[1053] A Little Stroll

Let’s meander a bit. It’s 12:33 PM. I’ve been awake since 9, up around 10, and beyond coffee and scrolling, haven’t locked into a precise drive or motivation. I’m headed to The Comedy Attic tonight for Ron Funches. I don’t even really want to write this, as I immediately clicked away and began searching through the club’s website.

I think there’s few thoughts that are more reoccurring than how often I’m by myself. I think I antagonize this by being extroverted and going out. When I have creative energy it’s the absolute worst. I get to tell myself the jokes, which still makes me laugh, but isn’t the same. I really need to up my game in finding new connections or spots. It’s not a problem to let compound.

At the same time, I know people are shit. I have to get a ahead of what will be an increase in the other pool of thoughts that accompany doing things alone. I'll never be the one getting invited. I’ll hear about how busy and poor people are. Inevitably the particularly off-color joke won’t land and the chasm that opens up will mean I’ll want to ensure there’s several pots cooking at once.

If I had any sense, I’d focus more on cleaning up the yard and getting trash thrown out. It’s quite hot. I’ve gotten more of my inside environment organized and rearranged. All that’s left is maybe 20 minutes of making dish storage more coherent. I’m staring dead into the heart of my guitars, sax, and piano. I have approximately 7 hours to kill before I need to be in line to not get a shit table.

There’s so much time. I always have the time. Why do I always have time and so many never have any? Why take on debt for things that only bring you stress instead of fun or growth? Why am I able to answer my phone or text you that I saw the call? I’m flatly irrationally conceiving of myself in this wholly unintentional bubble where my sense of what’s possible or worthwhile appears completely detached from the people…are they even in my orbit?

What if you never bothered to take these little strolls? What if you were so desperate for companionship or solidarity it never occurred to you what aspects were worth setting a boundary to protect? I haven’t lost my ability to make insta-friends. I’m not shy. The existential barrier to getting what I want is that so many people conduct themselves like so many interchangeable bodies. The ones that don’t get subsumed by their solipsism. Is there not a spectrum with decently aware, fun, individuated personalities worthy of exchange?

I tried calling Hussain. He didn’t pick up. I got two tickets originally for this show as, in my mind Ron Funches isn’t a run-of-the-mill comedian so whatever extra effort might be made to trap someone for a couple hours should occur. I haven’t really spent any time talking to the friend who I bought it for after the kid gun waving incident, yet he’s supposed to go. I don’t have a strong instinct as to whether we’ll even sit together. We’ve not-gotten drinks together the last 3 times he’s suggested, and then bailed or ignored. He’ll call when I might be of service to him and his professional obligations.

I’m looking forward to Seattle. I’m thankful I get messages from Brandy where we can continue intellectually stimulating conversations. My dad continues his cooler-than-you reliability in surprising me for my birthday and being down to see people like Dave Chappelle in Chicago without needing an insulting explanation. I’m wearing a Sick Sad World T-shirt, and I kind of don’t ever want to take it off.

[1052] Dually Noted

I hate it. I hate it so much. I genuinely believe one of the most dangerous and destructive behaviors you can engage in is false praise. I think playing nice onto absolutely catastrophic ends is how you get the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” You, in your impossibly naive and idealistic fantasy intend to do something “nice” or “good.” You don’t know what those things are. You literally can’t define what’s good nor often care what someone would consider nice. Nonetheless, you’ll keep on paving.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a reply-all email chain. Someone you’ve never met got promoted, married, had a birthday or a baby. For the next week, until someone like me comes in to sour the mood, you will get dozens of emails at random times on and off work hours with, “CONGRATULATIONS!” and “I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!!!” It’s mentally fucking exhausting. You don’t know when your computer or phone dings that it’s another piece of the well-wishing bullshit train. If you’re me, you get to microdose stressful reactivity.

I can be pretty flagrant and ambivalent about rules and social niceties. I’ve walked a long road from leading emails with, “With all due respect.” I still can’t bring myself to swallow completely the idea that I’m always and forever meant to carry on with the crazy-making behavior as though it’s polite or professional. It’s lying. It’s cruel. It’s wasteful and distracting. It’s training yourself to form insincere expressions, feel nothing in doing so, and walk away insanely self-righteous and entitled when someone points it out. The only times I’ve ever been invited to talk to my supervisor’s boss are when I didn’t complain through the chain of command or violated the façade of how much care is truly there.

