[962] Own It - Again

There’s a dozen ways this could start. I’ll just speak to the first thing on my mind.

My neighbor told me he’s not crazy about me finding more pallets to bring to the land. “They don’t have the best curb appeal.” He also reflexively blamed me for a nail he found in the tires he bought because he saw me hauling things in the bed of my truck. He also told me about a plan for $50 a month rock plan that’s less robust and considerably more money than the $200 my other neighbor asked for. I really just wanted to come inside and go to bed. I moved to the middle of fucking nowhere so I could play with pallets and be left the fuck alone. If I wanted a discussion about curb appeal, I wouldn’t be looking at the series of broken vehicles and half-stripped RVs across the street, or the abandoned bus, or various array of animals and odds and ends my fucking neighbor has dashed about his property and RV.

A few things have been weird about today. There’s this incredibly enthusiastic prisoner who has created a lot of programs and holds his own classes. He talks and talks and talks. He has found his calling, and runs it ragged. He likes to compliment and try to reinforce people in their good habits. He’s also…you know, kind of a dumb prisoner who thought citing evolution as something to question was speaking to having a wise and individuated mind.

He, not half implored me, to consider continuing to work in the prison when I mentioned I will probably be moving on to somewhere I might do more of the job than navigate the broken personalities of the staff. He said something to the effect of, “If it’s your goal to touch and affect change in people, you’re never going to find a population more ready to do so than prison.” Little does he know, that’s not really my goal.

I feel like I’ve spoken to this before, but listening to him go on and on about the big wide world of possibility makes the insular and selfish part of me really want to shine. I want money. I want time. I want independence and self-determination. I will not suffer any and all stupidity or injustice just so I can [incoming social work cliché] “plant a seed” that grows into a healthier individual. I don’t mind helping people. I do get some kind of positive feeling in watching people grow and get a better grasp of themselves. But that feeling is not why I do anything.

I do things because I hate. I do things out of spite. I do things because I am my own worst enemy and challenge and if I don’t push against something I conceive of or deem worthy, I’d just sit here watching TV indefinitely. I get more gratification taking an aptitude test that tells me I scored in the 95th percentile and should be considered for the job of lawyer, analyst, or CEO than I do most anything else. I like screaming from the rooftops the idea that I both deserve more responsibility, but when given the keys won’t do shit like buy fucking Twitter.

And I don’t feel bad about that. In recovery, we’re always telling people to put themselves first. They have to be in charge of their recovery. You can’t do it for your kids or wife. You have to do it for you. I do shit for me. I’ll find better jobs for me. I’ll find a new battle for me. I’ll write the narrative that explains each step I’m taking and why. I’m not getting carried away on the hopes and dreams of the gang-affiliated maybe white-ish-supremacist persuasive talker who also happens to empower a lot of other inmates. I would employ him though, because that mother fucker does get shit done.

My “power,” or whatever you may conceive of it comes from owning my shit. My shit behavior, my goals and dreams, and my aberrantly whorish intent. I feel good about how mean I am. I want to tell the dumb junkie coworker cunt, “See you on my caseload!” on my last day so she knows what I think about her battle to find this job and stability after her struggle with addiction. It doesn’t matter, actually, if I’m smart or decent looking. It doesn’t matter how many things I own. It doesn’t matter how well I perform at a job or how many friends I do or don’t have. What matters is I own it all, good or bad, the display of cards as they’ve fallen.

I know if and when I’m prepared to do the work to change things. I own that capacity. I know you have to practice the directions you want to go. I want to continue in the direction of owning my own business. I want to continue on the pursuit of more of my time. I want to keep playing with whatever wood I find and put it wherever I deem suitable.

My capacity for insanely selfish behavior isn’t this thing that’s just constantly running into every layer of my interactions. It feels as though that’s precisely what I’m navigating from others though. Why am I a good listener? Because you’re always fucking talking. Why am I content to do my own thing and take whatever I can cut out? Because I can barely convince people to acknowledge they have their own things they want or wish to do, let alone to do them. The only time people have a strong opinion they’ll even pretend to fight for is when it’s in opposition to whatever the fuck it is you plan to do.

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It’s the next day and I’ve made a run to pick up some of the free pallets. One of my new trailer tires was flat. I still managed to get there, get them back to my house and unloaded without much issues. I’ve picked 4 ticks off of me, at one point was covered in ants, and I haven’t eaten yet today. I haven’t eaten since last night, and most of that was puked up last night because even a little drinking and then excessive head-banging and moshing means significantly worse stomach than I anticipated.

A few lines have been ringing in my head. “If you don’t have the time to do it right, when are you going to have the time to do it over?” With regard to the things out here on the land, I never have the time. I will never, without an insane amount of money, have the time to digest the career’s-long information that goes into building things amazingly well. I won’t have the time to take classes. I won’t have the time to watch dozens of YouTube videos that are only nominally relevant to what I need. I won’t have the time to sit and talk with my neighbors about their opinions about how I should have done it.

I’m not trying to do it over; I’m trying to do it different. Different looks different. Different feels different. Different is asking a different question and presenting an answer you haven’t heard before.

Also ringing, my neighbor made it a point to tell me how much he was cursing me for having things in the back of my truck, intent that it was me who let the nails loose on the road. He then went on to offer the “advice” that I get a small loan to get the kind of privacy fence I’m wanting. His wife came out briefly to get something from the car, and their tone of voice towards each other suggested to me his opinions had little to do with me. And for the record, I never offer words, to any of my neighbors, about what they are or aren’t doing on their land, even when his dogs are shitting all over mine. It’s something my fence will eventually address.

