone uncomfortable.

I suspect I exist in a realm of the latter kind of person on most issues most of the time. I suspect this because of my insatiable desire to explore the depths of my ass and get a remote grasp of the psychological underpinnings of humans at large. I think I get very explicit when I need to in picking apart words. I think my point can be succinct. I think I've done a lot of work scraping away vagaries related to conversational style, intent, and efficacy.

As such, I know, hours before I'm blocked or hidden, that what's being discussed is perpetually on the verge of being censored. There's a psychological line that people who are angry can't cross. It's familiar. It's universal. It's annoying when someone points it out. It's worse when they do so with "big" comprehensive words juxtaposed with calling you a cunt.

Religion, racism, trans issues, misogyny, feminism, pick your poison there is a long sordid history and dozens of books neither of us have read in service to them. You can try to be angry or sad and talk about these issues, but almost certainly you're going to devolve into calling the other person names and running away.

Trump doesn't become president unless we were hemorrhaging what it meant to be honest. It is so deep, we barely know what I'm talking about right now! Dishonesty is hidden in memes. It's the fabric of our social groups. It's the silent obligations and compelling feelings that have us conforming around modes of communication that destroy us.

My worst clients are the dishonest ones, not the ones cussing at me or making empty threats. Their dishonesty hurts them, their children, the annoying process, and their prospects of not having State intervention come back if they manage to close things. My work environments suck by capitalist definition because they are dishonest about their greedy motivations and lack of accountability in allowing people to own their work, sense of being, and time.

The honest estimations of "what's happening" get crucified and killed, routinely. It's familiar. It's universal. It's easy enough to write me off as getting off on "arguing." It's also dishonest.

The playing field isn't fair. We're up against the baggage of being dumb apes. We're up against being wholly ignorant of our own minds. We're not just dumb, we're complicated in how we've structured being dumb. We're bull-headed in defending that construct. We're actively seeking voices to help protect and reinforce that construct. It's merely a construct. It's a wild and broken one.

I write. I share what I write. I save my conversations and arguments and share those too. The truth is naked, painful, comes with a lot of dirty words, and the thing you don't want to look at you need to the most. You look at by quoting. You look at it by offering challenges and criticisms of it. I'm proud to shit on people indignant and hateful masquerading as crusaders for the oppressed. That's Trump. That's Nazis. That's "radical activists" who have zero appreciation for how to interpret people different from them.

You can't say, truthfully, I don't understand your emotions. You can't say I'm just blissfully unaware what my words do to a person already on the defensive. You are correct in that I'm aggressively trying to pet a dog who's been abused for years and just needs time alone. Except, people aren't dogs. They need to be accountable for their barks and bites. They need to be shit on. We've taken our knowledge of trauma and used it to pretend pain is a selfish and noble thing to be protected from criticism. And when I say that, I'm giving too much credit to the people who behave that way, because I don't think they understand a goddamn thing.

I persuade people to peacefully part with their children. I can't persuade an angry keyboard warrior to quote me. The mediums come with their own handicaps or strengths, but both require honesty. I prefer the typing pissing matches because, at least when I do it, the words remain. You can go back and analyze. You can rephrase. You can ask questions. You can build and progress. You can expose yourself to what hurts at your own pace until you mold yourself into something better from the inside out.

But you have to mold yourself. You have to face what hurts. No one can force you. I can choose to stop calling you a cunt. You can't choose to make me feel bad about something I said. You can't force me to consider myself a "transphobe" or "bigot." You can honestly engage with what those terms mean to you. You can read exactly what I've said with regard to a topic, and pick it apart or ask for more detail. That's not what you do. Not doing so is dishonest.

I didn't stop feeling an overwhelming desire to "fight" with people until I examined the dynamics of my emotionally abusive childhood. I can differentiate between needing to react and overcompensate, and a genuine longstanding and worthwhile concern. I know what to focus on and break apart. I'm not plagued with guilt and doubt about the righteousness of my words or actions. I've detailed them out. You can read why. You don't have to pretend or even give me credit! You just have to look at what's already there.

I don't consider myself explicitly right or wrong. I'm curious. I'll keep asking questions. I'll keep probing for what motivated your behavior. I have nothing to win or lose that way. I "win" to the extent my work and words shape behavior, and my behavior first. Behaving as if you're the first person to feel a certain way and all your words are the best words is Trumpian. It's ignorant. It's dishonest.

Do fucking better. We're days after a wholly inadequate neoliberal mess is being dishonest about the impact of their policy and words. We're content to think we've "won" anything. We're still fucking lost.

[876] Same Old Story

I can't tell why I'm procrastinating.

