[903] Oregon Trailer

I want to talk about the difference between “coping” and “processing.” Of course, this will, as always, just be my interpretation and how I might think to use them in my own life.

 

I think the primary difference between coping and processing is “intention.” Children have to cope, they don't have a choice. My body, my habits, and my thoughts were shaped by my quasi-abusive upbringing, and the things I did or continue to do were coping mechanisms. Obsessive thoughts, picking, headaches, or less maladaptive things like learning how to joke (in a cruel or otherwise manner) fall under that umbrella. I didn't say, “Hey, that's hurtful or confusing, let's make my head pound for a month!”

 

Processing is deliberate. Processing is writing. If I encounter a difficult or stressful situation, I want to exhaustively investigate each moment of what happened. If, in less than a second, I swing from immense pain to sadness to a flicker of joy back to pain and right into confused emptiness and disembodied consternation, I want to know if every beat of that constitutes their own paragraphs or singular words. I respect my brain's capacity to fuck me relentlessly over “small” things or “fleeting” emotions and sentiments. I respect that it can do so in a way that massively outweighs its ability to remember and reflect on what's good or worthwhile, and is even evolutionarily designed that way to protect me from underestimating potentially deadly dangers.

 

Even more disparaging of a thought, there is no guarantee you'll ever really be able to process something. Maybe you lack the mental acuity. Maybe you're never provided nor able to discover the series of words that result in a genuine epiphany over struggle to manufacture insight. I had a lot of extremely naive ideals about “love” and what a “healthy” relationship were before I decided consciously to tango again and again. Had I remained in that “intellectual” posture about what coupling was or who people should be, it wouldn't be a stretch to say I would severely lack the visceral insight, bravery, or patience to engage with the infinite series of questions and struggles that arise from our ever-iterating entanglements.

 

As long as you're alive, you're coping. You're coping with getting older and things failing you. You're coping with less-than-desired novelty. You're coping with growing obligations or responsibilities, which are not the same thing. Maybe the coping is helpful, maybe not, maybe sometimes, or maybe results in a threat to someone else's coping. If you've adopted a kind of “radical honesty” that has manifested as an amazing tool for stress reduction in your own life, but everyone hates you and what you have to say, well, hi. Without the hyperbole, you can understand the different kind of approaches to life when you contemplate the difference between when you're able to counsel verses when you need it yourself.

 

I think most healthy adults most of the time don't react to things like literal babies or young children. Spilling a little food isn't going to have you crying for an hour. Stubbing your toe isn't going to prompt you to throw something or punch the wall. You would counsel that child to come to you, maybe kiss the spot that hurts. You would redirect their attention. You would try to make them laugh. You know spilled food or a bruise are not the end of the world, for someone who's perspective is so small or short-lived, how can you expect them to know it isn't, in fact, the end of the world as they've come to know it? It's the parents that were treated like adults and traumatized to grow-up and suppress before they had the tools or time that break the little brains of their offspring. “I'll give you something to cry about.” They had room to introduce more pain, but not room to explore or find a better habit or perspective.

 

Somehow, I've found myself in the position to now be an addiction counselor. I say “somehow” somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I've been aggressively exploring my place in the universe for 16 years. I parse out the language. I take the time. I write it down. My attempts to relate my experience were felt, put into practice, and I'm sitting in the consequences of every moment. Every extra second of patience, every more-exacting word, and each opportunity that builds on them is the best I have to offer. I know you can't move me when I don't want to be moved. I know the difference between feeling and behaving indignantly verses genuinely not understanding what you're talking about. Even if I may remember or recall feeling viscerally, I also know I've chosen to approach those feelings in a way that moves them away from “coping” and into “processing.” Both surely happen and often at the same time, but you're watching my chosen habit. Yours might be different and function the same way. Only you'll know.

 

There are a lot of cliches that become apparent even in scratching the surface of group therapy or addiction counseling. One is, “Meet them where they are.” Where any of us are appears functionally or practically impossible at first pass. Where am I? Well, I'm behind the computer or leading the session, physically. You don't know what's going on in my head, and it'd be a wild amount of pride to suggest I knew it “perfectly” or “exactly” either. Where are you? How am I supposed to understand where you are? Maybe you'll tell me. Maybe you're lying. Maybe I won't understand. Maybe you have a very narrow word box that keeps you penned in. Maybe you've never read nor heard the *exact* way you've been feeling, so that even when you hear it, it does not translate because it's 15 syllables long and in German.