I consider a certain aesthetic a degree of heightened privilege. I consider it almost excessive. I already live in a somewhat regal manner the broader you conceive of humanity. It is so much money for things to be “pretty” or “proper.” It might cost me $200 in gas in all of the back and forth to get these pallets. It will save me thousands in the equivalent amount of wood. It’ll be hours and experimenting and sweating to turn them into anything remotely useful. It’s already a workout. It’ll be a learning experience. It will be an exercise in creativity. It will be a sustainable practice. It will be a litany of things that aren’t the baggage of “a small loan” to get a fence. The decadence that bemoans an aesthetic is a naïve and pathetic state of mind. Feel free to create and buy nice and pretty things. Keep your fucking attitude about it away from me.

While it might not sound like it, I’m in a pretty great and comfortable place. I’ve been seeing some amazing shows, found a new great burger place, and should likely get this job where I’ll still only work 4 days a week with 2 of them at home. I’m playing my guitar a little more, I’m getting back into the swing of salvaging things as the weather improves. My debt is “good” or “inevitable” debt like car fixes, taxes, and food way more than indulgences and I’m still perpetually 3-4 paychecks away from it being settled up again. These rolfing appointments have been an absolute dream loosening me up. I’m walking better and my posture is correcting. I’ve gotten over my initial enthusiasm bump at the idea of new girl to hang with, so I can stay mellow with banter without my brain acting like things are more complicated. We’re still pushing to be in business for ourselves. I’m bowling every weekend. Like, the next time you hear me complain too sincerely, I’ll be in a particularly bad mood.

[961] Inadequate

I’m obligated to speak to an incident I encountered on the dorm. One of my clients, steaming, comes up to me with a writing assignment in hand. He tells me that he’s not trying to be all aggressive, but that he wants a new counselor, and it’s all explained in the writing. I probe for more. According to him, when I asked a question during class and began soliciting answers, he was under the impression I was laughing at him with whatever he said. This had him fuming for the better part of at least a day, venting to others on the dorm, until he could finally confront me. We talked, things mellowed, he left with about the same tension-ridden suspicious glance as he has had since joining programming.

Now, of course I’m not laughing at my guys for any reason than when they are doing or saying something meant to be funny. I’m not ridiculing steps you’re taking to stay sober or improve your life. This is just a kind of “duh” thing. I didn’t even recall the moment in the group conversation he was talking about. As counselor, I didn’t even tell him, “You know, I wasn’t laughing at you.” I did the political thing and apologized if I came across some kind of way I absolutely didn’t intend. As he explained several times over, it became clearer that he did not like being challenged on whatever his answer to my question was.

 

We talk a lot about emotional regulation and awareness. My guys aren’t habitual “think it through” types. This isn’t because they are incapable or don’t want to, but it’s not what they’ve practiced. They have entire worlds of language and behaviors that don’t comport with ways we definitely take for granted. This gentleman, without irony, said, “Some of us just are able to let things go, just because you don’t operate that way doesn’t give you license to just laugh at our answers.” I did not find his capacity for letting things go convincing. I spoke to the difficulty many people in programming, let alone prison in general, have in identifying and resolving hurt feelings.

 

Whether or not they are willing to speak to it, prisoners, no matter the life they’ve led before becoming incarcerated, tend to feel very small, very dumb, and like the world does not give a fuck about them. Often enough, many are pretty goddamn dumb and they hold incredibly immature or underdeveloped brains in their skulls. I don’t think I’d have to spend too much time trying to persuade you how little you or anyone you know thinks about the welfare of the incarcerated unless you’re black. What do I feel my responsibility is to people in that position who say something like, “I just let it go?” I challenge them to get more specific.

 

I don’t really let things go. I don’t honestly know what that means. If all I had was my own impression of “let it go,” I’d still be curious what you were talking about. I have the added insight of hearing dozens of non-answers to important questions on the regular. I know when you’re trying to run and hide. I know that you’re feeling dumb and ashamed. I know that part of the reason you get in trouble is an unwillingness or inability to simply accept all that you, in fact, have in no way let go by any measurable assessment. To the extent any given topic shows up less often in my writing is how you might figure I’ve “let something go.” Does that mean I’ve stopped ruminating on the nature of friendships, communication, “love,” my mom, family, work, land goals, or any seemingly lost to time conversation or thought? Let’s call in another, “Duh, no.”

 

I suppose given that this is the second time in less than a month that someone has telegraphed their “I feel small around you” insecurity, combined with my recent observations of crowds at concerts, the word “inadequacy” really started to shine in my consciousness. I rarely see anyone go out to eat or go to a concert alone. As I look at the people or if I happen to overhear a conversation, my prevailing thought is how I’d rather be alone than with whomever I’m looking at or listening to. I…never? I don’t think I ever have the thought that goes, “Oh, they look like they could be a friend” or “I want to talk to that person.”

 

I should clarify too, this is entirely different from “reading people” and getting drunk and navigating body language and facial expressions in order to make a friendly interjection into their night. I can certainly identify people who are going to be more or less amenable to that kind of behavior, drunk or sober, but the inclination to do so goes to zero sober.