Groups doesn’t give a fuck about me. Most capitalist institutions under nearly all circumstances don’t give a fuck about you. They’ve automated your birthday card in the mail, if they recall it at all. They don’t pay you enough. They don’t offer benefits that cover anything. They are trying to retain and placate. A huge part of that is swallowing the propaganda. It’s occurring to me now as I have the overt compulsion to write this instead of the notes I’ve been procrastinating on, I’m ever more incensed by attempts to hijack my language or the desire to correct my behavior. My message “wasn’t well received,” after all. Obviously, it’s not their job to help, understand, or respond to critical feedback. Obviously, it’s mine to ensure they feel comfortable and protected and correct.

It literally will make you crazy. You will not be able to utilize your words, find your agency, or feel as though you even own the thoughts, infinitely bizarre and random as they may be, flowing through your head. You are in the wrong if you think it’s wrong of me to want to protect my attention and sanity from your baseless and insincere praise. You want to know how I know it’s baseless and insincere? WE’RE A REMOTE FUCKING ORGANIZATION. I haven’t met 10 people I work with, nor 15 of my 160+ caseload for more than seconds at a time, and when you give a fuck, you do more than project to a thousand people one line or one word of praise.

Unless, of course, that’s the new normal. That’s how you're going to practice and conceive of sincerity. That’s fucking miserable, a joke, and a mockery of bothering to say anything at all. You have to click TWICE to get to reply-all. You’re not even quickly rushing to tell that person, and that person alone, how excited and happy you are for them. No, you’re ensuring everyone sees you. You’re doing so days later, because you didn’t know or care what they were doing on the actual wedding day. You didn’t set an alert so information about them would make it to you no matter what. You lazily and emptily piled on with performative pizazz.

I haven’t been this reticent to get my notes in in a long time. I haven’t felt that “getting called to the principal’s office” dread in longer. I’m counting the days until my next vacation. I was imagining packing up my shit and quitting yesterday over what I had yet to learn our meeting was going to be about. Why? What changed between a few days ago when I was driven and energetic and thinking I could power through work, house stuff, and larger projects? A visceral and painful reminder of the edge I’m always walking and trying not to cut myself on. Combine that with putting Hussain up for the job and him managing to get fired in 3 weeks, who knows how to best conceive of the consequences there for my clout or sense of his general competence.

Part of me feels like today is going to be one of the longest days I’ve had in a minute. I’ve already started to do more house organizing (in lieu of sitting down and focusing on notes.) The pit in my gut is wide open. The tingles are shooting up from my balls. I can’t tell if I have to shit or am just so full of theirs it feels like mine.

[1051] Share & Like

It’s 12:33 PM the day after my birthday. Those who did not wish me a happy birthday yesterday will be summarily executed. It is what it is. I’m in Bedford with 2.5 hours left until my first of two groups, the second at 6:30 PM. In the meantime, I could do notes, which might take 20 minutes. I could watch TV. I brought books to read. Instead, my mind is a flutter, and writing feels like the thing to do.

I’m here, now 13 months into my “hybrid” role, of wasting time and gas hanging out in an otherwise empty office with the office managers. Our building is next door to a historically and comically destitute meth hotel. I’ve got fancy steakhouse leftovers waiting for me in the mini fridge. A regional supervisor is on site, prompting my attendance. She’s not my supervisor, but she’d talk. I’m hoping to not make it an entirely wasted trip by obtaining my still-missing cords for the game systems I’ve been trying to assemble for at least a month.

I usually try to spot-check my birthdays. I’ve been fascinated with time for a long time. I thought I’d be fairly rich and living easy at 30. I’m not exactly roughing it at 35, and it’s hard to argue that attending 79, so far, shows all over the country (65 last year), is anything but “rich.” My job is mostly remote. I talk to people about “coping skills” and organizing their lives around sustaining sober practices. It’s a little on the nose, no? I’ve been desperate for sober thinking from my cohort my entire life. That these people have literal physical addictions to potentially quicker life-ending means isn’t as far removed from what I’ve been complaining about since I started.

Whether you latch onto your comfortable narrative, the path laid out for you in advance, or weaponize feelings, it’s part of an addictive self-protective instinct. If nothing else holds true, it feels right. The consequences are reduced to a form of archeology and academics that bypass the heart. We’re circularly “logical” in order to survive, just as we are, in any given moment. It’s not growth. It’s not incorporating or contextualizing. It’s sustaining whatever words or behaviors that exist in any given moment. That’s “survival.” You’re here, full stop. You don’t have to know what “here” means. You don’t have to have anyone accept you. You don’t have to believe anyone exists, let alone with a complicated context of exactly the same feelings generated from the same mechanisms that have justified the existence of every remotely conscious “here” creature.