 

The whole of conscious existence swirls around that kind of battleground - provided you're not on a kind of hippie spiritual or experiential flow that tries to not engage with it all. It's one that I'm notably learned in generally, now, remaining “ambivalent” or “nonplussed” about, and it has “chased away” a great many of my relationships which were not prepared to break things into minutia or “argue” semantics. I state pretty quickly and confidently that I'm aware of my role or posture in those relationships, and have made peace with the ones broken or will in fact break in the future if and when the idea of talking, writing, and honestly sharing is beyond the kind of respect or patience they are willing to extend to me as I show for them. I may not like them or wish to “fix” or “forgive,” but they aren't my focus or source of ongoing pain.

 

There's a reiteration in counseling to be aware of “thinking errors” and “irrational thoughts” that come with all-or-nothing thinking or presuming you know someone's motivation when you feel slighted. I printed out a top ten list of irrational thoughts to be aware of in cognitive behavioral therapy approaches to counseling. They apply to just thinking and people independent of addiction. I'm aware when I've employed them to misstep, and I'm aware when I'm tempted to say “everything” or “everyone” or “nothing” as though merely asserting the words makes them true and comprehensive. I don't expect you to understand any word, let alone blog, as I've “intended.” I expect you to take what you can, leave what you can't, and honestly engage, or there is no conversation or connection. I'm under no illusions about where my “power” lies or which thoughts I derive comfort from, and they aren't in the idea that I'm *necessarily helping you more than me.*

 

Would I like to help you? Sure. Can I help you? I don't know. I know what works for me. I know how it works against a myriad of reactions, judgments, and descriptions you might offer about it. I, more often than not, observe the “processing” and “progression” towards what I'm reaching for. Are you? And if you're not, do you have anything you are reaching for? If you were an addict it might be reflexively “to get sober,” a disembodied generalization that has nothing to do with the underlying compulsions or trauma. I had fuzzy goals of “being rich” or “exacting revenge” that have gotten so specific like “acquire 15' x 8' ft 6500 GVWR each double axle trailer to tow large equipment, vehicles, thousands of bricks, or in-tact sheds to stockpile for future self-sustaining plots with on-hand salvaged/recycled resources.” That's one goal in a chain of hundreds of lists, less-specific goals, and built on new discoveries and experiences along the way. I can confidently say if you found me a trailer like that from free to affordable, you will have helped me in service to a transcendent yet specific goal.

 

You can be that exacting in your behavior to stressful or triggering situations, but not if you're unwilling or unable to ask yourself a lot about your needs and learn at least a bit about the [trailers] that are going to facilitate your goals. How are you going to understand the weight you're carrying? I understand enough about my own to seek out more. I understand how to differentiate mine verses what you or life broadly may ask me to carry. I want the kind of trailer that's prepared for all things. I know that's going to take a kind of patience to find one within my budget. I know it's an invitation to more work and risk as much as it is a solution. I have to search, wake up early, budget, make the repairs, work the “normal” job, cope with my own anger and sense of futility, drive safe, find patience, and remain open and pliable to modifying goals or dealing with threats independent of what I think the trailer can do for me. Like all things, it can help or hurt depending on your approach, and the more you understand how it will invariably do both is going to speak to “where you are” relative to the infinite possibilities.

[902] But Seriously, Like, Read This One

I really want you to pay attention to this blog. I'm going to try and approach it very deliberately, run some numbers, and speak to some of my highest aims. I had a momentary resolute surge of hope for the future, and longtime listeners will know how much I dislike the word “hope.”

I genuinely want everyone in my orbit to be organized in a way to “maximize” themselves. This is not a small or simple feat. It's also not synonymous with being “efficient” or presupposing some level of opulent lifestyle aims (which, to some extent, I have).

If you have goals in mind at all, they are likely to vary in as individuated of ways as you conceive of yourself. Maybe you covet a certain kind of decadence or environment. Maybe you want the simple pleasures indefinitely. This is “fine,” in some broad, existential way, but it also might mean you are not my audience. Or, in the spirit of “hope,” you're a $1/month subscriber that functions as a kind of thumbs up for the greater political project and contributes to an ever-more-imposing supporter count.

My bills, at what I consider something of a modern subsistence level, are $106.50 for the internet, between $117-$374 for electric (3 space heaters for months straight - not typical), and food, which were things to get dire, could be supplemented by the food bank or food stamps. What this translates to practically is, at bottom and in splitting the bills, I'm only obligated to pay $240/month, in the worst of all possible space-heater worlds. Do I need a cell phone? It's a kind of luxury, but that would push the bill to $265/month. I don't ever need to leave my house with the amount of books, movies, and instruments I've amassed, so gas and car insurance/maintenance/registration would drop precipitously. Property taxes can't be ignored, so $326/month if I don't pay them in a lump some. Every year, being a hermit who wants the internet and to wear his contacts too long, it costs me just under $4,000. Unplugging the space-heaters knocks that down to just over $3,000.

