[912] The Hunt

I think it is exceptionally rare, if not nearly impossible, to do anything in “light switch” fashion. The two ideas that embody light switch change coming to mind quickest regard brain injury a la Phineas Gage, and the phrase in ceasing drug use immediately as going “cold turkey.” Perhaps the addict relays a moment of epiphany in which it became almost mystically possible to stop. Perhaps most of us need something tantamount to a rod shooting through and eliminating the most objectionable parts of our brain.

I feel generally stable. This has not always been the case. When I am unstable, I can usually trace it back to a handful of pretty common or familiar things that, presumably, would destabilize most. I might be hungry, tired, or physically exhausted. It's not really a secret that when I donate plasma, that day I shouldn't be battling the heat with a power tool. I know Tuesday when I forget to pack a lunch, I'm going to be grumpy at 11:30 as I anticipate eating. In a fleetingly small amount of days, I sleep wrong, and perhaps there's a knot I've worked my head, shoulders, and back into that creates a tightness and unease I can't really shake. Those are all simple and anticipated.

I can still work myself up about all that I wish to do and be. I often point to other people's inconsistency or intransigence as “my” biggest hurdles. I reflexively frame issues as a series of any one person or group of individuals who appear, at least superficially, to have more to say and control over my fate than me. It's a long road to travel in attempting to discern where and when this may be the case. I may know that I can't save the planet replacing my light bulbs and recycling, but after I learn my statistical insignificance, do I continue to do so in service to the larger narrative? Do I more deliberately inform my conservation efforts going forward, or give up, hopeless and confident my example does not matter?

The story I tell myself at that point is an existential one. Am I seeing any light but one shining on the mockery and futility of my effort? Am I discovering creative ways to plug into and revolutionize what needs to happen at the macro scale? Can I parlay my individual effort into a series of compounding consequences and create something no one expected or could originally conceive? Just what does it mean for me to exist as someone who wants to recycle their cans or save a little energy one bulb at a time?

For me, every moment is something of an existential crisis. Whether I'm negotiating whether to wash dishes, write this, or find the steady and determined mind to knock out a more laborious task, answering “just who I am and why” is feverishly knocking, insisting to be let in and entertained. The different parts of my personality answer the door and generally keep the question satiated and engaged.

Well, how? Why?

How I've come to understand myself is an evolutionary process. I had to first discover what it meant to be embodied. I had to test and find my limits. I had to baste in the anxiety and angst of whatever I deemed to be a crisis. I had to figure out what the words I used to understand myself actually meant, for me, and how others employed them too often against me. I'm still doing so. It's a never-ending adaptation to whatever being presented to you in any given moment. It's work, but before it's work it's an awareness that it's the only real kind of work you ever have to do. Evaluate your circumstances, consider choices, make peace with the consequences of those choices.

One of the reasons the mental health discussion forms around the trauma experienced in childhood is that child brains don't have the capacity to engage that process. What does a child know about a sexually exploitative environment? How can a child be said to be responsible for their choices when we know their brains aren't even completely formed until their 20s? How can a sense of “resolution” for a “choice” be determined when accurately determining what you're even made of is functionally impossible?

Now, you get to your late 20s, 30s, and beyond, and perhaps for the first time you're even presented with the opportunity to “really adult” or “responsibly evaluate” your circumstances. Surely, we're modern creatures, so the wisdom of different cultures, schools of thought, and science are introduced early if not arbitrarily. Does merely teaching about slavery or The Holocaust mean you'll never behave like a psychopathic Stanford prison guard? Obviously not. The lessons of history have to be worked for, not merely handed over. I just completed the series Human Planet, and not a single tribe member said they inherited that day's meal from their ancestors. The knowledge of what to do had to be put in practice, the same risks taken, and the same respect for the nature of the task given. Or, you die.

I realize something in this moment about why I get anxious when I don't feel busy. Somewhere deep, I know hard work is the antithesis of death, so even superficially, too much comfort is synonymous with being dead. I don't wanna be dead yet, so every moment my subconscious screams I'm dying kicks up some butterflies and tension. Some level of work needs to be done, no? Add another reason I'm thankful for writing and the peace I'm able to make examining what constitutes my anxiety. It's not irrational nor uncontrollable, it's just complicated and hidden, and you never know what you watch or hear that's going to provoke, obscure, or illuminate.