This can’t be “fixed,” the longer I think about it. It can only be danced with. There is no “example” for those to follow, only partner “heres” you can match with the infinite void of chaos and destruction. The world is disorded? You defy it with a simple list. The universe is ambivalent and purposeless? You defy it with a single goal, choice, or sustained effort to show yourself what else is here at the same time. I can’t persuade any of my clients, my management pretending to be “leadership,” you, myself, or the family dog. I can just be here, as whatever I am, and create new words here and there. It doesn’t subvert agency. It doesn’t opine on “free will.” It just is or isn’t.

I find myself closer the more I detach. When I write about the intensity of my feelings, I get so close to them they persistently move me to actually work and change my circumstances over short and long periods of time. That’s my case for being as or more feeling-laden than anyone else. I feel it so deeply I have the energy to work, drive, show up, speak, fight, and the “hope” invested in putting myself out there to try and connect in abject defiance of contrasting or conflicting assertions about what’s really here. I know what’s here, and it’s at least everything contained within me.

I make statements about my sense of “freedom” or the importance of how I’m utilizing my time. My overall trend is still to ever-increasing levels of both. That’s incredibly hard to see when I’m literally here at the office, for no reason. There’s a new world in the books I brought. There’s new music on the songs I haven’t heard shuffling through my playlists. But I’m embodying someone else’s concept of where I “should” physically be. It’s at perfect odds or conflict with my approximate ideal. There’s no less potential in this moment to subvert their here and protect the positive trend. This blog is doing it. Do they pay me to reflect? They are now.

I have considerably more and less than I thought I would at this age. I never envisioned my “adult version party house” as filled with anything less than people mostly enjoying themselves. Instead, there’s two cats in my combo-shed. I have the capacity to build more. I have a decent amount of “job security” either built into my history or by virtue of my credentials. I have a living history of positive experiences I draw on to pair with the absurdities of my fascist here, my ignorant here, my ambivalent here, and my alone here. I can’t pretend something isn’t missing, but I won’t deny my capacity and responsibility to keep speaking to it, looking for it, or throwing myself into new heres where I suspect it might exist.

I’m the counselor because of circumstance, and I do the work. I maintain the boundary when “things” have “gone too far.” I show up and dare the rain to cancel the concert. I book the flight. I buy the tools. I save the bookmarks. I take a chance every moment I lean into the idea that it could be more of what I want than less. The more I speak to and define what I want, the easier it is to prove it. I wanted the last hour or so to be writing and made it so. Very soon I’ll want my here filled with food and a TV show. Then I’ll do notes, maybe, or crack open the graphic novel. I have everything, but in sharing it so infrequently, it can feel like there’s very little. That’s a tragedy with important components I need to consistently remind myself I can’t control.

[1050] If We're Keeping Score

Oh dear.

I’ve been attempting to hold onto this thought for over an hour driving home. I hope I can do it justice.
It’s curious, funny, amazing, and pretty ridiculous that I’m not given (at least in my mind) the credit for the depth of my feelings. So much of my behavior is fundamentally rooted into an overwhelming feeling, I don’t really know what to take from those who pretend I’m Spock-ing my way through life (irony free at least.)

I feel so much. I’m like the biggest fucking feeler of anyone. I tried at one point to downplay how much I felt about my crush in high school and Byron’s whole disposition shifted to make sure I didn’t allow a lessening of what I was on about. I’m extremely hateful. I’d kill in a heartbeat. Every intellectual and existential posture I could argue for the lack of wisdom in certain kinds of violence would fly so freely out the window in the right circumstances. I live under a constant tension. On my best days I’m actively resisting tightening up or clenching my jaw.

I believed so fucking hard in the friendships from college. I was absolutely sold. I think every person who entertains me for longer than a week is practically miraculous. My feelings are overwhelming by default. I am nothing but a wave of “whatever feeling” when it strikes if I’m not paying attention.