Of course, that's kind of ridiculous, right? I like eating at restaurants, leaving the house, and playing with new toys and tools. It's not “realistic” to expect myself to hunker down for the entire year and really feel “human,” unless I was oddly gratified by becoming a mythical miser. I designed my lifestyle to try and account for what might happen if I had to work at McDonald's, and still wish to feel like “me” in pursuing my larger entrepreneurial and world-takeover goals. I'd cover the basics in 3.5 months flipping burgers.

I currently occupy this weird space that is filled with increasing amounts of potential. Last year was amass the supplies and tools. This year, they are in the next room or sitting outside. Last year was dig up the hundreds of saplings or dump piles of driveway stone one wheelbarrow at a time. This year it's detailing with soil amendments and shoring-up muddy holes. I'm *excited* to build experimental structures that are blowing over to ground me in what I can and can't do with salvaged wood.

So much of this process has been a pain in the ass. Who wants to drive to the middle of nowhere? Who wants to learn how to compost if you grew up “normal” and flushed your cares away? Who wants to deal with Trump flags, fast-food 20 minutes away, and ticks? Who enjoys the aesthetics of a shed for their living arrangement? Who wants to get nominally used to water that smells like sulfur? Any one of those things would have stopped me from bothering with this project had I maintained the point of view prescribed to me through a “modern” upbringing. I'm supposed to have a mortgage and car payment, right? SHEDS AREN'T HOUSES!

The failings of our capitalist system have turned “tiny houses” and shed-living into not-so-niche points of pride and creative excitement. Poverty re-branded as a lifestyle choice is a coping mechanism. It's not more or less an effective one than the polite pleasantries we offer to excuse our behavior in service to austere neoliberal capitalism or “conservative” thought. The antidote to those modes of being has been fashioned as a kind of “radical socialism” in which even marginally giving a shit about one another is branded as un-American and begetting the inevitable road to... communism? We get boxed into this rhetoric, paralyzed and exhausted by endless working hours, and become distracted indefinitely, if only to survive.

And then what?

I think I unconsciously ask myself this all the time. What happens after I make “enough” money? What happens when my dog catches the car? A wheel makes a revolution, always returning to where it began save the wind around it or the wear-and-tear. How fast do I want to spin, and what kind of air do I want to stir? When I stop spinning, will I have worn myself down for something worth it, or did I just spin too long because I could?

I've spent 3 or 4 years to go from buying the land, to the shed, to turning it all into something resembling a house and degree of comfort I look forward to driving back to each day. I vividly remember staying here without power, without rocks to walk on, without running water, and without any idea of when or if anyone would be joining me...ever. It's a level of focus and work-ethic that I take a lot of pride in speaking about. I also simultaneously SAVED THE CHILDREN if that counts for anything. It chases back further to being able to save enough money to buy the land, and discovering that I did, in fact, want to spend as little amount of time being subjected to “normal” as humanly possible.

I don't want everyone to “suffer” like me, but I do want people to appreciate the level of dedication and detail in their own stories as well as mine. One of the things I took for granted - especially talking to a mostly-white middle to upper-middle class group of kids in how I conceived of what our futures might be – was that there was an appreciation for how many tools we'd been given and how lucky it was that we had found each other. The “goal” or “obligation” seemed clear, don't fall into the habits and traps that got us all waxing about the folly of the past. Build sustainable things. Work together. Pragmatically pursue a kind of life that enabled what everyone was saying was going to be hard to impossible given our corrupted and (literally) crumbling conception of ourselves.

Oh to be young. And, really, I get why people in their 30s hesitate to call themselves “old,” my knees or general circulation be dammed. In truth, I've had less than 10 years to, not only attempt to circumvent the circumstances I was born into, but navigate all of the new psychological drama of algorithm-infused myopic “hatred” combined with a political project to ever-institutionalize American fascism that's been churning for 50+ years.

Like a conservative laser-focused on overturning all that is good and true in the world, I, too, have an indelible focus that believes I can achieve my ends. I think I can recognize my place on the wheel. What is yours?

