[1020] Missed You

I hope I can take my time with this. I had a lot of fun and helpful ideas on the drive home, but I don’t know that I’ll recall them all. First one is easy. I’m allowing myself to use the word “hope” again. I haven’t found a good substitute, and I think I’m aware enough to not allow hopes and dreams to supersede any amount of work it would actually take to get something. I think I’m fundamentally a hopeful person, but that always felt like a kind of shameful notion. Fuck hope, work. Why bother hoping if you can do? And then as you pay attention to so many things you can’t do anything to help or fix, the desire for them no less antagonizes, and you’re hopeful, if not still helpless.

I almost posted a tipsy status saying something like, “I want to do big things.” It’s a stupid statement. It’s the first pass of an idea, vague, nonsensical, and empty for its very “hopeful” sensibility not backed by any tangible commitment or sacrifice. I felt like it bubbled up as a reminder. I want to make a discernible impact on the whole of experience. I want to shift “things” and demonstrate an awareness or capability with power that you can measure independent of opinions. That hasn’t stopped being true no matter the seemingly infinite series of humbling scenarios I’m meant to swallow with regard to my budget, time, or energy.

There’s a chance for a role at work to be fully remote. I want it, but of course I don’t. I want it so bad that I continue to work to create my own business, again. What kind of “exotic” locales could I be in while I conduct my groups? How much “freer” would I feel if I could literally plan to spend more time with friends located much farther than 20 minutes from me? I bet I spend less on gas to and from the airport with $9 a day parking than I do driving to bumfuck Bedford.

Today has been weird. I haven’t felt anxious in a bit. Once I figured out it was my righteous “fuck you” impulse that spoke to my difficulty doing “easy” notes for work, I pretty much mellowed out. Then, ex-girlfriend comes back into the picture, and I’ve just been off. It’s not even confusing or complicated to me, but I’m in this observer state. I don’t feel seen by her. The last time I reached out, I was admonished, and it was made clear to me that if there was going to be any kind of “friendship” going forward, it was going to be on her terms and at her pace. Umm, great, but friendship is an exchange. What do you have to give to the person who can’t see you?

She suggested we walk around a trail at the dam near my house. I’m tired, don’t give a fuck about trails, it’s cold, and I’ve been less than adequately active for months. It felt like an analogy for our dynamic on the whole. I was just along for the ride. She spent a year or so discovering more about herself and finding the capacity to apologize. Cool, good for her. It has nothing to do with me. You want to spend time with me and have a “low key” or chill environment? Come bowing or let’s get food. That would suggest you have a remote inclination about what I’m into or would put me more at ease with you.

And I could just say “no.” I could just be like, look, I don’t trust you, I’m not angry at you, but you don’t make me feel good and I don’t want to have a dumb forever non-conversation about what it takes to look and feel like a friend, but I appreciate your effort or the direction you feel you’re trending. What does that get me? I couldn’t begin to pretend to understand how that might register to her. So, instead, I’ll be tired and complicit in my own caricature, walking along the forest path small-talking like I’ve recovered from the severe blow to my hopes and dreams come back to manifest as a perhaps more self-aware ex who confidently dictates the means by which we might relate.

Whatever.

I both enjoy and am a touch worried about how much I’ve learned to shut the fuck up and let things go. I’m literally too old. I’m 34. I really don’t need to say anything most of the time. I’ve seen it before. I see you coming. I’m not lacking in confidence or direction. I’m not an insecure or proud know-nothing powering through idyllic fantasies. I just want to hang out, build some shit, laugh, watch my shows, and not entertain too deeply the thought that were my plane to go down, I’d be getting off easy.

I’m taking more planes. I’m barely in less debt than I normally am, and I’m being way more deliberate about booking the flight, getting the place to stay, and just manifesting that “do shit and see people” ethos I wanted to be at 10 years ago. I don’t care about the debt. Even if I have money in the bank, I’m still in debt. There will always be utility bills and property taxes. I’ll always have to eat. My car…is a car, and I have 3 of them. So, debt? Oh well, at least I visited wherever, saw the band or friend, and get to talk about it again in whatever blog comes next.