Thankfully, I’m smart enough to write. I have 1050 attempts of paying closer attention. I don’t just kill things. I don’t try to wife up every cute-enough girl who can’t help but play with her hair as we talk.
I’ve spent 20 years now trying to conceptualize my feelings. I don’t want them to have more power than they’re due. I don’t want to be at the mercy, of which there is little to none, of them. I want to be sincere and deep and earnest in my expression of desire, interest, or indignity. I know how to sincerely *sell* that, but I want it recognized and reflected in earnest. I want fucking friends. I want interested invested payers of attention spending interest points on things that matter.

You want to really pretend you can get a grasp of how lonely I am? I’ve written 1,050 blogs over 20 years. I’ve given you every remote depth of my psyche I could access. I’ve discussed every horrifying ridiculous thing about my thoughts, what people think of me, how I’m oriented, or what I’m shooting for. Literally every single person in my life, I’ve read maybe 5 thought digressions from people combined. And almost all of those are from the same person, my RA 16 years ago.

I don’t know what anyone’s really thinking. They don’t own it. They don’t look at it and wrestle with it and utilize it to direct their next action. You fuckers realize I live in a fucking shed in cousin-fuck Indiana, right? How the fuck do you think I get here without an entire world-shifting conversation about the pros and cons? My deluded dumbass hopeful self thought I wasn’t the only one having it. Fuck me I’m fucking retarded.

 
I’m so angry and hopeless it doesn’t register in words. I’m so sad that no matter what I do, what I say, what example I try to set, I can’t be anything more than “where people are.“ People are in a miserable ridiculous guilt-ridden irrational hopeless and ignorant space playing nice so what they do have isn’t ripped away any sooner than it’s destined to.

I had fun again. I saw bands I liked. I acquired T-shirts. I chatted with an old friend and her friends. I got some walking in. I defied notions of debt. It’s just my world. Other people were there, but it’s mine to be immortalized in lines like this. What could really be shared? We don’t listen to the same music. We don’t have the same money. Our priorities don’t align.

Fuck your feelings. That’s the message. No one has ever really given a shit about mine, so I learned how to respectfully dismiss yours. It’s not the way to run a healthy or respectful relationship. I have an overwhelming amount of feelings about myriad topics all the fucking time. Who cares? Does it help me understand or consider where you’re coming from? Does it speak to how I might practice and live a practical ideal?

I don’t know anything about you. You have nearly every word I’ve ever thought about me, and you don’t know anything about me. Isn’t that a tragedy? Am I not allowed to feel not great about it? I don’t belong, not really. I know how to fit somewhat, but it’s contrived and manipulative. I know how to play the game.

I know how to play the game.

[1049] Loose Bolt, Complete Machine

I already have a penchant for writing incredibly random crap, but my head keeps returning to a few things I need to try to synthesize.

I listen to a handful of podcasts. If Books Could Kill discusses books that have gotten popular over the years, and the basic absurdity, lies, and lack of reasoning we tend to digest without question. It wasn’t anything about any particular book that struck me though. A comment about J.K. Rowling from one of the hosts did. He, in as pious and pithy a manner as one is capable, dismissed a podcast series by Megan Phelps-Roper trying to explore communication barriers associated with all that drama.

It’s stuck with me because, dude, you’re literally hosting a podcast attempting to critically think, but when your token issue is addressed methodically, purposefully, and masterfully, you default to the same dismissive arrogance and snap judgment that fuels the popularity of ridiculous books for ridiculous people.

No matter how confident we get in our intellectual posture, we’re a fucking joke. No one, literally no one, should be trusted, ever to speak beyond the bounds of what they specialize in, and then, other experts in that specialty need to be actively criticizing and humbling and rounding out the picture. You can’t be “generally intelligent” if you’re going to eschew the wisdom of asking questions and working with the specific claims of the material you otherwise deign worthy of instant dismissal.

Shuffle.

For as much as I worry about manipulating, I’m a professional manipulator. I get a handle on your behavioral pattern, apply the right tone and words, and you walk away, more often than not, at least thoughtful, if not inspired, provided you’re not fundamentally hostile to me or the task at hand. It’s so deep an instinct that I used to black out and have people tell me all of the wonderful and caring things I would say that I had absolutely no memory of.

As such, I have developed a partner instinct to instantly recoil at too much praise or if I see that you are “too into” whatever I’ve done or said. This most highlighted last year when, for the first time in my life, I wished my step-mom a happy mother’s day. It meant something to her. I care about my step-mom. I like her. I want her to succeed. I wish I could do more to contribute to the incredibly cool things she’s doing with reselling and crafting. I didn’t wish her a happy mother’s day this year because I pulled so far away from her reaction last year, I felt I’d be getting into that dangerous space of “too much” endearment.