I have land I'm offering for you to live on *rent-free. That comes under the condition that you do the same amount of work and sacrifice in service to your largest goals or narrative as you've watched me put into mine. There's room in between, I'll happily collect rent, but you know we're both better than that. What is your money going to? Where is your time spent? I want you to be exacting in your budgets. I want you to imagine what it would mean to take over the world.

When I look at my friend list, I don't precisely know how to understand it. There's people I've been familiar with, worked with, and a couple strangers. There's people I know a fleeting amount of their bill or life obligations. There's people I've gotten drunk and dreamed big with. There's people I'm waiting for my big birthday party invite no-one's going to show up to to delete the day after. They've probably still got student loans, donate to charity, or you wouldn't believe how complicated kids are! I see occasional personal wins or celebration. And then what? What is the goal? Wait for Joe Manchin? Die old and in your sleep?

I want to drop rocks, rehab a couple trailers, and rent free-to-cheap. Do you want “passive” income? Help me. Buy in.

I want to scale up worm production.

I want to grow food and live off-grid.

I want to build sustainable little communities on small and large acres that supplant the impact of the larger power brokers and psychosis of myopic depression and anxiety.

I want to sleep and wake up at whatever times I want.

I want to be left alone to practice a small measure of difficult music for as long as it takes my fingers or lips to figure it out.

I want to be busy with things that give me energy and get me up early in the morning.

When all of that comes under threat I want to organize my vigilant and accountable crowd to beat back the enemy (Guess where we are on the wheel.)

Then I want to get back to building the infrastructure that lends itself to letting me piss off and play music or sleep until the next Rush Limbaugh is born. Or, I want to have created such a robust and meaningful system, it incorporates the Rushes and the Trumps and the Hitlers in such a deliberate and awake way, we avoid bending ourselves into jagged spokes being turned against our will.

What does that look like for you? Where in my goals do you see any of yours? How much time do you want to waste doing 1/10th alone what we might do together? What's your budget? How much do you spend on rent? How precious is your locale?

16 or 17 years ago, I sounded a lot like I do now. The macro-picture has not improved, and I don't mean to dismiss the musing or statistics of a Bjorn Lomborg, Stephen Pinker, or Coleman Hughes, but they don't seem to have a way to account for what seems like the heart of a sickness. I can't “persuade” well-enough-off people to form a more aggressive Rainbow Coalition around a shared truth or identity that renders the ticks and funky waters of life as mere details. I can't persuade people to even *speak* to their goals for fear of provoking the embarrassed resentment that begets the flood of excuses for their behavior.

Keep asking yourself – and then what? The wheel is going to turn regardless. Where are we going?
In 3 or 4 more years, I bet I have another camper or 6 set up. In 10, I suspect I'll have stopped associating with the vast majority of every eye-ball that might be looking at this now. In 16 or 17, I hope to not sound piddling and pathetic about the state of the country, environment, or my prospects because we all saw what was coming, and couldn't be bothered. I am bothered. I am doing something. It won't be enough alone.

And if you can't figure out how someone so “bleh” like me could ever be worked with, borrow from Am's or BT's example. I'm basically just an obnoxious proxy for their behind-the-scenes calculations.

[901] Set Phasers Too

I feel I'm in a different phase. I don't yet know what I mean by this.

First, I can look at writing. Writing has been this tool to help me calm down, ease headaches, or violently puke ideas that no one was around to listen to me drone about smashed. Now, I feel more like a redundant chronicler. I'm not so much discovering new insights into my thought process or reasons for doing things. I'm watching and living the consequences of so many conclusions I've drawn over time. I rarely know when to stop blogs anymore. There's not so much a central “issue” I'm examining from all sides, because little carries the kind of emotional depth or suggestive trauma anymore. I'm matter-of-factly speaking.

I find this unsettling because I'm still an idiot. I work within the confines of my knowledge and access, and they are infinitely small for as abundantly they may make me feel as though I'm correct and doing the right things. I imagined myself testifying to the behavior of this particularly aggressive, lying, and spiteful mom; “Your honor, I can't diagnose nor have evidence of her drug use, but every song is made with the same 7 notes.”

On my drives home, I'm thinking about things that I believe would lend themselves to a blog. I get home, I either forget, or they feel diminished. That mom from above, for example, is nothing special. I've met her before I ever met her. I've made up my mind what kind of professional attitude and series of excuses I can lend to depersonalizing her behavior. I can bemoan the impropriety of her CASA praying with the family, thus advising the court they're A-OK, in spite of track marks you can see from the moon and her very-likely intoxicated/withdrawal state for the last visit. We can move right on past her former DCS ongoing case-manager being placement of her children, because that was a year ago, so no issues, right?