 

Perhaps I give off an incredibly strong, “You’re not my type” vibe. And, frankly, you probably aren’t. I’ve been talking to myself more lately about how…by myself…I often am. I have friends. I go do things with them, but there’s a disconnect. It might be better understood as there’s particular lanes my friendships seem to fit. I’m either working with you, I’m your “novelty,” or I’m something you’re oddly trying to mollify, particularly if the thing that’s wrong with our dynamic is a lack of honesty and communication.

 

Working backwards, the idea that I need to be appeased or pacified I think speaks to the fallibility of people pleasers more than it testifies to my general irritability. I’m not looking for people to make my problems go away or care for me, but I am looking for people with a certain kind of attitude and insistence when it comes to addressing their own. If you don’t have that, when I do complain about something, your worst instinct kicks in, anxiety rises, and I turn into something to resent. If you’re not the people pleaser type and just don’t really care to address things, you start turning into the thing I resent.

 

Me being a novelty is so routine I’m curious why I haven’t spoken particularly in depth about it before. Somehow, every time, in every work environment or when I meet the most obnoxious or “out-there” person, I habitually manage to out “What the fuck did you say?” them. I take the joke several steps too far. I bring in a left-field example. I use a word that gives pause. I say something I find innocuous about my life that seems wholly incongruous to your truly poor read of me or what I’m about. I can say just consistently enough fun and flirty things via text or chat for ages. I’m constantly making myself laugh with goofy shit that comes to mind, and when I can pair it or interject it into our dynamic, a lot of times you’re laughing too.

 

I’ve considered my strongest friendships the ones in which we’ve worked or are working on something. It doesn’t even necessarily have to succeed, but that we’re both there discussing the details and moving in some kind of shared direction is what I was after. It would help explain why I managed to romanticize the college group. We did a lot of shit together, at least, for me compared to anyone else I did things with. I found it immensely gratifying to find myself on the same page, even if it proved superficial, when it came to parties or games or trips.

 

I suppose when I think of my relationships like this, it really highlights the idea that people aren’t generally cool or close with me because of “me” or “who I am.” They don’t really care what I have to say more than how what I said makes them feel. Or if what I said gives them license to condemn or gossip or otherwise fantasize about what I “really” meant. I don’t think this habit of how we might interact really has anything to do with me either. I think we land socially about where we are psychologically or what we think we deserve.

 

The closest kind of person I think that matches me psychologically is either older women or the quasi-pathological when it comes to their work. While there are plenty of those types around, it doesn’t mean you’re destined to be friends or occupying similar circles of interest. Hussain is a workhorse. Hatsam matched every minute of energy I put towards the coffee shop. Allie built the garden. I just had an exhausting conversation with an older woman workhorse who’s grasp of the various fields and sub-fields as it pertained to social work and connections therein might actually help us break through into some vein of self-operating.

 

Are we otherwise “inadequate” to each other? I think of my less-involved connections. I had people from work who would go bowling. I’m almost certain if I don’t send the invitation text, they’re not going to be the ones reaching out to start back up. Did we enjoy each other’s company? There were plenty of laughs, but I suspect my novelty wears thin. Maybe I consider the number of girls I’ve disappointed by not being husband material. Why, if I’m not good for a long-term commitment (read: pageantry of marriage) or a baby and willingness to endure any job that keeps up with the Jones’s, what good am I?

 

I can’t tell you how frustrating it has seemed to make exes when I tell them I just want them to be them and around. Oof, what a fucking asshole I am! What does that even mean!? Where do I get off pretending that I have no expectations for them or am not directing my critical ire onto their being? They’re looking to be defined, be dependent variables. Their boyfriend needs to reflect upon them something they aren’t otherwise feeling about themselves. You can’t just be cool with me! I’m a piece of shit!

 

I don’t know that I feel inadequate about nearly anything anymore. I have the power to eat better and get in shape if I think I’m getting too fat or find myself embarrassed I’m breathing too hard. I know it’s disinterest or mental fatigue that keeps me from diving right back into being a nerd reciting details about whatever topic. I wish I could find someone doing counseling that had a trick or skill I could steal or learn from, but the constant feedback I get is that I’m the one doing it better or the best; and I’m perfectly willing to consider the sources of each of those assessments. I don’t feel great about not having a master’s degree or license, but it’s not inadequacy, more like a frustration with the injustice and absurdity for the cost and indifference to the practical reality upon obtaining them.

 

I think most people know what they’re suffering or running from. If I’ve been in a thousand conversations about living off-grid or sustainability, I’m the only one I’m aware of who went for it, finding speckles of help here and there. If I tell you about some business idea I have, I start it, even if it’s always messy and confusing and if for no other reason than I sit primed with the cocked weapon to employ once the fog of what I don’t know is lifted. I ask the talented and knowledgeable inmates in guitar class to teach me what I don’t know.

 

I’ve been curious why “radical acceptance” has been such a reverberating catchphrase in my head, and now I might know why. It’s, somehow, radical to acknowledge reality. Because we’re constitutive of our environments, psychological, social, and biological, to hold an endless list of contradictory information or competing notions in a deadlocked war with any of those levels appears nearly impossible. Pretend you’re an addict whose whole family is as well. They love you. They’ve supported you. They are your ticket back to prison and a whole host of other horrible consequences for other people in your life. It’s pretty radical to accept their love and all the steps you have to take to perhaps rarely if ever engage with them while they are in active addiction and your true goal is to stay sober.

