[1074] None Of Your Business

For as much as I feel like I'm writing a lot lately, I'm still not hitting it.

Let me tell you about a weird feeling I get. I started using this app, Habits. It, very simply, let's you create a habit you wish to practice each day, record how or whether you did it, and that's it. I've set it up to track doing 5 squats, reading 1 chapter, 1 article, and practicing music for 30 minutes a day. I have not been able to pull off those 4 things each day. More to the point, I haven't because of this sinking panicking feeling that just hit me, and does at different points in the day when I'm asked by the app if I've done one of the things.

Why would I have a flash of panic? Why would my stomach drop at the prospect of building on and forming new or better habits? Why do I feel as though I've sacrificed a sense of autonomy or ownership by…capitulating…instead of feeling empowered and in control by working my professed goals? I think there's something at the root of all misery and hell in the world related to the answers to these questions.

I don't think, deep down, we want a choice. I think we're instinctually anti-choice beings. I think that's why we attribute a certain dignity to notions of "conservatism" that practically and persistently just destroy or seek to control in the face of someone else's freedom. I think religious myths are so powerful because you are, by default, at the mercy or lack thereof in a cosmic game. When you do wrong, seek forgiveness. After all, it's sin's fault, not yours.

Rich or poor, you can subscribe to an environmental and cultural narrative that absolves you. You're the victim or the oppressed, demonize the other, justify your course, full stop every day all day. There's no obligation to really feel whatever someone else might be going through. You're not expected to learn or cross pollinate with ideas that challenge you. Even the pseudo-fight for the cultural landscape serves the same purpose for dipshit kids who think dirty looks or naughty words are "violence." You don't have to use words right when you're following the script.

I listened, very painfully, to Bill Maher talk with Candace Owens. I hate her. She's as dumb as a Dinesh D'Souza, Ann Coulter (who Bill also likes), or pick your favorite shit-smearing moron in any realm that draws press, like our newest House speaker. He challenged her to say, quite simply, that the moon landing was real. After some back and forth and chiding and pish-poshing, at bottom she said, "That doesn't even interest me." She didn't say it was real. She said he was asking her about something she's not concerned with, so it's functionally unfair or just rude to ask her for a head nod to what one might consider old-world "common sense."

She's not real, and people like Bill aren't wise to how someone like a Candance Owens thrives and navigates the world. It's not through deep intellectual analysis and differing opinion. It's through cultivating complicated-sounding bubbles of self-serving ignorance. You dress it up by being polite to people who tolerate you and then if you carry on long enough you start to get a veneer of legitimacy. Put out 10,000 podcasts, it doesn't really matter what each one says. There's 10,000 of them, so that counts for something, right? There must be a deep point to a personal truth in there somewhere?

I don't just want to practice, or read, or do a paltry amount of exercise. I want to live as though I have a real sense of freedom to engage in fun activities not at the end of a desperation gun. I think about school. School was fucking annoying. There are a million fun things to learn and do in school that don't feel fun or like you're learning shit. Why? Your teenage brain doesn't turn on until noon. Your teacher is an asshole. You're surrounded by other idiot kids. It's presented at a pace and in a way that may or may not jive with how you best learn. The background condition is a set of societal expectations that have nothing to do with how fun or cool science might be, or useful math might be, or how you could have better gotten into a gym routine before your bloodwork read "pre-diabetes."

My mind shoots reflexively through all of this. I don't necessarily have particularly bad habits. I don't tend to make excuses verses push myself to do the harder things. But I feel desperate. I feel like I'm mocking myself and the life I'm desiring. It also feels like I'm ceding something regarding my autonomy. I really want to just sit here, watch my shows, and go to bed. I want it more, in this moment, than to practice rudiments on the drums or Sum 41 songs on my guitar. I want it more because of that hopelessness and exhaustion that kicks in, because the more I talk about it, the more I want to practice. The more I unpack the feeling, the real sense of identity, motivation, and satisfaction starts to creep in. There's no dread or hesitation, but I have to dig.

I can't help but to tie this to thinking about addiction. You're not addicted to the drug. You're just not. I know your body has sometimes life-threatening physical attachments to it, particularly with alcohol, but you, as a person, as an individual, have an instinctive conservative reflexive narrative that keeps you locked on what is familiar, comfortable, and naively self-affirming. It's only validating that single sliver of your desires or potential. The sliver that wants to maintain a sense of control. So you feel "no" regarding any change, not just the kind that might make you better or push you towards a professed desire.

I've been thinking a lot about how to approach the next few weeks. The shows are winding down. I don't have a job. I still need to make about $12K. I have business goals and expenses looming. The weather is probably going to get shittier. I can feel a certain kind of lifestyle speaking louder to me. It's working considerably less. It's working from different areas of the country or world. It's making something more akin to the bare minimum than it is stressing on how to maximize profit. In the rush of all I feel I need to do, I'm consciously trying to be slow and deliberate so I don't desperately say yes to any new obligation that seems like it will satiate the familiar momentary panic.

I need to get out of social work completely, I know this. I need to stop juggling hundreds of pieces of disparate drama and repeating myself with regard to better practices. It doesn't matter if I'm good at it. I, personally, have nothing to back up how good I am other than the "fluffy" comments I get from people. I have had ZERO come to me after groups beyond a couple texts that have not been followed up. I knew that would happen. People don't want to get "better," they just want to find a new "familiar" or sense of "safety" with whatever it is they're presented with. The Suboxone or the routine and dance of "harm-reduction" does the heavy lifting. I plugged into the Groups routine and toyed with people's levels of comfortable. They didn't plug into me seeking the discomfort of what it takes to change and own and account for the things I'm attempting to.

You hear people profess to "thrive in chaos." That's shorthand for, "I've figured out who and how to exploit in my circumstances to feel stable again." Someone, or several someones, perhaps needy co-dependents, "love" to "help" and account for your chaos. Mutually assured stagnation, self-justification, and personally riotous [hear: "righteous"] truth.

