[972] Just Watch

I can’t help but feel as though something is still missing.

I say “still,” because over the last few weeks, I’ve found a high degree of comprehensive flow and achievement of my goals in relatively quick succession.

I’ve played my guitar long enough to hint at my peak capacity.
I’ve started building an area that is larger than my main house and bathroom combined.
I’ve hung out with friends at the Moose Lodge, bowling, and for food.
I’ve bowled almost every weekend reaching scores that suggest improvement.
I’ve salvaged about half of the pallets.
I’ve been super caught up on shows.
I’ve started using more of my woodworking equipment.
I’ve read a book from a manga series I’ve been wishing to for quite some time.
We’ve got the application submitted to potentially be a disability provider.
I’ve spoken with someone who is reaching out about ways in which we might be able to partner with an existing counseling operation, and had some networking conversations with a few local people.
I’ve seen a couple good movies, comedians, and have concerts almost every week through October.
I’ve had absolutely amazing and painful rolfing sessions that have dramatically improved my posture, circulation, and flexibility.
I’m still full, still healthy, and still 3 to 4 months of perpetually away from being out of debt.

So much of it is to do with me though, doesn’t it? That’s not like “bad,” but there’s nothing new or exciting about how I stay preoccupied. I don’t have to learn anything, help anyone, or feel anything but whether or not it’s time to screw in another beam or switch on another show. None of the above, save the potential in the networking conversations, speaks to the largest goals and direction, and that hasn’t happened because of my effort or ability, but because my friends reached out to both me and their friends.

I haven’t noticed that before, but it might speak to this unease. This thing about “connection” and “ongoing conversations” and just showing up and being present is the only track that has me visualizing a kind of light at the end of the endless tunnel. It’s not hard. That’s the constantly striking thing. It’s not hard if you talk, share, connect, and then show up and do.

I’ve also been watching Louis Theroux documentaries throughout the day. He talks to everyone, but mostly those in worlds with particular controversy or stigma. I didn’t need to watch the ones on poverty or drug use. Those were my clients. I could hear the bullshit miles away. I registered the catchphrases and felt the naivety in his questioning. Sometimes, though, someone would state things plainly like, “The pain of the lifestyle isn’t as bad as the pain of whatever drove them there.” For all of the drama or culturally degrading lore about addiction, it’s just a heightened story of whether or not you choose to engage with the requisite level of pain.

It hurts to learn things, but it’s nothing like a pain of not knowing and being at the whims of things you don’t understand. I was willing to change how I understood myself, and my perspective on the power of words, when the pain of thinking things were up to some deity or fate drove me mad. It hurts to be out in the sun building things, but paying 5 times the amount for the same amount of space hurts too. Getting my muscles worked to death has hurt in new and exciting ways, but cramps and chronic headaches are worse. It really sucks to feel a certain kind of perpetual isolation, but staying silent and pretending I’m not witness to so much bullshit is a kind of self-destruction I can’t stomach.

I’m missing a culture that vibes and speaks like me. I’m told “the majority” has the vast majority of my values. Apparently, this stops at the moment I suggest we literally kill the literal fascists. What do we make of those other values? My instinct is to blurt out “feckless,” for what is a value you can’t celebrate nor defend?

If nothing else, I believe in trying. That’s something that can operate as a “belief,” because you still have to do something with your trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something, if we take the Google definition. Another goes, “An acceptance that something is true or that something exists.” Perfect. I accept there is trying and that it can be truly demonstrated.

I don’t give a lot of people credit that they’re trying, not because they don’t feel like they’re trying, but because they don’t admit what they’re trying to do. They’re often trying to gaslight and lie about me lol. But that’s a little too easy to recognize because, well, the words are often written down and can be reviewed when the volume of feelings have been turned down. They’re trying to convince themselves that playing guitar, and building rooms, and taking trips, and being fed and entertained, and looking socially acceptable and relevant, and finding a happy place in hobbies is the point. It’s not. The more I merely indulge in said activities, the more the hole opens up.

