It was a small shift, but it happened and it didn’t feel good. For most of the day, I’ve been pretty content to shift things about in my house, clean up a bit, and think about how I will go about my work day tomorrow. My shows have been running for the last few hours. I’m full. I’m not precisely sleepy. It’s not terribly late. As the next show, Atlanta, began, I immediately did not want to go to work tomorrow. My heart of hearts sprang its “ugly” head.
I’ve also been thinking about my new friend/ex-coworker who I got to hang out with last night. She’s been in the process of unpacking her previous relationships and how they mirror things about her current (seemingly former as of today) situation. He’s about as cliché an insecure controlling hypocrite as any entitled 15-year-old who happens to be 45 and married. She has spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out why he has had the impact on her life and feelings as he had. The logic for having nothing to do with him was in perpetual conflict with how she felt, and how she felt was a complicated series of layers developed over years.
According to her, I’ve been instrumental in helping coax along the decision to finally break things off with him. She said she owed me, to which I assured her all I need is for her to keep being her and stay safe, as she was echoing so many sentiments I’ve heard from the battered-wives-club even if he kept the battering to the emotional type thus far. She’s a great example of someone who has every capacity to do the harrowing work of digging through their mind and building that complicated puzzle, but can astutely also testify to the difficulty and sometimes unwillingness or lack of desire to do so.
I think about my role in the conversations. Unconditional positive regard comes to mind. I don’t talk shit about nor feel negatively towards her for making what might seem like incredibly short-sided or exacerbating moves. I just kept asking questions and for her to define down the rationale behind those moves. I show up when asked to hang out and respond to texts. I played out vocally what my process would be were I writing the blog given the information at hand if it was my life. I apparently frequently echoed her therapist or other people she’s chosen to share with.
I do want to think I’m good at helping coax that process along, but I overwhelmingly believe in people doing their own work. Part of my willingness to buy-in to her process is that I recognized it. I trusted she had one, and I wouldn’t just be spinning my wheels with someone motivated to waste time and self-destruct wish as many people as she could bring down with her. What about people not like that? Is there a way to turn people out who discover a process in spite of themselves? What if the whole notion of “fixing” something about how you speak or think is as foreign to you as another language and cultural norms?
What does this have to do with not wanting to go to work? I’m running a constant informal experiment where I’m seeking a qualitative answer to the questions above while under extreme duress or limitations. I tell my guys all the time, if they learn a coping skill or get into a reflective meditative or writing habit in prison, they learned that shit on “hard mode,” so getting out things should be much easier. If you can meditate in prison, you can do it in a shed or in your car. If you can contend with the cultural norms and keep yourself out of conduct-threatening situations, you can walk away from a fight or difficult person on the street.
But, just like for them, prison is not necessarily the environment to thrive. You can do good things. You can be a genuine help and example. You’re still a cog in several complicated layers of entrenched systematic injustice and norms that, I don’t care how common the cliché is, you don’t fix from the inside. I practice the pieces of what I wish to be in my culture-shaping or culture-attacking system while I’m embedded in them, but I’m not naïve to the extent that they get knee-capped by business as usual and norms I’m financially obligated to uphold.
So with the weight of the world questions about what kind of challenges I need to be taking on swirling in my subconscious, praise for (the acknowledgement alone feels good) a capacity for helping organize the fog of disordered relationship thoughts, and fresh memories of the kind of “freedom” and fun I like to engage in as though they are removed from otherwise responsibilities and contexts, boom, a “fuck work” pang of doubt about the purpose and utility of my being there.
I’m almost certain I’m about to start going door-to-door advertising “consulting” and counseling for $20/hour. It’s less than I make at the prison, but if I just took this - ICK - “gift,” so-named by the neighbor who’s dog we helped retrieve and went on the road like the unlicensed Dr. Phil, Tony Robbins, or these “facilitators” constantly advertised to me on Instagram, maybe I cut out my own little "influencer" space. I have no desire to pretend to be a therapist, but I do want to reach as many people as possible with the tools that have helped me. I’m like a fucking infomercial for the scatter-brained notion of compiling philosophy and lectures into writing with a sprinkle of addiction counseling and hard-won life experience at some of the highest levels of power. Cops can shoot you, but DCS can destroy your family for generations.
