[952] Lemme Tell You

I do things.

That is no small statement. I get anxious, I complain, and I can find myself opining about things over which I have no control, but I do things. I’m not a reactionary, nor do I sit and stew in the hopelessness of being the smallest cog of a seemingly intractable machine.

 

So many of my conversations fall into the same patterns. I say something encouraging or hopeful, someone tells me “the way it is.” I offer to begin some initiative or inquiry, someone feels it is their duty to, somewhat forcefully, remind me of what I’m up against. If I tell a story of learning and sacrifice, they share a story of what they would never be able to do or the luxury and convenience they demand. If I qualify and reflect a point or sentiment, I’m invited to its reiteration. When I find myself discouraged in work environments or ill-reduced “life,” it’s usually because I’m choosing to be done having the same conversation.

 

I don’t like the word “hope,” but I feel like my life is an extremely loud demonstration in service to what I hope for. Because I don’t hope, I work. I try. I create. I do things. If you want to complain, I will complain with you, and then I will reflexively say we should organize or experiment or whatever. I’m not attempting to invalidate your feelings or perspective, but merely complaining needs to be redirected. If you’re unwilling or unable to do so in your own life, what the hell are you doing as a leader or counselor or parent? This is the existential dissatisfaction and disillusionment. It’s not that just anyone relays hopeless cliches and sentiments to me, it’s that my authority or peer wishes to throw in with the language and attitude that lands people in prison.

 

How can anyone with a straight face say that “nothing changes” while they’re listing off the perpetual changes they don’t like? It happens so fluidly it’s a wonder you might ever catch it when you’re in the conversation. Of course, things change. By asserting they don’t, you’re denying the means and responsibility that need be displayed for them to not change stupidly. You risk discovering that it's not about them over there and everything to do with the fights you’re unwilling or unable to have. It’s okay to not want the fight, but then don’t waste my headspace with your words lighting up the strawman.

 

Because I do things, I’m genuinely invested in how those things actually work. If I just wanted to see my energy manifest as a series of chaotic movements and clouds of dust, I wouldn’t risk getting severely disappointed by empty conversations to the “nowhere” you were aiming for. But I’m clear in my goal and aim. I know that, when I can’t get anything else, I at least need to have the conversation. I believe in the power of my voice and ability to bring things to a shared consciousness. I believe the impact of that is felt well independent of your opinion on the wisdom or purpose of doing so.

 

I’m not advocating out of childish devil’s advocacy. I’m not trying to get a rise out of you in challenging the powers that be. I’m looking to maintain my agency in any given moment. I’m looking to protect the values I have in service to autonomy, choice, and whatever I might conceive as “common” about decency or sense. It’s fascinating to me how often this appears to be lost on the people I’m speaking with. Where’s the person in the cliches? Where’s the wisdom in “pick your battles,” if you don’t understand the field you’re battling on?

 

I’m battling the innate ambivalence of the very cells which I’m comprised of. I’m battling “isms” and “ists” that “ians” and conquers and psychopaths who all have a say in how I need to navigate my life. I’m trying to stand for what continual effort and attention to moments of discomfort and ambiguity consist of. I’m picking the existential battle, all the time, every moment. I’m fighting the only battle I deem worthy of actual individual people with goals that transcend literally every other circumstance. I don’t have a god; I have the eternal values his believers allegedly believe in.

 

I don’t have a “fix” for institutions I “voluntarily” join to keep the bills paid. I can’t fix prison from my desk as a counselor. I can’t live in the glory days of how some counselors preferred programming. I can’t change how my “leadership” does or doesn’t respond to questions or gives direction. I can just pay attention. I can figure out how to speak to grievances or my values in ways that don’t get me immediately fired. I can take the pain and disillusionment from previous work environments that have operated the same way and learn to not let myself get so strung up. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m comfortable saying out loud how much I’m still consistently desiring to be my own boss in my own enterprise, and the idea of working here just long enough is the most compelling.

 

Funnily enough, while I have no god, I do like some of the sentiments people offer in his name. Recently, someone said, “God puts you where He needs you, it’s your job to figure out what He needs,” or something like that. I don’t believe that, but I think it speaks to a principle of being aware and setting YOUR example in whatever setting you may find yourself in. I could concoct a roundabout subconscious story about you repeating patterns and dragging yourself into environments that reignite your demons or play on trauma to understand the sentiment as well. I don’t think you need to go through 7 abusive relationships before you find self-esteem. I think your god is pretty fucked up for thinking otherwise. I don’t care how good "Man’s Search for Meaning" is, The Holocaust and seemingly endless series of genocides before and after are in bad taste.

 

My confidence stems from knowing I’m going to continue to do things. I’m going to continue to know I have a choice to write, bowl, spend, sleep, save, or start. I’m going to keep talking, even if you will literally lose your breath trying to say enough to persuade me not to. I seek out that kind of discomfort because that’s where I grow and learn and encode in my being a way of living and behaving that reinforce the rest of what I dream about. I don’t want a massive organization in which I’m flippant about the ground floor conversations or details. I can accept that nothing is “perfect” while knowing how to deliberately steer away from and account for negligence. I won’t allow myself to operate under the illusion that I have nothing to do, learn, or try. I’m a perfectly persuadable zealot waiting for a better argument than, “Fuck you, I know you can’t.”

