[1068] Give Me Therapy

I just got this flourish of inspiration to write.

I think about this date I went on a fair amount. I'm not a dater, so that was my first mistake. It was with this tiny therapist, a little older than me. She was partnered, had a kid, and was every ounce of a "theater kid" type energy. It wasn't a "bad" time, but she said something about being in therapy in a way that struck me. She said she believes everyone needs to be in therapy. She said it with an air of self-assuredness if not pretention.

What I imagined was a battle between her ego and insecurity playing out in the conversation we were having. There's this thing about being in a "counselor" or "therapist" role where you might struggle to "turn off" being in observer mode. By occupying so much time in an advisory capacity, you may start to get the impression that pretty much everything you say is "good" or "better" or "helpful" when you're situated against people who have meaningful differences or deficits in their processing or organizing.

Had she merely "just said" it, I could agree with the general sentiment. I don't think that by dawning a therapist or engaging in talking or writing will fix anything by themselves. If you have a genuinely helpful, intuitive, accountable and informed exchange, you might arrive at insight, but the impetus to put that insight to work or the ability to raise your wisdom quotient are entirely different animals. I say this because of how reactively hostile she was to my challenge that, by default, no one is "objective."

Her narrative about how she operates or what she's achieved through therapy was threatened. This appeared to cause her to hear my challenge as something like, "Truth is relative." She maybe thought I was criticizing the very idea of seeking a broad view trying to as objectively-as-possible contextualize your life and how you describe it. She might have felt that I was dismissing the difference between those who engage in some form of therapeutic feedback process, and those who ignorantly and confidently espouse entitled animalistic fascism. And she might have felt all of this in an instant when her taken-for-granted authority was checked.

I, obviously, also talk to people for a living, believe I not only gain from the exchange, but have seen people grow and improve themselves through a structured examination and accounting for their experience. I think we all need, as individuals, a strong sense of what that even means. I think you can get there through many ways. I prefer self-reflective writing. Even my closest relationships don't really understand how I operate, so if I don't find the words, argument, or reason to de-clench my jaw, your - perhaps not even as well-read as me - PH.D. or laughable lesser degree isn't going to save me.

Does that impact my ability to counsel effectively? Does that mean I can't maintain a sense of stability or order in my life? Does that provoke you to look for what my diagnosis *should be* were it not for my denial-ridden intransigence? We should always return to the fundamentals. What is the goal? Is it reasonable? Are you building an evidence bank of your effort and accomplishments? Are you finding yourself maintaining or gaining more control over the areas of your life that you want to?

We have to remember, there is no "normal." You could throw literally every single person under some label if you so chose. Most of us unconsciously strive for a semblance of "normal" regardless. We get media feedback, cultural pressure, biological clock knocks, and colloquial lore that passes itself off as timeless wisdom and step-by-step instructions to a Good Life. It's as much a cliche the story of the wine-drinking desperate housewife, the single-mom doing the best she can, and the overworked and underpaid provider whose story of the pride they take in doing so struggles against depression and anxiety.

We're all processes. Everything is in flux, and you plug into the ride, or you disingenuously anchor too long. You react and lash out when the faux-confidence in your status gets threatened. You remain dejected and hopeless when you pretend there isn't another call to make, email to send, step to walk, or question to ask. You look for things to confirm what you already know or stay "comfortable" instead of challenged to push, learn, or evolve.

Several times in my life I've had exceptionally comfortable financial circumstances. I've disrupted them every time. Not through self-destruction and waste, but through exploration and a deep persistent nagging that I am never allowed to remain on some perch. I want the wisdom and work to drive how I structure business, my day-to-day life, and approach to engaging or inviting others into a therapeutic process. I think I have a really good understanding of what "healthy" verses "pathological" looks like because I've been observing in myself what works or doesn't in an ongoing way.

This speaks to my general grievance about feeling fairly alone in getting or pursuing things others profess to want. It's always me that has to get "lucky" or make the extra effort or provide the clarifying and specifying note. It's a responsibility I voluntarily accept, but it's shocking when it feels like I'm the only one aware of how to do so. It's upsetting really. If I wasn't on the call yesterday to get username and password stuff sorted out for the 6th time, what took 50 minutes likely wouldn't have been fixed at all. It's easy to see how leader-types can get caught trying to do everything for everyone all the time.

That's, also, not leadership. Leadership is recognizing the gaps in someone else's knowledge and providing a way that they can plug them in. You don't let your insecurity, frustration, or incomplete judgment of them prevent you from allowing them to fail forward and learn like you have. I had to translate what I thought a philosopher meant and apply it to my life. No one just told me "the right way" and I snapped into focus and followed. I live and feel the reality and difference in being skeptical and open to change verses the miserable gripe-ridden excessive boundary imposing child who thought he knew everything.

I need questions. I need speculation and experimentation. I need to feel growth and potential and reasonable exchange. These aren't optional. These aren't things that just naturally follow once your paycheck hits a certain point. These aren't things that even your "best friend" is interested in recognizing, protecting, or cultivating with you. I would rather be broke with a strong impression of the routes I can explore than loaded and dead inside after beating the drum of company propaganda and saying the same thing to closed minds a thousand times.

There is always something new to explore. There is always a challenge to rise to. Whether or not you or I can articulate it perfectly, I have a nose for sniffing out when your professions betray your posture. It's trained on my own disposition, achievements, and accountability of the moment. Whether I'm inspired, dispirited, or superficially contradictory and confused. Mine is not a naive and empty hope. I just have my awareness of how I feel in behaving and speaking in one way verses another. Then I do the work. Then I look for the wisdom to be reflected back in your words and your examples. That's also why I think we're fucked lol.

[1067] Can't Be Satisfied

Angry doesn't begin to describe it. Familiar notes of hopelessness and exhaustion flare. Being made into a feckless beggar for dignity and respect is no way to live.

I'm quitting my job. My 4-day a week 2 days remote job where day in and day out I have a version of the same conversation. I've made my appeals to be fully remote. I've done the math. I drew a line. I'm immediately tempted to devolve into cliches, but I know better. This was inevitable. I called it before I ever hired on.

Groups fired an incredible office manager within weeks of me starting. They allowed a lie from a bitch-ass counselor to bolster their already-decided-upon desire to remove her. This was without warning or appeal and over an infraction that, even if it were true, her violating HIPPA, would have warranted a slap on the wrist. But, because they don't care about who you are or how good you are, she was out.

I sat in for a couple groups for training. One counselor is as messy as you get from any client. She involves herself in their lives like it's personal entertainment. She allows chaos and laziness to suffice as "counseling." She throws office managers under the bus. She's just someone who has it together enough to get a credential, but has no business telling anyone how to operate. She's been at Groups for years.

I've watched the seductive power of Groups work. The 4-day week is a trap. You need to be comfortable and comparing it to the often over-worked and ridiculous social-work job you came from. Will they mission-creep you for more responsibilities? Absolutely. If you're an office manager, they won't even pay you for the lauded "help" that keeps you staying late and covering different areas.

Groups encourages you to think of your Suboxone as diabetes medication. Say nothing of the long-term effects on your liver or teeth, isn't "harm-reduction" preferable to running these streets? The whole ethos is "keep paying us to keep you stable, no, to save your life actually." It doesn't matter if you actually get a better grasp on your automatic responses, addictive tendencies, self-talk, or sense of agency. It matters that you can get complacent and dependent on their drug verses yours.