So often my thoughts turn towards how I'm getting fucked, or how something could be a little bit better, or what it would take to convince a "reasonable" person to shut the fuck up during a movie or concert. It's a trap. We're not on the same planet. We don't have the same words. My priorities or goals or questions or jokes do not make sense in the context of the vast majority of people's worlds. They have their personal newsfeed now. They have their information silo. They have the culture of whatever excruciatingly small pocket of their world to draw from. Superficially, you can entertain them or sell them things, but they aren't there. Whatever you're practicing or attempting to show off or relate to can't be done in return. It's just not there.

I think about how the dynamic between me and Byron broke down. I used to be able to rely on what he said. Then, he started drifting into how "normal" people talk. "Hey! I've got this opportunity!" In reality, he's got this liability he wishes to foist the responsibility of onto everyone but himself. He doesn't want to man the food kitchen? Hire Nick under the guise of creating an on-site services coordinator. "You're my best friend, I'm looking out for you." He adopted the language of "best friend" to obscure the series of selfish acts and slights. Every single thing or connection or chance for growth or betterment presented by Byron turned into something that cost me money, a lot of time, or energy spent spinning my wheels and planning or learning for nothing. I occupied this "chess piece" thing in his head that he could wind up and move around, but never be viewed as a king in his own right with his own board. So goes everyone that heedlessly takes advantage and makes excuses and loses sight.

Hussain bemoans all of the "promises" he gets when he applies for a job, and every single one falls through. His clients blow the same bullshit smoke up his ass that mine do, and when he goes to follow up, gets frustrated when they don't answer or follow through. It's the ubiquity of the human condition. I don't know what percentage of "things I say" you'd need to match to "things I do" for it to be at a level that feels individually responsible or trustworthy, but my gut tells me most people are at less than 10%. Why? There's no expectation to be consistent. Your job is a psychological place-filler for that much less personal responsibility. You just have to follow orders. Be they to pollute, take-advantage, lie, stay silent, or kill. You play a certain role in your family. You structured the expectations of yourself around various perceived authorities or professed wisdom.

What are you to do, as an individual with a claim of awareness or meager attempt at diagnosing layers of our innate condition and ongoing conditioning? What am I supposed to listen to when it's not your god, your thought leaders, your pop culture icons, your politicians, educators, or pretty much anyone in too much authority acting in their capacity as an expert at maintaining their power and their narrative relative to all others? I certainly can't always trust myself. Myself wants to panic-pause me away from drum practice.

I have to listen to the flourishes and fleeting moments where someone seems to sound like me and explore why. I have to listen to the violent grading of gears operating against each other when your actions betray your words as they pertain to our friendship, your perception of my work, or professions of our allegedly shared values. I have to listen to the random lines I might hear from a TV show, song, performer, or overheard-at-lunch that give me pause and make for some bizarre inspired connection or insight. If I can't get that to congeal into practicing the goddamn drums, reading the book, or making the next miserable phone call to find an angle on the business I want to start, you shouldn't trust me. You have to be able to recognize and find the willingness to do the same work, or you'll never see mine.

I'm skeptical without getting conspiratorial. I try to use reason without pretending it has every answer to every question. I prefer to say "I don't know" instead of fill in the blank with magic answers. I demonstrate respect, often, through silence. I'm direct, and rude if necessary. I'm willing to entertain counter-narratives to my worst ideas about you if we spend too much time together and you talk too much. I'm open to being wrong, but I don't meet people willing to speak the language of humility and doubt. They'll perform it, but they don't work and feel it. I'm not wrong because you say so, or feel so, or are "just not interested in that" like a Candice Owens struggling to acknowledge the moon landing. I'm wrong when you can state my position, develop your own, and contextualize us both.

If I'm tempted to make sweeping declarations about "culture" or "humanity" it's after taking in the examples people set under many different and seemingly disparate conditions. Every single job I've worked has betrayed it's "mission statement." Almost every single "friend" I've had has needed to be reduced to superficial acquaintance or straight hateful bad influence. I watch people constantly torture themselves with their "dream self" and no, literally none, means of achieving it. Whether they're comfortable with the familiarity of their misery or luxury, I think it's the same mechanism. The Offspring line, "That's okay because I like the abuse," just came to mind. That song goes on to celebrate eventually getting to take advantage of the girl who was doing it first. Low self-esteem serving it's function on both ends.

I have so little power and am constantly getting taken advantage of. I get fucked financially. I get fucked professionally. I feel like I've pissed off the exact wrong people in the past and that's found a way to follow me for years. I can step into environments or conversations perfectly neutral and in good spirits, and in 2 minutes find myself getting yelled at over someone's perspective of my behavior or commentary. It will absolutely never matter who or what is "right" in those scenarios, just that I triggered someone to emote and my unwillingness to reflexively capitulate and share their pain will register as me doubling-down. Again, I'm the other, the monster in their narrative, the thing they can be justified in feeling anything about.

Now say you're a normal person who hasn't articulated all this out so far. You have the same sense about you. "The world" is out to get you. You're incensed and averse to their "judging." How do you cope? You actually double-down. You actually get more selfish. You look to control and constrain your perspective in a desperate race to the bottom. I am and do get routinely taken advantage of, so do you. How bad do you need to make yourself feel about that to justify maybe controlling your partner or child or lashing out at your parent or friend? I've gotten accused of heinous shit and looked at like I'm masterminding manipulative games. How about you? What assumptions do people build into your character that fuels the ways you rebel or bite back? Literally every word, body movement, or detail of your misery-inducing environment becomes a piece of the personal apologetics handbook if you want it to.

I'm going to continue to fumble forward and fuck up every possible angle there is to fuck up. I'm going to look over the sea of cars and lights and millions of narratives I can imagine from my plane seat and try to continue to identify the ones that don't get us all killed or leading hateful and spiteful lives regardless of how "real" their capacity to stoke our sense of dignity or pride in their expression. There's literally an infinite amount of ways to organize these words, let alone the hundreds of thousands that have came before just from me. Are you reading and hearing what you already know? Is that why you skipped this one?

[1073] Unabashed

I have so much work to do. I want to use this time to try to get a handle on it all and maybe weave in reflections on my time in Vegas.

I might have found a Suboxone provider. This means I’ve talked for 40 minutes with a doctor who seems to already have several hands on several pots and established harm-reduction arms, and he’ll let us snuggle up under one. This means I need to get my website updated to refer directly to his intake process and ensure I know what to incorporate so people smoothly still do their counseling with us. I’ll need to update/print/spread around flyers. I need to perhaps plan to get updated technology and a spot to host for when clients need to remotely check in with the provider.

