[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.