Once again I return to probably the most repeated line in my head from Waking Life about what is the most universal human characteristic; fear or laziness? I'd have to look back through blogs, but I pretty readily answer laziness even if my first instinct might have been fear. I view the vast majority of everything good in my life as an extension of what I've been willing to work for. I think the narrative of that work is highly susceptible to kidnapping by self-aggrandizing and lazy understandings of “just who I am, and why.”

I don't think the entitled insurrectionist dipshits are afraid. I think they're too lazy to do the work of accepting how bad they really are or how good they could really be. That's when you find fear. That's when the reasonable fear of the consequences can take hold, when you embody the work and feel what's missing in threads of fabric it takes to weave together existence. I'm afraid of myself when I decide to grant myself the license to retaliate or methodically target. I know what I'm capable of. I'm afraid I get the money and power and control, and too comfortably slip into a kind of ambivalence about the values that drive my working ethos. Those are good things to worry about, stay mindful of, and bring up in conversation often so you don't turn into a rotting mockery of your potential.

The work of survival is endlessly obscured by modernity. You're situated, too comfortably, by default. I've never been hungry a day in my life. When my air conditioner breaks, I can burn fuel and sit in my car, or meander about a Wal-Mart. We're also given psychologically pacifying (another mockery) narratives about our place in the universe and heavenly desserts in spite of our abject sin. Why work when I can simply believe in the guy willing to take the crucifying for me? Why conserve what was given to me by right? Why learn for myself what can be easily recited over and over and never put into any real practical practice?

This is how I've come to understand my responsibilities and get excited about the nature and purpose of my work. When I say I'm a “spite engine,” it's my deep resentment towards people unwilling to get off their ass or ask the next question or allow themselves to feel the deathly consequences. I don't have to know what's in your head to see whether or not you're doing the work. I know how your entitlement manifests as you unfairly latch onto the meals the workers provide. Because we have so much food, we've severed our connection to all of the intangible nourishment that comes from pursuing protein for days and maybe leaving empty handed. Maybe this is the fascination modernity has with hiking and climbing, trying to reawaken the necessary danger that doesn't really exist anymore. Of course, it does exist, it's just manifesting “over there” and “beneath” us who've insulated so well. We may not physically starve to death, but there's an undeniable hunger and unquenchable thirst.

[911] TV Made Me Do It

It's getting late and I'm feeling sickly after doing 50 squats on a plasma donation day, so I'm gonna talk about TV.

I've been thinking a fair amount about how and why I watch so much TV. The easy answers pertain to the mild compulsion to complete things broadly, the informal "points" that seem to accompany the binging or gaining of familiarity, and the general mild interest I maintain for anything I haven't seen yet.

I started watching TV aggressively when I found myself with considerably "too much" time on my hands after college. I had money in the bank and no worries about bills from doing the drug studies (also little to do beyond watch TV in those). None of my friends were particularly not-busy nor interested in making any more time to do things together than they did. When left listening to my internal body clock and with nowhere to be, I'm immediately up all night so there's certainly no better time nor excuse to find a screen, right?

I remember thinking to myself I only watched "good" shows. There was a certain dignity in it for me. The critically acclaimed, show-up-on-every-list type shows. I never got the inclination to watch things sped up. I just would have felt a kind of foolish or missing out if I couldn't marvel at The Wire.

It moved into a space of trying to understand the shows my parents watched and making up for the cartoons I never got to see all of growing up. I think around the time I started watching ER is when it occurred to me to start speeding things up. 331 episodes are not carried by particularly thought-provoking or plot-moving intricate details.

I broke my thought process of only watching "good" shows with Arrow. I know people who were really into that show and I still have no idea why. I wanted to be able to argue details. I wanted to mock and joke more effectively. I wanted to see if there was something there that I was perhaps blind to, but I doubted it. The same can be said for Twin Peaks which I've authored pages of arguments against all for nothing when I discovered a fan video detailing just what it is Lynch was after. But the "fight" with an ardent, if equally oblivious fan, was fun.

