[940] It's Me, Not You

I’m pretty fucking annoyed. I was ready to be asleep more than an hour ago. Instead, my friend sits down and says he’s experiencing a certain kind of tension that he’s not entirely sure how to speak to. He manages to open with, “I’m not looking for a roommate situation.”

We’ve been working to renovate the house he bought intending to flip. By “we” I mean “I” have done 95% of it. Occasionally, he’s oscillated in thinking he might stay in it, or use it for some other thing like a business space. The way we’ve gone about fixing it up has evolved over time as well. He wanted it “as close to perfection” as possible, meaning things like mitered edges for the trim and deliberately painted accent walls. In practical terms, this has added hours of thought, labor, contradicting thought, supply buying, and general hiccups of stopping and going with regard to any one aspect of the project.

First, I built my house. I hired people to do work on it when I did not have the time or energy to do things. I’m learning that I’m not only capable of doing what it takes, but doing it better than people who confidently assert their abilities. The people I hired weren’t getting paid, maybe, many months from now after my house sold. The people I hired did every “hillbilly fix” available for the price point I could afford, which was almost as much, if not often more, as I made in an hour. Things that might’ve taken me days with the money and know-how took weeks. Supplies got wasted. Money functionally stolen. The only person I found who was reliable had, through no fault of his own, crippling health concerns.

You know a big reason you move to a field in the middle of nowhere? You’re not looking for a “roommate situation.” Back when I was getting started, this friend had to be practically harassed for months for an afternoon of his time to help me get two TVs transported from my van into my shed. I’ve been keeping myself to a 2 days on 1 off semi-schedule doing practically everything. If he puts in one row of floor, I put in 10. If he paints, he doesn’t paint. Before we ever touched the house, I brought over my yard equipment and we got to work weed whacking, hacking saplings, and generally cleaning up and pilling wood for fires. Nearly all of my tools are currently on site. I’ve literally painted everything. My power washer was used to clean up the front and back porches. My power washer which is as easy and lazy of a thing you could ever use to clean anything which sat out for weeks until I squeezed in washing the back porch after I had done what I could inside.

I’m currently sleeping next to a cat who likes to use its litter box as a hang-out spot. I’ve steam-cleaned this giant bean bag chair a dozen times. My back rolls the dice on what my spine will look like each morning. For weeks, we were huffing the dust, mold, cat litter, dander, their smoke, and the general dirt and debris from living around a ton of trees and gravel driveways. My sinuses were fucked until we got filters put on fans which aren’t ran continuously.

My house, which again, I built, paid people to build, and am still continuing to build, I like. It’s struggling with a heat issue for which I have a wood burner pending Amazon shipping. It’s not cheap to drive to town to work on this house, so I’ve been trying to donate plasma on the same days. I’ve had this longing desire to condense the nature of whatever task I am doing so I can just be done. It takes an incredible amount of time to paint, then floor, then trim, then go back to paint, then rip up some floor, then put down some floor, then go back and fuck with something that, were anyone being truly realistic about the nature of living in a construction site, we could solve quicker.

I appreciate anyone willing to come to me with whatever to make of their “tension.” He has told me that he could not do this without me. He took on this kid. He’s broke too and thinking about jobs and future political things. That’s all well and good. What annoys the fuck out of me is that, as with most things, I’ve asked for a schedule. I’ve asked for a more coherent time use. I’ve made the appeal to just get to work while he and the kid fuck off and do their own thing. Today, because I’m apparently here unexpectedly, it’s time to frame this as if I’m trying to live here?

Right now, I’m in this place for 25% of his cut after he pays back his parents. Ball-parking, that’s $8,000 if the place sells for at least as much as the neighbor’s house did without any renovations. How many hours do you think I’ve put into this property since August? How many tanks of gas? How much do you think my tools, their bits, blades, and batteries cost? It’s my truck that hauls his cabinets to the house and hauls the 20 contractor bags of trash away. If anything, by the time the house is actually done, I’ll be like a housing intern, cherishing the “experience” in lieu of what money I may have ever needed.

I try to be efficient not just because you obviously want to save time and money, but because I view it as a moral issue. If you don’t have to waste, why choose to? I don’t take my health, the working nature of my tools or truck, or the weather for granted. If you are going to consider your comfort at a level higher than what you’ve obligated yourself to complete, what am I doing functionally positioning myself to work in service to your comfort? In theory, not in any tangible practical reality, his connections could help spur on the counseling business. Right now, we spend considerably more time walking the dog, theorizing about the future, and doing something tangential to food.

I wash the dishes. I pick up the constant stream of trash. I sweep up the cat litter. I walk the dog when he’s gone for long portions of the day. I keep the lists of the supplies we need. I keep my tools jammed in my truck or at the ready. I mold to fit every little particular thing that comes up that interrupts the flow of work. You don’t like a cold garage? Fine, we’ll occupy one of the few outlets we’re constantly using for a heater. You don’t want to make the living room your bedroom while we work? Fine. We’ll do one room at a time, one aspect at a time, repeat everything we’ve done, redirty, repaint, re-find all of the tools we used last time. Why not? It’s not like I have money I desperately need riding on the sale of this place or anything.

It’s always going to be an imperfect balance. There’s no real way to measure my contribution to what he may or may not bring to getting the counseling running. What I pick up here will inevitably help me in any house I wish to flip in the future. I’ve been a touch more comfortable, in not freezing to death, by crashing on this bean bag chair in a house with heat. It still feels dirty and disingenuous to come to me like I haven’t been bending over backwards and tempering my “let’s just get this fucking shit done” attitude this entire fucking time while I listen to them cough up weed smoke. You know what I just did on my “day off” of either hanging and waiting or working on the house? Dug 9 footers and laid the sub-floor for another home extension. It took me 3 hours. I also built a housing for my truck box before the sun set. Think another room couldn’t have been painted or a floor installed in the same amount of time?

When he first bought the place, before all the things were moved in, before the kid was fostered, and before we’d generally sit in this rut of “when I feel like it” mode of getting anything done, there was a TV, my tools, and me. I didn’t even have counseling things to really fuck with. I could have ripped up the whole floor, not just the living room, and had that shit dumped or burnt. I could have painted the ceilings without crashing into furniture. I could have installed the floor without the kid coming out and picking up tools and commenting on shit. Instead? I’m here almost 4 months later, a third of the way done, and being mildly chastised for…overstaying my welcome? I don’t need to be here. It will not get done without me. I’m, again, trying to sincerely work and invest and demonstrate my value through work and communication. I’m eliciting…discomfort. I’m also getting this message as I’m wishing to fall asleep, now kicking off an hour of head racing on top of things.

Right before this chat, we just finished eating tacos prepared with my SNAP money, along with the other items thrown on the tab. I’m “happy” to cover things like that. We share food, resources, yada yada as friends do. You’re not looking for a roommate’s tacos though, right?

He runs through his schedule, and we decided tentatively to have me work tomorrow on things he was not prepared to do, then not again until next week, for 5 days, alone, with him and the foster kid gone for the holidays. It’s all I could ever ask for, to be left alone to just get shit done. That will add to the absurdity though. While family’s are gathering and Christmas vacationing, I’ll be alone at his house doing his renovations, for my small stake, in the hopes I can bring more peace to my mind about the time it has taken and the “discomforting” barriers to progress.

You know what happens when you switch between tasks on a round instead of doing them all at once? You get floor and wood dust/confetti landing on your paint supplies. You’re spending 20 minutes rearranging the garage. You’re miscounting or misremembering how much you needed for something to complete the task because you only calculated half of what you had left to do.

I’m tired of bitching. I’m tired of being subject to how “uncomfortable” it is to be responsible for what you signed up for. At least he brought it to me, and at least I can start reorienting myself around staying the fuck away until perhaps the drama of my absence tempers the inclination to say anything more than your schedule, plans, and “thank you.”

[939] Fishing Trip

I was just reading a reddit thread where someone asks if it’s “worth it” to go to a concert alone. I think I’ve been to at least 50 or more concerts, in some form or another, and only a handful have ever been with someone else. I find the idea fundamentally odd that you wouldn’t see or listen to something you enjoy without someone with you. Perhaps this is a person who is wholly unable to find value in themselves unless they see it reflected in someone else. Maybe they have an identity rooted in a broken concept of “worth” and outside acceptance. Maybe the ticket was going to be a lot and they had only heard a small amount about the band.