To not start something is familiar. We're waiting for things to “feel right.” We're hoping the conditions will lend themselves to our effort. We put off doing assignments because the consequences of doing so are not that severe. It affirms that rarely are the stakes high nor will the work be appreciated.

The last few weeks I return to familiar and persistent feelings. I might have 3 phone calls to make, 2 reports to write, and I can't persuade myself to do them. I'm not invested in the work. Doing them won't even bring me peace, which registers as the larger dilemma, and the feeling to “not do” starts to bleed into other areas. I have to finish the detailing and soffit on the room extension, and yet I find myself here writing.

Doing work is something of a sacred act. What you work affirms what you believe, begrudgingly or otherwise. If you don't understand or believe in the work you are doing, you're corrupting. You're corrupting your future enthusiasm. You're betraying affirmative words in bids to compel other people to work like you. You're eating away at your capacity to formulate why the work doesn't feel like it “ought” to.

It's certainly more precarious for me to orient my life around what I can do “hustling.” There are many poor people who scrap, make just enough to get by, and are plagued by their inability to save, account for their health, or respond to a disaster. My juggle is to weigh that precariousness around living under the threat and stress of mild panic regarding the majority of my time otherwise. I hate my job because it's not “mine,” it's a job I do. My identity is not reflected as palpably as I've worked to assert it in other realms.

I'm never just “negotiating” what I'm doing in any one moment. I'm gambling with the future. Each moment spent arguing with a 15-year old probation kid is one I'm not making another long-term scrapping connection. Each minute spent reading an email that tests my ability to cope with “fun” games about who turned in paperwork on time picks at my will to live. These are high-stakes considerations constantly running through my head. The drama of living in the moment is trying to introduce enough workable variables to keep you together.

What it means anymore to be alive, at least in The U.S., is to have never had a real stable environment to work within. Every effort is, by design and practical definition, undermined when you're gaslit about what to expect or the merits of your perspective. There is no real stability even before you take the concept to some existential or philosophical level. It's always been about how to capitalize and exploit. It's always been about overwhelming your senses and a narrative about your sole capacity and obligation to yourself. You can't expect things to get better, no matter the amount of money or social networking.

I always feel hopeless. When I don't, I've managed to forget or get distracted. I haven't fixed anything. I haven't built a genuinely foundational belief in more than my persistently demonstrated ideas about the value of work, iteration, and self-respect. Those are vital, but not comprehensive. I need friends. I need entertainment. I need a sense of peace and escape. I need to see my values reflected in ways I can't alone and make music I've yet to here. It needs to happen as a measure of my ongoing culture and sense of mutual expectations. Without that foundation, everything feels wrong. Why bother? Why create? There's a fire on the floor below waiting to consume you.

As someone almost incapable of not speaking about things he believes are fucked up, this is why I'm anxious. I'm not disordered, I'm desperate for order. My anxiety is familiar, detailed, and understandable by anyone paying attention to the same things. I want to feel “free” enough to deal with life's problems that aren't the one's we've needlessly created for ourselves. I want it to be a matter of logistics, not survival. I want to use my capacity to manipulate my environment to foster a better set of sensibilities, not masquerade as power or control. The only story I don't see coming is the effect of work in service to creation instead of mitigation.

I stopped playing video games obsessively because the same dynamics led to the same outcomes. I watch most TV sped up because the same voices are saying the same things. I'm suspicious of the amount of time dedicated to paperwork and excuses because the same problems lending themselves to neglect or abuse are timeless and many networks across disciplines are intimately familiar. We know you just need to pay people. We know what percentage of the population is genuinely beyond redemption.

I can pretend that some days are better than others when my work feels hopeless. Well, I can't, but when I flirt with the idea the bottom drops out of my chest. My stomach is in knots. I start to look for a way out that either blows shit up or meticulously accounts for my assets. This is not a healthy state of existence. It's just bad, and my version of the bad I suspect is consistent in everyone else's experience across fundamental dimensions, if not the details. I've begged my hopeless network for things we can do together for...oh, 12 years? The answer is still, “I'd like to be left alone to my own devices” or “I liked your post, what else do you need?”

I need you angry, talkative, and ready to work well before we're killed off by the fascists and disbelievers in germs. I need you to fight your feelings with collective demonstrations. I need you to call me up, not pretending to miss me, and say what your budget is in time, sweat, or money. I need you to think about who needs to connect to who in order to move forward in a Stacy Abrams kind of way. I'm not out here trying to show off. I'm trying to infect and mold the culture. You need to be too. I want to help you. I want the work to speak for itself so I can find peace in shutting the fuck up.