I'm hit with an idea, so let's see if there's anything there.
The thought was "Already Home Syndrome." When you engage people's pathological communication online, when you dive into particular social or political contexts, or if you just consider your individual family dynamics, the context has the same "form." It's a form manifested of feelings and expectations. You're "already home" and it's not clear how often you're able or willing to leave.
I flit about reddit. Recently, I attempted to contribute more responses to the /r/self page where 20-something lonely fat women and 20-something poor suicidal men talk about how hopeless their lives are in reddit-appropriate speak. This means "tl/dr" and infinite qualifiers so they don't sound "too whatever" that might elicit a wave of backlash. I discovered very quickly it's, like everything else, incredibly insincere.
I'm as sympathetic to the need or desire to bitch and moan as you can be. What I'm not, and never have been, is looking for sympathy and validation in spite of my shitty perspective and behavior. I've always wanted to try and better understand what felt like incomprehensible thing or behavior example after example. What "people" do is use their words to assert justifications and side-step the conversation about how they can be more accountable.
You can go to reddit and find immediately a paragraph describing "how fucked up my life is," and with almost no effort, each line will testify to glaring gaps in perspective, show a lack of appreciation, or build who is to blame into the conclusion. The more I've observed this, the easier it's become to detach and try to study it. It's incredibly human. Scaled up you get these flame wars politically. We make it noble and build it into religions. There's always always always a scapegoat. And you're mean or rude if you even suggest the problem is you.
We habitually fail to entertain the idea of context and history. When you're caught in a reddit dogpile of people's internal "yikes" sentiments regarding your replies or posture, it takes the opposite of effort to criticize a caricature of you, feel great doing it, and get validation from the errant barking. Say someone comes on to complain about their relationship. They aren't there looking for strategies to healthily navigate their dynamic. They're soliciting hundreds of votes in service to a new, more comprehensive, placating narrative to explain and excuse away the behavior.
Do you have any idea how many people are comfortable claiming their husband or boyfriend is "addicted to porn" before they'll entertain the simpler notion that guys will continue to find other women attractive, or even more attracted to others than them? They don't want to talk about other cracks or flags in their dynamic that would suggest a bad or dwindling relationship. They want the problem located in something seemingly external or slightly foreign to their experience like some kind of invader to an otherwise perfect picture.
I never thought I'd come to understand people who've learned just to not talk or share anything with anyone ever. I complain and excoriate how silent most people are on many issues I care about, but that comes from high, perhaps unreasonable, expectations of people I like to believe I've been witness to their better capacities. I don't want to hear from everyone all the time on everything. What I've learned, again the hard way, as that even when you come in patient, deliberate, informed and you got the lived experience and honed instinct, you're just asking to have it thrown back in your face. I've never raised a teenager, but I suspect it's close to the same thing.
With my ex, it didn't matter how patient I was, how long the conversation went on, what words I chose, what project I agreed to help with or pay for, how much time went by, what rules I asked her to follow so we could stay friendly and communicating…at the end of the day something was driving her emotionality, reactivity, and judgment that had nothing to do with me. It didn't, and I'm inclined to believe, still doesn't, see me or my perspective at all. By context-specific default, I have nothing to offer her or I have to be extremely cautious and conscious of what I am or am no longer willing to contribute to the dynamic.
So it goes for all of us in all of the contexts we share. Is it even worth making the same kind of appeals you have to the people in your life who've proven themselves intransigent? They're already home, and you're telling them to make renovations they think are ugly, move to a state they don't like, or keep the best (only slightly abusive) dick they've ever gotten out of their spare bedroom? You're crazy.
Reddit is a specific context. You're expected to conform to the horrible way people communicate on that platform. Spits and stutters and presumptive assumptions that validate feelings. It's longform Twitter with micro megalomaniacs policing speech more fervently than any authoritarian. And it teaches you to conform or not exist within its context at all. Then these people step out into the world and try to make it conform to the same online rules. I consider it literal fuel for fascist thinking.
Your "porn addicted husband" never gets a say. No book or researcher or statistic exists in these environments. The concept of "personal responsibility" doesn't take shape at all, and if it's remotely alluded to, baked into the newspeak connotation is an accusation and enemy you'll be shamed for not reflexively condemning! That is, you're only personally responsible, in crazy town Twitter world, if you adopt my catphrase, deplatform "violent" words, and encourage I emote in whatever direction and to whatever degree I see fit. Anything less, you're kicked out of the house.
This gets so complex because it gets conflated with "setting appropriate boundaries" or "communicating healthy needs and expectations." The key to these discussions being coherent and productive is respect for evidence and shared conceptions of reality. Otherwise it's a competition between gaslighting and ignorant narratives.
When my ex and I were arguing, if I bled her funds dry, withheld my tools and time, verbally berated her and picked at her self esteem, beat her up, threatened her stuff or cat, sabotaged her effort in the garden, spoke ill of her to friends, or did any of the shit I hear people do in their "normal" relationships, you'd have evidence to rightfully assert I'm the problem. If you don't have that attitude about your own behavior with regard to any topic, especially ones that piss you off or scare you, you're probably not doing what you're doing in a healthy or appropriate way. If you're looking for validation from strangers on reddit, you're definitely not doing what you need to be doing lol.
That we're so dispositionally biased to believe whatever it is we currently do is why so much is shit. There's an incredible amount of heinous shit built into our normative behavior and presumptive "value systems." You don't get millions for Trump, or Palin, or Putin, or Hamas in a world that fundamentally "makes sense." You don't suffer indefinitely under completely avoidable poverty without some powerful persuasive compulsions to protect greedy impulses. It's not abstract. Your husband isn't addicted to porn. You're not in a fanciful romantic love story where everyone is happy in the end after an hour and a half of animated wish-fulfillment and expectations built into you from childhood. Without irony, they scream, "Fuck your feelings!"
We're not humble. We're not curious. We don't volunteer for the necessary pain that draws out our best conceptions and potential realities we long for. We're just whiners. We're feeling more and more entitled to whine. We think, "Well that's how all the rich white privileged people won, so now it's our turn!" No. There have always been people willing to exploit and capitalize on their proximity to power or access. It's a historical fluke and your deliberate framing of the oppressor and oppressed to service your version of victimhood. It really is the same mechanism at different scales and contexts.
Don't you know men are x, y, and z therefore…
Can't you see how woke or privilege has…
He thinks…! Bitch, you don't know what he thinks, he barely knows what he thinks, and worse, you're both probably not even interested in finding the truth together. If you can get him to agree that you've remotely captured what he thinks, I'll start listening to you.
It feels like someone screaming, "I didn't ask to be born!" Sure. That's absolutely true. What do you think you're saying with that statement? How many concurrent ways can you imply you'd rather be dead before we move on and recognize you're saying it to justify behaving in a shitty way? A child who does that we might think of as "just following orders" from their developing lacking-in-control systems. A culture that builds on that propensity and protects and refines it we might think of as fucked up, sick, and doomed.
My brain's been echoing the "You make people feel small" accusation from my ex-coworker. I had a session with a new client a couple days ago in which I started in talking about "fight or flight." She didn't know what I was referring to. When I explained it, she said she understood and thanked me. I'm already home in my go-to proven sentiments that have helped people in the past or helped me better conceptualize myself. I struggle to think of a more ubiquitous and common piece of knowledge than "fight or flight," but here we had someone who didn't know it. I don't consider her dumb, ignorant, or "small" nor had an impulse to criticise. It shouldn't be controversial or read as some kind of unfair judgment or priviledge if we recognize the disparity in what information we have and how we're using it to address our relative issues.
It's just factually correct that we barely know anything about anything. That's as quick a test as you can offer someone to determine whether or not they're really worth spending your time on. Do they recognize their own ignorance? Can they entertain gaps in their knowledge? If that answer is no, ever, for yourself or about others, you might as well just make squawking noises back and forth. You're ideologically possessed. You're contributing to our seemingly inevitable collective cultural downfall. Your house is on fire, and you need to move.
Friday, December 29, 2023
Wednesday, December 27, 2023
[1088] Stay Humanism
There's two ideas I want to explore. The first is a swing back around to the word "entitlement." The second is the various layers involved with "cynicism." They're both in quotes to emphasize how much I hope to transcend any initial connotative assumptions that might already be swimming through your veins. They are the first layer on the feeling wheel, and we need to find the core.
Sometimes, I like to load up my Amazon cart and see what everything I think I want to buy would amount to after shipping, financing, used "like new," and proper quantity. This round was just shy of $3,000. It was mostly books, some tools, and a couple high-priced toys I have no genuine need for. I couldn't help but think to myself how "small" or "undramatic" it felt to look at the price tag.
I've pulled the trigger on a loaded up cart in the past. I still like and play with everything save a couple of the wood-working table equipment pieces. When I pan out, I think how "easy" it should have been for me to afford everything I've got now, and the next things I aspire to. I'm 35. My last job, when I played with an inflation adjustment calculator, would have been worth $350,000 a year in 1973 at my current salary. The ethic, respect, and priorities have massively shifted culturally, and I'm just along for the ride.
