[991] I'm So Sick

Before I let my brain get too woken up…

It’s safe to say that I live in a fairly perpetual state of disorientation. It isn’t that I don’t have a direction or ideas of the directions I want to go. I feel like I’m trapped. I’ve written about how often I feel “stuck.” Whether I’m citing the practical limitations around a budget or physical limitations of my body, I find myself envious of those who appear to be moving freely about the world. I don’t mean celebrities or rich people. I mean the people who conceived of, built, and began operating the new hospital in town, and every new building on campus between me graduating and today. I mean Jonny Kim who’s the viral Navy Seal, doctor, astronaut by the age of 37.

So much of my self-conception was fueled, innocently enough I’m sure, by my time in school. I don’t think I was particularly “exceptionally” smart, but doing well in school kept me safe, got me praise, money, and like a lot of kids in my era I was told I could grow up to be whatever I wanted. When I “turned it on,” there was little I couldn’t understand or get an A, and when the psychological gains of doing so began to wane, I settled for As and Bs and still way more often than anyone should think about the circumstances for the 4 Cs I got in college.

I was told often, well before I had any concept of what it meant, that I was a “leader.” I don’t know if my parents were just trying to reframe my general obstinate posture or if they recognized a capacity I would later use for the party house and entrepreneurship. Either way, it is deep in my core conception of myself that I don’t just follow along. I don’t “just believe” things. I don’t deny myself a differing view or the opportunity to put my voice to it.

I’m shaped by dozens of formative phrases and incidents of my life. I’m perhaps moved to discuss them because I recently watched Dave Chappelle talk in 2020 about his history and contract issues. He was also full of confidence and potential that was recognized early. He’s at the point in his career where he’s functionally transcending his medium and giving more Carlin-esc speeches-necessary, wise, and still funny-speeches verses doing sets. He was stuck too, in his contract, and then parlayed his fame and love for him into a credible threat and escape.

I make a lot of superficial movement in the world. At bottom, it reduces to spending money. I have money to spend-ish, when I do, it allows me access to the city, parking, venue, restaurants, and less-than-cultivated or prettied-up  picture and video montages of what I’ve been up to. I get a third of the way through any project before the rain starts, budget dries up, heat cranks, or time gets crunchy. It’s become easier over time to notice more psychological gratification in taking an extended lunch or settling in for a show and Candy Crush. Things that started out as pacifying go-go-go anxiety and stress turned into “enjoy it now while you have it.”

I find myself reflexively comparing myself to people like Jonny Kim. Whether or not I’m actually capable of being, or have any genuine desire to be, anything like him. In the least disingenuous way I can say it, fuck the military lol. I still hold respect for doctors, but perhaps ones in different countries who haven’t been co-opted by our corrupt and ignorant system. And I can barely ride several roller coasters back-to-back without feeling pukey, let alone pass the tests NASA requires. Do I want to be like Jonny Kim? No. I want to own myself to the degree of analogous effort and distinction. I want the story of doing so to be a compelling and persistently meaningful personal narrative that helps drive my behavior and focus.

The amount of sacrifice is under-appreciated when it comes to being “high-achieving” or “exceptional.” You don’t do a lot of other things because there’s always a new nuance to incorporate or responsibility to rise to. It doesn’t mean you can’t have, say, a family or hobbies, but it does mean you’re probably feeling like they don’t get the attention you’d like or they might require. It means you now have plugged into the “advance the species” project more than “prioritize me and my life” one. Consciously or unconsciously, you have to believe we can “advance” at all. You have to remain steadfast in your dedication to “helping people.” You have a driving faith-claim that as a source of inspiration and demonstration “things” or “the world” will inch forward and be better overall.

Perhaps this is where I don’t have faith. I appreciate Charlamagne tha God’s recent discussion with Stephen Colbert. He’s persistently that matter-of-fact voice about the chaos and ever-analyzing his in-the-moment experience that only those with the same kind of anxiety can appreciate. We’re on the precipice of losing the country. He gets it. I get it. Noam Chomsky gets it. Historians and some of the more inflammatory voices of commentators and observers do too.

We don’t have people in power who represent us. I’ve watched the country, not just “struggle,” but defy notions of accountability and growth. I don’t make more money each year. I don’t find new friends with more time and opportunities. I find myself escalating my indulgent side. I find myself “wishing” for someone to give me a call to finally release me from my mockery of obligations. I don’t feel as though I have the power to lead myself out of the largest context and consequences.

