[1041] Amen

It's no grand achievement to destabilize someone.

Something you're not going to encounter or understand unless you're in the "social work world" is how on-the-edge people are really living. They can present as "normal" or "friendly" or "smart enough" or have many "supports," and with what seems like the slightest bit of wind, conjure a tornado that throws their whole life into chaos. It's a world of anxiety that's so high that becomes the normal working condition. It's filled with so many medications, you start to feel "wrong" if you haven't built taking "something" into your day. It's a world where the futility and actual consequences of performing verses working mean relapse, jail, or death.

In the broader context of American society, with the decades long concerted effort to cripple school, health care, safety, infrastructure, individual freedoms, or even basic notions of public decency or good, it wasn't hard. Everybody who can't empathize with living on as dramatic an edge feels like they did something right or are special. Why on Earth would you attempt to embody the lived experience of people who struggle the most? You might fall into their black hole and find yourself as devoid of an identity or direction as them.

The illness manifests in how the victims go about "solving" their problems. How fucked in the head do you have to be to have your child's head blown off, and then you start your begging of leadership to "do something," with, "As a gun owner!..." bending the knee to your psychosis before you appeal to the power avatar. "Raise the buying age to 21!" Because that's the problem, just like "fighting for $15" means anyone took heed of inflation.

The problems are infinite, but the ones we pretend to discuss are literally crafted by those in control and with much grander greedy agendas than anything to do with helping you or preserving and protecting a life worth living. The fact that anyone has anything to say about trans issues beyond individual trans people and their doctors is the largest and latest. We still discuss the "opioid crisis" and not the corruption and complicity and greed of those who facilitated it. No matter what happens to the planet, profit will always take priority in how a response, if a response, is crafted.

Addiction is an apt analogy to so much of our broken psychological landscape. We're so deep down different holes, we're not entirely sure we've ever heard of the sun. When the entire framework for your existence is built on, not just a mythological framework, but with the mechanisms to make it self-reinforcing with each new traumatizing or inconceivable absurdity, all you can do is twist until something breaks. It's an abusive partner dynamic. The only kind of "love" you've known is them. You've come to look forward to the beatings and emotional withdrawal. You know what sets them off and are gratified in the knowledge and security. You take pride in understanding things on your terms where no one else can. It transcends "cycle" and forms a kind of orgasmic pressure cooker you cheer and pray for it to explode.

I watch it manifest across nearly everyone I know. I see the pivots to distance from doing the harder things to change. I see the dozens of details routinely skipped over. I see the safely self-scrutinizing posture of someone who knows exactly how to craft an argument for doing precisely as they've always done. This is why "things" and "we" will never get better. We can't conceive of it. We couldn't see it if it was in front of us. We couldn't sell it. We couldn't work to maintain it. "It" doesn't exist. It's a poll of what "a majority of Americans agree on" manifested in the exact same place of power an individual has to call the cops on their love-of-their-life-and-also-a-cop abuser.

You don't get it. It's either break the whole paradigm, or play pretend. Every single societal trend in this country is astonishingly terrible. Every symbolic "win" an abject mockery. Prove me wrong. Show me we have a remote democracy. Show me greed isn't king. Show me we have a shared ideal or vision of the future that has all the fixin's of a decent and meaningful life. Show me how much better we're getting at educating, granting rights, protecting the environment, generating power, or living in a way that isn't desperate to fit in as many distractions and indulgences before the fall as possible. We are a society on the familiar edge of my clientele, but literally can't conceive of the inevitable consequences of continuing to play along. And when we can, the destruction feels both deserved and glorious.

I think my fight needs to shift. I need to be more selfish. I need to hunker down and insulate and try to protect me and mine long enough to ride out the era. The era may last another 50 years, or it might aggressively break and shift in the next 10, but either way, I'm in a war with one soldier against an infinitely diffuse, ignorant, and ambivalent set of forces. I should sit and read because there's only fires raging outside and the illiterates will only resent and attack. I should play games because clearly something something "god wills it." And you're god, and I'm god, and let us bask in our creation. 

[1040] Take Me Home

At a basic level, what I "really" want is incredibly simple. It's so simple, I find myself pushing astonishment at the amount of effort I exert in trying to get it. I'll spend thousands to spend time with a friend who I can trust actually likes me and isn't looking for a reason to get upset. I'll try to start companies to get paid, not even obscenely, but looking for the "comfort" of not always describing things in debt-ridden terms or that comes with comprehensive insurance and a decent car. I just, on a whim, started another one of my hasty wood-working projects because I didn't know what to do with my energy and wanted to test out my cleaned-up garage-esc space. Just having something to focus on that involved my tools and hands has brought me to 6:30 AM, only a tinge tired.

I don't actually understand why it has to be so hard. I don't know why I have to have a predictable amount of dread at the prospect of going to work for people who don't give a fuck about me. I don't know why I have to dream about the circumstances that will make sitting and reading a book feel justified. I don't know why most people most of the time can't be relied upon to grab regular drinks, movies, shows, or otherwise.