If I don't matter, I turn into an incredibly dangerous person. You don't get the sense that you matter when you take the time to explain yourself and be very deliberate in how you conduct yourself, and it's met with silence or dismissal. If there's a more pungent scent in the air than that of resentment, I don't know what it is. I don't want to huff it and have it churn me out from the inside.

I'm not precisely annoyed at the amount of work or searching I'm going to have to return to, but I am utterly dismayed and dejected that I must do so at all. I hate constantly learning in subtle to explicit ways how little I matter and how meaningless the examples I try to set are in the face of the people I find myself working for. They matter to me in literal life and death terms. I'm not propagandizing myself, I literally need to feel like I'm growing and changing in positive ways, or I'll crack. Only I can save me.

I have a client I spoke to after my last group today. We've done this a few times. We're about the same age, she's got two kids, and she's more keen to describe her life experience in terms of energy or quasi-mystical terms, but I get the gist. She's lonely. She's gaining all of this new awareness about herself and how people operate, and it's, especially for an emotional person, extremely depressing and isolating. Yep. The more you learn, and the more responsibility you take, the more alone you get. You're no longer part of the herd in an important way. What you do with that is anyone's guess.

I have a friend who seems stuck in a contradiction. She got fired from her job, technically resigned, because they found an illegal substance in her car. She's a drug counselor. She was the director of programming in a prison, was falsely accused of trafficking, and consented to her car being searched, knowing Kratom was in there. I don't know how to square her professed love for the job and any willingness whatsoever to have illegal anything on a prison ground. My friend "coincidentally" keeps the kind of company that are all either in active addiction, doing not-great in recovery, or otherwise doing things like killing themselves or accidentally overdosing on CBD in which I'm called over because she's not good at handling panic-inducing situations.

Why talk about my friend and my client? What does thinking about them evoke when I'm writing another meaningless digression of corporate ambivalence and greed? I think we're all manifesting this self-destructive impulse. We know what we have and how we're going about it is fucked up. Whether it makes us just want to break down and cry, ignorantly claim to "thrive in chaos," or starts seeping into your shoulders the weight of your captured state, either you, or the faceless infinite series of "the way it is" sentiments will break. You're considerably less robust.

I'm continuing to make a bet that the search is worth more than the suffering. I'm claiming that working to create and sacrifice in service to that creation is more life-affirming, true, and necessary than a consistent paycheck. I initially wrote "comfortable" paycheck, as though it's comfort that moves me to leave. It's incredibly uncomfortable to feel erased and taken advantage of. I understand why you'd prefer drugs or chaos or literally any narrative that otherwise fills in the blanks for how that makes you feel.

 
I don't think we'll ever transcend it. I think I'm going to have to be ruthless, and I really don't want to. But I'm alone, like my client, like my friend, and anyone who can't see through the consequences of dependent "stability" upon self-absolution. It's like parallel play that sends us over personal cliffs. What even is "together" or doing "better" in this context?

[1066] Wobbles

I think I'm ready to claim feeling stressed out now. It only happens when a series of things build up over time that I feel little to no control over. I wasn't looking forward to going to Louder Than Life. 6 hours driving on a Sunday by itself set the poor mood. An inability to catch one of the main acts I wished to see soured it further. Spending 25 minutes in a fast food lane having not eaten all day before leaving for home just poured it on.

Over the weekend I'm already riding the annoyance train with a client who overstepped several times after being told explicitly to stop. He doubled down Monday. I drew the line in the sand with my job telling them they can fire me or simply allow me to be fully remote. I'm sick of wasting 3 hours in drive time, the goodwill left in my oil or gas guzzling vehicles, and general productivity sitting around the fucking office for no reason. I'm fairly certain the relief I'll feel in leaving will be greater than any meager satisfaction if they cave.

My head hurts. My stomach has been upset for an hour. I hit a fucking dear driving on the fucking highway I had no business being on leaving the fucking building I had no reason to be in. I've never felt "caught up" in my sleep after the late arrival home Monday morning. Now I'm home at 10 PM writing because I can't just be left alone to eat whatever shit I must to work this job without the added resentment of getting fucked on top of it.

On the plus side, I managed to steal a new sink head after trying to just buy one, being told it would be a "special order," so I unscrewed one from the display. The flow was immensely satisfying when I washed my hands. I popped a Tums for my stomach. I got all my shit and groceries inside. I need to lay down before a headache hits.

I'm 35 years old. I can't seem to find a friendship, relationship, or otherwise that isn't begging for a diagnosis. My clients, overwhelmingly, wish to tread water. I've NEVER worked for a dignified genuine leader. The people who I've popped in on or learned about are living the 30-something version of sadness, depression, or anxiety having tried to do the exact things their parents did to get us in the cultural mess we're in. For all of my work, interests, demonstrated capacity, and genuine enthusiasm and goodwill I exert on this miserable existence, I feel I'm owed considerably more. I'm some bizarre version of hermit-hipster-tech bro desperately trying not to espouse some ironic detached view of the world only to be pummeled to death the more he plugs into it.

I am not blind to my otherwise regal status, but it rests on a story of infinite precarity and spite. Does no one else crave something balanced, trustworthy, and well-reasoned with regard to how they work, what they're worth, and why?

[1065] Good Boy

I don't consider myself a "good" person. More to the point, I don't think the sentence or sentiment makes any sense. I liken it to saying, "You're a good dog." A dog is a dog. It has dog tendencies, and depending on the breed and kind of engagement, you can lessen or exacerbate those tendencies. The "goodness" of the dog depends on variables internal and external. Our concept of a good dog varies with each observer. My good dog responds to commands, doesn't errantly bark, and refrains from tearing my shit or other dogs to pieces. Your good dog may routinely lick you inside your mouth.

I don't consider myself particularly disciplined either. I'm a product of a fair amount of conditioning, and it's hard to think of myself as not constantly looking for ways to push boundaries. I'm like Byron's dog Ike. It knows not to lick me, yet you can see the compulsive lick wheels turning non-stop. He can respond to demands, but is just as likely to take off into traffic. He's incredibly afraid of the dumbest things, but will occasionally decide it's time to throw down and fight at the dog park.

If there is one metric I attempt to remain consistent in, it's in matching my words to my actions. I try to build in leeway for things I'm not entirely sure I can pull off. I might say something like, "If I practice 3-8 hours a day again, I bet I could come close to sounding like that," when I watch an incredible guitar performance. I'll qualify the amount of work I'd like to do with, "If I'm in the mood," or "weather providing" or "if something doesn't come up." In talking or writing like this, I don't ever really need to make promises. I don't need to sell myself or make some "extra" pseudo-commitment profession. Whether I'm looking to be praiseworthy or condemning and judgmental, you can frame it in a sincere and balanced way.

I think about this a lot when it comes to my approach to people who begin to annoy the fuck out of me or who seem to betray me in ways I couldn't find myself justifying. In my reflection on dropping Byron, I spoke to moving out, and the darkness I was kept in. That's been damn near every single year from every single person I've lived with. No one, it appears, cares how much it costs or how much work it takes to get a house you're renting back in order and packed up. No one knew or prepared to work out where they're going to live year to year? No one thought twice about paying the ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

I would never just abandon a living situation that wasn't otherwise threatening me. I would never expect someone to throw out my shit or clean up after me. I would never contemplate moving and just keep that from them. These are the kinds of things that create financial holes, to say nothing of the psychological ones, that can take years to get out of. If it's not deliberately malicious, what can we say about people who are routinely selfish and willing to inflict such drama via, if nothing else and very forgivingly, "absent-mindedness." They dash into the street, and you're on the hook for the medical bills.