I need to attend a meeting Friday to discuss just how much Atlantis fucked us and either did not correctly submit or tell us at all how we weren’t getting empanelled. I also need to figure out how to cost-effectively sue that company.

It sounds like less writing it down. I am very sore and otherwise ready to get home, so maybe it’s just registering as a lot when I’m stuck in Vegas and still a plane ride and couple hours drive away from home.
Vegas has a lot to do. Like, a lot a lot. There’s really no reason to look for other shit until you’ve dug into and planned a week or more’s worth of activities in Vegas. Next time I come back, I’ll make sure to have a lot more money, stay somewhere that doesn’t require taking the bus or ride-sharing, and better plan food/drink locations. I spent so much just to eat and it felt so unnecessary for decent, but not mind-blowing, meals.

Vegas is dirty. I’ll never, I mean never, understand how billions can be concentrated in such a small space, but there’s little intention to send any of it to pretty up the streets or surrounding neighborhoods. Seattle was like a garbage monster, Vegas is its cousin. Feels like there’s enough distinction, but certainly the same family.

People suck everywhere. Maybe it’s more drunk people suck everywhere. It’s the land of excess and waste. They don’t care how much you paid to check out The Sphere, they’re going to talk and giggle and be drunk cunts no matter the amount of shushing or dirty looks. The guy basketball-shooting his trash to the floor at the bus stop, while standing next to an empty trash can, is going to be a palpable metaphor for what I take to be the underlying psychology of the area. The right thing for you to do is available to, but you’ll make an extra effort to not.

I genuinely never felt a real pull to gamble. It just feels like such a convoluted way to burn money for nothing. I don’t get a dopamine rush. The lights and colors mean nothing to me. I’m not feeling competitive. Just dumb.

There’s not enough ways to navigate the city that are efficient and don’t require walking. I’ve been in some form of pain in an ongoing way for about 4 days and have probably walked at least 30 miles as I add up what my maps have been telling me. You have to walk to get away from congested areas. You have to walk to the bus stops. You have to walk 3/4 of a mile just to leave the Sphere parking lot/building. There’s almost nowhere to sit that isn’t in front of a slot machine, perhaps an errant bench here and there, or at a restaurant.

I don’t know how many people I actually observed having “fun.” It’s like the ultimate way to occupy time at this non-stop level of “doing something,” but I don’t get the impression anyone is invested in their experience or the space. As soon as a show is over, it’s on to the next one or immediately double down on drinking. The people watching I suspect is second only to New York. All around you hear different accents and languages every few steps. For all of the noise and lights it just feels very…simple. It doesn’t even feel “busy.” It’s just nakedly whatever it is on that day. Hot, congested, filled with people at various levels of inebriation, and flagrant about what it thinks you should pay to soak it all in.

I’m ready to go home. I’m really not, in my heart of hearts, a traveler precisely because I’ve been in this moment enough to know what I do and don’t want/need regarding “experiences.” If everyone I saw in Vegas came to Indianapolis, I’d never come to Vegas. It’s not something “new” or piece of insight regarding “culture” I’m getting here. I got a mildly better working knowledge of where some things are. Cool. It’ll help me conversationally “relate” to other upper-middle-class people who’ve blown through here like they do everywhere else. Swell.

Whether I was criticizing the trash of Vegas or Malaysia, I’d still feel like I wanted to go home 3 days in, especially if I had to walk everywhere and encountered the same surprising number of whiffs of shit. We’re all, fundamentally, the same, and not that interesting or interested in each other, so we create places like Vegas to put our trash souls on parade.

[1072] Kid Gloves

I’m just over halfway through my Vegas adventure. The first 3 days were spent somewhat in the company of my brother, at his place, and just under his general him-ness. As I reflect on the explicit and hateful text I sent him as I Ubered away from his apartment, it struck me how “empty” the whole thing felt. I’ve gotten by for so long in just not having to consider him, navigate him, or give a fuck, there’s no real energy or animus there until it’s been dragged out by what my instincts and experience have already taught me.

I sent him the following:

“I apologize for even flirting with the idea that we should have tried spending time in the same space. I don't like or trust you and I know literally everything you do or offer is in bad faith or looking for leverage or you feel put upon. I never wished to rely on you for anything, and were dad not part of this equation you never would have heard from me. I won't fuck that up again. Next time, just tell me to go fuck myself. It's some bitch shit to say ‘that's north and we're going south’ lol.”

I was not “lol”-ing. I also sent him $100 for the inconvenience of having to exist around me for 3 days, detailing what I ate or drank, and any gas he burned carting my dad and me to our activities. I’ve discussed my brother a handful of times in the past, mostly after he’s been considerably more explicit in the show of his true nature. I started initially thinking he had a “piddling sincerity” that kept him more honest to our upbringing. I’m no longer entertaining that idea. He’s now working to solidify and protect his judgmental and pretentious posture. It’s the identity he thinks best hides his inner shivering child at the prospect of addressing his deeper issues.

That would be some pretty crazy and baseless speculation if I knew nothing about him. If I didn’t know the years he spent playing the battered-wife in service to our abusive mom. If I didn’t know how he reacted to the last things I wrote about him calling out his proud expression of pathological bravado. If I didn’t just live through 3 days of the fakest high-strung performance to piece together “respectable adult” verses “running screaming blind through the darkness.”

My brother is starting to remind me of my uncle George. If something is just a little off or inconvenient or not in their wheelhouse, a switch flips and “fuck it” is engaged, and everyone around them is to blame. My uncle used to snap at my grandmother about it while she was serving him food or otherwise taking care of him or the house she allowed him to live in indefinitely. My brother, say, when he can’t figure out how to use his GPS in order to pick us up after a concert, will spend an hour attempting to make it sound reasonable that we should walk 5 miles to meet him wherever he’s decided to stop and tantrum or burn out. He’s 33.