It occurred to me that I've been trying to convince myself to "go harder" in service to my business. I want to manage a business, people, and have a spattering of clients. Starting a business is none of that. Starting is pleading and fighting and taping together pieces that need glue and nails. Starting is putting a hundred things out of your head in an active way so you can focus on the next phone call, email, or form you can't define with no one to help you. I want people out there going door-to-door or to businesses to convince others to donate in service to care. I don't want to be the salesman, because I'm not selling anything. I'm a good counselor and manager. I just want to do the work.

I could be a good wood worker. In whatever I find to do part-time, I'll be good at that too. It takes a while, a sort of by default patience, that has to occur in order for me to discover how "simple" whatever it is I'm doing actually is. I used 20 different tools to cobble together this bed bench. I didn't even get a splinter, and I made the thing with my shirt off.

There was a reddit post about some person in an intentional community saying they have 4 or 5 families living together on the same land in a couple multi-family spaces. They were friends growing up, and through college, and then transitioned to the community they created. What was the secret? What are they hiding? It's hard not to feel perfectly objectionable and "crazy" in my constant advocacy to change or join up or experiment. I'm not jealous of those who can pull it off, I just get angry. Are my circumstances a particular kind of fucked? Are my "friends" somehow more pathological in their behavior than I might diagnose "the masses?" Am I setting such a terrible example that I've been allowed to persist within some kind of desperate and sick complex you've been salivating while watching this whole time?

I feel good just hanging out. I feel good using expensive appropriate tools to create fleetingly passable things. I feel good when I work with someone who takes themselves seriously enough to push through discomfort and skepticism. I don't actually want higher-order indulgence or a fuck ton more money. I want to be able to live approximately as I already do, not in debt, with a persistent presence of one or a dozen people I care about. I want help. I want to know I'm not insane, and that's impossible to do alone. What's the next example I need to set? Who am I not being enough like? Am I uncreative or uninspired?
I don't know where to turn, so I'm over here hyper-cleaning my house, binging shows and movies, and making ear-shattering noises with scrap wood.

[1039] Get A Grip

I don't know if I'm feeling more inspired or antagonized lately, but it looks like I'm attempting to write first thing in the morning before work. Weird.

I've been watching Soft White Underbelly videos over the last few weeks. This morning was a girl who has a pimp. The guy Mark who does the interviews, was giving her money which was going directly to her pimp. Mark sets back up the camera, interviews her and her pimp in a more interrogation/accusation style than he normally does, and says he can't funnel Patreon supporter money to her pimp. He explores "who to blame" in bringing up "the life," "hustling," "poverty," etc. The comment section is a predictable amount of, "She used you" and "She's being controlled and your demeanor is uncalled for."

Control. When do we actually have it? Can it be ascertained in any meaningfully distinct manner? It's a theme we return to every moment of our lives. Personally, I feel like I have an incredibly small if barely-there amount of control. I use my writing as evidence of that. I'm exploring and piecing together so many impressions I couldn't control what they made me think or feelings layered under so much prudent introspection, it's hard to express them sincerely. Is she being controlled by her pimp?
What does it even mean to have control if not predictably influence the outcome in the shared objective world? If she always, no matter what she feels inside, gives him the money, I'd say yes. That control starts most often when you're very young, and just continues. Did your parents control you growing up? I suspect most of you are familiar with acquiescing to the vast majority of rules or behaviors imposed on you or inferred. My "super power" to quickly read people was imposed by my mother. I didn't say to myself, "It'd be nice to learn how to better control and recognize when she's likely to hurt me or break my shit."

Control seems like something you earn. That's not the same thing as saying everyone who has some measure of control or who can be of major consequence has earned anything. I think it requires consistency. You might prevent yourself from eating unhealthily 1 day a week. That's better than 1 day a year, but it's not the kind of control I think most of us are looking to have or claiming to have.
I think we show a severe lack of control in how we judge others. I've read a few "anti-work" posts the last few days talking about how people's parents bought houses and became millionaires doing nothing special beyond working normal jobs or the exact same roles people my age are today. In discussions with these people, they simply can't imagine or believe that rent is 3 times the cost of their mortgage or that you need 2 jobs to barely keep your head above water. These older people often feel as though they were in control of their lives and that anyone younger than them just isn't working hard enough or is just being indulgent.

When that happens, you don't get empathy and policy shifts. So what does either side of that misaligned discussion control? Before you accuse you can ask a question. You can form the discussion around numbers. You can consider ways to organize, support, and share. Or, and this is what we do, you can figure, "I've got mine," and say confidently you don't control wages, the job market, or an infinite series of confounding variables related to the economy and personal work ethic.

I certainly don't control how much I get paid. I can't even capitalize on the "coverage" that's "always needed" as they have a "float" to undermine paying me any more than my baseline salary. They go so far as to take things off my schedule so I'm not automatically qualifying for money by having more clients than their ideal threshold. I'm literally making less money the longer I stay at this company, leaving aside the wasted gas and repairs for my vehicles to get me to the office for no reason.

I do control my narrative about my shitty circumstances, my attempts to mitigate them, create around them, or contextualize them. I allow my judgement to be fluid and informed by more than the most forsaken sentiment about how it plays out, accurate and hateful-feeling-laden as it may be. I can't control insurance companies or clients or the amount of available or worthwhile jobs to try and apply for. I can, wide-eyed, engage each deliberately convoluted and malicious barrier from a place of sincerity and desire that doesn't need to eat me alive.