I'm already home in the thought that in order to address what seem like particular egregious details in any one person's character or series of professionals' judgment, I need my own kind of thing. I need to be a kind of advocate and accountability marker that does not exist in my orbit, or at least in great enough quantities. This is a posture I've taken to my voice and work broadly. It's the decision I come to any time I find myself under the growing myopia of grievances left perpetually unaddressed. I need to own, destroy, or somehow put outside of my thoughts. Acceptance or forgiveness are off the table.

The weather is improving. I'm again looking at the land as a series of things I could theoretically do at any moment. The ground is soggy, but that's not too big a deal. There's wood begging to be nailed together. There's money waiting to be spent on details. I have another client whose whole family lives on about twice the amount of space we have. 5 houses, relatives with independent businesses. It's got little street lights, enviable garages, large equipment, and it's a class of people who make sure to buy another basketball in case the one they have isn't pumped enough or the tip is lost from one of the several air compressors neatly tucked on a wall shelf. They're living a version of what I want, superficially, as at least one of their members couldn't avoid methamphetamine.

I've met a few of those late 40s or 50-something guys who talk like their accumulated wealth or extremely specific hobby or job is just another take-it-in-stride kind of thing. Just enough grey in the beard and hair, slim and going to the gym just enough. One day, you buy an ATV, the next, the garage to house all of your toys you take out maybe a couple times a year. It's natural, right? Keep your head down, do your work, save and budget, you can be an ATV dad. Then, one day, you'll maybe have the privilege of getting old enough to be a great-granddad who tells his granddaughter's visit supervisor about how you played tag growing up in the small town a half hour away.

I return to the idea of already being home. Tonight, after consciously saying I've zero interest in rushing to get paperwork turned in on time, I've pushed right on through with my day, drove the opposite direction of home to get pizza, came home and started my show, and now, more than half the way through the pizza and show, have taken the time to write. I still have to get my notes in. I've got plenty of extra time in the morning in which I can sleep in. I remember the version of me that would be exceptionally anxious to get things done NOW, and he's still there, but more careful about using it in service to “better” things. It's wholly subjective, but I'm not going to work myself up in service to people or organizations I don't respect. This blog, TV show, and pizza are more important than your deadline. Significantly more.

My general posture towards the “professional working world” has been so degraded. It's one thing to read a polished business book about how alleged titans of industry work, think, or organize. It's another to have it hit just how goddamn fucking stupid everyone is piggy-backing off their privileged space in time, reinforcing entitlement with ego loops, and regurgitating convenient truisms to maintain a kind of stasis. Say you get in at the ground-floor of some company. Hang on long enough to get a little more power. You adopt the company-speak and demeanor that weathers every possible conflict. Did you do anything? You were there. You stayed. But just like playing a board game, you didn't craft the pieces nor invent the game, nor expect yourself to think about whether or not the game could or should be improved. But, damn, doesn't it feel great and “adult” when you tell people your title? Fucking rotten posers.

I suppose my interest in this next phase is pretty simple. I don't know what happens after all of the things I already know are going to happen do. I knew I'd get this home base into a livable, expandable state. I'm living here, not alone huffing drywall dust after having trudged through wet grass. I knew this kind of environment is going to appeal to my kind of person, and she arrived. This is not meant to be some “master of the universe” kind of statement divorcing her from her agency. It just means bros find frat houses, and no one finds that remarkable. I know that each of the pieces of this spot costs money, you get money from keeping a job or few, and if you show up and do math, you get more shit. All perfectly foreseen, if not the amount of money it might take to keep things fixed. This is often where that grey-enough guy I meet starts to lose me. Domestication takes over. Regular drinks at the Cheddars becomes the highlight of the week.

I still want the kind of thing only I can create. I want the light shining between lines of a blog to illuminate something I can hardly imagine. Just like I keep searching in writing for what's really on my mind or for a way to combine all of the flourishes into something digestible. What could you call my 900 blogs? Simply, writing? Everything I've ever tried to say? A path to personal enlightenment? An ego-maniacal diary of someone who never learned how to just smoke weed and shut the fuck up? It doesn't matter, and that seems like the point. Your approximation, wholesale disregard, or somehow obsessive fan-boying don't matter. I found the will to move here, build here, write here, through writing about who I was or still am. I accepted, deeply, my power to own or destroy, and anything I couldn't put outside of my mind, I put on paper. Maybe that's a blur of old friendships no one wishes to own in how they were destroyed. Maybe that's echos of dreams better learned from than pursued.

