[1019] No Accounting For Taste

Oh boy, I’m back home. I wasn’t gone for terribly long, but long enough to register the contrast between feeling perpetually “stuck” and “waiting” otherwise engaged in responsibilities and less-than-fulfilling thoughts and exercising the illusion of freedom with a friend over drinks, mini golf, and delicious food.

I come home to a stained bathroom. I broke the handle on my sink faucet when it was frozen before I left. When it got warm, eruptive chaos ensued. It appeared to Byron who came upon the mess that the flow of water was dangerously close to the space heater I had running in an attempt to ensure the cats’ water stayed unfrozen. I get to imagine whether it would have simply shorted out and blown a breaker, or burned everything down.

 

The GFCI outlet that popped, wisely insisted upon by Jim, housed the series of extensions that power my refrigerator. It was off long enough to have many sticky things melt, leaving a mess that I haven’t even entertained the thought of when to bother addressing. The spewing water drenched the cat food and isn’t suitable to drink, so today I’ve been finding puke and shit leaks on various parts of the floor. It’s all feeling a little Final Destination-y.

 

My friend Brandy in Orlando is perhaps the easiest person I can talk to about an array of topics that have nothing to do with social work. I had to pause several times and point out how much I appreciated that we were able to talk about shows we’ve seen or when music and musicians have found us at different periods in our lives. She’s a doctor and teacher, so I got insight into college students from freshman through grad school, as well as university politics. We fluidly made reference to dozens of authors, speakers, thinkers, and creatives and didn’t miss a beat with those awkward dead/polite faces you catch from people who don’t independently seek out new information or interesting things to learn about.

 

She’s one of those people who are so smart it’s easy to feel crazy and ask yourself too many “how” and “why” questions because you can’t quite wrap your head around the general ignorance and depravity of the world you’re made to navigate. We’re able to speak freely regarding our relationships and perspectives and how to pragmatically achieve greater happiness and stability. She’s as powerful an example as I could have asked for as far as reminders that we’re never really stuck, and when you’re willing to assess and move on your situation, you can do an immense amount of work, emotional or otherwise, in short order.

 

It’s New Years Eve. We’re prompted to think about the past year and what we want going forward. I want more structure. I am in less debt than I was last year. I am in an easier job. I’ve got more things already bought and on the menu book wise and by way of entertainment. I’ve got more things to fix and pay for regarding my home environment, and a more concerted effort to tackle them. The things I’m doing by way of indulgence still register with a degree of superficiality. That is, it’s great that I can afford the concert, but I’m still in regular need of Byron’s or Planet Fitness’s shower. I bought a car off Hussain that added another 2 weeks to my “have to work” narrative. My health insurance is about avoiding fines, not insuring health.

 

I put together a list of people to cold-call regarding looking for clients. It’s 800+ numbers long. Flying from Indianapolis to Orlando, it was another nice visceral reminder of just how many people there are. Thousands you can see at once along highways. City-centers lit up. Every single person is a world unto themselves and they are connected to everyone else in big and small ways in an infinitely changing and dynamic landscape. I thought to myself about the power and impact of music and celebrity when I looked over the landscape. How many of those little dots have never heard of Adam Sandler or Tom Hanks? If I blasted “We Are the Champions” from the plane, I bet everyone could sing along. There’s a universality that you can bolster your behavior with to access that which connects everything. It’s why fascism will always be an option. “Hate” transcends every little point of light. The work you can do with the ambiguity towards the unknown remains the same.

 

In the span of a few hours I went from a beautiful day with great company and an excellent meal to the rain and gray and psychological trappings of Florida’s insecure twin, Indiana. Florida has all of the same stores, but also higher-end and better ones. It has the same people, but the crazy is more diverse. You need distance from what you’re used to as often as you can get it. The things that need to remain true and what you’re really after need to shine brightly and be just as obvious to you as it should be to clean up where the cat took a shit outside the box.

 

I know who and what I want to trust and why. I know that if I’ve been led to hell through someone else’s negligence, ambivalence, or malice, it wasn’t because I lead with a judgmental or spiteful attitude in my attempt to connect or build. The friends who I can continue to engage in the mutually assuring and uplifting exchange massively outweigh the baggage of the ones who can’t be bothered. It’s a state of perpetual mourning when you think about how vital that is to your well-being and how callously it’s been rendered mute or worthy of resentment.

 

I’ve never wanted to be the person who’s like, “I’ve got A-level friends, B-level friends….” Etc. I’ve discussed being “on the level,” to be sure, but that’s about an awareness and capacity more than how much or whether I want to bother with you as an individual. I clearly don’t need friends where we have much in common besides work or a shared disposition even if I’ve been starving for years to talk to another encyclopedia. I’m going to keep doing things. I’m going to try to return to a kind of deliberate enthusiasm for more grindy type of things that will hopefully make me feel more stable.

 

It occurred to me that I had the energy, and probably still do, to give and receive from considerably more than most are prepared to. This analysis prompted some by the various pathologies associated with those in the poly community. I don’t “need” anything I’m unwilling to work in order to achieve for myself. I’ll fly or drive to the friends that are worth it. I have an incredibly robust understanding of the character traits I respect and need to see reciprocated in order to thrive. I draw a deep and resounding enthusiasm from the opportunity to spend time with them. That’s not something to be squandered and begged for. That’s not something to be afraid and ashamed of as though some petty slight or pithy detail, floating above so many ant-like figures from a plane, should be the governing rule.

 

What I can’t fix, at least yet, is people recognizing for themselves the same potential freedom and what the work looks like to orient as though you’re not at the mercy of your circumstances. You’re too busy? You’re too tired? You don’t have the money? If you’re reading this, you have at least one friend who has the proclivity to create worlds where the opposite is true. But what’s that really mean if you’re not friend enough to yourself to even recognize what’s being offered?

[1018] Eat Equals Valuate

I had a one-off thought a moment ago; I want to see where it goes. We’re not supposed to rank and judge people. It’s as robust an ingratiated cultural sentiment as you could ask for. If you’re religious, we’re all sinners, it’s an equal playing field that you will eventually reap what you’ve sown. We establish laws that are, very theoretically, supposed to give us a chance to evaluate and discern the guilt or innocence of someone through an indifferent lens. We’ve infused our conversational landscape with language that tries to understand people not so much as a measure of their choices, but conditioned behavior as a result of their environment or trauma. We do this unironically as we cheer for our teams to win, celebrate records broken, and seek endless opportunities to passionately self-actualize.

A certain shame has gotten attached to regarding yourself or your achievements as something worthy of distinction. You seemingly can’t be “better” more than you’re part of an infinite sea of “different.” I think this is a significantly more powerful influence than we give it credit for.

As I think about how or whether I’m able to “counsel” someone, I’m up against personal and cultural forces. Part of what allows me to not take things personally is my awareness of how many things are working against some ideal “progressing” state as it pertains to the management of emotions or addiction. If, just like in the movement to cease “body shaming,” we’ve drifted so far away from the facts, ethics, or truthful acknowledgement of what distinguishes a positive or healthy direction, the conversation gets stuck in a loop of disingenuous self-gratifying, but ultimately unhelpful, notions.

I’m constantly judging and evaluating both myself and the people I’m made to engage with. It’s the thing I tried to consciously suspend in service to “friendship,” thinking my otherwise manipulative nature would unfairly reduce their agency or be “unfair” to the dynamic. I tried to do the exact opposite of what we seem to crave. We want “our spouse” and “my children” and “best friends” and so many other distinctions by way of trophies, certificates, or sobriety chips. Maybe we just want to do “better” than yesterday. Maybe we want to hold the value in ourselves today we couldn’t recognize while overwhelmed and enmeshed in drama, insecurity, or naivety.

Judging, and knowing how far your judgment can or can’t go, is a measure of wisdom. I know, forever and always, I’m just one person with one small window into the world. I have the language I was born with, the people who have influenced me, and the tools I hope I can understand and utilize to help myself or others. I’m never right just because I was the first to say it, loudest, or only one to bother to keep speaking. The moment I get something even half right, new information can swoop in to humble or disprove. This is my running license to speak with confidence or assertiveness, without a defensive ego that needs whatever I’m saying to be the “most true” or somehow infallible an inaccessible to your judgement.

If you don’t operate by the same principles, you’re always going to be afraid to speak. You’re going to seek out friendly company so you don’t have to defend yourself, or repeat the incomplete and incoherent place you’re coming from until it feels as disorienting to you as it’s made someone else. I was reading a comment from an old friend on a blog who filled her response with what I would describe as cliché and empty truisms regarding “human nature,” and a lot of empty speculating catastrophizing if anything but her narrative was to prove true. I’m thankful any time someone has the balls to comment (I do implore you often), but just like I open myself up in sharing these, you get opened as well. It’s enjoyable to me to organize the weeds, you often think I’m threatening or arguing with you I guess in bad faith.