I had a client text me, 2 days in a row, about not getting a 14-day script. He's a relatively long-term client. He knows how the system works, or doesn't. He knows I have nothing to do with writing, retrieving, or even looking at and accessing the systems to do with prescriptions. Yet, he felt compelled to interject his bullshit into my day, distraught that having to do jury duty appears to have registered in our software that he didn't have perfect attendance. This isn't a 2 minute conversation let alone a dozen texts over 2 days one. I, because he's a "good" or "nice-enough" client, unwisely, responded at all, very briefly blaming the software, holiday, and finally requesting we speak about it when I'm actually at work. Of course, he kept talking, so I stopped.

There's a "good person" narrative at this juncture that starts to nag you. Don't you wish to alleviate, to whatever degree you can, the confusion of your "good" clients? If it's not going to annoy the fuck out of me (qualifying statement) I don't mind sending a very quick 5 word-ish text. Another member messaged coincidentally about the same time for the box code to get screens. Should she, and anyone who's been doing this program for years and heard the box code dozens of times know it? Sure. She's also a good client, and the box code doesn't obligate me to drama, here you go, I can move on quick.

I can recognize the difference between how either attempts for my attention register. I consciously refrain from saying "makes me feel," because I know it's my underlying habits or desires that fuel just how annoyed or otherwise I'm going to be when you come at me with your bullshit. I didn't have to respond to my first client at all. In one sense, I violated my own boundary. In another, I made a bet that talking back would help more than hurt. In yet another, I was expressly espousing my values to treat my "good" clients with a little more leeway and privilege.

It's not black and white. Depending on how hard I lean into any of those sensibilities, I could nag myself with guilt for not holding strong. I could be conjuring a tale of my desire for taking risks and hedging with unstable and inappropriate means. I could simply pat myself on the back for consciously elevating an individual, even if he managed to disappoint me.

My goodness. It's all so convoluted and layered. It's all of the senses at once, and my unconscious and pre-verbal parts of my brain cycle through each layer until I can land them line-by-line here.

My sense of whether or not I'm "good" has been shaped by how I was raised. My dad being the unconditional love type, and my mom ensuring it was metric and fear-based. I was good if my grades were good. I was good if I responded to the threat of violence with compliance. To this day, I still feel what I'd describe as a "standing guilty conscience" as though I've done something wrong or punishment is inevitable. 

It's not "real" guilt. It's the irrational kind you can't take responsibility for. It's what forms when you've been made into a victim. Your abusive or neglectful caregiver can be as significant a contributor to that as your cultural environment. There's adults still thinking they're going to Hell for jerking off. The Protestant "work ethic" is a recipe for chronic unfulfilling self-imposed slavery. 

The real problem with this not-real guilt is less about the endless ways in which it may play out as selfish and entitled. It's significantly more about realizing how all-encompassing it can become. It's us needing to own how punishing our environments are, so we can form a responsible and accountable approach to what they've done to us. Very few of us appear to even entertain the conversation. It's more of a cultural parody at this point about the levels of anxiety and depression and everyone's need for therapy and simply more exposure and acceptance a-la shows like Sex Education.

We're foundationally irrationally guilty, we don't know of what, and if we don't already feel like we're being punished, we intuit that more punishment is coming. Our insincere parroting of words gives us zero capacity or insight on how to approach this. We reduce what accessing the real and meaningful guilt might provoke in behavior change to the pithy ether of melodrama and religiosity.

I don't wish to be "a person." I want to be me. I want to believe I'm making decisions to orient around things I care about, equitable relationships, and my potential. If my debt was compulsive hoarding to fill a black hole, like it is with my uncle, I'd expect to hear criticism about that from people concerned about me. If my aberrant or impulsive decision-making was courting interpersonal, financial, and legal trouble, a "good" friend or person talks about it. That's the implicit lesson of like almost all TV. There's bonds that can't be broken as they drive towards genuine resolution of the plot. It's another tool in service to rendering us blind when the lines and goals haven't been explicitly written for us.

I can't remember the last time I deliberately and consciously tried to hurt someone. This lack of recall stands against how frequently I've been accused of doing so. Just as it was in my mother's household, before I had the language of developmentally appropriate stages and the neurochemistry of the pre-frontal cortex, I was always in the wrong. Moreover, I couldn't even imagine that someone else had the agency or their role to play. I think about this in particular when it came to throwing parties in college. Hundreds of people's drunken behavior was routinely laid at my feet, and I was right there to pick it up. I didn't think twice. It was "my" party, after all. I wasn't 1 of 5 on the lease, 6 living there. I wasn't 1 of 100 places to drink or act out that IU has to offer. Through sheer force of will and charm you'd think I literally cast a spell on my attendees.

And in a way, by having any intention and direction at all, I did. And if and when that goes awry, the responsibility follows. I'm fine with that, considerably less so with the next step to act like you can party all by yourself. I don't have my hand up your ass mouthing your justifications or holding your jaw shut.

The road from distancing yourself from that irrationally guilty space that blames everything around you to responsible adulthood is a framing and self-talk problem. You may not see the 100 people around you at the party, but I promise you they see a scapegoat. You may not see the work, family, or political environment you're ever-molded by, but they have your number and know what you're good for when they can't be bothered.

I hardly recognize everything I've bought and built to try to find more contentedness and occasional "happiness." I'm not just out here alone playing music all day, deeply contemplating compelling media, and full of cheer for the examples I'm trying to set. I know most people can't even really see me. I know I'm going to be expected to clean up so much dog shit and the other animals are going look on ambivalently to bemused. It just hits really hard sometimes when the bubble you're cultivating gets aggressively barked at or slobbered on. I'm fucking tired of having to treat people like dogs, from my "best friend" to my "good clients," and I literally have to if I'm going to survive. 

I'm the only one who gets to kill me.

[1064] High On Believing

It's getting late and I have to be up early. I'm curious if there's anything on my mind.

I think a lot about spending money. It's more or less unconscious, but my mind will flow between things I've imbued with an impression for their potential. I think it'll be "fun" stuff, or things that will help me avoid getting "bored." I feel a certain obligation to play my instruments the more expensive they were. I like the idea of myself being free of mind enough to reengage practicing like I used to. I don't want to be someone who only had potential instead of tried to make it look and sound like something cool.

I've had a couple instances of buying a large amount of things at once that I was sick of talking myself away from. My new computer was $2500, when I bought a bunch of tools it hit $4500 and I included some household things and Beats. Another tools, house stuff, books, games, and piano hit $2300. I just spent $1700 a few days ago on a series of electronics. These aren't numbers that going to account for a single shimmering stone on a rapper's ring, but for your small-time "professional" who's spent many years of his life getting by on $5000-$10,000 a year, it makes you feel a certain way.

That feeling grows more nagging yet ambiguous when you look around at all of your toys that you don't feel like you're really allowed to play with. That is, the things I buy I also consider a certain kind of work. Yes, it is fun to know how to play a song or use different instruments, but that comes after a great deal of time and work and very very slowly practicing things your fingers can't do yet. It takes focus. It takes dipping into that "forever" compulsive well that sees one destination, learning whatever's in front of me, and blocks out everything else.

I find it very hard to "switch gears." I want to do whatever the thing is all the way. If I have work for 4 days, I want to get as much of the work done and out of the way in 4 days, and then switch into "get to the show" mode. If I pick up my guitar, I want to play it pretty much until I can't anymore, which doesn't lend itself to utilizing a nice day for yard work or running errands or beating myself up for not figuring out how to attract more counseling clients.

