[1004] Pending

This is just a weird space. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to start anything, but it goes a little like this. Quickly get the “easy” stuff done like some paperwork or buys. Use that momentum to begin calling people about what to do next. Find out you don’t know even more than you thought, they don’t know how to help you, and there’s a dozen interpersonal barriers and variables you couldn’t predict in your wildest dreams. Try to start many things, you’ll find yourself at different points of the endless unpacking of what you don’t know, and more and more people’s interpersonal details will seep their way into what you’re trying to accomplish.

For 1 year and 3 months, I’ve been attempting to run a counseling business. For about the same amount of time I’ve been trying to cash in on the house we’re meant to flip. Today, I took the day off after 2 weeks of coughing culminated in me puking when it became uncontrollable. I’m better, but it’s 2 AM, I still have one day left of “work,” you know, counseling, which I can’t just do for myself. The house isn’t sold. As I watch my shows and movies, I long for days when I was doing drug studies and had the vast majority of my time not answering to anyone.

Among the shows I’m watching are episodes of NOVA. Miracles, by any grounded definition, are reported on for the many years of effort and contributions from the smartest corners of the world. HIV vaccine? Humanity is almost there. Raise an entire city and engineer ways to keep it from flooding? Just bust out the old pen and paper and let’s get to calculating. The “thingy-ness” of existence undoubtedly has one-to-many minds cracking how that thing works or can work to keep us afloat. Of course, there’s a hidden monetary motivation that doesn’t creep into the celebratory narrative, but this is why we reflect on these stories, to remind ourselves and humble the adulation.

I know there are people who do almost nothing beyond attend meetings, click a few things on a screen, and put on charm offenses who make hundreds of thousands to millions. I continually reference the 3 to 4 months of paychecks were I to stop all unnecessary spending to get out of debt. How I conceive of my “freedom” or the “brink” and “verge” of regaining a measure of my time is an entirely different universe of conversation to the person I wish to be. I feel like I live a mock-version of that person in extravagantly spending on shows and toys I can, technically, afford, you know, if my grand designs and plans ever came to fruition in a manner that felt anything but prolonged and accidental.

In fact, no matter how many shows I go to, or toys I buy, my world still feels very small. My suspicion many years ago was that no matter how much money I may make, no one around me that I cared to indulge with at the time, was going to be free. In 52 or so shows and counting, I’ve brought my dad most often. That’s not a problem, but it is telling. No one, but my dad, is traveling to me and what I’m up to. No one’s inviting me, if they’re up to anything at all. So what if I had 100 things scheduled for next year? You any less busy? You gonna discover a deeper interest?

So I want money. I want obscene amounts of money because I want to do a lot of big things and I don’t believe people in this country know how to do anything if money doesn’t dictate it. They won’t make time for each other, unless, of course, spending that time entreats or paradoxically prevents a very complex emotional baggage narrative about how much they do or don’t “love” their family. They aren’t valued and getting paid enough to push whatever role they occupy towards something better or more comprehensive. They don’t recognize their thoughts have been reduced to memes.

There aren’t any political networks going door-to-door in my neighborhood. There are more people getting actively harmed by over-booked caseloads and zero accountability than anyone wishes to admit. All of our major looming issues regarding the environment and ignorant violence are always at play. How do you approach without obscene amounts of money? How do you get your minute and a half blurb on Big Think without the networking and marketing? How do I find a life that let’s me use winter as a verb?

You tap into the existing models of exploitation. Women get exploited? You become a pimp. Oligarchic medical establishment? Lick up the endless crumbs of the cookie they’re munching. I’m convinced there’s no particularly “ethical” way to make the money I wish to. It’s reorienting around a narrative of entitled taking. Why take it? Well, they give it to you. People give every inch of themselves to the powers that be, religions they pretend to adhere to, the prestige and honor of their title. You name it, someone’s trying to hack off a part of themselves to give to it. I saw it at the party house. People volunteered for what would be paying jobs at any proper club or music venue. More than building a company, I know I’m building a narrative.

This is what incenses me about so much of the bullshit of different company “values” and “mission statements.” You’re narrative doesn’t have to be a lie unless you want access to the money controlled by the largest liars. You just have to obscure some details and downplay your company’s dance moves to be pretty wildly successful without ever reaching “throwing themselves off the building” kind of press. Every time I drive past some big building with a name I’ve never heard of, I’m a little jealous of whatever series of half-truths and opportunities they were afforded to get that little piece of certainly-not profit-shared real estate.

