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.
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