I think it’s better to act like me. I think it’s better to try and get more refined in where you’re coming from. One of my members, a better one, who should probably taper and find a program more appropriate for her level of work and awareness, told me she wished she could phrase things like me. She thinks the same things, often enough, but can’t find herself relaying them like she routinely hears during our group. I reminded her that if I’ve come to speak to anything with any remote coherence, I’ve probably written about it dozens of times. Most of where I’m coming from is bred in these pages exploring the minutia of my experience or single sentences that stick and I stay curious as to why. I’d rather look stupid and un-informed with a positive learned-from failure mindset than find myself dying on so many hills.

We’re not equal. I think a lot of “conservatives” run with that idea without the wisdom and lack of ego. Their deepest sense of inequality isn’t in their wealth or faith, it’s their insecurity. They know one step outside the bounds of their insular environment undermines their entire identity. What’s “country livin’’” in New York? The naked cowboy caricature. It’s a thousand cookie-cutter songs referencing beer and your truck. Yellowstone is a romance with melodramatic sentimentality oozing through God’s country like a spring you’d die to defend from a commercial development. It’s a stolen valor and deliberate downplaying of the historical and circumstantial reasons behind your so-called success or station in life.

A whole language develops to dog-whistle and code to draw out the class and culture distinctions in terms of pride and nobility instead of merit, measurement, or material impact. The faithful have numbers! Don’t get me wrong, and money flows everywhere within the confines of the flock. It’s the same condition of the radicalized Lefist. Moral pontificating steps in for data. Self-righteous “safety” is sought instead of accountability. It’s the same insecurity, same ego, and same underlying fear that how you think and feel isn’t up to snuff, or isn’t worth acknowledgement from those whom you think have the power.

Whether or not we internalize and warp our self-conception based on other’s judgments is a difficult choice to discover. And, regardless, we’re feeling the impact of their judgment. It’s certainly been decided that I’m not someone worth talking to by the vast majority of people I would have at one point considered myself closest to. I am generally alone and not in conversation with “old friends,” after all. There’s an infinite list of reasons and excuses why, but we can be confident it’s not because I *haven’t* been evaluated as not meaningfully contributing to how you would prefer to converse about and understand your life or feel during the day. You’re judging. On the basis of, and in service to what, one hopes leads to serving more than taking, but I doubt it.

For what it’s worth, I don’t feel as though I’m particularly “better” at anything that I’m not practicing, and more to the point, with intention and to the best of my ability and awareness, than anyone else. I’m better at emotional regulation and mindfulness because I write, and that, combined with the whole host of failures regarding healthcare, is why I get to occupy the role of “counselor” and people are willing to exploit my capacity to pay themselves considerably more than they ever will me. I’m not an addict, or depressed, or anxious to the point of interrupting my ability to lead the life I want, or otherwise impaired disproportionately internally against conditions externally. I think I’m better at evaluating feedback and incorporating many disparate threads of information. Tests tell me I have the general intelligence to occupy almost any role I choose to put my mind towards, and I try to keep myself from getting complacent around what I “know” verses what I can lend evidence towards.

It’s been my persistent desire to find people who help enable and round-out what I do and don’t have. When I reflect on past relationships, I think the average person would colloquially say something like, “I couldn’t make them feel loved/special/beautiful” etcetera, and retreat to a commitment to make more overt displays of affection to a future partner. But this side-steps any conversation about whether anyone, including yourself, can feel loved, special, or beautiful independent of their partner. This acts like the dynamic isn’t being driven by mutual insecurity verses mutual appreciation or exchange; as though one person could be expected to account for everything missing or tell anything but a one-sided story.

I want you to trust your judgement. I want you to like yourself in a way that let’s you see and talk about the same things I try to. I want you to judge yourself accurately. I think I’m lost and stuck and lazy and wanting for a deeper connection to something meaningful or transcendent. I won’t allow that feeling to let me glom on to mythological thinking, whatever group happens to be closest, shitty familiar “friends” or coworkers, or a dialogue dripping in faux pride and moral certainty. I’m not going to pretend to like things I don’t or ever decide to “fit in.” I can’t go back, right? I can’t start lying to myself or you. I can’t unsay the things that informed your judgment. I can continue to ask if you think yours is better than mine, and what that means for either of us.

[1017] Sweet Nothings

Oh wow, it’s that rare morning blog because I fell asleep at 6PM yesterday and have therefore been up since about 2AM. I need to rush this and get moving as I still work today and get to see The Punch Brothers and Bela Fleck this evening.

Yesterday, two of my clients were in crisis. This is one way of describing their negative experience that was imploring me to help or fix. One seemed to be flirting with suicide after his recent relapse doubled-over on itself the last few weeks, causing his wife to leave him. The other was in a horrific accident, breaking several bones and requiring multiple surgeries and plates to repair. Both have been without their medication.

When I said recently that I didn’t know what I was built for, I can’t recall if I alluded to working the sensitive power dynamics of DCS, but the situations that arose today are analogous. People, literally begging, me to be the only one who can help them. You stay patient as they cuss. You hear the hopelessness and exhaustion in their voice. You find the words to downplay the insistence that they consider you a “friend.” You make sure to not enable the self-pitying dialogue that feeds escalation.

And on an entirely different level, I’m just turned off by the whole thing. The frustration I think a lot of people have with addicts is that, when times aren’t so dramatic and out of control, the actual work of getting better gets ignored. Then, a crisis hits, and it’s not just bad, but it’s almost perfectly situated to target and try to tear down those who are trying to help. No one can do the work for you, and sometimes the work is finding the civility to suffer as though you have any respect for how you can make others do so.

I feel angry when people who have, seemingly dozens of reasons, to better themselves or push and try harder, fall off quicker than I might in service to something “dumb” or “simple” like amassing “fuck you” points or engaging in some other form of indulgence. The amount of effort and energy it takes to be a dramatic whirlwind of chaos that sucks everyone else up into you would be impressive if it weren’t a disaster.

This is where I think people so unfairly pigeon-holed me in describing my “negativity” years ago. What did I do with all of my negative commentary or sentiment? Show up, work, build, and look for a way out. I invited the conversation still no one wishes to have. I didn’t destroy myself with an eye towards bringing you down with me. I say a fair amount of forlorn and angsty despotic things, but I hold no genuine pity for myself or situation until I’m incredibly sick. I’m always looking for the way out, the joke, or the opportunity to genuinely address or fix whatever the problem is.

And I don’t know how to conceive of that propensity as anything more than a choice first. If an addict is simply someone who can’t conceive of themselves as making choices, it’s perhaps more innocent when the behavior reaches aberrantly destructive and hateful places. One then must wonder if they are capable of choosing their apologies, choosing the occupations under which to work themselves to death, or choosing to “reduce harm” in signing up for a program that has a remote chance of obligating them towards practices that enable mindful choices.

The “saints” and “I couldn’t do what you do-ers are hailed for their patience and compassion. There’s a routine “thank you for your service” kind of pageantry when people learn that you’re in counseling or other forms of social work. People know, deeply, how much they’re their own kind of addict or infinite excuse-making and selfish being, and that core belief prompts a reflexive burst of “thank you!” or “good on ya!” guilt management system response. So many in the field have been victimized themselves, and whether they actually know how to or not, they want to prevent others from going through what they had to, or give them tools that worked for them.

But there’s a mismatch. People have to go through, in a most important sense, things alone. You have to discover what it means and feels like to choose something. You have to own your pain and feelings. The “tools” for doing so manifest as you exercise the incorporative and corrective behavior. I’m practicing patience and processing and “coping with anger” as I write this. Waves of calm or resolution wash over me when I finish something that needed said. When I want to break, I say so, and like “magic” that breaking point turns into fuel for the spite engine or clarity that allows me to go eat or start my day.

This is work. This is at least the 1,017^th time I’ve worked on my patience, anger, angst, judgmental attitude, and perspective that makes me want to burn everything down and pretend something “new” is in fact that or worthwhile. I don’t just recognize there’s a difference between my mirror-neurons reaction and my choices, I’m literally practicing the differentiated nature of my being as I type.

The social work field is a place where you have to exist in the suspended state of your uneven clients. They don’t know who they are or what they’re capable of. They have strong conceptions of what they can destroy, lie about, or how power can only work against them. And you have to press right up against them and whisper about the thousand competing narratives and opportunities every moment a mere choice away. When they swing so wildly the opposite direction, it’s hard not to think less of them than you might your pet. What kind of wild animal doesn’t just charge its caretaker, but does so as a matter of routine or pride? What kind of animal kills itself?

How many of you have occupied a role in which people have begged you? I remember begging my mom not to gut my stuffed-animal friend. I associate that level of helplessness with one of the most severe trauma-inducing moments of my life. I was also like 4 or 5, and the argument about how helpless I genuinely was could hold up. Is that what these situations ask of me? Am I to reduce people to helpless children in how I conceive of what I might do to “help?” Does that not feel incredibly perverse or egotistical?