I’m not entirely sure why I thought to bring up that thread. Nor am I sure why I’m mentioning hearing an auto-playing YouTube video talking about god emanating from my sleeping friend’s room that I had to put on headphones to stop being distracted by. I felt like being present. I felt like paying attention to me getting more tired. I want to acknowledge my full stomach. I want to tell you and myself that I installed more trim, painted, and fought diligently against a tricky vent. I had a pretty solid “flow” day, even if I had to redo aspects of the home renovating that I fucked initially.

I have a “strong” sense of my own existence. Almost always, the source of my ongoing frustration boils down to logistics and naive wish-making. I’ll ask the universe to make people smarter or more honest. I’ll beg for resources all at once instead of in difficult piss trickle fashion. I know that, on any given day, I’m living at the peak of pretty much anything that has existed ever. Debt is symbolic, and you can shift what it signifies. I must not begrudge enough my tight joints or stomach acid if I continue to eat as I do. I’m typing this on a computer I dislike. I’m so privileged, I get to shit on technology.

I live in something not unlike a perpetual state of confusion. I don’t know why I wish for “things” to be “different” than how I might perceive them in the most damning of terms. Do I want to pretend I don’t experience the world the way I do? No. Hard no. I want to hate what I hate, like what I like, and know what’s going to be a reliable recipe for keeping me moving and attempting to account for “the world.” For as many things as confuse me about myself or my place, much is simple. I like food. I want to watch my shows. My cats are not to blame for their behavior like I wish to blame a person for theirs. Vaccines are miracles.

I think what gives me any degree of confidence in the simplicity of some things is a mix. I’ve experienced a fair amount in 33 years. I’ve read a ton, watched a ton, met tens of thousands of people, worked on an array of tasks or projects. I’m hip to the idea that no personal experience is going to drown out the voices of thousands or millions of people and hours that converge on our best approximations for how to conduct ourselves. What should I converge towards? Is that like asking about my purpose or place in the world?

Surely I don’t exist “just” to buy things. I don’t think I was put here. I don’t believe in magic. I’m not compelled to subvert saying “I don’t know” with fairy tales and pleas to traditionally belong. What does it mean if I were to say I was “moved” to start writing? It seems like a misnomer. I wanted to write, and not even something specific. Do I want to continue writing? Am I looking for something? Is there some deeper metaphor I’m trying to “dig” out?

My work feels infinitely detached from what my purported reality was supposed to consist of. My work has kept me above water making lateral moves for many years. You can say “growth” has occurred in the mere accumulation of stuff, but I was no more or less likely to work as I do since I started. 16 year old me would have hauled bricks, built a shed house, and been excited by the prospect of using all the tools. When I was hanging out on nonsense Zoom meetings there was the occasional allusion I would get a chance to talk to someone and sell self-indulgence. I was invited to celebrate the illusion that we were in a war to gross $100K.

It’s been something of a relief to orient my life less around money. I still need it. I still want it. But you know what I want more? To laugh as hard as I usually do when I hit The Comedy Attic. I want the porter I’ve yet to try to be good for all 12 bottles. I want the cats to jump into the forts I build them. I want the time to practice not getting frustrated when I’ve just noticed I installed door trim as the baseboard. Unlike the simple things like liking food or enjoying a show, it wasn’t necessarily simple to psychologically divorce myself from every fantasy I’ve entertained about what money could do.

I don’t want to get too lost in some ethos of not pursuing or recognizing the utility or purpose of cash. I do want to emphasize that who I am is not the dollar amount, the debt, or whatever imagined future I think I might unlock through spending. I’m what I work on. I’m what brings me a sense of flow and calm when I look and it reflects my value. It’s not untrue, no matter how it sounds, that I don’t play music or get on stage with a comedy routine because I don’t feel I’m in a place to do the work for them to reflect my values. I want to have fun playing music and sound decent. I want to be funny. I’m not playfully trying on hats looking for another star sticker on my identity card.

I think I’d be a shitty actor. Or, I’d have to be a character actor always playing an exaggerated version of myself. I don’t know how I could stop myself from thinking, “This is where I ended up? This is how I’m using my time?” I love stories, and I admire so much art, but I don’t even really care for Halloween. I feel like I’m always watching people poorly act. They pretend to be my friend. They pretend to be “professional.” They pretend to have the energy or motivation for self-righteous indignation. They pretend to be curious. They act like they’re going to be the one who does anything about “it.” They act like we’re speaking the same language.

I never know what to do about the act. Most often, I’m encouraged to play along. Life’s short, why rock the boat and not rape your throat with cliches? I don’t, and then find myself looking aloof with my odd-jobs and curious occupation of a compound in Cousinfuckistan. I’m “baffled” the fat and sassy conservatives in charge of tending to the wheels made to break you don’t want to see what I’m capable of.

“Good” work means nothing if it can’t or won’t be recognized. That’s what it feels like at least. That’s where you start coddling yourself and crossing your fingers that targets of your effort or ancillary effects are playing out. Here is the introduction of “karma.” Here we start imagining a “just god.” Here we celebrate our exhaustion and give license to indulgence. I literally want to introduce a profit-sharing model to a field that is infamous in being studied for its stress levels. I want to do it with people who’ve trained me, had my back, and I want to do it in an area where I’ve been told, “We’re desperate, we never have enough.” I can’t? I’m oriented wrong? I’m working on the wrong thing? I’m not in charge of the monstrosity tasked with “helping” or “intervening,” therefore, I don’t exist.

Whatever I may make of the barriers to this specific task, it’s at all layers. It’s the self-deception, insecurity, and greed. It’s the fear and necessarily convoluted pictures drawn by people who ran out of things to say, so they just started arranging and reiterating as many words as they could find to justify their airs. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’ve gained weight because I’m older and lazy, or as an extreme attempt to understand and empathize with the piles of shit who seem to blithely pull the strings of influence. Maybe I can grow to hate myself to such a degree that everything will snap into focus.

I don’t have a better explanation. I think people hate to exist. I think most people, most of the time, hate it. They hate the drama of their families or interpersonal issues. They hate their loneliness. They hate the weather. They hate that they aren’t any more articulate or understood than me who they hate for his endless diatribes. The hate is dressed up as fickle pride, pretty photos, and promises to yourself to never get too introspective. How can you do anything but hate to exist to turn down miraculous medicine? How can you do anything but seethe with hatred when you vote for fascism?

Instantly, we want to call it something else. We want to believe in the “better” demon of simple ignorance or misinformation. We want to let everyone off the hook for their hatred and what the consequences are. We let them off because we can’t acknowledge how much hate we’re carrying. My mom, for all her batshit, never said out loud how much she hated being a mother. How much better we might all have been had she gotten there. We arrive at my biggest sin. I hate out loud. I hate every day. I tell you what I hate about you, myself, and I tell you how much I hate how I’ve watched you my entire adult life lie, and I hate that most of all.

We’re not that close. We’re not that friendly. We’re not too busy. We didn’t forget. We just don’t want to. We just regret some past detail. We’re just selfish. It will always be our story and version first, whatever incidental moment together or conversation lost to the fog of time. And how could we blame each other? We want to define and redefine the “work” to whatever suits the moment. “Resist.” “Hope.” “Believe.” “Family.” “Team.” Any word is as loose as it needs to be, always. Language is the attempt to take the infinitely complex and approximate coherence. To speak, to talk shit, is an act of metaphor for the impossibility of accurately representing what you mean.

So, you can’t stop talking, posting, sharing, watching. I can’t stop writing. We’ve set ourselves to an unachievable task of capturing what we’re unwilling or unable to work for. What’s “serenity” but the new screen saver you shared to Instagram? What’s “relaxing” if not the vacation pics? What’s “delicious” but the food 1 in 8 people are hungry for? What’s “friendship” if not a group with drinks in hand? What’s the “future” if not your baby bump? What’s “commitment” but a feverish deference to the brand or mission statement? Is it valuable if millions didn’t binge? Who decides you are more “right” than your concept of the “extremists” on your wings? Who’s ready to save and be saved?

A friend and another acquaintance-friend had a therapeutic acid day a few weeks ago. The acquaintance-friend mentioned to his girlfriend that I used to write these long posts. It’s not clear that he was reading the posts nor encouraging her to. But, damn, I had a lot to say. You should see how many tags I’ve grouped them under! I clearly feel I’ve got to say something. What the fuck ever it was or what for, anyone’s guess. It can only ever be guessed at. It’s not like I’m saying anything recognizable.