[951] In The Breeze

I am fucking tired right now, and again find myself writing at work. I’ve been coming to work for 24 days now. In those 24 days, perhaps understood as 6 weeks, I am still not able to access the systems I need in order to do my job. I got 3 clients yesterday, told them I couldn’t do much for them yet, and I’ve otherwise spent a good portion of the day reading Wait But Why articles and shooting the shit. Oh, and I was called into my boss’s office because someone had concerns about how I smelled.

Leaving aside that it’s become excruciatingly clear my whore-baths during negative temperatures with my still-broken unheated home have apparently not been cutting it, today has been otherwise a struggle. Coworkers getting snappy about not following their precise instruction when they haven’t given consistent instruction upon checking against notes. The perpetual half/non-answer to direct questions related to how I get going to, you know, do my job. The people I like are leaving, leaving soon, or flirting with leaving depending on how hot the fire in their burning-down personal life decides to burn.

 

I played a semi-useful trick on myself in calculating how much time I actually need to spend at work verses have time for myself. I came up with 5% of my time. I need to go back and figure out what math I was doing on that as there’s only 168 hours in a week, and 40 of them I’m on the clock. An hour before I’m on the clock I’m waking up, and while I’m much closer to home, I’m not “done” with work until at least an hour after I get back. I’m also drawing from a much smaller pool of hours if sleeping and being awake are qualitatively different. Now you get to about 38% of your time. In that 38%, am I doing anything necessarily that difficult or unfair? I mean, how broad of a lens do you wish to criticize capitalism? But, not really, no.

 

I can’t help but think about how a little poison is still poison. I practically raced into a situation where I was enthusiastic about debating policy and using State-speak because…? I’m dead inside? I’ve rehearsed my lines, so I might as well put on the play? I have my calendar put up next to my desk. Each day I dutifully X out a day. I have my future concert dates written down. I’m psyching myself up to go bowling after work to try and build in more practice and celebration of the things that make me happy. I’m trying to imagine the home improvements I can make and the spending cash for traveling. At some level, it all feels artificial.

 

The counselor I spoke of previously who has a fairly perilous relationship with alcohol and men talked with me today. I probed her on what she really meant by “self-sabotage” when her stories seemed to indicate the only one sabotaging things was her violent ex. She is now “analyzing” the current…fling? after his foray into hacking her phone. She’s experienced changes after her near-death experience to the tune of no longer experiencing anxiety, is proud to live for herself, and yet can’t shake this idea that she will be an agent in her own demise, choosing to find a method of self-harm for reasons she hasn’t quite pinned down.

 

I like to destroy too. I’ll fuck my head and body up drinking occasionally because I meet new people and find a fluidity to my jokes and being that speaks to the point of drinking. I like to drop grenades in relationships that bore or disappoint me. I don’t mean romantically, just your general acquaintance or coworker, maybe fair-enough friend who you don’t want to get the wrong idea about what kind of person you are. I like to take uplifting narratives that drag me through intolerable hours of wasted workdays and describe them as poison. 5%? Who was I trying to kid? When work seeps into your thoughts on days off, or you are desperately running to the bowling alley to wash away the stink that deodorant can’t help, how much of your time is yours?

 

In counseling, we’re constantly on about reframing and rephrasing. Maybe you’re not a “negative person,” as I’ve certainly ruminated on for many years. Maybe being born into a home where drinking at age 9 had an outsized impact on your ability to regulate your emotions. Maybe being molested by the person who adopted you and taught you how to read messed with your concept of trust and how or why to become attached to someone. Maybe, just maybe, you’re a dumb advanced ape who has myriad layers and influences that need at least as much of a lifetime to retrain as we’re prepared to punish indefinitely.

 

Haven’t I hashed my childhood baggage enough? Aren’t I pretty sure I know chaotic attachment patterns that have underwritten my relationships? Why can’t I sit pretty, collect money, regard my privileged place and mind as something to just “be” and shut the fuck up? Why do I need the wonderful chaos of how I’ve chosen to live, the ironic threat to stability, given my persistent desire to own, grow, learn, and create? Is there anything in my life remotely analogous to the trauma I’ve read or listened to from the prison population? Is there anything so glaringly obvious as “you being molested and pumped full of drugs at 11 isn’t your fault” going on in my head or with my life?

 

I don’t think so. I think my problems and complaints are perpetually privileged until I get violently ill or my home blows away hopefully without me in it. And even then, an overriding societal and “positive thinking” notion will kick in and life will dare me not to be thankful I still own the land, I survived the illness, or my mind can be attuned to the methods and means of creating a different kind of life. It feels like a lateral move to play games like that more than some form of earned wisdom or growth. It feels cliché. What if I’m at the bottom of some imperceptible tragedy that isn’t about “won’t,” but “can’t” be made to feel the way I “should” unless certain conditions have been met?

