[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.