[1032] Bullseye

 Again! I am quite tired, but less so than when I last tried to write. I think what put me over the edge for writing this time was watching the combat footage of the Nashville police clearing the school and shooting the shooter.

Power.

If you can conceive of it as a fluid instead of a solid, you won’t trap yourself under the same conversational patterns. Is the population capable of enacting laws to stop school shootings? It, like every question begging the reflexive and same responses, is framed incorrectly. It’s rooted in abstraction and obscurity. Those who ask what “we” or “people” can do aren’t wrestling with reality.

Do you have power?

I do. I prove it to myself every day. I have the power to write and speak the truth of what’s on my mind. I have the power to make myself feel better by doing so, going to shows, and recasting the things I do to occupy my time as opportunities more than financial or guilt-ridden burden. I call my Nazi Senator Braun a Nazi regularly. I vote, regardless of my “belief” about its efficacy, I know definitely not doing so is of worse consequence holistically. I create and build relationships. I listen to people testify to my good advice and encouragement. I feel capable of destroying at least as much as I might create.

I feel it. I practice it. I speak to it. I brag about it. I lay it bare to be scrutinized (ignored). I recognize when I’m hesitant to gain too much of it, and I watch as it shapes, most often for the worse, people I’ve admired. The conversation around power, in my observation, isn’t happening. Power is something relegated to the de facto consequences of Christo-fascist nationalism, ignorance, and fear.

I talk to 100 or more people regularly every week about the things they feel powerless to control. That doesn’t mean they don’t work. That doesn’t mean they don’t have dozens of things I’m excited and proud to hear about and discuss. Not a single person has used the word “powerful” to describe how they feel in service to their recovery or achieving goals. It’s not on their mind or tongue. It’s, of course, powerful to maintain goals, fight, take care of your family, honestly get a deeper handle on how your brain works and what the words you’re using are doing to you. But do they claim it? Do they feel it deep enough to celebrate and speak to it?

We’re culturally addicted, and it’s not to drugs. We’re addicted to abstract notions of how power manifests and how it can be used. We swing between extremes in self-serving narratives about abstract enemies while the knife in our heart continues to turn. Any sentence that starts with “guns” isn’t talking about guns. It’s a nonsense abstraction about “tyranny” or “rights.” It’s a fear for the killing potential, often realized regularly upon children, minorities, or the sad. You don’t know how to deal with your fear of guns or a fascist’s fear of everything. So, from either perspective, it’s all crazy, must be condemned, and no amount of violent coercive demonstration or law, let alone statistic, will be persuasive nor account for the broken heart of the issue.

To recognize the amount of power you have is to court madness. I’ve never been closer to empathizing with religious believers and why they need a god than the more I saw the impact of my power. If you don’t have a rooted “why” for your behavior, it defaults to “because I can.” You can lie, because to you, the ”greater truth” often becomes manifest in a more obvious and consequential way than you, or anyone you’ve been lying to, is going to bother to recognize. Is Trump in prison? Are any insurrectionist Senators being removed? Don’t you “keep the peace” and “pay the bills” by lying a thousand times a day about things big and small? Isn’t it “easier” to pretend that you have simple one-off feelings that aren’t important or “that big a deal” and aren’t worth exploring? You have the power to deny you exist at all.

Every kid will die. There’s literally a war this moment in which the rampant shelling of civilians in schools, hospitals, and homes is the strategy. It’s creeping up into “debatable” to some in the abstraction that is “The West” whether we should bother caring about all that, what with our clear and present series of errant death scenarios playing out at home. Don’t you see? Those in that conversation don’t care anymore about a concrete expression and demonstration of values in service to Ukraine than they do children here. The dance is the point. There’s nothing to win, only an obligation to perform, even as a ragged and exhausted zombie as every other voice collapses around you.

You don’t have power. I do. How’s that make you feel? Angry? Empty? You gonna “argue” with me about it? Your power is memes. Your power is silence. Your power is finding secret nobility in being a self-righteous exhausted do-gooder in service to your extremely personal ethic and cultivated awareness. Your power is to treat yourself as an abstraction at the whims of people like me. You can’t be my cheerleader when we don’t operate the same means of power. I can’t take your advice when your window to the world is coated in sticky fingerprints and stuck open just wide enough to fit a whisper through. I can’t trust and respect what you can’t recognize about yourself with regard to chaos or control. That’s why I have power, and you don’t.