You have to know and be confident in your "why." Why keep fighting? Why get sober? Why lean into as much pain as you can bare, and then a little more? Why is it worth sacrifice and discomfort and weird challenging nuanced understanding? For me, each time I answer the question, I'm able to move on. Why write? So I can focus on my trivial work tasks without it ruining more of my day. Why build a fort, go to every show, or try to start a business? I'm so deeply acquainted with hatred and exhaustion, I'm curious and desperate to feel consistently any other way. I don't feel like I have a choice in lieu of my desire. This in contrast to not feeling like I have a choice because I haven't figured out what I truly desire.

I want to be of consequence not because I recognize and can emulate the behavior of a pimp. I want to create so I can feel like I belong. I want to demonstrate what I'm positive people can't even conceive of for themselves. It's why I don't need a god or lengthy debates regarding my entitlement or disposition. On my laziest day I'm doing some kind of work in service to my highest ideals. I happen to exist in a context which gives no fucks about that. How quickly does your average person then take and weaponize that intuition into compulsive self-destruction? You're tempted to think they don't know what they want or their "why." But it's worse than that, because they do. And in knowing, they open themselves up to all of the pain and errant judgment and depravity of a world dragged along by the narratives of others. How are you supposed to compete with that?

[1038] Vel Non

I'm back. I hate it. I like being home, my stuff, knowing the cats are okay in spite of being out of water and not having the cat box cleaned, but the contrast is jarring. I spent 6 days in Florida hanging out with one of my coolest friends. We talked music and books instead of client drama. We worked hard to walk miles back and forth between stages at Rockville. We had a ton of delicious meals and drinks. It's over. I'm back. I'm trying not to start clenching my jaw, tightening my shoulders and back, or thinking too hard about the pains of crappy vehicle ownership, insurance, or a job that is psychologically antagonistic.

Before Florida, I was in Chicago with my other great friend who's living her own version of the same things I am. Incredibly short-sided and idiot "leadership." Clients/students who are stressed out and ill-equipped. She's wearing 4 different leadership hats and considering her options for transitioning roles. Whether you're welding in Chicago, or in academia in Florida, it's politics, systems that move too slow, if at all, and among many other metrics, monetary and time exploitation presented as a gift you should be grateful for.

As thinkers, doers, and otherwise intelligent types, we all do some version of the same thing. We look at the broader picture, instinctively feel responsible for it, and ask what can be done. The personal saga of perhaps attempting to consume less or grow more or demonstrate through canvas bags and donations where your consciousness lies might flourish. My friend in Chicago wanted to engage in a kind of exploration conversation about how to broadly shift the paradigm or see if I've discovered something she hasn't yet to "fix things."

No matter how idealistic we might be about living sustainably or breaking up or competing with instantiated power, there are dozens of considerations we can immediately swap in to arrest more radical action. Who doesn't like driving 5 to 10 minutes up the road to Target? Who doesn't worry about having job options in densely populated areas?

I'm a dreaming idealist who suffers as such routinely. I make a concerted effort to couch my suffering in an appreciation and honest relaying of my moment or days as they strike me. I, after many, many years of singing the same tune regarding my hopeless hatred for everything I'm made to engage with or waste time on, have not found anything "better" or, most importantly to me, more practical, than to start from this place, literally in a field, and try to have my idealized life on top of the shit sandwich. I was amongst the old and entitled "Owner's Club" getting golf cart rides to the entrance at Rockville. If they have a car payment or mortgage, they're in considerably more debt than me.

I've felt lighter the last week. The mission was clear. Get to the venue, walk to stages, drink water or otherwise, rock out, take videos, eat, get back, shower, chill, repeat. I wasn't even tempted to clench my jaw. My shoulders weren't in my ears. The pain and work it takes to festival right paid off what festivals pay. It was worth it. I contrast this with the amount of work I put in to "stay stable" in my conception of myself with regard to my day job or the feedback and level of conversation I engage in with my colleagues. There's no amount of massaging that really makes the pain go away.

On the broadest scale, I can see how I appear to be trending. I get more and more stuff. I get a little more access. I learn about a new, absurd, hurdle to trying to do anything good in the world, get paid adequately for it, and avoid getting punished by someone who feels threatened you exist and try. I live a cartoonishly privileged life when you compare it to the catastrophic circumstances of what might constitute "average." But it'd be foolish to get deceived by the perks and placations. The foundation is extremely fragile.

Part of that fragility is that I'm only one person. I'm not a society. I'm not even a collection of friends or partners truly working towards a singular goal. The other major catch to being a thinker or doer or feeler of responsibility is that you work alone. You have a vague notion you need to work out to either prove how brilliant you are, or at least hold true to yourself that you believed until the end. It's a recipe for self-destruction that I feel I caught in myself fairly early and build into my imploring that if/when you wanted to come play on my land, you'd be living almost free to experiment in a way I deeply appreciate is a component of your being. I wish to enable that propensity. Please see the effort into gardening I made for a year when I've little interest in doing so myself.