 

I “radically” embraced the hundred things I didn’t know about converting sheds into living spaces, ticks, driving, learning about country folk, huge projects with scant budgets and tools it would take years to save up for. I accept my “alone” or “outsider” status while fluidly joining you for dinner or pursuing new friendships where I might serve as fun or interesting in proportion to them as they do me. Writing, examining, and keeping open questions about how to think about myself or my life circumstances isn’t “that was the best concert ever!” when I do something entertaining or Insta-worthy. It was probably a good show, and the musicians were talented, and by the end I was just as happy to not have to stand any longer as I was when they played the one song I knew. And that’s okay.

 

I also understand that where I am is always falling short of the idyllic picture I had in my head. I literally only measured success as a child by my acquisition of a big TV, so that concept had to be retired. I still dream about a big house and sustainable experiments in different locations. And I can say at least I have the tools, land, and time spent getting a grasp on how to go about doing so. I’m still living in the dream. Whether I’ll ever find people who feel adequate enough with themselves to play with me, I don’t know. I also don’t have to find them to keep being radical in accepting my desires and obligations.

[960] Function Over Form

I just built a little thing. It’s not pretty. I barely measured it. I didn’t take my time, snugly align the pieces, nor pretty it up in any way. On top of it now sits one of my, incredibly heavy, TVs. It doesn’t wobble, bend, or creak. It’s serving its purposes, which included giving me something “productive” to do, lifting my TV high enough to see better and allow for the space below to be freer, showing me just how bad I am likely to be at cutting angles I want slotted together, saving my overworked computer monitor stands, and giving me a chance to test the saw I wish to sell, but hadn’t put through any amount of wood-cutting. In the clean-up, I as well went after kitty litter and hair. It’s now serving as the inspiration for kicking off whatever comes of this writing.

I analogize often. The physical reality of my living environment really hammers it home. Function over form. I want the thing to work. I want it to serve its purpose even if it’s “weird,” or “wrong,” or “why did you do it like that?” When I can get something to work, the vague-enough “problem” I have snaps into focus in its resolution. Perhaps 12 things at once are now better, and I was only consciously able to list 6 of the most obvious.

I got sucked into looking through old friends’ pictures earlier. These social media sites won’t let anything die. When I consider those relationships in the context of function over form, they make a lot more sense. How many “close” bonds was I trying to form? Given that it’s many years later that it dawns on me to ask the question, probably not many. What did the group function as? Entertainment, companionship, laughs, fooling around, and help. I was just remarking about how I envisioned my space of the future being occupied by more than me and the cats, but do I want to fill it with people like the ones I rolled with in college?

Over time, I’ve insisted I make the extra mistake of being the one to reach out first. I’ve done this with dozens of friends. If I get a response at all, and it’s not openly hostile, it’s much later than in any timeframe that we could have organized a time to meet up, or it’s a kind of piddling, “Per the rumors and group disposition you weren’t informed of, I don’t know that I can really fuck with you,” kind of thing. I’m not complaining, this is the observation. Especially with time, that “thing” that you’re supposed to have in common with people you’re allegedly close to, becomes incredibly hard to define or recognize. It has me severely second-guessing the nature of comradery or connection altogether pretty habitually.

It’s not like it should be a surprise either. People fall out of deep and passionate love for partners who gave them children. You get old and sick or whatever mental health issue that’s gone unaddressed since childhood starts to take over. A lot of us only recently found out how Nazi Germany could really be a thing. Outside of the pathological unifiers in physiology, with each person being a world unto themselves, it really does seem like there is considerably more that divides us than unites us. I find myself struggling to connect some of my highest aspirations and ideals to the people who’ve supported me the most. What kind of hubris or naivety would make me believe an acquaintance, perhaps colloquially referred to as “friend,” is sharing in…me?

This is kind of coming to a head after some conversations with my buddy’s sister. On paper, her ex-husband literally checked boxes she had created for the type of guy she wanted. Well, he lied. He’s got some deep issues he’s not demonstrating a great capacity for proactively engaging or sounding remotely accountable towards. She’s divorced, he rarely sees the kid, and now my buddy and I’s experience at DCS is hopefully funneling through into a brilliant custody agreement. What was she supposed to do? She actually did the work and sought out who could fill in the blanks. It wasn’t gut. It wasn’t overwhelming limerence. But fooled by the lie, here we are, me, her, and her brother taking the child to the children’s museum this past weekend.

She was asking me what I wanted in a girl. Taking my initial answer as too vague, I described for her the things I wished I had in the relationships that weren’t there. Open and honest communication would be stellar. Someone who felt remotely secure and self-confident in who they were. Someone who could express gratitude for some of the million little things that go right each day. It’s not that my relationships were devoid of these, but they weren’t front and center. They were hinted at or thrown out like a desperate defensive shield when challenged.

That’s a lot of my friendships too. Hints, pictures, superficialities, but shit was always bubbling. There was always something left unsaid or that kind of befuddled condescending look Jake George would give like I didn’t understand the irony of something I said or have the lived experience to contribute. There was the on-paper story of number of parties attended, hours spent, outings enjoyed, shots toasted, and jokes told. But there was a lie at the center, and now I’m a single cat dad lol.