The point is to push, challenge, own, incorporate, and protect. The point is to raise the fucking child. Whether it’s the one in you, or the ones you’ve started spitting out. You know the areas you can work more on. You know the injustices in your field. You recognize when you’re not being accountable to the responsibilities on offer, or if they don’t live up to what you can and should be responsible for. Can you genuinely tell me you wouldn’t be ashamed of me if I chose to return to Kroger and stock shelves for a living? It’s not about the job or denigrating the work, but what kind of bullshit would I be on to shirk what I’m capable of?

I’ve never needed more indulgence, I’ve needed a few righteous stabs at the dragon plaguing our culture. More than the recognition that this is the immutable overarching goal, I’d like to hear how you sort and work the details of killing our mutual problem. In the meantime, the school shootings and lack of healthcare and general exhaustion and disillusionment are literally killing us. Are you talking about your breakfast? Your magic spells and convoluted impractical theories? Or do you have a goddamn idea how to sharpen a blade?

If you don’t, can you recognize you don’t? Can you talk about it? Can you explain why you’ve never felt the need to learn how? Can all you do is listen to others sharpening theirs and point out the sound of the “screeeeeeeed” they are indulging in like so many public masturbaters?

[971] You Big Fat Phony

I’m a little annoyed that I feel I have to write right now as I’m a hot second from heading outside to build some walls. I subscribe to the subreddit “askwomenover30.” I came across a post that extracted a title from a 5-page PEW article on dating. It briefly describes how a majority of single women have pulled out of the endeavor for the first time since they started recording such data. The comment I left, which garnered 22 downvotes, is as follows:

“I think a lot of men have lost the thread of what it means to be both a man and in a partnership. As I read through some of these top comments I'm just generally embarrassed that these have been your experiences. Men have gotten scarier? Maybe I just live around a weird area, but I can't really tell the difference between the men and women as I'm walking down the street. I don't know if that's scary or trendy or what.

I've never been a "dater," per se. It's either been straight to the drunken fooling around or mixing with friends until something longer-term kinda spills out. The idea that there's a litany of people who just exhaust you to the point that you hold your errands up as something "better" or "more productive" to do is a travesty. There's a meek and mild level that empathizes (I'm in social work), but at the same time, I feel like the drive and motivation I have in being with someone I can do things for/with is a different kind of energy. This, provided you differentiate it from codependency and insecurity of course.

Like, I definitely think the culture has shifted into a "softer" or "whinier" or awkward and "entitled" kind of space. I do think men of a certain age probably struggle more than they should with not being aggressively sexually inappropriate. But I also think the conversation has moved away from discussing how and why we partner up or what the expectations are.

You want to be left alone to do your own thing in a way a 1950s housewife wouldn't dream of? Tell the people you date. You have a boundary a "typical man" is "unbelievable" in his willingness to cross it? Make yourself as explicit as humanly possible if only to save yourself time if not disappointment. I've spoken to thousands of people who do a really really bad job of honestly relaying their wants and needs if they can genuinely define them at all. Combine that with the myopic isolating influence of the internet, it's hard to say how deep the real person is really buried.

It can be a little too easy to pillory a given sex. I don't write off the women I meet for their mental health concerns, anxiety, children, or thickness, even if that's the vast majority of who presents as available. I like the person who highlighted the lack of social skills. That makes sense to me more than "men are x y z." I also don't think a dating app is wise enough to factor in the ways and reasons people get together. Women sexually select for the species. They didn't do so by swiping away all the unsolicited dicks, but in that the means exists, we just carry on like it's the normal or appropriate app to use.

I don't know (wo)man, I'm a dude who's been in 3 longish (1-5 years) relationships, 2 ending because we were young, and 1 over unyielding anxiety turning every interaction into an opportunity for resentment. Anymore, I just ask that whomever I try to partner with be "cool." Can you just be honest? Can you not scream at me? Can you be remotely in shape? Cus I've got a fat ass too, but only when I do next to absolutely nothing physically for months at a time. I don't need you paying the bills, cooking, cleaning, bolstering my ego, pregnant, nor sexually exclusive.