A lot of progress recording sites were experimented with and Trakt started getting its legs. It compiled lists of the "Top 250" movies or shows of all time. It would start telling me what was coming or what else was getting an unnecessary reboot. I could turn watching TV into a collecting exercise. If you don't know, I used to obsessively copy down animal names into a notebook, filling every inch, searching through encyclopedias, and parents' friends' books when they doubted my efforts. It feels good to click the little check mark and shame the non-believer.

I started developing an affinity for certain actors or story-tellers. I could start to discern when someone was trying for something verses working for a paycheck. I started getting a hint of feeling like an "insider," who knew little details about career paths or projects. I wasn't getting nearly as obsessed as I was about animal names, but it's gratifying to chase an instinct down a google rabbit hole and discover you were able to recognize an individual's voice or be right in who they claimed to be influenced by.

Part of me also wished to prove a point about time. There's so much of it. Over the period of years where my friends were becoming less social fun and exploratory and more hyper paranoid and focused on how to "adult," I felt like I was carrying a certain kind of flag for the existence I have now, and I wanted to prove I could still do all the little things in service to it, watch as much TV as they played video games, or significantly more, and still move towards what examples I'd prefer stood out about my pursuits and goals. I'm not butt-hurt people spend their time otherwise, I'm ashamed they don't also get at what they said was really important.

I wasn't just watching TV, or when I had to, working all day and night to get things moving here. I was getting myself immensely stressed out about the state of the world reading article after article. At one point, not unlike when I obsessed over religion and would respond to things with book-length answers, you could name a country, and I could name a damning thing or several about it. I remember an instance at Sports where I caught myself off-guard in how much I was talking about Malaysia when prompted. TV offset that to some degree.

I weened myself down from reading about the world, at least from "news" sources. More time for TV. I completed lists. I got used to the idea of subtitles, in fact preferring them for things better watched sped up. I would marathon anything explicitly recommended. Awards lists, "cult classics," whatever shoddy hipster website said was underrated or niche. I wanted to know what shows meant the most to individual countries. I wanted to know what movies or characters other characters were referencing. I wanted to see every series or project the characters from my favorite shows got involved with. You think I watched Suits for Suits? I really liked Suits, but Zoë, dammit.

I learned that my reformulated concept of "good" shows causes me to slow them down. The dialogue feels like it matters or the jokes deserve the timing. The scenes are begging to be taken in and the plot, inevitably recycled in some manner, tastes a little different in how the actor is portraying it or the line was tweaked. It's how you can get nuances in "cop show" or "angry alcoholic/smoking white guy." It's how I'm confident in agreeing that representation is important, but woke or purely identity-based storytelling can still be boring as fuck if the characters, ethos, or perspective doesn't transcend superficial presumptions of value and avoid reducing to cliches. Luther, Atlanta, The Mindy Project, Broad City, Ramy, and the first few seasons of Girls figured out something Insecure, Master of None, Lady Dynamite, and the back half of Girls did not.

Currently, TV is something of a meditation. Maybe I'm reaffirming my view that a good portion of what exists on thoughtful-nerd-TV shows are shameless rip-offs of The Twilight Zone. Any time there's "family" magic that keeps a show running is something of an interesting miracle to think about why those people in that setting or with that set of writers in this era. There's still plenty of the compulsion pushing me through sped up third-spin-off series like Power Book III and The Flash (I managed to refuse the shitty DC rabbit hole, mostly.) But I can put them on while I drive or clean or weed whack.

I'm currently at, approximately recorded of course, 43,532 plays of 1,082 shows and 2,892 movies. I like to play with the numbers. One movie a day for 8 years is all it takes to catch up. Combined is 1,194 days worth. And I keep the bills paid, chores done, yard work, read/audiobook, podcast, and spend a solid amount of time listening to music or meandering about town.