 

I do experience gratitude, but it often resides in a milieu of obscenity. I’m grateful I can be informed someone thinks I smell, and my first thought is to mine jokes and desire just a fucking heads up because I’m not naïve to effects of sweating nor taking it personally. I’m grateful money is on its way. I’m grateful I’m full. I’m grateful I have at least gotten to meet and exchange numbers with some of the people I’m almost positive I’ll never or barely speak to again once they leave. I’m grateful I can write about how ungrateful and exhausted I feel until I discover the faintest motivation to try something in service to feeling better or persuading myself that I can be bothered to show up again tomorrow.

 

I pride myself on incorporating the bad. It is bad. It’s bad to have to bend at the demands of ambivalent capitalism. It’s bad the contortions we get into to maintain the faux civility in service to the haphazard tribes. It’s bad that I can’t confidently say I trust and respect how the people I work with do their jobs despite their overtures to your comfort and assistance to “remove barriers to your success.” They don’t know me. They don’t care about me. They care about retention. Is that okay? Is that unfair? It just is what it is under the conditions we’ve been given. I don’t want to be whatever it is I happen to be under the conditions I’ve been given. I’m not just going to smell and remain content.

[950] Ring My Bell

I pick up the phone.

I think, well, I know, it’s incredibly important to pick up the phone. When I was growing up, and bill collectors were harassing my injured dad for years, I did not pick up the phone. I’m not speaking to being habitual or disingenuous. I’m speaking to being open, available, and accountable. I can be found. I got my first phone at 15, and from that moment for the last 18 years, day or night, if you have my phone number (and pretty much everyone who might read this does or did at one point), I’ve been available.

 

Just in case that wasn’t enough, if the phone was dead, lost, or otherwise not in my possession, I lived and worked in various locations with phones! I was also plugged into social media and have a dozen email addresses. My phone number has been the same my entire life. My oldest email address is still in use. I’m here in the middle of nowhere, and if you happened to search for the business name I came up with my freshman year of college you can find me.

 

We make a choice to call or not to call each other every day. Most of us probably feel like we no longer have much in common or shared history. I figure a good amount of people feel as though they’ve “outgrown” versions of themselves that would have rolled with me or my dreams. With the windows into each other’s lives, we got both the myth that the grass was greener, and the sobering reminders that people are just people doing their thing, be it over there, or next to you, and maybe they can’t “entertain” you anymore than your spouse did the first few years of your marriage.

 

I try hard to interrupt thoughts about “could’ve.” While I think people can express a level of sincerity about their plans or thoughts, I don’t think they know shit lol. I think we all adopt narratives because they’re necessary for survival, then we find ways to make excuses for why our feelings do or don’t conform to them. The “wisdom” one derives from that process is either a measure of what you’ve choked down or the conscious resistance to being dictated by ever-ambivalent or malicious forces.

 

It’s work to find a goal, set it, pursue it, and sacrifice for it. It’s work to discover how it might need to change. It's work to assess the landscape and consider how even your best ideas might no longer fit like they might have yesterday. It’s just work all the way down, all the time, if you’re doing it right. Always be assessing. Even when I’m doing “nothing,” I’m working on the next plan. I’m working my way through my more accessible goals. This is work to figure out what killer line is lying dormant in my head to help me orient how I’m going to go back to work.

 

For the last year or so I’ve been renting space on the land. What you’d think couldn’t be more straightforward “park here, come back and get it when you’re done” has been a saga of poor communication, mud, property damage, and now several hours of pipe-dream wasted conversations. The latest engagement had me on the phone with a couple of guys looking to rent space for storage containers. They move pallets of shit, load the containers, move the containers. I forgot to say “allegedly” because none of this operation I’ve seen, nor am thinking anymore I much wish to be a part of. They, sometimes, answer the phone. I’m doing other things with my life and time.

 

My hedging of opportunities is always at play. I’m not going to dangle at the end of someone’s goodwill or disappear in a cloud of smoke they’ve tried to blow up my ass. It’s the lowest bar I can reasonably expect from someone. Talk. Answer. Don’t fucking lie and waste my time.

 

But that’s not what people are on, so it’s what I always have to be on. This plays out at every level of my life. Who do I hang out with? Byron and Hussain answer their phones. What jobs do I take? The subcontracted company for the prison called me, my supervisor called me, they confirmed interview dates and me getting hired immediately, and got me in a week early when I asked to start sooner. I became someone’s go-to scrapper because, even if I couldn’t do the job, I always answered the phone.

 

I’ve been criticized pretty regularly when I “insist” to be acknowledged. You can feel the tension in conversations or texts that I would dare point out that you didn’t follow through or functionally lied about where you were coming from. It’s my problem either way. Either I wait indefinitely for you to come down from your mountain, or I commit the egregious faux pas of respecting my time and taking my ass and mind to somewhere I can be appreciated or feel like I’m getting somewhere. I can’t win unless I truly own how little I wish to fuck with people who don’t pick up the phone. That ownership struggles against a desire to remain open and accommodating to the same chaotic life that often doesn’t carry out my plans as intended.

