[1013] The Chase

I’m not in the mood to write, but there’s clearly too much on my mind.

I’m feeling emboldened. I want to make “big” or “dramatic” moves in a new direction with regard to how I conduct my life. I want to transform my experience. I’m aware that this can rhyme with my sentiments about feeling “stuck” and desperately looking for something novel or fulfilling.

Something more fundamental is shifting. I have a friend/associate that has done most of the handyman work around the house. He reached out a week or so ago about feeling overwhelmed and maybe getting counseling. We spoke for about 25 minutes and attempted to schedule another 3 or 4 times to complete the conversation. It’s now Sunday through the holiday 4-day break period, and I don’t know if or when we’ll actually complete the conversation.

It’s immediately reminiscent of the space I occupy with almost every one of my clients. They have a problem, and in response they do one of two things. They’ll tell you about it once, then disappear and suffer in silence until they relapse, end up in jail, or otherwise breakdown. Or they’ll persistently repeat their problem, sometimes with the exact same words, for weeks, as they proceed to do absolutely nothing you suggest nor offer any insight as to what might improve their circumstances.

You let them go, or you chase them.

But I’m always chasing. Not so much professionally anymore, but with regard to friendship or basic companionship. Try as I might, I’m a social creature. I can’t make jokes about people I’m not around. I can’t challenge or be challenged by conversations I’m not having. I can’t learn about new and interesting things or happenings around town just through Google and talk shows. As much as I don’t like people, I’m at least half a person, and the things about me that co-evolved with the rest of the tribe mean I need a holistic view on the nature of my problems and how to solve them.

I chase people to go out to dinner with. I chase people to come to shows with me. I chase a kind of peace and civility with neighbors. I chase new acquaintances. I chase responses and noise and solidarity or comradery. I can’t pay people enough to hang out. I can’t persuade anyone to take 15 minutes for themselves, let alone me or our time together. It didn’t matter how many events I threw after college. It doesn’t matter if I’m free all day every day or get penciled in months in advance, from my perspective, the entire concept of friendship, time together, or building anything worthwhile with people is absolutely broken.

I can blame any number of things. I could personalize it, blame exploitative capitalism, call out any given person and their inconsistencies or lies, or tell a detailed history of changes in society related to technology, isolation, the pandemic, and cultural stressors and trauma. It would all feel incomplete in the moment. The moment, like so many, after you’ve been denied or ignored for the 10^th week in a row. The moments you’re digesting the “I’m sorry, but…” text or reading about how someone’s abusive or alcoholic acquaintance takes priority over you. Or, don’t you know, things are just so busy and chaotic! You couldn’t possibly be bothered to keep a regular sleep schedule or make it to dinner because, by default, the frantic self-destructive dance needs protecting.

I just can’t anymore.

I also chase money. I think that I can work hard enough, identify niches, or consolidate on so many modern comforts, and with my time or extra cash will arrive at some genuine feeling of safety or security. But don’t you know? They’re not going to pay me. My friends aren’t going to pay me. Insurance isn’t going to pay me. The desperate and exhausted and hollow, who will pay for everything but themselves or what they need, aren’t going to pay me. My jobs are going to pay just up to the line that keeps you gaslighting yourself about how much you need their money and what it’s good for.

I used to be so anxious that I was wasting every minute when I wasn’t hyper-focused on some “big” world problem or taking a step in service to some larger goal. I would make myself sick, because I only had so much time to create what was driving me. That started to chip away. I can build a big house and fill it with anxious cats, because no one’s coming. I can try to build a business that no one’s hiring because monopolies and grudges dig graves for your walking dead ideas. I can try to build new friendships or relationships, but the texts aren’t going to get returned and the underlying anxious lie about what’s driving you together won’t get left alone.

I’m fine to be a place-filler though. I don’t expect to be seen, heard, or understood. That’s an incredibly high bar in the clusterfuck of modernity. I don’t need to share what I’ve read. I don’t need to offer any genuine opinions. We can fuck like real dolls. I can dress and slim down for some proper arm candy. I can cheer for the sports team and feign indefinite interest in what is almost certainly the dumbest TV show, hobby, or preoccupation of all time, but if it brings joy, oh boy! I don’t care anymore. I’m going to go seek out more of these impossibly unfulfilling and meaningless interactions so, if nothing else, I have more explicit things to talk about in blogs.

What do I even want? I want to work to stop believing “things” will get “better” than what I’m given, or not, every day, every weekend, and every moment your excuses, silence, or malicious interpretation finds its way into my brain. I don’t care what you think. I’ve been experiencing what you do for so many years. I’m watching myself get infected by you so that the things I enjoy I feel like I can’t, and I have no idea what the fuck that is about. That is, until I think about incorporating you. If there’s nowhere to go, I can sit peacefully and practice or read a book. If there’s no one to share a joke or picture with, I don’t have to consider taking and thinking in those terms. I need to deliberately step away. I need to full-stop obligating myself to whatever it is you might need of me.

That said, as I emotionally pine for money and keep the ongoing calculation rendered about when it would be “best” to leave my job, I’m more or less resolving myself over the next 2 or 3 months to hunkering down. I don’t need to be mean about it, of course, and I’m always going to need help with things, but I’m not going to be the force moving things around. It’s me, here, with whatever I can or can’t do by myself for the foreseeable future.