[1002] Still Alive

God fucking dammit! I hate every fucking thing I want to say in this blog. Fuck me, fuck everything I’m blithly offering a perspective about. FUCK FUCKING FUUUUUUUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

It is 3:35 AM and I have just gotten home. I’ve been quasi-sick the last few days, and after wrapping up my last group at 4:30, I had energy. I invited 2 friends to check out a free sketch comedy group on campus. Neither came. I went, still had energy, and got to drinking.

As I do, I made a couple insta-friends. I read the room. I bided my time. I read people for a living, you know how it goes. Nothing interesting came from that. I encouraged some kids, I spent too much money, yada yada.

But from the end of that interaction until now is FATE!

I drove my drunk ass home. I fucking hate that fact, and I also don’t. I hate that, were I utilitarian in my thinking, I would never agree to allow the standard I’ve seemingly set for myself be the rule for all. There is no amount of money worth the catastrophe at the end of the drunk-driver story. No excuse. No mercy. No conversation nor negotiation.

And yet, the facts have me here typing this, in real time, not from a prison cell, 13 years into my gambling with drunk driving. That fucking sucks! That has a degree of “fucking pay attention to me” persuasiveness no seemingly moral and reasonable person wants to acknowledges. But I’m fucking Nick P. I can call it the cuntiest of facts but facts nonetheless. I can plainly state that I wish I never had to acknowledge another detail to my aberration existence, but here it shits, and so we sniff.

I don’t think drunk driving is cool, safe, in bounds, or any other positive-sounding qualifier just in case that wasn’t clear. I don’t really want to feel perfectly able and competent to get my drunk ass home safely. I don’t want to pass cop cars and know to a certain degree of certainty they’re not going to pull me over. I don’t want to know that I have an exacting understanding of layers of drunkenness that would wage the gamble in the first place. I don’t want to know that I’ve spent 13 years dodging the proverbial bullet. All of this shit bugs the fuck out of me, but apparently not enough to stop me at least up until an hour ago.

This is my struggle. The naked “obvious” nature of something, and my “different” or “questioning” or “are you sure” perspective.

Justified? I don’t' really think so. Like, I don’t feel good lol. It’s not pride, man. I’m not special in a holistic sense. But, like, I’m begrudgingly aware. I’m not all swervey. I’m not speeding. I can work hard when I’m drunk. I can pay attention. But my greater context renders that mute.

Moreover, I have all these” big plans.” Who the fuck am I to jeopardize that? Oh, wait, I’m drawing on my experience of shit-ass cunts and life broadly. If anything, the dumber a cunt I am, the more I’ll have license to things I can exploit. Well fuck, that’s a shitty lesson lololol. What reasonable person would build that into their pragmatic approach to life?

I never want to drive home drunk again. That’s such a huge statement. I want home to be in walking distance. I want the resources to get me anywhere I want to be, like home, without ever thinking about it. I want to inhabit a space that qualifies and respects my ability to drunk-drive as superior to others, even if It's such a ridiculous thing to parse or differentiate. I don’t want the risk. It’s not a thrill. It’s not my subconscious desire to destroy myself. It’s such a stupid fucking point, “I just want to be home and I bet I work it out without spending money.”

I’m just as irrational a beast as any of you dumb cunts. I just happen to talk about it.

I wish I were understood. I don’t want what I have. It just makes me more and more alone the more I use it.

[1001] And The Band Played On

The last couple of weeks have been busy. I don’t really know that I’ve given myself the time to process. I don’t know if there’s that much to even process, but I know that I’ve taken in a lot of information I’ve yet to spit back out.

Less than 2 weeks ago I was at Cedar Point. I rode every roller coaster worth riding several times. I walked until my feet hurt immensely. I drove there the day before, and taught myself again to not rely on the kid that was there to be thankful or accommodating or helpful and I should always spend a little more for my own comfortable space. I was able to turn what felt like deliberately scammy marketing about a “season pass” into getting the day comped when I discovered at the gate I only had a “summer pass.” My fast pass felt like a worthwhile investment.

The next day I drove to Cincinnati for the Is For Lovers festival. I get acquainted with some new bands and see again a few I had earlier this year. I was in pain the entire time, but managed to walk between stages and get up close to most of my favorites. I drove through the night back home, and 4 days later would find myself in Chicago for Riot Fest.