And that’s okay, but probably at least a little sad, no? Each person using the dynamic for their own function, be it the companionship, distraction, or stroking of their incensed ego boner. Some of the people still show up in each other’s pictures of course, years apart, all presumably living their best Insta-lives, gaining higher-order roles or taking further and more expensive trips. There are more than a few babies starting to float around. But is there a lie somewhere in the heart of it all? Or did it just reside in me and I managed just fine in cutting myself out and isolating my cancerous influence?

The operative, “If you meet an asshole once, they were probably an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole, you’re the asshole,” comes to mind. But I didn’t consider any of them assholes lol. I still don’t, incredibly shit rumors and posture towards me notwithstanding. That’s the thing. If anything, I got all romantic and very dream-like in what I envisioned the future would be. My first indication that I don’t need drugs to be fucking irrationally high. My strategy for combating irrational guilt kicks in. Whatever happened, is that what I wanted or intended? No. Fuck no. And the complicated ongoing self-discussion and examination or feelings associated maybe kinda sorta suggests that I actually gave a shit.

A lot of my clients have done incredibly shitty things, from killing people to…well killing people is pretty high up there, even if it was accidental. The seas of guilt and shame they swim in are crippling. Most often, they did whatever they did while high or drunk, or really really high and/or drunk. The locus of their betrayal and irrational disregard of consequences in service to their hijacked survival mechanisms can readily be blamed on their addiction, conveniently or otherwise believed. What’s any one of our excuses for being a bad friend or betraying a budding notion of family? Are we just heedlessly trudging along with our general conditioning and abuses ever ambivalent?

What do you want in a friend? Them just to be there regardless of the tangible impact on your life? What do you want in a partner? Someone pretty enough to not fuck up your child’s looks and irrationally committed enough to their job to ensure you’ll garner child support no matter what? My buddy’s sister suggested that in my initial vague answers that I hadn’t thought hard enough about what my standards were. My standard is at once so incredibly low, but seemingly impossible to locate. I want someone that functions lol. I’ve relaxed my ideas about looks somewhat. I don’t require someone to know me inside and out and go Dutch on every meal. I don’t need you to be “passionate” about anything, from politics to the environment. I just want to trust that you’re going to function as a decent trying-to-be-better you. But like, who the fuck are you? Are you building little things to testify to an approximation of you like me? Are you working on something that means anything to you?

That’s how I tricked myself with Allie. She’s an incredibly hard worker. That passes an instinctual vibe check well before icing on a cake regularly glazed. (That was subtle, right?) Open and honest communication? Well, maybe, here and there, but when I pull the emails, the thing that blew up a year later was a thing that wasn’t worked on or fixed in month, if not week, one. I can trust that there’s a 100’ x 100’ garden outside. I can’t trust she has a handle on when she tells me she’s going to work on something emotionally or practically helpful conversationally. Oops.

What about with Kristen? Talk about my rose-colored glasses there. I don’t blame her for the things she struggled with, and I certainly had less of the tools or language than I do now to perhaps better approach those things, but the number of things left unsaid over the course of 5 years was vast. The nature of her “experiment” with me was not introduced into the conversation until years after we split lol. Steev before her had similar mental health struggles and we were so cavalier or evolved as to have literally planned our break-up date. I can’t say I have a strong sense of what was going on with that dynamic.

Again, what do I want? I want someone more interested in the work that functions more than the form their story takes. I don’t need a wedding let alone the photos. I don’t need a deep bench of pretty-enough posturing about the sacredness of the pageantry. I don’t need to be told constantly how good I look or special I am or resented when I have more on my mind than desperately searching for when I can work in those affirmations for you. I just want to be recognized. I’d like for the incredible amount of time I’ve spent and work I’ve done and reflection I’ve engaged in to register as something worth sticking to. I don’t want to feel like I’m perpetually failing to live up to the arbitrary dictates of ill-considered lies.

I just want a friend.

[959] By Way Of Analogy

If my last blog I was looking for a problem, I think maybe now it’s sinking in what I might’ve been looking for.

It’s hard not to be in a kind of perpetual reflection when you’re working in a prison. Everything you say is being scrutinized for a measure of authenticity or weakness. There’s nothing else to do but be sucked into the immediacy of the collectively present and overbearing circumstance. You’re caged, told what to do, unequal, and there’s rules that don’t just catch up to you, but can come crashing down in riot gear and bullets if you’re having a particularly bad day.

My role is absolutely fascinating. I’m new dad. I’m older brother. I’m non-judgmental uncle. I’m the closest thing to a therapist or encouraging voice some of these dudes have ever had. And I’m in another system almost perfectly designed to snuff out the memory, let alone responsibility, of that role. Like every single social work job I find, the people running it don’t actually give a shit. They have money to make. They have bills to pay. They rose to the middle of fill-in-your-bureaucracy and don’t intend to learn your name anymore than they believe you should concern yourself much with your once-a-week out-patient clients.

Worse than the harm from simple negligence and selfishness is the stupidity. You couldn’t ask for the worst people to be put in charge of “training.” You couldn’t design a more perfectly convoluted series of questions and non-answers to get even the smallest things done. I don’t know if stupid is large enough of a concept for it to bear the cross of what is so routine and ubiquitous. I don’t know how many long-term employees you have to lose each month before the clue finds its way to changing how you operate.