I can spend a year of my life making phone calls and sending emails and waiting and waiting and waiting and I still can’t find a way to do literally the job I’m doing, but for myself? That’s a beyond-broken system. It’s defying the essence of self-determination, value, and individuality. Then each step you take to “fight back” becomes another self-defeating mockery. How do I discard my observations about addicts and addiction and then with a straight-face tell other professionals, “We don’t take insurance?” Every practice that doesn’t started with taking insurance, and after filtering through hundreds found their reliable self-payers, and closed the door to Medicaid. How do you “speed up” an office that loses your paperwork, an agency that lies to you or has an axe to grind, or follow ever-differing instructions from people not qualified to offer them?

But that’s just my smallest sliver of experience. What if you’re a Florida teacher being told someone observing your classroom for 12 hours is tantamount to your time in school, debt, and professional experience? What if you’re the half of the country or minority group watching the systematic obliteration of your rights? What if you’re a fat kid being told there’s nothing to see or worry about, just keep eating and loving yourself and things will turn out alright? What if you’re a kid with a bullet-proof backpack? What if your small sliver of experience is equally exhausted, desperate, confused, and unable to lead a kind of life that doesn’t suggest futile and pointless struggle as the raging fire dictates the context?

That’s the heart of my restless and distracted soul. I’m not okay. “Things” aren’t good. I feel threatened. I feel sick. I feel immense hatred. And no amount of good books or TV shows are going to make me forget. No amount of skill I demonstrate on an instrument is going to put out the fire. No nerding-out on the history or rounding-out the context is going to erase the ever-present threat stabbing away at any remote confidence I have for our collective survival and understanding of what’s going on. We are not built for it. Individuals can cut paths that peacock a certain respect or intelligence, but “we” don’t exist and the animal that is human is as dumb and annoying as my cat resting on my armchair staring at me, expectant, selfish, ignorant of its motivations and mine.

I’m not okay. “It’s” not okay. “Things” aren’t okay. “We’re” not a thing. The country, if not literally a good portion of the world is on fire. I’m over here doing what? Haphazardly “counseling” those instinctively dosing themselves into oblivion to help cope with the pain? Because being numb with rotten teeth is preferable to medical debt and a big smile as they come to destroy what you’ve worked for or love? We’re not brave enough to even SPEAK!

We won’t even speak. We won’t talk about the big and obvious fucked up things. We won’t do it, ever. Not just for years, but ever. We won’t talk about how we’ve fucked up. We won’t talk about what it will actually take in actual work to change something today, right now, let alone in 10 years. The only people talking are the psychopaths, just as miserable and small and pathetic as we are, but with more fluid motion to exercise their greed and disdain for existence. And we won’t call them greedy and disdainful, we’ll celebrate how much they’ve “earned” and “innovated.” It is forever opposite-day in the mind of the damned. No story will sweep in and account for the deliberate ignorance or sacrifice itself on our behalf.

“Everybody knows there’s a party at the end of the world.”

The fact that I have this perspective and don’t know what it “means” is of ongoing concern. Do I pack up and leave the country? Do I power through my home projects? Do I double-down on the party? Do I make a more concerted effort to recruit and bolster physical or financial defenses? Right now, by default, I’m just playing along by ear. Things certainly “look” normal, as they have in every society the day before shit went crazy. We’re already crazy. It’s already happening, and has been, and we never talk about it. We never share anything but a meme. We don’t vote, we don’t fight unless it’s with a Russian bot, and we don’t really feel more than an overall foreboding that’s best not explored.

The vast majority of the world informing my experience is on some level suicidal. I have a friend actively disengaged from the larger political and historical context and conversation. I can’t blame her. I have professional connections that, even in places of power and relative comfort, can’t or won’t organize or find a momentum of sustained prosperity. I’ve been offering no-rent and creative expression for 3 or 4 years now, and not a single person has been able to enjoy or play with that for longer than a year without the greater anxiety or unaddressed nature of our problems winning the day.

The communication gets resented. The trust never exists. The real work and sacrifice go unacknowledged. The concept of how or why to connect reduced to social media pageantry or compulsion of your genes and cultural expectations. When I talk about being “alone,” it’s that singular lines of blogs like these would occasionally show up on the tongues of those I felt closest to after they were ridiculously drunk. Then, hush. Then, race away and get very busy before turning defensive and angry.

I will never forget when one of my friends said, “I think it’s going to have to be for Trump, man” when we were discussing politics and who to vote for before he was elected. This friend was intelligent, kind-hearted, and just an outsized positive presence on any occasion, but he fell under the spell of the malaise and inarticulate fog. He was, of course, busy and a professional and comes from a “normal” middle-to-upper-middle class background with an extended family and series of things on his mind a million miles away from the word “fascism,” which he’s perfectly capable of understanding intellectually.