In a simple way, I feel "entitled" to whatever book, tool, or increasingly expensive music toy I could ever want for the rest of my life. I feel my output certainly warrants more than I've received, but moreso, what I want isn't about lavish spending and excess more than it's about creative potential and expression. I don't feel guilty about what I want. I don't feel like I squander what I have. I don't feel I demonstrate a lack of appreciation or respect. I want "more."
I want more out of myself. If I can handle the drama of dozens of families and help put fires out again, give me more. If I can direct a budget to equitably pay people and grow a company, rack the dollars up. If I can cram more good habits into every one of my days because I've designed efficient systems or transitioned away from things I could train and allocate, please, leave me to my music and travels. It's been many years of nonstop "first-world poor" living standards. I'm nowhere near equitable amounts of time spent properly doing, enjoying, or exploring what I want with the simultaneous headspace to do it.
I'm obligated. At some level, if I don't pursue or have something like my own business or some challenge like navigating the impossible circumstances I've been, that's first and foremost on my mind. I just watched American Symphony about Jon Batiste who said music is a spiritual practice to him. That's what "searching" or "fighting the ignorant cunts" is for me. When I see what exists and how people use it or get used, there's little else I can think about than what I might do to exist in a more just paradigm. I'm not going to bitch and chainsmoke. I'm not going to disappear into a video game. I'll never capture it in a song. Every day I run through some dream vision of getting to bite a horrible person's throat out (or the metaphorical equivalent) of putting an evil dumb cunt in their place.
I know some of this is prompted by the perpetual injustice I felt growing up, but if anything, actually growing up as taught me the truer extent of the program my mom was on. It didn't have to be hell back then anymore than you have to needlessly suffer today. But I don't think we get that message nor trust ourselves to find the paths to which we're most suited or destined. I don't think we get the message because I see the same error perpetuated by my most intelligent friends, and by every client I can't literally push over a cliff because there's nothing left they need but a boot in their ass to fucking fly.
I think I know what I'm worth. I think I know "at least" what I'm worth. I think it's more than a shed, for as much love as I have for it. I think it's more than working as a food delivery boy. I think it's more than double any salary I've ever been offered. I think if you were me and heard as many well-wishing and thank you thank you thank you and "hand to god" sentiments as I have, you'd be on the verge of having your ego take over completely. Thankfully, I don't really trust people. I trust work. I trust sacrifice. I trust what I see you spending your time on. I trust the silence you offer in service to the things I care about.
When you embody a level of "entitlement" you can start to develop a form of "confidence." Think "confidence man." You know the trick. The more you practice and normalize it, the easier it is to pretend it's not a trick. Whether you're a hapless overgrown child trying to guilt trip your next lonely 30-something target, or a salesman of any type, you spin the same tale. You hook an emotion, and you twist it around your ends. The means by which you do so justify themselves. It's built into a capitalist ethic. It's built into smarmy pickup advice. It's laid on aggressively when you're wielding unearned power.
It makes my stomach drop to imagine behaving like that. Like I'm going over the hill on a roller coaster. There is no end to the drop when you start to behave that way. There is no corner of hell you won't explore. And here we might start knocking at thoughts about "cynicism." It's where I feel many, many people are operating from. Doubt me? How many millions vote for fascism, murder, rape, etc. Nothing but faithful cynics pretend to "see the world as it is" and "just follow orders" by locking step in service to behaviors that make the worst seem inevitable.
Cynicism provides a sense of "freedom." Elon Musk is cynically letting people treat Twitter like 4chan. The fancy fairytale ends justify the means. When what you're selling no one is buying, you get airy and philosophical, pretentiously bludgeoning your point down unreceptive holes. I am not free, very explicitly, to conduct myself in every way I've imagined to achieve my goals. The less I respect that merciful boundary, the less I'll have anything left of myself to recognize or respect.
I think I've done a lot of important work that ripples in ways I'll never know. I think I don't believe in karma, but I do know everything is fundamentally connected to everything else. My "success" or "luck" is intimately involved with the "hope ripples" or "work ripples" I've created so far. When I watch a musician play with every other musician under the sun, plugging into the infinite wave meeting you when you need it, it can serve as a constant visceral reminder if you let it.
I'm about to embark on soliciting funds. I'm not going to sell anyone on the idea that they should give me and what I'm doing money. I'm going to talk about my ideals. I'm going to explore their questions and concerns. I'm going to dip into the well of hope and sincerity that everyone wishes they could believe and take a dip in a little deeper than they do. I haven't cynically given up on the previous ways I've tried to get up and running. I'm evolving my approach because I either believe in the feedback, my work, my potential, and my message, or I don't.
I practice believing in my message through writing. I practice hope in myself every time I encourage Hussain or hire a new Upwork person or "happily" choke down the costs of keeping business requirements up and running. When I feel I'm coming from the right place in how I speak to the "How do I get money" question, then I trod off down that path. I may have a distaste for speaking too often about the "mission" and "values" in the gross normal-empty-speak way people care to hear about what you're doing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a real mission or value I'm looking to espouse.
Fuck, just working out that contradiction is rough on its own. The fact that our language has been so hijacked by so much bullshit that has in turn been rewarded makes it incredibly hard for me to parrot. I don't want to be anything like what exists, but I can't be so divergent no one bothers to engage or finds themselves trusting at all. It's hard to overstate how much this has contributed to "idle" time regarding how to build a proper foundation.
I do need to guard against cynical thoughts as it pertains to assumptions about other people. It'll be hard to listen to the fumbling excuses why a successful business can't find the money, care, or concern to contribute. I'll reflexively think to myself about how much I've spent in service to my friends or dad and think, yeah, fuck you buddy and whatever your irrational prejudice or assumptions. The wealth is out there, and ever-more concentrated each day. You think the ones who cling to it for dear life give a fuck about my values? I don't, but some of them at least want to look like they do.
Sometimes, I like to load up my Amazon cart and see what everything I think I want to buy would amount to after shipping, financing, used "like new," and proper quantity. This round was just shy of $3,000. It was mostly books, some tools, and a couple high-priced toys I have no genuine need for. I couldn't help but think to myself how "small" or "undramatic" it felt to look at the price tag.
I've pulled the trigger on a loaded up cart in the past. I still like and play with everything save a couple of the wood-working table equipment pieces. When I pan out, I think how "easy" it should have been for me to afford everything I've got now, and the next things I aspire to. I'm 35. My last job, when I played with an inflation adjustment calculator, would have been worth $350,000 a year in 1973 at my current salary. The ethic, respect, and priorities have massively shifted culturally, and I'm just along for the ride.
In a simple way, I feel "entitled" to whatever book, tool, or increasingly expensive music toy I could ever want for the rest of my life. I feel my output certainly warrants more than I've received, but moreso, what I want isn't about lavish spending and excess more than it's about creative potential and expression. I don't feel guilty about what I want. I don't feel like I squander what I have. I don't feel I demonstrate a lack of appreciation or respect. I want "more."
I want more out of myself. If I can handle the drama of dozens of families and help put fires out again, give me more. If I can direct a budget to equitably pay people and grow a company, rack the dollars up. If I can cram more good habits into every one of my days because I've designed efficient systems or transitioned away from things I could train and allocate, please, leave me to my music and travels. It's been many years of nonstop "first-world poor" living standards. I'm nowhere near equitable amounts of time spent properly doing, enjoying, or exploring what I want with the simultaneous headspace to do it.
I'm obligated. At some level, if I don't pursue or have something like my own business or some challenge like navigating the impossible circumstances I've been, that's first and foremost on my mind. I just watched American Symphony about Jon Batiste who said music is a spiritual practice to him. That's what "searching" or "fighting the ignorant cunts" is for me. When I see what exists and how people use it or get used, there's little else I can think about than what I might do to exist in a more just paradigm. I'm not going to bitch and chainsmoke. I'm not going to disappear into a video game. I'll never capture it in a song. Every day I run through some dream vision of getting to bite a horrible person's throat out (or the metaphorical equivalent) of putting an evil dumb cunt in their place.
I know some of this is prompted by the perpetual injustice I felt growing up, but if anything, actually growing up as taught me the truer extent of the program my mom was on. It didn't have to be hell back then anymore than you have to needlessly suffer today. But I don't think we get that message nor trust ourselves to find the paths to which we're most suited or destined. I don't think we get the message because I see the same error perpetuated by my most intelligent friends, and by every client I can't literally push over a cliff because there's nothing left they need but a boot in their ass to fucking fly.
I think I know what I'm worth. I think I know "at least" what I'm worth. I think it's more than a shed, for as much love as I have for it. I think it's more than working as a food delivery boy. I think it's more than double any salary I've ever been offered. I think if you were me and heard as many well-wishing and thank you thank you thank you and "hand to god" sentiments as I have, you'd be on the verge of having your ego take over completely. Thankfully, I don't really trust people. I trust work. I trust sacrifice. I trust what I see you spending your time on. I trust the silence you offer in service to the things I care about.
When you embody a level of "entitlement" you can start to develop a form of "confidence." Think "confidence man." You know the trick. The more you practice and normalize it, the easier it is to pretend it's not a trick. Whether you're a hapless overgrown child trying to guilt trip your next lonely 30-something target, or a salesman of any type, you spin the same tale. You hook an emotion, and you twist it around your ends. The means by which you do so justify themselves. It's built into a capitalist ethic. It's built into smarmy pickup advice. It's laid on aggressively when you're wielding unearned power.