Can you just be chill? Even with this bar, which to my mind feels both fair and incredibly low, maybe because I'm meeting people in the social work realm, it's a struggle. I don't need you madly in love with me, but like, can you be nice? Can you talk and share your perspective on the day? I don't care if you like the same shit I do, it's more interesting if you don't. Please, be free, go do you, and then like maybe we can do some cool shit together and enjoy each other's company. It just doesn't seem like it needs to be as hard as people are making it.

Maybe I'm weird, but like single remotely attractive honest chill girls are few and far between. And if you do find one, settle in, because we're old, and processing the trauma of our abusive pasts has little to do with feeling sexy or emotionally available to run yourself through a new thing lol. Anyway, I just try to be a friend anymore. It's just easier all around to suck any remote expectation out of the dynamic and take conversations or time together on its face as something appreciable. Emotional investment is a risk worth taking, but maybe you know people more in touch with their emotions than me.

tl:dr no, no you cannot be chill lol.”

The only response beyond the downvotes was from someone who said, “Thank god a man has arrived to tell us to be more chill and less fat.” Then some tit-for-tat and she adds, “I wrote a flippant one sentence comment in response to your eight paragraph screed, so which of the two of us seems more upset?” I say, the person without the patience or honesty to see anything but a screed. I wake up today to a temporary ban lol.

I guess this stands out to me as indicative of my experience in general, neatly packaged. I write a whole thing with a dozen claims bred from my perspective. I’m then “understood” as a one-sentence summation extracting the most emotionally-triggering sentiments rephrased to sound more damming than intended. That’s pretty much my interactions with most people conversationally online as nutshelly as it gets. This is my former coworker when she said, “That was a lot of words to say ‘fuck you,’ just a different subject matter. This is everyone who impresses upon me how I’m overlooking how an incensed person feels when I question the facts or veracity about literally any topic of contention.

You’ll notice, the “solution” to not garnering the anger is always to be quiet. I’m over here impressing people to speak up more, and also showing them what it gets you lol. If I don’t want to get banned, don’t bother explaining lightly, but explicitly, that a man who’s not attracted to you is not by default every caricature you’ve lent to the pile-on discussion. Someone in the thread said, “I’m tired of all the men with fat-phobia.” Phobia? Just like I’ve been accused of transphobia? Like, no, not afraid, just not attracted, and don’t think J.K. Rowling is the enemy.

Mind you, I’m not “upset” by this, I’m just increasingly fascinated it’s the default setting, and how we double-down. One of the top posts on reddit today is a satirist interviewing someone claiming more people die from hammers than guns, and when they Google it and show he’s wrong, he reiterated his second amendment right and scoots right past. The “liberal” or “enlightened” reddit crowd loves the hypocrisy on the right, but is equally blind and unwilling to engage with their muddy thoughts.

Is there really anything else to be said? I hope to not be a The Daily Show analogue, where I spend my whole life pointing out the contradiction or decline, and then can only step away with the knowledge that things have gotten worse, and the best I can do is a 60-minutes spin-off and maybe help get a bill passed every 10 years. I mean, good for Jon Stewart, but he knows he can’t fix “us” anymore than I can.

[970] Sticking Points

I think I want to talk about getting educated. I’m not sure, but that’s all I can come up with as an opener. I’ve had the last few days to kind of sit and do nothing. The rain has made it so I couldn’t work on building. I read or listened to dozens of my old blogs. Yesterday, the weather improved and I got a decent amount of work done outside. Today, the weather is also nice, and I’m hesitating to get back at it. There are a few things that have been informing how I feel the last week.

I cramp pretty easily. I suspect as a result of my less-than nutritious diet. When I’m out working, even if I’m not physically exhausted, the tension on certain muscles starts to make me woozy. I don’t think extended time in the sun contributed positively to that feeling either. While I greatly enjoy the cardio and feeling stronger in my capacity to move big and heavy objects around, it’s not without pain. How much I wish to continue pursuing the flow of working and accompanying pain is more informed by each day before that felt it.