School shooters are the visceral example of the thought process depicted above. You can’t encourage and empathize with their plight because you don’t operate within the horrid reality where they know how “obvious” and “easy” it is to exercise their destructive power, but you act, speak, and legislate otherwise. Those capable and willing to speak honestly about how fucked things are aren’t whispering and still never get heard. They’re screaming, pleading, and arguing articulately indefinitely, and you’re calling them “just the wind.” What is an “innocent child” in a psychological world that can’t acknowledge what a gun is? What is a world that can’t reckon with its fear and lack of control the gun represents?

Everyone has to die until all who are left no longer wish to continue killing themselves. That’s what we’re doing, always. That’s my opposition to the death penalty. It’s not because I can’t or won’t kill someone, it’s because I feel, deeply, just how many I could get a taste for killing. There are many things about me that could stand to die, but my hesitation to destroy someone forever shouldn’t be at the top of my list.

I have power and you don’t because I don’t rely on you as the primary sources of my power. I work to discover and recognize what I need. I maintain my license. You wait for me to act so you can perform a reaction. You look forward to what I have to say, right or wrong, because you’re not engaging with me; you have a fantasy where what I say and do gets situated for you to ogle like an expensive piece of art. Somewhere, you know “my” power isn’t mine at all. My work ethic demonstrates a matter-of-fact set of consequences, obligations, responsibilities, and points of awareness that you believe would drive you mad. You’re too busy. You’re too tired. You have too much on your mind. You’re barely keeping it together, and you don’t really know why or for whom, but you’re absolutely certain whatever it is I’m talking about certainly has nothing to do with “you.”

It's not that you or I have too much or too little power. You either don’t have any, or you have all of it, and the examples you set as a result of either condition dictate the ongoing landscape. I assert again you don’t have any power because your meme is not your voice. I say loud and proud that you do not have power because you don’t do ANYTHING that isn’t on the back of someone else. The celebrity gives you license. The work environment sets the rules. The habit courts justification. You’ll “try” and “hope” and “would like to” and “it’d be nice” and “we’ll see” and “one day” or “I’m waitin’ on” or “if I could just” as if you’ve lived a singularly just day your entire life.

You don’t care and can’t cope. You’re not brave enough to admit it, too lazy to explore what happens after you do, and too guilty and ashamed to account for the consequences of operating that way for so long. So keep watching the kids die, every day. Watch the despots grow in power as your silence and complicity become all-consuming. The nature of your power is as obvious as a bullet through a child’s brain, and yet only shooters seem capable of figuring that out.

[1031] Every One Of You Is Fired

I’m so very tired, but it feels like something is kicking around up there.

“Damn, there I am.”

I’m in it. Well, kind of. I’m doing the thing I envisioned for myself happening much earlier, but it’s happening now. I’m buying, pretty much, what I want to buy. I’m building a business. I’m living fort-life. It's all that and a bag of peanuts.

I wasn’t exactly “called out” for going to a comedy show tonight alone, but it was apparent I was the only one who had done so. I don’t really think of it as being alone though. I’m doing something. I’m doing something I want to do, that I can “afford” in the modern debt-ridden sense of the word. This has been the “obvious” pursuit of most my life. I want to do something, I try to do it.

Apparently, that’s the autistic part in full force. “People” are ever-abstract and nondescript in what they want. While I’m feeling confused and betrayed, what’s actually happened is a fundamental miscommunication between people who have not been speaking the same language. It’s not their fault they don’t mean what they say. It’s not my fault I seemingly have a condition that needs things to mean things in order for them to make sense.

The average person sees 4 concerts a year and .69 comedy shows a year, according to a hesitant ChatGPT.

I had to go to sleep.

It's 1:11 PM the next day. I’ve only just gotten out of bed, made coffee, and still feel myself hesitant to doing 30 minutes, maybe, of work before I start up again Monday. I do that “average person” search thing in trying to orient myself a lot. What’s the average mortgage payment or rent? Between $1100-$1500. What’s the average amount of sexual partners? 6.4. I like going back to tests and seeing scores indicating my capacity and potential. I know we’re all average across an infinite scope of variables, but there is little I look at and genuinely believe I couldn’t get really good at or master when I put my head and focus into it.