I think most people manifest the series of competing impulses as a kind of paralysis. I certainly feel that most days, but I can usually coax myself into a lower-investment activity that still meets my lowest order goals. That's consuming shows or spending hours organizing files. That's picking up and rearranging the house or slowly piecing together something new I've bought. It might be me doing pre/notes or replaying a song that I've learned, mostly, on one of my instruments.

But there's still a hunger. I clicked through 700 videos I've taken since last year of different bands. It sinks in with each one what an amazing opportunity and gift it is to be able to focus and write and perform. There's certainly going to be of-the-era things that make certain songs or styles click more than others, but at bottom, every single person on those stages have done the same thing. They sat, and practiced, and trudged around to perform, and connected in an imprecise way with dozens to millions of fans. Many performers are still perfectly internally tortured and all exactly human.

My head returned recently to a few ideas I think have gotten me into trouble. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and "If you build it, they will come." One is wholly misrepresenting, "We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” The other is from Field of Dreams.

I'm one to blaze ahead forward. Right or wrong, before I developed a decent way of checking my impulsivity, I'm down. Let's go fuck up your enemy, build something, or wander aimlessly in any direction that may call to us. When I started to drink and party, I became the "best" at it. When I cared about school, a bad grade was devastating. When George said I'd never play guitar as good as him, I learned how to play riffs I never imagined myself remotely capable of. I'm sitting inside that disposition, typing from my shed, projects and toys lingering and calling. I'm dreaming of things I may yet do in business. I've been to 100 entertaining events this year with 29 still on the way.

I read one of the most insightful articles by what I'm gathering is soon to be one of my new most favorite philosophers Byung Chul-Han. It speaks to what feels like a culturally inexorable detail regarding how we behave towards one another that I've bitched about, but never articulated as clearly for myself. I still don't really have a community. I consistently find the people I'm closest to, or try to be closest to, fuck me in ever deceitful and neglectful ways. All of my effort, all of my "stuff," and all of my fancy ideas have been, in one form or another, uniformly dismissed, ignored, deliberately confused, ridiculed, thrown in my face, or resented.

I feel like I register as a "risk." The nature of that risk, of course, is that I will turn you, us, and everything we're alleged to be to one another into a blog. I will never unhear, even if I forget who said or typed it, "No one wants to be a blog." No one wants the scrutiny, the accountability, or the work. No one wants to be pitted against their best or worst versions of themselves. No one wants to be seen for all they're capable of. No one wants to be summarized in so many words when they'd otherwise entertain an infinitely grand illusion about their place and behavior.

When we fit, the risk is mitigated. When we plug into a family-track or career-track or a Colorado-culture story or Insta-appropriate series of filters, there's almost no risk. You're speaking everyone's language. You're not challenging what's intuitively understood. You're certainly not taking shrooms and deconstructing the nature of "intuition" altogether. You fit. It's snug.

For you to do something like move out to the country, navigate all there is to learn, and throw yourself into the ongoing unknown is unthinkable, unless you're drunkenly talking to me in college and I'm incredibly naive. For you to accept the terms of living with or near me is to, by necessity, dive into yourself and extract the hundreds of pages that you're comprised of, and in the meantime, keep running into the abyss. That's a "spiritual" or "character" thing. You, - maybe - I'm learning, know how to budget. You'd get used to driving a bit more, or a bit less as your opportunities change. If you moved here today, you'd bypass living without water, electricity, the internet, or a place to park.

But what would it really mean for you to do so? I suspect the most likely candidate is someone at the end of their rope. They've tried the "normal" life thing, and can't afford to pay New York loft rent for a trailer each month. They hate their job. They're "lightly" addicted to something, and perhaps a particularly painful interpersonal tragedy occurs. Ring ring, "Hey maaan, you still got that land?" Poor candidate. While this is my refuge, and I'd surely love to facilitate a safe environment for someone else, they don't really want to be here, they want to be away from wherever they are.

Maybe someone has fallen down a Tik-Tok rabbit hole about sustainable living or the collapse of all the used-to-be-cool places due to climate change. Do they really care about the planet? Probably not anymore or less than I do, and I use enough electricity to mirror a 4 bedroom household. What do they wish to bring? Ideas! and maybe a little nest egg. They're full of inspiration, not necessarily perseverance or practicality.

Allie was a romantic dreamer. She literally screamed at me about how she never would have moved out here were it not for the romantic story of it all.

There's plenty of hard workers. I talk to nearly 200 a week. There's plenty of people who have compelling stories for conducting their lives along certain familiar and easily anticipated lanes. Everyone, "could use the extra cash" though. Everyone has been "too busy, with everything going on" to regularly have fun or spend the time to learn something new. Everyone, "just thought or is just sayin" some worn sentiment about the inevitability of their lot in life or the conclusions they've drawn without ever stating the premise.

I don't have kids. I don't have student loans. I don't have a major, or minor, health condition. I'm not trying to build rockets or monopolize markets. My business goals aren't of exploiting and hoarding. I very rarely raise my voice let alone break things. I've thrown thousands of dollars and thousands of hours at my friends. I continue to manifest my dreams in one form or another each day. I speak it. I work it. I offer myself to each next thing poised to exploit me. I invite in spite of my worst feelings and betrayed instincts. I write as something of an infinite regress asking the silence what I should set my sights on and if anyone would share my description of it.

I'm the risk? You don't know what I'm going to say if you need something from me? You don't know if I'll show up or foot the bill? You don't know the nature of the incoming joke? You think I'm going to flare out and give up and leave you stranded? You think I'm keeping some big secret about my feelings or desires that's going to leave you hollowed out and desperate? I'm unreasonable, somehow, because I've parlayed whatever you wish to make of my energy or capacity to articulate it into more money, more time, more…everything besides friends, with each passing year? Is it even about me? Has it ever been?

I wanted the opportunity to support and be apart of what my friends used to discuss they wanted to do so fucking much. I wanted to feel like I belonged amongst people who cared and tried and created the world in spite of their circumstances. All of my wildest dreams included Playboy Mansion-esc numbers of people just around "doing the things they do." You wanted to write a book? Good thing you don't have to spend 40-80 hours a week at your job, right!? You want to travel? For all the jokes I make about living in the middle of nowhere, the airport is 45 minutes away. You've got some strong opinions about encroaching fascism? Study, organize, and grow grass roots from your toes, because you're free to. You think I live far away? Have you ever actually timed how long it takes you to get to Wal-Mart with traffic and stop lights?

My imagination could go on forever. My practical autism doesn't need to be persuaded I could be living there right the fuck now with 2 or 3 analogues of my disposition. Instead, we've isolated and set ourselves up to compete as commodities with every antagonistic call for our attention and bodily resources. We're more trapped by our internalized narratives than any slave has ever been. We're more afraid, and confused, and distrustful because we've lost all notions of "evidence" or what constitutes a value worth preserving and fighting for. We're fluid. We're goo. We're not "we."

I want to get incredibly good at my instruments, but if I didn't want to do so for me, I'd be playing to an audience who talks the entire time through my set. If I wasn't clear on what I was after, and what I continue to get, in moving out here, saving, creating, and investing in my potential, I'd feel like a failure before I ever began. I'd be wholly consumed by what you thought or what "society" deemed abnormal. That's my only window into speculating on what's going on in your body when you contort yourself away from the idea of what you could do with an "extra" $20,000 besides buy toys, tools, and shows.