 

But then again, in the chaos, I still pick up the phone. I call you back at 5 o’clock when I get back to my car from the prison that doesn’t let me have a phone. Then I tell you my schedule and what days I have off. I give you my work email and office extension. I contextualize it further and make sure you realize I’m running several games at once, and while I’m technically “open” to what we may do together, shit changes quick, so we need to establish a routine, commitment, or pattern of communication that doesn’t sweep away the effort thus far. Almost everyone I talk to is completely full of shit about what they intend to do, either as a function of lazy language, or just because they don’t feel there’s anything riding on being accountable. What makes you or I any different from the worst consequences of that behavior? Are we planning and prioritizing, or being dragged along by the angriest or most chaotic forces?

 

I’m itching and impatient to move on my best day. When I have more money, more opportunities, more pieces working well than I already have, I may be downright tyrannical if I’m too close to the excuses and the nonsense that amounts to the failure of phone answering.

 

I’ve tried to make time the locus of my value system. I want my time. I want to spend my time around the people I care about, on the subjects that keep me interested or might have the greatest impact on society. I want to fill every waking minute of my life plugged into something meaningful. I’ve experimented aggressively with giving my time to things I thought would meet that criterion. When the things get bought, the friends disappear, or the goal achieved, you’re left with your experience of time in any given moment. Is it filled with resentment for old friends? Is it filled with anxiety about things you can’t control? Is it idle and depressing or bored?

 

No. It’s planning. It’s thinking. It’s watching. It’s writing. It’s wishing. It’s moving on to the next person who might pick up and the project that might take off. It’s learned that if everything else fails, the process and patterns remain the same. I’m not addicted to making excuses for how I spend my time or the horrors my phone is going through in looking for a signal. I’m right here, and always have been.

[949] Ratchet As I Wanna

I must be pretty miserable if I’m writing 4 times in 3 days.

I’m realizing the extent of the “value” in my ability to consistently listen and observe. I put value in quotes because it’s a kind of value that doesn’t translate into as much money per hour as a FedEx employee makes. It’s the kind of value that is overflowing with platitudes by people who “can’t imagine” working in the social work fields. It’s a value that slaps you with irony when you realize how little someone you’re speaking to is capable or willing to do for you as you do for others. It’s like a secret you have to keep with yourself. Valuable in a sense that you know it exists, and you watch its power, but you can’t expect it when you need it.

 

The people who most often listen to me complain have learned to mostly wait it out. They’ve known me long enough to anticipate some regular level of anxiety or overwhelming thought pattern, but every year I get older the rants get shorter, the volume decreases, and whatever addled hope which provokes my despair dies atom by atom. People need to talk, right? They need to complain sometimes? “It” all becomes overwhelming or you have a flurry of feelings or things that confuse you that just need to come out in messy and incomplete ways. I think it’s a literal process built into our potential for well-being just like you get actual diarrhea or puke when you need to rush order the expulsion of disease.

 

Any expression of stress or confusion causes a sympathetic response in people who aren’t broken. It doesn’t matter how articulate you might even attempt to be in your expression, if you dare try, you’re basically begging the other person to feel bad, unprompted, uncontrollably, and whether they mean to or not, they’ll lash out. That lashing can take a few typical forms, from personalizing what you’re saying to diminishing. If you’re not aware they respond like this, you and them can get stuck in a resentful spiral of persistent miscommunication. I’m thankful I’ve danced that dance so many times I know when to pull out.

 

In any event, it’s still kind of disheartening. I want to be able to bitch too. I’m actually human. I know this seems hard to believe, but it’s true. I don’t want to be a perfect Zen master navigating an endless array of problems, personal, existential, or external, with a measured series of blogs and dedicated practice. Sometimes I just want to scream, or revel in the misery and hatred for all of the little people and their small lives that manage to have an outsized impact on my brain or weekend occasionally. Is that too much to ask? Is it not fair of me to wish to be received with the benefit of the doubt?

 

I give people credit. I get chastised for giving people credit. It falls to the same kind of “value” game. Do you truly value an individual and their capacity to change? No, truly, do you? If you don’t have a rock-solid conception of where you stand on a question like that, you’re either a decent counselor or you’re handing out paperwork and shooting the shit with a prisoner who will be back within a year of their release. You’re either working with messy, ratchet, families to put together a safety plan, or you’re targeting them for removal because you “already know” who they are from reading a report. You’re shooting first because you value your fear and life over any remote conception of oaths you took.

 

I give people credit, but I don’t trust them. I don’t trust them because I watch what they do with the credit I give. It’s that simple. I don’t trust you to listen to me. I don’t trust you to understand where I’m coming from. I trust you to be all up inside how you feel about things I say more than I ever trust you to read them or interpret them. What would make me think otherwise?

 

A familiar refrain at this point is to point out that you have to look for good things in order to see them. You have to, somehow, use whatever may be wholesome or righteous about someone or thing and use it to placate the negative consequences of their behavior otherwise. I think this is a weak mantra opted into by people completely terrified of speaking towards how far and wide negative consequences go. This is the “good Christian” narrative downplaying child ass rape. This is the “you’ve only one family” narrative that masks the complex machinations of generational abuse. This is every cliché offered to choke down hostile and exploitative work environments.