I am genuinely struggling to just do my work things. Although, this time it’s not causing anxiety. I’m “blocked” like a struggling creative trying to put out their next album. This weekend hasn’t felt like a weekend. I tried to put my computer together only to get interrupted by unknown unknowns and “should have been there” pieces that weren’t included. The symphony show was meh, so I paired it with a decent comedy show a couple hours later. I’ve had one of my favorite burgers to eat. I got 2 more people to sign up for my company’s services. I’m going to another show in a few hours.

There’s still resistance. The topics of conversation have centered around how annoyingly hopeless and lying people are. I’m isolated in that I have a desire, at all, to not be “average.” My “personal philosophy” encapsulated in so many blogs attempting to pragmatically orient is mine and mine alone. After 1,030 entries I’m 1,030 more steps along a lonely road than nearly everyone I’ll ever meet. My existence will make this condition worse and worse the longer I’m alive.

What do I do about that? Keep playing along at my job? I, not quite accidentally, have 4 people currently signed up to the website I started a few weeks ago. I still, weekly, get affirmations about my ability to counsel and encourage. I’m waiting for a “comfortable transition” between my current role and operating independently. I’ve deliberately walked myself into a debt corner so I’d stop too seriously entertaining quitting too quickly. But, why not just go for it? I still don’t have the trust in myself to connect? No, I don’t trust the world to fill in the blanks. I think it’s hard enough to get a handful of people to fall in line on either side of what I’m doing, I’m not going to pull out the net, even if there’s some money already realized and in the account.

There’s a deafening emptiness surrounding me. I guess I can’t make out which direction to walk. It’s all for what? It’s all for who? My friends will unironically talk about needing to get out more and turn down or ignore invitations routinely. It’s not the money or the time. It’s not me. It’s that they don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know, or trust, in what they need to not be like they are. To realize your power and responsibility is to court insanity. They “feel” like “things” are “crazy enough,” even if they don’t know what that means.

As my company grows, the amount of distance I’ll put between me and what I’ve come to conceive, coldly, as “learning opportunities” will be practically infinite. When I get to the point of being able to be anywhere in the world either doing my job or collecting enough from the ecosystem, whenever I please, it’s hard to believe I’ll be able to maintain much of the memory of so many hapless or incoherent souls. I’ll be 35 in a few months. I was convinced I would be living an upgraded version of the life I am now 10 years ago. Which of your goals are you 10 years behind on? You think you’re gonna be more or less likely to achieve them in your 40s than you are now? How many of your favorite artists will be dead by then? What new health problem is looming? People aren’t showing up for themselves well before I ever need to complain they aren’t showing up for me.

These notes don’t look anymore appealing, but the block is less heavy. I should get them done, utilize my upgraded shower, get my other favorite burger before the show tonight, and watch this week go by in a flash until pay day where I can take another bite out of debt. My probation emailing trick hasn’t proven to work, I don’t know when I’ll find it in me to fuck with the new computer again, and I’m sure the rain will continue to antagonize regarding all I wish to do outside. It’s alright. I have no real problems, still. I can launch myself into any new direction to address what’s on my mind in any given moment. This thought does not drive me mad. Thinking like that, but not feeling it at the same time would.

[1030] A Short Walk To Work

You know, I’ve been perfectly fine all day. I’ve been a bit tired, but had decent groups, am fed, the weather improved, my water is mostly back and I can use my shower and toilet again, and I did a mini construction thing to protect some water lines. Then, I checked my email.

I’ve emailed the probation departments of the state. I sent the first one Friday, the next one today. The second I treated as though I had received a number of responses and wished to answer questions in bulk. I got one response so far. It’s from the director of Rush County asking to be removed from my distribution list.

Rush County is small, rural, and exactly the type of place that a place like Groups tries to account for. Perhaps, in a world I’ve never encountered, everyone on probation is having their needs met in Rush County. Perhaps, relative to any other county in Indiana with the methamphetamine and fentanyl problems, Rush manages to escape the worst. Perhaps, and my suspicion, the attitude of a person in charge of probation in a rural Indiana county is not the kind of person to entertain anything beyond their version of “help,” “service,” or “accountability.”

There’s a certain kind of brazen crazy you need to adopt to maintain yourself in the social work world. There’s another kind you need to be an entrepreneur. There’s another to empathize and emulate the insecure backward “conservative” fear and power games of Hilljackistan. Mind you, it manifests in different ways no matter where you’re from, but your hurdle is never a question of whether you have the credentials, capacity, or good intentions. Your hurdle is an innate suspicion and pretention that anything they’re not familiar with is going to threaten their power, control, or what they can anticipate.