The distance protects you as much as it does me. If, and I still consider it a strong if, I’m more autistic than not, I’m literally incapable of matching the depth of the feelings I can illicit, at least for prolonged healthy “normal” ways, if that’s the goal. You have to understand, I’m outside. My feelings are either compulsive, or working to be controlled. There is no “simple” version of liking or “loving” anyone that doesn’t have a whole world of context and trust built around it. My dad’s known me my whole life. He’s not going to find himself “under my spell” that I didn’t intentionally cast in the first place, nor do I have to explain and walk back when things have gotten out of hand.

The closest memory I have that pairs with pulling back on happy mother’s day sentiments is when I told my friend Brett that he must have caught me on a good day when I said something encouraging about him going to bed early on a night we were partying in college. He felt a certain kind of way that I respected his decision and drew on that memory years later when I was at his wedding. I discouraged the positive association. To me, I’m just as likely to call you a bitch (in good spirit, but still, especially back then) as find myself in the mood to be like, “You know, that’s respectable, good for you!” My “real” friends would maintain that kind of disquieting skepticism or qualify any positive emotion they’ve drawn from me, THEN take away the fact that, I was sincere. You don't just get the feel-goods by themselves.

It sounds like a weird mind-reading immature game based on my inability to trust myself, right? But I do trust myself. I don’t trust your perception of me. So I try to train your perception with good and bad examples of my behavior to hopefully provide insight as to how it works. I’ve slowed down on doing this as it’s become easier to keep a more informal notion of “friend” in my head, but if I actually like you and wish we were cool or want to invite you to the next party even if we haven’t spoken in a few years, it’s a whole thing.

A simpler version of stating this is, I have an easier time trusting assholes. Feelers and empthas are raw meat in a sea of sharks. Assholes don’t let their resentments linger and sneak up on you. “Assholes” is also a misnomer as it basically just delineates people who are prepared and confident in their boundaries.

I see, literally every day, how viciously weaponized people’s feelings are. Whether it’s against me, against themselves, or against just basic sense and decency, well in spite of our best selves. I don’t want to practice that, enable that, or act blind to it in some bid to be “more normal” in my well-wishing or cordiality.

I’ve managed to bite myself in deliberately ignoring the feedback from the faces and body language and gossip of so-called “friends” I wanted in the past. I’m too familiar with psychologically abusive patterns relayed to me in dozens of versions of the same story. I get consistent positive feedback on the impact I have on people’s lives, and “You help more than you know!” as though I’m not actively telling you/the void how much I do know and don’t take it as a default good thing about me more than a statement about you.

When you can inspire, intrigue, or demonstrate your understanding of me, I get out of that mode. I think my dad gets me in a way Tammi never has or will. I look up to people who are, not just “smart” or “articulate,” but humble and comprehensive in their analysis. They’re showing me a way to work or speak that I haven’t found that is useful and perhaps marketable or scalable. Otherwise, it’s anyone’s guess which mood I might confidently assert in your direction. You may think absolutely nothing of that and consider it an awkward vague wanna-be threat of “something.” It’s my obsession. I’m wholly subsumed by the idea that I am either working you or working with you. Outside of that, it’s simply to avoid altogether.

Clear goals for our dynamic helps me too. Informal chatting? Sure, I can lay off. Did I invest hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars attempting to enable you? Well, fuck. Guess I can never really get that alignment of goals locked in. It’s an extension of the sensibility I use with regard to myself. When the goal is work, I work until I can’t anymore. When it’s indulge, I spend as much on shows, flying, parking, 2-item minimums, and gas as I ever have per year on home projects or car repairs. When I decide I want peace of mind, I’ll retreat indefinitely until the urge to nonsense fight resurfaces.

I don’t want to jinx my flow. I’ve been really feeling it the last week or so. I’m getting my house in order. Very annoying projects are registering as doable. I’m practicing music. I’m looking forward to maybe making my own. My notes aren’t feeling like they’re taking hours when, at their worst, it might take 2. I’m still beasting through shows, performances and TV. I’m rooted in an enjoyable now and looking forward to, perhaps an outwardly dismal future with regard to politics and the weather, but I think I can carve out an ironically decadent place.

Shuffle.