No one resolved my situation but me. I talked about it. I joked about it. I wrote about it until I no longer had an emotional response when thinking about it. I feel the hollowness and echo of how cold the world can be, and arm myself with the knowledge that it’s there and ready for when I need it. I don’t operate from a place that everyone I meet is ready to kill me or my friends. I don’t pretend like isolated horrors tell a comprehensive story of my being or humanity. This, again, begs the question of what to make of any individual’s awareness and approach to their addiction or “addiction” broadly as a concept.

I conceive of most people as addicted to bullshit. They can’t help but abscond with the truth; they do it fluidly and reflexively. They lie like they breathe and then lie about others’ ability to see it. They’re addicted to silence. It’s the first clue you’re full of shit when you can’t talk about everything right or wrong with you. Or, more insidiously, you only talk about what’s wrong with you as deep cover for bullshitting yourself about the responsibility you won’t take to do better. The endless rehearsed reiteration of all the past drama gets stuck on repeat. “The only reason” you do this or that pretending to be reasonable. I feel most powerful in the moments you betray how full of shit you are, and it’s why I have almost no respect for authority. It’s incredibly rare to hear someone talk with measured qualifying statements verses proud pontificating of “the rules” or their righteousness letting ignorant dictums do the work instead of practicing accountability.

I hate conceiving of the positive things my clients tell me as lies. It’s annoying to hear “I really think you make a difference” from someone contemplating suicide 2 days later. I don’t want to be texted “Why the fuck did I leave the house just to not get help” from someone 2 hours ago saying “I’m glad it’s you who called me.” I’m over the, “You seem like you actually care!” sentiments from people who don’t seem to care about themselves. That is, they don’t practice the things I tell them I do to care about myself and that we’ve learned scientifically can foster care and investment in yourself where you previously couldn’t. Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar screaming in my head, “Save yourselves!”

[1016] After Ours

Don’t bother.

There’s the thought keeping me from writing. Don’t bother reiterating. Don’t bother wasting more hours of your life pretending you’ll arrive at some “conclusion.” It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth it. You don’t feel enough of anything to justify more empty words in service to your ingratitude and impatience. Fuck you, sit down, watch another one of your little TV shows. Clog your gut with more pink Starbursts.

I don’t want to be useless and mediocre. I think they go hand in hand. A thing that’s not useful for whatever it is you’re doing with it is, by definition “of only moderate quality; not very good.” “Moderate quality” seems like a contradiction. Are you having a quality time, or not? Or is “quality” one of those disguised useless terms that infuses the real description with nothing information? Is it a “quality” piece of clothing? Is it expensive? Is it keeping you warm, comfortable, or dry feel like the relevant pieces of information.

What is the “quality” of my experience? I just got home from a Straight No Chaser show. I’ve never been to an acapella show before. My first instinct on most acts I’ve seen online, confirmed ever more in person, is awkward Christian summer camp energy. Do you understand what I said? Did I have a “good’ time? Did I like the songs? I only knew a couple and I had no specific complaints. Would I see them again and again? Was it “worth the money?”

The whole of where my experience lies seems outside the realm of this line of questioning. I went for a small book’s worth of reasons, all of those and more will inform if and when I go again to them or any other band. I wanted to experience “something” remotely novel, affordable, and that would occupy my time I’m not otherwise in front of the TV, fast food window, or work environment.

Why am I parsing through an abstraction on awareness and time expenditure? I was asked by my boss if I’m “happy” working at Groups. This has caused me several days of ongoing mild panic. I genuinely want to “snap” at questions like that. I feel at once so many things. It’s, “Does baby have to boo boo?” from a doctor meant to be investigating a twisted bowel. It’s, “Live, Love, Laugh!” on the wall of the suicide hotline office. It’s limp. It’s pathetic. It’s shallow and shitty and fuck her for asking such a bold and fucking ridiculous question.

I got asked because I’ve been increasingly introduced into the drama between my office managers. I, again, drive an hour and a half at least once a week to sit in an office to do a remote job. I come face to face with overworked and underpaid secretaries who get regularly screamed at and threatened by our drug-addled population. As they get more burnt, it translates into how/whether they handle our people in professional ways. This spills over into whether anyone takes the program on the whole seriously, which they already have enough reason and ways to not do so anyway.

Am I happy about that? Do I like that my office managers’ leadership has deliberately and consistently removed herself from solving anything they’ve brought to her? Am I happy I waste gas and time driving to the office to plug into the failures and drama? Do I like working for a company paying me a fraction of what they’re billing my service for? Am I happy I have a schedule so scattered that I literally can’t be more efficient? Am I happy that I’m not challenged or driven to do anything but the bare minimum? I NEED MONEY! That is the only reason I have ever occupied any role ever. Money. Always. Whatever other perk or privilege is a thousand years removed from “money, please.” Happiness has NEVER factored into it. Am I stuck or placated? I’m probably still at the job. Am I out of debt? I find myself showing up, waking up, and shutting up. Fucking happy? You fucking cunt!

I’M NEVER FUCKING HAPPY. It’s probably a good summation as to why I don’t have friends. I’ll stick with the over-statement because it depicts a larger truth. I don’t want to be friends, colleagues, or concert-going with someone fucking miserable and oblivious enough to think any of this is about “happiness.”

I’m not happy bowling because I wish for more instruction and consistent practice. I’m not happy building on the land because I need more money, more time, and better weather. It’d be great if every time I took out the trailer a tire wasn’t flat. I’m not happy reading because I’m either learning more about what I can’t use or fix or feel like I’m mocking myself in trying to desperately “escape” whatever circumstance I’m in. I have so many books I’m genuinely interested in reading, and I can’t. They’re like my instruments. I don’t have the freedom. My mind is not available to “just play” or “just read.” I have to keep furiously scratching a compulsive itch to worry or reflect or mindlessly vibe through TV shows and Candy Crush levels.

I’m not happy and I’m not free. I’m play-acting all the fucking time. I pretend to be professional. I pretend to care. I pretend to be polite. I pretend I have anything figured out in terms of indulgence and ownership and the perks of being “hood rich.” When I do my budget I constantly, and I mean constantly, remind myself “only 5 paychecks and I’m even” or “Only until February…if I can just sit and do nothing.” Then you know what happens when you tell yourself that long enough? Insurance needs to be renewed. Property taxes are due. Contacts run out. My air conditioner will break. A tire needs replaced. My cats get fleas. I get sick. Someone needs a loan. I get bored and indulgent and spend too much on another ticket, drive, and pair of cocktails.

It’s stopped feeling like a climb or “requisite sacrifice” to get anywhere. It feels like a miserable slog through layers of shit, deliberately laid or otherwise. I was driven to create the coffee shop and throw the house parties. I was driven as a kid to do well in school. I was motivated to connect and share and try to build and celebrate. Now I just wait. I just wait and bitch and share pictures of musicians and comics living their dreams. I wait till you’re free or maybe return a text. I wait on insurance companies and for the next opportunity to piss away another 25 minutes inputting redundant information. I wait for the meeting to be over, the month to be over, and the payment to hit.

I don’t want to be present in most of my moments. I want to be with my TV shows. I struggle sometimes to watch them while I’m otherwise waiting, sitting at a bar until the show starts or at the restaurant eating alone. Until the comic is starting or the band starts playing, I’m just around disease vectors and people who seem mostly together because they match heights and looks. Do I want to feel my feet and back ache in the standing-room only venue? Do I want to huff your vape runoff or farts? Do I want to watch a band I enjoy through your hair? Does it make me happy to freeze outside for an hour or more in order to get an appreciable spot to witness what’s happening and costing too much due to monopolies and greed?

I fuck up and listen to smart plugged-in people talk about their accomplishments. I hear people talk like how my brain works about their areas of expertise. They get hyper-detailed. They know the subject has a dozen layers and it’s not going to make sense unless they find a way to speak to them all and tie them all together. “When I was writing my first book…,” “When I owned a pharmacy and was doing what Mark Cuban was doing 8 years before him…” So many bands remind us how grateful they are that they “get to do this for a living, and it’s because of you!” Whether they’re selling out the venue or not, there’s a culture, direction, and presumably sense of purpose that I lack. They don’t need 2000 words per song or joke. They don’t need $1400 every two weeks. They need to load up the van, move to the next gig, and play.

Why can’t I just play?

I don’t want to be useless and mediocre. When I think of playing, I think of children. If you drop obvious sentiments, they epitomize uselessness and mediocrity. I don’t really remember the last time I felt like a child. I have memories of going to the park and playing in playgrounds. Playing implies that you’ve nothing else to obligate yourself towards but that free self-expression. You have energy, so you run. There are other kids, so now it’s a chase or a thing to throw rocks at. I feel obligated. I feel responsible for living a certain kind of way that conforms with my best approximations or what might be derived from what I write.