Before getting to that festival I got to see Smash at her place for the first time in years. We got to talking about the past and how the group dynamics changed. She showed me her kick-ass art that I need to find a way to get promoted or turned into a series. It was the kind of interaction that proved to me time is an illusion and that we’re all just where we are, either making  and enjoying and investing in the moment together, or not. There is no other side of the hill. There is no place to occupy with someone else if you don’t already do with yourself.

She had another friend over who brought an expensive thermal imaging toy with him where we spotted deer, owls, and coyotes in a nearby park. When we got back to the house Smash and I kept talking as her boy and friend got dreary and went to sleep. I got some insight into my incredible insensitivity back then, and we explored just how cynically one might regard the person next to you in how you establish expectations. It’s literally gradations of that kind of interaction that had me so thoroughly invested in the friend group in college.  

The next day it’s off to Riot Fest. My AirBnB kind of sucks and I can’t get checked in until after the first day. I Uber it to the park, a mistake when I discover my phone almost dead and thousands of people trying to catch a ride away at the end of the day. After a miserable battery balancing act, I get one after walking far enough away, and with 1% manage to access the series of door codes that get me inside my AirBnB. Did I mention it kind of sucked? Not clearly marked, 1 towel, paper thin walls, and poorly air conditioned. At that point, very late, I just crash. Did I forget to say the oversold concert took 40 minutes just to walk outside from?

Days 2 and 3 were comparably better in that I learned from another friend who attended of a parking garage considerably closer than the distance I walked away to find an Uber. I better planned to leave before the final song, listening to the closing tracks on the walk along or on a bench outside the fence. I had “Deluxe VIP” tickets, which were seemingly also oversold and only worth the money because I’m a generally poor planner who didn’t bring a cane/seat, shade, or backpack that would have eased some pain points. The “VIP” viewing areas were further away than you could comfortably stand or even access in bigger crowds. Only a proper alcoholic could drink the money’s worth at the open bar. It kept me out of the “everyone needs to step back” after every song crowd for My Chemical Romance, but it was mostly a learning experience I’m happy was better than what I wasted on VIP for System of a Down. I drove back home through the night, and called in sick when I couldn’t sleep by 4 AM.

I didn’t meet anyone worth mentioning. I got some compliments on the Four Year Strong jersey and Bayside T-shirt I bought. I got complimented on a hat I found on the ground and started wearing. Most people that I caught looking at me smiled. I didn’t really think twice about the money I spent on food or other things at the concert. I only drank 1 of 3 days, and that problem of “Why drink if it’s alone?” arose pretty quick. I feel incredibly thankful for being told about the parking, being able to drive the car Hussain lent me, and being able to make the drives safely. It’s also the first day that it’s starting to feel like I’ve been doing a little “too much.”

Someone on reddit posted all of their concert tickets from 1970 to 2010. I started counting. He had between 40-50 and they included baseball games and to things like “The Wiggles.” In the comments he said it was only about half of his concert tickets. By the end of the year, I’d have 56 if I had physical tickets. I’m always counting or making comparisons like this. You could tell he took a lot of pride in his collection and got a lot of engagement and upvotes. I have this sneaking suspicion were I to upload printouts of all the shows, it would just strike people differently.

I just seem to go hard in every direction. Once it’s picked, game over. I want to watch all the TV, learn all the instruments, see all the bands I like after collecting every track well-independent of if there’s enough hours left in my life to consume it all. THEN I DO THE FUCKING MATH AND DISCOVER THERE IS! And I’m even planning to watch things when I’m too old to move around or that I think will be funnier or easier to galvanize other elderly watchers when we’re all stuck in the same boat.

One of my office managers asked how old I was recently, and when I said 34 she went “Oh, that’s so young!” Like, in a sense, yeah. I can walk my happy broken ass all over parks and drive through the night and mosh and eat kinda shitty and think about the future like it’s still open to what I might do with it in business or cultural revolution. But there’s that infinite disconnect, be it in awareness, partnerships, commitment, or just spirit of “yes” and “do.” We’re still trapped. No matter how rich I get, or if I’m seeing a different show every day of the year, my practice is unlikely to become yours. And I don’t know that there’s anything I can really do about that.

I called off work today and intended to watch TV straight through. I kept falling asleep. Then I decided to update my dating profile with so many words. Now I’m writing this and it’s going on midnight, and because I’ve had several consecutive days reminding me that I get most of my energy at and through the night, I’m trying not to persuade myself into the dread of going back to work on a “normal” schedule. I felt it for a second as I started that sentence, and then was like, nah, because I know what I’m about to say next.