Bert Kreischer has been on the rise for a minute now, and is bringing along a band of like-minded comedians he admires. He said recently how he knows there are people who are way more brilliant and better stand-ups than him, but he puts in the work and utilizes the business minds/advice of people like Tom Segura and Joe Rogan. There is, of course, a model you can follow. There are posting guidelines and cross pollination strategies. While seemingly "anyone" (with money) can "go viral" (game the system) and the barriers to entry are lower, there are still structures akin to what might be understood as major labels of the past if they're nonetheless more diffuse and abstract than a particular studio, king-maker, or locale. Crazies like RFK Jr. know the series of podcasts to hit to make it onto Sam Harris' lips questioning the wisdom of allowing him to do so. Propogandist "news" is still working as intended.

I still fundamentally believe in work. I do think it's the thing that tends to win regardless. Whether it looks like what others consider work is where it gets complicated. It's work to keep Hussain sane enough to deal with the functionally impossible barriers to opening our own practice. It's work to maintain my own patience and positive orientation indulging in building fun memories verses stoking anger and resentment towards "the system" designed to ignore and kill us. It's work to continuously humble ideals while maintaining them anyway. It's work to stay skeptical and creative and preach better behavior than the environment is begging from you. This is work. This is also self-care. This is evidence I wish to keep on keeping on without just emptily saying that and pretending we both know what I mean.

I think I'm going to invite a headache related to tearing down the shed into my day. When that gets to be too much, I'll come in and shower, see if Hussain is free, when he's inevitably enmeshed in his chaos, I'll see about either seeing IMAX Oppenheimer, hitting The Comedy Attic, and certainly grabbing food. I have a few errands to run I suspect will wait until Sunday. If you catch this early, you're welcome to join, but I know it's pretty silly of me to continue inviting. Didn't you just see what I said about practicing the ideal in spite of the environment? Pay attention.

[1048] Vroom

Poised to be an extra-all-over-the-place one.

I’m back at my dad’s house after a weekend in Milwaukee. We saw Green Day, Foo Fighters, and most of the rest of the bands for Harley Davidson’s 120th anniversary festival. We ate great food. We drank beer. We navigated a mildly frustrating AirBnB situation, we got specialty coffee, and he picked up beer you can only get in Wisconsin. The day before, we saw David Cross and Sean Patton in Chicago during David’s latest special taping at The Metro. They were both tear-inducing and face pain funny. 

I do cool shit, but you already knew that.

I do cool shit like I’m someone who recognizes how quickly the entire world can be brought to its knees with the right bug. I do cool shit like I actually more believe than not I won’t have the opportunity to do so, at least in this country, when the fascist trends continue. I do cool shit like the artists actually mean something to me and like I think it important to generate positive feedback loops and new associations in an otherwise overwhelmingly stressful and stagnant existence. I do cool shit like it’s my job, because it is.

My dad has come with me to more music shows, comedy shows, or even movies than all of my friends combined over the last few years. My dad who iron works, takes care of graves in cemeteries hours away on the weekends, takes care of things around my aunt’s house, and keeps his own in order. My dad who’s turning 62 this year. My dad who lives 3 hours away from me. He has the time, energy, and attention to hang out and do cool shit in a way none of the other people I know, vaguely or otherwise, even flirt with having.

They don’t say, “Hey Nick, I’m not really into your genres of music, but so-and-so is playing, would you want to go to that?” They don’t say, “I’m so busy! But I’m budgeting to get a babysitter, and I’m definitely gonna hit, well, at the moment Fall Out Boy seems to be uniting people in a unique way." They don’t say, ”You sure do go to a lot, I’m legitimately too busy, but you’ve inspired me to take a little time and splurge or indulge or treat myself, because you know what? I do work a lot and I haven’t been attending to the necessary fun of a worthwhile life."

I inspire nothing! Today marks the 75th show for the year, 77th “fun thing,” with 34 left, Fall Out Boy on deck for tomorrow.

Is it debt? Yes. Is it long drives? Totally. Is it all of the risks associated with crappy vehicles, increasingly ugly and un-shared cultural landscape, and don’t my feet and back kind of ache? You might be arriving at the point and wisdom incumbent upon the whole endeavor. It’s work. It’s deliberate chosen effortful balance I’m interjecting against the void.

I’m incredibly frustrated by the lies, delays, and overall greedy empty nonsense trying to do good work and get paid for it. I don’t feel it in the same way as Hussain. It’s one, incredibly disappointing thing about how fucked we all are, let alone what I think to try to create. I have a dozen positive memories to choose from to pair that dissatisfaction with from the last few hours, let alone days. The “worst” thing about my life is “debt” which has come to symbolize considerably more about "potential" than "burdens" or "obligations." I don’t have a mortgage or car payment. I suspect you’d kill to be 3 months away, pretty much at all times, from being debt free, no?