It will probably be pushing midnight before I bother with this program for inputting my notes. I'll be over-tired as the itis kicks in from all of the pizza. Tomorrow, I'll try during staffing to stifle my enthusiasm for my drift away from this latest blip on my work-experience radar indicating again how just barely anything works. I'll weave into my next gig, pull in more money, glance at my cameras and see the garden shed installed, perhaps renters at the end of the drive, and I'll be out of debt, or not. It's still the realm of all things I'd be perfectly reasonable in expecting to happen, but it is changing. The phase shift by its very nature is unknowable until it's happening, and that's why I'm seeking it out.

[900] Power Off

This can be considered an ongoing riff on power.

 

I just got out of a conversation with two good-ole-boys otherwise understood as my neighbors. One, a former trucker, another, some kind of job that requires neon clothing. One, agnostic, man-of-all things with a lot of hillbilly knowledge, and is perfectly okay with treating people as they treat you, but damned if he'll tolerate a trans man going into the same bathroom as his daughter. The other, a Christian, was raised to believe if you're choosing to be gay, he views it like all sins including stealing or murder. He's suspicious of unions and doesn't believe his friend is genuine in his recent talk regarding a union he joined, but is trying to fit in. He does not believe in “white privilege” and knows plenty of poor white people, and disputes systemic racism. We all agreed that there's a lot of divisive talk in the media and that people need to get to know each other.

 

It's a kind of conversation that only takes place when people feel “comfortable” honestly relating their various strains of extremely problematic views immediately tagged with a held-harmless “reasonable” thing to reassure you. It's variations on, “but I have a black friend.” It's familiar, I find it boring, and it's the kind of thing you do just to kind of reassure your neighbors that you don't hate them when you'll need their heavy equipment.

 

To me, it highlights how, almost functionally useless talking can really be. I'm, in theory, diametrically opposed to, at least the Christian, neighbor, and for as cliché or stunted as the other's view on trans issues may be, he's never going to have the opportunity to confront a trans person who may be in the same bathroom as his, adult, daughter. The power, to not lose the theme, comes from listening, sharing honestly, and allowing for the discomfort of ambiguity chase them home to reflect on how you may (I did) pock the conversation deliberately with guilt or introspection-inducing ideas. Don't you know how uncommon it is for the “average” person to really sit down and figure out how to live with each other? Takes a special kind of person, perhaps the numskull Christian across the way, to really wrestle with practicing what he may preach.

 

The Christian neighbor made a point about how people want to belong. This was servicing his argument that democrats were being divisive and wanting to lean on anything, like race, to build a camp to belong to. I think his point is important in understanding how most people feel power. They belabor their family values, their traditions, or their creature comforts. For as much as you might profess to have your “faith,” it comes with a tangible community that is bringing you food when Jesus can't be bothered. I think there's a move to defer to the ambiguous values of the community as a kind a faux humility. In pawning off your good deeds, you're able to eschew the responsibility for your bad ones too.

 

I think a new kind of community can be forced. I think I can build a coalition around, “I'm tired of being poor.” Am I going to moderate the humble-ignant-religious nut as they hopefully discover their gay neighbor isn't choosing to, functionally murder, their soul? No. I'm past that. Don't need the seminar. Deeply and dismissively appreciate how long it will take you to find the truth. In an important sense, attempting to meet you where you are would absolutely destroy where I can and want to go. You don't get your PH.D. teaching kindergarten, but no doctor would dismiss the idea of educating children.

 

Do I consider not needing a god, my basic understanding of people as people worth a degree of understanding it might take work to achieve, and significant amount of reading I've done to conceptualize myself as a small piece of the whole powerful? Well, how am I using it? Neither of my neighbors walked away from that conversation pissed at me, if they even understood 90% of what I said in analogizing or drawing from historical examples. If I can no longer access their tools or a phone call when a new car comes to the area, what would “I and all my book-learnin'” get me? What did I want from that interaction? Simply, to honestly represent myself. I do know a lot, use big words in between saying fuck a lot, and am extremely sympathetic to black people and liberal views. What that looks like in that kind of exchange is almost like practicing an art.

 

They know I don't hate them, nor do I believe they hate me, and I think I could throw a party with as many different kinds of people as I wanted and they'd be safe out here. Does that mean the Christian neighbor would stay for the whole party? Probably not. Does that mean I want to attempt to mediate a bathroom argument while intoxicated between my other neighbor and the trans friend who defriended me for persistently disagreeing with a meme about thought and word policing? Fuuuuck no. Everyone is toothless, dumb, and extremely insecure. I wish you would bear that in mind about most people you talk to. Not me, but like, people. If you're going to be like them, respect what they actually consist of, and don't make a boogy-man and lazy conception that pretends they're dumber and lazier than where you're coming from.