I have a kind of psychological habit, I like think it’s wisdom, of downplaying what I might have. If I don’t respect the test to get the certification, why should I be proud of the certification? I consider both my degree and my CADAC II kind-of jokes. I’m not good at talking to people because I know how to answer test questions or memorize a series of facts. I share a title with a messy bitch who thinks I need to write an essay to tell her, “Fuck you.” And the higher up the ladder you go with the letters after your name, you find people in ever-increasing silos of pretension and strange relationships to power and control.
What do I really want? I want to stay up late and binge the 30-odd hours of TV I’ve stockpiled over the last couple weeks. I want considerably more money for doing what I keep seeming to discover I’m good at, but can’t capitalize on in “official” or “respectable” ways to the extent I would like. Do I need a contract or partnership with someone “established” to talk to people? No. I need to nut up and introduce myself to my clientele who don’t yet know I exist. I need to personalize a practice of behavior that I can scale and partner with those who are willing to do the work.
This feels like classic overthinking arresting my otherwise usual gung-ho to jump into the roundabout means by which I get what I want. At the same time, I do worry, given the nature of the industry and task, that I’ll end up running afoul of some of the same powers that have locked me out of certain spaces already. There’s a bit of an awkward conversation in walking the “traveling counselor” line who ensures he reminds you he is not a therapist. The easiest out I have for that discomfort I don’t even want to use. I have my degree, I am state certified, I am an official counselor. I have more than enough “regular” status or power indicators to move in considerably more directions than I feel like I am currently.
I guess I kind of want both. I don’t respect Dr. Phil, I got bored with Tony Robbins in my teens, and whatever you want to say about these Instagram people, I’ve never felt a desire to watch their whole commercial. I like school and knowing shit. I wouldn’t be against getting more licenses and degrees, I just won’t do so if it means debt. I don’t want to come off as someone lazy or cheap providing the back-alley abortion version of a private practice or poor-man’s Tony Robbins. But I really, really want more money and I do seem to help people.
I don’t things to get out of hand. Maybe I find enough vulnerable, but paying, people, and the floor starts to shift on me. I technically have independent accountability at the prison, but in practical terms, you have to maintain your own standards. Maybe that’s where the conflict arises. I’ve psychologically rooted in a “standard” above my current “official” station. I respect doctors and therapists for as many as I can’t stand and absolutely don’t trust. I didn’t start typing in my credentials on my reports until the CADAC II was official. It matters to people reading it. I worry about all of the other things they’ll be reading in me going about my business differently.
I think a lot of it boils down to me not wanting to look or feel foolish and desperate. I’ll talk to a friend indefinitely until they reach a better place, but you’re high if you don’t think I’d love to be paid for it by people I’m not friendly with. I spent a lot of time getting good at DCS. That shit is valuable information that no one is sharing. Is it “dirty” to capitalize on people who are otherwise desperate to understand how to navigate that system? I want to do it for free, but, I don’t. I want the whole system to be under my attack, and I need money and the information I have getting out there in order for that to happen.
Can I say I’m living my values if I’m not experimenting more and iterating upon reaching sudden doubts and pauses when I think about how I’m occupying my time? I’m a “Do everything, do it now, do it anyway” kind of mother fucker. Who am I waiting for? Who’s going to give me permission? Am I just going to all of a sudden start giving too much a fuck what people think? Now? ::tongue deeply entrenched in cheek:: On the precipice of greatness!?
I’m not trying hard enough. The stakes are considerably higher in people’s lives than my vague and remote embarrassment about the lack of letters after my name. A socially-imposed embarrassment that no less conflicts with my very real respect for smart and motivated people who manage to achieve them. I think you can do both. I think you can be useful in the realms generally set aside for egg-heads pretending their capacity for doing homework is tantamount to competence in people engagement. I think I can stay in my lane, and will be talking about what that lane looks like well before some dramatic clash or decline.
I need to stop waiting for something to happen. I start the party, mingle, put the pieces together, build and refine. I create and do shit. That’s all my pitch needs to be for people struggling to do the same.
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