I feel like we need to say a few things about hospitality. In theory, when someone let’s you stay with them, cooks for you, let’s you drink a beer or otherwise plug into their space, they’re being hospitable. Unfortunately, for people like my brother, he’s so in his own world, you can feel every ounce of his resentment that you’re there. He’ll carry on in that extra way like “we’re all friends here” or you can “help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen,” but it’s also daring you ignore the looks, commentary, and subtext.

I feel a little bit like the tortured protagonist in a horror scenario who has like a dozen real things happen to her, but she can’t explain it, and given her own stress or situation she sounds crazier and crazier when all she wants is to be seen and believed by her loved ones. I promise you, it’s not just because I’m so full of hate or really wish for you to feel one way or another about him. I was extremely unwise in allowing myself to be around him and have walked away lesser from it.

It feels like such an own-goal. This trip has been in the works for a literal year. What happens? We get to the main event late and miss the first band. Am I able to maintain perspective and appreciate all the other bands I saw that day and the awesome time I had with my dad? Absolutely. Did we get Joshed like the Bears got Grosssmaned? Absolutely. It was preventable. I knew I wanted nothing to do with his perception of time or severe inability to prioritize or consider anything beyond himself. I was in the car anyway.

I almost feel like with my text it’s punching down. It was in retaliation for his incredibly disingenuous statement to be sure. You’re about to hop on the road for 5 hours for a mini California vacation. You just have to get there and eat. You have the extra 20 minutes to save me $25. I was clearly open to paying you for being so put out. God knows the entire fucking year we’ve had to prepare for this time together we couldn’t have planned this any better.

My Uber driver was from Nicaragua. I asked him if he got along with his siblings. He just got back from an extended vacation with one of his brothers and regaled me with all of the excellent times he’s had with his gigantic family that all travel and spend time together. He and his wife lost a child 15 years ago, and it sparked in him a desire to refute the joke that is life and dive into as many experiences as he could get with the rest of his kids and wife.

In a world that made sense, I’d still be at my brother’s right now, perhaps watching his cats, instead of him paying to have them boarded up while they’re gone. But, you know, because I’m “lesser” or “not to be trusted” or whatever boogeyman I’ve morphed into for him over the years, it’s ridiculous and laughable that the idea would even be entertained. I’m fundamentally not worthy of whatever he feels he’s created for himself with his codependent extremely high anxiety wife, “ridiculous number” paying job, and future world travel plans.

He has the picture of what he thinks everyone should want or need, but he has no perspective and he’s not real. I didn’t need the “better couple’s communication” book left out on the coffee table to start predicting the nature of their impending cracks when they can’t nerd their way through buried resentments that will build over time. I told my dad to not let Josh get away with downplaying things when he inevitably goes to him in confidence.

I don’t know what the best way to talk about that thick sticks-in-your-throat layer of things left unsaid that just carries into all of the interactions. If he asks you something, it’s because he’s already prepared to say whatever he wanted to on the topic. If, and this has gotten worse, I’m talking, he’ll just interject in a loud way whatever he wanted to say that doesn’t even acknowledge what I was talking about or was talking at all. He’s like attempting to erase me from his psyche in increasingly obvious and awkward ways.

I’ve been attempting to erase him too. I think the only way we managed to get along on the last layover in Vegas was because his wife was out of town, he literally had nothing to do, wished to drink, and I had already started drinking and was open to do more. We then proceeded to talk to other people the entire time at the bar and only had perhaps 10 minutes of fluff on the ride back to the airport. That’s about all we’re good for, and probably after this last round, even less than that.

It’s easier to believe that at least things are “kinda even” or “okay” when you’re not forced to engage with them. Everything that’s ever annoyed the fuck out of me about him or that I’ve alluded to, but hadn’t reached boiling points yet, came as a flood with each bump in the day. He’s literally still the instrument my mom engineered to torture me, and he’s completely unaware and disregarding of that fact. So much so that I can literally do and say nothing but “please” and “thank you” and he can’t hear me, or if I ask for a ride, I’m asking for a dam to break.

“You know Nicholas, I’ve been going out of my way for you this whole weekend!”

I’ll never unhear how he said that to me years ago. So much condescending vitriol like I was slime and he was deigning to carry me along. Like I asked him for anything. Like I needed a fucking thing from him. You know, as the “good son” for some empty semblance of “family” or in service to our father. This cunt. I’d bet money that the same tone and sentiment has been ringing in his head like a nagging bell the whole time I was around. Who does he think I am? He doesn’t think I’m anyone. I’m an incredibly cool, smart, and hardworking person. It’s not a secret how I learned to perceive how deep me being me can really cut someone. I can consciously be silent or polite and people like him will go out of their way to ensure I know I’m a burden and out of my place. Fucking Colorado trip comes to mind, “Nick must be miserable walking up this mountain…” yada yada. Great mind-read to set an unnecessary and incorrect tone. Thanks!

I don’t wish to get locked into some pathetic sibling squabble. I’ve been comfortable since as long as I’ve been cutting out shitty people from my life to continue doing so. I wanted to write about this today so I can digest the muck I’ve been swallowing and carry on the next few days focused on the things I planned to continue enjoying. The thing he’s severely lacking I dish to him like a sledge hammer to the head. What he could provide or trade on in more civil ways he doesn’t have the self-respect or awareness to mine. We’re on two different planets, and I look way too salty and spiteful, as though he’s not just another addict offering me an opportunity to over do it on rage-a-hol.

I feel like my family is cursed. We have intellectual assets, money, a certain degree of ambition and potential, but for the love of everything holy can’t figure out how to sit in the here and now and just fucking enjoy it. That’s my biggest sin in all of this. I’ve literally been enjoying myself nonstop for almost the entire year, and instead of just veering past the predictable unfixable problem, I stepped right in. Stupid, Nick. just like with Byron’s kid. You can’t fix these people, nor do you have a desire to. They don’t wish to get better, and you will always be the considerably bigger problem to them if they even conceive of a shared dynamic or responsibility. Cut them off harder, faster, and run as though you’re fleeing a cult.

I made myself small. I haven’t done that so aggressively before. With the Byron’s kid situation that was some overlap of many things breaking down over years. With this, I just don’t interact with Josh. I don’t visit him. I don’t call or text out of the blue. He wished me happy birthday 4 days late this last year. Like, fuck that guy. He’s a fucking asshole. I’m a fucking asshole too, but I won’t pretend to play nice and at least I’ll tell you why I hate you or that I think you’re a bitch.

