When I was working to start the coffee catering van, I recall doing some of the paperwork from the bank. One day, I was introduced to a new form. My really cool banker guy Adam handed it to me, wished me well, and went back to his office. I sat down, took approximately 5 minutes to fill out the form, walked back to his office, and him, genuinely surprised invited me back in and we completed that portion of what needed to be done.
Why does this story stick out? It highlights the contrast between me and how other people engage and experience the world. Adam had probably given that form to dozens of people, most of whom left the office, maybe got to it later that day and maybe when they found the time later that week turned it in. I recognized 3 to 5 minutes of my time I could move beyond now so I could focus on the next thing. That, alone, brought surprise and mild delight to my banker's face.
I've hired a few free lancers to research and apply to grants. One seemed more suited for a consultant role or more appropriate for after I became a non-profit. I asked her how much it would be to just hire her to do all of the "non-profit stuff." She needed to get back to me after consulting with her partner. She came back 3 days later with $3000. I did what half of it I could do while I wait on the IRS in 3 hours, told her my progress, and she responded, "That's amazing!"
It's not, but, to the normal regular world it may as well be a miracle. I did the bare qualifying minimum, read a couple government pages with step-by-step instructions, weeded out the bullshit, and plugged the things into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet will one day save myself, or anyone else who wishes to incorporate in Indiana 3 hours of their life, and apparently $3000 if they want a high-end non-profit writer.
When I think about the shows I've been going to. I've been to 127 things. The only reasons I've been late to 2 are an incredibly blind-sided stupid parking surprise. (No, I'm not paying $40 to park at Rock the Ruins, an already shitty venue experience.) And my brother. I can not only attend that many things, but do so in a timely and safe manner. When I record the feedback from most people about even coming to 1 thing every 1 to 3 months it's. "I can't," "I don't have the money," "I don't know what I'm doing," "I'm tired," "I don't know the artist," "I can't get off work," "I would, but."
I'm not suggesting people don't have legitimate reasons to not come out. I'm suggesting that I occupy a universe that is steadfastly about the possible, the potential, and the opportunity, and others are stuck wherever they are.
I still hear people pipe-dream about their farming aspirations or green and isolated living fantasies. My neighbor, just because he wanted cows and still doesn't know what he wants to do with them, got 3. No one I know is getting cows or asking me for the room to start experiencing the practical realities of their desires.
I talk about clients in counseling a lot. Every single spot I left has resulted in 0 people continuing their counseling with me. This is in the face of, no exaggeration, dozens, often several per week, of professions about the "good" I'm doing and impact I've had. No more texts, no emails, no follow up from the ones who went out of their way to say, "No no, I'm serious, I'm definitely going to reach out." I don't think I'm being cynical when I tell you that I know they won't. Just like during group, the ones who "got the most out of it" could often not bring themselves to show up every week.
Meanwhile, when I discuss how earnestly I hope to provide affordable and flexible counseling, even when I get people who seem to be a good fit, they don't last more than a couple weeks. The accountability and structure isn't the priority. The obligation to answer for what they've said or thought is too much extra "with everything going on." I'm, still, offering to provide what I have been for $5 and would move most of my schedule anywhere it needed to go to ensure we could keep the conversation going. Nope.
I think a lot about the things I've tried to invest in. I think a lot about the times I've been burned. It's not in an obsessive way, but because I find them sources of perpetual confusion.
I would never just abandon you to a lease or to functional homelessness because I was unwilling or unable to discuss my living plans.
I would never pick a fight every single day.
I would never scrunch my nose and criticize you spending money on me.
I would never allow a novel's worth of gossip and bad blood prevent me from trying to have a conversation with you.
I would never expect you to drive an hour to my house almost every day for months and then leave you to work on my project only to turn around and stiff you.
I would never surprise you with some new judgmental and serious tone because I'm old and mature now and you've offended me, but I won't explain how.
I would never steal your inheritance.
I would never turn what's good about you into something bad.