It makes my stomach drop to imagine behaving like that. Like I'm going over the hill on a roller coaster. There is no end to the drop when you start to behave that way. There is no corner of hell you won't explore. And here we might start knocking at thoughts about "cynicism." It's where I feel many, many people are operating from. Doubt me? How many millions vote for fascism, murder, rape, etc. Nothing but faithful cynics pretend to "see the world as it is" and "just follow orders" by locking step in service to behaviors that make the worst seem inevitable.
Cynicism provides a sense of "freedom." Elon Musk is cynically letting people treat Twitter like 4chan. The fancy fairytale ends justify the means. When what you're selling no one is buying, you get airy and philosophical, pretentiously bludgeoning your point down unreceptive holes. I am not free, very explicitly, to conduct myself in every way I've imagined to achieve my goals. The less I respect that merciful boundary, the less I'll have anything left of myself to recognize or respect.
I think I've done a lot of important work that ripples in ways I'll never know. I think I don't believe in karma, but I do know everything is fundamentally connected to everything else. My "success" or "luck" is intimately involved with the "hope ripples" or "work ripples" I've created so far. When I watch a musician play with every other musician under the sun, plugging into the infinite wave meeting you when you need it, it can serve as a constant visceral reminder if you let it.
I'm about to embark on soliciting funds. I'm not going to sell anyone on the idea that they should give me and what I'm doing money. I'm going to talk about my ideals. I'm going to explore their questions and concerns. I'm going to dip into the well of hope and sincerity that everyone wishes they could believe and take a dip in a little deeper than they do. I haven't cynically given up on the previous ways I've tried to get up and running. I'm evolving my approach because I either believe in the feedback, my work, my potential, and my message, or I don't.
I practice believing in my message through writing. I practice hope in myself every time I encourage Hussain or hire a new Upwork person or "happily" choke down the costs of keeping business requirements up and running. When I feel I'm coming from the right place in how I speak to the "How do I get money" question, then I trod off down that path. I may have a distaste for speaking too often about the "mission" and "values" in the gross normal-empty-speak way people care to hear about what you're doing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a real mission or value I'm looking to espouse.
Fuck, just working out that contradiction is rough on its own. The fact that our language has been so hijacked by so much bullshit that has in turn been rewarded makes it incredibly hard for me to parrot. I don't want to be anything like what exists, but I can't be so divergent no one bothers to engage or finds themselves trusting at all. It's hard to overstate how much this has contributed to "idle" time regarding how to build a proper foundation.
I do need to guard against cynical thoughts as it pertains to assumptions about other people. It'll be hard to listen to the fumbling excuses why a successful business can't find the money, care, or concern to contribute. I'll reflexively think to myself about how much I've spent in service to my friends or dad and think, yeah, fuck you buddy and whatever your irrational prejudice or assumptions. The wealth is out there, and ever-more concentrated each day. You think the ones who cling to it for dear life give a fuck about my values? I don't, but some of them at least want to look like they do.
Monday, December 18, 2023
[1087] You Really Like Me
I hope this one does the trick. For weeks I've felt like I'm floundering. I can't commit to the process of finding a job. I can't feel "more serious" about pursuing my hobbies or side-projects that might eek out a means of profitability with enough investment and focus. I can't justify sitting back and just watching TV or looking for the next show to attend. My mind has been all over the place, and for someone who exists with that as a standing condition of existence, it's felt acutely elevated.
Evidence of this state of mind is me making a doctor's appointment. I don't really know anything about ADHD beyond the amount of kids I came across with the diagnosis and the increasing cultural awareness of the behaviors associated with it. So much of it is as familiar to me as the feelings of when I read/learned about autism. I've never been one to much care for many people's claims regarding a diagnosis or the implications that followed. The more I start to meet "pathological" impediments to my sense of well-being or capacity to get shit done, the more my sympathies grow.
I discussed recently how I can manage well-enough with structure. In a closed-enough environment with rules and consistency, it can be really easy to downplay or ignore what about you that looks to derail. Most jobs pretty much insist you have to get up at a certain time, pay attention to the commute, fall within the guidelines for behavior to not get fired, and keep the threat of not keeping the bills paid hot enough to justify indefinite suffering or excuses. The longer I go left to my own devices, I feel consequences of a lack of structure compound.
One way that happens is the "drama" of the space between doing things gets elevated. If I'm not otherwise plugged into something, it lends itself to irrational negative emotion. This gets complicated further because I'm, on the whole, generally muted emotionally. Whether we want to chalk that up to a learned behavior trauma response to my upbringing, autism, or deliberately cultivated practice given age, wisdom, and the nature of my professional responsibilities, I'm willing to entertain it's all that and more. Practically, it means I will never be persuaded by the "passion" or "depression" or "anxiety" or "angry" that others claim moves or motivates their behavior.
In fact, particularly with the word "passion," I regularly discuss how much I hate that fucking word and how stupid or misleading I think it is. It's employed to downplay the circumstances and privileges that enable someone to pursue one route over another. When you don't have these swings in emotion, very little signals to you to change, dramatically or otherwise, whatever you're currently doing. I'd like to believe it makes a certain amount of sense the reasons I build through writing and conversation to do one thing over another. Whether or not that's the case you only care to the extent it affects or entertains you.
Broadly speaking, you're not invested in my well-being because you have your own life and things to suffer and barely figure out as well. That sentence feels like a major part of "the rub."
I feel myself envying anyone with a community. Even shitty communities, there's a sense of togetherness, belonging, understanding, and consistency that I sorely lack in my day-to-day. For most of my life, I've felt explicitly on the outside playing observer to how people treat each other, what you're "supposed to" say, or trying to figure out what "really matters" in the dynamic.
If I thought to myself, "How do you get a girlfriend?" No exaggeration, 9 out of 10 relationships I would observe would be explicitly abusive. No, not everyone was beating the shit out of their girlfriend, but yes, both parties were using emotionally manipulative and personally guilt-inducing behavior to maintain that dynamic. In fact, the older I get and the more I've watched relationships maintain or falter, it's not like that pattern has gone away, but the "healthiest" couples realize, maybe in their mid-to-late 30s that they have been behaving in those fucked up ways towards each other and start therapy.
This kind of disconnect permeates pretty much every level of my life. I'm not, nor have ever been, "normal." Yes, I exist like all things, and there is nothing new under the sun. I'm not claiming "special." I'm claiming "aberrant" or "noticeably and consistently different." I'm the only Vulcan on board. There's a whole fucking planet of Vulcan's, but I'm the only one on my particular ship.
This means when I sit here, contemplative, with a level of "anxiety" that I will never score higher than a 1 or 2 on a scale from 1 to 10, I may or may not address that by a dogged pursuit to "fix" what is probably 10 different things nagging that at one time. I've been paying extra attention to how all-over-the-place my mind is when I've got nothing in particular I care to focus on. I can start vacuuming in the middle of making a sandwich. I'll start a movie in the middle of another paused show.
Incidentally, as I finished that last line, my dad calls me and we talk for a half hour.
My dad is my most consistent force in my life. When people are acting like complete shit-heads, I'm not looking over my shoulder for my dad to fuck my life up or take advantage of me or threaten my safety like my "best friend." When I talk about the projects on the land I wish to focus on or when I needed to get things done to make the house livable, like how I imagine some people's friends and families work, he offered and continues to offer to come down and help me. If I were to strip away a lot of the nonsense related to my approach to work or fantastic dreams and what I am or am not doing every day in service to them, it makes an incredible amount of sense for me to spend more time in the region with him trying to grow the gravesite cleaning and yard work business.
My closest friends continue to maintain different forms of distance. They have their own families and paradigms. Very much to his credit, I do believe Hussain would help me with a project on the land and has offered to do so. That's not, like, the only or most important criterion for whether or not I can call someone friend, but it's akin to the question of "Who helps you move?"
Who enables your expression and embodied physical manifestations of space? The drywall in my house was a result of my dad helping. My nice electric guitar my dad again. He's also the most frequent one coming along to shows. The..whatever's left of it…garden outside and room extension have everything to do with Allie. The vehicles that have gotten me all over the midwest have been worked on, for free, or bought from Hussain. Jess, Hussain, Brandy, and before the break Byron came to shows. That's pretty much my network of people I see or interact with in person with any remote regularity until I get a job and meet coworkers with no desire to unionize or talk about anything that helps us transcend our capture.
I also feel like it's not for lack of effort or compromise that I find myself most-often alone and wondering what to do next. I've tried to start the regular meetups with not just the people from college, but different coworkers over the years and with Hussain and Byron. Whether it's just to grab a drink or hit the bowling alley, or see a movie. I want to be clear, it's not that I can't or can "never" persuade people to hang out or chill, but doing so is distinctly not the priority. One might disingenuously personalize and take it a step further to consider themselves the lack of priority, and while that is practically true, it's not an honest way to comprehensively understand the dynamic. People care about themselves waaaaay before they "don't care" about you or what you're up to.