By the numbers, I've spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on things Allie wanted to do, Byron wanted to do, investing in the space and tools for what I thought "we," those born complaining about the things at 15, 25, and now 35 wanted to "fix." I'm still the only one standing out here. We're still intellectualizing and abstracting the struggle and mildly to not-so-mildly resenting the implication that we don't care or haven't worked hard enough in our own miserable little corners. I guarantee we will all fail until the conversation, well, happens at all, but with enough regularity, clarity, and direction to prompt the kind of action that I'm increasingly less inclined to take on my own.

More importantly to me, I'm less inclined to entertain the conversation that doesn't include sacrifice, incredible amounts of discomfort, ticks, shitting in bags, thousands in shared debt investment, or dogged nearly irrational pursuits in leverage and experimentation to get somewhere different. I'm "Owner's Club" and 48 shows left on the year different after building this space over the last 6 years. Shit has flown by. Yet I suspect my effort so far will still prove unpersuasive the next 6 years, like the blogs weren't persuasive before I found the land; and the conversations never took place about what to do with the chunks of study money.

"We're all addicted to something." If 1 in 10 addicts are ever going to stay sober, I think it's almost exactly the same psychological forces that dictate the 1 in 10 smart, empathetic, motivated, do-types to break from their internal dialogue and attempt to pair or match it with someone else. Although, the odds are even lower, because the pool of people is a tenth of the addict pool. I personally know 6, and the efforts we've made so far are still routinely undermined by "life," be it mental health concerns, or undermining and resentments within our own families. I should be flipping my next house, or seeing dozens of clients for a more-than-merely-living wage, or franchising my coffee shop, or rubbing elbows with all the rich successful types who appreciated my insight and enthusiasm at the prospect of getting them to write their own book.

But I'm not doing any of that. I'm here, alone, with the cats, dreading my easiest remote work day tomorrow. I put in a ton of job applications, when I could not get too distracted by the amount of spam email sign-ups and dead deceptive listings. I'm mourning the ease with which I carried my shoulders. The contrast has been striking as I'm thrust back into everyone's drama and emptiness crying out for daddy to make them all feel better. I know why your god flooded everything and let his kid get tortured. He didn't understand the suffering is built in to whether or not it's your creation.

If you're not creating something that constantly rediscovers gratitude and power and connection, you die. You crave death, turn the craving into something noble and worthy of worship, and retool the whole of conscious existence into variations of your death-cult thinking under the instantiated delusion that you won't suffer or will one day achieve eternal bliss.

Your god is a lie, and always has been. The story you've been telling yourself is full of more lies than you know how to identify because you're unwilling to do the work. You're sacrificing your potential, but you can't really conceive of your potential. You're silent until you're selfishly claiming to want empathy or to vent more than excuse yourself. Your god, be it magic sky-daddy rushing in to eventually make it all better, or other self-serving narrative about your value, intelligence, or perspective, it isn't a fart in the vacuum if someone isn't there to sniff, remark, and return fire.

 
My idea for "fixing things" or "changing the world" is to create $15-$20K versions of pop-up sustainable spots where anyone part of the initiative learns how to build, grow, and share in ways they're not used to, but feel better than what they're giving now. It's sustained via regular jobs, menial or otherwise, that we work to transition out of, if we want to, through capital experiments, or self-sustaining practices. You need land, not unlike mine, tools, not unlike what I already have, time, which we have considerably more of than we wish to believe, and some hard conversations about where to set up, who is responsible for what, budgeting, time-delays, catastrophes, time-frames, points of discomfort and sacrifice, and measurable metrics of success. I don't think you have to be errant dreamy hippies fucking off and flirting with tetanus.

I think every worry you bring to the table is valid, or you wouldn't have been invited to it at all. I think I've had every faith in what you're capable of for as long as I've been bitching, talking, or inviting. I think in the next 6 years, if I'm out of debt, if I'm working some job that doesn't make me feel hollow and angry, and if I've accumulated every thing, hobby, or skill I've earnestly thought to acquire, I have an extremely small expectation I will get there alone, and whether it's me and one other person, or me and a dozen, I know how I'm trending amidst the dumpster fire. Do you? Is what you're really after the mild incremental indulgences that accompany playing safe and selfish?

If I had all the money in the world tomorrow, the work remains the same. Do we have a clear enough idea of what it is? It's not look for daddy. It's not merely bemoan circumstances. It's not to get to every show. It's not compound self-serving narratives. It's not to worship the word "but." It's not to bitch to each other about how irrational or unfair or unsympathetic everyone in charge or around us is. It's not to get stuck in guilt for the wasted time or energy. It's not to voraciously charge towards idealistic exit strategies. It's not to pretend we're more emotionally stable or capable than we've proven so far. Whatever country you try to escape to is on the same doomed planet. Whatever job you take has a built-in bureaucracy. Your body is super acquainted with injuries and energy levels by now. Check back with me in 6 years, I guess.