I’m trying so fucking hard. I’m trying to be the constant cheerleader. I’m trying to understand the “reasons” verses miserable excuses I can or can’t move in some direction. I’m trying to derive layers of meaning from the shows I seek and artists I invest in. I’m trying to not lose sight of the veritable miracles I’ve been able to pull off so far. But there’s a healthy dose of suffering in each moment. The stakes and pressure are real. I’m running contingency plans. I’m mourning previous conceptions of dreams and myself. I’m tired and anxious not because I don’t have energy or anything to worry about, but because the fight feels less and less worth fighting and I’m exactly the kind of person who can carry out dramatic reflexive course shifts in spite of the consequences. I’m daring “the universe,” embodied by my supervisor, to keep asking me if I’m “happy.”

I’m embarrassed, ashamed, annoyed and restless. I’m fucking angry as fuck that I’m so angry it’s the same deadness-as-self-preservation I felt growing up. I’m lost. I’m first-world-poor. I’m distracted. I’m alone. I’m bored. I’m unfulfilled and meandering and eating like shit and spending money on so many wet bandages ill-suited for open wounds. I’m as full of hate and despair as I can imagine anyone with less impulse control and perspective can be before they hurt themselves or others. I don’t want another superficial interaction. I don’t want to dance around. (But fuck do I miss dancing!)

I need to disappear into a hole. I have from the 22^nd until the new year off. I dream of either reading a dozen books, or getting a lot of yard work done. If it rains, I need to stop myself from just wasting away, waiting around my dad’s house until dinner or thinking to myself I can get through several layers of each channel’s first episodes! Did you catch that perk? I get all that time to contemplate how much my job cares about me and makes me comfortable. That’s so nice of them. Way better than more money, a stake, vote, or sense of ownership and belonging to a mutually instantiated and protected culture of health care and accountability. Aren’t I “happy” to have the time off? Don’t you wish you had that time off?

I feel like I’m somehow lost or the only one acknowledging the broader context. Byron has increasingly said “Black people are the canary in the coal mine,” with regard to the slow-moving coup and creeping fascism. It’s beyond fucked Hershel Walker even came close. If that’s not scaring you to death in an ongoing way, you seem absolutely insane to me. If you can’t imagine striking, unionizing, or ever remotely speaking to your “authority” or “representative” about the detailed shit of your circumstances, we’re not on the same planet. What do you think is in store for your kids? What do you presume insulates this ignorant country from collapsing like any other? Are you “happy” to just not think about such depressing things? Are you all just making wildly more money, enjoying your time, and figuring out this life thing better than me?

[xx-24] Attended Shows of 2022

Theory of a Deadman Feb. 11th Indianapolis
Sister Hazel – Feb 18th Indianapolis
All Them Witches, Swell Fellas Mar. 9th Indianapolis
Steve-O - Mar 20th Indianapolis
The Maine, Charlotte Sands Mar. 26th Nashville
Hawthorn Heights – Mar. 27th Indianapolis
Wolf Alice – Apr. 5th Indianapolis
Itzahk Perlman – Apr. 10th Cincinnati 
Gang of Youths, Casual Male – Apr. 22nd Indianapolis
10 Years, VRSTY – Apr. 23rd Indianapolis
Okilly Dokilly, Steaksauce Mustache – Apr. 29th Indianapolis
Badflower, The 86, Brknlove – Apr. 30th Indianapolis
Neil Hamburger, Major Entertainer - May 4th Bloomington
Beach Bunny - May 7th Indianapolis
Michael Ian Black – May 28th Bloomington
HAIM – June 1st Indianapolis
Jeff Ross - June 10th Indianapolis
Motion City Soundtrack – June 11th Indianapolis
Thrice, Bayside – June 14th Fort Wayne
Dina Hashem - June 18th Bloomington
Josh Groban – June 23rd Noblesville
Stephen Lynch - June 24th Indianapolis
Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms, Toad The Wet Sprocket – July 1st Indianapolis
Jack Johnson, Durand Jones & The Indications - July 3rd Noblesville
Third Eye Blind, Taking Back Sunday, Hockey Dad – July 7th Indianapolis
Earth Wind & Fire – July 8th Noblesville
Andrew Rudick, Josh Gondelman - July 9th Bloomington
Halestorm, The Warning, Lilith Czar – July 12th Indianapolis
The Black Keys, Band of Horses – July 16th Noblesville
Chicago, Brian Wilson – July 20th Noblesville
Anberlin, The Sublets, Truss, Ophelia - July 21st - 23rd Cleveland
(33)

Cedar Point - July 23rd Sandusky

Kyle Kinane - July 30th Bloomington
Dashboard Confessional, Andrew McMahon – Aug 4th Indianapolis
Marc Maron - Aug 5th Indianapolis
Andrew Bird, Iron & Wine – Aug 6th Indianapolis
Jack White – Aug 17th Indianapolis
Korn, Evanescence – Aug 24th Noblesville
Taylor Tomlinson - Aug 27th Bloomington
Wu-Tang Clan, NAS, Busta Rhymes – Sep 1st Noblesville
(8)

Cedar Point - Sept 9th Sandusky

Ohio Is For Lovers Festival - Sep 10th Cincinnati
Riot Fest (MCR headlining) – Sep 16-18th Chicago
Bill Burr - Sep 30th Bloomington
Sam Jay - Oct 1st Bloomington
Foxy Shazam - Oct 5th Indianapolis
Mother Mother, Vundarbar – Oct 7th Chicago
Otoboke Beaver, Spread Joy – Oct 8th Chicago
Dulce Sloan - Oct 15th Bloomington
Better Than Ezra - Oct 21st Indianapolis
Beth Stelling - Oct 22nd Bloomington
Joe Satriani – Oct 23rd Nashville, IN
Piff The Magic Dragon - Oct 28th Indianapolis
Bert Kreischer - Oct 29th Indianapolis
Ismael Loutfi - Nov 5th Bloomington
Caitlin Peluffo - Dec 3rd Bloomington
Jay Mewes - Dec 10th Louisville
Straight No Chaser - Dec 11th Indianapolis
Bela Fleck, Punch Brothers - Dec 15th Indianapolis
Shane Torres - Dec 17th Bloomington
Nutcracker With A Twist - Dec18th Indianapolis
(22)

[1015] Don't Funk With My Heart

My head feels about to burst, so let’s ironically discover I’ll be out of things to say after 2 or 3 paragraphs. I had a meeting today. My normally scheduled supervision was superseded by a regional director, HR, and compliance person Zoom calling me to discuss how I might elevate concerns I have. This is the kind of thing that happens to me semi-regularly in “professional” environments. For some gosh-darn reason, it does not sink in that I’m supposed to, by default, defer to the people perpetrating whatever I think might be the issue. I stay vocal. I provide reasons, in writing, and until I’m psychologically at a happy place, and if you keep inviting me into the conversation I don’t wish to have a dozen times, you’re going to hear what I think is fucked up.

I call this being a responsible adult. I know, deeper than most things I might know, the consequences of staying silent. I know being too pliable and compliant or matter-of-fact in your cliches about how much you “care” or want to “help” can literally, and regularly does, get people killed or otherwise destroy their lives. I will challenge even the fucking hint of complacency or downplaying of concerns related to behavior that spells a recipe for catastrophe. I can wiggle if you can testify and assert the personal and developed data that says drinking alcohol plus taking Suboxone is better than not. I will fight tooth and nail if you tell me you “believe” it’s best and we should all shut up and keep pumping out the drugs as we admit more and more severe alcoholics into a program that looks like it might “oopsie!” your death, but feel pretty okay as long as the documentation was there.

Before I got on my call, I’m talking maybe 60 seconds after it officially started, the ladies were laughing and discussing their favorite vacation spots. It reminded me of when I first started at Lifeline and many of the people in the “leadership” did the same thing when brought in to discuss their various roles. It’s like a habit or class signifier they can’t help themselves from engaging in. Oh? We have literally any amount of dead air? The cold weather makes me long for Cozumel! I’m headed to [insert warm place] for my vacation [insert time period always somehow within the next 2 months.]

It’s another reminder of class. People of a certain income and preoccupation they pretend is their occupation aren’t operating at the level that has to be actually concerned with real lives as such. They have to be concerned with optics, whistle-blowing problem children, and keeping the capitalist ship running. By analogue, at the State, you’re looking to protect an infinite paycheck. When someone dies, they’re a tragedy, not a name and history and series of small decisions and circling-around-nonsense email chains. The party line, “We care! Some level of service is better than no service!” will do all the heavy lifting, just like “I care about children! I want them to be safe!” justifies lying on paperwork and aggressively threatening scared parents.

Literally every realm where something, besides the individuals involved, hell, even the idea that there are individuals involved, is the priority, you see the same dance. How many lies do you have to tell yourself to protect your fanciest notions of “family?” How many dicks do you swallow to assert the presumed pride behind your job title or paycheck? There’s no knot the route to the most money won’t tie itself in. And all along the way, you have people occupying entirely different worlds in their perception of what’s happening, their responsibility to it, or remotely grasping what the end game really is.

One of the office managers was apparently “uncomfortable” when my discussion with another office manager turned to the idea of collecting evidence of negligence and sending a letter to the, dogshit, attorney general. It was explained to me that, while it’s perfectly within my right to discuss who to talk to, they wanted to make sure I knew they were there. You see, there’s internal mechanisms for this kind of thing and a chain of command. Much better to rely on “leadership” and discuss whether or not I feel “supported” than to heedlessly escalate my problems to a realm that could threaten the whole machine.