The psychology of this is spoken to by too many things to account for. We blame the isolating echo-chambers online. We can point to the dire economic situation where "the jobs report is improving" has nothing to do with even the concept of a living wage, savings, or what it means to live day-to-day. You have dedicated institutions meant to obscure how we talk about or understand how to "fix" anything, and overwhelmingly you meet people who are just exhausted and adopting versions of "slave ethics" in order to cope and squeeze what little positivity they can out of their circumstances. If that comes with waterfalls of denial, compulsive abuse, or sweet smelling stories of personal dignity and direction, all the more comfortably they sit with no one bothering to notice or care how they play out.
I think about the conversation I got into with Smash, and at one point I said something that triggered "that face" that people get when they are convinced you can't be persuaded or have said something so egregious they both feel sorry for you, angry at themselves, and abjectly hopeless in considering there was a point to beginning the exchange at all. What, of course, separates a Smash from a regular person is that she pushed through it and we found a better place to resolve whatever the discrepancy was at the time. That's a special capacity and awareness we don't practice culturally. If we're already suffering, working incredibly hard to deny or downplay it, what purpose does more serve?
I put it to you that I'm just an extension of my circumstances first. Before I can ever attempt to "personalize" something or claim some power of "will" and freedom to express it, I'm just reporting on the cold, the silence, the self-reports, and variations on the theme of "I'm confused and struggling." I'm not a lowly detached desperate-for-any-kind-of community person flinging out theories about how life works or doesn't. I'm reflecting on my own, not-comfortable-enough or not-comfortable-in-the-right-ways circumstances as well as the literally thousands of pieces of input I've received professionally.
I think there is a palpably different experience between "life is hard" sentiments and "there's a concerted effort to keep you feeling empty and desperate." I think we're suffering the latter. I don't think it's precisely a "conspiracy," but I do think it has a lot to do with us losing a sense of honesty and ownership regarding what we allow to pass as acceptable from each other. I think we're like Byron, allowing the consequences of our behavior to pull guns on each other, and without irony or malice, remain perfectly baffled about what we should be expected to do to be accountable to that.
The "middle-ground" Nazis play the same role. The vast majority of Germans were not in the S.S. or filling up mass graves. They were still Nazis. Apologists for Trump, fascism broadly, religiously-motivated persecutors, and every single time you point your finger before you recognize your own hand plays the same instrument. This is how people get so comfortable ignoring atrocious behavior. At absolute bottom, they know they're doing the same thing. Or, they know they don't care.
"I'm not doing the same thing!" You protest. No, you're not butt-fucking children, but you thought about it, because I just typed it. You didn't enjoy the thought, but the more specific I get about that old Catholic dick inching towards that blonde-haired innocent little booty hole, I take over your mind. Your infinite sea of ridiculous and random thoughts is a source of infinite guilt, denial, distraction, and confusion by default.
If you expose yourself to information often enough, you might think to yourself, "Man, I have a problem with how often I think about butt-fucking children? Does that make me a pedofile?" Of course not, you just work at DCS. The problem is not the thought in and of itself, as any meditative practice will teach you. The problem is not recognizing how much your environment is disconnecting you from a feeling or capacity to get your thoughts organized and acted upon. You're being intruded on. But, worse, you're intruding on yourself with algorithm-assisted means to make you feel good about it.
The best person who has ever existed is still a mammal, a person, and completely fallible in the ways you are. What better way, Jesus story, to comprehensively justify and placate all "sin?" You are born, often enough, into a culture that insists you don't question the dictates of your prophet, lord and saviour, or all-powerful "mysterious force" that absolutely must "make sense" when infinity is over. It's an analogy for your infinite potential. It's a way to not fall into literal insanity trying to calculate the combinatorial explosion that is existence.
Say I return to my younger self. Say I ask "innocent" questions like a child would and tried to analyze the current landscape in front of me. "How do I be an adult?" Take a job that doesn't pay enough, fall into debt for literally any reason, but definitely for school, health issues, and car or mortgage payments. "What does it mean to love your family?" Put up with them just flatly and consistently disrespecting you, from your sobriety to anything you've accomplished, and make sure you show up to any and all gatherings regardless of the gossipy hateful things that have been said and done every day in between. "What does it mean to be a 'good Christian or Muslim?'" Protect pedophiles, cheer Hamas, deny science, control women…
Our narratives are generated from broken internal systems. We don't identify how they break. We double down on mistakes until we turn them into virtues. We act confused and innocent when asshole autistic-types like me bite down on these discrepancies and shake them with as much or more religious conviction than you've ever experienced. Appeals to do things "differently" or "better" are viewed with hostility and suspicion. We'll find ourselves undermining others in their effort to do so just in how we talk about them. Extolling the pageantry over what practically happens.
Then, I need to come full-circle and figure out how to blame without blaming. I need to figure out what's the next piece to take responsibility for and hopefully more deliberately than not choose a course of action that accounts for how perpetually harmless you're going to hold yourself for our collective dynamic. Consolidating and sacrificing aren't optional for "things" to start changing for the better. We're not hungry, there's certainly plenty of food, but we're absolutely starving. We show up when it's "convenient" or if we're desperate, which means we're not showing up at all.
I need a robust network of both accountability and potential. I'm so at the mercy of that need that I've tolerated years of emotional abuse. I want friends so bad I'll talk about them in quotes for dozens of blogs for years and years before it sinks in they aren't friends. For every tool at my fingertips, I'm not inspiring anyone to join me, play music with me, build anything, or contribute in any way to the effort of creating a means to own the work we put into the world. It's not exactly that the more I look the less I find, but even some of these Upwork hires are helping me compare and contrast what they've accomplished in a few weeks compared to me and "my network" over years.
Intellectually, I'm comfortable with things constantly in flux. As a human, I would appreciate stability and predictability along certain metrics until the day I die. I don't ever want to be confused about the location and safety of my food. I don't want to feel like I'm gambling on whether or not I'll get to keep my stuff or have my house burn down to humble me and teach me the value of still being alive. I don't want to occupy an environment that's Mad Maxing every time I leave my house because the collective psychology is arrested by violence and in-group out-group primal instincts. We either drag what we want the future to be into the present, or we suffer the fallout of machinery that compiled all of the survival mechanisms naturally-selected to keep us alive so far. The infinite vacuum of space is "natural." Not good or bad by itself, but wholly antithetical to life as we know it or would prefer.
Evidence of this state of mind is me making a doctor's appointment. I don't really know anything about ADHD beyond the amount of kids I came across with the diagnosis and the increasing cultural awareness of the behaviors associated with it. So much of it is as familiar to me as the feelings of when I read/learned about autism. I've never been one to much care for many people's claims regarding a diagnosis or the implications that followed. The more I start to meet "pathological" impediments to my sense of well-being or capacity to get shit done, the more my sympathies grow.
I discussed recently how I can manage well-enough with structure. In a closed-enough environment with rules and consistency, it can be really easy to downplay or ignore what about you that looks to derail. Most jobs pretty much insist you have to get up at a certain time, pay attention to the commute, fall within the guidelines for behavior to not get fired, and keep the threat of not keeping the bills paid hot enough to justify indefinite suffering or excuses. The longer I go left to my own devices, I feel consequences of a lack of structure compound.
One way that happens is the "drama" of the space between doing things gets elevated. If I'm not otherwise plugged into something, it lends itself to irrational negative emotion. This gets complicated further because I'm, on the whole, generally muted emotionally. Whether we want to chalk that up to a learned behavior trauma response to my upbringing, autism, or deliberately cultivated practice given age, wisdom, and the nature of my professional responsibilities, I'm willing to entertain it's all that and more. Practically, it means I will never be persuaded by the "passion" or "depression" or "anxiety" or "angry" that others claim moves or motivates their behavior.
In fact, particularly with the word "passion," I regularly discuss how much I hate that fucking word and how stupid or misleading I think it is. It's employed to downplay the circumstances and privileges that enable someone to pursue one route over another. When you don't have these swings in emotion, very little signals to you to change, dramatically or otherwise, whatever you're currently doing. I'd like to believe it makes a certain amount of sense the reasons I build through writing and conversation to do one thing over another. Whether or not that's the case you only care to the extent it affects or entertains you.
Broadly speaking, you're not invested in my well-being because you have your own life and things to suffer and barely figure out as well. That sentence feels like a major part of "the rub."
I feel myself envying anyone with a community. Even shitty communities, there's a sense of togetherness, belonging, understanding, and consistency that I sorely lack in my day-to-day. For most of my life, I've felt explicitly on the outside playing observer to how people treat each other, what you're "supposed to" say, or trying to figure out what "really matters" in the dynamic.
If I thought to myself, "How do you get a girlfriend?" No exaggeration, 9 out of 10 relationships I would observe would be explicitly abusive. No, not everyone was beating the shit out of their girlfriend, but yes, both parties were using emotionally manipulative and personally guilt-inducing behavior to maintain that dynamic. In fact, the older I get and the more I've watched relationships maintain or falter, it's not like that pattern has gone away, but the "healthiest" couples realize, maybe in their mid-to-late 30s that they have been behaving in those fucked up ways towards each other and start therapy.