[1037] Shake It Three Times

I'm so thankful. I made it to Chicago, twice, in my truck, and saw Troy Bond, Waterparks, and The Killers sandwiched between in Gary. The weather was fine. The roads didn't pop my tires. My truck didn't scrape the walls of a cramped parking garage. I got to hang out with Smash. I got to spend time with my dad. I got caught up on my TV shows. I cleaned and organized my car. I got great food and good beer. My cats didn't freak out while I was gone. I'm back home at 12:28 AM, wide awake after immediately falling asleep once I got settled in around 6.

I'm living a veritable fantasy in many regards. I'm healthy enough to travel, by myself, to expensive shows I can't technically afford, but no one really bats an eye at the debt figures or downplays their jealousy. I was able to see two of the shows because I work 2 days remotely. In almost exactly 48 hours I should be on a plane to Florida where I'll be gone for 6 days in the "Owner's Club" of Rockville and condo Brandy's parents have up the road. This is arguably the hardest I've ever gone in the "pure indulgence" vein, and I'm counting the party house given I wasn't spending thousands to scale what we were doing.

Big picture, there's a version of what I'm doing that sounds purely selfish and hedonistic. Aren't I worried about pick-your-existential crisis anymore? Don't I think, creepily deeply, that the crowds I surround myself with at shows are statistically full of the dumbest, saddest, and most self-destructive children the world could produce? I mean, they can afford the tickets and get to the venue. I'm often engaged in conversation with people who can't imagine themselves driving for 25 minutes to the nearest comedy club.

I have competing values, but they are anchored by time. I've felt, for most of my life, that time is very short. I've been able to slow it down by hyper-attenuating my experience of any given drama or question. I'm, hopefully, a living embodiment of just how much time we really do have, what can be done with it, and whether or not I can be doctor/astronaut/war hero, I can put up impressive stats on started struggling business ventures, shows consumed, hours behind various instruments, words read and written, miles driven, performances attended, and projects play-grounded. Nothing on that list spot-lit other people.

I read a blog written almost 15 years old where I'm talking about my "robot" or "analyzing" nature. I'm trying to explain why it's impossible to be "friends" with someone I can so easily manipulate. I'm imploring the, college crowd at that point, to not understand me as someone maliciously trying to play with them, just isolated in the knowledge that, in any moment, I can tell the temperature, and I can't understand why they can't. I've never really wanted to have this persistent distance, but it's as real and compelling a fact about my existence as I've ever discovered. It's not me "closing off" or "shutting down." I'm considerably less inclined to entertain the idea I'm a "psychopath" the more I've learned about autism.

I don't just "want" to do all the things I'm doing. I need it. I can't physically function when I come up against feeling too "stuck," be it in a relationship dynamic or a working environment. I need novelty. I need to render some notion of forward movement or progress into existence. I've been thinking about quitting my job. I've been thinking about seeing what I can unlock in myself when I give up the "freedom" to be half-remote 4 days a week to do more in service to my business or breach an entirely new field. I didn't go to school for social work. I didn't want to stay in school until I found a way to make most of my classes related to philosophy, history, and psychology. My innate ability to pick things up or play on familiar human patterns has been plaguing me my entire life. My nearly pathological ability to focus or obsess will manifest in literally any direction I point it, and invariably I will unlock new parts of my story I can't conceive of yet. Why am I not something like a sports-better after building psychological profiles on players and coaches and analyzing stories about their habits and relationships?

It's very weird to psychologically position yourself to fight comfort. I don't want to get set in my ways. I don't want to say, "You'll probably be too tired." There's no more a familiar and shared condition I observe across the people who annoy me the most. I went back and forth for days on whether I should get a ticket to Jeff Arcuri in Louisville the day before my flight. Wouldn't it be "responsible" to be closer to the airport, not spend the extra gas, not throw the logistics of doing your last group of the day into the mix etc.? I felt myself generating excuses to put distance between me and something I sincerely wanted to do. Fuck that, see you soon, Jeff. Let my truck break down on the way to the airport. That just means a touch more in credit card debt or annoying Byron or Hussain with a midnight phone call.

Time is running out, after all. The people who make me laugh or sing will all be memories eventually. I haven't regretted going to a single show. I haven't felt guilty about anything else I'm not spending my money on. I'm merely on the latest iteration of my mission to be what I wish to see. Will a super-fort, health insurance, or sense of community ever make it into the equation? I don't know, and I don't know if I really care or if it matters. Is the world burning down? It seems like it, but I don't really trust myself enough to catastrophize my thinking in how I wish to approach the premise.

I missed my house and worried about the cats. I feel like immediately falling asleep let me reclaim a sense of ownership and safety regarding the space I've built. I have so much to do the next few days. I have so much to spend, be awake for, read about, and drive to. I have so much.

[1036] I Hate You, You Hate Me

I've been listless. You wouldn't think to notice were I not saying it. I'm still "busy." I still work full time. I still see, or attempt to see, clients in service to my own business. I'm tending to my bills and house chores, though apparently not close enough to have enough replacement litter after meeting the scent of my house when I opened the door this evening.