Yeah. Go fuck yourselves lol.

In an extremely practical and small sense, I’m accountable to the entity signing my paychecks. In the larger scheme of things, I need to sleep at night and trust my perception of this posture inclined to downplay the reality it wreaks.

So I made one of my groups’ topics today about trust. I trust myself to talk out loud, often, always, about what I think is fucked up. I trust the vast majority of my clients to not take themselves or the work it takes to incorporate addictive behavior seriously. I trust that their ambivalence combined with corporate greed and chronic conditioning is a story of an ongoing unmitigated disaster. At any level in which I remain in human services at the behest of an outside entity, I will be nominally complicit, but especially if I don’t bother to say anything about it. And especially if I don’t bother to say anything about it to the people setting the shitty standard and pretending to give a fuck about rules of human decency when there’s so much money to be made.

This idea of occupying different worlds has been a compelling one for a while. Watching The Crown has given me an infusion of thoughts about it. The institution, the system, of monarchy subsumes any individual desire. The intransigence of their divinity is a noble distinguisher, not a mark of shame or antiquity. Do you want your god changing the rules every few thousand years? The language of that institution is of a “keep steady” realm. Youth and modernity want change, inclusion, and growth. The “conservative” has the argument that, “Well, we’re still here, so obviously something has worked or is working.” The enlightened ideal is that you will forever reach a happy middle ground through ongoing open and honest debate and reasonable concessions. Ha.

The monied bureaucrat does not speak the language of the working-class moron. The exhausted temporarily-embarrassed aspiring rich person pretends to speak the language of both. Rarely, if ever it seems, do you find someone that wants the same thing. Do I want to go on vacation every year? Not as much as I want to feel as though I’ve earned a vacation through meaningful work. Does my concept of “meaningful work” ever match your story of what feels and sounds meaningful? Hardly. I also have no interest in protecting any organization that sees me as lesser than anyone else in it. I wish I had a savings AND could enjoy indulging myself with fun self-care things AND have adequate health, car, and home insurance. Right now, I get to pick 1, pay down the debt it still throws me into, and refamiliarize myself with poor-people habits that include excess alone time with TV or books.

What can you make of “trust” in that environment? If you’re me, you default to the “trust people to be what they are” sentiment. I know what each class and style of person is likely to do, so I do what I want both in anticipation of and in response to. It’s not an accident I’m open, honest, and ongoing about shit that pisses me off. It’s deliberate practiced habit. You’re going to come at me sideways dancing around “the issue,” so I’m going to assert the issue in as many words and languages that it takes to teach you I’m not the one to play your stupid fucking game with.

I don’t identify with the characters in The Crown. I have no institution or tired parochial standard to defer to. I have myself and anyone else willing to continuously poke at the disingenuously and incidentally powerful. I have all of the capacity to carry the pretensions and expectations of someone who pretends there’s a “proper” way to exist independent of mutual acknowledgment, celebration, or solidarity. I’m not so blind as to genuinely believe any catchphrase or edict I conjure to desperately mask my intentions usurps common decency and sense. No, I don’t feel supported in this endeavor to maintain certain sovereign conceptions of dignity or accountability for their own sake. I do not trust the institutions I feed on like a baby suckling a drug-addled mother. It knows not its plight, but I do.

One of my office managers is struggling with her boyfriend being “almost” a cheater. In her words, “I don’t care if you want to fuck someone else, just tell me about it! We’re basically in an open relationship as it is.” He was on Bumble and I guess doing other sketchy things, generally hiding it from her. He’s reignited wounds from her traumatizing past related to infidelity. They’re 22 and been together for a year and a half. She regularly discusses her general hopelessness for the future and the difficulty of even conceiving of herself in a stable and healthy place financially. She’s lived in Bedford her entire life and is deeply burnt out by her social work responsibilities often very unfairly imposed on her. She can’t trust her country, the company she works for, her boyfriend, or even the woman sitting next to her. Where do you think she’s going to find someone that wants the same things in life anymore than you or I can?

Who’s speaking the language of the aggrieved with any real capacity to do something about it? Who has the emotional awareness and salient argument that compels deliberate open and honest exchange? Who is “managing the best interests of the company” with any remote clue how an individual is actually experiencing said company? Richard Wolff remarked that facebook is laying off 11,000 employees after a disastrous miscalculation about shits the world has for the Metaverse. 11,000 lives, plus families, plus the communities they’re plugged into, because a power avatar gets to gamble where none of us can.  Choosing to gamble, verses being forced to, are entirely different universes.

Our lives are not guaranteed in the same way that there will always be an eager demigod looking to preside over them. We adopt their language and set our expectations in ways they deem fit. We insulate ourselves from the precise ways we would otherwise criticize, as getting too exacting would betray why we find their influence necessary and regal. The illusion of stability and order is preferable to observing and owning our inherent chaos. Now, you don’t just occupy a realm of social strata, you deserve it and belong. You’re entitled to protect the money, your small cut-out caricature of a worthwhile existence, or anything else you like provided it doesn’t disturb the god from which you all draw power.

I will continue to cause calculated chaos.

[1014] Chop Chop

Let’s talk out dumb old stuff again to see if I can get it to break or advance. I’m thinking the next time I attempt to figure this out, I’m just going to take a ton of shrooms and look for an angle only a kaleidoscope brain could access.

Stupid, easy, pointless, work. It’s not provoking elevated levels of anxiety like when I first began, but I can’t quell the unease entirely. I spent several hours this morning slowly mind-creeping my way towards doing, always, 10-30 minutes of work depending on how well I can focus and not have to redo something. Later, I conducted my groups, and it’s almost 5 hours later, and I haven’t done the next 10 minutes of work, and I’m nowhere near doing the prep that would complete the vast majority of the time it takes me to do notes.

I can do the notes with a show or movie on, especially the prep stuff. I can do them weeks in advance and it might take me an hour or two if I dragged it out. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why I allow myself to think about the notes, write about the notes, anticipate and mildly-anxi-e-tize myself about the notes, instead of just picking a focus lane and knocking the notes out. I enjoy the feeling of opening up the prepped notes and speeding through pasting the individuated portions. I literally have nothing else I do in service to my job beyond sending a few texts and emails occasionally. There is a greater series of absurdities at play.

Today I also attempted to turn that note prep into something more efficient. Well, I asked about how I might be able to. We use templates that the company has populated, somewhat. If they populated them more, it would save me another 5 to 10 minutes per note. That’s 1 to 2 hours a week, over the 6 months I’ve been working there, for 24 to 48 hours of time I could be speeding through sitcoms or cartoons. The response I got, eventually, was that my ideas were great and they’d be discussed at the next software updates/overhaul. That is, after I got a weird amount of pushback and confusing responses that I would even bother to ask for a way to be more efficient.

I don’t own my time. It’s the wretched tickle in the back of my throat that never goes away. Every second I spend in an email debating whether someone who isn’t appropriate for this level of care actually is, is stolen. Every time I’m asked to “support” someone who I don’t have the tools, license, referrals, nor any business pretending I can help betrays being a part of the whole endeavor. That I would specifically set aside time to do the functional equivalent of shoveling shit never makes the shit smell good. I have a perfectly good shovel. The shit is dry and ready to fly. But it smells like shit, and I’m conscious of the mess it makes of my psyche and uncomfortable with how it pollutes my lungs.

I lose when I go into “efficient Nick P.” mode. I feel an extra layer of defeat. They tricked me! They got me to “work like I do” on another thing that is meaningless to me. They designed something that made my wall come down, and now I’m over here knocking out tasks and staying on top of my game…but it’s not my game. My game is figuring out the insurance companies I’m impaneling with and starting my own company. My game is getting back outside and tending to my fence and pallets. My game is the stacks of books around me that need to continue to look like opportunities and trips more than antagonistic escapes.

What if I quit? Then I’ve put this effort into prep that never comes to fruition. If I do the prep, it makes it harder to feel in my bones that the option to quit is as close as it needs to be. Buy-in is how you fall for your captors. If I let myself go, I might start wearing their clothes and thinking their cheap version of my coffee mug isn’t half bad. This is a company that is still holding me hostage for $2,000 if I leave sooner than a year. I will never not think that is bad and a severe form of exploitation.

I never experience a palpably poor consequence of “procrastinating.” It feels like the wrong word. According to Google, it means “delay or postpone action; put off doing something.” Except, I’m not putting off doing something, I’m deliberately and aggressively *not doing something* in standing by my aggrieved principles. I’m not just plagued by some vague notion of “work” or “obligation.” I’m actively engaging in protest that I should ever conceive of the task as the thing that should happen “now” or take top priority. I have until Thursday to put in 10 minutes of notes from today. I only have 2 groups tomorrow. It’s a totally open question if I’ll be inclined to knock them all out tomorrow morning, tonight, midday, 2 in the morning tomorrow or early as fuck Thursday. I wait for the mood to find me, I don’t betray what I’m capable of.