But “we” aren’t wise enough to contend with how we aren’t intellectual. We don’t make the time to develop robust systems for determining what information is going to be used in service to our decision making. We watch people like me struggle endlessly to determine inches of movement, and figure it’s a lot easier to plug into the streams of consciousness that already presume to have figured something out. We’ll suicidally sacrifice ourselves with proud demonstrations of how little we appreciate what we’re actually worth. It’s routine. It’s normal. It’s, “Trump, I guess” because he “seems” to resemble the anger and confusion you haven’t been practicing putting better words to.

Barring a black swan event of currently inconceivable means, it’s not getting better. I might have a year or two to escape the country. I might have enough money to buy my way into a graduate program or immigrate to the country somewhere with a home-rehab immigration system. That fucking sucks. That’s fucking despicable. That’s something I’m talking about now, 1 or 2 years early, so when you’re mock “horrified” that coked-out Don Jr. is burning a 10-year-old who had an abortion at the stake in primetime (how “hyperbolic” can I get when the standard is already mass child slaughter?) I don’t fall under your spell.

Purely as an automatic predilection for survival, I complain about clenching my jaw or simple logistics.  I act like there’s a greater nobility or efficacy in attending to day-to-day details. The effort needs to be spent fighting or speaking to the problems dictating my greatest context, but who am I speaking to? What am I fighting against? Should I punch my friend until he comes to his senses? I can’t really help myself from continuing to scream into the silent abyss. Is this how I’ve transformed my conception of “the fight” into a series of indulgences and doing “regular” jobs? I do those jobs just long enough to flirt with getting fired as the microcosm demonstrations of our larger failures of leadership and imagination become too much to bear.

I can’t look away. More importantly, I don’t wish to. I don’t wish I’d stop talking, I wish someone would talk back. I wish I could trust anything about anyone that didn’t reduce to self-protection or indulgence. I can’t. I’m fighting to thrive in a world built on so many lies and confusions to do much of anything but pull out and run is going to feel like a futile mockery. It’s going to keep me as isolated and alone as it’s proven thus far. I can stay angry, or pretend hopeful, or I can make a better escape plan. I can engage the mockery with the ambivalence or play that seem to compete with my best notions of how I’ve conducted myself in the past. I need to start saving.

[990] Slaphappy Birthday

Even though time is an illusion, it looks like I’m 34, at least, at 10:58 PM. I’ve just woken up, made coffee, and wanted to explore how I spent the last few days. I got home this morning after driving all night, and I think I discovered the secret to falling asleep immediately. As soon as you get home from driving through the night, put on the podcast “The History of Philosophy Without any Gaps.” I ended my trip the way it began, considerably more prepared and awake on the drive home than to Cleveland. Cleveland, by the way, does rock. I see myself going back there.

I decided, because Facebook’s targeted ads are working, to see the band Anberlin play 3 nights, each night an old album. Anberlin, though celebrating their 20^th anniversary as a band, is one I came to relatively late. They have songs that are familiar-enough and an overall style and tone that, the moment I recognize it’s an Anberlin song playing, I’m almost-never skipping the track. I tried to “study” by playing their albums on repeat so I wouldn’t be a poser standing right up front against a stage only as high as my ankle. It really highlighted how hard it is to memorize songs in my genre that don’t make the vocals crystal clear. I’m not going to stay hunched over lyrics like I’m about to perform.

The venue was located in what I understood as a historical “hang-out” area with several quality places to eat and get smoothies or coffee. It had its Leftist book-store and on Saturday an artsy street fair with little booths and jazz band. Cleveland gives you a very palpable sense of its busy history as the old buildings weave throughout the new and the renovations attempt to keep basic features intact. I caught an article on the wall of the Grog Shop commemorating the first edition of Altpress which I didn’t know started there. The band was funny, engaged, and did great each night. During the last song on the first night the lead singer invited everyone who could fit on stage to dance, sing, and position themselves to catch him as he hung upside down from a beam lining the ceiling.

I had good food, a comfortable Airbnb room. I got to sleep on a big bed and really lean into a normal shower and bathroom setup. I was able to get my remote-work job done, desperately tired, but meeting my obligation. I read a book. Unable to get the nagging sense that I was incredibly close to Cedar Point out of my head, I decided to put the jewel in the crown of my time away, and got in 5 of the top roller coasters in the country before making my way home. It hit me, for as much as I loved going there, I don’t think I had been in 15 or 16 years. I listened to most of a book on the history of The Daily Show on the drive back.