 

I see plenty of “good” things. [Side note, I happened to hear the argument of the last paragraph neatly following an argument that “good” and “bad” don’t exist, so, you know, take whatever you might from that.] But I do. I’m one who persistently writes about what he is thankful for and what is going right. I frame my shit circumstances in digestible bites and timeframes. I offer myself to initiatives and things I can help or work on. I did so 3 fucking times today! I offered to help these messy pipe-dream guys, and said I’d take on extra work with my guy who’s built things around my house, and tried to reengage the addict who needed his screening. I don’t get to be the guy characterized as constantly wallowing in misery or looking for an excuse to handicap my decision making.

 

It’s just kind of disheartening to consistently be at the end of people’s judgment at what I’m unable to do perfectly at all times. I didn’t handle my girlfriend slitting her wrist in front of me particularly well. I don’t keep my cool when I’m taken for granted and cut off for over a year or yelled at over things so inconsequential, I can’t even remember them. I’m the dick when I want movie theaters to be silent, you to respect my time, rules to apply evenly, or in my desire for an explanation for something that does not make sense save the arbitrary whims of a given power. In broad terms, I want “common sense” and people to “be cool.” I can’t find it, and they aren’t.

 

But forever, if I try to express this in any form but like this, to my 3 followers, I will be met with this gross protest and insistence I’m not being understanding or forgiving or I’m just taking things too seriously. All of a sudden, I’m talking about “you” specifically, and bringing to the surface every insecurity you have about your complicity or, very wrong, assumptions of my opinion of you. I’m either talking past people, or I’m feeding their ego. I have real conversations with like 3-ish people, and not regularly. And I feed that ego so I don’t make a bad or sad day worse. I feed it so I can play a game around a type of connection that doesn’t really exist for me. Not because I don’t want it to, I just don’t know how to be listened to.

[948] The Nightmare's Supposed To End

I’m really rather annoyed. It’s been going on for at least a few days. I know when this happens it’s because a lot of little things all stack up on each other in short succession. I have an approximate idea of what they are, but I haven’t made an exhaustive list yet.

::begin skipping block of bitchfest now::

 

My back is fucked up. Not sure if it’s from sleep weird or if I’ve hurt it some other way. The idea of buying another mattress or rearranging all of my stuff to access one of the 3, also not great, other ones I have sound miserable in turn. My head was hurting. My nose running and throat is dry. It’s still appreciably cold at my house because fate I’m sure has decided I won’t have an adequate heat system until June. All of my plans for having “fun” or otherwise distracting myself from my myriad shitty thoughts have been cancelled, closed without notice, or aren’t open to begin with. My job is starting in on getting to me with all of the indications of shitty leadership, lack of accountability, and ensuring I’ll have to choke down some pathetic and psychosis-inducing set of behaviors in order to cope for the months-long sentence. I didn’t get to pay down the amount of debt I was going to. I didn’t get paid for setting up what sounds like an over-enthusiastic rich kid’s pipe-dream distribution center on the land. I actually made the effort to get to and from work in spite of the storm for another symbolically significant reason for me that will be otherwise wholly ignored an unappreciated. I wasted gas and time gong into town yesterday being unable to coordinate the things I planned to do. I’m unable to get it all done today, and I’ll be waiting around Sunday, maybe, for the next attempt at getting the heat fixed, precluding my willingness or ability to get half of what I might’ve gotten done today had anything ever made sense for me over the last few weeks. I’m staring down sitting here, cold, watching TV, until Friday, where a very on-a-whim concert is scheduled for a band I’m about as familiar with as any one-hit wonder from the 90s. I don’t have my tools for doing a few things around the house. My tooth is chipped slightly. I’m worried I’ll lose my eyebrow piercing after losing the ball which required buying more shit from Amazon and a need to send half of it back after I figure out what gauge the thing is. I’m tired of TV. It’s too cold to play instruments, which my throat and body being what they are wouldn’t prove great for anyway. I haven’t been able to get my fucking bowling ball drilled after 3 weeks of lies about when the pro shop would be open. The guy who reached out to me about getting screened for probation cancelled. The dead cat I found just felt disconcerting. I’ve come close to getting stuck in my yard 3 times because I had to park the dumbass renter’s motorhome at the top of my driveway. The scam of credentials and how to obtain them is becoming ever-more obnoxious. All of the people I talk to with any regularity seem overwhelmed or cagey. My cats tricked me into thinking they could just sit next to each other for longer than 10 minutes without fighting for no reason.

 

I’m fed. My stuff is still here. I don’t have to look for a new job yet. The truck still runs.

 

When this kind of disparity in my thoughts starts to take root, I begin to feel like every worst thing about me. I want to cause trouble for people I don’t like. I want to feel a righteous surge of satisfaction of demonstrating what kind of power I retain precisely in the moment the world would otherwise try to render me helpless. So much of the bullshit in my life is the end result of negligence, dishonesty, or ambivalence, and in the face of that you can go limp and “accept” the things you can’t change, or you can attack and continually remind yourself just how much change you’re capable of at any moment. That’s the temptation and another source of stress just sitting there idling and waiting to actually move.