I like to think about what's my favorite and why. Inevitably, it's what has a prayer of staying on my mind for any length of time. Right now, that's Rick and Morty, Mr. Inbetween, Last Week Tonight, Dave, Mr. Pickles, One Piece, Impractical Jokers, and Ted Lasso. I like to think I've found a place for each individual show like I've tried to cut out for each person as an individual. I want to be able to discern the voice and respect the slight skews in the perspective. We're constantly iterating and reflecting different things about our eras and headspaces. Maybe you find that vibe from looking at art or unpacking layers of music, but I think at bottom, for the true connoisseurs, we're all looking to connect with the same thing. Or even just connect at all.

I don't feel guilty about "wasted time." I'm not watching TV "instead" of otherwise respectable adult or responsible things. I'm sticking it into all of the cracks that would otherwise be filled with something equally absurd or "unproductive" as if I have some quota to fill before I die. It's free. It's considerably less interesting, even my favorites, than if you elect to actually go bowling, eat dinner, or talk about and help create what we may do together. It's a tool to keep me from anchoring myself to something that might be considerably more mentally or physically taxing. I know I'm obsessive and know how it can work against me.

I take a lot of pride out of knowing "something" about topics, even if it's just to like or dislike. I like the enthusiasm bubbling up when you tell me you're considering watching one of my favorite shows. I'm not memorizing air dates or converting my speech into a series of one-liners from shows, but sometimes something will stick and show up in a blog or just keep replaying in my head until I figure out why. I smile to myself when professions of "I waste so much time!" are made. Like, if you lock yourself into this moment, I promise, you'll start finding all the time you need.

[910] Shoot The Moon

What's new? Well, my buddy got the license we need to open up an independent counseling shop so as to become vendors for probation referrals and the ability to bill Medicaid. If we organize this properly, with even 5-10 clients each, I could be richer than I've ever been in a shorter amount of time than I thought would be possible without a dozen businesses running simultaneously. So, that's potentially good news.

My girl wants to do something “dramatic” to change the pattern of get along for two weeks, bicker about something incredibly small until she's driving back to Kentucky to reset, get along for two weeks, on and on. Does that mean her continued stay anywhere remotely close to me or the state? Who knows? So, that's potentially bad news.

 

I'm tempted to defer to one of my favorite stories about the monk who continually asks, “Is that so?” about the various circumstances of his life and things people bring to him. You might consider me in a “cold” or “calculating” space about how I attempt to organize the next few weeks and months of my life.

 

I've taken a lot of things for granted in my life. While I'm not keen to be shamed about “privileges” with a Woke Wokerson, I do concede that I'm a legacy of a level of work and care that a great many people do not get. I've felt obligated to match, to whatever degree I can, the stories about what my grandparents did or dad has done, in service to providing and creating the circumstances for me to be where I am. The details matter. The culture that undermines or protects what's there matters.

 

All of my grandparents' children were able to fend for themselves, get through school, retain jobs, and 3 out of 4 figure out how to get acceptable partners. They've still fallen prey to unprocessed trauma and regrets. They've still managed to steal from and resent each other. I certainly don't know the details of the households my grandparents were brought up in, but I know if they're even half of the kind of people I've experienced them to be and that my dad has talked about, they would never accept the kind of behavior I've been witness to from their offspring. That said, I still can't shake how my uncle was allowed to speak so shiftily towards my grandma.

 

Either way, for all of my privileges or “born with its,” I could have, by default, had more. I could have started this cousin-fuck Indiana experiment with the money from the sale of my grandparent's stolen house. My mega-rich second cousin and aunt could have thrown me the money they wipe their assess with to make it so I wasn't spending 22 hours a day working and navigating the exploitation of mall leases and politics. Money I don't feel entitled to, mind you, and worked to account for other ways. The details matter. The culture that undermined or protected my efforts mattered.

 

I've stated on more than one occasion that were it not for my dad, there's an out-sized chance I would be in jail. At 33, in 9 days, a person who has demonstrated he can work high-stress, high responsibility jobs, build a little homestead, and otherwise be “boring” enough to keep an earnest TV habit, it might be easy to dismiss the idea of the wanna-be hood rat and violence I was itching to ratchet up. I don't continue to obsessive compulsively count, tap, collect, read, or literally physically and mentally exhaust myself, routinely, trying to satiate my underlying need to be recognized and cared for. Anyone who's listened to me for a prolonged drunken rant on a patio or been stuck with me in the car as I went on about lady woes can be confident my mind is begging for the excuse to spin out at all times.