That I want to pursue activities and investments like this is informed by things more intellectual than physical. I’ve liked building things since I was a child. My dad is an iron-worker, and there’s a certain appeal to be like your parent. I’m budget conscious, and after the $3000 it will likely take me to get my new shop in order, that’s $15,000 I didn’t spend on the same amount of prefabricated and delivered space. I want to be flexible in my capacity to create and be useful in tangibly physical ways.

My experience of engaging in things, my thoughts collected and impressed upon me over time, and then how I speak about and record the journey are in a constant dance. One of the things that strikes me about reading old blogs is how little I’ve moved away from what they’re saying. I’ve improved word choices or tempered some degree of fatalism or pessimism, but the fundamental point often remains the same. The desires remain the same. The things that are missing are often still missing.

It's a little depressing, but more informative, that I’ve been looking for “help” for almost as long as I’ve been writing. It obviously comes in spurts, but at the base of my being, I wish to be plugged into “something” or “someone” in which we’re headed in a similar direction. It might be understood as unconscious fixation. My first instinct in answering, “What’s your motivation?” might illicit, “I want to be independent, I want my time, money, etc.” But, under that, it seems like I want a kind of indefinite connection or reciprocity that I don’t feel as viscerally as cramps.

For as many times as I’ve felt “stuck,” you can skip a few blogs, then suddenly a new opportunity or show or project arrives. I’m not catching as many hiccups to my flow for any given activity. I spent the money, and just reach in and grab the tool. Or I fire up the resolve to drive into debt because, well, I’m always in debt, so what am I getting for it?­

I could borrow from the language and study of trauma and say that I have attachment issues. I could speculate on the opaque problems of “humanity” and its inability to organize behind anything that isn’t ironically self-destructive. I could make pains to convince myself any momentary preoccupation is as meaningful and purposeful as I need it to be. I could take it a step further and extract a self-righteous proclamation about the one person who I might reach to make it all worth it.

I’m also constantly on the attack. I’m always going after “you.” It’s rare that I name drop in a blog or have some explicit fight I want to parse out line by line. They happen enough, but I don’t really seek out drama for its own sake, and I definitely bore of the patterns insecure people play out at my feet. If I had to personify “you,” the two most defining characteristics would be dishonesty and silence. I might have to look up a fun way to combine the words or the roots of their origins so I can move the conversation forward in my head. My draw to Jordan Peterson was how often he said the exact same things I was feeling instinctively, or arriving at by writing, but tying them to his experience as a clinician and study of literature. Now, his brand is meme summations like, “If your life doesn’t look like you think it should, try honesty.”

Is he talking to me? Well, no, he’s talking to “you,” who has remained silent or dishonest in your silence. The featured comedian I saw yesterday spoke to getting to her 40s and realizing the secret to happiness was to stop pretending to like things. This, a point I feel I’ve diverged on since birth, as I can’t pretend to like things if I try, which I don’t.

The wild swings in my perspective find a mean regardless. I can’t stay feeling desperate and alone. I can’t work myself to death. I can’t spend all my time in someone’s presence I enjoy. I can’t find the drive or enthusiasm for any hobby to keep it up indefinitely. I can describe myself as a “whore” psychologically and not be prowling the bars or joining the sex websites in free moments or to assuage boredom. The harder you push, at all, in any direction, the insistence of balance makes itself known. When you overstep there’s a cue to pull back. Maybe this is why I’m not a regretful person in paying attention before I have to jog backwards as opposed to creep a few inches.

I don’t know where I would be without writing. I’m the opposite of silence, and if all I did was take to the page to spew bullshit, I couldn’t take anything useful away even reading 10 or pushing 20 years later. The only way I could envision my life being any better is by incorporating more people into forms of security and indulgence. I don’t know how to do this. Or, I don’t know if I’ve only been able to go about doing it in ways that are selfish and make sense to me. I think a major reason I don’t know is that people are dead silent about their perspective, at least to me.

I don’t find it confusing why. When you start speaking, you beget that underlying responsibility to do something about it. You can get challenged. You might discover you’re very wrong and dumb. You might unlock a lot of drama you’re not prepared to deal with. I talked myself into ticks and garden shed over years. It wasn’t manic epiphany. I’ve consciously plunged into debt for an envisioned future, not because I feel great “right now” with fleetingly low bills. I mean, that feels great, but my goal isn’t to pay bills lol, it’s to have a little enclave, then dozens, and then the world.