It's not "one day" I'll see about doing what I like, or need, or value more than how tired I may be or scared and unprepared for the unknown unknowns. It's today, mother fucker. It's tonight, right the fuck now. And it's always right now. It's always my desire and privilege to speak and own and try and dream. Every damning thing my be true AND whatever I have to say about it or am currently working to do about it.

If you don't want space, and time, and money, and as much help doing literally anything you wish to do as I could possibly give, can you wrap your head around how fucked up that is any better than me?

It's too much. This is too many words. I'm too much angst or enthusiasm depending on how tired or unforgiving a mood you are in when you catch this. This is one slice of 1,063 for me, and for you perhaps an entire world-begrudging condescending desperate plea for companionship and solidarity I get once every month or three.

I had a wonderful conversation with Brandy over the weekend. The subject of client feedback came up, and I spoke to all of the good will and positive sentiments and thanks I get. I move to distance myself from it. I can't trust your perception of me when we're not equals. I'm not saying I'm better than my clients as people. I'm saying I'm hyper aware of how they're vulnerable and what I'm versed in. They need that same awareness, or it's like a dog just being happy you're home. It may have evolved to respond to us in a unique and meaningful way, but it doesn't love you for your mind and the house you've built for it.

I think we know we carry ourselves like so many pets. We're creepily happy to regard ours as children. We wag our thumbs with empty "enthusiasm" as so many likes, almost never shares. Fake smiles, muted barks, and endless clawing and scratching at our internal and external perceptions of chaos. We want to be on a leash, pawing for the outside, but without the restraint bound to get lost or kidnapped or hit by a car. Our favorite toys, meme-i-fied caricatures who try to remind us we're not dogs, we routinely rip to shreds, dig holes for burying, and piss on. We need someone else to feed us and decide when it is time to be put down.

I guess there was something on my mind.

[1063] Best Friend

I'm so fucking tired. I've been up since 4 and was falling asleep on the way home. I just got another call from the Anderson Police Department. They've tried to reach out to Byron 4 times, left 2 messages, and he's not responded. Byron is married to his phone. I've watched him pick up a dozen calls an hour for as long as I've known him. He's deliberately avoiding giving his story to the police.

It's looking like I no longer will have one of my oldest friends. I've watched him spiral away from the person I thought him to be for years, and it appears to have culminated in his approach and defense for this kid. If I reflect on the series of disconcerting things regarding our dynamic, I'm probably better off. Easy to say, miserably tired but feeling as though now it is absolutely necessary to explore, I'll lay it out.

When I lived in the 3-story town home, there was a fair amount of roommate shuffling. The most notable aspect of that shuffling was, I was always the last to know, expecting to have said roommates another year, and finding out within weeks of needing to re-sign that this wasn't the case. Every single person besides Hatsam, including Byron, left me scrambling to find a replacement, clean, move things out, or otherwise navigate finding a new place to live altogether.

Byron lived there initially in the living room. It was always a cluttered and chaotic disaster. He brought wild-animal asshole bunny into the mix for a few days. I didn't say anything. He needed a place to stay, so of course, I roll with the fallout of supporting my friend. Did that living arrangement foment the resentment of whomever was living there at the time? Probably. But I was also still under this impression I actually had friends who cared to support each other.

That eventually ended in a last-minute messy move out where I was left functionally homeless. I was doing drug studies, pivoted the cash, and managed to get a broke-ass moving van towed to the place and eventually towed to the land. It was early in the stages of attempting to transition to the land. I didn't have power, water, or anything remotely set up as a "living" quarter as the garage served mostly as a storage space. I didn't have it paid off. I didn't even have a coherent walkable path from the garage to the road, so any trip was bound to catch a dozen ticks and scratches from weeds.

I resolved myself to trying to make the best of it. I wanted to get used to the drive. I wanted to get a feel for the space. You do have to adjust to sleeping in a shed when all you've known is houses and apartments. I start working for Clustertruck, several other delivery companies, and other odd jobs like Kroger. I'm trying to avoid the exorbitant interest payments on the shed, so I'm working non-stop. I'm sleeping in my car in the Clustertruck parking lot so I can be guaranteed to sign on and stay on all day.

This goes on for a few weeks. It starts getting colder. Byron says he can't have his best friend sleeping in his car, and says I can stay with him and Rob. I end up sleeping on the couch and living there before starting working for Lifeline doing visit supervision. A few months later he persuades me to start working for DCS. Things aren't ideal, but they seem stable enough. I tried to keep the thought at bay that the only reason I was on his couch in the first place is him and Colin keeping me in the dark and fucking me, and I'm trying to be appreciative that I have a better paying job that's proving interesting and easier to adjust to than I imagined.

When I was making plans to leave the apartment, Byron put together a plan that, to this day, I still don't understand what went so egregiously wrong with it, but I knew I was leaving and I wasn't signing up for nor paying for anything related to wherever they planned to move next. That caused a major days-long piece of drama that got resolved when I believe it sunk in that I was getting out. I paid both Byron and Trent who had moved in by then all of the back rent for my time on the couch.

Me on the couch until moving was also the period Byron was doing is political stuff. He was campaigning and holding meetings. We were walking Ike and talking about the players and party direction. When it first began, I was working 16-20 hour days doing visit supervision, making almost nothing, and wearing down my car that I was driving without air conditioning. I had nothing left at the end of the day, no free time, no money, was doing nothing for myself for fun or to relax. It was pretty fucking miserable. Transitioning to DCS meant weeks away training in Indianapolis, all the while, I'm trying to coordinate getting the house set up by people who are scamming me, destroying things, or stealing from me.

At one point after Byron's failed bid, he said something to the effect that he couldn't succeed like he planned because I wasn't embedded in it like I should have been. With what time? With what energy? That's anyone's guess, but it was an extremely curious thing to say. I, too, had a series of difficult things to do and needed help with in getting my house in order. I had to functionally beg for months to get 3 hours from him to help me carry TVs into the place. I brainstormed and talked political bullshit almost every day. I showed up to events when I could. I offered the best advice I had. I didn't have anything else I could give.

I get out to the house. I start piecing things together. I keep getting fucked in finding anyone reliable. I don't have all the tools I do now. I certainly didn't have the time to make dedicated pushes. Things progress with Allie, Covid happens. I've got someone to help me and it's someone I'm happy to help back, and a little more time and funds to do more. Is Byron offering to help? Never. His plan is to flip a house. We can both get in on it, turn a nice profit, parlay that into more. Am I brimming with excitement knowing how successful his family has been doing exactly that our entire lives? Absolutely.

Water is treaded as 2020 plays out, I throw Allie out, I burnout of DCS, and I'm completely free, with just enough money, and all the energy and ability I will ever have to just focus in on this house. What happens? I ask to do a project, like pull up the old floor. "I don't want to live in a house without a floor." The big empty living room with all the space in the world to work gets packed with shit over the next few months. I make what feels like an endless series of garbage runs in my truck. I bring my tools over to landscape. I'm told, when I've stayed late, again, expecting to work and am stuck instead sleeping on a smelly sleeping bag, "You know, I'm not looking for a roommate." When "we," I, eventually get to work on something, it's around a ton of crap moved in the way, alongside the freshly moved in kid who's still at peak terrorizing, and being met each day with some move to put things off.

We didn't know Byron's dad was suffering from something growing on his brain making things more difficult. But that aside, we wasted so much time. We made the project harder for no reason other than Byron's discomfort, and in the middle of it, Byron decides the kid is his new mission. Ultimately, I spend 10 months or so not working and making money, not finding myself getting invested in what was to be a $12,500 payout. Instead, I lose money, lost that time, and have invested in tools for future house flipping that, while useful, are just more credit card debt when you're not making the money back.