[938] Big Boy

It’s hard to tell precisely where I’m at right now. A couple days ago, I thought I might write the familiar stuck phrases in my head, tired, cliche, endlessly wrapping nonetheless, curious if I might actually spit out a mild insight or find a moment’s peace. That long moment subsided, and I decided to keep reorienting and cleaning my house. Yesterday, I felt my familiar boost of energy as the night carried on, cleaned more, cooked, and decided to buy every missing power tool one might need to run a professional woodworking shop.

Now, to be sure, I’m not a professional woodworker. The whole thing was put on a credit card. I will be pretty tightly squeezing the equipment into my freshly cleaned and organized garage-esc space. What was I thinking?

I made the decision to do so over 6 or so hours. I would add things to my cart, then go back to organizing. I would think about things that I’ve searched dozens of times, consult with my project board, and catch mental whiffs of frustrating passages read or videos watched where the person attempting to help or teach casually mentions the thing they use that I don’t have.

I’m a person who, as little as 4 years ago, habitually eschewed debt. If I didn’t have the cash, I didn’t even bother entertaining the idea that I could have something. What if it got repossessed!? What of all my friends being extremely stressed out and feeling stuck in miserable jobs because of the interest and their student loans? Debt felt like an irrational gamble predicated on impulsivity and a lack of wisdom.

I got a credit card, and then another, and then 2 more. I always kept them paid off. My limits were raised. My credit score became “excellent.” My home was not bought outright. My truck I threw on my highest limit card at the time. All have continued to be paid off, and I’ve only had to deal with interest in amounts I’ve most often been able to pay with reward points back.

It’s hard to ignore what people go into debt for. I know plenty who are still paying off their degree 10 years later. It didn’t get them a job that would pay “enough.” My car loan made me absolutely miserable. The truck I loved having, using, and paying down. The car loan has me still thinking I subconsciously decided to crash it and get the insurance to cover it (which it did). My house I worked myself to death for, getting desperate enough to ask acquaintances and all-but-estranged family members for a short-term $2000 loan so I might take a day off. Wedding rings, 30-year mortgages, major medical debt rack up the practically infinite bill. My stupid stepping-on-shit cat cost me $100 yesterday too.

I try to make investments in myself. I bought tools. I bought a means of turning the wood I have that’s in danger of rotting into smooth and straight pieces I can use for more than crooked “aesthetic negotiations.” I spent less on those tools than I did my truck, and they will enable me to practice building things, nearly anything I could dream of, while I’m up all night pacing and wondering how I’m so discontented despite access to so much of the world.

It hit me, not now, but after I clicked to complete the order. Just like every blog, I need to feel like I’m representing, working, or creating what’s “pressing” in the moment. I was watching “Get Back,” the new Beatles documentary, and it was immensely gratifying to see them create songs like I create songs, or blogs, or poems, or improvised structures that inevitably blow over in the wind. The act of creation, of being present, of watching something manifest that represents what you are, can do, or were thinking is my drug. It’s my perpetual reason. It’s what tempers my frustration, doubt, or pure hatred for everything that seemingly stands in the way of my flowing and extracting from any given moment. In this way, plans are either a treat or torturous. My brain started flowing, expecting, dreaming. How much rises to wake you up.

I think it’s pretty easy to forget that you have to practice what you wish to be. It’s not enough for me to own my stabbin’ cabin in the middle of nowhere, I have to exercise it. When I tell you I can pay my bills a year in advance with a month or two of a Mc-paycheck, what does that mean? How do I exercise that sentiment? I’m probably not running to work for a fast-food joint to show you how I’m basking in the glory. I’m exercising it by betting on myself and making an investment on what my mind gets up to with the tools in front of me and excuses removed.

I’m constantly oscillating between what distinguishes an “excuse” from a “reason.” I’ve built a room extension with wood that hasn’t seen a jointer and planer. It stands, it doesn’t seem keen to be about to blow over, but it’s certainly what I refer to as a “negotiated” space. I got a room, but a room built by an amateur with twisty wood. It functions as intended, and I’m probably more prone to criticizing it more harshly than it deserves. Regardless, the next room can be square, level, plumb, and true, using wood that cost me nothing but gas and time.

As well, I’m not working. It feels like a ridiculous thing to say, because of course over the last few months I’ve been renovating my buddy’s house so we can flip it. I built more of my fence, then picked it up when that section blew over. I’ve hauled trash and cleaned up both our properties. I’ve spent 150 hours attempting to get through the intransigent cuntiness of DCS “leadership” in trying to become a service provider. I’ve spent as many hours writing proposals, listening to tutorials, and navigating rounds and rounds of phone calls. It doesn’t pay well, quick, or at all, but it’s work.

I try really hard to keep my focus on the things I can actually do and control. I know DCS is akin to a timeless Greek godly entity merrily ass-fucking its way through anyone bothering to carry a hole. “Fuck fuck fuck away!” it bleats. As such, when I create a burnout loop attempting to contemplate why “power” “always” “seems” to be concentrated among the worst possible people with the worst intentions, senses of self-respect or esteem, and who would literally let people die through perpetually chosen negligence…who am I helping? How does that help me learn or create wood pieces singularly worth what I paid for the tools to create them? When does that prompt me to unclench my jaw, make some more phone calls, or hand out fliers and cards with our services?

When I deign to give advice, while there is a lot of merely listening and motivational interviewing, it’s to accept the nature of the beast and attempt to account for its many details. Most people don’t know what it really means to be addicted, especially the addicts. They might know pain in deeply personal and cascading ways, but they don’t understand how to turn it into anything else. I know people don’t care about my pain, not least of which because they’re people with their own. I learned how to create blogs. I learned how to marry my coping mechanism dying to be represented and heard into a work ethic humbled enough to spend hours scrubbing bathrooms and patient enough to juke and quiet screams and tears.

What’s the nature of the beast? To blindly fuck you independent of your feelings, intentions, or good works. Does a few grand sound like the biggest gamble when the game you’re playing in life broadly is trying to kill you with the snow on the road and mutating virus? If I have to work in a factory for 3 months, will I barely recall what it felt or smelled like as with every other gig? Who’s betting on me not finding private counseling patients when every provider in the area is perpetually closed for bookings? Who thinks we don’t have grants to pursue, deals to cut, and remote options to explore? Why reduce my life and effort to something meager and mild that begs for the mercy of abject pieces of shit?

I got a better idea of how to repay your debts and practice what it means to exist as a function of those debts. Speak to what has been afforded to you. If you can’t spend your money on something that is just going to produce interest and dividends by default, give yourself the tools and the chance to work them. I’ve made 30-odd scrap runs, helped people move, transported wholly unsafe lengths of wood, pulled hundreds of saplings, and loved every minute my truck enabled me to move and make the world. My house has allowed me to incubate the counseling business, experiment and learn in building, and house the dozen projects and futures I’m watching and betting on in any given moment.

If getting older has taught me anything, you aren’t doing anything alone. You’re ambivalent, complicit, or actively engaged in any given moment. Perhaps that’s where I find the real depth of my sadness. I know it’s not just one dumb cunt in a leadership role at DCS. I know it’s not just a singularly malicious billionaire or supervillain. It takes a village to perpetuate the assumptions. Ignorance, and justifications for life “as it is.” We accidentally stumble into solidarity for Black lives or unionization. We’re surprised at the chance to witness justice or accountability. We wake up every day betting the world will look like it did yesterday, and we’ll do everything in our power to deny our role in why it does. We’ll ask, “Who can blame me?” because life does suck, and you are poor, monetarily and of spirit.

I blame you. I blame you like I blame myself when I clench my jaw after handing the keys over to my most irrational and excuse-making feelings to drive me into walls I can’t scale alone. I’m always singing from a catalog of familiar songs. Are they building me up and prompting an enthusiastic recitation, or resonating like overplayed torture?

There’s still a world where I just sell everything and attempt to gain residency and higher degrees in another country. There’s still a world where a new variant comes raging back. The stock market still needs to crash. What if Gamestop actually does go into the millions? In the meantime, I’ll have the tools, a wood-burning stove, and debt I might pay off primarily with plasma or the sale of my Pokemon cards. Whichever choice I can land on that doesn’t catastrophize my circumstances or lock me and my jaw into an illusion of “stuck.” Maybe I just need a reminder shroom trip of how loose things really are. Maybe I need to go back to being the kid who went door to door to shovel snow and mow lawns. Those guys always seem to drive the biggest trucks.