 

I wrap a lot up into the things I say. I'm the running dialogue of my experience and effort in the world. I don't expect to be “perfectly understood.” I don't think, especially if you are unwilling or unable to provide the means of doing so, I'm capable of wrapping my head around any given individual. I see trends. I pick up on choice phrases and body language. I know history rhymes. That is often more than enough to navigate most people most of the time. That is how I can wiggle my way out of the worst consequences of my propensity to give myself over to anyone I've deemed “individual enough” or perhaps back in the day “on the level.”

 

The first part of the work of appreciation has been to do the actual work. Speak to it. Repeat it. Remind yourself of the standard and compare it to what's come before. It's important for me to know who I am when no one is around or who I've been when I've been awash in personalities. It's important for me to know the nature of my compulsions and utilize their power without getting burned. My stomach still drops with anxiety, and now I can deliberately meet that with another TV show, a meal, or a smaller task than the capitulation to pretend I'm addressing all of the drama and hatred I have for the world by over-achieving or doing “everything” in the moment. I'm lucky that I've built a repository of reminders on how to engage temperance and not a list of excuses for laziness. 

 

It's not lost on me every single detail it has taken to enjoy a measure of comfort or “stability,” and even still, I have to work and convince myself there's anything remotely stable or there to enjoy at all! I need a specific kind of spreadsheet that lights up green even if the numbers are the same on the one I normally use. I need to use the microwave and stove more than 3 times in a row before it clicks just how much food there is I don't have to drive and overpay for.

 

You know what I can do? I can build a house, and work DCS or casework or counseling, and pull up 200 saplings, and spend entirely too much money on shitty cars or gas, and eat out too much, and buy concert tickets, and tools, and find, transport, and carry heavy free shit, and build a fence and room and fire-pit-turned-pond, and watch 1188 days worth of TV shows and movies, and fuck nearly every day! I'm a fucking beast. I can also remain open, mostly tempered, and willing to learn more, do more, and spend or sacrifice the comfort on hand if it will help you. I've got plenty enough going on in my own head and that I enjoy doing with my time if you won't convey how you wish to better relate to it.

 

My friend, who needs brain surgery and couldn't find a ride so it had to be rescheduled, asked me yesterday what I wish I had if I had to start all over. She wants land, to be off-grid, enjoys camping, and is dealing with her own obligations with kids and work. I told her I wished I had more help. My situation struggles with the same cultural tides that are begetting fascism and learned helplessness. The faux obligations, lack of civility, and broken concepts of truth or dignity pervade at all levels. People don't believe in the future, their agency, or that there are creative and incredibly tough ways in which you build things to believe in. They don't trust themselves to be satisfied, at any point, in the process which precludes their ability to enjoy the ride. They've been met with the same crickets or betrayals in service to their ideals as I have. They're taking for granted as many things as they can claw away from their circumstances.

 

I continue to ride the begrudging gifts bestowed upon me. I want to enjoy the ride and know that if it all stopped this instant, I'd still be a king, I'd still be full, and I'd still be hyper-aware of the difference between what was “me” and was given to me to work with. I'm not feeling guilty over the dozen things yet undone. I'm not ashamed I like TV or just spending time chilling with chill people. I appreciate that immediately I'm prepared to throw on the work gloves and not stop until the job is done. I've reflexively thrown myself into months of debt to help check off things on the to-do list. My baseline is to accidentally overdo it when I'm not paying attention or practicing the patient, calculated testimony about what I've done, am doing, or plan on. If I want the world, I want to ensure it's balanced enough so that the pull of the moon remains a mere wobble.

[909] What I Really Really Want

I'm persistently battling the discrepancy between capacity and desire. I have the, not unfortunate, history of a demonstrated capacity or competence. I have a furiously chaotic desire to do a great number of things in no particular order.

