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.
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