[937] The Ongoing Mitigation Of Difficult Quarter Inches

I've avoided writing, at least posting anything I've written, for a few weeks concerned it would come off as entitled bitching for bitching's sake, and with no gained insight. There's a version of my current place in time and space that's as enabled, productive, and forward-moving as I've ever been. There's a version that's reduced to my complaints and anxieties about, still, not moving fast enough. I'm gonna search for the balance.

I read a wonderful article articulating thoughts about “stupid.” I took away that stupid is easier in groups, and those who you might want to call stupid are after a kind of transcendence of their circumstances. Why get religiously intransigent about facts unless they were of a sort that had you so beat up, so sublimated by default, you've got nothing to lose? We might then question your understanding of your position in life, those facts, or the nature of particularly defiant and stubborn creatures. Either way, it's rare someone is just well-rehearsed and methodical in their donning of a persistent “fuck you” with regard to reality and its consequences.

Consider, Trump grew up in a rich and malicious cult before his oligarchical ilk sought to expand its borders. Religious and fascist cults are marching inch by torched inch over decades, if not millennia, in an effort to solidify their rule and desperate dance to avoid feeling as helpless and afraid as they do.

My buddy and I are fixing up and flipping a house. Who doesn't have a family member, friend, or acquaintance that either does this, or has a story of someone who does, or who hasn't considered doing it themselves? Lowes and Menards are like adult playgrounds. There's YouTube videos for nearly everything. Most places, particularly in this inflationary environment, are going to settle up for larger lump sums than you will ever see unless you're a lottery winner or human lab rat. What's not to love or why temper your dreams as you're tapping in vinyl or taping up plastic to protect your accent walls?

Just as quick as you might entertain the idea of flipping a house, you recall the stories of how difficult or frustrating it was to perhaps even find someone nominally capable of fixing something at your own. I'm thankful I have the blogs and statuses where I detail out my futile struggle to find help getting things set up out here, and I've considerably less square footage or aesthetic-concerning aspects to my living environment. To do it yourself, you need time, money, and the patience to navigate the ever-present learning curve. If you're going to get the job done in any appreciable amount of time and considerably less risk to your health, you also need help.

I don't take any variable in the story of my success for granted. I don't want to waste a drop of water in the sea of potential productivity because, rational or not, I feel incredibly thirsty. I've learned to distinguish this thirst from ravenous compulsive working in service to building something my demons are just gonna mock anyway. It's a thirst born of visceral memories of feeling stranded in a proverbial desert. I haven't had the help to the degrees that would have saved me a fuck ton of time, money, and energy. I've absolutely had help, but in spurts, when they had time or were feeling capable. Sometimes it was if and when they could be bothered. Whether I've paid in cash or strands of hair, no one is waiting around my house for me to help them do anything I've got worked up around here.

To that point, I know I'm, when given the right conditions, an aberrant machine with regard to my work ethic. Do I hold people to my standard? Only at my peril, and I sympathize with my business partner who is “worse” than me, currently washing dishes with his Master's degree because it's taken 4 months of games and incomplete information to get this counseling business still not precisely up and running.

Between writing the above and starting again now, it's been six and half hours of me chasing the end of what I might claim has been a “stupid” process of bureaucratic nonsense and silent game-playing. I'm sympathetic to criticisms of “big government” or the general pace and demeanor of people who manage to keep jobs indefinitely not for their competence or vision, but ability to play along. I'm in social work, where I believe it is my responsibility to set a persistent example by which others are to follow and learn from. Would I tell a client to give up on something for which they had one or a dozen ways of asking, calling, or experimenting forward? Of course not, thus my speculation, complaints, or criticisms come right up against my “just do the next thing you dumb fuck.”

Analogies abound. There's 35-odd things to do to get the house sale-ready. Each has its own compounded redundancies, new things to learn, or variables you can't account for until you hit them. It was no different in starting the coffee shop. It's no different in getting my own house in order. You have to claw every miserable inch of progress from the nakedly embarrassing and vitriolic fog of those conducting incidental lives. You have to lay floor accounting for the budding carpel tunnel, vinyl cuts, smashed fingers, and aching knees so the piece fits just right under the trim. Or, you half ass it and put down eye-sore quarter round to try and poorly cover for your mistakes, exhaustion, or lack of care.

I feel like people pretend like we don't share considerably more than we differ, for every individual soul nonetheless. TV shows, movies, and music tie the entire world together. Our biology can only do so many, though seemingly infinite, things. Our brains have about the same meat. Like recognizes like, and whether you're drawn into the blended seam of a perfectly mitered edge or submitting a meticulously documented and accountable measure of your effort in service to a family, what drives the pursuit of either remains the same. You're trying to practice the appreciation for what you've been given. You're trying to be comprehensive in your accounting of where you're at, but also what you're capable of. The story of your impact, the decisions you make in service to who you want to be and where you want to go, is not over until you die.

I may have an infinite well of hatred that fuels my ability to write endless redundant emails in professional-doublespeak, but it doesn't cloud my ability to recognize what the work I've done is worth. I'm not driven by hatred, it's still spite, but I know who and what the enemy actually is. I fight the complacency, disorganization, absent-mindedness, and ambivalence that lend themselves so freely to any given moment. Life is begging you to kill yourself and a chorus of do-nothings are ceaselessly harmonizing.

I will get “my way” regardless. I may not recognize it as mine, at first. But all I have to know about me is that I'm as consistent and persistent in my exercise of the traits and perspectives that have served me the most in life. A presumption of decency or tactful demeanor about me can be denied, but you're gonna see and feel the work I do.

[936] In The End

I need to see if I can find the thread by just talking about different portions of my day and last couple weeks.

My buddy is fostering a kid. The kid has seen more shit and experienced more trauma than most of us will our entire lives. There are detailed historical reasons for much of his behavior and little quirks. He's also capable of just being an asshole.

I like to think that over the course of exploring my own physical and emotional trauma, as well as experience with hundreds of people in a job as entrenched in trauma as it comes, that I have a pretty good radar for the subtle, but important, differences in people's behavior. I'm not quick to box someone into my first and worst idea about them. I'm constantly talking out both what I think they are doing or going through, and what my sense or gut is conjuring in me. At this point, it's like a professional reflex.

Nothing is ever so simple. Nothing is ever as dramatic as it feels. Nothing can't be brought to some level of resolution. Nothing is the end of the story. You should always be asking more questions. You should always be prepared to be wrong. You should not treat your ideas as so fickle and precious that they can't be swayed by new evidence or can't be changed when shown to be wrong.

One of the more exhausting things about being in “social work,” broadly, is that you have mirror neurons that you can't shut off. If you're not actually a blunted unremitting psychopath, other people's drama works on you. It's normal. It's the emotional leverage all weak and insecure people reflexively play on because it's what you do as a baby to get adults to capitulate to your needs. There is no perfect line between crying because you're hungry and bitching and moaning because you're underdeveloped and pathetic.

I get so fucking tired of always being in social work mode. You'd think my world consisted of the machinations of every most dramatic person I've ever met. I'm the ex-boyfriend who, no matter the amount of time, patience, money, or support is still “wrong” for whatever words might be used to describe the negative feelings I perpetually conjure. I'm the one with the “wrong attitude” for having some basic respect and expectation that I should know what to do with my time and be able to feel as though I'm being heard about how many other things I'm working on or obligated to. I'm getting subpoenaed for deigning to touch the case that churned though 7 different caseworkers or providers given the aberrantly combative and mentally unwell people involved. I get whispers that my psychotic mom is curious about me and still willing to tell my dad he's turned me against her, like I'm not the one who provoked a restraining order in a backwards-yet-effective way of preventing her from reaching out to me.

You know what I've been doing lately? Working. Not even working for money, yet. I've been painting and pulling up flooring and shopping for tools and supplies to keep remodeling a home. It's had its delays and there are many things that will be improved upon on the next one, but it's precisely one of the things I've been wanting to learn and do for many years. As with most things, it's infinitely more accessible than you might assume. It's a fair amount to invest in both time and money wise, but it can be done. It can be done pretty quick and it can return more money than I need to cover the basics for a year. Apparently, we're getting into the house flipping game 5 years sooner than the model house-flipper friend/family acquaintance, and he's doing quite well for himself.