[947] Hills To Die On

It happens fast, but not too fast.

I made it 13 days. I got to day 13 of a new job before I emailed regarding policy and practices. I got to 13 days before I “complained” that something didn’t seem right to me about what I was told or what I’ve experienced vs what is written down. Now, I’ve started my “incident tracker” of all of the disconcerting things of my work environment and keeping my records for the things people will lie to me, but worse, lie to themselves about.

 

It started with inclement weather yesterday. Any reasonable person in authority should have told people to stay home. They did not. I challenged their lack of proactive responsible engagement. Today, it’s being told, after weeks of it not being an issue or even mentioned, to take out my eyebrow piercing before entering the prison. I read the rules, and I’ve counted half a dozen violations that have been ongoing for a year or more from the staff currently employed. I want the same privileges they have, not least of which because it’s a pain in the ass to remove my piercing and get it back in.

 

I consider things like this worthwhile hills to die on. Why? I’m speaking to a fundamental truth about fairness. I’m speaking to what it means to be reasonable. I’m desiring a world that has grown up about what constitutes “professional.” I’m aware of explicit violations of policy that don’t seem to bother anyone akin to the one I seek. But, most importantly, I think when you allow yourself to repeat nonsense like “I encourage you to go back and read the policy” after I’ve told you I have, quoted it and shared it, and denoted the arbitrary enforcement, you’re telling me as explicitly as polite bureaucratic nonsense allows, to go fuck myself.

 

I have a problem with this, because when I play by your rules, you don’t wish to engage. When I try to speak plainly about the absurdity or arbitrariness, you try to punish me, and if I just shut up, I start to eat a hole in my chest and obsessively think about how fucked up it is I must bother with your type of entity or person at all. This gets in the way of me doing work, feeling well, or otherwise engaging in life. As you can see, I’m writing again. That’s not happening because I’m merely processing, accepting, or moving on from something that has exhausted all the words I might have to say about it.

 

Really think about this as it pertains to your own life. You’re always making a choice. You’re choosing to remain silent and keep the checks rolling. You’re choosing to not politely, but firmly, and consistently, engage in finding the person or the language to challenge the shitty power structures that be. I’ve so built it into my ethics as a person, that I feel obligated, mostly because literally no one around me is ever the squeaky wheel. It matters. You become a function of the arbitrariness of “the world” or the ambivalence of those in power. Then what? You see the shitty consequences as they play out across our culture and time. To me, it’s a direct fucking line.

 

It's important when you engage in this kind of cage rattling that you’re clear about outcomes. Could they fire me for being politely annoying and inquisitive? Sure. Everywhere is “at-will” employment these days because, we’ve literally built a lack of accountability into our social working fabric. Do I give a fuck? Not enough. Nor do I feel it is that big of a risk. I’m scrapping off a few layers of respect-for-myself skin in getting a job altogether. When I leave, it will be in service to healing, not in lamentation for the paychecks that never were.

 

For me, for always, it’s about bringing attention and awareness to things no one wishes to think about or speak to. I actively suffer perceived injustices. I think you do too no matter how unwilling you are to speak to them. If I should suffer, particularly unreasonably, so should you. The magic of being adult and thoughtful individuals is that across so many domains, we really don’t have to suffer. It’s a choice. I, in spite every common notion of what you should or shouldn’t be speaking to, will make you speak to that choice explicitly, or I will maintain a level of considerably less agreeableness. This isn’t a game, a distraction, or me pathologically looking for dumb fights. This is about living within principle and practicing what is best.

 

I don’t think things change unless you feel the pain and the consequences. You can, of course, be so psychologically broken that any degree of pain just makes you break down further. I’m not willing to treat people tasked with building up and embodying pro-social and accountable ideals, for inmates no less, as feeble minded and unduly put upon in my insistence they engage. That’s a privilege, to ignore things, which you have not earned from me, particularly if you’re going to deem yourself capable of designating how I conduct my life or appearance.

 

So I’m going to keep writing emails, keep asking questions, and keep looking for the next person to annoy until you look the other way, or tell me explicitly what kind of intractable cunt you’re willing to be about nothing, for nothing, and just because you can. That’s all I want. Own it. Like a monkey flinging shit in your face, I can make you own it. Then I can go back to giggling to myself and sniffing my fingers. There’s no law against it, right?

[946] On Coming To Work In The Snow

There’s a storm a’brewin’.

This week has seen most of my coworkers circling around a foregone conclusion. They weren’t coming to work. If (x) number of inches of snow hits, if the roads are too bad, or if they feel like going in the hole for PTO that will have to be paid back, they aren’t coming. Some handed out homework to inmates in advance, almost positive if they weren’t going to be here today, they wouldn’t be here Friday either. Some cited their distance to work and general inability to drive very slowly for what would be well over an hour. Some were content to eat up their time off. Most telling to me, they all wanted to know what *you* were doing, including my direct boss.