But we’re broken. We don’t do the math budget-wise anymore than we do it with mental resources and allocated time towards worthwhile or otherwise thoughts. Concert crowds are certainly broken. All sense appears to have flown away. You’re around thousands of people, you’re going to get touched, you need to drink water, and setting down a blanket or chair anywhere near or around where a pit might open up is just a cunty dumb thing to do. When I’m walking back with two fresh beers to the spot I’ve been occupying for the last 7 hours, it’s the exact wrong time to strong arm block me and get into a debate about what, “We’re all trying to do” in getting in closer. No, bitch, you’re trying to be an incensed righteous lawyer cunt for no reason. I’m trying to politely edge past without spilling my waiting dad’s beer.

The whole concert scene has obviously been on my mind. It’s a unique expression of our selfishness and irony. I’m not there to love everyone in the crowd. The only thing we might have in common is barely knowing a few lyrics to some of your most popular songs. I suspect most people in the crowd haven’t read the latest Dave Grohl interviews or biographies of Green Day. A spattering of the crowd might be budding or capable musicians. Green Day in particular are great at appealing across generations. The old-school punk and the little girls all gather to belt out hits from 10 or 20 years ago despite 5 albums of music afterward you kind of pretend don’t exist.

I’m tired of hearing, “Welcome to the family!” from the singer of your band. I thought Pierce The Veil was incredibly awkward in their Green Day rip-off give-a-fan-a-guitar segment. Yes, Vic, sing into the weird gay kid’s eyes as he swoons on a stool before handing - an instrument he’s clearly never held in his life - a guitar he can keep and certainly cherish forever and not pawn. That’s crowd work.

Anyway, I’m gonna be 35 in 8 days. I suspect it will be uneventful. There won’t be a surprise party. No one’s taking me to dinner. I’ve already gotten the card from my parents with the $100 in it. On each day of the festival, tragedy struck someone in the circles of people I know. A friend’s mother’s best friend was murdered Friday. One of the step-kids’ husband had a stroke today. I’m just over hear chugging ice tea, listing my favorite bands, and bemoaning Sugarcult not getting as big as they should on the drive home.

I won’t be going this hard at this endeavor next year. I set the pace last year, kinda felt like I created a personal challenge to beat - beat severely - this year, and I’m chasing the feeling of a certain kind of magic going away. I used to find it incredibly hard to entertain the idea of ever leaving a show early, even a little bit, because I had to get my money’s worth. I didn’t go out that much. I’d never seen the band. What if something happens right at the end? I don’t leave early that often, but when I do, it’s because Tool is headlining, or the day before it took an hour just to walk out at an oversold My Chemical Romance Riot Fest performance, or Dave Grohl can make any one of his songs last 15 minutes, and that’s not always the best.

It’s an insane amount of privilege to perform, to attend, to afford the food, and to have the time to get there early, leave late, and be confident you’ve got the cash for the parking. It didn't use to be like that. It used to be music could bring any and all together. Now it brings those who can afford it, and those people are incredibly entitled, naive and out-of-touch cunts. It’s not all their fault, but they’re certainly not my friends, real or imagined versions of them, taking up room instead.

Finding common cause seems markedly different and opposite to finding common reaction. In a crowd, you react. That’s your job. Wave your hands. Jump. Scream. Unfortunately increasingly, hi-five, hug, introduce yourself, or dance with your neighbor. What are we all there for? To hear none of the women the day of or after The Supreme Court repeals Roe v Wade speak, sing, or scream into the mic about it? Hello, Lilith Czar, The Warning, and Halestorm, where the fuck were you?

If you’re not persuaded by the parts of the world on continuous fire, pick a metaphor you find agreeable. Minority stake holders in culture and environmental wars are plunging us into this absurd parody. How “festive” do you find festivals that have more bars than merchandise, art, or anything fun to do while you wait for your band to play? There’s music on. Some of them sound pretty angry. Anyone catch what it was? No protest song has stopped a war and no soundtrack makes the pills you swallow being born to your time and place any easier to digest.

The crowds aren’t diverse. The narratives around why are worn from being overplayed. The message isn’t clear and there’s no solidarity to be found. Rich whites like noise that helps them ignore all the screams they engender from their decision making. Let’s go, Brandon! No better time to be and loud and proud ignorant asshole than at the “Don’t wanna be an American Idiot” gig!