I’ve been refreshing myself on different philosophers lately too. So many seemingly concerned with finding the best ways to live and think about things. Meta questioners by default mostly folding their arms after a quasi-circular reasoned thing registers as a novel way to state the obvious by the onlookers.

It's two days later.

I’ve been listening to Philosophize This! segments. I’m reminded in simplified ways that the vast majority of remotely “novel” insights I’ve ever infused into my perspective are pieces of what stuck from classes in college or reading. Each philosopher answering and undermining and substituting their words and versions to help explain just what it is we’re made of and why we bother.

I’m here at the beginnings of the last couple days where faint anxiety has started to creep back in. For a while there I was pretty smooth, working out why notes were such a chore and resolving myself to work at my own pace and/or in advance. My stomach still drops a little at the prospect of working each day, but it registers as an insult to the idea of suffering to bother mentioning it (over and over and over again). I feel bad I missed my friend’s text. Part of me heard my phone 2 hours ago, but a larger portion of me was in my own head. I put on a cheesy movie from 2002 and proceeded to play with sewing a pair of pants I’ve been saving for several years for repair because they fit so well. They deserve a person who actually knows how to sew or with the patience to watch more Youtube videos.

I tried to go to the gym today. My body was reaching that odd state of discomfort that knows it needs to be pushed in a way that I haven’t in a while. I thought I had the clothes packed and discovered otherwise in the parking lot. My plan was to use the energy working out tends to give me to come home and work some notes in advance. I act as if I’m not going to be up until 2 or 3 anyway. I’ve been fighting the temptation to maximize a level of debt to spur myself into more movement. At bottom, I know I need to move, I just rarely seem to identify what that’s supposed to look like each day.

For all of the different schools of thought and means of describing the same restless-human-syndrome, I find myself drawn towards the “everything at once” and “all is connected” sensibility. I think it’s why writing persuades me in a persistent way that it’s actually working at doing something. It’s an analogy for the perpetual process. The words can be infinitely translated and reinterpreted. Every time I return to them, they mean something just a hair different to me than they did before. They’re an embodied “form,” mathematically described, yet perfectly abstract and inaccessible until you activate your machinery for determining meaning. It really is a fascinating “thing.” When I’m dead, they get to act as different reincarnations. In summary of everything I’ve written, you might gather I’m rather angry and don’t like jobs.

It’s the next day.

I’ve just gotten off another dumb interaction in the world of sales. I find it fascinating there are people who have been in business for decades selling crap to idiots with cliches and soulless imploring who don’t have the persuasive skill and coherence I intuited at 15 fucking up your credit with Target red cards. I’m too sharp a weapon, man. I need to take your kids or go at 35 felons at once. I recognize my capacity to make “instant-friends.” Why can’t I get introduced to ones with money or influence lol? Is there truly nothing of value that needs introduced to someone who could use it? It’s always got to get gross and kinda forced or hidden under the corporate-speak that doesn’t let you engage with thoughts about how you’ve abused their ignorance or sold your soul?

I have to end this thing at some point. This week already feels incredibly long and I have a party I was invited to Thursday, Louis C.K. Sunday, and didn’t realize I’m off on Monday. I’m caught up on notes.

I say often how I’m lied to dozens of times a day. I think people mistake this as though I feel I’m somehow on the receiving end of deliberate attempts at deception. No no, it’s the colloquial language lies. It’s body language lies. It’s professed standards and competencies with no discernable measurement or distinction worthy of holding. I’m awash in lies and they make me extremely sensitive to when there are attempts to cajole me with them. I find commercials often psychologically tortuous. I hear on repeat the “wrong” word like “opportunity” you’re calling the cold-calling bait-n-switch “sales” job. Your acronyms and mission statements mean nothing to me. All the hyper-insisted upon “I’m sorry” “I don’t know” and “good luck” sentiments fogging your mind and air.

If I’m a philosophical cliché in being ever-restless and striving to individuate or manifest my power as described in dozens of works and religious traditions, so be it, but whatever I’m after I’m wholly convinced is impossible to achieve while under the spell of so much bullshit. If nothing else, no matter how obscure what it means to exist may be, you don’t do it better lying. You don’t do it better calling those lies “pretending” or “professional” or “mature” or anything that helps conceal and disguise the intention to hide.