I want to know if it’s genuinely harder to build big things with people who are more equal, or if this system is just so catastrophically oriented against it that you might as well quit. More people, as I’ve already alluded, bring in all their baggage and different alignments or often lack of goals beyond, well, making as much money as possible. They may or may not jive with decisions that require them to affix their tastes to a certain income bracket. Is that the kind of drama I want to deal with when I try to either sustain a happy place or grow over a longer period? No. Or, what if they don’t even recognize how little the money really means to them as much as the drama of it all? Make that fit, or cut it out?

But even this fight is only a fantasy. I can’t get login information correct. I can’t discover, currently, how to write the check for $1300 that says we’ll be impaneled with insurance companies and can start taking clients. I’ve got a licensed person asking me to include her phone number on my flier “so it looks more official” to her alleged DCS contact. And, honestly, I can’t tell you what I’m doing wrong without conceiving of it as “everything.” It’s all wrong, all the time, and you just hope the next wrong move maybe makes you feel good or makes a little money eventually.

I stopped having any genuine expectations. I don’t think this is a healthy kind of detachment. When I was first told the house wasn’t going to sell, I didn’t feel anything. Of course it wasn’t going to sell. Why would it? I only worked on it for months. It’s only been an extremely hot market. It’s only supposed to have been to a wealthy and powerful political connection. It’s only overcame weird internal drama that no one anticipated. Why would it sell now? So I can be out of debt and we can move on to the next one? Not a good enough reason. Why should I think this person we’re utilizing for their license will be any better or worse than someone who hasn’t had their jealous husband accuse Hussain with sleeping with her? There’s no rules, just chaos. I don’t know if I embrace it so much as I’m just dead to it. Maybe this is my peak, in my shed, with a good portion of my time, occasional company, with just enough money to pay for one-off doctor’s visits and meds, but not good health insurance.

Aunt Vi in Queen Sugar said sometimes you forget to just sit in it while you’re living the dream in reflecting on the success of her pie company. If I don’t have a family or career to get complacent in, maybe I just make it about my shows and music and indulgences. I saw of clip of Gary Vaynerchuk talking about a proverbial fanatic of a show, and how if they just quit whatever they were doing and started making content about that show and their fanaticism, in 2 years, they could be a version of him, living their best life like the 3-5 emails a day he gets from people claiming to have achieved that. This kind of rich-guy circle-jerking philosophy I got bored with a long time ago. Any given blog or podcast from these types is very buzzy and motivational and all predicated on nothing but humble-brags disguised as hard-fought wisdom. They take on a false-god sheen as their brand seeks to supplement the mutual feelings that something meaningful is missing.

I don’t trust anyone telling me how to succeed that doesn’t have stories like mine about the inconceivably petty and arbitrary stops. The hollowness and emptiness of watching all of your highest dreams linger at the end of a phone call that no one is answering. Just quit my job and blog about TV you say? What if instead I became “passionate” about sustainable accountable care for some portion of a population local to me? What if instead of touring the country espousing the “purpleness” of everything, I had a message that spoke to the individual in a way that would get them to vote in a way that didn’t court fascism?

I’ve watched every episode of 1,005 shows and 3,146 movies. I’m 34. In many ways, I’m still very anchored to who I conceived of myself as a teenager. I still want shit to make sense. I still want to think there are right and wrong ways to live independent of the individuated rabbit holes our myopic selfishness might like to jump in. I still think we need standards and accountability. I still find it incredibly hard to imagine the mental world that allows many people to carry themselves as they do. That is, unless I factor in the incredible amount of depravity it’s otherwise impolite to mention. We’re dumb, poor, fat, exhausted, “busy” with whipping ourselves to within inches of suicide outside the death by a thousand cuts. We’re liars. We’re proud of our lies and we’ll isolate ourselves to protect the lies at any cost. We provide healthcare! No, we bilk insurance companies. We care about children! No, we work our complexes and sense of powerlessness on those even more powerless than us.

I mostly want to see what happens if I can be rich and continue to antagonize the liars. I want to use my money to destroy the psychological artifice that keeps people trapped, and record the results of how desperately they return to the same self-destruction. When given the freedom, opportunity, and access, will people do the “right” things? No, I don’t think they will, but I don’t know for sure, and need to run the experiment. Am I doing the right things with my freedom, opportunities, and access? I’m trying, no? Do I even know what trying looks like anymore?