Yes yes, that’s all well and good for a lot of excuse-making and demonstrating you have no appreciation for your circumstances that let’s you get away with making money for doing so little. But how do you really feel?

I can’t lose. I can’t lose myself to the drudgery. No one can protect me from the chances to give up dozens of little ways to protest and feel like an agent of my own making but me. It’s superficially a persistently dumb and petty ask to be tasked with some redundant clicks and boxes to fill. It feels like an existential threat. They know, and I know, that it doesn’t have to be this way, but the time-honored bureaucracy means, maybe, next quarter, we’ll give you back a day or two for every 6 months you stay chained to us.

Will I make any more money if I save everyone else time with my ideas? No. Is it now more likely efficiency will mean they’ll pile on more people until they reach new fail points? It’s practically guaranteed. Our ends are not the same. I want time. They want money. I evaluate the relative effectiveness of the use of my time in my overall sense of being, recognition of opportunities, and reflections on how freely I move about the world. They evaluate the effectiveness of their organization through the recitation of “we’re helping” propaganda and balance sheets. If this job allows for me to watch cartoons and fuck around until the last minute, that makes me feel good, like I’m capitalizing on an opportunity, and when I skip going to the office, that’s freer than a desky 9-to-5.

In school, most classes I could approach the same way. Very rarely was I doing homework right when I got home. I almost never studied until hours before the test. People mistake this for a kind of arrogance or indication of how “smart” I think I am. The bar was just that low. It’s been that low for a very long time across many domains. It’s set just behind the middle of the bell curve. Any average asshole is going to register as acceptable to the broad psychological zeitgeist. It’s the space of the familiar and mundane. It's where you celebrate the ease with which you can do your job instead of let it terrify you. I don’t brag about getting As and Bs; to this day I still shit on IU for failing me, just like I shit on predatory DCS workers, and negligent caseworkers who won’t schedule you to see your children, or ambivalent “harm-reduction” pill-mills that downplay health risks.

I don’t want to feel myself getting enthusiastic about shoveling the shit. That’s what being proactive does to me. It drives me to want to do even more. If I get two weeks done in advance, why not 4? Why not reorganize my spreadsheet and dig up resources and design a whole 6-month plan so I can take the thinking out of what to discuss each week? I could invite myself into more client drama with useless outreach. I could double-down on trying to fit more insurance company puzzle games in between sessions. The anxiety and drive will push me to “capitalize” on the “momentum” until I finally get disgusted enough with myself to relearn how much I like a balanced, modest, and self-aware pace.

A rich man has money, a wealthy man has time.

I won’t allow myself to lose sight of how much I enjoy using my time for “whatever.” My limits brought on by capitalist conditions aren’t going to disappear, but if I must remain a slave, I want it to be a slave that has the time to contemplate and write about his servitude. I want to be the slave that can, somewhat, pick his moment to get back to work. It will always be there and always gets done. My persistent pithy rebellion hasn’t stopped the bills from getting paid nor provoked me to get too dramatic in how or whether I cut off the flow of money. I have no reason not to trust myself that I will do what needs to be done. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t need a constant anxious refrain as though this week is different or there’s some prize for forcing my focus. I’ll get to it.

[1013] The Chase

I’m not in the mood to write, but there’s clearly too much on my mind.

I’m feeling emboldened. I want to make “big” or “dramatic” moves in a new direction with regard to how I conduct my life. I want to transform my experience. I’m aware that this can rhyme with my sentiments about feeling “stuck” and desperately looking for something novel or fulfilling.

Something more fundamental is shifting. I have a friend/associate that has done most of the handyman work around the house. He reached out a week or so ago about feeling overwhelmed and maybe getting counseling. We spoke for about 25 minutes and attempted to schedule another 3 or 4 times to complete the conversation. It’s now Sunday through the holiday 4-day break period, and I don’t know if or when we’ll actually complete the conversation.

It’s immediately reminiscent of the space I occupy with almost every one of my clients. They have a problem, and in response they do one of two things. They’ll tell you about it once, then disappear and suffer in silence until they relapse, end up in jail, or otherwise breakdown. Or they’ll persistently repeat their problem, sometimes with the exact same words, for weeks, as they proceed to do absolutely nothing you suggest nor offer any insight as to what might improve their circumstances.

You let them go, or you chase them.

But I’m always chasing. Not so much professionally anymore, but with regard to friendship or basic companionship. Try as I might, I’m a social creature. I can’t make jokes about people I’m not around. I can’t challenge or be challenged by conversations I’m not having. I can’t learn about new and interesting things or happenings around town just through Google and talk shows. As much as I don’t like people, I’m at least half a person, and the things about me that co-evolved with the rest of the tribe mean I need a holistic view on the nature of my problems and how to solve them.

I chase people to go out to dinner with. I chase people to come to shows with me. I chase a kind of peace and civility with neighbors. I chase new acquaintances. I chase responses and noise and solidarity or comradery. I can’t pay people enough to hang out. I can’t persuade anyone to take 15 minutes for themselves, let alone me or our time together. It didn’t matter how many events I threw after college. It doesn’t matter if I’m free all day every day or get penciled in months in advance, from my perspective, the entire concept of friendship, time together, or building anything worthwhile with people is absolutely broken.

I can blame any number of things. I could personalize it, blame exploitative capitalism, call out any given person and their inconsistencies or lies, or tell a detailed history of changes in society related to technology, isolation, the pandemic, and cultural stressors and trauma. It would all feel incomplete in the moment. The moment, like so many, after you’ve been denied or ignored for the 10^th week in a row. The moments you’re digesting the “I’m sorry, but…” text or reading about how someone’s abusive or alcoholic acquaintance takes priority over you. Or, don’t you know, things are just so busy and chaotic! You couldn’t possibly be bothered to keep a regular sleep schedule or make it to dinner because, by default, the frantic self-destructive dance needs protecting.

I just can’t anymore.

I also chase money. I think that I can work hard enough, identify niches, or consolidate on so many modern comforts, and with my time or extra cash will arrive at some genuine feeling of safety or security. But don’t you know? They’re not going to pay me. My friends aren’t going to pay me. Insurance isn’t going to pay me. The desperate and exhausted and hollow, who will pay for everything but themselves or what they need, aren’t going to pay me. My jobs are going to pay just up to the line that keeps you gaslighting yourself about how much you need their money and what it’s good for.

I used to be so anxious that I was wasting every minute when I wasn’t hyper-focused on some “big” world problem or taking a step in service to some larger goal. I would make myself sick, because I only had so much time to create what was driving me. That started to chip away. I can build a big house and fill it with anxious cats, because no one’s coming. I can try to build a business that no one’s hiring because monopolies and grudges dig graves for your walking dead ideas. I can try to build new friendships or relationships, but the texts aren’t going to get returned and the underlying anxious lie about what’s driving you together won’t get left alone.

I’m fine to be a place-filler though. I don’t expect to be seen, heard, or understood. That’s an incredibly high bar in the clusterfuck of modernity. I don’t need to share what I’ve read. I don’t need to offer any genuine opinions. We can fuck like real dolls. I can dress and slim down for some proper arm candy. I can cheer for the sports team and feign indefinite interest in what is almost certainly the dumbest TV show, hobby, or preoccupation of all time, but if it brings joy, oh boy! I don’t care anymore. I’m going to go seek out more of these impossibly unfulfilling and meaningless interactions so, if nothing else, I have more explicit things to talk about in blogs.

What do I even want? I want to work to stop believing “things” will get “better” than what I’m given, or not, every day, every weekend, and every moment your excuses, silence, or malicious interpretation finds its way into my brain. I don’t care what you think. I’ve been experiencing what you do for so many years. I’m watching myself get infected by you so that the things I enjoy I feel like I can’t, and I have no idea what the fuck that is about. That is, until I think about incorporating you. If there’s nowhere to go, I can sit peacefully and practice or read a book. If there’s no one to share a joke or picture with, I don’t have to consider taking and thinking in those terms. I need to deliberately step away. I need to full-stop obligating myself to whatever it is you might need of me.

That said, as I emotionally pine for money and keep the ongoing calculation rendered about when it would be “best” to leave my job, I’m more or less resolving myself over the next 2 or 3 months to hunkering down. I don’t need to be mean about it, of course, and I’m always going to need help with things, but I’m not going to be the force moving things around. It’s me, here, with whatever I can or can’t do by myself for the foreseeable future.

[1012] Swing Life Away

I’m so confused. The other day, I envisioned myself hanging from one of my ceiling 2x4s and writing a facebook status, “Bye, can someone please grab the cats?” I’m not suicidal, but I let my curiosity and taboo orientation ride the thought waves to see if I’ll be “moved” or “jarred” one way or another. The takeaway is that thinking about that made me feel nothing. It was just a thought. It didn’t instruct. It didn’t cause fear. I don’t feel guilty. There I am, just dangling, and then a smirk slowly starts to appear at the idea that, you know, this is really about the cats and making sure they’re okay.