[1071] You're Gonna Die, Gonna Die, Gonna Die

Oh dear.

It's not that I can't handle silence. It's not that I'm afraid of what's in my head. It's not feeling overwhelmed by loneliness. It's not anxiety for what's to come.

It's dread. It's a hopeless void that somehow infinitely recurs. It's hearing and seeing all the same things under the sun, and facing the impossibility of escape.

There's an unbridgeable void between the world of logic and the world of what we feel. When I say unbridgeable, I mean that any time one is built, it collapses moments after. You can read every contrary book, live well into your elderly years, and listen to thousands of embattled pleas to be understood, and you will die smiling and assured in your personal truth.

I got 14 minutes into this mini news documentary on Indiana passing a near-total abortion ban. I watched an old white dumb cunt representative skip on by a question about the benefits there are for the 10-year old girl who was raped. I can't help but think of the potential for escalation with regard to this country's fascism almost every day, what the ongoing wars will bring, or what ecological or economical cliff the "elite" will have us barrel towards next.

We want to die.

I don't know how to arrive at any clearer a sentiment. Of all the patterns I profess to notice, this one just keeps popping up in new and tired forms. We simply want to die.

We want to die through our work. We will do so functionally 24 hours a day. We build our entire lives around the dictates of work. We've, barely, scraped back almost laughable dignities when compared to others or our ideals. We think about work when we're not working. We anticipate the work we must do when we get off work. We dream about new and marginally better, if not at least different, work when we're not at it. We don't wish to exist. We wish to work so long and hard that we cease to exist.

We want to die through our entertainment. We want to die so bad, we don't even recognize it as entertainment. We're squawking through the whole performance. We don't see the stories they are telling because we aren't heroes or even background characters. We're watchers. It's meant to be on, streaming, endlessly, racking up views and playing ads. You're not supposed to take up your own sword like some hero of your own existence. You're not supposed to see yourself as the funny one, poised for a romantic tryst, or scheming to enact your hidden agenda. You're a 1 or a 0, selecting from interchangeable squares calculating in real time which ones to show you next.

We want to die through our politics. This almost doesn't feel worth elaborating. The cultural psychosis that is Trump worship is tantamount to a religious inquisition. We celebrate, not just ignorance, but determined and proud denial of facts, science, or the language and possibility of a shared existence. Conviction and repetition sweep us under like an ocean current. I predict hundreds of thousands will die before you get half a generation attempting to undue the damage of the last 50 years.

We want to die through our relationships. We let our abusive and dismissive family members tear through our self-conception. We let our partners control us. We let our kids run amok. We let our relatives take advantage and get demanding and we pray away the self-respect and responsibility it would take to cut them off or tell them the truth. We enable self-pitying and compulsive excuses to stay lazy, silent, and distant. We seek people who "compliment" our pathological self-destructive narratives and coddle our unhealthy coping mechanisms.

We want to die through our memes. Who needs an "original" thought? Why sit with yourself long enough to conceive of a means of describing your life or circumstances after asking and wrestling with questions that arose in you? Do questions even arise in you? The answers are in limitless supply, so why question? Some errant "thought leader" said it first, and certainly meant it exactly as you feel they must have. Just as well. Who has the time to write, or read, or embody a series of difficult contradictions when the right voices, color patterns, and approved activities can be added to the conveyor for all to notice and not be threatened by?

We want to die through our language. It's just empty. It means nothing. It's the fakest most painful series of interactions I have every day. So much nothing, about nothing, for no one. You wanna hang out sometime? Maybe if I hound you for a month. You're upset about the state of the world? Bet we didn't read the same series of articles. You wish "things" were "different" or "better" than you have now? Whether you practice the naked ironic inability to appreciate all you currently have, or you dutifully abstain from pushing yourself to budget and coalition build, every path leads to pre-verbal sensations of cyclical inured guilt.

We want to die in our celebrations. Halloween is so many people's favorite holiday, right before they slump into a 3-5 month depression remembering everyone who isn't coming to Thanksgiving or how many Christmases have been nothing but stress. We carry dreadful narratives about what one must do with and for "family" no matter the cost. We pretend not to resent all the effort we might put into the facade, and the obliviousness and disregard from the other players leaves us not quite unaware of how suicides tick up this time of year.

We want to die in our addictions. It's not so straight-forward as to suggest we wish to go down in some hazy bliss of an overdose or poisoning. We want to die by being beholden to our comfort, our pattern, our overseer. Be it a persistent avoidance of the feelings and traumas and ignorance of how we're wired, or kneeling in prayer for getting "stable" on a "harm-reduction" medication, we wish to be absolved of ourselves through the rituals and the rulers. "As long as I have my x, I'll be okay." As long as I never determine what it means to be "I," any x'll do in making and following a rule.

We want to die as watchers. The more we watch how others are or aren't, we can implicitly compare and reassure ourselves that, wherever we are, at least we're not over there. When you watch, you get to trick yourself into thinking you only exist right behind your eyes. You're not your body, your words, your works, nor anything more abstract like your potential, your intention, or your awareness. Ephemeral bursts of agency or desperate claps-back serve to embarrass and train to self-correct. Don't change, fix, or challenge. Watch the story unfold, hit your mark, and play along.

We want to die as consumers. We'll bleed the planet dry for doodads. We'll burn ourselves alive to keep things "convenient" and "cheap." We'll bemoan soaring coasts and defer to inflation before we face our own greed that would obligate us to hold others to account for theirs. There will never be enough to buy, therefore never enough produced or commodified. When the robots learn how to do it for everything physical, you'll find even more ways to divide up and price out your soul.

We'd rather die than forgive. We'd rather die than admit. We'd rather die than acknowledge words like "humility" and "wisdom" even exist. We scream and cry when concerted efforts are successful in their explicitly stated aim to kill us, and we don't try to defend ourselves let alone kill back. We die in our silence and complicity and late-to-the-party complaints as though we weren't happy to celebrate our deaths as long as they were politely dressed and laughably convoluted and incoherent. They would never! Say the incredulous bloviators. Yet, they always do.

