This is the third time I've tried to write in the last week. The first time, I deleted everything, maybe 8 paragraphs of bitching. The second time, I restarted my computer without saving (turns out it autosaved, but if I was that forgetful of it, was it really worth saving?). Now, I'm going to use some new echoing sentiments and see if they can bring the feeling home.
A first-class mage, out of mana, all-but totally defeated in battle, would continue to fight until the end.
I also saw Tony Robbins tell Theo Von to look around the room for every brown object, and then asked him to report on how many red things he saw. He then challenged Theo on how many things he instinctively tried to make fit into the "red" category that might have been close, but not quite right. It was a quick illustration to demonstrate how we filter in and out information based on what we want to see and reflexively justify or make excuses to help "win" in our perception of how much we noticed.
Writing helped teach me at more of an instinct level that my perception was infinitely incomplete. I write to express the "drama" or pain and negativity and catastrophic consequences of inattention and inaction. And then after each sentence, I'm presented with the choice to double down or refute. I draw relative conclusions based on how I'm choosing to express myself on the topic. I'm not convinced. I'm never all bad or all good. My motivations are often equally greedy and selfish as they are kind and patient. I think to be a wise or real human you have to be aware of that duality in as many moments as you can.
My life, or at least the narrative that feels most appropriate to try and capture it, changed in a fundamental way a few days ago. For the first time, I'm able to "simply" do my job without qualification. There's still messy bits that I'm working to stabilize, but I'm not at the mercy of the forces I've been complaining about for years. I have breathing room to see if people I've hired raise even more funds or successfully net me grant money. I have enough to keep the credit card companies at bay. I just have to do what I do best, talk, and get in front of as many people as I can.
I've had big portions of my life where I've felt relatively "free." Drug study money time where I was functionally retired for my 20s I wasn't anchored by anything but my "friends'" ambivalence and too much reading about the world. I woke up and slept when I pleased. I had thousands in the bank. It obviously wasn't what I aspired to be or have or I wouldn't have taken on the thousand headaches related to building a more permanent living situation. This isn't the first time I've ever been able to breathe, but it's a new kind of air.
One of the things I mentioned in those previous writing attempts was my aptitude for games like StarCraft. You start with the resources on the map. At different points in my life, I've made manifest what I wanted/needed when the resources were in place. Bills covered while in school? I built the next-level party environment. Cash upon graduating? Oh look, a coffee shop. Money saved from drug studies and/or working several jobs at once? I genuinely forget "the struggle" it's been to get here typing this from my fort staring down the barrel of an endless list of projects or upgrades to make. You give me the instrument, or tool, or video game and I learn how to play it, if not better than you, better than most.
I'm a first-class mage. I keep fighting, even when I feel, acutely and constantly, at some proverbial end of my rope, existentially dreadful, and full of hatred for this, that, and the other thing. A condescending conversation can set me on something of a roller coaster, and then a surprise, like the donated money to get back to work, quickens the process to shuffle that one asshole into the gigantic pile of assholes making the same predictable mistakes that have set me off my whole life. My emotional response is routinely violated and proven wrong, so, I learn not to trust it. It goes both ways though, and you have to adjust your sense of "happiness," which I think is miscalibrated in a lot of people.
I'm not unhappy. I'm also not particularly enthused or engaged by most things. I can watch most TV sped up because they aren't saying anything interesting or new. I'm not "shocked" by the horrors reported in the news. I'm not so sheltered or impoverished to be brought to tears in some Dobby-esc way over what anyone treated appropriately could be initially excused for taking for granted. I know, just as an animal, I'm predisposed to sense the bad and danger. I know we're negatively biased. Being aware of and incorporating that feels like the project of any conversation about addiction, mental health, or whether or not we find a place for ourselves in the world.
Part of the miscalibration in our sense of "happiness" or "belonging" I think stems from bad incentives, bad expectations, and inexhaustible wells of denial and excuse making. I can identify literally dozens of "failure" points that would have prevented me from breathing this new air regarding my company. Some of them still currently exist and are being worked out. But what is "failure" to me? It's a state that can change. It's a point of learning. It's the chance to ask new questions. It's growth if you incorporate it. I need failure. I want to know what's going to fail early and often, so I can fix it or work around it.
