[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.