If you don’t keep that conversation going with yourself, you don’t have a reason. You don’t have a direction. You don’t know what’s missing, how to get it, or whether it’s worth it. It’s part of the reason I get very frustrated when some project stalls, especially if it does so for reasons, in theory, I can control. What more in life could we ask for than to follow the path laid out before us? Especially if we got to choose the path!? It’s like turning your life into a vacation. You picked the destination, wandered into whatever shops seemed intriguing, ate and drank to your satisfaction, then on day 5 of 7 just slept in the hotel all fucking day? Did you forget you were on vacation, have a shitty reason for going to begin with, or are you lying about the purpose it’s serving and whether you know how to enjoy yourself?

I enjoy building shit. I enjoy learning new things, reading and watching everything, playing music, discovering new artists and shows, and maintaining a preparedness to play at a moment’s notice. That’s my center, acknowledging, sanctifying, and protecting the “go” and “do” and “right now” capacity of any moment. That’s how writing allows me to get “unstuck.” That’s how I can keep enjoying the pain, obligation, and debt while I bowl or bemoan the weather. That’s why no business venture is “failed” when it’s done in that spirit of adventure and exploring the boundaries of what you know.

In a way, my collection of un-utilized dodgeballs exists as the standing analogy for my life in general. I bought the balls shortly after college. I had played with a group of guys on the dorm, and then some kids for a few weeks. I thought if I had my own, I’d be able to get my friends together and be able to play more often. Maybe even construct a mobile netted enclosure. In my naivete, my friends weren’t about that play life. I created events, brought it up in conversation over and over, and most often got something akin to, “I’ve always hated dodgeball” or, “I’m not very good.” So, they have sat, in a dodgeball bag, all-but deflated in and amongst my things for maybe 10 years. I tell the people I counsel if they can’t get the little things right, they don’t have a prayer for the big things.

I can’t get people to play. Before that, I couldn’t get people to speak up and be honest with me. I could get them to party, and then have that converted into resentment and accusations. I can seek out sports leagues and meet-up groups, but you quickly discover the nature of the game you’re playing and the one on the field isn’t the same. That is, at every adult softball game I’ve attended this year, I don’t know that I’ve witnessed someone not smoking or drinking during it save one or two people. There are large men trying to recapture younger glory years, out-of-shape and been warned by their doctor to make lifestyle changes types, former generally athletic and social ones, or loners who pick softball instead of the bar.

I don’t begrudge their reasons for coming, but “play” doesn’t capture it. Fear of dying young, insecurity about getting old, justifying an unhealthy puff with a healthy jog, or mitigating loneliness sounds like a more honest and complete picture to me. Surely playing happens, and it can be fun, and you can gain rewards for doing something beyond wallowing in whatever drove you there. I wish everyone was out playing sports in service to their demons before doing anything else. At what point does the play get to trump or incorporate the demons though? When are you ready to build the playing field?

Does it make sense why I would glom on to an Allie who has a whole fucking garden out there? I’ll subject myself to a year of mental turmoil under the impression I’ve found someone to play with! Lol. I will put in a floor and paint and pat myself on the back right through Christmas convincing myself the effort will mean I can play in the next house just around the corner and not have to keep taking jobs that mean nothing to me.

Why it’s so vital to know what something means to you is clear. You can’t really be happy, have fun, or play otherwise. The idea that you’re running from something becomes a too obvious and compelling story. The nature of how you’re being exploited stays felt and rarely spoken to. The lack of connection or empathy or drive for an actionable belief in changing your circumstances turns into fate. I knew what my friendships meant to me. I know what my work on my house tells me. I know why I show up to hang out or send the invitation in spite of the endless canceling, silence, or lack of enthusiasm. I know what I mean to me or what I can mean to those who play along. It’ll never be meaningful to you, because you don’t exist. You’re an abstract ironically disembodied construct representing dishonesty and silence. You’re busy, tired, sick, and broke. You’re bad at dodgeball. I’m ready to go right now.