That's the line. That's what I'm feeling. I feel like the things that are borderline spectacular about me register as bad things. I think I'm regarded as a bad friend. I think I conjure an incredible amount of negative feelings and thoughts about what I'm doing or trying to do. I think literally every single attempt I make to grow or celebrate or experiment or explain is met with whatever that wall is that normal people push and crush you under. The fake politeness. The empty words. The silence.
I find almost nothing about the world is straight-forward, yet with that perfect irony, it's as demonstrable and predictable as anything I could hopelessly continue to bare witness to.
I had a "friendly" conversation with some people in the bar line before Penn & Teller. One offered to buy my drinks, as the show was beginning and it was taking a while. Actually, what he wanted was to speed up the line, but after the girl in front of us got cross thinking we were attempting to cut the group smashed in next to her, we ended up waiting, and dude made sure to clarify that he was sorry he wasn't going to cover the drinks anymore as I ordered and motioned back for them to say theirs. We'd talked and joked for probably 15 to 20 minutes. He called me handsome. It was all fun and games, but it was fake. Illuminated by 3 whole extra minutes.
Meanwhile, on the off chance I go out or get to drinking, I can't tell you how many drinks I've reflexively bought for people I've just met, guy or girl or group, particularly on deal nights, or just because I'm in a good mood. I'll bring the booze for the whole party if you're feeling strapped.
I have that part of me because of my dad and grandma. There isn't a day in my life I've thought my dad was trying to take advantage of me. I learned to cover the drinks or lunch or ticket because he still does that for me. I never talked to my grandma and thought she was looking for an angle or keeping a secret in asking me about my day or interests.
Are people just the worst products of what they grew up missing? Because, while I feel like I'm about as giving and sacrificial a person as you can find without it getting pathological, I'm also the biggest potential asshole and enemy you've ever met. I learned that from my mom. I don't wish to be that person. I don't wish to occupy the space of prefacing and justifying everything I do or say via the intensity of my feelings. I don't demand respect and allegiance, I demonstrate what they mean to me. I pick up the phone. I answer the text or facebook message. I'm 99% of the time the first one to reach out. And, for some reason, I feel wrong or bad that that's who I am.
I drove 3 hours to Louisville yesterday (it's 5:13 AM and I've yet to go to bed). I waited in the line outside for 1.5 hours. I waited against the stage for 1 hour. I waited through the openers and the set up for Kingfish another hour. Between the openers and Kingfish, a lady stuck her beer-clad arm between me and another guy who had been waiting just as long as I had. She leaned on me. She tried to squirrel her way against the stage. I've been grumpy all day and weighed my options. I decided to just focus on watching Survivor on my phone and moving centimeter by centimeter to close the gap. I won the day.
I would never not put in the time or work, show up at the last minute, lean on you, and expect you to get the fuck out of my way to reap the best standing seat in the house.
These frustrations and sense of betrayal all contribute to my overall sense of hopelessness when it comes to starting a business or just doing anything remotely worthwhile in a "professional" capacity or that relies on the ambivalences and negligence of the way we do capitalism. I'm offering a service that people don't want, desperately need, and the only way I know this is because of how much I've personally witnessed over years combined with how they praise my effort or work done so far. That's a crazy-making sentence. And we have a system designed to prevent me from even making a realistic attempt. It's the $1500 for rent College Mall wanted for my coffee shop in the dead space that malls are after an attorney told me their contract was "standard."
So I spend a lot of time just thinking I'm ambiguously wrong. Wrong for trying. Wrong for speaking. Wrong for spending money, not spending money, seeking help, going it alone, or implicating anyone in my plans or ideas. I try to hire help, they somehow create more work and stress. I try to do myself, I find myself spiraling into ways I might escape the whole idea of working altogether. Maybe there's some "online niche" scam or way I sell my land to a shady entity that needs a place to dispose unmentionables.