This kind of disconnect permeates pretty much every level of my life. I'm not, nor have ever been, "normal." Yes, I exist like all things, and there is nothing new under the sun. I'm not claiming "special." I'm claiming "aberrant" or "noticeably and consistently different." I'm the only Vulcan on board. There's a whole fucking planet of Vulcan's, but I'm the only one on my particular ship.
This means when I sit here, contemplative, with a level of "anxiety" that I will never score higher than a 1 or 2 on a scale from 1 to 10, I may or may not address that by a dogged pursuit to "fix" what is probably 10 different things nagging that at one time. I've been paying extra attention to how all-over-the-place my mind is when I've got nothing in particular I care to focus on. I can start vacuuming in the middle of making a sandwich. I'll start a movie in the middle of another paused show.
Incidentally, as I finished that last line, my dad calls me and we talk for a half hour.
My dad is my most consistent force in my life. When people are acting like complete shit-heads, I'm not looking over my shoulder for my dad to fuck my life up or take advantage of me or threaten my safety like my "best friend." When I talk about the projects on the land I wish to focus on or when I needed to get things done to make the house livable, like how I imagine some people's friends and families work, he offered and continues to offer to come down and help me. If I were to strip away a lot of the nonsense related to my approach to work or fantastic dreams and what I am or am not doing every day in service to them, it makes an incredible amount of sense for me to spend more time in the region with him trying to grow the gravesite cleaning and yard work business.
My closest friends continue to maintain different forms of distance. They have their own families and paradigms. Very much to his credit, I do believe Hussain would help me with a project on the land and has offered to do so. That's not, like, the only or most important criterion for whether or not I can call someone friend, but it's akin to the question of "Who helps you move?"
Who enables your expression and embodied physical manifestations of space? The drywall in my house was a result of my dad helping. My nice electric guitar my dad again. He's also the most frequent one coming along to shows. The..whatever's left of it…garden outside and room extension have everything to do with Allie. The vehicles that have gotten me all over the midwest have been worked on, for free, or bought from Hussain. Jess, Hussain, Brandy, and before the break Byron came to shows. That's pretty much my network of people I see or interact with in person with any remote regularity until I get a job and meet coworkers with no desire to unionize or talk about anything that helps us transcend our capture.
I also feel like it's not for lack of effort or compromise that I find myself most-often alone and wondering what to do next. I've tried to start the regular meetups with not just the people from college, but different coworkers over the years and with Hussain and Byron. Whether it's just to grab a drink or hit the bowling alley, or see a movie. I want to be clear, it's not that I can't or can "never" persuade people to hang out or chill, but doing so is distinctly not the priority. One might disingenuously personalize and take it a step further to consider themselves the lack of priority, and while that is practically true, it's not an honest way to comprehensively understand the dynamic. People care about themselves waaaaay before they "don't care" about you or what you're up to.
The psychology of this is spoken to by too many things to account for. We blame the isolating echo-chambers online. We can point to the dire economic situation where "the jobs report is improving" has nothing to do with even the concept of a living wage, savings, or what it means to live day-to-day. You have dedicated institutions meant to obscure how we talk about or understand how to "fix" anything, and overwhelmingly you meet people who are just exhausted and adopting versions of "slave ethics" in order to cope and squeeze what little positivity they can out of their circumstances. If that comes with waterfalls of denial, compulsive abuse, or sweet smelling stories of personal dignity and direction, all the more comfortably they sit with no one bothering to notice or care how they play out.
I think about the conversation I got into with Smash, and at one point I said something that triggered "that face" that people get when they are convinced you can't be persuaded or have said something so egregious they both feel sorry for you, angry at themselves, and abjectly hopeless in considering there was a point to beginning the exchange at all. What, of course, separates a Smash from a regular person is that she pushed through it and we found a better place to resolve whatever the discrepancy was at the time. That's a special capacity and awareness we don't practice culturally. If we're already suffering, working incredibly hard to deny or downplay it, what purpose does more serve?
I put it to you that I'm just an extension of my circumstances first. Before I can ever attempt to "personalize" something or claim some power of "will" and freedom to express it, I'm just reporting on the cold, the silence, the self-reports, and variations on the theme of "I'm confused and struggling." I'm not a lowly detached desperate-for-any-kind-of community person flinging out theories about how life works or doesn't. I'm reflecting on my own, not-comfortable-enough or not-comfortable-in-the-right-ways circumstances as well as the literally thousands of pieces of input I've received professionally.
I think there is a palpably different experience between "life is hard" sentiments and "there's a concerted effort to keep you feeling empty and desperate." I think we're suffering the latter. I don't think it's precisely a "conspiracy," but I do think it has a lot to do with us losing a sense of honesty and ownership regarding what we allow to pass as acceptable from each other. I think we're like Byron, allowing the consequences of our behavior to pull guns on each other, and without irony or malice, remain perfectly baffled about what we should be expected to do to be accountable to that.
The "middle-ground" Nazis play the same role. The vast majority of Germans were not in the S.S. or filling up mass graves. They were still Nazis. Apologists for Trump, fascism broadly, religiously-motivated persecutors, and every single time you point your finger before you recognize your own hand plays the same instrument. This is how people get so comfortable ignoring atrocious behavior. At absolute bottom, they know they're doing the same thing. Or, they know they don't care.
"I'm not doing the same thing!" You protest. No, you're not butt-fucking children, but you thought about it, because I just typed it. You didn't enjoy the thought, but the more specific I get about that old Catholic dick inching towards that blonde-haired innocent little booty hole, I take over your mind. Your infinite sea of ridiculous and random thoughts is a source of infinite guilt, denial, distraction, and confusion by default.
If you expose yourself to information often enough, you might think to yourself, "Man, I have a problem with how often I think about butt-fucking children? Does that make me a pedofile?" Of course not, you just work at DCS. The problem is not the thought in and of itself, as any meditative practice will teach you. The problem is not recognizing how much your environment is disconnecting you from a feeling or capacity to get your thoughts organized and acted upon. You're being intruded on. But, worse, you're intruding on yourself with algorithm-assisted means to make you feel good about it.
The best person who has ever existed is still a mammal, a person, and completely fallible in the ways you are. What better way, Jesus story, to comprehensively justify and placate all "sin?" You are born, often enough, into a culture that insists you don't question the dictates of your prophet, lord and saviour, or all-powerful "mysterious force" that absolutely must "make sense" when infinity is over. It's an analogy for your infinite potential. It's a way to not fall into literal insanity trying to calculate the combinatorial explosion that is existence.
Say I return to my younger self. Say I ask "innocent" questions like a child would and tried to analyze the current landscape in front of me. "How do I be an adult?" Take a job that doesn't pay enough, fall into debt for literally any reason, but definitely for school, health issues, and car or mortgage payments. "What does it mean to love your family?" Put up with them just flatly and consistently disrespecting you, from your sobriety to anything you've accomplished, and make sure you show up to any and all gatherings regardless of the gossipy hateful things that have been said and done every day in between. "What does it mean to be a 'good Christian or Muslim?'" Protect pedophiles, cheer Hamas, deny science, control women…
Our narratives are generated from broken internal systems. We don't identify how they break. We double down on mistakes until we turn them into virtues. We act confused and innocent when asshole autistic-types like me bite down on these discrepancies and shake them with as much or more religious conviction than you've ever experienced. Appeals to do things "differently" or "better" are viewed with hostility and suspicion. We'll find ourselves undermining others in their effort to do so just in how we talk about them. Extolling the pageantry over what practically happens.
Then, I need to come full-circle and figure out how to blame without blaming. I need to figure out what's the next piece to take responsibility for and hopefully more deliberately than not choose a course of action that accounts for how perpetually harmless you're going to hold yourself for our collective dynamic. Consolidating and sacrificing aren't optional for "things" to start changing for the better. We're not hungry, there's certainly plenty of food, but we're absolutely starving. We show up when it's "convenient" or if we're desperate, which means we're not showing up at all.
I need a robust network of both accountability and potential. I'm so at the mercy of that need that I've tolerated years of emotional abuse. I want friends so bad I'll talk about them in quotes for dozens of blogs for years and years before it sinks in they aren't friends. For every tool at my fingertips, I'm not inspiring anyone to join me, play music with me, build anything, or contribute in any way to the effort of creating a means to own the work we put into the world. It's not exactly that the more I look the less I find, but even some of these Upwork hires are helping me compare and contrast what they've accomplished in a few weeks compared to me and "my network" over years.
Intellectually, I'm comfortable with things constantly in flux. As a human, I would appreciate stability and predictability along certain metrics until the day I die. I don't ever want to be confused about the location and safety of my food. I don't want to feel like I'm gambling on whether or not I'll get to keep my stuff or have my house burn down to humble me and teach me the value of still being alive. I don't want to occupy an environment that's Mad Maxing every time I leave my house because the collective psychology is arrested by violence and in-group out-group primal instincts. We either drag what we want the future to be into the present, or we suffer the fallout of machinery that compiled all of the survival mechanisms naturally-selected to keep us alive so far. The infinite vacuum of space is "natural." Not good or bad by itself, but wholly antithetical to life as we know it or would prefer.
Sunday, December 17, 2023
[1086] Fixing
Let's try to capture the mood over the last few weeks before my "day" gets started.