Let's just start there. I came home after seeing Hussain and him showing me how my car needs an alignment after the work he's done. He's predictably frustrated with our therapist who can't be bothered to communicate with us why a 20 minute task is going on 3 weeks to complete. The car has needed $150 or so in parts, he doesn't charge me labor, but it also needs tires, which I just bought for $270. Add in the cat litter, air fresheners, toilet cleaner, and some other "house supplies" things, almost $400 of crap, not fun crap, not wholly-unnecessary crap, just crap to live, drive, and clean, is on the way. Also, all the bills email me at once. $106.50 for the internet, and finally a nice surprise a radically reduced $150 for my electricity as the weather has improved. $8 for my seedbox. and $800 to my home insurance company because I figured, why not keep the spending ball rolling and avoid installment fees? I've been home for approximately an hour, and it only took me 20 minutes to spend $1400, $1600 on the day if you add the IMAX movie, gas and food I bought earlier. I also discovered a leak in my roof, and the rubber tape I suspect I'll need to fix it, $50.

I didn't buy truck tires. I don't have kids. I didn't have to pay my insurance for the year all at once. I didn't have to spend an obscene $17 on a bacon, egg, and sausage sandwich and large vanilla latte. I didn't have to see a movie. I could cross my fingers and pray for a few more months regarding my tires or just replace the worst ones. Do I absolutely have to have $5 air freshener? Of course not. It's not that any one piece of my day can't be sacrificed, or excused for, or defended in the spirit of living once and simple pleasures. It's that the whole premise and project that I'm working within, in my view, is irreparably broken, so it all feels futile and arbitrary fundamentally.

I'm smart and did well in school, and it doesn't matter. I've worked myself near to death across various industries, and it doesn't matter. I've attempted to start my own business several times, and it doesn't matter. I've lived as broke and hermit-like as you could reasonably expect a person to live, and it hasn't mattered. I'm as honest as a person can get without it becoming pathological, and it doesn't matter. I can get all the praise and positive feedback in the world, and it doesn't matter. I can be as giving and forgiving as you'll ever find in life, and it doesn't matter. I can live without things like running water, working toilets, air conditioning, or a bed, and it doesn't matter. I can create as open and freely accessible environment to live easier, play, experiment, save, or create, and it doesn't matter.

Nothing I do fucking matters. I'm not going to get paid enough, I'm not going to get recognized. There is no reward at the top of the hill. I'm not maintaining my access to heaven. I'm not winning friends and influencing people. I'm just telling a story of a wretchedly ironic caricature of the hero's journey. Perhaps in an anime you'll see them training. Each session they level up, or after they nearly die fighting a bad guy, they unlock new powers and potential. In One Piece the truly destined get a conqueror's aura that can paralyze or incapacitate through sheer will. Everything they do matters. Everything contributes towards them building strength, a reputation, a team, and a story that will transcend any given life or death struggle.

When I say "it doesn't matter" I don't mean "there's no consequences." I'd rather be in my paradigm than my paradigm but a little dumber, a little poorer, a little sicker, a little less well-connected, or a little more psychologically at the behest of my mother. I mean for you to think that the answer to "Everything happens for a reason" is "Yeah, shitty, shitty reasons." My schooling was a joke designed to extract money. My job(s) over the years the same thing. The business environments I've attempted to work in keep the tradition going. I could blame a most-encapsulating notion of capitalism, but I prefer to not obscure the simple greed at bottom. It's the greed of "convenience fees" and "transfer fees" and "processing fees" and "installment fees" and creeping ever higher interest rates. It's the greed drawn from an infinite well of insecurity that what you've created and how isn't actually good for anyone, fulfilling, or a worthwhile expenditure of time.

We were watching Kitchen Nightmares. The failing kitchens were all filled with greedy people. Their lost loved one needed never be dealt with as "their heart was no longer in" keeping the business alive. Gordon Ramsay comes in, points out the obvious, but then also magically resolves years of trauma and resentments in neatly packaged 40 minute episodes. 21 out of 105 kitchens are still open. That is a 20% success rate. If you're on Suboxone, there's a 90% chance you will still relapse. 10% of 21 million addicts actually seek treatment. I can't tell you how 1-to-1 the parallels in the worst kitchens matched the language of many of my clients. You're only twice as likely to save your kitchen as you are to "beat" your addiction, which is resting comfortably at 10%.

It's the behavior. It's your behavior that's fucked up, that sets the conditions for indefinite failure. Whether you want on-the-nose examples like millions of votes for fascism, or the, somehow, "abstract" fallout of your perpetual silence about things that matter, no one can succeed under these conditions without heavily sacrificing things none of us should think are acceptable. Did I describe such an extravagant and wasteful existence above? It's the first time I've claimed to spend money on anything that wasn't concerts or comedy shows in a while. Would I, could I, should I have the money if I dialed back trips around the Midwest and $50-$200 ticket prices? Sure. I could also die tomorrow. I'm on the road a lot, and that's where a lot of people die.