This is why you have to call “everyone,” meet in person, and let things develop in a way that doesn’t suggest you are too thirsty. For whatever reason, say the abject depravity and disregard of your average person, the go-getter or do-gooder or highly capable is default treated with derision until the direct benefit of their presence is felt. After all, until then, I’m just in it for the money, right?

I know, personally, over years, this state is wildly underserved. That any director of anything, ever, would ask to be removed from an email list before they would bother to ask a question reminds me of the “leadership” of DCS. Put that aside, your pithy contention or moral or perspective, and do things like I say. At some level, it’s an impossible barrier. But, the more people you connect with, and the more you’re able to let the work speak for itself, those people rot in their self-righteous holes as you grow around them.

You don’t want to believe the world is as shit as it is. Most people aren’t people. Most are pathological egomaniacs in suicidal races to the bottom barely refraining from turning feral at the full moon. It’s why so many who’ve been resigned to their fate “wish me luck” with everything I’m trying to do. We know it intuitively takes luck or an insane capitalistic resolve because nothing is designed to enable and genuinely help or fix something for more than a moment if the wrong people aren’t watching.

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I hadn’t written in a while because things are “good.” I’m busy with shows. I’m not thinking too hard about my job. Consciously making the decision to stop pitting my desire to quit against the debt I’m amassing to have fun and own cool things helped. Investing in a means of getting people to pay us directly went decently far. Of course, there’s always something lingering. My friend asked me if I would really feel free enough once I was making a certain amount of money. I enthusiastically said yes. I know when I’ve felt more or less free and why. The less things I “have to” think about verses “want to” think about speaks to that immensely. When I’ve got the bills paid 100 years in advance, every insurance possible, and get to play all day, that will be better than the regal debt and choppy car and niceties of maintaining a professional demeanor for never-enough money at a time.

I’m still watching. I’ve still got things to complain about. I still mourn the loss of opportunity in every unanswered call or invitation. My business partner is still perpetually on the verge of a heart attack. Our client base is as reliable across frustrating metrics as they are any other. I still have a dozen “little things” like shows not starting on time, getting charged more than I’m due, unfixed potholes, ill-temperatured buildings, ashyness and itchiness, and technology gripes. But the overall path feels as accessible as it possibly can without an aggressive advertising campaign and visits to various offices.

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I’ve bought the parts to my new computer and have yet to put it together. It’s going to take focus, prep, and several hours for me to not feel like I’m about to break something. My best guess is I’ll make my attempt next Saturday. I’m already psychologically comfortable with spending 2-3K on an acoustic/electric guitar if it plays like I want it to. It really does feel like fate that the giant guitar store is located 7 minutes away from the comedy spot I’m heading to in Fort Wayne. I’m also likely going to get the wood to complete at least the basic shell of my wood shop. I’ll do both of those things before I pay for more rolfing, which is far and away the cheapest option with a high positive emotion payout and impact on overall health, but still so fancy for a basic budget boy like myself.

At 20 clients, I make as much as I do at Groups. That could be 20 hours of individual, or 2 groups a week. At 40 clients, I’m paying off my maxed-out credit card every month and a half. There are 92 counties in Indiana, 1 wholly opposed to even being contacted so far, and 5 people circling us from the surrounding area. We’ve had 1 person pay, 1 say they could tomorrow, 1 on Thursday, and I’ve 2 transferring to our company from the Groups I already hold. This feels doable. In spite of my wretched state, fascist country, and overall painfully violent and tortured perspective regarding the people in my field who profess to care, this feels doable. The math makes sense, because fuck my feelings. Me and Hussain alone could meet the lowest practical bar. Entertaining some state-wide critical mass or legitimacy isn’t the goal. Developing 20 relationships is.

[1029] What If

I haven’t felt the need to write. I’m not entirely sure what’s prompting me to try now. I opened this word document in the middle of the day. It’s 1:08 AM now after I’ve returned from seeing William Shatner and a screening of The Wrath of Khan. There are certainly a few things happening in my life worth discussing. Time continues to race, and where precisely I’m at in space is ever imprecise.
No matter how much time passes, my brother will remind me just how unwise he is. I don’t see him very often, so when he manages to not be an out-and-out douche, I start to trick myself into thinking maybe he’s gotten a little older and measured about things. I need to cut that out. If I’m 34, he just turned 32. He’s got his good job, wife, and series of hobbies. He certainly believes he has “figured some things out” and can “tell it like it is.” It’s cringey and dispiriting to watch too closely.