Why is "day" in quotes? It's 4:39 PM. I've been out of bed approximately 15 minutes. I haven't been precisely asleep all day, but finding the reasons or motivation to leave my bed were not forthcoming. It's been that way, off and on, since the middle of October.
Having developed the habit of "just get the ticket," even though I left my job, I didn't precisely cease spending money. I left before I paid off debt. I left, not precisely in a reactionary way, but I couldn't ignore the consequences their behavior was having on my disposition and willingness to choose shittier ways of expressing myself.
Practically, while if I kept the job, I could still reasonably say something like, "I'm only 5.66 months of paychecks in debt," now, for that to remain true, I'm staring down sitting in my car in service to Grub Hub or Door Dash all day until I hit $100.
I want to make sure I'm very clear about one thing. I don't regret any show I've been to. I don't regret any instrument or tool I have. Whether I was $5,000 or $50,000 in debt, if, as modern reporting indicates to me, we're all in debt, I feel, hopefully not "delusionally" good, that mine is in service to creative options, hobbies, and things that don't aggravate anxiety or anger. I don't dread the 1 to 12 hour round-trip drives to the venues. I'm not cursing myself for standing in the cold before the show. I don't look at my band T-shirts and go, "You fucking idiot!"
If our system means practically inevitable debt to live a remote semblance of a "middle class" lifestyle, if this be my lot, so be it. My house is literally a series of combined sheds. I drive very old cars. I have no children. I have no mortgage. I have no health insurance. I have the opportunity to have as much fun with my fleeting youth as possible before I either get sick, some new tragedy befalls the world, or I proverbially break and tame my spirit to work indefinitely in service to something I hate, is "beneath me," or "poisons my soul."
You should know, I do attempt to think creatively about how to work in a field or on something that doesn't fill me with unyielding drad. I think maybe I write a bunch of letters to creators and artists I admire and see if they have some kind of position I could occupy. I mean it when I say I don't need much. Even a relatively small Youtube channel who is getting sponsored might stand to need an assistant, right? Maybe I do the same thing with different bands I like. With 2 thoughts around 1 idea, I've opened up hundreds of letters or emails to send.
What do I say then?
"Hey! I like what you do a ton. I respect [x y and z] and [such and such] has meant a lot to me because of my [personal anecdote]. I'm wondering if there's any spot I might fit to help out? I mean as a job, in any way, big or small. I want to see you succeed and concurrently learn more about how you do what you do. I'm [all the ways I'm amazing, but humble.] I've had every kind of job from scrubbing toilets as a generalized social worker to working for The Department of Child Services investigating crisis situations and resolving gigantic interpersonal logistic problems.
I currently live in the middle of nowhere Indiana and have wide open availability. I'll be real with you, I'm sending some version of this out to well over 100 artists, bands, or creatives that I admire, but will never simply ignore or not respond to anyone that hits me back. I genuinely wish to change the direction of my life by plugging into the work of creating more than coping, and there's so many worthwhile operations in effect I have to believe deserve what I can bring more than my past work environments.
And just as a show of good faith, if you have some task you'd like me to work out to prove my timeliness, communication, or sincerity, please send it along. I'm a complete stranger reaching out from the abyss. I suspect we'd both prefer my work speak for itself."
Think that works?
In the meantime, I'm still waiting to hear whether or not the non-profit gets its tax-exempt status. I believe one or two more grants have been submitted or are pending submission once we get the letter. I still can't find a replacement therapist for supervision and billing. I have an appointment Tuesday with a new client. And I've made $58 from Grub Hub, $20 of which I spent almost immediately the same day. I put in 6-12 applications depending on how explicitly fake you wish to consider some of the listings. I have a 16-day streak of reading at least 1 article each day, 23-days of reading at least a chapter, 17-days of doing squats, and 11-days of practicing an instrument for at least 30 minutes.
I started the habit-tracking in October. They say it takes 3 months to develop a habit. Just because you theoretically can do something "more" than you are, that's not the task or point. The point is the consistency and overcoming the resistance to introducing a new behavior. The closer I've paid attention to this distinction, the easier it's been to "feel right" in engaging the practices. I've finished 12 books, done 1,100 squats, read 110 articles, and played for 44 hours that I promise I wouldn't have otherwise without this app and setting the bar so low.
One of the things that persuaded me to quit my job was an ongoing reminder to myself that there's "infinite work." There are thousands and thousands of people within driving distance who have work to do, work they may or may not even be good at, and work they would be just as if not more likely than me to pay someone to do, if they knew how to find that person. Statistically, if you put yourself out there long enough, you will land somewhere. I cannot trap myself into thinking I "have to" work some menial miserable job always playing catch-up to debt. It's just irrational and wrong. It can just be hard to be your own cheerleader, especially when you spend 99% of your time alone with cats.
I suppose I need to pull up a spreadsheet and get to tracking down the contact information of people I admire. If I can get reading, practicing, eating, and shitting out of the way first I'll have that much less ADHD distractions that feel like conflicting "should do" things. It's now 5:26 PM. I think I've started this day fairly productively.
Why is "day" in quotes? It's 4:39 PM. I've been out of bed approximately 15 minutes. I haven't been precisely asleep all day, but finding the reasons or motivation to leave my bed were not forthcoming. It's been that way, off and on, since the middle of October.
Having developed the habit of "just get the ticket," even though I left my job, I didn't precisely cease spending money. I left before I paid off debt. I left, not precisely in a reactionary way, but I couldn't ignore the consequences their behavior was having on my disposition and willingness to choose shittier ways of expressing myself.
Practically, while if I kept the job, I could still reasonably say something like, "I'm only 5.66 months of paychecks in debt," now, for that to remain true, I'm staring down sitting in my car in service to Grub Hub or Door Dash all day until I hit $100.
I want to make sure I'm very clear about one thing. I don't regret any show I've been to. I don't regret any instrument or tool I have. Whether I was $5,000 or $50,000 in debt, if, as modern reporting indicates to me, we're all in debt, I feel, hopefully not "delusionally" good, that mine is in service to creative options, hobbies, and things that don't aggravate anxiety or anger. I don't dread the 1 to 12 hour round-trip drives to the venues. I'm not cursing myself for standing in the cold before the show. I don't look at my band T-shirts and go, "You fucking idiot!"
If our system means practically inevitable debt to live a remote semblance of a "middle class" lifestyle, if this be my lot, so be it. My house is literally a series of combined sheds. I drive very old cars. I have no children. I have no mortgage. I have no health insurance. I have the opportunity to have as much fun with my fleeting youth as possible before I either get sick, some new tragedy befalls the world, or I proverbially break and tame my spirit to work indefinitely in service to something I hate, is "beneath me," or "poisons my soul."
You should know, I do attempt to think creatively about how to work in a field or on something that doesn't fill me with unyielding drad. I think maybe I write a bunch of letters to creators and artists I admire and see if they have some kind of position I could occupy. I mean it when I say I don't need much. Even a relatively small Youtube channel who is getting sponsored might stand to need an assistant, right? Maybe I do the same thing with different bands I like. With 2 thoughts around 1 idea, I've opened up hundreds of letters or emails to send.
What do I say then?
"Hey! I like what you do a ton. I respect [x y and z] and [such and such] has meant a lot to me because of my [personal anecdote]. I'm wondering if there's any spot I might fit to help out? I mean as a job, in any way, big or small. I want to see you succeed and concurrently learn more about how you do what you do. I'm [all the ways I'm amazing, but humble.] I've had every kind of job from scrubbing toilets as a generalized social worker to working for The Department of Child Services investigating crisis situations and resolving gigantic interpersonal logistic problems.
I currently live in the middle of nowhere Indiana and have wide open availability. I'll be real with you, I'm sending some version of this out to well over 100 artists, bands, or creatives that I admire, but will never simply ignore or not respond to anyone that hits me back. I genuinely wish to change the direction of my life by plugging into the work of creating more than coping, and there's so many worthwhile operations in effect I have to believe deserve what I can bring more than my past work environments.
And just as a show of good faith, if you have some task you'd like me to work out to prove my timeliness, communication, or sincerity, please send it along. I'm a complete stranger reaching out from the abyss. I suspect we'd both prefer my work speak for itself."
Think that works?
In the meantime, I'm still waiting to hear whether or not the non-profit gets its tax-exempt status. I believe one or two more grants have been submitted or are pending submission once we get the letter. I still can't find a replacement therapist for supervision and billing. I have an appointment Tuesday with a new client. And I've made $58 from Grub Hub, $20 of which I spent almost immediately the same day. I put in 6-12 applications depending on how explicitly fake you wish to consider some of the listings. I have a 16-day streak of reading at least 1 article each day, 23-days of reading at least a chapter, 17-days of doing squats, and 11-days of practicing an instrument for at least 30 minutes.
I started the habit-tracking in October. They say it takes 3 months to develop a habit. Just because you theoretically can do something "more" than you are, that's not the task or point. The point is the consistency and overcoming the resistance to introducing a new behavior. The closer I've paid attention to this distinction, the easier it's been to "feel right" in engaging the practices. I've finished 12 books, done 1,100 squats, read 110 articles, and played for 44 hours that I promise I wouldn't have otherwise without this app and setting the bar so low.