Specifically, the bad, wrong, always-fucking-me behavior is the lies. It's the pleasantries, the pageantry, the omissions, the red tape, the "good luck," the "I've just," the positive feedback backed by no more money, access, freedom, or power. I'm lied to constantly. It's the thing I hear most often every week. It's every sentiment offered to pretend "things" are "better" than they are. It's hopes and wishes and dreams side-stepping even acknowledging there's a problem, let alone exchanging ways on how to fix it, let even more alone fix it in perpetuity. We don't know what we're aiming at, why, what it could feel like once we got there, or what we're to draw on as we project its impact into the future. We have children we don't want and then somehow don't viciously punish the ones who would rather they go neglected or hungry than aborted. We take jobs we don't want and buy shit we don't need because slavery has been rebranded and taken us out of the sun if we're not a beleaguered minority. We pretend your human rights should pair with your access to capital; yours, or what's been mostly subsidized by everyone else.

We just lie, all the time. We pretend to be mentally stable as we shower the internet in stupid fucking memes. We pretend to be financially stable provided we never get too sick or downplay our cortisol levels that pay for must-have insurance. I am the absolute last person who should ever be in debt for really any reason. I live alone, in a shed, in one of the most affordable states, with a job paying considerably more than you'll find nearly anywhere. Even before I made the decision to go to all of these shows, my year-to-year trending spending was showing getting ever-indebted. All I was doing was driving and eating and working and I was losing. Could I have made more meals for myself? Sure. Could I have invested in a more fuel-efficient vehicle or diligently searched for a job closer to home? Maybe. Should I be expected to, every waking minute of my fucking life contemplate what I could do without so I can tend to basic fucking necessities to feel like a normal fucking person?

We're addicted to these bullshit fucking stories, and the kitchen-owners among us, with some professional celebrity help, have a 1 in 5 shot of keeping the miserably misplaced dream alive. The addicts have a reliable and predictable A- shot of keeping us collectively spiraling down the bowl of our fragile ego. You're depressed. You're anxious. You're angry. You're alone. You've given up your creative and motivated vision of who you imagined you'd be right now. You're tired. You're fat. You're every word is to be taken as fluff. You don't answer the call. You don't listen to the voice that nags you. You don't own anything, especially not even the very fucking fact that you don't own anything! It's all gone as quickly as you, or the people after you, can click submit.

I've wondered if I should go back to school, or learn a trade, or double-down on my debt and approach my business and potential from some creative angles. I've wondered if I should commit to retightening the purse strings and see if I can actually get within a paycheck of being out of debt verses cling to the story of the "few months away" that isn't true-enough to adequately describe the ambivalence and forlorn frustration undergirding my behavior. I'm enjoying my shows, TV, comedy, and music. The drives can be a literal pain in the ass, but..."What else would I be doing?" I'm not a real person in the environments I'm forced to adapt to or die. Nothing about me or my idea or my potential means a goddamn thing. So I'm going to laugh as often as I can, disappear into as many fantasies about family or friendship that will have me, and shake my fucking hair hard enough that my neck is sore for a week. I'm going to eat the food I like, spend obscene amounts of money on band T-shirts, and tinker on professional-level instruments.

I'm just as selfish as the next person, but I don't have to lie about it. In fact, I'm more selfish. I won't just let you have the story of yourself or your behavior. I won't just let you keep the peace. I won't be like an episode of Frasier where I step into the room and immediately continue to run with the lie. An 11 season 264 episode show ran through the 90s into the early 2000s built on insufferable caricatures habitually lying to themselves and others, and yet they're rich! And love finds a way! And the memories serve to remind them. And it can all be diagnosed and addressed as neatly as Gordan can turn around a kitchen. This is the kind of thing our brains have trained on our entire lives. This is why you're looking for a Disney prince or princess instead of a partner to work with. This is why we can get so lost in our own assholes we can turn ideas about being accepting or "woke" into compelling parodies.

You're still confused after reading this. You think I'm under some illusion that I'm more "real" than you or have some special insight into the nature of your pain and reasoning that I don't. You think I'm performing and am looking for sympathy or attention. You don't understand what the work of attempting to cope with a suicidal environment looks like. You don't actually access the depths of how hopeless and lost and fucking angry I am pretty much all the time. You will literally discuss your own issues through a series of fucking pictures and emojis or ensure your mental health struggle PSA has the best pictures of your tits and meta-data-ready hashtags. You don't fucking get it because I'm not lying to you, so none of this translates. It never has. It never will. It doesn't matter to you or the environment we're plugged into. It's for me, so I don't kill you or myself. You would never! you exclaim as your murder porn drones in the background. You can't imagine? You have a "quirky" fascination? Drawn to glamorized depictions of death is as ironically Freudian as it gets. You don't have the time or inclination to learn what I mean by that, so let your brain insert a belabored caricature. Freud is as real to you as he is to Frasier.

You believe your version of events. I don't believe what I'm saying right now, it's just what I feel and think. Show me something more. I have this version of events combined with the 1030 I've written already and the ones still to come. What do you think? Sorry. Can you think? What do you feel? Considerably more hopeful and joyous and connected and appreciative of our environment than me? I'll never know, because you'll never say it. You'll perform it. You'll Snap-it and Insta-it. You won't have a so-so time. You won't recall how you regret not missing someone more you designated as "best." You won't weigh the evidence of your satisfaction or direction of your existence; you'll filter what you're even willing to count as evidence, and reiterate it over and over again for the internal judge already on the take.

