My baseline nature to want to attend to things or apply "fixes" was pushed too hard. Idiots at work who refuse to take responsibility for their shitty attendance and communication wait until precisely the moment I close out my last note to open a can of worms we'd been dancing around to get done for two weeks. My friend's car breaks down, can he take my recently gotten home truck again? My favorite tool which I immediately put to good use and started making plans for utilizing for other things as well? The one with 220,000 miles on it and just cost $1500 and 2 months to fix? Can he also get $50 because drug dealers don't take credit cards?
I've got childishly entitled clients on the brink of emotional collapse raring to lose it any given week. Nice enough people, decently hard-working people, selfish, normal childish and entitled people who will come to me about "my dose" as though it's my job to just continuously answer their every panicked thought at any hour of the day. I ignore most of that, to be sure, but it's another phone ring. It's a call for my attention. It's a passive aggressive comment locked and loaded for next week about what it is we aren't doing to help.
I've been told about 9 times over 3 weeks that a "had no reason to believe she was that chaotic" client was going to get signed up. She apparently wasn't receiving texts and emails, has the money and then doesn't, wants individual counseling, but then maybe for her kid who has massively improved from his traumatizing situation, but actually hasn't at all. At the end of the day I get to spend several hours at the least convenient time troubleshooting, quasi-counseling, caseworking, and I've not been paid. Then, I get to dodge panic attack paragraph texts as though I'm an emotional support animal on retainer.
Did you hear? I'm not just in debt, but courting more of it because I just don't care anymore. I want stuff. I want to go to shows. I want to build more on the land. I just don't care. I'm not likely to get fired, getting directly paid through my business, and haven't scratched the surface of where referrals can be generated from. I'm, inch by inch, day by day, on the verge of fundamentally shifting the priorities and nature of my problems in life. But, it's not here, and I'm still debt-ridden first-world poor, and the things I have walk an incredibly precarious line of functional instead of financial burden. What if I then played the imagination game?
You think my truck is insured for another driver? You think I trust my friend's parents to help him replace it because, you know, could he? The parents who fucked me on the house? What happens when the wobbly car-jerking issue with the Scion finds me in a wreck. It's begging for it. If 2 is 1 and 1 is none, I might have a solid half with my 3. I have a coffee van that doesn't reverse, a truck who picks a new thing to break every couple months, and a Scion with an as yet undiagnosed issue I'm genuinely gambling won't go catastrophically wrong on my frequent hours-long trips.
I didn't exactly forget that life is always coming with the next thing to charge you, but I felt it in a deeper way recently. I got home insurance, of course catastrophically expensive because my home isn't "normal" and abnormality, regardless of the actual value, risk, or practicality, means you get fucked for the invitation to play the insurance game. Add the utility bills, interest charge (you know because you got fucked on how much it cost to get your water back because the only person you know who can do it can't fucking figure out how to bill, record, or communicate to save his goddamn life). You don't pay down as large as you planned. You don't pay off like you planned. You can't take enough long showers to feel like they make up for yet another negative spiraling trend built into your financial picture.
Let's not forget though, I don't really care. Most people my age carried tens of thousands in debt, which they paid towards for years, mostly in interest, never paid it off or barely have paid it off, and they have mortgages, car payments, a few have kids, health issues, etc. I might spend $15K on 100 shows, yearly bills, a new computer, guitar, rolfing, building supplies and car repairs? Every 2 weeks I can pay off 10%. If I can get 10 more clients, 20%. I'm certainly impatient, but it's not an irrational perception of that impatience driving my decision making. I'm almost 35. I live in a fort in cousin-fuck Indiana. I live in a proto-fascist country. It's kinda time to live it up, especially if we're the new tornado-alley. (Oh man, that would have been such a cunty thing to nickname my ex when we were fighting.)
My licensed therapist is in some, probably emotionally abusive and awkward power dynamic with her husband, so when I need her to fix something related to login information or to help our insurance wranglers proceed down the lie of the "80-100" day process of getting empanelled, she just won't respond to me. She'll call Hussain and get panicky and ask him all sorts of shit he can't answer, won't even respond to a text of mine. Won't send me a picture and bio to advertise on the site. Talks about spending money she claims to not have to rent a building in town to hold sessions individually, but also confidently asserts how perfectly unable she is to handle the business end of things. I have back ups, but it's all so needlessly convoluted and always in the background nagging.
I want to be reliable. I want to "help" and "fix." I feel like I'm constantly trying to do my best and do more while the people around me are getting by. They're along for my ride. I created and threw the parties, they were happy to drink and fuck and puke on things and carry on right into the resentment for inviting them and locking them inside. I provide the platform, pay for the infrastructure, maintain the fighting and cheerleading spirit. You think anyone ever calls me with news about who they contacted or who might help in getting more referrals? Hussain, to be sure, but that's why he's the business partner. Have any resulted in us getting paid though? Well...
It doesn't matter how much I do, create, risk, build, or invite to join. It will never be enough. It will never be persuasive or indicate that it's worth a kind of investment and sacrifice that I've made so many fucking times for so much shit that hasn't panned out. LIke, I fucking own land that I've offered for people to live on for free lol. I'm fucking ridiculous. I've paid thousands to live on a fucking couch after getting fucked out of my affordable apartment! How am I not the most entitled and shitty fucking cunt on the planet? I never get help moving. I've spent most of my life begging for an extra hand or the recognition that I would put up with emotional abuse for the better part of a year after finding someone who actually cared to work alongside me.
There's a decent chance if I ever get particularly successful I just disappear. I'm sick of talking to your memes. I'm sick of "normal" conversation about the infinite list of things holding us back. I'm sick of politely engaging every iteration of sit-and-spin you can bring to your imagination. I know I'm fucking sick of it because I'm this fucking frustrated in spite of literally every week if not often each work day, someone tells me how much they appreciate what I do for them. The words feel empty. I gave such rousing encouragement to one of my people who I was so proud of, she nearly broke into tears. Professional courtesy, of course, dictates that we're not friends, and neither she nor I should exist in a mutually supportive context where we're getting the help or money we need to feel secure and grow versus being reduced to the cursed encouraging words.
I've been buying expensive black band T-shirts too. I don't want your branded bullshit from the jobs I work. I don't want to be buttoned up. The whole of my feelings in blogs are summarized by the collective works of the artists I enjoy and the creative energy they inspire. Maybe in 30 years they'll get special vintage status and I'll get to be even cooler than I already am, also for no one to care or notice lol. I have so much shit filled with so much potential fun and worthwhile consequences, but it only feels like it when I can cast a convoluted verbal spell that lays out the embedded vitriol and sabotaging forces. I have no reason beyond chaotic chance to believe I won't continue to get everything I want, provided I can keep it specific to things and experiences that merely cost money.
Do I want you to share my spirit? Do I want you to find the energy and the way forward no matter what? Do I want absolutely anything from you, and each time I allow myself to accidentally set some subconscious expectation delight in the inevitable let down?
I will always be fascinated by how many people wish to dress up as stormtroopers. I will always be baffled by how many wish to be a mere crew member on the starship Enterprise. People delight in the uniforms, soldier status, mythological families, and piety. I have always, always, looked at the hero as the thing to emulate. What is the main character doing, and why? Who supports them, and why? What is their obligation? What transcends their flaws? Who are people but nameless trudgers along micro-fascist environments. They're capitulators, persuadable, and predictable. They're not trying to be heroes, they're imbibing the reassuring feeling that someone or something will save them no matter what.
You fucking idiots. No, they won't.
No comments:
Post a Comment