 

Get in the mud. Focus on what's true for you. Years ago, I don't know that I would have had the patience or maturity not to simply make some smart ass comment about “dumb religious fucks” and how little I cared what they thought of me or what they might offer. It's not even that hard or a secret to understand that's not the way to go, unless you're me. You might not be as dramatic, but the same forces are at play in our political discourse. The same fears and discomfort preclude talking at all, let alone about the hard things. Ambivalent power will fill the void and we'll keep eating ourselves out from the inside if you can't find your voice.

 

My voice is moving to a new job. My demonstrated capacity is again disregarded. One day I went to sleep, the next, 6 months later, I woke up and am pursuing a new job. It didn't take 2 years like the last one. I didn't allow myself to get worked up and excessively stressed out. I trusted my voice, honestly relayed where I was at, and can cut ties without resentment. I'm judging the shit out of people dumb enough to let me leave, but that's on them. I'm hoping the example I set and conversations I had are little seeds for other people to use to find a place more representative of what they are worth too. There are so few examples of those willing to remind us what we're worth or what we should be shooting for.

 

No transition, but I've been thinking of a way to talk about a Jordan Peterson video I struggled to watch. Peterson has been severely ill for the last few years. His wife beat cancer. His daughter has had extreme health issues throughout her life as well. Recently, he was in a conversation with Jonathan Pageau. I don't know Pageau, but Peterson enjoys him and considers him a deep thinker with regard to Orthodox Christianity. Peterson, broken, searching, is discussing the “inevitability” of Christ when you chase all the ideas of the greatest good and what it means to be conscious. Peterson is on the verge of tears several times throughout the discussion. Peterson posits, “Does the fact that that's how it should be mean that that's the way that it is? And that's trust, that's a question of trust.” in discussing aiming for the best, and embodying what you believe.

 

Pageau gets a smug look and says, “It's a question of truth with which ends up manifesting itself in love [] and I think that like the love that you have for the world which is [] clear...anyways, it shows me that you migtht be closer to that trust than you might want to admit to yourself maybe.” as his voice trails off.

 

THIS IS THAT INSIDIOUS POWER SHIT. Fuck that guy. 

 

Peterson says he doesn't know what to do with his thoughts, is the most confused person he's ever met, and says he's working at about 5% of what he considers normal. Peterson is vulnerable, and here come the Christians coming to prey on him.

 

This kind of power I feel is precisely why most things are fucked beyond measure. If you want a convert, go at them at their best and win. Don't hijack their weakness and pair subversive language to their struggle. Are you a pathetic boss who doesn't want to be undermined? Drone about policy and abstract plans until someone like me quits. Are you ashamed or naive about your privilege? Tell all your white friends, where it's safe, and your ideas can congeal as a vote for fascism. Parasitic subversion is the preferred method of the worst ideas and behaviors into popular discourse precisely because when it's uncovered and felt for what it's doing, you might struggle against how it's killing you.

 

The comment section is littered with chirps and prayers and the typical, excruciatingly gross prostrations I can only depict in the image of those crowds falling over when the preacher pretends to be imbuing the congregation with heavenly manna. What's the power they seek? The power of the crowd, the familiar affirmations, and deeply personal shares of their own pain or epiphanous exhaustion that finally brought them to accepting the truth of the metaphysical. Since it's true you should be good, and Jesus is good, Jesus is the truth! – circular reasoning triumphs! Transitive property FTW! It's definitely not assumptions couched in word-salad and trust/love-laden language foisted upon the self-confessed exhausted and confused mind. GO TO HELL!

 

I'm not angry or suspicious when you say you care about someone or enjoy talking to them. I'm extremely skeptical and pessimistic about the move to divorce your agency from your actions towards them. I don't care how many thousands of words you use to “minister” to someone, you will inevitably find yourself drawn in a circle, justifying anything or everything and nothing but because you could and it makes you feel good. You'd rather hide from the ego that nakedly enjoys it. You'd rather shutter your window into yourself and the world and play on the merry-go-round of your reasoning to nowhere. You're not seriously engaged in the world when you can blame Jesus or when you're preying on the weak. You're letting the world burn in service to egos high on their own supply.