[969] Insecurity Blanket

I’ve just had a thought about a “binding force” as it pertains to my work environments, and what I attempt to not fall prey to when I’m alone.

It would be too simple to call it a kind of “mediocrity.” It functions that way, to be sure. It’s a consequence of a lack of accountability. It provides a sense of security. Let’s just talk about what it sounds and looks like.

At DCS, no matter how bad a job you are doing, the person “in charge” will do one of two things. They’ll intervene in your behavior, take up the conversation that needed to be had, and attempt to fix the problem. Or, they’ll defer to their boss, their obligations, talk about how many counties there are, and basically ignore you. They will speak to how there is functionally no real oversight without a companion Avengers-level threat to kick people into motion.

The security comes from the size of the organization. Even if someone tried to watch, they can’t, unless the problem gets too large and provokes a death or lawsuit.

At the methadone clinic or in prison counseling, it’s much the same, but the problems are less variable and if anyone dies it’s only a junkie, right? You can remain poorly organized, fail your audits, and bleed employees, provided you’re just another operation that was bought by a national conglomerate. People are watching, rather closely, but only the bottom line. They’re not concerned with your performance across anything human or factoring in anything practical.

The security comes from the size of the bank account, addict population, and number of clinics under one umbrella. A few dozen or hundred can burnout or die, and it’s an overall rounding error on the books.

Maybe you want to sell books! What does becoming an author at a small publishing company have in common with big bureaucratic structures? There’s deference to all of your other obligations and priorities. There’s trading on the goodwill of the highly conscientious to obscure the lack of organization. Provided the ownership tows self-soothing party lines about the vision and purpose that you can recite in harmony, no need to scrutinize, be on time, or connect with the language underneath the business book buzz words.

The security comes from following the templates laid out by larger organizations and infusing them with elevated interpersonal baggage to help gin up the fog about who is responsible.

It’s a lot easier to identify failure points with smaller structures. There were 5 employees when I drove a taxi. If you didn’t make your shift, that was you. There weren’t offices for the schedule to get lost in or a lack of clarity on who to contact about where you were supposed to be. The number of times I’ve been maliciously classified as “independent contractor” tries to lay this “I don’t want the responsibility” backdrop bare. The smaller you are, the more personal it feels, and the less you can avoid the difficult conversations around what you did or didn’t do or don’t know.

Whittling down further, in a partnership or relationship you see similar dynamics. You can usually tell if a relationship is healthy or not based on how people respond to each other’s concerns or perspectives. Are you “too busy” to find the mental space for your partner? Is it wholly beyond your control to inform how they might feel about your living arrangements or social dynamic? Do you think God will step in and provide where you can’t?

When you’re just alone, and perhaps this is why I gravitate towards sentiments about being an individual and finding a personally honest thread, you can witness how this (in)security force works in you. You too tired to practice? You deserve some indulgence? You ashamed to speak to how you actually feel or think and wish to blame whatever happened to you or maybe belabor a traumatic past? The excuse, just like the responsibility, is open to you in every moment. Whether or not I play my guitar and the reasons I give myself for doing so are on me. I can’t stop the rain in my desire to complete my wood shop, but I can decide if I want to bare the humidity and set up a tent for when it stops.

It’s a singular thread and conversation with yourself from which all catastrophe or great things spring forth. Do you even acknowledge how much you can take responsibility for in any given moment? Do you respect the power you’ve been given? How many people do you reflexively find fault in before you get to you? Do you ever get to you? As someone who appears to be in the business of courting blame, I can’t say I hear nearly ever how it’s your fault.

This is why I own when I’m a dick. That’s me being accountable. I meant it. I knew when I turned up the snark. I didn’t “just react.” I probably spent months trying to play nice (or dumb in my language), and you didn’t get something fixed or even really try to make it better. At DCS, this meant sometimes destroying families. At the methadone clinic, people died. When you overwork yourself, you don’t just take years off your life, but the world closes in on you, and it does not appear like there are other opportunities or outlets for recognition or dollar amounts you deserve.