One of the things that persuaded me to quit my job was an ongoing reminder to myself that there's "infinite work." There are thousands and thousands of people within driving distance who have work to do, work they may or may not even be good at, and work they would be just as if not more likely than me to pay someone to do, if they knew how to find that person. Statistically, if you put yourself out there long enough, you will land somewhere. I cannot trap myself into thinking I "have to" work some menial miserable job always playing catch-up to debt. It's just irrational and wrong. It can just be hard to be your own cheerleader, especially when you spend 99% of your time alone with cats.
I suppose I need to pull up a spreadsheet and get to tracking down the contact information of people I admire. If I can get reading, practicing, eating, and shitting out of the way first I'll have that much less ADHD distractions that feel like conflicting "should do" things. It's now 5:26 PM. I think I've started this day fairly productively.
[1085] Bitching
If there's a better time to try and buckle down to do almost nothing but work, it's winter. While I am getting a certain satisfaction in building on reading and playing consistently, I'm not a fool and completely unwilling to acknowledge the debt I would prefer not to be in. I knew I was disrupting an incredibly comfortable applecart in leaving Groups, and I'm almost certain I'm going to despite just as deeply whatever I do next as I've ever done. I continue to wrestle with that, as peace will never be made.
Bear in mind, my whole life gets incredibly simple if I get a grant, let alone 2 grants. I, fundamentally, don't need a lot of money to be comfortable. That's the overarching point I hope really sinks in, both to anyone reading, and my own psyche. I'm not in debt with a mortgage, car payment, kids, or with even $500 let alone $1,000 or more due every month in service to my bills or credit card payments.
I can still seek and work with customers in service to my company, which is arguably at "side-hustle" level indefinitely, but still technically viable and paying me peanuts occasionally. I'm discontented overall though because every time I think about my company, I'm reminded of the stupid people and stupid variables, beyond my control, that fuck me for reasons they refuse to explicate. I am livid regarding the therapist situation. I'm prepared to get obsessive and spend-happy to sue for damages with the last insurance empaneling company if the refund, due in the next few days, doesn't come.
I browse articles online that show the forever-increasing income inequality and moves the sinfully-rich are making to amass even more. It's exhausting and debilitating. Anyone who pretends they aren't functionally rotting away slaving under this system is delusional. They've likely adopted a slave ethic and sense of faux duty or obligation, side-stepping the real personal responsibility to honestly assess their situation and figure out who or what to fight. I don't really know what to do beyond bemoan the situation as well, so who can blame them?
My life gets so simple when I'm able to, even briefly, find the focus to just play my guitar or get lost in a comic book. All I really I want to do anymore is pretty much within arm's reach. This is why I would be contented with a "mindless" job doing "data entry" for "minimum wage." I have to speak in quotes because nothing is real or means what it's supposed to mean. It's another exhausting mental hoop to navigate.
Why even write this? It's nothing new or interesting. I'm just trying to gear up for another headfirst charge into a wall. I'm trying to find the sanity that struggles to maintain in the face of all my insane, desperate, or "fuck it" behaviors.
While it's true there's an infinite amount of work, it's considerably less likely you'll find that work meaningful, impactful, worthy of your time, accountable, or paying you reasonably. We're led to believe there's some form of "noble competition" in our clamoring to survive amidst the overwhelming opportunities to indulge. It's all lies and incredibly stupid. It's all an effort to stay distracted. It has me floundering with, "The system is fucked, maaaaan" vagaries because I have run out of ways to describe it.
I need to read, head into town, eat, kill time, and see a show tonight. I need to see if I can actually get paid to deliver food again. I need to put in more waste-of-time applications to mostly-fake job listings. I need to practice my guitar "extra" because I decided to go to sleep early and wake up to conduct a more-normal daylight hour existence today. I need to acknowledge and incorporate what would otherwise be overwhelming anger I can feel swelling up at the absurdity of my circumstances. Appreciation practice doesn't obfuscate or erase the practical hells.
Bear in mind, my whole life gets incredibly simple if I get a grant, let alone 2 grants. I, fundamentally, don't need a lot of money to be comfortable. That's the overarching point I hope really sinks in, both to anyone reading, and my own psyche. I'm not in debt with a mortgage, car payment, kids, or with even $500 let alone $1,000 or more due every month in service to my bills or credit card payments.
I can still seek and work with customers in service to my company, which is arguably at "side-hustle" level indefinitely, but still technically viable and paying me peanuts occasionally. I'm discontented overall though because every time I think about my company, I'm reminded of the stupid people and stupid variables, beyond my control, that fuck me for reasons they refuse to explicate. I am livid regarding the therapist situation. I'm prepared to get obsessive and spend-happy to sue for damages with the last insurance empaneling company if the refund, due in the next few days, doesn't come.
I browse articles online that show the forever-increasing income inequality and moves the sinfully-rich are making to amass even more. It's exhausting and debilitating. Anyone who pretends they aren't functionally rotting away slaving under this system is delusional. They've likely adopted a slave ethic and sense of faux duty or obligation, side-stepping the real personal responsibility to honestly assess their situation and figure out who or what to fight. I don't really know what to do beyond bemoan the situation as well, so who can blame them?
My life gets so simple when I'm able to, even briefly, find the focus to just play my guitar or get lost in a comic book. All I really I want to do anymore is pretty much within arm's reach. This is why I would be contented with a "mindless" job doing "data entry" for "minimum wage." I have to speak in quotes because nothing is real or means what it's supposed to mean. It's another exhausting mental hoop to navigate.
Why even write this? It's nothing new or interesting. I'm just trying to gear up for another headfirst charge into a wall. I'm trying to find the sanity that struggles to maintain in the face of all my insane, desperate, or "fuck it" behaviors.
While it's true there's an infinite amount of work, it's considerably less likely you'll find that work meaningful, impactful, worthy of your time, accountable, or paying you reasonably. We're led to believe there's some form of "noble competition" in our clamoring to survive amidst the overwhelming opportunities to indulge. It's all lies and incredibly stupid. It's all an effort to stay distracted. It has me floundering with, "The system is fucked, maaaaan" vagaries because I have run out of ways to describe it.
I need to read, head into town, eat, kill time, and see a show tonight. I need to see if I can actually get paid to deliver food again. I need to put in more waste-of-time applications to mostly-fake job listings. I need to practice my guitar "extra" because I decided to go to sleep early and wake up to conduct a more-normal daylight hour existence today. I need to acknowledge and incorporate what would otherwise be overwhelming anger I can feel swelling up at the absurdity of my circumstances. Appreciation practice doesn't obfuscate or erase the practical hells.
Thursday, December 7, 2023
[1084] Bad Company
I've taken to expressing frustrations via vlogs, but unless I'm particularly worked up, it's not proving to be as in depth as I need to if I'm looking for courses of action to take.
I felt utterly defeated downloading apps like Grubhub and Doordash. To be sure, I'm not "above" or "against" working really any kind of job. I am reaching levels of properly desperate or crisis in considering how much more of my effort or time I'm going to have to waste in order to keep my head above water. I can't stop myself from reflecting on how I wish I had better or more consistent manifestations of what I consider to be my worth.
The thought occurred to me that I've always excelled at things which have already been set up. School? Read this, answer that, memorize a little here and there. Easy as pie. Work environments? Even shitty ones that have a set schedule or series of required repeatable metrics for "success," I will master your system, software, or process in 3 months, make it more efficient by 6, lament how it's killing me for the next 6 and then depending on how messy my life outside of the work environment may be, quit, or suffer until I break in larger ways.
I'm not good at the "start-up" stuff. There's too many things I can't control for. I can't make people respond to me. I can't know the amount of ways I'm getting taken advantage of, like with our rent at the mall or lazy lawyer I consulted. I can't keep the faith for anyone else I'm hoping to work with. All of my projects are extremely fragile or amateur. Everything I've attempted on the land, while it functions, and certainly has met some of my goals, is explicitly "me." I would never expect a "normal" person to live like I do, nor would I create something for someone else that functioned like how I live.
This is a daily visceral contrasting set of experiences. At one level, I'm a guy with a litany of unique skills, experiences, and beliefs about his potential. At another, I'm proper random chaos who can't keep his attention on anything for longer than a few hours, so projects are half-complete, sacrifices in comfort are made, and when ruts hit, all of the potential I'm surrounded by turns into antagonism. Right now, I have 8 computer screens in front of me. There's a scammy rental fractional-investing video from a course I need to just put to bed. There's 2 different TV channels, 2 Spotify instances (as I'm in the middle of a huge downloading project for my dad), a Coursera page, and a window with some light research on more potential remote jobs.
Just beyond these screens is my digital drum set, guitar, piano, Invincible compendium, and 10 game systems, not including Candy Crush from 1 of my 2 phones. All of it, in some way, calls to me every minute of every day. When I can do something for someone else or have a genuine reason to leave the house, it nestles away somewhere comfortable. When I'm home, which is where I wish to be generally speaking, any time I'm not doing one of those things, I feel like a wasteful cunt. I think about the people getting bombed and shot. I think about the people working themselves to death and never seeing their families. How can I exist for a single solitary second not feeling a deep appreciation for my circumstances and a willingness to do whatever I must to keep it going?