 

We look for license. We want to be part of the group. This is nothing new, special, or confusing. I refrained from placing myself into an expectation of not making it in. I didn’t want the license or forgone conclusion of it all. I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life. I’ve driven in every kind of snowy conditions available. I know the difference between iced-over and sliding uncontrollably, and driving between 20-30 mph in the tire tracks wherever they may lie.

 

In a world that made sense, when every single one of your coworkers has the same instinct, reasonably or otherwise, to not risk the drive, your company wouldn’t force you to gamble with your time off, money, or safety. The State emailed their policies and guidelines for inclement weather, so did the parent company Centurion, and so did my subcontracted company RepuCare. No one simply stated, “It’s going to be bad, just stay home, you won’t be penalized.” The same form of tomfoolery and gamble was made regarding Covid. Many found out weeks after they came to work anyway, they could have had paid time-off while they were sick. Now it applies retroactively, because prevention and safety are the afterthought, not the rule.

 

You might recall, I work on spite. No one can make it? I can. But also, I feel like I’m resisting the nature of several bad games at once. Do I wish to be safe? Sure. Are any of us ever, really? Not in my experience. What do I gain by playing along with even the ancillary presumption? Do I want to engage in a conversation about “going in the hole” and paying back time I took off? That feels gross and insulting. Do I ignore what I’ve learned about snowy conditions and driving, just this once, because we’re all in on the “let’s take off” joke? What else am I doing with my time? Before pausing to write this, I’ve been watching CEUs.

 

I really don’t like groupthink, not least of which because it seems to only work when it portends lazy and excuse-ridden ends. We don’t all get to collectively think about actual safety and prevention, we get to collaborate and lean into our apologetic reasoning precisely when it feels like we’ll be able to get away with something. We’re not going to get organized and start to think about how we might shape the organization we work for to let us off nicely for the snowstorm. We’d rather practice the easy and self-sabotaging narratives.

 

I’m not looking for you to give me license to care about myself or the things I do. That’s an extremely important distinction for me. I don’t really care what everyone else is doing. Everyone else seems to fuck themselves, fuck me, or otherwise handicap who they could or should be as a matter of routine. There’s an, not weird to me, argument for getting stuck in the snow as a visceral analogy for the ambivalence displayed by my “leadership.” It’s easy to shift the blame at that point, and even more illustrative of the propensities I despise. “Why didn’t you just stay home?” No, why didn’t you exercise your power to make staying home the most reasonable and easy thing to do? Let me choose to stay home and maintain the meager amount I’m squeezing from your cultural exploitation of me. At least now, I get to own the nature of my “Fuck you, I know the score.”

 

So I’m at work, watching trainings on addiction and trauma. I’m trying to get my hours in for higher-order certifications. I’m learning of the amazing people with incredibly long outlooks and deep clinical experience. I’m seeing people who have accountability and statistical evidence built into their bones and practice. I’m watching the heroes who don’t get signs planted outside of their offices nor shout-outs on the news. I’m seeing who I should be more like, even if the topic of being deeply involved in peoples’ lives for decades isn’t precisely where my interest or motivation lies. I’m working out a way to incorporate their lessons and my knowledge and ability into something that lends itself to the overall health and stability of society. To that end, I see a direct line from disassociating from toe-in-ground wishy-washy posturing and my capacity to make forthright and bold assessments of how I manifest my larger project. I wouldn’t be here, reflecting. I wouldn’t have a few more hours under my belt. I’d be home, watching TV, cold, thinking about how much I don’t like the penalty for doing so.

 

Okay, the more concise less abstract portion is over. Now I’ll try to tie it into my other recent experiences and conversations.

 

One of my coworkers, unprompted, asked me “theoretically” what I thought if I had a friend who told me a guy she was seeing hacked her phone to find out what she was lying to him about. I told her what the 16 year old version of me would have said, “Bitch, that shit’s crazy. What the fuck? You need to run. Totally uncool. Fuck that guy, awkward ass controlling ass behaviors. Shit ain’t gonna stop there.” I also told her what the current counselor would tell her. “That’s an incredible violation of trust and boundaries, and while I don’t know the particulars of how you’re balancing that kind of behavior with what you perceive otherwise that you’re getting out of the relationship, it’s a major concern for me, and both in my experience and from what I’ve learned reading, it seems unlikely it’ll be an isolated event or not escalate into more controlling behaviors.”

 

She’s also a counselor. She’s in therapy. She relayed that her therapist has told her she’s never been in a healthy relationship, and has told her many, if not all, of the sentiments I expressed about her current enthrallment. Other details include, he’s married, her coping skill is drinking, and she is confident were she to break things off, she would have to find another job, because she could not handle seeing him every day.

 

I don’t tell you about her because I’m trying to be judgmental or shitty. She’s relevant because in the span of 15 minutes, she invited a stranger into her life’s baggage who told her things she both knows already or has heard a dozen times before, and she demonstrated, quite explicitly, the same kind of downplaying, excuse-ridden, avoidance patterns that underpin the “lesser offense” in the dance to get out of coming to work.