I've always wanted several irons in the fire. Counseling is a lot of hurrying-up-to-wait even if we have 3-5 clients, technically. The wait for bureaucracies to get us in systems and call us back is not great. It'll keep inching along, but we ain't getting rich overnight. Home remodeling is one of those, once you're up and doing it, you just do it. The house needs to sell, but there's nothing stopping us from buying what we need and working. That's been generally gratifying, even if energy gets derailed when a kid wishes to be an asshole. I thought I'd be moonlighting as a sales guy for a minute, but I couldn't manage to blow enough positive smoke up people's asses and maintain my sense of self-respect. The fuck ton I've had to blow to try and get my heat working suggests I could still stand to have a modest regular income not based on my plasma.

I really do try to not forget how regal of an existence I maintain. It's all the more viscerally palpable when a disrespectful kid talks endless shit about things he has no means for understanding how to appreciate. I have to constantly remind myself that I can afford to eat the food I want because I've worked to keep my bills low. Each time I say, “I have that tool!” I've saved time, money, and testified to my long-term values and desire to be of tangible and perpetual utility.

I am a certain kind of tool. Never seemingly the one people want. I'm not sure this is so much about me and what I'm good for as much as it is that underlying universal need that's not being met. We have as much access to information and tools as we can ever hope for. We'll still be like the lonely girl on OKCupid who will message me occasionally for entertaining compliments I'm not inclined to give when her fuck-buddy/boyfriend/husband is boring or annoying her. What are you really after with your poly-whatever “evolved” pretense? I'm just a whore who enjoys the idea of a partner who can be basically chill and work with me. I'm not falling in love with you, and you're on OKCupid, you're exceedingly average looking or part of a bulbous left-swiped montage. We're past 30 and live in the mid-west, that's about as good as it gets.

See, I exercised my utility there, but no one likes it. I tell the annoying, hurtful, truth-as-far-as-I-can-tell that has no place in the modern coddled and entitled mind. Oh my god, did I call people fat? That's like, fat shaming, right? No wonder no one loves me or wants to talk. Why shouldn't you be bothered to tell someone cute they're cute? What's wrong with compliments and flirting? Immediately, the narrative takes place of any critical thought or inquiry. I don't care the topic, the age-group, or presumed taboo, there's a ready-made playbook for those unwilling and unable to contend.

My match will be the one I can talk to like I talk to my dudes. If I have to stifle myself until you've left the car, we ain't meant to be. If I have to get self-conscious that I've brought “too much” to the conversation, you're not talking about the things I'm talking about. You're either not capable, not interested, or not worthy. I get older every day, and that's one more reason that I can't spend time worrying about whether or not you “get” the page I'm on. It's not defiant hood-rat meming away the haters. It's dude who's trying to work, enjoy food, and act as though he's responsible for the world.

I think I get treated pretty reflexively as though I'm not deeply feeling the levels of hatred I tend to engender from “people.” I stress the word “people” and not “individuals,” “friends,” or “clients,” and even “friends” retains a precarious position. I'm fucking exhausted in trying to cope with so much negativity and hatred for what I stand for. As I keep searching for the depths of why I clench my jaw, it's with dire and chaotic “hope” that it will reveal itself to be something less insidious and more controllable than what I feel the truth to be in my bones.

I've already lost, in a sense. I know “feelings” win. I once wrote that “sincerity” wins. It does, but so many useless and helpless and unaccountable feelings are felt that they dictate the rules well before you get around to owning them or expressing them in a real and sincere way. So, I lose. If I genuinely express the depths of my feelings, I fucking destroy people. I'm unforgivable, and I've succumbed to the baby emotional leverage they were looking to evoke all along. A six-foot steel “irony” placard gets to shoot its way from my dickhead, and the cycle repeats. Sincerely share, try, demonstrate – get shit on, blamed, condescended to – retreat, write, speculate, explore – Try to relate, create – get called names, ignored/silent treatment – isolate, read, plan – find reason to get up and go out or make small investment - general life “fuck you” setback – wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm not as hung up on people being little emotional whiny cunts as I sound. It's more heartbroken. That thing I feel in my bones? It's the practical door closing for a means of addressing it in my overall “world domination” scheme. I could have any number of “Great Man” traits and unique spin on what it takes to succeed, but I won't transcend my environment, I'll just be iterative dictations molded by it. I can't escape. I can't buy my way out. I can't implore them to “do better.” In my bones, I've got this solipsistic nihilism about “others,” so vague, so-named, and their ability to be self-aware and accountable. I'm at their errant mercy. How else do people fall to a “woke” or otherwise disembodied online mob of judgment and hatred? People aren't even awake to how full of hate they are and insist I must empathize with in every waking moment. But their perspective, like so many babies, is going to shame and exhaust the world into submission.

There's a 1/3 shot I'm going to have to tell someone to shut the fuck up during a movie in a theater. This is anecdotal, but the trend has held for several years, dating back to Episode VII The Force Awakens. It's one of the little absurdities I like to use as indicative of the debauchery perhaps only a Larry David could really convey. You'll never guess who's the “wrong” one between me telling you to shut the fuck up and you talking. It's me! Of course, I'm not wrong, and you should shut the fuck up. I earned money. I paid for a movie. I have as much a right for nominal escapes into stories as the next cunt. There's a deal, a contract, and a reasonable expectation. That this paragraph exists at all I hope testifies to how generally hopeless and ridiculous it feels to exist as me having to defend silence in a theater. Maybe your experience is different and you're wondering how we collectively forgot how to stop sign. The underlying principle and shame is the same.

I've been put in a position to have to strong-arm for my paycheck! Because I thought there were deals and expectations and things like getting paid on time were a mutually understood shouldn't-really-have-to-explain-or-defend-this kind of thing. Fuck me though, I had that wrong too! Think those who held the keys are ever going to feel guilt and offer an apology for prolonging my literal shivering as I've tried to navigate my heat situation? Fuck no! I was rude in politely asking when I might expect to get paid, giving them a chance to disburse it in chunks, and once offering to work for functionally free if that was required (not an offer taken up on). Fuck me again! Right!? Who would fucking dare to offer to pay off my debts or account for the whispers of unfairness and impropriety by meticulously scheduling ways in which they could contribute without disrupting their life otherwise? WHAT A FUCKING MONSTER FOR EXPECTING ME TO BE ON TIME AND CLEAR IN MY DIRECTIONS!

You don't give a fuck about me or my life. You never have. You, “people,” are the pageantry. You are the artful decadent façade of living forever through your earnest and deep feelings and reckless indulgence masked by words like “passion” or “believe.” You are the things I'm talking past. You are the things I'm constantly reminding myself not to exploit by lending my awareness or capacity to your chaos. You can continue to resent that, but it's not going to make it any less true. And, for “them,” as I was literally told not weeks ago, “It's not really about whether or not what you said is true...” Ok, sweetheart.

I'm a pretty natural flirt. I sense out the lines of decorum and seek to plant muddy boot steps on the other side. I know the difference between you falling for me and you falling for what I know you want to hear more than anything. I want to make the jokes that routinely cross the lines. I want to obliterate the boundaries of what I expect out of myself physically, mentally, and interpersonally. That involves playing a different game than the one on offer. That involves finding myself in the interchange between here and what I work on out there. I'm not going to be constitutive of your shitty and incomplete words. I'm not “just” what's ragged and left of being battered by incoherent seas of emotion. I'm hardly even merely the best or worst things I claim about myself. It's one of my superpowers, evolving, adapting, and creating the more comprehensive narrative that gives license to mild reprieves between cycles.

I hate nothing about myself. I know I'm just a different kind of tool for a different series of purposes than can be utilized or recognized by “people.” That's okay. My work exists in my own space, in the worlds of people who recognize what I am, and in the ongoing consequences of what I tried to bring to those living under considerably more stress and confusion or pain than I may ever experience.

We make things so much harder than they need to be. Quasi-co-parenting a teenager should resonate with anyone who's had or been adjacent to one. What are you mad at? We're out of Sprite? GUESS THAT'S THE END OF EVER DRINKING SPRITE AGAIN! Or, it's not, and we can go to the store, right now, if it's that serious, which it's not nor ever will be. Really, though, what are you mad at? Me? I find it hard to believe because you can't really see me, anymore than the teenager who wants to trash talk my truck which literally hauled his trash away the morning it also hauled his ungrateful ass to school. Trauma be dammed, I know when you're just being an asshole.