I think some version of that framing is why people get trapped under impossible-to-fix and irrational guilt. I don't feel guilty. I feel like a cunt. That framing suggests that your disposition should be dictated by your ability to engage in "self-care," or more accurately "indulgences" and "privileges." I genuinely want to learn and feel confident in every instrument I own. I don't want to at the expense of any and everything else I might focus on or do. It's okay not to be playing until my fingers bleed. And, for what it's worth, no one's misery ever, under any circumstances, has anything to do with your responsibility for getting out of a funk, enjoying something, or framing it in a way that you can avoid unnecessary guilt.
My whole mood changes in an instant when I can start imagining doing whatever is "next." I'm feeling stuck in the counseling crap? Can I envision buying an ATM route and breaking even in 2 years? That, almost perfectly random, thought brought on from reading reddit comments about B2B businesses and "unsexy" things people do to make millions gets the juices flowing. I spent 30 hours finding out a YouTube business course was ridiculous. How far into Coursera and how many certifications do you think I could get in 30 hours? How about a 2 weeks of working like I do? I'm over here trying to dodge remote customer service jobs, what if I started the new year in IT?
I'm not very disciplined. What I am is a trickster. I will trick myself by building an environment that facilitates with less concerted effort. The party house was a perfect "If you build it, they will come" kind of thing. Part of the reason the land projects stagnate is because it has only been remotely the kind of environment I envisioned with Allie was out here, and we saw how that went. All this stuff I'm surrounded by is my velvety-barred prison. When I get desperate or restless enough, I get really really good at whatever's in front of me. That can be researching and reading, binging, cleaning/organizing, playing, etc.
What to pick, and why? At a very important level, most of what I'm doing each day isn't speaking to something "more." I don't have to get any better at my instruments. I can play exactly everything Jack Johnson can if that's the kind of musician I wished to be. I beat the shit out of probably 100 or more games before I pretty much stopped gaming entirely for years. What are these "new" ones really bringing to the table? If I get these certifications, I'm guaranteed to be paying $50 a month, but the job prospects? Anyone's guess. TV is ole reliable. Half these jobs I'm applying for are just engines for email spam. I know I'm going to feel absolutely ridiculous leaving my house to drive food around only to come home hours later with maybe $100.
I really do need money though. My debt situation is starting to get to a point where I'm wondering if my internal sense of crisis is driving the car I don't want into another totalizing accident. I'm still enjoying all of the stuff it's servicing, but I probably shouldn't buy anything for 6 months with a decent job, let alone the seemingly inevitable crap I'm going to find myself enmeshed in by whomever is willing to hire…and I probably should still dash on the side.
I came out here to escape "normal" life trappings, and that's proving to be way harder than I thought. Namely because even living like I do, say I did absolutely nothing fun, bought no toys, and just collected paychecks. You know how much money I'd have right now? $4,481. 15 months of 40 hour weeks. ZERO nights out. ZERO band-ts. ZERO tickets for friends or my dad. Just me, my job, and my humble abode, in 15 months of wasting gas and time and enabling people, I could in this imagined future be just shy of $5,000 if I went even further and hit the food bank!
Let's get my savings up just a bit higher. Let's kill any remote ambition regarding the counseling business. There's another $2,000. Let's make all my meals at home. Another $4,000. Nix the home insurance. $1,000. Now we're talking. Be a literal hermit who gets amazing at ramen variations and I could be sitting fat and happy on $12,000 right now! I made $10,000 for 2 spinal taps, a 5 day stay and 6 or 7 brief follow-up visits doing drug studies.
How does anyone who has to pay rent do it? How does anyone with kids do it? And whether I had $4,000 or $12,000 right now, say I get sick and needed to hit an emergency room, in a heartbeat all the time spent working and sacrificing is snuffed out. How do you not just live in a place of "Fuck it, I'll do what I want?"
Sunday, December 3, 2023
[1083] Split-Brain Patient
I feel sick to my stomach. This is the reward I get for completing the next step of my latest meager attempt to be in business for myself. I submitted a 1023-EZ form after obtaining my EIN for the nonprofit. With the determination letter, if I'm approved, I should be able to apply for significantly more grants. What could go wrong?
At the end of the day, I'm trying to find a way to get paid. In a "perfect" world or one that made sense, the 1 in 3 people who have a substance use or mental health issue in the U.S. would be able to access and pay for counseling, and I'd be able to live a slightly-better-than-middle-class lifestyle as a result of working as long and intensely as I do.
Instead, we have this sick-care system and, in my estimation, wholly abhorrent and broken culture around what constitutes "help" and "healthy." I have to find a ways to capitalize on people who are otherwise being leveraged by systems that mostly seek to take advantage, enable (in the bad way), or obscure. I have to bother to explore nonprofit funding at all because I can't get empanelled with insurances, and for the life of me, I can't figure out if there's anything that I, in particular, am doing so horribly wrong to or with the people I'm attempting to work with.
I don't know if I can blame myself when people don't respond. Like, I've asked, no exaggeration, 6 or more times for a regular meet-up/base touch time each week so we can all be on the same page. No responses. Not from Hussain, not from our therapist, not from the old empaneling company, not from the new empaneling company. When I ask if password/login issues have been resolved, ignored for a week as well. This has happened for months.
What am I supposed to do about that? Fire everyone? I'm not asking for an unreasonable amount of time. I'm not doing so in a way that's like, "Hey you cunts, what the fuck is going on?" I feel like I'm in an absurdist cartoon. I cannot wrap my fucking head around why it is so hard to get people to even answer a fucking question or respond when spoken to.
If we dip into addiction counseling 101, this would fall into a category of "things I can't control." The things I can control, I'm putting the work into. I'm submitting the forms, paying the fees, and getting the numbers. I'm hiring new people and exploring hopefully smarter and better behaved options that will help me progress. I'm watching tutorial videos and reading infinitely obscure and confusing federal and state guideline garbage in desperate swing after desperate swing to get SOMETHING working in a way that hopefully doesn't bite me too hard in the ass when I fuck up a vital detail.
I want to abandon it all and just go up north and help my dad work his gravesite maintenance business. Of course, it's December.
Consider this something of a two-parter because I stepped away for several hours and my mood has shifted.
One of the blessings/curses of writing and having an online presence is that you can see, instantly, how much hasn't changed. You can feel how "hopeless" or "pointless" your goals, speculations, or feelings were in any moment, years ago, and how they have or haven't landed in what's manifesting for you currently.
Seemingly all of my "big" goals stay in a state of perpetual failure. The reason appears to be, I can't do it alone. Things like becoming genuinely off-grid, building certain "green" structures, experimenting with different business ideas based off of having the land, or the general "work for myself" goal that I've been miserable at for at least 10-15 years now depending on how you wish to consider saving from drug studies or the efforts made in service to the coffee shop and counseling.
I'm sensitive to protesting too much. My "comfort" levels, as far as incomplete and arguably bad words are concerned, have never been under genuine threat. I, perhaps in more of a desperate self-preservation and defiant fashion than I realized as it was happening, shifted my goals to buying and traveling to and seeing shit. I've never been under the illusion that you can fill the "meaning" hole at the center of your soul through spending money. I was getting self-conscious about the amount of time ticking by where I wasn't at least seeking entertainment, culture, or ever-smoothing of rough inconvenient edges.
The major sticking point is the being alone part. If I want to fuck off and drink every night and find some little rut with other Iceman Cometh types, I could start that tomorrow. I got whiffs of it waiting at the bar before the comedy show this weekend. If I want to "play nice" with immolation at dozens of demonstrably harmful institutions professing to help, I could have stayed at Groups or any of the other spots. If I just wanted to be some eccentric "artist" and fuck around all day on my instruments until I nailed "my sound" and "message," I'd spend considerably less time beating myself up trying to find the focus to pursue grants or conceive of creative ways of fixing my problems.
I've wasted, not precisely true, an incredible amount of time on people and endeavors that have taken me for granted, lost the faith, threw my effort and perspective in my face, lied to me, or otherwise tried to make it seem as though I'm in the wrong for trying, sacrificing, and continuing to hold myself to what's proving to be an ongoing incredibly difficult standard. I'd like to just blame myself and say something like "I signed up for it!" but it wholly obscures the horrific environment I'm plugged into.
In theory, I "should" be able to see different ways out. I have one brain. If I don't see something, it's an unknown unknown, then all I can do is spiral. If I try to get more people involved and all they do is shrug, ignore me, or contribute markedly worse information into the mix, the fuck am I supposed to do with that?
I'm comfortable entertaining the idea of failure and moving on. I don't absolutely have to succeed at everything I try, but if I fail, I wish it was for at least remotely reasonable things. I wish it didn't speak to what feel like larger more despotic and harrowing forces mauling our collective psyche about our prospects or responsibilities.
I spent more money today. I paid the $275 to get a tax-exempt determination letter. It still has to be determined, and they'll remind you on every other page there's ongoing reporting requirements as though you don't file your taxes every year already. Will it inch me "forward?" Who knows. It could as easily come back with some questions I can't answer or perfectly ridiculous hang up that requires appeals and new fees and numbers to wait on hold for hours to "fix."
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