Unfortunately for you, you're not dead yet. Your merely meager and often feeble existence is still killing us all considerably more than it's keeping us alive. You know how I know? You're silent. You're alone. You're depressed. You're anxious. You're confused. You're exhausted. You're poor, but not poor poor. You're stuck. You're afraid. You're working incredibly hard to not feel how deeply all of these things you are, and you're scared of touching how close you exist to death, and how often you seek it.

Or, maybe, you occupy an entirely different world than I do. Maybe you're in some pocket of middle-class bliss and reverie that one such as me has never known. Maybe Jesus is keeping you so safe and snug that you can't wait to ride the next catastrophe into His Light. Maybe everyone else's mythical beings you don't believe in are really the ones looking out for you, but they aren't taking it personally. You're already in the club, right? Just gotta dance, drink, and hit on people. It's simple. Just gotta believe. Gotta have faith. There's always hope to be had in something.

Death will be a gift, but only if you've figured out how to live before it gets you. All this practicing and dress rehearsal is a mockery. Wake up. You're asleep. You are drifting between narratives that have nothing to do with you or what you need. Your voice works. Your work matters. You need to find the things to fight and push through instead of treading water. There is no prize at the end. All you have is right now.

[1070] Bad Boy

I'm doing nothing if not trying. I try so hard to do things the "right" way. I work against what I know and deliberately exercise good faith and good will where an infinite well of hatred and criticism otherwise exists. Why I bother to try to behave this way got tested and challenged today.

I think I need to just get the argument portion out of the way.

As I was explaining to one of my groups, who had yet to be informed that I was leaving, I talked about having my out-patient clinic. 99 times out of 100, if you find a therapist or counselor you actually trust and are willing to talk to, if they leave wherever you found them, that's it. It becomes a best of luck wish to find someone you might have invested years of your life with. I occupy a unique space where, if you were actually getting utility and feeling growth in talking with me, you just have to click a different link or call a different number.

I had 11 different counselors coming in to cover the 12 groups I was leaving. For the past 2 weeks I've made approximately the same statements regarding how to find me, how my company seeks to work, and how I hope to have structured it in a way that people can maintain their attendance and adherence to Groups' rules, and still afford me. I don't even trust Groups and have watched them do demonstrable harm in an ongoing way, but in that spirit of deliberately trying not to be hateful and spite-ridden literally structured my "competition" to accommodate the clients' needs first.

I've made those statements in front of providers, 7 other counselors, office managers from different regions, discussed it with my supervisor, and no one until this cunt, Richard Lembke, batted an eye. He calls it "wholly unethical" to be pitching my company to people who have expressly asked me how they can keep in contact. He reports me, takes control of the group, and kicks me out.

There's so much to account for, yet it's all very simple and can be done quickly. First, we regularly coordinate care or attempt to find other providers if Groups doesn't seem to be the best fit. We have an entire department dedicated to giving our people numbers to call and options to explore so they can keep a regular prescription or get resources Groups doesn't offer. If you're putting people first, and they've built a trusting therapeutic relationship with someone for as many as 15 months, where does the confidence come from to assert the "wholly unethical" charge? What does it say about every single other person who listened and didn't feel entitled and moved to hijack my group? What do you make of the 2 people who immediately reached out to me after that Group to either tell me they, and the rest of the group, defended me or wish to proceed individually?

Between the 4 people loosely associated with my company, that isn't offering medication assisted treatment, there's 1 person on the calendar bi-weekly. I'll maybe have 2 in a couple days. Groups can't handle that? I'm cutting into their profits too much? The subsidized multi-million dollar operation with 350 people in our office alone? K. The company that regularly admits people who are exceptionally mentally or physically unwell that we watch deteriorate or destroy groups each week? That's not "wholly unethical" when I have every supervisor and the regional medical director agreeing with me when I call it out in the meetings?

It is one of the hardest things to do to find someone you can actually trust to talk to. To get reasonable, thoughtful, critical feedback that let's you then put it to work is an exceptionally rare find. That is to say, what I do has taken a lot of practice, life experience, and adherence to being incredibly fucking ethical given how I know I could act in working for places that aren't ethical.

If I get to some level of "wild" success, I don't want it to be because I created a cult, dependents, or through intimidation. I don't want the people who work with me to feel like they are under constant threat to say the "right" things to sweep bad shit under the rug. I don't want people who, even jokingly, start to worship or glom onto me because I'm yada yada, "The only one who's ever cared…" And I don't want to be so self-assured and delusional that I'm willing to Elon Musk my way past any critical feedback or proper restraint.

Parts of the world are at war. The "in group out group" and unearned confident narratives are running amok. I initially thought about titling this "Religious Zeal" because that's what Richard made me think of in how confidently he asserted my lack of ethics. He is convinced of himself, and thus in my estimation, a dumb and dangerous cunt. His small, but righteous and mighty, perspective will speak with all the conviction of a terrorist or zealot, and smugly denote the hyperbole in the analogy. After all, he's never killed anyone, and it's right there in the rule book how we're all supposed to be.

He's the norm. Ignorant conviction following the strictest interpretation of some uncriticized norm or rule. Who wrote it down? Why? Does it make sense? Who benefits from it? Doesn't matter, daddy said so, so begone unethical beast. I didn't get the job for two days as a spy from another giant Suboxone provider intent on snatching people. I was trying to respect and protect relationships I've been cultivating for 15 months. Neither he, nor Groups, gives a fuck though. They've never given a fuck about me, they don't care if you're mentally unwell or appropriate. They care about getting thousands of submissions sent to insurance every week.

It's hard not to regress into sociopathic and "pragmatic" thinking about that. There's a dozen shady things I could do to make money, seize power, and functionally arrest people under some horrifying notion of "care" or "help" or "harm reduction." I don't. I don't not just because it's wrong. I don't because I need to believe there's actually a right and just way to succeed. Every other fucking aspect of my life is the exact opposite lesson. The companies I work for exploit. The indifferent capitalist machine churns through all of our lives. Desperate and privileged elites demand exorbitant amounts for an hour of their time. It's bad. It's bad practice. It's being a bad human. It's bad for your soul. It's opportunistic and fatalistic and empty and filled with so much screaming denial I can't stomach it.