I want to occupy the space “in between.” In job searches, I get email notifications for “management” positions, no doubt at establishments I want nothing to do with. I buy in when I'm actually responsible for things that rise to the level of my capacity to be organized, “professional,” and focused on the goal at hand. I also felt a genuine mild enthusiasm at the prospect of helping set up the county fair, part-time. I'm not a “company man” looking to retire at some pseudo-noble profession. I'm not a vagabond trying to piece his way one side-hustle or precarious gig at a time.

I am self-directed or authored. I do seek to continually explore this in-between space and figure out a way to proceed that is not dictated to me from a job board. I comment often about how I have yet to go door-to-door in pursuit of some small business yard work or scrapping endeavor. I read recently a post from someone who said they were “small” in doing a few million a year in revenue, but still feeling dependent on the checks cashing sooner or the operation might be stymied. What's millions when it's on fire and you're thirsty?

I would much prefer a generalized “gig” approach to my life with the gigs lined up well in advance to know there's some amount of money coming in. The only project I can intensely focus on is that of my personal life and comfort, which incidentally I'll go to extremely uncomfortable lengths to establish. Many variables remain unsecured, namely, long-term insurance across domains, and income that comes independent of my huge time or gas or otherwise investment.

I have a fair amount I wish to sustain and protect now. I have tools, including vehicles, I'd like to keep repaired and working. The things to watch, practice, and play are always ready and waiting. I can live lifetimes of “what ifs” as I lounge about the house and sporadically search for remote routes of income. The curious thing, you're always in debt in a society like ours. You always owe somebody, and the impending doom of consequences stokes your “motivation” to keep putting yourself out there for the next whip. The imagined alternative ways of living seem like a worse punishment, and there certainly does not seem to be any genuine “revolution” on the horizon.

I reflect a lot on why it continues to frustrate me when I think about the different directions people went after college. Now, we've hit the age points I called-out in my early 20s after the divorces I (sorry?) called coming and the hairlines have started to recede. People's smiles are looking a little more dead and the posts feeling obligated to promote the “happiness” of our lives feels less insistent. What's the take-away? Continue to live in service to our presumptions and pretensions regarding a “normal” life? It was worth it to run the experiment of things we knew, in our heart of hearts, was not what we wanted?

I know it takes an incredible amount of work and bravery to try and live in service to a “highest” ideal. Really, who's paying the bills? You have to look incredibly closely at what you're trying to create, what you can do without, or what it will say about you when things inevitably come to a grinding halt. I don't know that there are enough words to describe how different I feel even trying to “be me” verses play the many other parts I feel obligated enough to partake in. I can't describe the cascading frustration when I zero in on how fucking absurd it is to be granted so much and feel so stuck because...the pallets and a huge scrapping score are waiting just as I discover my trailer is out of commission, and I wasted money on the wrong tires, and it's unclear if a trip I've been planning for months will interfere with my ability to capitalize on my access to either. What good goddamn reason is there, universe, that I haven't been loading pallets and picking up scrap the last few weeks? I'm too broke to fix my trailer AND have a few months of savings? After a dozen passes under this framing, it never begins to make sense.

The move then is to center around what has been done and how much finer the line gets with each step down it. I can afford the trailer, extremely begrudgingly. Like with everything I call out well in advance, it does not make paying for it, fighting with rusted lug nuts, nor the tasks to engage in potentially last minute any more palatable. I've already achieved a serious amount of pallet and tire hauling before I discovered the new issues. I have a trailer to even be worked on. I have job prospects and lines of income at least in the works, so the added anxiety and frustration at the costs should be mitigated eventually. There is an entire world of scrap and pallets still left to be gathered no matter how frustrating it is to look ill-prepared and inadequate in the present moment.

That's my biggest problem. The moment feels like such a demonstrable and insidious lie and wholly a statement about me and what I haven't established yet. It takes effort to rope everything else in. It takes reminding myself that I tend to forgive people the circumstances of life because I'm so intimately familiar with getting fucked by them as well. I could have been more methodical in the type of tires I bought to ensure they were the correct size and not taken the tire guy's comment over the phone at face value. Is $200 ever going to make or break me? No. Is it just another testament to how expensive it is to be poor when you're navigating problems as they arise to the “best” of your attention and budget? Absolutely.