I’m attempting to model behavior. I don’t struggle with goal-setting. I don’t wake up every day with an excuse for not getting to work on time. I don’t need to drill in a habit of making my bed because my ability to focus and achieve is not predicated on building my esteem with small wins and new-daddy over my shoulder making sure I don’t get too impulsive. I haven’t cancelled a single class. I haven’t missed a day of work. I haven’t been late with notes or treatment plans or just threw up my arms and said I was too “out of it” to do stand-to on my dorm day.

Who’s borrowing from my example? Not various-levels-of-burnt coworkers. There’s always going to be a group of people, no matter the setting, that are going to “get it” in a way others won’t. Is that anything to do with me? Or do I get to pawn off my larger responsibility to the statistics? I can tell you a thousand times I can see the focus, determination, read the testimony, bask in the class engagement, but what if the snobby pork rind C/O is right and it’s all a song and dance?

It puts a searchlight on what my larger targets and goals have been all along. I’m not about fixing a shitty subcontracted company’s posture towards its employees. I want to take on Indiana. I want to fundamentally shift your concept of the State, and what its alleged powers and presumptions are. I have a considerably better shot at that by making a lot of money than I do writing a brilliant letter of discontent with coworker signatures.

But we’re getting too big and broad. My day-to-day issue isn’t that I’m not a heavy political animal. My issue is that things don’t work and the ones who could fix them won’t. I’m exceptionally good at many things I do in work settings. You take 5 days? I take 20 minutes. You write 2 lines? I submit a paragraph of analysis. You cancel class? I add 1 more, put together discussion topics for one you abandoned, and start eyeballing a complete overhaul to how we employ this whole group system to begin with. But, like everywhere else I’ve worked, that doesn’t matter. It’s not recognized and respected and enabled.

So I do what? Repeat what I hear a dozen times a day from coworkers, “It is what it is?” Pretend like I’m not gutted when I make continual outsized efforts to actually “meet expectations” that are ever-shifting and I was never really taught in the first place? Act polite when I’m told I have to attend a “mandatory” interruption of my day for some pageantry or meeting that has absolutely nothing to do with me?

I know why life sucks. I know why every single one of my guys drinks, shoots up, inhales, or otherwise tries to ignore and shove down the waterfall of shit that I feel I bathe in when I subject myself to these environments. Of course, you should fuck off and get high when literally nothing you do matters. Now, I’m lucky, I get plenty of smoke blown up my ass about the impact I’m having, so I can easily dismiss the catastrophizing notion. Them, though? Who cares about them? Not Indiana. Not The D.O.C. Not people I talk to when I bring up what I do in conversation. How would they be able to recognize it even if you do care? How can I expect them to recognize something I can’t from those mouthing words allegedly concerned about my well-being?

So what do we have to “radically accept?” Seems like such a cop out. “You’re fucked! Deal with it! Ha!” Like it’s “radical” the idea people are pussies and overwhelmed. I practically live to deny shit you might tell me to accept. I could quit and try to do a drug study and be out of debt in two weeks. I’m every day massaging the idea of lasting right up to the end of the highlighted calendar pages. I have to accept that if I believe the world to be genuinely small, and if I’ve done as much work as I have to recognize the things I think we all need to survive and live well, then I’m actually able to squeeze a fair amount of good out of otherwise abject shit, even if it does basically nothing for me at the deepest levels.

Am I broken? I can get a little misty reading these guys’ stories. I can get very enthused when someone writes down what feels like a great phrase or breakthrough, but I don’t ride those kinds of highs. Those are their wins. Nietzsche didn’t clap for me. Helping people is not my drug. I want to destroy. I want to attack. I want to flaunt and celebrate the power that overcomes what feels insurmountable for its lack of definition. I think the same reason helping people does nothing for me is why I haven’t been interested in having kids. I’m a cheerleader, sure, but I want to recognize the same fire in you that I have, not spend my life trying to persuade you not to be a fuck up.

I got guitars donated. Whether they’ll be approved or handled in time for class tomorrow, I don’t know. It took me 2 months, but I accomplished, somewhat, a goal to improve one of the classes that was on the verge of being abandoned. Go me. If I have nothing else, I get to listen to this absolute beast of a guitar player and singer in the advanced class. I get to worm my way into the heads of the people who’ve been watching me to see if I was full of shit about getting more guitars. Fuck the doubters, of course I got more guitars. That’s the whole fucking point of everything.

[958] Itsy Bitsy Spider

Hello darkness, my old friend.

Starting is the easy part. Keeping it going is an entirely different beast.

I saw, live, an embodiment of greatness, not for the first time, but definitely on a level that one should process several times over. Combine the magic of music, the talent or intelligence, and extravagant settings and history, and you can connote the sacredness of a moment in space. Is a world-class violinist Christ-like in his excellence? Or in his modesty? Can the music be so perfect as to lull you to sleep?

The word on my mind for months as been “goal.” I’m constantly asking my guys about their goals. I’m not feeling anxious, precisely, about my ability to pursue or achieve mine, but they feel…waffly. Oddly enough, one of my standing goals, to watch ALL TV, has struggled to serve its space-filler goal posture, and I’ve been approximately 20 hours behind for weeks. It’s almost like the stories are heavier in their predictability or cliché when they’ve certainly been just as predictable and cliché as they’ve always been.

I’ve been talking so much about the weeks or months I need to keep my job. It’s practice to not let burnout creep in. It’s constantly trying to remind myself I’m doing easy work, more efficiently than I could be otherwise, getting paid more than I ever have, and I’m aggressively building in points of joy to occupy my mind so the prison walls don’t close in. Now, after a major “indulgence,” which I genuinely conceive as a form of healthcare, I need to work my job for another 3 months. That statement doesn’t fill me with dread, which is a start, but my real goals have nothing to do with maintaining normal employment.