We seek security in the story we tell ourselves about what we can or can’t do, say, or see altogether. This is how I can immediately see when people are almost complete failures when it comes to a personally honest account of their life. It’s all the little things. When my stomach drops at the thought of going into work, I write about it. When my relationship with a new friend or coworker creates competing impulses, I explore. When the work I set out for myself needs to account for new details like increased financial or physical costs, I do the math and modify as needed. I’m not just feeling my way through the dark and yelling at you when we bump into each other.

When I look around my house and I see the sheer amount of shit I own, it’s hard to deny how many of my “problems” are part of a narrative fantasy to help keep me oriented around my preferences. The only real debt I truly have is a lack of a meaningful collaborative project. I’m not financially burdened as much as I’m boxing myself into a quasi-stable mode of living that comes with getting “real” jobs and eating time with toys and distractions. I like being able to go to the comedy clubs and concerts. I’d like considerably more a team of 5 people making a credible attack on various levels of power or speaking in organized and deliberate ways on how to achieve practically sustainable living and working arrangements.

I can get a job, buy toys, keep the bills paid, build my little castle, and play my music. I can’t talk you into joining me. You’ll help me here and there, but our mission isn’t the same. I discover time and again how many missions do not comport with my own, because mine attempts an outsized recognition of what I’m capable of and truly desire. I can continue to reiterate that I don’t just want money, or what’s in my Amazon cart, or even time. After all, I have time now. I’ve had considerably more time in the past. But time without the money, or the friends, or an actionable plan just leaves me to spend too much time finding things to get angry about online. I’ve been home for the last 3 days or so and it feels like an eternity. I look at what I’ve built and think, “That’s all?” I have a fucking problem lol, and it’s not much to do with “me” than it is “us.” There is no us in my world, or it comes in spurts, or resents how I conduct me.

And I don’t mean to overstate this, because I have irons in the fire, and collaborators, and friends good for the things they’re good for, but it doesn’t scale. The connection breaks when you try to attach it to a long-term investment or vision. It gets routinely undermined by how incensed you feel about what you probably are fucking up and can’t cope with owning. I like to remind you when I don’t miss a day of work, cancel class, or show up late because I’m celebrating my attentiveness. I like to show you how many hours and dollars it takes to run a proper experiment in salvaging or sustainability because you need to feel the work before you comfort yourself with the narrative.

I cannot persuade myself only to sit and play my guitar, or my videogames, or disappear indefinitely into shows and YouTube. I don’t have kids. My bills aren’t incredibly high. I’m not the head of any organization. But who I am, or the tools I’ve been given, don’t exist, can’t exist, unless they exist relative to my experience, work, and recognition of the world around me. I live in nation teetering on fascism. I live in an environment poised to make us all extinct. My brain doesn’t shut off just because I travel somewhere or find some new preoccupation. It’s all happening all at once and in every moment.

I can bare the weight of that perpetual existential crisis. I’m not going to kill myself or drink myself stupid. I’m not going to get depressed and retreat. I’m not going to stay silent. I’m going to keep calling out “you” for not bothering me for anything but the placation or indulgence of your feeble feelings. I’m going to keep questioning what you’re really working on and point out the elaborate excuse-ridden nature of the children’s game you’re calling “adulting.”

Don’t get the impression that any of this matters, either. It only matters to ME. It matters that I write the blogs, build the wood shop, get the pallets, be on time, or achieve a level of technical sophistication in how quickly I can move my fingers along an instrument. I don’t need you to come on board. I don’t need you to invite me into your thing or entreat the baggage I would bring. I know that the things I need have nothing to do with me at all, they just exist at the ends of my patience or willingness to manipulate. I have gained considerably more patience over the years and my heart isn’t in manipulating.

I am going to ask that you pay attention though. I can’t make you read the blog, but I can make sure it says you should recognize how bad you are at being honest with yourself. Are you happy, full, or fulfilled? Are your days filled with meaningful interactions or mildly gratifying indulgences? Does something call to you when it gets too quiet? Did you reach out, speak out, or take a punch in a worthwhile fight? Did you sacrifice something that matters in service to something that matters more? Whose fault is it, me for pointing it out, or you for running away?