Apparently, you never can tell with someone like me?

[935] The Clincher

I hate writing what I feel is the same thing I'm always saying. If I'm truly writing for me, this wouldn't be but a hiccup or mild discomfort as I would clearly need to keep seeing it relayed, or it wouldn't be on my mind and moving me to write. In a sense, I'm lucky that I rarely if ever get any feedback on what I say. Whether I had it in my mind that anyone was reading or not is rendered mute. I wrote earlier today as just a series of personal complaints about things so small and ridiculous, it still floors me how often they rise to the level of painful crisis in my head.

What am I always saying? I don't connect. I'm not into “people.” I have dozens of high-minded conceptions about what to do with my words or time that are routinely trampled by how we're to conceive of the lowest common denominator of human traits or behavior. My gilded existence is a series of seemingly deliberate naïve forays into attempts at getting along doing things in the “normal” way, with people whose feelings I've yet to be persuaded are worth dancing around. Yet, I can't seem to escape this whole “being human” thing. I want to connect, in a manner of speaking.

My idea of connection is formed primarily around dudes and the utility we bring each other. My best friend and I are constantly analyzing situations, cracking jokes, or otherwise finding ourselves wrapped up in the flow of attending to the needs of those who tend to find us in the most desperate situations or use us as de facto pseudo-therapists. My business partner was willing to get into the same kinds of trouble I did, standing for the truth of a case verses falsifying a narrative to suit the targeting from insane case managers. His anxiety or high conscientiousness keeps him constantly trying to get things done and work like me. My dad has modeled a level of chill, trust, responsibility taking, and work ethic that carries over and jives with experiences of my buddies and their dads.

Sometimes I carry on like my life isn't in perpetual “pending” status after I've made the good-faith effort or sacrificed enough of my time or self-respect to change directions. I keep trying. Trying at what, exactly? Well, to “fit in.” It's not exactly that I think I can relate to the insecure feelers, it's that I think I'm missing the angle in which their behavior doesn't resonate as though it's indicating the fall of man. I think the arguments for “practically” securing some means of a paycheck outweigh the frustrations or negotiations with my identity. I can't actually tell if I'm repeating a pattern, or if I'm so boringly trying to budget for things I don't need and find new ways to flavor all of the time in between.

I don't believe a soured relationship was one that necessarily existed at all. I'm imagining a fire hose delivery system for water. If you need water, say while you're marooned in the desert, you'll take getting blasted to the face in order to survive. If you had a fire hose system shooting through every spout of your house, the conversation is less about the necessity of water to survive, and more about how you've designed your house in such a ridiculous way. If you're the loneliest, most self-loathing, and painfully shy and insecure person on the planet, you might adopt the series of abusive and cold relationships in the mockumentary story of what your life is worth. If you're identified by what's wrong or broken with you unconsciously calling the shots, do you and the connections you form really exist? Or is it just incidental runoff flowing as water flows?

Basically, just because I discover, or am forced upon, the failure point, does not mean I go into things seeking failure. I wish to learn why someone or something doesn't work, but I'm not self-sabotaging. I'm literally trying to speak to and stand for what I believe used to be taken-for-granted behaviors that spoke to self-respect and worthwhile connection. If I tell you I budget my time, you make a point of making sure I'm not wasting my time. If I tell you that 5, 6, or a dozen times over the course of a month and a half, and you make no effort to change your approach to my time, you don't respect me. Am I getting that wrong? I should leave that situation, no?

Something I deliberately avoid is saying something like, “I'm being made to feel like...” That's never true nor precise. I may in fact feel like I'm always “wrong” or too antagonistic or bull-headed, but you didn't make me feel that way. I've trained my senses around what I think are reliable indicators that you're full of shit. I lie in waiting for the patterns of behavior that spell disaster and then go into self-preservation mode. I don't bitch in a vacuum. I don't lie to myself about how I do or don't believe in what I'm doing. I don't lie to you about what I think is fucked up. This course of action, wholly life-saving and meaningful to me, is never appreciated. I don't know what to feel or how to react to this, because I'm not going to stop. I'm going to “attack” until I die. I'm going to feel the release of tension by voicing what's fucked and that's going to tell me I did the right thing in spite of the, usually petty, yet painful drama.

Something else I've spoken to in the past is how I'm amazed at how things can stand, grow, and remain so self-insulated or superficially successful in spite of the corrupted core. You can look at the U.S. “justice” system, or billion-dollar industries destroying the planet and instituting slavery. You can look at basically any appreciable amount of money ensuring its voice gets instantiated in perpetuity as it threatens violence, carries out violence, or creates worlds more intricately detailed and denial-ridden than all of humanity's fiction authors could conceive. That's how you know you're doing well, right? You have the money to pay people, put your voice out there, or people are willing to throw you tens of thousands in bids at their own immortality or chance to glean self-worth by association.

If I were to boil down my “real” issue in this moment, it's that I don't just have the job I'm good at waiting for me to do it. I'm bored, so I'm getting into trouble levying the burden of timely accountability and specific goal-oriented behavior on children running themselves the kind of ragged I thought was appreciable as a teenager straight-through until I had the coffee shop. Still, though, I worked jobs, showed up on time, did well in school, answered the phone, and all of the other “basic” things that you apparently don't have to do in order to reach defensive-posture-inducing levels of achievement.

Arguably, I don't even wish to be recognized by that type of person. I want to create my ventures independent of that slop. I want my impact to be felt in the way that words never will. I'm playing an entirely different game than other people around me, and I still find myself getting frustrated when they don't know the rules. I co-opted the rules from what I thought was “society,” but it turns out these were just part of the propaganda of America's “greatness” perhaps? In actuality, your only obligation is to your feelings and the dollar amounts. Everyone else be dammed.

There's also this contradiction where this is really all I wish to give people who don't live up to my standards, but I also, fundamentally, want nothing to do with them. Why do they get a blog? Well, it's not about “them,” is it? It's about how there is no “we” beyond the intermingling pathological conceptions we have of our value and how it intersects with the demands of any given environment or concept of leadership.

I have this fantasy where I never get another tension headache. I want to pretend that there's a place I might exist where my jaw is never clenched because I've figured out just where I fit amongst all of the “mess” of people's worst ideas and behavior. I want to believe I'll work out a philosophy or travel itinerary that avoids the worst impacts of fascism. I'll plug all of the absurd holes of my interactions with people and redefine what it means to call it “fuck you” money. What nags continually is that up-and-down the layers of problem analysis. What sense does it make to speak of fascism or environmental catastrophe when your experience is people taking seriously that you don't consider it appropriate to provide the polite and requisite “grace” to disregard your time, voice, and concerns? Haven't they already explained this to you!? There's more important people to deal with!

One of these days I'm going to dislodge the wrought-iron stick that reads “irony” wedged between my throat and taint.

I demonstrate respect by showing up on time, ending on time, and being consistent in my expectations. I take responsibility by not only telling the truth, but inviting you to share yours. I put work into things well before I say I “believe” in them. I'm not superficial in my praise nor stingy in sharing what I like about you, myself, or what you may bring to the table. I cut both ways. All I've talked about for the last few years is getting this house in order. Would you be prepared to shit on me as hard as I'd deserve if I had no good reason for this house to not exist in its current order? Would I demand respect for every complaint I've had about my social work environments disappearing like so many farts in the wind, or am I the mother fucker that opens up his own shop?

I know what I'm talking about. I know why my principles matter. I know consequences. I know how fragile even the most robust conception of yourself might be when it's marred by so much time, errant words, or provocative doubt when something new feels incredibly familiar and old. Am I a dick on top of that? Maybe, sometimes, but also no, you're a fucking dick. You're a fucking dick, a fake, and a liar. You're a bitch, you whine, and you do nothing but talk yourself into self-satisfied frenzies searching for acolytes, not partners, not bosses, not equals. You don't look for people who demand your best to match theirs. When I start feeling guilty that I'm taking advantage of you, so I stop, that's a good fucking thing about me. But it's like I said, I'm playing a different fucking game.

[934] The Clench

I just need to complain.

I've spoken in the past about how the common denominator in all of your complaints is you. I never want to be so blind, insecure, or dishonest to the mere fact of my disposition or perspective in how someone or something is failing seemingly independent of my best efforts. That said, to the extent I can document, predict, and correlate what I perceive to be the failings, and see them in vastly different domains or subject matters, suggests to me that my perspective isn't so much a failure of my being as much as it is the persistent awareness of, and similar response to, the human condition.