What can I control in all of this? I can keep typing until I'm done. I can keep going to work, running up the credit card, limping through my next business goals, filling up the tank, eating what I want, and beating the shit out of the infinitely abstract "you" for all of your silence, indifference, lies, and pain you cause in ignoring any word, let alone line, that might speak as whispered echoes of what was your capacity for honesty. Dumb or smart, you can choose to lie. Rich or poor, the story of either is a magnificent tapestry of bigotry or prejudice, or a holistic accounting and presenting of opportunities to act in service to discrepancies. Tax the rich and pay for literally everything we could ever need, or don't. Differentiate "poor" from "entitled," or rage-watch talking heads debate either abstraction indefinitely. I'm not pointing my finger at anything or anyone, because nothing is there. You're not there. You don't exist. You don't matter. You just won't admit it like me.

[1035] Piggies Bank

As a thought experiment, I imagined having my debt paid off, and looking at $5000 in the bank. What then? Do I feel "safe" or "better" than if I'm in debt? Not even a little. A decent issue with my car, an illness, or a couple lump-sum insurance payments wipes that out immediately.

What do I want from any given moment? To feel like I'm doing approximately what I want, or have access to what I want if I'm not. I can work without all of the old issues of my old computer on this new one. When I want to practice the piano with weighted keys and build proper muscle memory, it's an arm's length away. If I'm curious why a graphic novel series is confidently 5 stars on Amazon, I glance to the books stacked on my speaker.

"Possibility," whatever we can make of the word, is the operative variable at the heart of my being. I fundamentally want to enable as many worthwhile and engaging possibilities as I can. I need that to be true. The job can't trap me. The "debt," if abstractly represented in the math, needs to be met with a conceptual framework to match equaling a result of "what's possible."

I'm going to Chicago tomorrow to celebrate the 20th anniversary of an album. It's Wednesday. It's possible to call off. It's possible to buy tickets, drive 4.5 hours, rock out, work remotely, and drive back for a comedy show the next afternoon. It's possible to get to Louisville and back the next day and Fort Wayne the day after that.

I talk to ~130 every week, some going on 11 months now. I hear constantly about restrictions and wishes and "it'd be nice" sentiments. Don't you understand? I'm busy. The kids. My job won't. My finances aren't where I want. Literally anything stands in for restricting possibility. When you close off your options, you don't learn new ways of coping or fixing the problems you encounter with a rigid mind. You don't know what's possible. You can't recognize what it sounds like. You don't have any real feel or sense that "possible" even exists.

I remember crying a lot as a kid in response to my mom. I did things I didn't understand, got responses that terrified me, stuck me in my shivering or pissing myself state. The "why" never materialized verbally, but the lack of an answer served to arrest anything I might access to change my perception of the situation. All I could do was cry. All I could do was stare and heave and hurt. This was my lot. This was my real. This underwrote my compulsive picking and tapping and inability to drop or stop anything from a videogame to some subject matter that might piss you off.

So many of us are locked into our terrified arrested childlike states. We know everything there is to know about what we can't do. We don't have the slightest concept of just how much is possible. We don't push ourselves past what we think we already know. We don't "independently learn" things that don't practically manifest as "do your own research." We're stuck, and when asked about how or whether we're free to move, get downright defensive you can't appreciate our rigorous squirm.

I don't know if a place exists where this accountable/unaccountable, excuses-ridden/reason building, yes we can/know your place favors the possibility-laden mindsets, but I know I need it more and more desperately each day. My practice is to relay my perspective as honestly as I feel it, build things I care about, travel to share in experiences, invite, encourage, and challenge to clarify and specify the infinitely abstract ways we trap ourselves. I'm not content to rest on "enjoy the ride" or "the work is the reward" ideas about this. I need more. I need a culture where I don't feel like I'm the only one doing the work of realizing what's possible.

Maybe it sounds incredibly selfish and judgmental. Maybe I'm just unable to hear how much genuine consequential hope may be manifest in the weekly accounts of how we're not quite ready to put more on our plates. Maybe I should borrow from the book of belaboring isolated positive examples to placate and downplay how I feel, never allowing the potential of my greedy sensibility for more to play out. Or maybe I'm right in a deeper way than I could ever speak to. Maybe more people should be like me in their own way and own lives, "but."

It's exhausting trying not to be as selfish and entitled as the environments I'm plugged into. My job and clients want to use me, not utilize who I am or what I know or how I might best work. My friends live their "functional" version of the addictive debilitating tendencies I'm trying to get my clients to interrupt and redirect. There's a, not dissimilar, sensibility in the pretentions of those in charge of "legitimizing" your ability to run a business or be deserving of enough money to live in terms removed from "sacrifice." Every hoop is justified "because." Every Ticketmaster fee "convenient" and perfectly reasonable.

I didn't expect to write this much. I just wanted to tell you I still don't care about my debt from a new angle. I'm not looking forward to trying to drive and park my truck in Chicago tomorrow, but I live in a paradigm where there's almost as many cars on the road as there are people, and you can't find one to last longer than 3 months before needing to be repaired if you don't want the kind of debt I can't psychologically write-off.