 

I seek to destroy with my power. I don't want explosions and death. I want to kill this fluid habit of acting like parasites looking for hosts and validation in everything besides our best ideas or capacity. You want to “intellectualize” religion and call that Christ? You take on all the baggage. The predators are on your team. Is your sacrifice of who you are for what they tell you you are worth it? Jordan Peterson has meant a considerable amount to me, and not for his ability to break and choke down bullshit because a pleasant goatee mirrored his pain and called it love.

[899] Power On

Let's riff on power.

I think people underestimate me. Be careful to prevent yourself from reading that with more than what I'm saying. I'm not saying I have extra or secret powers to be unveiled after appetizer skirmishes. I'm not saying they are consciously saying, “no” or “I don't believe you.” I'm not even saying the ones who aren't would understand what I'm putting down as powerful would regard it in the same way I would.

I think people underestimate me because they underestimate themselves. Where they doubt, I bet they could. Where they profess the truth, I doubt it's so sweetly understood. I habituate a contrarian impulse that shapes my approach to the world. Every “I could never,” if nothing else, gets its thought experiment for just how deeply and aggressively I could. I divorce my ability to entertain every terrible or amazing idea from an insistent moral or value flavor were you to share it with the wrong person.

I consider this ability part of my immutable power. As long as I can feel, say, or do otherwise, nothing will remain sacred or too powerful. Your authority is suspect. Your words will be open for discussion and dissection. Like all forms of power, it's ambivalent to the outcome of its exercise. I either crash your disposition and into how you conceive of yourself, or I don't register at all but as someone carrying on a discussion or making a harmless point. Rarely, if ever, am I able to tell something to someone they don't already know about themselves, but the reaction isn't so often a nod in solidarity more than a condemnation for the whole intellectualized posture and mere speculation of their character or motivation.

I think people have considerably smaller conceptions of their own power that often conform to modern narratives or prescriptions from authority. What's a “middle-manager?” Someone who has played along long enough to get someone underneath them they can dictate to. Whether they are actually feeling responsible for those people, or what they say to them, is entirely removed from the hierarchical structure's implication. They're your boss. They manage. In fact, “management” is whatever they're doing. There's no check on the implicated reality without you bringing one to the table.

I think people are embarrassed at the amount of power they have and double down on their embarrassed paralysis in observing how little they use it. It's not that they don't know what they could do, it's that they don't choose to engage the consequences all the way through. This is born of a false notion that everything isn't playing out its series of consequences at all times. You have to pick what you're choosing to suffer or the suffering that's going to happen anyway will be for nothing.

I find myself in a persistent power imbalance. I have a habit of being able to demonstrate my ability in ways I struggle to describe as anything beyond making people feel inferior or resentful. I have the “power” to play-along, find my middle-management impulse, and settle into the kind of graduated authority I obtained in my first job in high school. It generally takes less than 3 months before someone, somewhere, gives me the license or authority well before and independent of a matching title or paycheck. This translates practically into me getting taken advantage of and elicits an endless array of bureaucratic platitudes to my offers-cum-pushes for increased access, control, or responsibility.

The first rule in The 48 Laws of Power is to not outshine the master. Be deferential, and god forbid you're charming, try to avoid working for them altogether. In my capacity at DCS and now social working, I connect. My habit of seemingly baseless (invisible) speculation on my observations allows me to get people to crack or comply. My unwillingness to compromise on a certain kind of behavioral standard makes the rules by how I orient my life real for you. I'm charming, deadly honest, and I happen to have an inexhaustible well that's oriented to making a big show or example of what I'm capable of. I denounce the concept of masters and routinely leave them blind. It's never been a secret why I've wanted to strike out on my own entrepreneurially or am super enthusiastic about turning a spot in cousin-fuck Indiana into something remotely representative of my values.

Am I powerful in other ways? I'm fairly strong. I'm terrible at getting sick, but have tended to survive. I have strong opinions on the forms political engagement should take place. The relationships I cultivate and seek to protect form a basis around how I think my values can be extended and manifest independent of me. I try to keep the chaotic and angry ship of my brain flowing with the wind and current yet not carried away. I think writing is powerful. I'm giving shape to the infinitely abstract. I'm building another anchor and reference point. I'm seeking a point of connection I can never know and trusting the consequences matter.

What's the nature of your power? If it's memes, try again. If it's self-effacing excuses and shoulder shrugs, try again. If it's mocking the very idea or question altogether, think about the example you are setting. Think what you would tell a child you cared about. Think as though what you can do or say will last forever, and whatever people may think of you, that's what they're going to see. Would you recognize yourself in what you said or did? Were you even trying?