Tangibly, what does that mean? It means when I complain that no meetings start on time, don't end on time, and don't focus on what the meeting is purported to be about, in my world, I think this demonstrates a lack of respect, focus, organization, and what I consider the bare-bones sense of accountability. Be on time, no? When you're not on time, you can have any number of excuses, perhaps occasionally reasonable, but mostly to try to mask or cover up whatever it is about you that can't make their life comport with better allocating time. Between the two of us, if only one of us can be expect to respect my time, it's going to be me.

What about when it comes to carrying out or denoting responsibilities? I was hired as a sales person. Initially, I sat in on calls, heard the general pitch to be part of an “anthology series.” First, we wanted authors to write a chapter. It was never clarified if we would pay them $1000 or expect them to pay us. Then, we wanted specifically high-dollar or million-in-revenue authors. We expected them to pay $5000. People to call were making their way to our calendars predicated on old LinkedIn copy which they wished to change. That change didn't take place for a month and a half. Stated differently, it took a month and a half for “someone” to write 10 or less lines so we could begin again email spamming people.

What are you getting for your $1000, or $5000 dollars? Another meeting! Each request for something for each author to sign to was met with the proverbial, “that makes sense, we should do that” then silence, or another meeting in which no one was tasked with creating the thing to sell that would generate any money. Did I mention that the calls we were supposed to make ranged from people who haven't been spoken to in maybe a year, extremely wealthy people which the owner has a previous relationship, shots in the dark cold emails, and people who were considered fence-sitters, but we should try to close anyway, even though the dollar amounts they might bring would be generally negligible?

So, you're presented with this choice to take initiative, call people vaguely associated with one of the categories above with an incomplete pitch, or dare to ask for something explicit, again. What happens if you take initiative? Well, they change the pitch, as is what happened in the $1000/$5000 discrepancy in which I shouldn't have left a message for a prospect about the change. Were I wise, I would have taken for granted that we would just eat the $4000 disparity and continued to pursue him. It's not that I should expect them to be clear, it's that I'm so foolish as to think it unwise to play continual balancing act for what bullshit or arbitrary things we've told to people.

Weeks later, lists, uncategorized, provided without context, are distributed. Who to call? Everyone! Well, except this one, that one, and, on you know don't do this chunk right here because...whatever the reasons. What should we tell them? Well, we refuse to answer that. These people are just random connections, not the millionaires we'd like for the anthology. An anthology the head of sales voiced is trying to dissuade the owner from pursuing anymore, by the way. What we should definitely do though is reach out to them and get them on the calendar. Why? So they can get in another meeting! So we can pass them on to the only people you really want doing sales, because you're ambivalent about whether or not I know what I'm selling.

If you put voice to any of this, you're attacking. Once you attack, the mood shifts. People aren't sharing with you that they actually just called everyone they could, and if you thought you were redundant or irrelevant before, look now. People talk out of one side of their mouth urging you to share honest feedback and to be patient, then persistently shuffle you into the background and complain about everything they've already told you about how little regard they have for your time, it just looks nicer when I say it has to do with client management.

I just quit this miserable “job.” When I put voice to my desire, I felt relaxed. Again, like every shitty job I break with, I feel better, like the right course of action has finally taken place, and like I can get back to putting my head towards things I believe in and wish to work for.

People are fundamentally insecure. I don't know of a louder or more persistent truth. From that insecurity, every level of hell vies to capture the best parts of you. The very concept of “truth” is rendered mute. The only currency is the collective narrative which bolsters the angry mob in your gut, lashing out at criticism and clapping back any suggestion that your behavior hurts more than helps. I'll invite you to think of half the country still touting QAnon and Trump conspiracies.

I feel hopeless. Not for myself, of course, but for ever making something worthwhile with the “normal,” painfully inadequate and resentful world. I'm just glad I've worked hard enough to exercise my privilege to quit. I tense up and clench my jaw when no resolution feels possible. That is, no resolution but ending the relationship. How many do I need to attempt before I stop altogether?

[933] Brick

I've felt a bit off. Something is missing. About a week ago I got a 24 hour flu, and the subsequent recovery from that kept me a touch achy and thinking I had all but erased any remote cardio achievements.

There are real problems. Is that a particularly controversial or difficult thing to state? We have real, honest to goodness, can kill us all, problems that permeate to the basest levels of our psychology. We have big broad “ism” problems. We have interpersonal issues. We have logistical nightmares. We have the haphazard violence of accidents and ambivalence woven into every moment. Why, ever, do we choose to make that even more difficult? Why compound the problem?

This is one of the questions at my core which drives my behavior. Am I just hurting myself? Is my life needlessly burdened by tying itself to some idea, person, or task that may have stopped making sense? If a rock is in my shoe, I take off my shoe, remove the rock, and proceed to walk the already difficult path. This is not to say I only ever do the “logical” or “easy” things, but it does mean I try to remain conscious of the conditions under which I might choose to hop about and kick the rock to a part of my shoe perhaps not directly under foot.

Today, much is referred to as “problematic.” From your jokes to turns of phrase, the idea that you would emulate something from a culture that isn't yours, the fact of your job or choice of associations. One way or another, you're always the problem, killing the planet, fueling capitalism, capitulating just inadequately enough to the incensed to remain frosty for a target bigger than you. “Identity” is up for grabs, and those on the attack will be dammed that you get to dictate yourself before they're done thrashing.

Writing is my perpetual grasp at an identity. Some of my most persistent memories are of being curious how to engage the world. I didn't know how the adults could sit around a table and talk for hours. I didn't know how people answered questions on game shows. I didn't know what it was to be charming more than fumble within mutual immaturity. Abstract concepts remained that way because it didn't occur to me to unpack every syllable that gave me pause. I want to know better. I want to do better. I want it to be easier and easier with each attempt. I want to fit everywhere I go.

Of course, I'm me. I don't fit. I imitate. I adopt the language. I build an entire psychological housing for a perpetually defiant and spiteful narrative underpinning my motivation and instincts. “Fuck you, watch me.” I can't speak to people without pissing them off. If it isn't that viscerally demonstrative, they maintain a defensiveness almost by default. I'm reflexively critical. I exist in a state of doubt. I'm daring you to be accountable to your word. I'm longing for the recognition of what mine is worth.

“Me,” is not something that can “go with the flow.” I have to speak up. I get headaches when I don't. I feel sick to my stomach. I clench my jaw. Mind you, none of these things happen when I'm merely managing or working through something difficult. I can do physical labor all day and not clench my jaw. I can try to parse every word in some argument and not have a headache while doing so. I don't feel sick at the prospect of starting or running a company. Those conditions are inflicted upon me when they arise from avoidable circumstances. When I can recognize the environment as destroying me, and can't change it myself nor expect you to give a damn, I suffer. Or worse, I can change it, but it means I have to get that much colder or ambivalent about you.

I haven't found a good fix for this. I'm occupying many environments at once. I can always alleviate the pressure here and there by putting a show on, putting you on mute, or wrapping myself up in some physical task. But, overall, my environment is not the one I want. It's still begging for the bills to get paid. It's still feeling the giant “fuck you” from the organizations I've worked for. It's still dependent on the sense of time and agency from people who've likely consigned themselves to miserable fates years ago.

I need a partner. I don't mean romantically necessarily. I need to meet my match about some foundational things. I need someone who sees things as urgently as I do. I need someone who has just a touch of elevated yet healthy anxiety about waiting just one more day. I need more tangible examples of what I know I'm worth to act as a balance against the distractions of time in between.

I shouldn't have to have “dumb” conversations about cause and effect or what constitutes “work.” I think a component of my “new” anxiety is how much more precious every second of wasted time on bullshit feels. I don't want to be in a dozen meetings and still left with nothing to do. I don't want to be having a meta or meta-meta-conversation analyzing why you can't give clear direction or complete a task in a time-respecting way, then positing it's really to do with my feelings that there's any real problem.

What I want is so simple. It's so simple it takes 100 hours of paperwork, weeks of miscommunication, the tact or organization to stay budgeted above water in the meantime, and a propensity to do several other things concurrently, you know, just in case it's not so simple.