It might be 3 weeks or so before the house sells. The buyer did the walkthrough and agreed to the terms. This means enough money to pay off all my debt, plus 2 more paychecks, and theoretically I’ll have started taking on clients either via Marion County DCS or places we know who have overflow clients that need to pay via insurance. In 2 to 5 months, my already “fuck you” spending could turn into a situation that transcends any monetary access and living arrangement I’ve ever had. I’m technically already not in debt barring a catastrophe where the house never sells. The gaping wound of all I didn’t know in how to get this business started has begun to sew up. I’m struggling to find the thing to worry or complain about. I feel like there’s a way out, and if I can get firmly in the flow that always finds the next opening, I might be able to focus on how to create that access for anyone else willing to dive in.

[1000] Warped

As the year starts to feel like it’s winding down, and as I’m back home trying to recover from an immense amount of walking over the last few days in ill-equipped shoes, here we go on my (not-technically) 1000^th digression.

I would call my position in life extremely privileged. From small things to grand scheme, I can point to what I like about being me and, more important to me, what I wouldn’t like about being someone else. I can readily dream about becoming any number of things in manageable timelines and within different budget restraints. I’m almost always feeling healthy. I’m never hungry. I’m capable of learning new things, stepping back and thinking about difficult subjects, and confident in my ability to “go,” “do,” or “be” whatever example I wish to set in any given moment. I feel so powerful that I primarily worry about what happens if and when I let that power get out of hand.

Each thing I do to demonstrate that I’m more than under some debilitating delusion often serves as something that isolates me. Whether I turn on a capacity to, seemingly, over-indulge in seeing “all the shows” or dive into an interesting subject, I’m doing something I can’t really relate to others, or doing so in a superficial way. Take TV, where if I watch “everything,” and you have a favorite show you’re often quoting from watching it so often, I’m not watching it the same way, so even if we share liking it, it’s different. If we both work in the same field, I’m not haplessly trying to “help,” or make up for my childhood, or falling for the manipulations of the desperate and addicted. I’m trying to manage and hold accountable and utilize my perspective verses pray for mercy from it.

I like lists. I’ve posted my list of things I’ve been doing all year several times. Each thing I move to the “did that” category is a little dopamine rush. The lines on that list represent hours of driving, walking, singing along, laughs, money, good luck in weather and traffic, Instagram posts liked by the artists themselves, story reference points, food beforehand, solidarity, cultural appreciation, and inspiration. They, occasionally, represent a shared experience with anyone I’ve known for longer than a day. I have all the power in the world right up to the point after the invitation.

I try to be what I feel I don’t have. I’ll be very deliberate in how I speak to this. I have people who will invite me to things. I have people who will tolerate me. I have people who I think like me. I don’t have someone who would genuinely like to see me or extend an invitation to pretty much any show or activity like Cedar Point. I occupy a very specific place in people’s minds, and it’s not something “easy” that can just be around or part of whatever they’re doing. I, in an explicitly opposite manner, would think I’d died and found out I was wrong about heaven if any combination of anyone I’ve met or enjoyed were around in a reliable way to hang, meet each other, or otherwise buy-in to a series of life experiences that preferred togetherness verses being apart.

Jordan Peterson, his ongoing convoluted legacy aside, still delivers lines that keep me thinking, even if I find them more worth challenging than incorporating. He’s said to be the kind of person who is best for someone else as opposed to finding someone worthy of you. It was a sentiment offered to men who are struggling to find a mate. Peterson is a big proponent of marriage and recognizes a lot of the mental crisis space modern men occupy. I don’t share their plight, and I get what he’s getting at in offering the advice, but I also recognize how that would play out in someone like me. I, still, worry about persuading myself into being an unrepentant manipulator. The second I recognize what you need me to be, well, are we to disregard the details as long as we post smiling pictures and make an earnest attempt at an honest family?

Again, I try to be what I feel I don’t have. You don’t have to “discover” and “play to” what I freely offer up about what I desire or how I wish to go about getting it. You know I want companionship, honest companionship, built on a shared desire and individual perspectives drawing from and contributing what only we can. I don’t want to play you or spend our time together with me probing for vulnerabilities. I can’t really stress that enough, particularly because I’m so good at it, I fucking enjoyed being a DCS assessor. Playing on vulnerability, stress, ignorance, and with more power than damn near anyone should be trusted with is like checkers. You move in specific ways, hop here and there, but there’s only 1 of 2 ways the game is gonna end. I can’t figure out why people either pretend not to know the rules, get bored and give up, or don’t copy what I’m doing.

