For the last few months, it's felt like it wasn't worth writing because there's been "too much" on my mind. So much that I've wanted to make music. I'm frequently all-too aware of how often I'm singing the same tune, so why not externalize it as a melody or sound? I have tabs open to try and learn proper recording and production. But the prospect of doing so conjured the stomach-drop anxiety feeling. Today is a free weekday. I could be marketing, or researching, or grant writing. I could be doing something…you know…important.
This is the rub I'm persistently privy to over the course of my counseling week. People work, constantly. They get off work to go to work. When they're not at work, they're worrying about work, how little money they're making, or what their work will do to hurt or punish them if they speak about how little they enjoy their work. They come home to work to keep their kids or house in order. They're, hopefully, working on their sobriety and emotional regulation while situated in as selfish and self-destructive an era and area as you could ask for.
So, what? What's asked of you in any given moment that life's circumstances may be brought into your awareness? The industrious, superstitious problem solvers came up with religious ideas. The modern solipsist worships through happy-branding and memes. I don't believe most are actually willing or capable of diagnosing or methodically and deliberately addressing "the problems," as such. So, again, what? What does that mean for you? Where should your anxiety rest or obligation manifest?
I'm an expert indulger. I doggedly pursue what I want and like, for me, because me, and the because "fuck you." Whether I write an indulgent blog, song, or defiant piece of rebel propaganda, I'm scratching an "I'd like to feel better" itch. Not necessarily long-term better either. In the moment my stomach is dropping and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going, that's what I want fixed, redirected, or obliterated. If I never felt that feeling again, it's hard to say if I'd ever write again.
The religious "fixer" or anxious miserable fuck tries to establish universal order in their creative expression. God wills it! Dominion over death, ain't it grand? The world isn't fair, ever, especially when we keep it abstract and blame-worthily denoted as "the world." Whether it kills your kids, gives you cancer, or bakes your brain until you babble and froth for fascism, the color of the tragedy doesn't matter and the consequences are predictable.
A secular or "spiritual" cunt might start, incredibly poorly, describing their understanding of energy or physics, dip into ideas about karma or personal responsibility, and ultimately scream their relative hedonism through literally everything they buy, share, or speak highly of. Weird, Bo Burnham's "White Woman's Instagram" comes to mind.
I tell my people constantly to engage in self-care and decompression. I know where the vast majority of them are at. It was misery-inducing enough to get me to move out here. For a minute though, I've had the exact opposite problem. I'm not compressed enough. I don't have an antagonist that isn't the disembodied general dissatisfaction I have with "my crowd" or lack thereof. I have battles with insurance I can't effectively fight. I have an endless list of chores or projects or hobbies. It's not the kind of drive either of desperation or that terrible word "passion."
I stayed up all night on Wednesday trying to do a 750 piece puzzle in one sitting. I haven't put a puzzle together since I was a kid (besides another simpler puzzle a few days prior). I wasn't desperately trying to finish it. I wasn't feeling particularly defiant. I just allowed myself to keep going. In my perfect world, I'm up all night doing whatever it is I wish to do, falling asleep at 5 or 6, and getting up at 11. I very nearly did that exactly on a work night, got up still did my job, and less than an hour after my last group finished the puzzle. Maybe I needed some light proof that I can still go into that "autonomous" or "robot" mode?
The world hasn't felt like it's closing in on me in a serious way for quite some time. It's still shit. I still hate everything. But I have a (wise?) calm about it I suppose. I think the weather's nice enough that working outside would be prudent. I have clean clothes. I haven't eaten yet. I don't suspect I'm going to hear back from anyone I've texted until it's much too late. I really do just need a crowd or cooler people to hang with. Before I think of anything else I might do fun or creatively, I need to plug into something that's at least passable. I just kinda want to exist around decent-enough people. I'm not trying to chore, fight, work, or spend in and of themselves.
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