 

She used broad language. “He checks all the boxes.” Okay, what are those boxes? “We fuck and have intellectual conversations.” Okay, so he checks two boxes. Anything else? A move back to broad language. “He’s just someone it feels good to be around, I don’t have anyone else like that.” So he checks a companionship box as well? Is he the only person you can fuck? “Psh, no.” Do you have anyone else you can speak intelligently with? “No, well, yeah, but not that I’m also fucking.” Do you have general supports in your life, friends or family? “Sure.” So he checks boxes that aren’t so unique, falls well within patterns of unhealthy relationships of the past, and you already know what you should do, but… Eventually, as I kept returning to the idea that she needed to unpack her word choices and get very specific as to what she means regarding who she cares about and what “trust” or “love” were going to mean in practical application, she said, “I don’t wanna do all that work.”

 

Exactly. I know you don’t. Very few people wish to do the work. There are many reasons for this, not least of which they don’t understand, or feel as deeply, the consequences of doing the work. They prioritize how they feel, who’s giving license, where the next excuse lies, before they even consider the overall or long-term impact. It’s not a factual calculation. She feels a familiar gratification or guilt or undue confidence to pick dramatic and feebly expository language in service to his poor behavior and her lack of accountability. I don’t care how good you are at exploring your bad relationship, we’re prone to do this, root for those we care about, and subsume the best practice to the narrative. I’d never have been in any relationships if I leaned into my perception of my exes and their personal issues or dissatisfaction with me. People deserve you at least trying, right?

 

Just like you can’t “save” an inmate or your partner, you can’t save your coworkers either. All I can do is hold the value of open and honest communication high in my mind, and practice how I engage in it as often as the opportunity presents itself. I worry about the holistic example she is setting for other people. I worry about her and how she’s otherwise coping with things in her life. I worry about how prevalent the controlling abusive archetypal man is given this kind of license to never face consequences and enlist those he terrorizes into doing so much work in service to his bullshit.

 

So much hides in the loose language. If you can’t clean up and explicate your language, you’re subject to all the forces wholly ambivalent to how they play out in your life. “Love” in a lazy way, blink and you’ll find abuse. Heard it all before? You’ll start to forget how to listen and turn information into a tool you can use. If you can’t own how fragile, self-destructive, and otherwise ignorant and afraid you are, they win, by default. That’s what it is to exist. Get there first before you start building a personal bible with endless dictums converging on what you’ll give up to a god in lieu of taking responsibility for.

 

I remember that disconnect. I didn’t have a concept of “personal responsibility.” Things just happened to me, and I suffered them. I suffered beatings from my mom for “bad behavior.” I suffered the oppressive directives of institutional environments. I suffered my poorly understood feelings any time I was surprised or backed into proverbial corner. I was a walking ball of pain with months-long headaches, endless anxiety and stomach butterflies, and a form of know-it-allism that kept me stressed and charged to argue way more than listen. 

 

This is the only thing I’ve ever found that helped. Writing. Trying to take loose words and turn them into specific action. Do I ever “hate my job?” I hate poor leadership, a lack of accountability, and watching demonstrable preventable harm happen as a result. Do I rush to tell you how much I “love” you? I prefer if you can experience my concepts of “commitment” and “honesty” and “working together” and if “love” spills out of my sense that we share those values, I won’t fight back too hard. Do I want to do all this work? Yes. When I started? No. I called myself names. It was messy large blocks of text sewn together with dramatic angsty feeling.

 

I had to learn how to give myself permission to do and view the work of better understanding myself. I don’t stop at, “I’ve heard that before.” I’m not ashamed of the aspects of my lived experience because I know they share universal themes. I’ve “sat” in the pain and confusion and disappointment and shattered expectations for so long, I just reside there. I’ve incorporated the depths of the pain into, if nothing else, the action step of exploring it. I know I’m going to die, and everything I care about will as well. I know pain isn’t temporary, but I also know it’s naively understood. I know it’s impossible for me to find the balance and deliberate choices to make without owning the worst consequences or a willingness to look at what happened when I didn’t feel I had the power to do something differently.

 

We’re all responsible for each other and create endless ripples through our personal lives, institutions, and world at large. If you don’t want to take responsibility for that, perhaps better said, if you don’t care that the consequences of eschewing that are coming regardless, to me, it’s a kind of self-righteous suicide. I don’t really want to talk to the person unwilling to do the work. I’m extremely suspicious they’re as proud of themselves and their intransigence as they put on as well. It only works if you work it, and you’re not powerless over your addiction to self-serving denial-ridden lazy bullshit. It’s about asking yourself what your responsibility is in any moment, and then feeling that responsibility move you through the world. You’ll never feel it if you don’t ask, and you’ll never know what the “right” thing to do is no matter how often you profess otherwise. I certainly won’t trust you, as my concept of “trust” isn’t predicated on how good or bad I feel fucking and talking to you. I know my role in life before I get too bogged down in the consequences of my role as “counselor” or “employee.” 

 

I show up for myself, because I’m responsible for everything I touch or wish to be apart of in the future. It doesn’t always feel good, in fact rarely does it feel good, but the alternative is much worse.