No one shares their intimate convoluted or seemingly contradictory and angry confused thoughts? Here’s my thousandth, one fucking thousandth, stab. It’s here I can iterate on how much I appreciate about my life in spite of what seems to come up short. It’s here I can explore why turns of phrase stay lodged or images from an endless ream of experiences stick out. The answer to “why,” is so often “for the record.” Just so I can record that I did so. I showed up. I saw. I invited. I tried. I’m still trying.

The “Is For Lovers” festival I went to is one of the several that have spiraled off from the ending of Warped Tour. I almost want to call the force that was that tour a “movement.” I think it’s as large a unifying marker of a certain style and sensibility that most of my cohort has and there’s a reason it’s having a cultural resurgence. All that angst and anxiety didn’t go anywhere. All the emotionality turned into fascism, and the still-arbitrary directions we’re headed have at least turned into a little extra in the bank after 15 years to “splurge” on an hour or 3 drive and $100 or less ticket to scream, “I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare,” in your 30s.

Ironically, the music starts back up after the pandemic, and you can still feel the hesitation to turn the numbers in any direction outside of the circle pit. Where do you want us to go? Up off our feet! Side to side! Along the wall of death! I will not be able to shake the dissatisfaction of attending female-lead shows where abortion or voting don’t make it through the mic after Roe. It’s not just girls who need to be speaking up, of course, but the only show I’ve been to that’s made even slight mention to the veritable pending dystopia, I forget, because it was almost in passing before firing up the next song. The viral Dropkick Murphys video trumps anything I’ve encountered in person.

We’re scared, or more specifically, you’re scared. You’ve been scared, for many many years, and you’ve been quiet for even more. Just like you don’t think to speak your mind about me until I’m months or years-removed from the picture, and then of course not actually to me, you don’t speak to the raging dumpster fire in real time. You don’t locate a hose, bucket, or even bother to spit at it. You grow psychologically “conservative,” trying to protect your precious concert, idea of family, or “empowering” opinion in spite of literally everything else. I call myself a spite engine, but what I’m contradicting is the fundamental existential spite that works to kill everything I try to be. I want the testimony to affirm, not struggle through choking and tears to defend and excuse the indefensible and inexcusable.

I’m not complacent about not having the kind of connection or solidarity I seek. I’m still sensitive to the resentment it conjures when I’m prepared to sacrifice in service to it. I’m mostly just confused, because time still feels illusory to me. I don’t know why you’d wait until tomorrow to do something better that doesn’t cost you anything. I don’t know why you’d prevent yourself from coming to the show or keep antagonizing yourself with my presence. I’m 34. You can’t tell me, “When you get older you’re gonna realize!” as though I don’t appreciate the use of my limbs or made a certain kind of peace with my impending heart failure. Like I haven’t been in relationships or worked consistently or been responsible for people’s lives.

We’re not really together, right? Like hundreds of isolated anxious bags of feels all at the same show, but finding no genuine peace or resolution as they bang their head or throw themselves against the pit.

I don’t really believe I’m ever going to find what I want. I know what I want is a process, and I’m practicing my process, and I’m making bets on ways I can turn that process into something capable of processing more. It’s not a “thing” or “person” to find. It’s not a few years away or “over there.” It’s no more lost than it is a secret to anyone who isn’t practicing the same thing as faithfully as I try to. I’m honestly sad that in all the years since college we haven’t figured out anything about what brought us together that would bring us back. I’m terrified that I could hold in such high regard people who won’t speak or answer back. I don’t think the insecurities or drama of this era are unique in the choices on offer for how to live and orient in the world.

I know the power of doing things poorly, with deception, or in secret. I know the insane impact of even one extra hand to help in doing something better or the right way. We’re not choosing the right way. We’re not fighting to put our energy into things we believe are worth the time and money. We don’t believe in each other, because we’re not speaking to each other, and even when we get the stage, we’re scared and unwilling to say what needs to be said. I don’t really see us getting better nor think the music will save us. I don’t think the lives you’ve cut out for yourselves thus far will have any more room for me or what I’m doing than they have so far. I don’t really think you know what I’m doing though, anymore than you know how to play checkers.

I’m sure you’d just tell me you don’t like checkers and tell me I can’t expect everyone to play my game like I invented the fucking thing lol on your way to blissfully ignoring the point.

[999] Golden Thread

I want to talk a few disparate things at once, so don’t look too hard for some unifying thread.