When I encounter the Richard's of the world, a switch flips in me. I get an adrenalin rush. I get scared. I like to cause pain, to fight, and create a scene. I like to show you, immediately, what's underneath all of the practiced professional posture. I like feeling ruthless and explicit about how I might choose to begin achieving my ends. It's as dark and scary as I ever feel, because it's compelling and feels incredibly reasonable, even after I come down.

Why not? That's what I have to keep asking myself. Why not "not kill" in the same way the zealots and dumb fucks hold themselves harmless in the suicidal environments they cultivate? I can construct a world in which you're feeding from what I serve you, especially if I entertain the all-consuming addictive part of me that would like to make an example of you. It takes a lot of energy, but perhaps it's energy well spent. I'm certain no one's going to speak up to tell me any differently.

You'd get off on watching too. People want the shit show. People are eating up the war videos and rolling baby heads. We kill ourselves in dozens of ways each day, knowing we don't deserve what we have and don't protect and create what we need. So when someone else is manifesting that impulse, slide over the popcorn. I know what you watchers want as much as I know what the worst parts of me wants. You want to be right about me. I want to believe I can be right about anything. We want the orgiastic jubilation of confirmation and conviction.

I never want to be a genuine Dick. I never want to be so convinced and pathetically clutching my pearls as something to bargain with in the next life. It might take me 4 hours to properly come down from an adrenalin rush, but that 4 hours is down from a veritable lifetime of feeling like I need to react disproportionately and "now" to the infinite sea of small petty people and their indignities fired like birdshot.

The world is truly a miserable place and I absolutely hate more of it than I like. What I like happens to mean more to me in terms of what I need to see and try to create than the forgone conclusions of exercising my hated. How long do you think it took me to figure that out? Can you say the same thing?

[1069] Knock Knock

This may be one of my more weird and off-putting digressions. I'm feeling weird and off-put. As my time at Groups winds down, it's giving my mind more room to breathe into the next things to focus on. It's giving me time to sit in and reflect on well-worn spaces regarding how I've spent my time and who with.

I genuinely wonder how "dumb" I truly am. I don't mean in an intellectual sense. I mean in terms of what it is supposed to mean to exist as a friend, man, "leader," or "basic human being." I primarily feel like I'm watching. I still find things confusing that I was watching when I was a child. Every day I'm presented with some new confounding, "I could never…"-esc situation that feels like there's a driving absurdity. I refer to it most often as an "unyielding irony" or series of consequences bred from immutable spite.

I simply don't know what I am. I don't know if I'm a good friend, or an eager puppy looking for pets and validation. I don't know if I'm actually causing some immense amount of harm or stress to people in how I exist. I don't know how I'm perceived, and when someone offers to tell me, it's too familiar or predictable and functionally devoid of any real depth.

The number one thing I hear from my clients as feedback that glances with anything to do with my actual personality is, "When I first met you, I didn't like you and thought you were a dick. Then I realized you were pushing me or making me uncomfortable because you cared or were trying to help." I have heard that half a dozen times this week alone. They acknowledge a negative feeling, the utility of doing so, and working through what I was asking.

To explicate this further, say you tell me you want to be "mindful" about "not yelling at my son" or "spending more time with my kids." When, each week, I ask you how many times you recorded noticing that you yelled at your son or how many times you recorded making more time for your kids, if you say "zero," I'm not an asshole. I'm opening the door to exploring why you're yelling or wasting your time. This, predictably, makes people uncomfortable, but it's the first step to any form of progress along any dimension in your life you wish to improve. You can't fix what you're not even aware of.

This feels like my dilemma. I feel like I'm missing something very deep and fundamental about how, why, or whether I interact with people. I have friends who I've given a hundred or more dollars to who've never invited me to dinner. I have friends who I've answered the call or text for in the middle of the night who I'm almost certain were I to reach out in the same manner it would fundamentally alter how or whether they bothered with me again going forward.

I'm certainly not saying I have some giant list of friends and I'm just naive about the nature of hundreds of superficial connections. I'm saying when I reflect on what are supposed to constitute my "closest" or "longest" dynamics, not all, but the vast majority simply don't seem to have ever existed? What, then, am I even trying to capture or refer to?

My closest friends at present are H, who is pathologically helpful and industrious. It's great when you're trying to promote an empathetic hard-worker in service to your company. It's dangerous when he's seeing the heart doctor because he can't draw effective boundaries about how to use his energy. We're both "desperate" to make money, though I've enough lived experience "failing" at entrepreneurship, I'm just as active in trying to enjoy the ride as I am in achieving anything. He's helped me immensely with my vehicles, in having an exchange regarding business ideas and distributing work, and just demonstrating that there's genuine people who deserve to be enabled instead of taken advantage of.

I've spent the next most time with J. She's fun to be around and funny. She's more intuitive and potentially hard-working than she wishes to follow-through with, and this lends itself to a kind of chaos. She cozies up to people with major issues. Whether it's because she sees herself in them, or because she doesn't feel she deserves more than the places they're at is unclear. Either way, she wants to be told what to do and fit into a dynamic that lets her "play." Her blasé attitude towards her health contributes to aggravating old sports and substance abuse injuries, and it's not clear how long she could be relied upon in a role of too much responsibility, as I continue to talk about ways to do just that.

I role with B, and have off and on since high school. She's as smart or smarter than anyone I've ever met, makes and follows through with plans, and is getting a handle on her emotional patterns and drives. We live in very separate places. When we do get to hang out, it's for a few days at a time, or for dinner. I've never gotten the "game playing" vibe from her. She's in touch with her damage, and I think doing so pre-empts what defensive and insecure people do to obscure or blame. I've never felt I've had to censor myself or hesitate talking about anything with her.

My dude HS is in a similar position across the country, growing in the depth of his understanding of himself, and fitting neatly into more leadership roles. I didn't really feel a beat was skipped even not having seen him in person for several years. In my perfect world, he's my first and perpetual neighbor who I know can be relied upon to, you know, actually get drinks or go dancing or hit a show without it registering as an obligation or some extra effort.