We’re begging the question of what strides I have or haven’t made in service to the out-patient clinic. Well, dear reader, I feel like I’m doing nothing. I run right up against the problem of not wanting to work after work. I fill my long-weekends with activities. A lot of the out-of-my-control practical realities still exist when it comes to business hours and response times. I’m not convinced I won’t still be going door-to-door soon, but I can’t shake the sketchy baggage I feel that would carry. I probably need to just take a few hours, join some online advertising/counseling practices, and engage in text/telehealth, but for some damn reason, it does not feel like a drive to get it done.

Why? At the end, what do I get? More money sounds nice, but at the rate I’m making negotiations with my billables, there’s little reason to believe it’ll be more than I’m making now for quite some time without referrals or dedicated cases. Freedom? I kind of have a fair amount of freedom as it is, and if I get more, it’ll take considerably more money than I have now to optimize it. I would likely be investing a lot of time in the effort to make an income stream “passive.” As well the people and places I’ve reached out to for help kind of showed a test-run for how involved and otherwise busy their lives are as well. Are we prepared to go it alone quasi-indefinitely? It’s not getting us very far in this moment.

I have achieved so much of what I’ve wanted. I’m now drifting into spaces like expensive cologne buying and making a, relatively, small investment in my overall health. I’m so comfortable save my manufactured debt crisis and pithy externalities of bureaucracy and weather. I’m warm. I’m full. I have so much stuff. I have dozens of plans and projects. I have friends. Is that all well and good enough?

I miss thinking of myself as a partner or like I was helping and supporting someone else. It’s not “I want a girlfriend.” It’s that I know the difference between what it feels like to do things for myself and do them for others, especially if I care about them. It’s not that I don’t like helping my guys, but they’re not really my guys, are they? They’re my responsibility, my obligation, but just like every single person who blew smoke up my ass about my efficacy at the methadone clinic, ain’t no one reaching out.

This friend who I only ever very sporadically speak to, and it’s not always clear to me what we’re talking about, said it seemed like it would be a “chore” for me to download shows for her. Like, no, I’m hungry for something like that. I want to help. It’s literally one of my largest preoccupations. You’d be doing me a favor if you needed to see a movie or show. Let me spend a few hours showing you ways to torrent that won’t get your internet cutoff or you catching fines. On my dating profile it says I’m perpetually wanting to please and working on that.

It’s not that my goals are too easy. I don’t have a version of what I need to accomplish that amounts to, “brush teeth, show up, don’t punch supervisor.” So much of my orientation, even projects on the land, were situated around trying to make Allie more comfortable. I’ll shit in a bag and compost or burn it. You want a whole septic system and water upgrades? Okay, let’s hunt for IBC tanks, budget for pumps, spend hours researching, and then…break up shortly after. One more in-progress thing for the board.

Maybe I mean something different now when I talk of “taking over the world” than I have in the past. There was more of a Billions character in my initial utterances. Rich guy doing whatever a rich guy does. Now, I’d like to conceive of myself as a constitutive part to many movements. What if there really is some direct correlation to the amount of good I can squeeze out of a prison environment and my long-term stability or happiness? I do, genuinely, think everything is connected. I don’t dare say I have an appreciation or knowledge of precisely how. If my guys, on average, don’t come back to prison at the same rate under other counselors, we’re still going to be a species of flirty fascists and hate crimes.

There seems to be this disconnect between my power and what it gives me. I want, I’m pretty sure, all the time in the world to fuck off and do my own thing. I want to take a dozen music lessons a week. I want to marathon a show, and then all the shows. I want to travel because I can afford it or more likely because you like to and I want to enable you. I want to have a business that takes the values I’m teaching in class and counseling, and puts them into firehose mode. And yet, still, now 33, all I can do is kind of limp along at either job, new business endeavor that never quite catches, or sketchy-adjacent land project that the wind literally blows over?

A goal is to find better questions. I don’t even know that I expect anything of myself beyond continuing to show up to work. In a different era, in a different person, that would be fair-enough, no? Keep the bills paid, drink a beer, shut up. Find you one of them low self-esteem women who won’t leave you, and cherish your TV time.

I’m just gonna bide my time, keep being a good counselor, get these guitars donated, and keep tracking whether or not I’m on some kind of brink that pretends I have really any fucks for whether or not I keep this or any job for longer than I can stand. I figure shit out, tend to get what I want, and maybe I just don’t want much beyond this level of indulgence, narrative, and effort. I’m just looking for a problem to push against and not finding it. I’d kill to be a fleeing Ukrainian right now.

[957] Hammer Meets Nail

I don’t so much feel like I have a “problem,” per se, as much as I don’t know how to think about the situation. I made a friend. It’s with the, former, coworker I’ve spoken about before who right after we met almost immediately launched into a discussion about her unhealthy and controlling relationship with a married coworker in another department. The conversation kept going, she ended things with the guy, we’ve pretty consistently texted and hung out a few times. She struggles with boundaries, allowing herself time to sit with and process her emotions, and flirts with self-destructive behavior. She’s in recovery for alcohol. We use the term “red flags” a lot, and the kinds she has recognized about her former relationships that she’s committed to no longer ignoring.