While at Cedar Point, and while tucking myself into bed, and while standing in line or amongst the head-banging crowds, it may not be the first thing I notice, but it is persistently in my head that I’m alone. I want to make pains to distinguish “alone” from “lonely.” I have what I take to be an incredible capacity to enjoy myself, by myself. The roller coasters aren’t any less fun. I’m not less likely to sing along, eat to my heart’s content, or wander about a space. I can make the drives. I don’t have to concern myself with being entertaining enough during all of the down time that comes with arriving early so you can be up close.

In the crowds at the show, I listened to people. You think I’ve been to a lot of shows? A girl behind me knows the intimate lives of The Academy Is… and has seen them 120+ times in different countries. A couple shared, several times to new people, how this is the first time they’ve gotten away from the kids, and they were celebrating their anniversary in Cleveland. Cleveland has a robust rock/punk rock scene and groups shared who they saw and when, their opinions on albums, and their histories as it pertained to this world they felt they belonged. I was never moved to engage. A big part of me doesn’t feel sincere in my “scene cred.” My identity isn’t rooted in black clothing, lyrics, or being able to recognize and name each band member. That’s not a prerequisite for engaging those conversations, but you feel this pull to live up to a certain archetype. It’s akin to adopting office cliches, but for music.

At Cedar Point, you can really forget that we’re in a country bordering on full-blown fascist overthrow. Tens of thousands of people eating over-priced theme-park food, hitting the water park, or waiting in line. These are either people who live close and this is their primary occupation of time, or people who can afford the pilgrimage. It almost feels like a micro-country with every kind of American represented proportionally. I can’t say in that sea of people I saw anyone there by themselves. I saw family groups. I saw, perhaps divorced, parents with their kids. I saw packs of teens. I saw polo-shirted high-thigh khaki types. I saw couples. I didn’t see ANYONE sitting alone, walking alone, or standing alone who wasn’t wearing a park uniform or clearly waiting for their unit to return.

Did I want to be there with a family? Well, no, not really. Do I want to be a rich “business guy” with his pack of other business guys who talk more about our hobbies than how we’re integrating our wealth into a survivable future? More than I want to be carting kids through a park, but that also comes with its disappointing and unfulfilling details. When I speak to how “different” or “weird” I perpetually feel, not “bad” mind you, it’s because I’m noticing how often the space I occupy isn’t literally shared. The conversation is most often with myself, and I talk to people for a living.

I don’t know when or how it hit me, but I know it was around the time I was in college as I was attempting to set up weekend get-togethers and finding little beyond exhaustion and confusion. The impetus to be very deliberate and energetic about what might today be understood as “self-care” is not lost on me. Incidentally, the books I read and listened to on my trip are about the relatively recent past. The themes that we are suffering as budding fascism today have been drumbeats hammered-out by historians and satirists alike since I was a child. We haven’t been getting better at acknowledging and combating them deliberately.

We arrive at the different space I occupy. I allow the genuine and ongoing concern for my broader context to enter the conversation even as I’m having a good time. I’m looking for the joke. I’m curious about the practical steps it will take to alleviate the problem before it becomes life-threatening. I’m paying attention to the aching back as I’ve stood in place for hours on end, and then feeling myself wise and undeterred as I utilize my new back-roller balls to press kinks as I drive. That’s not what people do. People want to share vacation photos, collect souvenirs, and sing as though songs weren’t inspired by anything than a desire to populate tongues.

My space is different mentally, physically, and in the story it tells about what I think is important or what I believe about my options. Facebook is reminding me that 3 years ago is when I took my first “real vacation” to California with my “real job” money. That could have been yesterday. A year, with each year that passes, can be a rounding error in the proportion to the rest of your life. How many times in blogs would I repeat to myself how old I was? I was trying to hammer in how to pay attention. The time may be illusory, but the entropy feels real. Now, I’m 34. I’ve seen dozens if not a hundred bands, read hundreds of books, played as many video games, typed hundreds of thousands if not a million words. I have more stuff than I know what to do with. I have hobbies I enjoy and engage regularly. I have professional goals I’m working, maybe slightly less-diligently on than I should, but working on nonetheless. I don’t have a 30-year mortgage or car loan and my job will pay my debt in 4-5 months if I could bother to stop spending. I’m healthy. I’m full. I have people who will occasionally join me here and there. But in a significant and meaningful way that I wish wasn’t the case, I’m alone.