To be sure, if I'm ever writing about you, it's either because you occupy a very special and privileged place in my head, or you're fucking up royally and in a very confusing way. Even when I'm attempting to be specific and discerning, it's never meant to beat you over the head or blame you. I just don't know enough. I'm not in regular conversation with nearly anyone. No one messages me out of the blue wondering what I've been up to. I don't get emails from old work connections who happened to incorrectly type something and my name popped up. I'm not invited. I'm not getting "just wishing you well" or getting Christmas cards. I'm not reached out to by my family, save my dad and step-mom, anymore than I am the hundreds or thousands of people I've gotten to know over the last 30 years.

That's like the first thing, right? The people mentioned above text or message me. They don't have anything approaching months of effort, thousands of dollars, or gun-pulled-on-me levels of betrayal. It's literally cheaper to cut dead weight and budget to fly around the country to spend time together than it is to waste away in an unhealthy and exploitative dynamic.

Conversely, I've reached out to damn near everyone I've ever remotely called friend. It's not as precisely unreasonable as it sounds on its head, but does mean I've sent at least one "test the waters" kind of message to the people who a short time later get defriended or deleted. When my idealism bumps against their, "Why is he messaging me?" it's time to go.

I'm drifting. I need to talk about how my experience contrasts. I've been accused of heinous shit. I've owned and written about actual things I've done, from hitting my cat in the eye with a Creepy Crawler snake as a kid, to being very-certainly too much at parties or in hitting on people and being handsy, to slapping Kristen. When I contextualize those things, I feel I understand them, it gives people a chance to compare instances from their own life and explore their own emotions, environments, ignorance, or motivations. In the minds of those who don't grown, learn, or own anything, it won't even take my actual behavior and ownership of such to put distance between us. They need to think of me as a rapist, Machiavellian, catastrophically ego-ridden, or phobic and angry in ways no genuinely moral person should have to entertain, let alone contend with.

I find this fascinating in an going way because I'm a literal counselor. I have hundreds of stories of people's absolutely terrible behavior to each other, and they turn it into a lovable routine! For the thousands of shows I've watched, there's nothing like the hellish dramadies of any given individual's life.

That is, if I panic-slap Kristen trying to bring her back to reality after a cartoonish reconstruction of what my mind jumps to after too much TV and watching her wrist bleed out, that's irredeemable. If you get beat, threatened, or controlled every day, and have so through a dozen partners for years of your life, I will never hear more "but I love them" sentiments. Sentiments protected and reinforced and defended by both sides and by onlookers. Sentiments echoing the pain, usual-ness, and shared expectations of that dynamic. We belabor a caricature of a "battered-wife" and completely ignore the context that smooths and justifies and condones.

If your friends and family have, with regularity, stolen from you, verbally demeaned you, or otherwise predictably and reliably taken advantage, you say nothing, except to maybe a therapist who's 50/50 not insane. I don't get invited to your wedding, but the abuser does. You don't do like me and say, "This is fucked up, Byron, and I'm not okay, and you haven't made it right," until the relationship passes reasonably salvageable. A crisis must ensue. An epic battle of crippled wills needs fantastic displays of hate-filled language, property destruction, self-destruction, and orgiastic guilt to cycle ad infinitum.

 
If I'm not yelling at you, stealing from you, beating on you, sexually exploiting you, or otherwise meticulously working a manipulative angle so that you're less and I'm more, how could I ever be trusted!? Why would you want to be "friendly" or "committed" to a monster that doesn't drink from the same sacrosanct smirkingly apologetic fountain?

 
Think back on my consistent feedback. "I thought you were a dick, then realized you were trying to help." What do you suppose gets someone there? Most seem to stop at the first half, then carry on into the sunset. I'll tell you, because they never actually started listening to me. They were never persuaded by how I spoke. They didn't "wise up." They had some experience with their own family or life they felt. Maybe they only caught themselves once refraining from yelling at their kid. Then they noticed the fear and dejected look on their offspring and it gave them pause and made them feel bad or for the first time connected to the causal nature of their behavior. I just invited them to even look at the door. Most will still take 6 months-to-forever to bother knocking or entertain taking a step through.

I'm "stuck" in this, "Sure, but look at this too," place. I need to see many many doors. I need options. I need creativity. I need license to explore and make hazy but demanding proclamations about what I want, who I am, or where I think I'm going. I need to trust myself to engage that process in a faithful, honest and consistent way when every friendship dies or evaporates. I don't wish to ever make it personal because we're not vulnerable in the same ways. If you hear me, or really anything, as gospel, our problems and perspectives occupy different universes. I consistently see what appears to register as an annihilation of your universe when it comes into contact with mine. You don't like that.

My universe is kind of cold. It can be pretty lonely, even if there are a lot of positives to being by yourself. My universe is work, patience, and significantly more questions than answers. My universe is critical, but not mean-spirited. My universe is being crafted with each line, and is hopefully setting some kind of example people are benefiting from or drawing on that, I'm trying to make peace with, I'm never going to hear about. Or I'll hear about it in "fluffy" ways, and no one will care to work together on more of a shared one.

Within 10 feet of me I have months of "entertainment" or "practice" or "study" or "meaningful work" insofar that it intrigues me or will color how I speak and whom to. I don't play in a band. I don't debate the books I'm reading. I'm not playing video games online. Any skill or business experiment will cost money I don't really have and time begging to be occupied by a new soul-consuming occupation. I'm literally alone with this "stuff" of existence almost all of the time. I'm functionally or practically in almost complete isolation in what I can only ignorantly describe as a kind of "spiritual" way. There are many jealous, pious, and righteous gods I observe people worshipping, and over here a decorated non-believer. Naturally, I deserve my exile.

The more poetic and ethereal you get, the more dramatic it sounds, right? I'll be happy if I can get the bills paid in advance, war stays off my lawn, and I can regularly bowl with my dad or find a decent club to join. My arguments and perspective is fundamentally rooted in a place of exceptional privilege. I want more I can't obtain by myself. I want more from you. I want more conversation. I want shared universes. I want creative fixes and chances taken to achieve things previously not even considered. Some of us might "kinda" get there with perpetual therapeutic structured and light suggestions that a fucking door exists altogether. Most of us don't have a prayer for anything more than we're already getting. Shame.