My persistently reasonable, mellow, steadfastly supportive father has been peeved for days over how my brother spoke to him recently. My brother has created a catastrophized scenario regarding my dad’s health and eyesight. Like most who might profess to be acting out of “just how much they care,” he got elevated and insistent that my dad rectify the problem with his eye, on my brother’s terms, as quickly as possible, and through a series of condescending comments and know-it-all-isms effectively chased my dad away from having dinner with him and his wife on his birthday.

I believe my brother cares, but he is an absolute dipshit. I feel like I got a preview into the kind of social-worker/counselor mode I’m going to have to go into as he overplays his perception of our dad as he gets older or does little to cope and deal with his fears and ignorance. That inability to cope will manifest as more insistence and judgement regarding the step-kids, my step-mom, and invariably me which I’m certain he launched into a self-satisfied series of empty truisms about me after our last phone conversation.

When a situation like this arises, it’s fascinating to me how quickly people get into their camps. The shared goal of something akin to “love and take care of each other” becomes a series of memories used to rehash arguments or prove weak points. Was the swerve because of bad eye-sight, or being tired, or because someone was walking where they shouldn’t? Doesn’t matter, once you adopt a story that your dad is basically blind and ambivalent about whether he hurts himself or others while driving, you’ll say fucking anything with your head held high and hands on your hips. I’m not exactly looking forward to the prospect of putting my brother in his place again, but if anyone’s going to do it…

My brother has the wrong kind of “matter-of-factism” nature. He can’t see the forest for the trees as he espouses the virtue of chop chop chopping and building his own little house and world that *would never* morally or practically be contributing to catastrophic deforestation. This is what people do once they give themselves over to a fundamentally selfish and self-righteous feeling. You can stay mad forever. You can call indefinite abuse the height of love. You can deftly dance around what action and practice you must engage in to be accountable to your emotions. I feel like I’m navigating this constantly, and not just because it’s my job.

Hussain is high anxiety as well. He messaged me tonight saying he wanted the contact information of the Putnam County probation department so that he could tell them to send us more clients. I met with them on Friday, got one of their people signed up and paid for, sent that person to him, and experienced the first glance at what I hope is not a problem I will have to speak to very often. He didn’t reach out to the client immediately. He waited until his priority, picking up a new old car to fix up, was hooked to my truck and he was driving back from Indianapolis. The client, because it’s the weekend, was with her family and couldn’t really talk, and now what was easy-going gung-ho reliable communication is rubbing against his desire to be too busy and chaotically organized. He begs to be overwhelmed.

It's good news that we got a client. I need 10 more, personally, consistently, and then I’m making as much as I do in my current role. I have zero qualms about Hussain as a counselor or his people skills. I have watched him get way behind on paperwork in every role we’ve worked together. I don’t want him begging referral sources, threatening rapport, or courting a chaos of paperwork that I might have to filter through our, also seemingly fairly-often-enough unreliable therapist. I’m going to see if a guided shroom trip will mellow him out.

It was a couple weeks ago I assured Hussain and Byron that I could do what needed to be done to kickstart this whole counseling thing. I get very enthusiastic and energetic when I’m drinking, so when I say 5 days, it might be 2 weeks, but the spirit is there. Practically, it’s meant spending nearly $1000 to get the website set up, pay system in place, video conferencing situated, etc. Could or should I have spent the $1000 before then? It’s a dumb question. I’m taking things day by day. I’m trying not to invite the default overwhelmed state that happens when you plug into the various chaos universes of our clientele. I spent way more than $1000 on concerts and comedy shows over the same period of time, and twice that on a new computer waiting for me to put it together.

At some level, the isolating perspective of what I’ll deem as a certain kind of “wisdom” is antagonizing me. I see the problems very far in advance. It doesn’t paralyze me, but the invitation to be savvy, cold, bold, or otherwise highly manipulative I don’t like. I don’t want to massage my business partner or my family. I want them to see the same shit I do and just give me a day off to worry about anything else. My job is less to counsel clients than it is the people I expect to work with who will then counsel clients. That’s what a manager does, to be sure, but also, it builds an extra barrier. There’s a faint part of me that would “just” like to get along or be friends or be family, but it feels naïve and potentially deadly.