Dozens of things then become part of the blame. His dad's health, a series of miscommunications and poorly set expectations, the kid, the market shifting, his political ally falling through and not buying the property. Pick your favorite or a healthy mix of all of it. I spent 4 days over Christmas single-handedly tearing down, cleaning, painting, and flooring the kitchen. Why? It needed to be done, I figured what's one Christmas away from family members that only make me think of getting fucked over with my grandma's house?

I'm currently the asshole who threw away a holiday, or at least the good food that would have come with it, to completely finish a kitchen, in a house that, once it was sold, made his parents and him even, and cost me money. I'm supposed to just shake it off.

Not too long later, Byron's uncle dies. He's supposed to get a good chunk of change, free and clear. The kind of money that let's you buy a car you can't really afford to maintain, pay off all your debts, and be comfortable for quite some time. I ask if he'll help me pay off my credit card. The credit card with a balance consisting mostly of less than I expected to make off the house sale and things bought in service to it. He declines. Later, it's discovered his other uncle finds a way to undermine his right to the money. Had he agreed, it'd be that much less he'd have owed back because it would have been spent. I, free of interest and with lessened resentment for getting fucked, would have paid him back in approximately 3 months.

He, since the night his kid pulled a gun on me, still owes me $350, 4 months later. You see, because I've also lent him several hundred dollars at at time that have stayed out indefinitely several times in the past. I run everything on credit cards. I use my entire paycheck to pay them down, accrue points, and avoid interest. When I take from my cash reserves to lend to him, it's costing me interest. I can ask or politely remind a dozen times. No installments. No, "I'll get it back next month." I have to functionally beg for my money back and create a detailed explanation of what it's costing me in real dollars if not psychologically.

Why is it such a pain in the ass? Aren't I going into debt for shows and toys? He'll ask me for money so he and the kid can non-stop smoke. He'll ask me for money for gas in his vehicles that the kid drives around and contributes nothing towards. The kid will show up with new clothes, a PS5, and other shit like the gun he was holding, but they need to borrow money from me? Then the smoke gets habitually blown in my face, in my car with a thousand empty "sorry" sentiments that aren't. The designer dog they bought was $700.

I'm now here, 3 months later, after the June 5th gun-pulling-kicked-out-of-the-car incident, and I'm still trying to get Byron or the kid to testify to their behavior to the police, or, do as they're continuing to prove to do. Ignore, downplay, and leave me with a "he said she said" scenario that can't on its face draw charges.

Like most things that catastrophically fail, it's not ever enough in any given moment. Things build and degrade slow enough that when you do a retrospective, it snaps into focus all along. I've never been less than vocal about each step of my dissatisfaction or feeling taken advantage of or getting burned. This is the last straw in almost a poetic way. If he'd prefer the life coddling and protecting and enabling the kid who would threaten, not only his life with the insane driving, but his "best friend's," lie to or ignore the police about it, ignore every time I insisted one of us drive instead and carry on like a perfect psychopath that we've openly discussed either of our capacity to be, more power to him. I hope he continues to get all he deserves from the way he treats his broken white boys.

I wish I really felt anything about it. There's no more consistent truth than every remotely stable relationship in my life is actually destined for some kind of ridiculous "totally could have seen this coming" scenario when you add up all the worst parts. My currently most stable friendships, while nowhere near resembling this level of chaos, could be described in their own damming and "fate-ridden" language. Ultimately, this is going to cost me more in tow trucks and rental cars, but I've spent enough of my earnest belief and energy. Everything gets to die.

[1062] Anxious

It's in precise moments like these that I reach "peak anxiety." On a scale of 1 - 10 on what people have described as their levels of anxiety, what I've been personally witness to, and what I've felt over a lifetime, it's a 2. It will subside throughout the day and as my mind wanders. I'm not forgetting to breathe, unclench my jaw, or stretch. The only real reason I'm calling it anxiety is because I don't know if there's a better word, and it has consequences when it arrives.

I get "stuck." My stomach feels butterfly-y. I get one thought after another of the different things calling for my attention that all "feel" just a step or two removed from what I think I can address. This morning it was notes, practicing my new electronic drums, addressing a flat tire I noticed on my truck (that I haven't driven in a couple weeks making it all the more frustrating), addressing my out headlight on the Scion, the hopeless thoughts about running $5 groups when in my heart of hearts I know in spite of endless positive feedback, people want their fix, not to actually fix things, so without a provider on board or threat of prison I doubt we attract what we need, and then I have a few more toys and game systems around I haven't unpacked or set up yet.

Instantly, each catastrophizing/paralyzing thought washes over in a round, and the feedback is "can't" or "not now" or "exhausting" or "frustrating" or "expensive" or "time intensive" or "you could eat instead" or some move to try and side-step from engaging the process that actually relieves the anxiety. Incidentally, I got into a chat with Pat Patterson who's debilitatingly ill at the same time. We wish each other Happy Friday every week, and forgot to yesterday. He's knocked out on drugs, I just forgot. He couldn't move like I can if he wanted to. I took a second to let that sink in, and found myself beginning to address notes, which are now done.

I'm not unduly "entitled" in discussing my 2-level anxiety or paralysis. I'm not willing to downplay how it manifests and plays out in my head and the impact it has on my behavior. I don't need medication for it. I'm not coping with it by compulsively eating or spending, even if that can be sometimes hard to distinguish no matter how long I wait to buy something or resolve myself to keep working to keep debt within 6 months of paying off. The paragraph above this one is the work I'm attempting to get my clients to get into when they're stuck. When they're sad, angry, hopeless, exhausted, or triggered emotionally in any way, you acknowledge the feelings, identify the thoughts, describe your behavior, and look for a very small and specific thing you can do to redirect your energy pattern. I got into a small discussion that prompted reflection, this time. I normally just start writing until I feel I can get up, another kind of discussion, but there's rarely anyone there to talk to.

Getting the notes done makes me want to take the tire off the truck. I have a solid amount of time before I need to head back to Indianapolis for my final show of the weekend, and there's nothing stopping me from taking little bites out of a few more chore things today. The weather is nice. I'm awake and healthy. It is simply the case that, even if we're given all the time, tools, and ability there is, we will still be struck by the irrational ambivalent and conditional forces of being a conscious animal. I can do something about that any moment I choose to. You can too.

[1061] Superstar

I feel like I'm not sure how "anything" works. The ways in which my life semi-does all boil down to being alone, spending money, or having a conversation almost entirely by myself. This line makes sense to me. So did the ones before it. I can follow the sense they made onto more thoughts and sentences I hope describe an antagonizing feeling. I don't, precisely, know what I feel. I just know it's "off." I know the handful of thoughts about specific individuals or scenarios sounds "angry" or "shitty" or "judgmental" in my head. I'm frustrated, in a sense, with what I perceive to be so many people castrating themselves and acting like they don't have a choice.

I had one gentleman substitute his opioid addiction for a gambling one. The moment you reach the point in the discussion about what he can do, literally that second, delete the apps, he's arguing that he's done that before and just downloaded them again in the past. You know how you lift a weight once and then you can enter the body building competition?

I have one lady who is emerging as the queen of thinking herself in circles and refusing to follow any conclusion through, even after she notices a change in how she feels when she half-ass does so. Each week a version of the same conversation that's not, in reality, a conversation at all. It's a merry-go-round.