We’re both flirts. We’re both funny. You know, it’s a pretty natural like recognizing like kind of connection. Me, though, very cognizant of my ability to attract people with a certain kind of damage, doesn’t want to threaten what could be a long-term friendship with whatever you want to call how my more intimate patterns play out. The ongoing “joke” of our dynamic is that I’m her “not-therapist,” and I’m perfectly willing to maintain a kind of boundary that keeps things at a distance, friendly, and conversational. She’s conveyed her enthusiasm for making out and cuddling. We’ve done neither, but don’t you know, kissing isn’t technically making out. And if I happen to stay too late and feel drowsy, she’s offered I can crash on the couch.

I tend to lean into things that make me happy. I like to share my enthusiasm and tell people if they make me laugh or smile. I have a pretty strong sense of where I am “emotionally,” meaning, when she said, “You can’t fall in love with me,” I struggle not to laugh. Anyone who’s willing to dive into my history knows the thousand hours I’ve abstracted out my concept of “love,” and it’s not going to be some quick and easy elevation or running away of my emotions in movie or novel fashion. I do feel comfortable being “in like” though. I can be bubbly and want to talk and spend as much time just in the presence of those I enjoy as I can get. I’ll never forget Judd Apatow talking about just going to people’s houses he liked, interviewing them, and just staying there well past whatever his subject might have believed about common decorum in how long people hang out.

I could take a “realist” or “pessimistic” or “matter-of-fact” analysis of the situation. What are you doing fucking around with another addict? Why bother developing any kind of relationship, fun-enough or preoccupying as it may be, with someone you know fairly intimately has not had a history of healthy relationships? You’re not even trying to say something bad about her, you’re just relaying what she’s explicitly told you. If you do like her and care about her well-being, are you willing to deal with how you might feel if she hurts herself? You’ve slapped an ex for doing as much. You’ve experienced the slow degradation of your previous relationship where coping with feelings or effectively communicating boundaries never found solid ground. Why do anything but pursue a kind of here-and-there play and mild distraction?

First, writing that just makes me feel very cold, dishonest, and empty. Not dishonest in that any of it isn’t true or is missing something vital, but dishonest for how I wish to view people, myself, or my relationships. I don’t think people are whatever they struggle with anymore than I’m just the shittiest things about me. I want more and new friends. I want their histories and perspectives and I want to broaden my ability to incorporate different dynamics so I’m not so overtly concerned with the minutia of any given one. It’s so easy for me to get in my head and overcomplicate things. I can either desperately search for more people willing to ignore that about me, or I can practice not overthinking and making that their problem.

I struggle with shutting up. I want to know. I want to talk. I want to express. I could allow myself the peace of mind, but it’s gonna start with shutting up. I need to embody that as an active practice more than me feeling like I’m not doing “something” from that vague compulsive place to “do.”

Okay, simple enough. What about my role as “not-therapist” or “friend” with good “boundaries?” Would I not enjoy the simplicity of that distance and being of a certain utility? Sure. Would I like to have an eventual make-out or cuddle buddy? Duh. I’m pretty touchy and affectionate. I enjoy companionship or fooling around. It’s not the driving force. But I think I need to pick a primary hat, and just kinda be happy if anything else accompanies it. My persistent stated goal and desire has been to be a friend. That’s easier to define and feel confident in being when someone is reaching out or sharing with you. In the meantime, little enthusiastic flirt over here just needs to slow down.

I can freely share if she comes to mind for some reason. I can say hi or ask about her day. I can decide I’ve been thinking too much about whether or not to text and just not text. Like I tell my guys, I know that’s probably the best course of action because it’s hard to do. I’m only feeding my anxiety about connection or friendship maintenance otherwise.

It's like, automatically, my body experiences a kind of loss or mourning with that “professional distance” and designated behavior. I’m thinking about how many former friends I just don’t talk to or who stopped responding. It’s pretty clear why I would maintain a strong desire to talk or share my appreciation for their existence and how it makes me feel. Hell, in that it makes me feel *anything* at all is a feat, and always has been. What’s a rephrasing of the same idea? In that I allow myself any emotion beyond guarded skepticism or default mild-dissatisfaction, to me, says something about you at least as much as it does about me.

That’s not to say most people aren’t “good” or “acceptable” or “decent” etc. But it does mean while there are plenty of agreeable, likeable, funny, hard-working, or otherwise friendly people I’ve encountered through work or counseling, there’s almost never an inclination to make that interaction any deeper than the obscene jokes or cordial sharing of stories or moods. I’ve never felt a genuine desire to threaten my job by reaching out to a client outside of work. I’m rarely anticipating my weekend plans well enough to invite or incorporate what is often someone at a considerably different place or stage in their life. Bowling together can be fun, or grabbing wings can prompt some enjoyable conversation, but it only goes so far.

I tell my guys to prepare for what happens when whatever they’re earnestly feeling doesn’t work out or get respected nor reciprocated. A lot of them have done considerably worse things to people over many years than turn those people into blogs or invite discussions on difficult topics. Ironically, I bet those people still want to believe in their addicted loved one in a way that I’m lucky my life isn’t completely devoid of, but has not been the rule. I think I’ve built a physical environment suggesting strongly my preparedness for many proverbial notions of isolation, but I did always envision whatever space I occupied to be kind of like my party house with people in and out all the time. I’m clearly still missing something.