I want to say more or refine what’s here. I’ll try again later.

[1047] Curses

It’s late at the tale end of July 4th. I have no real sentimentality or ideas to offer around patriotism or the status of this country beyond thinking we’re still on the decline and on the way out.

I wanted to write about how I think it’s been getting harder to write.

I’ve been contemplating writing music. I listened to Ethan Hawk riff on poetry. I’ve written 1,046 things, not counting what I’ve deleted or designated “blog adjacent” with an “xx” in the title. Where I’m at is less in the analysis and trying to parse the players and response or responsibility. I want a riff. I want a phrase. I want a wall of sound that reverberates as good as any that I’ve put onto my playlists.

I went to a party tonight. I stopped being the person to invite and get to know everyone, but I’m still friends with Pat Patterson who has his eclectic group of creatives and weirdos. I belonged. It’s people who will look you in the eye. It’s people doing as unique a thing anyone could be doing that they’ll pass off as any ‘ole thing. I was told I could join the invite-only group to know about the semi-regular events.

Part of me has eschewed looking for fitting into a crowd like that. Sort of like with getting a girlfriend. There’s an inevitability that my weirdness or perspective is eventually going to turn someone off or against me. It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy them or don’t with to maintain a dynamic, but whatever it is that I perceive I’m getting from the relationship is heaps different from the artifice the other players were attuned to that I wasn’t.

We’re not in a play. We don’t have a set of lines and cues and lighting configurations to tell approximately the same story for however many weeks we’re popular. Each time you have your individuated stress or trauma or hopes and dream overlaying why you do or don’t engage the gathering one way or another. If you’re always “on” and looking to have your kind of fun or conversation, if you’re me, your confidence and comfort is going to navigate considerably less tactfully the conversation about whether or not Dave Chappelle is transphobic.

I think a big reason I don’t think too much about “expanding my network” is that I know I still have those connected people. I’m one text away from 25 people I haven’t met who are as close to “my people” as I’m going to get. But that’s not what I want to explore.

I feel like I’m running out of words. I need sounds and rhythms and noises modified to analogize a tight neck and wretched gut. My anger isn’t as honestly relayed in a thousand blogs as it might be channeled through Chester Bennington on stadium speakers. My previously-conceived-of angst or anxiety is deeper than that. Quieter. More encapsulating. I didn’t feel right trying to occupy “annoyed” or “angry” or “ungrateful” space walking a couple miles to return my umbrella to a car or staying extra late to a terrible baseball game. I still need to express and create though.

I texted my ex that the garden shed blew over. She sent back, “Ok.” I don’t want to assume she’s functionally abandoned the space, but I don’t really know what else to think. It’s like, of course she did though, right? Nothing I try to enable or support is actually felt or appreciated, so if I saw anything but overgrown bullshit with a blown over shed for all of the time and investment, joke’s on me.

I stopped myself from buying $500 worth of T-shirts last night. I had all the carts at check out. I did the math on time I’d need to spend at work with the extra groups I’ve taken on. I stopped when I considered all the the shirts I’ve already bought. I can go two weeks without doing laundry. I’m still going to shows this year with some of the bands I want merch from. I found it incredibly tempting to buy because of how many were sold out. There are thousands of small shirts many bands I enjoy can’t sell to their fat fans.

Spending money isn’t going to fill the hole. Pretending I need some kind of empathetic or affirmative response from my ex isn’t either. Getting enmeshed with the creatives has points of potential and light, but there’s often a reason those types find their collectives and version of the pageantry that I find reason to violate as quickly as any other.

It’s fucking Tuesday, man. I still have to work tomorrow. My concert schedule slows down considerably this back half of the year, so I have more time to either fight with projects on the land, or drink with creatives. The writer’s strike has helped me catch up on so much TV. I’ve tinkered on my piano and guitars. I even read a chapter in The Boys which I’ve been delaying until I felt I had the proper focus for the better part of a year. 

What do I really want? The insurance to impanel us. The ability to take off. To be out of debt because the debt is laughable, not inevitable, or a several months slog. I want to be able to host my own parties for parties of 1 or 2. I still want to go to bed when I please and wake up the same way.

Every day it feels closer, irrationally so or not. The sum total of my effort and perspective continues to compound and accumulate. I just need these last few pieces to fit.