I have my "healthiest" people get their boundaries or ideals tested in the lightest of ways, and newer, more nuanced, but still addictive coping mechanisms come in to pile layers of what feels like needless complexity on enough problems already. And often enough, that complexity manifesting as a new man in their life. That is, when it's not an old man professing to be a new man.

I have friends, literal counselors, who get themselves on the verge of heart attacks and abject depressive chaos, endlessly doubling down on the exact wrong behaviors they're literally supposed to be capable of counseling others away from.

I have a lingering absurd scenario I'm growing more desperately desirous of bringing some resolution that seems to threaten my last bastion of what I thought could be the basis of at least one stable friendship in my life.

It makes the idea of "helping" or "trying" feel so shallow if not altogether hallow if it doesn't speak primarily to how you wish to help and try in service to yourself. Perhaps I'm just "lucky" I've done the work in that regard.

Another week, and especially now that I'm leaving some of these groups, the adulation is pouring in. How? How am I helping? I'm making you think? I'm calling you on your shit? I'm friendly and non-judgmental enough to keep you talking? I want to believe I'm helping, but in a major way, the problem isn't something I can fix. Life fucking sucks. It's a miserable place with death around every corner and most everyone and everything gives no fucks about you. You're prey to those in power. You're on the wrong end of the bell curve. You're sick, you're broke, and you're a blip on the ambivalent ass of existence. No shit you're an addict, what else could you possibly be? Surely a great many things, but addict first, right?

Even with "things" going "mostly" right or appreciably along a sense of stability, they're still shit. There's still plenty of suffering and absurdity and "stupid people" to be had. Oh, how my clients this week wished to complain about the stupid people! And then they get frustrated and want to smoke, or take it out on their kids, or flirt with their favorite path to self-destruction.

We need to wise up. I think the wisdom is bred from literal work on specific things we claim to believe. Our language is dog shit. It gives us glancing blows without landing the emotional umph that prompts behavior change. We're not working to talk better. We're not pairing our words with anything meaningfully manifested. We're not working to create a place that reflects effort, growth, and sanity. We're fucking around with memes. We're silent. We're complaining into the abyss on an ironic ride to hell.

I get so discouraged when I think about what it is I do to try and remain okay, and how long it took, and how many aspects still go miserably wrong all the time, and I'm supposed to translate that into digestible chunks for people maybe less equipped? It's not about being intelligent. It's that you have to functionally turn your lived experience into something people can have faith in. Then you have to, in turn, have faith it'll translate and stick? That's fucking gross. I'm not operating on faith. I'm doing fucking work. I'm trying to be accountable by literally counting words and time and money spent to achieve things. You have to reduce all the work you're doing into sentiments that can land on ears that don't speak your language. You're talking about exercising muscles they don't realize they have and which tremble against the wind.

 
With our infinite capacity to reimagine and interpret, what am I even saying to people? Sometimes they'll start a sentence with, "Like you said…" and proceed to say none of anything I've ever said, but damn are they enthusiastic about what it meant to them! What on Earth am I supposed to make of that? What could they possibly be hearing if they're willing, enthusiastically so, to continue "coping" in the easiest and most familiar ways after YEARS of being shown, and testifying to how they've been shown, how it's harmful, unproductive, and not in line with their values? It's ways that keep them sad, unmotivated, defensive, and yet proud to…play along?

"We're all addicted to something."

No. This is one of a thousand pithy sayings used as an excuse to feel better about what you're addicted to. The lack of control, therefore responsibility, is the point, not the deep desire to repeat something. I'm not addicted to writing, or eating, or picking scabs. I'm not addicted to TV or my go-it-alone "fuck you" attitude, or any food I thoroughly enjoy. Pretty much every single time I find myself getting lost or getting tempted to absolve myself of an awareness of my complicity or responsibility, it pops up here, at least to the extent anyone can pull themselves back.

Our cultural psychosis isn't an addiction. It's a mental health crisis to be sure. There's an infinite array of negative self-destructive feedback cycles we dip in and out of. But we're in severe denial about how many times we're capable of doing or saying "more" or something "better." I don't allow you to be held-harmless like you're at the peak violent throes of an addiction. You know damn well what's your fault, what's in your control, and what you're attempting to excuse and distance yourself from. You're not calculating a brilliant strategic approach, you're a pussy and a liar and you refuse to allow yourself to hate that about you as viscerally as it needs to be felt in order to change.

I'm no more willing to invite the vast majority of fights offered to me than I am willing to get sucked into the black hole at the center of anyone's individual universe. That doesn't stop me from recognizing my fight, my playing field, or my goals. Here's another 1,244 reps.

[1060] Copying Mechanism

If I had to bet, I would put money on the vast majority of people falling into a camp described as, "I can't trust myself." It doesn't mean they haven't opted for a form of living that looks functional, feels stable-ish, or would pass as "adult" to a random onlooker. It doesn't mean they are racked with medical-grade doubts about every little thing they may choose to do. It doesn't mean that any given moment may be an opportunity to "lose it" or "break down," as the basic throughline or coherence one needs to exist gets erased.

It does mean most people aren't inviting the counter narrative into their personal story of experience. Only the morbid, or "mean," or socially disingenuous and disabled do things like that. You're not even going to let your subconscious whisper "divorce" on your wedding day. Your baby isn't going die before you. Every statistically likely consequence of your eating and driving habits aren't going to kill you like you're really part of that majority.

The horror. The horror. When we're introduced to this horror in the infinitely creative ways from early drug use, abuse, medical trauma, general neglect, or by virtue of our miserably encoded genes, we cope or die. What we've discovered as we iterate on the DSM is that pretty much everyone is getting their ass kicked in measurable and consistent ways. It's from things we can more or less approach methodically, therapeutically, and with an eye towards consistent accountability. Can approach. We don't really, but the option is there.

I have the precise opposite problem of the vast majority of people. I trust the fuck out of myself. I trust I can engage in unspeakable terror. I trust I can accomplish things people routinely regard as "dreams" or "exhausting" with a persistent "matter of fact" attitude and growing mountain of evidence. The shocks to myself are derived from compounded ignorances or unlucky and ill-timed grievances stacking too close together. Maybe I wake up sore with a headache, step in cat shit on the way to the bathroom, go to flush and water's not flowing, try to get it working and break a nob. My phone goes off with the dumbest of dumb work emails dragging a corpse of a conversation from a week ago…Stuff like that.

I can certainly imagine that, but it's a lot harder to cope with it in real time, especially if it's that slow creep that doesn't tip you off that you need to stop and breathe or redirect. That isn't so much horror though. That's not imagining people close to you dying. That's not watching your body tumble down the highway after a semi-truck oopsie.

The thought doesn't actually kill you or them. But we treat it like it does. We fluidly dip into language like "karma" and the power of "intention." As if we routinely watch those who we chant "burst into flames" towards spontaneously combust. Challenging, painful, or difficult thoughts are met with reflexively coping. Whether you find a chemical to grow physically and psychologically dependent on, or another person, or a hobby, the reflex to survive gets to work.

I want to make next week in my groups about "commitment." What are you committed to? How? Why? I have a good number, about a quarter, of my people with terrible attendance. You can chalk some of that up to "life" and kids, but the vast majority is people who, instead of being honest with themselves about what it takes to be of sober mind, still prefer to defer to their feelings. They wish to employ the usual methods, the familiar, the rehearsed, ways of feeling better.