I don’t wish it because I’m lonely, I wish it because I feel like I have something valuable and honorable and worthy that I don’t know how to translate or share. Why can’t you pick up and come on a trip or show with me? Why can’t you feel comfortable pairing your day-to-day work or mental preoccupation to the larger narrative? Why can’t you find a sense of purpose or belonging in honestly engaging and doubling-down on the things you enjoy? Why don’t you feel obligated and responsible to talk about how your mind works or how it perceives your corner of the world? Why aren’t you practicing with the urgency that respects impending death?

I feel like I’ve earned what I have, in time, money, or right to say and share what I think. I feel like I have an appreciation for the difference between the fun of spending money and indulging oneself and the fun of helping people through utilizing real power in consequential ways. I think my life is as much a reflection of the infinite things I can’t control as it is infused with my intention collapsing the infinite sea into a conscious choice to pay attention. I’ve worked to push the direction of my life one way over still-probable others. I don’t need my will to be “free” more than acknowledged for its existence at all and recognized for what it’s manifested in service to our shared experience.

We are sharing experience, right?

[989] Bubble Boy

I still have stuff to figure out!

I’m getting more and more settled into the workflow of my job. It, oddly, seems very responsive to feedback from counselors and tries to actively mitigate the dozens of variables around different states and sized offices. I don’t really know what to do with that information. I’m not used to working for organizations that maybe give a shit almost as much as they want to make money. The State, in pockets, had a system, but it’d go too far to say it was more coherent and equitably exercised than the private sector.

I’ve pretty much resolved myself to keeping this job in a more active way than my previous 3 or 4. I’ve spent the money on toys, shows, and things I want to get done. One way to look at it would be that I’ve pretty much spent everything I would in a year and just gotten it out of the way now. My expenses have shifted as my budget suggested into more indulgence as the house got in order. My anxiety is not to do with much beyond how often I want to antagonize myself over the time in months to pay things off.

I just got done with a group, immediately put in notes, found a little vibe and energy, and then got up and meandered and started writing. I felt the incredibly little time investment. I felt how long it would take me to complete my next two sets of notes. So I stopped. It wasn’t an ambiguous worry, it was a tangibly grasped concept.

My clients speak often about either being overwhelmed and constantly busy, or seeking to be busy to keep themselves occupied and not thinking about how they feel. They’re often trying to avoid. I can vibe with that, but I want to master. I have the tingles, irrationally or otherwise, but I want to understand them so well that I don’t have to wait until there’s a time crunch or specific ask in order to address them. Also, they’re more of an annoyance than a proper “problem.” But I know they have to deal with my overall expectations of myself and witness to how I’m utilizing my time. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s about.

I think it might be instructive to consider how I lasted at DCS for 2 years. It’s my second-longest tenure at any job, and I didn’t want to leave more than had to. I had real power. I had real responsibility. I was efficient. I got to be alone and up and moving out in the world. I got into new houses and neighborhoods routinely. It had everything but enough money, respect, and accountability. I got to work with friends. It rose to the level of person I am. The only thing that has since is the amount of crap I put on my plate to do at once. Big difference being that I can take your kid in the rain or 104-degree weather in a way I can’t do construction.

Slogging through trying to start another business has its dramatic ups and downs, but it’s not a persistent pressure more than a nag and antagonism. It feels futile to be literally doing the work, but not figuring out how to get paid for it. Like, this is why I think I’m dumb. I’m smart, but not like these people who just get money. There are always more offices to call, I guess. And I feel like we’ve been double-fucked by things beyond our control several times throughout the process.

I had the thought during this all-hands meeting this morning that I don’t know how often I want to be embroiled in all of the details it takes to run a major organization. I might be taking a few cues from my newest friend who’s go-with-the-flow and not-really-plan and nap-often behavior has a certain appeal. I want to be comfortable, not constantly volleying everyone’s worries or repeating myself ad nauseum. I want the kind of comfort that allows me to pick the next stress-inducing road more than find myself forced to cope with whatever one suffices for the practical constraints of the moment.

I’m gonna get these notes knocked out when this is done. They’ll, maybe, take me a half hour as half my people didn’t attend two different groups. I don’t have any lingering emails to answer and my dad won’t be here for another couple hours. I think part of the anxiety is the thought that it really has gotten this “easy.” I can just do my incredibly easy job, see the debt decrease, go to my already-there shows. Play my ready and waiting instruments. I’m just here, and things are good, and because I was raised to never trust things are good, I get to be anxious that I have an incredible amount of access, privileges, and comforts no matter how much I’ve worked in the past or can claim to have earned them. And, you know, the world outside my bubble sucks and I can’t fix it.