When the flood happens, I want the foundation in place. Whether it’s the flood of my brother’s stupid emotions, flood of clients, or flood of confusion about potential futures insisted upon by the people I work with. What do those fundamentals consist of? Are we communicating respectfully? Are we fairly exercising balance with our time? Are the bills getting paid? Are there reasonable expectations for what to do next and how? So much of this I didn’t have to say out loud when it was the coffee shop because I was just in charge of it all. I guess in a major way I still am with the counseling business, but Hussain is partner, at least officially on paper.

I plan to reach out to other probation departments. I’m going to make my rounds at places where addicts meet. I told them I knew what to do next, and in 3 weeks I made us $150 and impressed a room full of probation officers. My “matter-of-fact” sensibility is bolstered by work and numbers. I know what we have to do next. I know how to make people confident in our ability. I need him, and anyone I bring on board, to back that up with how I engage people and organize time. Exactly like me? Of course not. But if I send you someone to get scheduled, in service to our joint operation and rapport building with different locations, you make the fucking call NOW, not tomorrow. I don’t want to have to build my own calendar of people filling in my ever-fleeting free time on top of doing all the management stuff and mood-tending while still doing my regular day job. Again, I have every reason to believe in someone’s person-to-person or counseling capacity, but they’re often miserable at the crucial details related to time-management.

I think about that when it comes to getting to all of these shows. I’m almost never late to anything. If I am, it’s usually some other obligation like work and someone’s having a too-coincidental meltdown. I’ve been irritatingly surprised at the $35 parking fee I refused to pay for one concert and spent time driving around a neighborhood, missing the opener. Any other time I’m late it’s because I’m waiting on someone else. I might be late to work a handful of times in a year if I oversleep or something. I’m hyper-conscious of how I’m using my time, and constantly estimating different scenarios to provide buffers or in thinking about how to occupy all of the time in between. I legitimately try to pay attention and be mindful in as persistent a manner as I can.

I want right now to not suck and make sense. If there’s something I can control, like calling and coordinating with you, I feel obligated to do it. Why wait? So I can have one more thing to think about? So I can forget? I’m not saying you’re always perfectly situated or in the mood to do any and every thing you “should” in this precise moment, but if you respect what it takes to maintain a kind of balance and perspective regarding your work, you don’t wait for the anxiety to dictate how you go about your obligations. I made us serious money. Take what I’m telling you about how to protect and secure it more seriously.

That just makes me think about the house flipping. Fuck does that still cut deep and the whole bait-n-switch fuckery feel like a reminder to stay cold and calculating. I tried so fucking hard to work fast, believe, demonstrate, and get a little engine of making enough doing something fun and potentially hugely profitable work. The time pissed away. The investment squandered. The example wholly unrecognized. For as much as people go on about how little they trust others, I can’t think of anything bigger in recent memory that threatened my capacity to trust. What is it all for if you can pour your blood, sweat, and tears into something only to be told the largest benefactors are actually the real victims and I should be lucky to get what I did?

I work. I work really fucking hard. Whether I’m breaking my back sweating to death or wear the weathered resolve of navigating dozens of your problems every week, I’m feeling myself demand more from the systems I don’t feel the right kind of support from. What do I need from them? Take 5% of the fucking time I do trying to keep my shit together to remind yourself what matters, what you can or can’t do, and what’s worth valuing in a dynamic. You think anyone’s going to work as hard for what I want as I did on the house? You think Hussain won’t throw himself off an anxiety cliff if I don’t constantly redirect? You think my family with its incredibly shit track record of emotional accountability and honest discussion is going to just resolve itself?

No, my probably-autistic ass has to cut through the noise and keep the peace and wax poetic in blogs because…I want more? I can check the impulse to expect the wrong things from the forces that will antagonize and test me indefinitely?

William Shatner ends his performance recalling his thoughts upon going into space. He reiterates that we’re specks and going to die and asks several times, “What are we going to do?” to alleviate ourselves of the consequences of climate change. We? We’re not going to do anything. It’s going to have to be assholes like me that have to do it. My task isn’t necessarily climate change at this resolution, but his point is much broader. You’re either stirring up and tending to the familiar drama of your irascible ego and insecurities, or you’re focused on building a broader conception of yourself and your place in the world. Who’s team are you on? Each one I try to join usually only has room for one person who doesn’t even know what fucking game they’re playing.