You see, maybe they're "too tired" today, so they'll make up for it at a later group. "With everything gong on," it just slipped their mind. Maybe they have a particular grievance with me they're less than bold or honest in relaying. Either way, the story of their sobriety or sober thinking needs to conform to the coping patterns already in play. They're still going to get their medication. They don't even really connect with those people in group anyway. What's the big deal?

I've been doing this job for 1 year and 3 months now. I've never missed a day that wasn't allotted to me. I've never missed a group that wasn't an obligation I planned for that coincided with extra work on my plate outside of work hours. Incidentally, I'm not "committed" to Groups. I'm looking for any route away from it that I can find. Importantly, I'm committed to myself. My needs, my desires, and my narrative is what is under threat through my obligation to Groups. (Or, capitalism when you want to get large and abstract.)

What is it, do you think, that separates me who can make it to 12-18 groups every week for 15 months and the person who can't make it to 1 every week for a month? Bear in mind, these are virtual groups. You don't need a car. You could be on any wifi. You can use anyone's phone, computer, or tablet. We offer a program that gets you a free phone.

Do you think I enjoy every single person and every single group every time? Do you think I'm wide awake and motivated every day? Do you think I don't have a dozen other things on my mind or things I'd like to accomplish? Why, it's a serious question, am I able to pull off this obligation in a way that garners consistent positive feedback from both client and leadership alike, but you might not ever meet me sometimes your attendance is so bad and you've hopped from make-up to make-up until I discharge you?

I'm there for me, not you. I'm there for money. I'm there because the schedule allows me to maintain my behavior towards attending shows, getting work done around my house, and facilitates me meeting and building rapport with what I hope is a huge number of clients I eventually steal. My sober mind is fundamentally rooted in a picture of what I need to maintain what I have, grow, challenge, indulge, and hopefully continue to honestly share. You not showing up isn't saying anything about me, it's the attitude you have to yourself. It's why you don't trust yourself. You can't even be trusted to run a program for an hour from your phone and keep it together long enough to hear ideas that are different from the ones you already have about yourself.

That defensive posture kicks in. You'd rather just not hear it at all, because to you, it's not an open exchange of new ideas. It's a damning indictment. It's an unfair judgment. It's an attack. It's a challenge when you're already too busy and too exhausted and never asked for it. It's work, and you're busy justifying working yourself to death at whatever it is you're already doing. Where do I get off telling you you shouldn't work 14 days in a row? Don't I understand you have bills and a family!? How dare you say I should put distance between me and my abusive mother! I love her!

The stories we tell ourselves matter immensely. I suspect it's the heart of why no matter what someone has accomplished or people they touch they still get suicidal. David Draiman, with his incredibly sad eyes, explained he almost killed himself in February were it not for his son and the Disturbed fans. I don't know all that he can or can't imagine about his life and place he holds in others', but I do know that level of sadness and isolation is available to us all. We drink from that poisoned well without acknowledging it as a series of suicidal acts.

Dipping in and out of this book on masochism (Thanks Brandy) has detailed for me what I've spoken to in the past, but this has elaborated it further. There's sheer joy and positive emotion we can generate from pain and self-destruction. I watched a video of suicide bombers picking which hand had a rock in it so they could get the honor of blowing themselves up. The, donkey-looking dude, was beaming. He was getting hugs and cheers from his brothers. He is (was) utterly convinced of where he is going, the righteousness of his action, and how to solve his problem with whomever the bomb was slated for.

Suicide is a commitment to a narrative about how you feel. There is no "disease" that pulls triggers. There is no infection that makes you crave too many pills. There is no pathogen that drags razors down your wrist, ties knots, or turns exhaust fumes into your favorite scented candle. You should be very careful about how and whether you subscribe to any narrative. You need to be actively participating in writing one. You should be deeply suspicious of the ones that make your sense of personal responsibility abstract. You know, like how "sin" is bad, and in the mind of the faithful, at least one on my caseload, that means equal parts butt-fucking children or being gay. Jesus doesn't obligate you to think critically or make distinctions.

If your sense of commitment looks like "extra" energy to get things done that matter to you, I can vibe with you. If your commitment makes you kinder and more patient, it makes a certain sense to me. If your commitment isn't pie-in-the-sky about what you can do or how you may feel, then I may start to trust you're grounded and genuine. If your commitment is time-bound, specific, open to being criticized, and accountable, then maybe we can agree it's real and worthwhile.

Conversely, if your commitment is exhausting your capacity for truth, we might say you've been committed to the mental asylum of your situation. If your commitment has you offering dozens of excuses and attempts to make it sound better than it is, you're just at its mercy, of which I promise you it has none. If your commitment prompts you to be reflexively arguing for why you're continuing to persist, a good part of you knows you shouldn't stay, but the broader narrative you've concocted gives you ample, if not infinite, opportunities to keep the justification game running.

My narrative is constantly evolving. I want it to. I need it to. I've had incredibly small-minded ideas about what should constitute my commitments and why. I have incredibly damming suggestions regarding what the narrative of my behavior or perspective should mean about me. At bottom, because I show myself the ongoing story and work to develop an individual window and nurtured nature, I can continue to land on points I trust. Sorry not sorry, it's not all of you, my hoards of fans, nor would it ever be my theoretical children. If and when you all die, including my phantom offspring, what's left? If and when you all leave me or stop talking to me or stop giving any remote fuck about spending time together or sharing anything (Oh shit, 99% of everyone I've ever thought to call friend?) where do you think I'm gonna go? Hang out with Chester?

I'm committed to whomever I may be right now. What I do or don't know gets to show up here. I'm committing my time to this exploration. I'm entertaining the horror of being ignored and abandoned. I'm letting the depth of the isolation give me pause to find how to capture the void. I've murdered my non-existent children. I've parsed and separated what I'm doing for money or as a series of obligations, from what I feel needs said and done.

 
Every single concert I go to almost everyone is there with their partner, family member, friend, or half a dozen other people. I'm there for the music. After watching and overhearing, now 93 shows this year, I think they're after a story about what fun or healthy people do. I think they need eyes or someone's hand to hold or someone to be in a picture with. I don't trust that it has anything to do with whatever individual they're with. I think there's a reason the most populated non-festival shows I've gone to this year are "themed" drug use (Dead & Company) and depression/suicide (Disturbed).

It's a bother to know "too much" regarding yourself. It doesn't always make a "reason" and an "excuse" or "self-justification" perfectly clear. But this is why you work to keep talking. This is why you look for people who trust themselves enough to offer you fair observations of yourself. Because we're still all made of the same shit and plugged into the same environment. Getting some clarity on that I'm working to make it only cost $5 instead of $60 or $110.

If I'm not suicidal and I feel like one of the loneliest people on the planet in a way I'm tempted to call distinct, but wise enough to know is cliché, how? If I'm angrier than anyone you've ever met and keep nearly all of my conversations clam and civil, what's going on? If I think life is mysterious, but mostly a goddamn ridiculous joke, game, and you're perfectly reasonable to kill yourself in dozens of tiny joy-inducing ways a day, why do I opt for yard goals, business goals, show goals, and wish to refocus my attention on the 1% yet to flee?

I have a really good ongoing story. I'm not suffering that much in any accumulation of pointy parts of my day and I allow myself to slow down and taste the subtleties in my expensive coffee. I'm listening to the music, not turned towards the crowd drunkenly trying to get the attention of my party or passers-by. I'm open to hearing something new from a band I'm not that familiar with instead of screaming my dogma and treating what they're attempting to communicate as so much background noise. If I were a character in something I was reading, I'd be curious what I was going to say or do next. I'm committed to the character development. Are you?