I don’t kill every bug I come across in my home. I’ve told myself that I would be committed to both extremes at different points. I’ve said, “Fuck it, you’re in my space, you get to die” and, “I mean, what does the bug know? And spiders help kill the ones I really don’t like.” I’ve waffled back and forth, as if landing on either would somehow indicate more about who I really am or what my values were. Given that time has shown me I play it almost wholly by ear with an extreme prejudice against things that buzz around, I think I arrive at another seeming-contradiction, that upon closer analysis, speaks to how I reason and navigate the world.

A bug lives or dies based on how I feel in the moment we meet. If I’m sick of the universe’s shit that day, I might make a concerted hours-long effort to suck up or poison every web, gnat, or ant that has dared enter even the perimeter of my house. My perception of the bug has nothing to do with the bug, and everything to do with how I view myself as either enabled and powerful to address “the universe’s shit” or not.

I’ve been drawn into a few “classic” conversations about relationships and religion lately. My buddy has an incredibly hard time understanding why I would be so nonchalant about an ex-girlfriend or new girl I’m talking to sleeping with someone or going on a date. He’s so generally baffled by this he can’t really even bring up a genuine contention or problem he has beyond, “I just couldn’t be like that.” It’s the same kind of vague dissatisfaction people allude to when you poke at the inconsistencies in their religion. Me, it is supposed, is missing the point of taking for granted your partner is yours or your God will save you and punish the wicked.

I reiterate when challenged on how or why I’m so “weird” or “different” about these things that, the presumed values espoused by your institutions are things I practice without the extra baggage. Marriage isn’t what dictates my sense or practice of “commitment.” If you tell me you “honestly love” me via the dictates of your sky daddy or naïve romantics arrested in your teenage mind, you’re not practicing the kind of honesty I need nor love I can recognize for more than its capacity for self-destruction. These are things I’ve talked about for so long, and at such granular detail, it’s hard to know what else to say. It’s just been in the air and gets a mention

I’m only working 3 days this week. All from home as I’m going to pretend my truck is still broken. If you’re looking for the 2^nd or 3^rd cracks in the story I tell myself about how long I can last at this current job, here you go. I feel my boss/company has earned my deceit, and in exercising my higher truth about not wasting gas, time, and energy to drive for no reason, I’m letting the savings ride. I’m also set to go back to Cedar Point, a music festival, and another music festival next week. I’m primarily concerned with my piddling obligations to work.

It feels weird to call it “work.” I’m not working, I’m occupying my time. I’m going through motions. I’ve been hung up on the word “meaningful” for the last few months. I think work is a word that only starts to make sense when it’s paired with meaningful. It doesn’t mean anything to me to do my job. It results in money. What that money means is a story of what’s already been spent. How I’m exercising my time outside of work doesn’t make the work any more meaningful. It’s a means to money-spending ends. I’m not particularly emotionally invested in the shows I’m going to. That’s not to say I won’t laugh, sing, dance, or appreciate the company. But I’ve spent the vast majority of my life and time not going out. My emotional well-being isn’t rooted in dozens of “escapes” or “distractions.”

I wish I knew how to create an upward spiral (in contrast to the downward spiral.) I wish I knew the little things I could do each day that would just boost a kind of stuck “on” of “better and better.” Self-destruction is so easy and familiar, probably because it doesn’t take anyone else to keep spiraling. The “positive” or “indicative of my values and capacity” things I do don’t have enough meaning even if they could be described as meaningful. I’ve improved upon and memorized more of the song I’ve been learning on piano. Some have expressed positive likes. Gather round the trickling water hose for a sip as we watch the neighborhood burn.

It’s several hours later and I’m as peak anxious as I ever get. I’m anxious about what happens when I start to persuade myself it’s okay to fluidly lie to people I don’t respect. I’m anxious about the incredibly high desire I have to just drop off my work things and quit. I’m anxious that on nice free days I still manage to feel as though they are being under-utilized despite feeling genuinely unwell. I’m worried that I don’t see much of a light at the end of this dismal story I’ve been watching myself play out of biding time for fleetingly small amounts of money.

There’s a dozen things I want to learn more about. There’s toys and software I want to play with. There are things around the land to do. I’m watching TV. I’m dreading every work day. I’m worried I will literally snap and leave a black mark I can’t be convinced to give a fuck about on my “professional” scorecard. If I have a cycle, I’ve been bubbling for quite some time, and I don’t precisely know what the lid coming off is going to look like, but at this rate, it’s coming. No amount of shows or indulgences is turning down the heat. I need good consistent change in one of the dozen directions I’ve attempted to setup for myself. I need that change very soon.