I feel like I have an incredible sense about the incredible heights I could reach. I don't overly romanticize anything, the past included, but it feels alive today as the same things that kept me excited and motivated and creative then pop up in what I elicit from people today. I'm still funny and engaging. I'm still sincere in how I relate information that means things to me. I'm still, sometimes on the verge of literally, fighting to not have certain standards of honesty and behavior fall through bureaucratic and pious holes of indifference. My “happy hobbit hole” is not a community and my forays into self-sustaining side-hustles cost an incredible amount in gas.

I do think an important shift has happened, at least nominally, in that I'm behaving more like the money is secondary. That's a class shift. I left my job earlier than anticipated, citing all of my righteous ideals, and after sternly dictating the pithy, but large enough, sums it would take for me to keep playing along. I passed on a sure-hire at another establishment with the same mindset. I don't want to be miserable and taken advantage of as much as what is on offer. I'm willing to exploit and be exploited, but it's taken me 3 years to open up more options as to how. What kind of fool works that determinedly only to persist in business-as-usual veins for longer than is required?

I continue to ask myself just what it is I need. Do I need recognition? Meh, I've only grown to look down on people more after increasing time around them. Do I need respect? Hard to ask for what you don't really give, so no as well. Do I need “entertainment?” It all, often, just feels like passing the time more than some deeply interested pursuit and exploration of why some artist is arting. No, I need to feel individuated in spite of the myriad reasons to suspect I'm a statistic across the endless means of categorizing. Writing is individual to the dictates of my head and fingers. The path(s) I choose will stem from the reasons or arbitrariness contained within.

Of course, my individual has morphed over time as incentives and obligations have evolved. I don't really care to surround myself with “friends” in the same way as I imagined in the past. This isn't a revulsion for social interactions, it is just another dagger in the romance. I want the creativity and chaos of genuine individuals pursuing their goals alongside and in service to each other. The focus and clarity of the how and why you are doing things is what bonds or outlives any one member. You can bind together because the profit potential exists, or you can vibe on an eternally enriching source of energy for defining the, not impractical, means for pursuing how to be your kind of individual. You can exist in service to or sacrifice of your conception of society writ large. You can marry every highest ideal to daily slog and you can do it in only ways you can define or figure ways to feel good and balanced about.

That's how I last in “normal” environments. I was alone when I went to people's houses and explained to them how the State worked. I made the rules of what was and was not appropriate in how we were going to conduct communication and visits, and those rules made just enough room for your traumatized and ratchet lifestyle without compromising safety or what it takes for me to live with myself. If anything, now is the time to be even louder. The impediment to that kind of definite statement is the “if only I had” kind of thinking. Had what? The motivation or organization? The drive? The desire? Surely I maintain those things, but it is perpetually unclear as to how they should manifest. I don't need a fancy camera to make Youtube videos. I don't need hundreds of dollars to knock on doors. I don't need to work 80 hours every two weeks an hour away to keep the bills paid.

I quit my job less than a week ago. I got a part-time job, am orchestrating going private practice for counseling, have looked into and sent quasi-applications to other part-time gigs. I haven't had the rug pulled out from under me for the scrapping or pallets. I haven't even begun the “real” work of what it would take to make the land profitable. I'm not in panic mode. I've just been given too many hours to get into my head and find familiar circumstances worth bemoaning. The needle has moved, but it feels different because I'm not desperate or feeling like my back is against the wall. It's a new kind of disorienting freedom.

I need to explore more grant writing and talking to people who do conservation and gardening. I kind of leave a lot of that up to Allie, but there's no reason I can't bump into someone who likes what I'm doing or knows who I should speak to that can fund, a year or few at at time, the effort to continually develop what we're doing. I never get properly worried until I've spoken to a few dozen people who all turn out to be shit, and I haven't even spoken to one. All of this could be functionally mute in weeks as well if this counseling pans out like it absolutely should. For now, I should focus on enjoying my trip to Chicago, the food, and ability to catch up on shows. Nothing is going anywhere.