[940] It's Me, Not You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[939] Fishing Trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[938] Big Boy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[937] The Ongoing Mitigation Of Difficult Quarter Inches

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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