Again, I pause, and take in my home. I put all this shit together. I put a new cat in it. I got power to it. I have supplies in the mail to hopefully fix the heat long enough. I'm full. I'm comfortable in my free chair I got with my awesome truck. I'm still at a certain peak. I saw an awesome movie yesterday, painted a bedroom, had help with a concrete run. I got my concrete vibrating motor working today for 60 less dollars than I thought it was going to cost. Barring extraneous spending, I'm already owed enough money to keep me solvent through the end of the year.

My life still happens in spurts. I certainly exist in between those spurts, but I'm not actually only and perpetually down to just...wait. I'm not keen to the excuses you use to feel better about how bad a job you're doing. I want to ride the energy of what I've done into the things I can't yet imagine. That doesn't happen, at least in a psychologically gratifying way for me, two or three days at a time every week or two when I have the money, time, energy, or help. I want the dominoes falling continuously. I don't want to wait for you to get better, I want to fire you and move on. I don't want to wait for you to remember what we talked about, I want someone chasing down the piece we need to move in service to any conclusions we drew.

This is a propensity that can get out of hand. This can lead to a lot of waste or potentially hasty decision making. The problem is that I'm 33, not 13. Most of the things I want to execute I've thought out for quite some time, or made moves in service to. Even if the precise mechanisms might change, the manner in which they operate has not. I know how to budget. I know how to efficiently invest. I have an imagination for the feasible permeating tracks I can take in business or with the land. In my own way, I'm inching along on the land in not pretending I don't have a working back or desire to fight the ever-encroaching pounds. There's always something to do, even if it's just log the next episode, but it won't suffice for taking the ride I wish to be on.

[932] Storied Toys

I'm as imaginative, creative, willing to fantasize, or naively capable of getting caught up in a compelling story or dream-like narrative as the next guy. There are a great many things I want to believe. That's what moves you, after all. Your genuine, unadulterated and compelling belief in your most hopeful mind's eye. It compels believers into cockpits, buildings. It makes you sappy and pliable after the hundredth re-watch of your favorite movie. It's what chills your spine and coaxes the tears over the edge after the perfect lyrics land on every overloaded sense. And, what a gift, the nature of your existence will do nearly everything it can to keep you from distinguishing troublesome “reality” from every imaginable world you might otherwise occupy.

I think I use my imagination differently. If it's most often an escape, I force mine to explore. My imagination is for running experiments, not pretending. My imagination prompts a search for what action steps I can take to bring it from abstract obscurity into lived and worked demonstrability. I feel trapped, in a sense, in my sense of reality. However I define it. Whatever peace I make with it. It's mine alone. Just like I'll be the only one who writes this. “Me” is trapped by these words, the impressions I leave, and the consequences that follow.

I force my imagination to work. I don't sit around and daydream at “random.” I watch “everything.” I let myself play like the characters on TV. I try to trap what I imagine into what seems possible. If you go about this the wrong way, very little indeed seems possible. If you refuse to trap anything, nothing really is.

We find ourselves trapped in many stories, but can't imagine acknowledging them. We trap ourselves behind big words left deliberately undefined. We trap ourselves within titles meant to do the work of what they're supposed to represent. We box ourselves in to genres quickly parsed by the algorithms more than capable of predicting what you'd like to surround yourself with next. You don't imagine you're trapped because, what else is there? We're thankful for our stories, no? We enjoy relaying our tastes and the warm familiar narratives we've built upon for generations.

Besides, doesn't “trap” make it sound like someone or something set you up? What? Do you think someone is trying to catch you? Or, maybe you take much comfort in how much every trap, humane or otherwise, is just part of your god's plan, and it's your job to fall in, not question. Whether you fall in to a pit of vipers or fall in love, fate is the wind to ride well above analysis. Why, if you're feeling or claiming you're been trapped by a story or ten, wouldn't you know it, just tell yourself a different one.

As someone claiming consciousness, I feel it is existentially imperative to identify and determine as many narratives as may constitute me as are relevant to a worthwhile existence. This is no small task. It's literally an infinite game. I'm always looking for myself. I'm looking for myself in how others conduct themselves. I'm looking for myself in how others tell stories. I'm looking for who is laughing. I'm looking at what and whether you're working. I'm listening for if you're bothering to speak at all.

It's only natural that so much of what I imagine is provoked by TV. It hasn't been until relatively recently (the last 2 years,) I've been able to do much beyond remain focused on providing myself a new floor to imagine from. Whatever you might say about how poorly my ex and I communicated, it was at least clear to me how directly my actions and motivation arose from a desire to help her. I have my latest dream, at least, a strong resemblance of it, so I'm trying to live it and create new things. Whether I'm imagining having the kinds of relationships on screen, or turning over the work to evolve what's displayed on my security cameras, the narrative is important.

I think it takes a big broken imagination to pretend you can “control the narrative.” It's the first move from someone wholly petrified by the responsibility and enormity of their individual task. It's so encapsulating a fear, we formalize it in fascist governance and are born predisposed to the psychological protection it offers. Tell me, do I look “controlled” when I'm searching my imagination in blogs? Perhaps when I'm lashing out or dissecting some forgone fight, inevitable given my disposition? Maybe I seek some kind of security in obscurity, and that's why nothing I say could possibly be understood. Easy to maintain a high-minded conception of yourself if you leave them always incapable of knowing what to criticize.

The narrative is important as long as you wish to get somewhere. Directions that take you in circles are for those that wish only to be dizzy. I wish to not only habitually redefine myself, but see it manifest in the world. I wish to remain worried if I'm fading before I'm due. I wish to imagine myself getting earned attention for doing work I believe in for people I respect...as people, if little else. I want to ride the flow that turns the work into every reason to live and spread the gospel of what's so amazing about now.

Lately, I've been feeling the squeeze, not of precious loved ones, but of what the TV stories and my own memories suggest they are supposed to represent. The TV gives you the lines, the enemy, and inconclusive conclusions. The memories get to marinate in idyllic spices and pair beautifully with wine you're prepared to drink too much of. I have a romantic imagination. It's a romance unacquainted with work and untainted by reality. I am able to recognize my imagination for what it is. It's an engine for desire, even lust. It's a place where the temptation to stop working feels altogether appropriate. It's a place betraying its own power by provoking me to call it a “trap.”

I can accept atrocity. So far, I've yet to be so traumatized that I need a permanent “escape” in some form of psychotic break or habitual chemically-induced alteration. I can talk myself into anything, but I can only work in service to so much. What I work on needs to bring about the consequences of what I deem worth doing, not what was most likely to happen whether or not I was there. That's my center and sanity. Everything I bear witness to while I write this is my work, from the stolen plush Steak N Shake claw machine animals holding up my faux insulation blankets to my tick-and-worm-free cat sleeping on my leg. If nothing else proves true, not even your impression of my view, the work to bring this picture into focus means more to me than words will ever capture.

Existence makes a lot more sense when you flirt with whatever makes up the feelings that tell you you need to. It's not the same as being carried away and horny or borrowing from tropes you're allegedly feeling regarding your offspring or insecurities. When you need to make sense of something and you need it to look and feel a certain way in order for all of the problems related to it to make sense as well, you change. You're not a default character. No one can just play you and press your buttons for predictable moves. It becomes insufferable that someone would choose to waste what you've made out of your character in service to their fantasy and ill-attended work. That they would reduce you to their mood or gossip and remain blind to the drive and work that justifies your being; it's like being invited into a suicide pact.

Then what? You rob them of their agency and reduce them to caricatures and cliches as well? You try to hold them responsible to your standards? You piss off and do your own thing? You linger, long enough for it to feel forced, on all of the things you just said meant so much to you? Try to squeeze the precious meaning and motivation for all it's worth when every new foray provokes apoplectic anxiety that perhaps nothing has made sense ever and your oft misconstrued narratives are ultimately suicidal.

My imagination is suffocated by what I don't know. I can't work with what I don't know. I can't fit a missing piece into a puzzle with an indefinite amount of pieces. I can't imagine “fixes” to undefined “problems.” I can't see the road I'm to travel if I'm stuck on a true-believer's doomed plane. What does that leave me with what I must believe about myself? What does that say about what has to be said in order for me to feel like I exist? Would I believe in me if I weren't fighting? Would I trust work I haven't done? Am I to be swept up by all manner of words. however you wish to deploy them. against the ethics and sensibilities I've decided to exist in service to embodying? I want to work, and it takes no work at all to merely exploit. Is there anything so exploited as the story we tell ourselves?