I try to not get trapped by the words "could" and "should." In my head, we all should recognize the 5 minute form, do it, and move on to tackling the real or bigger issue. In my head, it should be easy to fill out your first and last name, phone number, address, name of your company, and sign at the bottom. It could take 3 minutes to say, "Hey, I'm planning to move next year, so take the next 3-6 months to search for a non-batshit roommate." It should be "obvious" if you're single and rich and you've got younger family members who are regularly demonstrating their worth and values, you'd try to enable them.
I'm trying not to resent the amount I've attempted to give in service to what I need for myself and what people have claimed to need from me. It's getting incredibly hard not to think about what I should take instead. Once you get past stealing office supplies, it escalates dramatically. I could have taken the girl's arm off at the concert, spilled her beer, turned around and left her feeling dead or afraid after some mean shit I might say. Because that's the worst thing I take from people. Their illusions.
Dave Chappelle's line/story about manifesting his dream and feeling humbled when he recognizes he's just a piece in someone else's has rubbed me the wrong way since I heard it. It got me thinking about "The Secret" and other bullshit that blissfully ignores statistical analysis and historical trends when discussing who tends to succeed and who doesn't. No, Dave, you didn't just will yourself to your levels of success, and it's not humility to notice there's another rich douchebag at the club you're in as you presume to know what his dreams are.
It seemingly impossible to not fall under an illusion when you get that famous. Who do you think is telling Dave "no?" Uhhh, are you sure you want to have a 4 hour show with 7 openers and a musical number afterwards? "I've transcended comedy and Method Man has transcended Wu Tang Clan, of course." Okay, Dave! Are you sure you're still mining the "funny" from trans related material? "No, actually I'm transitioning to yes." Hell yeah you are, dude! Hannibal rapping about his fake teeth? "Put. It. On. Stage." Of course, of course! We just have these lists and I wanted to cross all the boxes and check all the Ts! "Where's my cigarettes?"
The money is in keeping with the charade. Make them feel good. Tell them what they already know. Excite the feelings waiting for a license. There isn't a crowd in the world as loud as they can be on the first ask to make some noise. We want the usual and familiar so much we literally marry people about the same size and shape as us. Does it have anything really to do with them? Do you like Dave Chappelle's stand up anymore, or have you romanticized his TV show and yelling that you're Rick James?
In all sincerity, I wish I could find a way to be mostly left alone. That's hard to do when you're in debt, and will always be in debt. It's hard to do when the things you enjoy are in public. It's hard to do knowing you're carrying a loaded weapon of charisma and intelligence and cool hair and a big smile, and you feel it's wasted on people handicapped in what they can see of it.
Let's take it one step further and then try to bring it home. Privy to so many lives and how people talk about them, I know of an endless stream of terrible relationship patterns. I see people stay together for years with one bailing the other out of prison almost as a matter of routine. I know husband's who gaslight or straight lie to their entire families. I know wives who put up with years of verbal abuse. I know moms who shell out thousands to the most ungrateful or violent adult children or hapless "friends" the world has to offer. I know the amount of bosses strangling your, just like me, desire to "do good" or "cover" even as it exhausts you or takes you away from your family and sleep. I know the horrible, horrible things you've done in the darkest corners of your addictive behavior and can only speculate (hardly) what it says about the people who eventually take you back.
I can't imagine. In an effort to try to save money I got a ride from Hussain to the airport and back. I filled up his tank. It was about what it would have cost me to park the whole time I was gone. Would I expect gas money from someone I drove to the airport? No, but it'd be nice to see that they had the same awareness about it that I did. Expecting a friend, or partner, or spouse to not only put up with me abusing them, lying to them, getting in trouble and needing their money, and just carrying on each day like it's all normal and tomorrow will be more of the same? There's someone for everyone, they say.
What I need can't be bought. I'll never have enough money to survive in relative isolation. I suspect I could circle the globe and meet a small number of autistic-types that still just don't quite measure up. I don't need new friends. I needed the ones I thought I had to actually be friends. I need people who don't need me to explain to them how you treat people you care about. I need people who I don't have to second guess whether or not they care about me. The proverbial world certainly doesn't, but it also doesn't seem to care much for itself. Where do you suggest I go then?
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