I’m more confused by what, if anything, my “purpose” is. I know I have to make my own decisions and own each moment I’m alive. I know there’s a certain gratification and sense of being/belonging in helping others. I don’t mean to echo too loudly the sentiment of a forlorn teen. I just mean that I’m built a certain way. My truck hauls things a regular car can’t. It’s built to. I’m built in a way that can contemplate tragedy and crisis in detached and pragmatic ways. I’m built in a way that voraciously consumes and aggregates information. I’m quick. I’m well-rehearsed.

My grandparents, if nothing else, worked. They worked to survive. My aunts and uncles all had/have jobs, made it through school. If we reduce the concept of “work” to “made money,” you can better account for their pathological and selfish behavior. Money keeps the bills paid, work keeps the house clean, discipline keeps you in line with the disciplinarian right up until they die or their power is usurped. “Work” is the common refrain for dictating orientation and purpose. You work to provide for your family. You work to distinguish yourself…at work. You work because no one is going to work for you, particularly in your faux representative democracy.

I discuss work often in how I do counseling. You don’t just show up, take your medicine, and blithely check in each week. You have to practice learning how to identify your feelings. You have to practice patience. You have to train your sense of responsibility and ownership. This takes existential-level work that your clients aren’t just bad at, but have literally been using substances to a degree that it perhaps cripples their ability to ever discover how. What, then, are we to say about the nature, purpose, or impact of their work?

I’m 34. In that time, I’ve worked hard enough on at least one instrument to have proven myself capable of performing techniques at one point in my life I would have described as “godlike.” I’ve worked to learn about the world to the point where I was spending thousands of dollars trying to build a website to organize and sort it all to become something useful for connecting and finding patterns. I’ve worked 3 jobs at once and 20-hour days for several years. I’ve worked 4 times longer in a role that burns people out routinely and would have stayed were it not for shit management. I’ve scrubbed the fuck out of a bathroom caked in grime of a mentally unwell client. I’ve created and ran a coffee shop, party house, done well in school, and been a person who has averaged reading more than a book a day. I’ve transported thousands of bricks and built out my house. I’ve hauled scrap, tires, pallets and torn down barns. I’ve been management and general labor. I’ve remodeled a house. I’ve been a part of a winning sports team and a jazz band. I’m working in counseling while trying to get my own business running.

I’ve scratched the surface. In that time I’ve also watched thousands of TV episodes, hundreds of movies, and dicked around, literally, or in days spent in the fog of “I’m not doing enough” or “Where to now?” or “Wanna spend hours driving around until we land somewhere to eat?” I’ve had 3 serious-enough relationships, entire weeks spent by the pool, and thousands wasted or gambled on less than meaningful pursuits. I’ve been to well over 100 concerts, dozens of comedy shows and several theme parks. I’ve beaten as completely possible that it is to beat 50 or so video games and spent as many or more hours playing them socially.

Almost never does it feel like “enough.” There’s work, forever, on whatever you choose, but the times I felt like anything I was doing mattered, whether it was drinking to oblivion or doing something around the house, was when I thought it was shared.

I’m confused because I don’t know what’s been shared. I don’t appear in pictures with most of the people I knew in college, let alone high school outside of a yearbook. My relationships appear to have been overwhelmingly built on a combination of naivety and “romantic” notions of who I am or what it means to be together. No matter what I watch, read, or play I’m not in some active conversation or exploration of the topic. I’m still the kid at dinner trying to tell his exhausted and disinterested mom about his day and getting shut down. Were we sharing a meal back then, or was she obligated to feed us?

I’m thankful for Hussain in sharing the struggle of getting the business started. I’m thankful I get to add “home renovator” via Byron to my list of accomplishments for every infuriating and baffling piece of crazy that has fucked that project. I will always boast about my partnership with Hatsam and the support our parents gave us. Friends certainly contributed back then. What was it to? Whether it was the shop or the parties, who was really there?

I’ve all-but stopped writing goofy paragraphs on old friends timelines for their birthdays. We’re not going to call each other. It doesn’t mean anything more or less to them than the unwashed uncapitalized mass “happy birthday” messages from the other veritable strangers. Anymore there’s several I’m convinced would be confused and offended I even bothered. What do I make of the time together? What do I allow myself to be convinced of about the nature of the friendship or words exchanged? Is it a measure of “wisdom” to maintain a kind of military-detachment that expects you or them to ship out or die at any moment?

I don’t seem to understand what I’m built for. If I bring everyone together to party and celebrate, I’m actually the target for scorn and resentment. If I reach out first, second, or a seventh and fifteenth time, now I’m a borderline creep or disingenuous puppy who can’t register it’s been abandoned. If I focus on learning and nerd shit, who cares? I’m not figuring out a way to get paid for what I know and the slurry of Patreon professionals are barely skirting by producing content every day and appearing on TV. I can’t persuade myself to take music seriously enough to sacrifice anything in service to again reaching my heights. Even if I’ve created for myself an adult playground with tools and space, I come up against some hard limits in the weather, time, budget, and tolerance for risk and pain while occupying the middle of nowhere.

I’m told, pretty regularly, about my capacity for building rapport and trust. I’ve watched people light up that they get to keep me as a counselor when they change group times. I’ve been told I can be talked to and seem like I really care in a way others don’t. I’ve watched the disappointment and anger as I’ve switched roles or the fear that I’m more abandoning you than saving myself. I’m not high on my own supply of self-serving narrative bullshit. I have a particular, high-powered, and special or different use. I can only seem to find it working in service to things that take advantage of me or treat me like a threat to what’s understood as a “normal” or “decent” way of existing. I can be really good at building trust and being encouraging, and line the pockets of a company that won’t provide insurance that covers the contacts in both of my eyes. I can give away the space to pursue dreams and create and be yelled at and looked at with ongoing suspicion about what I really want.

Even if I figured out what I was built for, who am I working for? An abstract notion of “the youth” and “their future?” I’m well past the point of believing I can “help” any fucking moron who has made a career of avoiding responsibility or bothering to define words. I can’t “save” you from yourself nor single-handedly fix my environment or problems of communication any better than an entitled billionaire.

Is this what I’m here for? Am I to keep reporting on the relative futility of it all? Am I just meant to watch and record as I confirm under different conditions how useless my hands and brain really are upon subjection to the infinite spin of errant interpretation and superficial relationships? What am I fucking doing? My best guess is “trying to amass money.” After that? Eat. Travel around and look for a remote sense of security. Build something, maybe better, maybe just more headaches, and keep people from…hurting themselves? Feeling victimized once more? News flash, I could have the best business in the world and you know what it can’t do? Make people pick up the phone, show up, or recognize anything about what it took to create.

You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself. I have no idea how to “help myself” be less suspicious about how or whether I’m capable of finding and maintaining meaningful relationships. Useful ones, sure. If your investment in me is on your terms, it’s not an investment in me. It’s not a recognition of me. I don’t exist beyond a narrative fixture in a fantasy. I wasn’t looking for a “wife” or “girlfriend,” and still aren’t. I cared about the people and what they wanted to do. I wanted to help and give and invest, and I can’t really explain how persistently that was denied and thrown back in my face. At the moment I might start to suspect that I could be a positive or consistent good in someone’s life, they pull out, and I’m a laundry list of problems and gaps and not-enoughs.

The “healthiest” relationships I could point to do a fucking circus extravaganza of not seriously discussing or fixing areas of contention. The overall sense of companionship or stability trumps the work and devastating consequences of battling things out. That’s the rule. Keep the image alive. Don’t race to the bottom where neither of you will find peace or solidarity in sharing a truth more precious than the most accessible and translatable narrative. Keep the sunglasses on your black eye teeth beaming pictures. Stay busy and distracted so you can better forget there was ever a smell coming from the basement at all.

We build families of this stuff. We’ve built entire nations on empty notions codified in anecdotes and lore. What do you win for speaking to that? Exile from the nation. Even if you play along, you don’t feel safe. Your soul no longer belongs to them. Any tenuous truce between your perspective and their power over you can get shattered in an instant. My uncles stole my grandmother’s house when she died and cut me out of the will. Do I isolate from them, be rude at Thanksgiving, and watch the proceeds of its sale when they die get sent to the church? Do I hurt and disappoint my dad who loves his brothers and his sons and just wants peace and prosperity for us all? Do I mock and practice ingratitude for the intangible things my grandparents have given me, their examples still being talked about now?

So I can mediate a crisis between you and the State, or between you and a problem you don’t have the time or notion on how, but perhaps intention to figure out, or with myself when it comes to a physical activity, socializing foray, or hobby preoccupation, but not within my thieving or leaching family. Got it, universe. I can invite a conversation about any given line from a digression like this, and I’m only going to catch those perfectly unwilling to quote, focus, or bother to do really any work to understand what was actually said or grasp the sentiment offered more than incoherently shit their feelings and demand I see and trust they know more than me. I can spend hundreds of hours on a given preoccupation or thinker and in seconds they, and I, will be caricatured.

