[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.