[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.