Is that friendly? Am I just being impatient and “too serious” in wanting to get as far away from that crazy-making behavior as possible? If I’m feeling isolated or antsy, and I join the sports team where everyone smokes, drinks, and is overweight, am I in the wrong for feeling like I still don’t fit in? If I discuss the lengths I go to approach the myriad problems I might identify, can you begin to understand how isolating it is when you’re met with that look like a dog who’s waiting for you to drop something for them to eat? Like you’re speaking Chinese or talking about moving grains of sand one at a time across a vast distance.

There I dangle. My environment kills me. It’s often by design, but mostly through negligence. It’s a silence that crushes my head and restricts my heart and punctures ears. It’s a look, so infused, by the layers of dream-work laid over the necessary shoveling I’m discussing. It’s the void behind your eyes betrayed by the fear, anger, and sadness. The people I “counsel” are overwhelmingly terrified of me. They shrink if we meet in person. They say “hey” and grab what they need and leave. It’s not “me,” of course, they’re reacting to. It’s how they feel. It’s why they became addicted. It’s why they’re tuning in, to the extent they are, to what I have to say and not the other way around. That’s the ongoing tragedy. I’ll be read as some smug or proud braggart by someone who feels just like them who’ll gleefully skip past the invitation to own and explore how they’ve weaponized their weakness and victimhood.

I’ve said too much. Who was this for? It’s 4:04 AM and I’ve got to get a nap in before gearing up to head north for Thanksgiving. I’m just kidding, I know who it’s for. All of the blogs, always, are for me. Because I’m the only one who can give me what I need. I have to find the words or reason to keep playing along while I otherwise swing in the breeze. I’m thankful I don’t want to die, but I’m still incredibly confused about what I’m supposed to live for when I feel like you’d prefer it if I were dead. Not everyone, just almost everyone who’s gotten to know me. I’m also thankful I thrive on spite.

[1011] Listen Jesus I Don't Like What I See

Wikipedia defines fascism as, “a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement. characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

I want to ensure that I get the comprehensive definition somewhere in my writing situated closely to my next sentiment. I hate religion. I hate your god. I hate your faith. I hate the, extremely human, impulse to see mystery and wonder and giant open questions and slap a self-soothing excuse over any inclination to learn, doubt, work, or hold you and yours accountable.

It’s a persistent hate. It’s a sincere hate. What is more authoritarian than an all-powerful god? What is easier a set of rules to pretend to follow than dictatorial edicts? How “naturally” it follows that those in the majority, or of the same color, or who can sound off the same creeds stand above the “other.” How liberating is it to sublimate individual desire for the glory of the hoard and the eternal reward after death? What could possibly suffice as a big enough lie to get you through your entire miserable life, ensuring that “you” never actually live it, than layers of fascist ideological narrative structures to plug your enfeebled mind into?

If you watch closely, people can’t fundamentally let go of their inherent fascism. If they eschew a god, they’ll worship the state. The state disappoints? There’s any hodgepodge of “individual values” or hobbyist preoccupations that never quite fill the void, but allow for a release of passionate advocacy that looks a lot like political violence and bids to control. Yes, far-left sensitive types who think racist jokes are tantamount to violence literally want to prevent you from speaking in the exact manner that far-right insanity wishes to prevent you from ever remembering what America was supposed to stand for. It’s about control, anticipating the end, and couching your sense of identity and future orientation alongside a pre-approved in-group story.

Simply, there is little to no control. That’s increasingly hard to believe as technology advances and we pretend the algorithms aren’t practically dictating mental health. We pretend that “control” certain groups have is in the form of blunt instrument money waves that get a lot of things wet, but it’s unclear what that moisture does but keep everyone annoyed and catching cold.

It always returns to a lie. The pretend certainty you have about what happens after death gives you cart blanche to pretend about anything for any reason. The pretend fairy tales about souls and babies let’s you remain blissfully unbothered by the science around birth, abortion, or the logistics of handling the 407,000 children in foster care and otherwise abysmal social safety net. How many times do we need to interview someone who says, “This country was founded on God!” It categorically wasn’t, but those giving the liars the mic don’t reflexively stamp the fascist-level ignorance with the truth or implications.

Why not? They’re in authoritarian-adjacent capitalist systems. The flame-war keeps the money going. The fear keeps you watching. Even if a report is as “unbiased” as you can reasonably portray, the dictates of daddy dollar win the day. Every “ist” and “ism” is a shortcut window into someone’s, “Tell me what to do” and, “Use me” sensibility. If I’m racist enough, will you give me more money? If I’m sexist enough, will you excuse our collective mishandling or subjugation of the opposite sex? If I’m a proud capitalist can I bankrupt your town with humble impunity and pollute the world for my starving share-holders?

The truth is pain and sacrifice. The fascist animal is “me me me” and “right now.” It wants the power by taking your life, your control, your agency, and resents any demonstration of responsibility or accountability you might engage in. I brought up 407,000 children earlier. That’s, at best, a lazy taunt to the fascist who can write every atrocity off on “god’s plan.” Those kids are living wonderful fantasy lives, and if nothing else, will certainly be rewarded for their struggles in the afterlife.

This is as familiar and tired a pattern as anything that has ever existed. And It’s reflexive and it’s in every one of us, and depending on the nature of the topic, your fascism will get triggered and feel perfectly righteous. How, ever, do we entertain the Palins, Trumps, Walkers, Boeberts, Greenes? Literally, how can they be a persistent and genuine danger…ever? They’re the hydrogen in a water molecule. There’s 2 people who can be driven mad by any given topic for every 1 person who stays vigilant in checking their biases and messaging or in attempting to think things through. Those pre-water oxygen molecules occasionally persuade one of the two hydrogens to hang out and vote with them for a while instead of drowning us all like an angry ironic god. It’s not a great metaphor, but you get it, right?

This is what Star Trek-dreaming types and scared broken Gen Z people need to figure out. The crazy is within us all. The entitlement takes exactly one generation for you to forget where you came from and feel as though your given “ism” can suffice for the work of writing legislation, holding anyone accountable, or having the conversation about why any of us bother to continue living. “Socialism doesn’t work!” It’s as ignorantly fascist a statement as you can make. It’s not dismissing a definition of socialism; it’s denouncing that we’re social or responsible for each other *by existential definition.* It’s a meta-lie designed to undermine the very concept that we’re actually, fundamentally, connected.

The impulse to lump is a fascist one. There are good psychological reasons our brain condenses things and we create summaries. Then we shit the bed and infuse our lumps with assumptions. We prejudice ourselves against de-lumping. All Blacks this, all Jews that, all women must be controlled etc. We then try to disguise this prejudice under banners of our “values,” “morals,” or “traditions” which act as hate propaganda. “Heritage not hate!” “Blue lives matter!” Our Left fascist counterparts say we have to “defund the police” while deliberately ignoring statistics on actual police behavior. They use media-fueled animosity to make the disingenuous lie that guns, while certainly a problem, are killing significantly more than is actually the case. Sam Harris has a really good talk getting into the numbers on that one I might look up and link here.

It’s our fascist impulses that let power do batshit things like take the world’s foremost innovator and futurist get reduced to pathetic Twitter Nazi. He does not have the wisdom to stop pretending that he can or should attempt to control anything he desires. The “ists” that make him rich design elaborate financial narratives to justify erratic behavior. The “ism” that his family fortune was built on is a not-so-dirty little secret. And we want to marvel at the fallout. We want to be entertained. We want to sit from our authoritarian toilet thrones and levy judgement and situate him against every new name and situation waiting for our engagement.

And it was good.

God, so pleased with himself, so circular in his logic, said it was good - until his fascist tendencies jumped the oxygen atoms and drowned us all.

You’re not up against “conservatives” or “republicans” or sects of historically relevant “fascists,” “socialists,” or “communists.” You’re up against yourself. We live in what I still consider an extremely confusing and painful world where it’s practically a toss up whether a brain-dead lying violent sexually and emotionally abusive cunt will “win” to “lead” against even a basically nice and “normal” person. A person who uses his fascist religious instincts to at least tout the values someone like me wishes we could figure out without sky daddy dictates undermining a robust and mutually-agreed upon means of caring for each other into the future. Jesus doesn’t persuade me not to manipulate and control you, he’s just a persistent nag about your sheepish nature and smirks all the way to the bank at getting you to believe coming back to life constitutes a “sacrifice.” That’s why you have to forgo an individual identity and sacrifice the other. You don’t actually believe him, but you can’t let anyone know that, especially yourself.

I hate that you’re willing able and proud to play this game of self-delusion and self-denial that, not figuratively, gets me and what I care about killed. I’m not naïve about how much needs to die to appease the angry whiny bitch god you pretend to venerate. It’s everything. You literally can’t stop because a lie, a betrayal of that which exists, needs to keep betraying like an infinite Judas. You can’t repent, because there’s nothing to forgive you. And you don’t exist, so you can’t learn how to forgive yourself. So, who’s next to blame?