I look for failure points. I look for the pain and drama and inexcusable injustice. Then I see if there's something I can personally do in how I orient myself towards that thing. I can't "fix" every problem in the world, and am thousands of degrees away from practically influencing almost anything. I can always control how or whether I talk about it. I can't fix inflation or "the economy," but I can occupy a space that softens the blow of prices rising and greedy landlords. There's gonna be one Dan Price for every 10,000 "normal" capitalist monsters, so I can pursue working conditions that attempt to bypass the machine, even while I'm working for it.
It's hard. But it's no harder than the stories I hear, by the hundreds, related to what people are struggling with as it pertains to their health, families, or finances. I'm in debt too. Not relative to my total assets or even half of what I tend to make every year, but my debt is servicing fun and growth. My debt is investing in crating a means to sustain my life and grow in my otherwise capacities if purely financial is off the table. I get more time. I get more chances to share with people ready to receive. I get to find the "happy" balance between what I'm working on, when I'm having fun, and when I'm navigating a fresh horror. It's hard no matter what you're doing in life. It feels orders of magnitude harder when you don't know why you're suffering whatever it is you are or can't find a matching fulfilling sense of order and meaning to press right up against the chaos.
It means something to me to be my brand of mouthy cunt. It means something to me to reflect on everything I've built, chaotically and constantly incomplete as they may be. It means something to me to go down swinging and find the "neutral" or "happy" blog after I've bitched and moaned for hours. I'm a loser and a failure and then whatever comes next, all at once, every day, all the time. I don't want to wildly swing in any direction and register the feeling as "true" in some too-compelling way.
This, and the spirit of those two unpublished blogs, is my 1,100th attempt to square my thoughts. What's the last thing you've done 1,100 times? That's how many times I've checked in on my worst impulses. It's thousands of hours of breathing and patience in spite of a headache, racing heart, or impulse to self-destruct. It's cheerleading for myself to maintain or succeed when I can't find anyone to share my perspective enough to offer anything I find practically useful. In the 20 years I've been practicing, I've met a literal handful of people practically implicated and interested in the potential consequences of that practice. No matter the examples that get set. No matter the explanations offered. Most of us, most of the time, find our rut, and look for anything to keep us there.
I know how far and exotic my thoughts get with regard to what I wish to create. I know no incomplete fantasy snapshot is going to capture the work and pain and sacrifices. So, I always bring myself back here. How do I feel right now? Do I recognize the potential? Am I cautiously optimistic? Am I doing other things to celebrate my interests and values while "the main thing(s)" still sit in a more hazy or indeterminate state?
I haven't slowed down going to shows. I'm still practicing my instruments, reading, playing video games, and planning or spending time with friends. I've got lines in the water for grants and fundraising. I just got off the phone with one of three potential someones to fix our licensed therapist hole. I've reached out and told my personal contacts we're in business. I'm forging ahead, in literally every moment I can, to continue to craft an environment that doesn't piss me off or confuse the fuck out of me in how negligently unaware it can manage to operate.
You can call it good or bad, but I realize it as working. Working for its own sake because the values contained can't be better expressed or felt any other way. I literally feel better as I work to figure out what's going on in my head. I cannot deny what I've created as I sit within my series of achieved goals. When I reflect on what I've written or overcome, that's the new imprint on my mind. It transforms a story of venting or failure into a processing guidestone on the way to the next thing. My brain does not have that habit "naturally." I am incomplete and begging to begin spiraling into hell if I made a determined effort to stop writing to just "see how things go."
I already know that story. It happens in every moment I need to write, but haven't yet. It's how I felt before I engaged the tool and did the work. It's what I hear from others who are, to be sure, no more or less confused about life or their place in it than I am, but refuse to even attempt to organize it. Or they'll try once or twice, "Doing what I told them," when what I told them is that I've done it 1,100 times for 20 years. They heard what they wanted to hear to keep them exactly where they are.
I don't want to be right here, and I want to be exactly here at the same time. I want a slightly warmer house with dedicated cord-managed rooms and high-end equipment. I want a sustainable nonprofit or business expressing my values that requires less of my presence over time. I want to be doing fun things, with friends, in any moment either of us choose, not thinking about the costs. I want to be telling other people's stories of success and values through the work they've done that shame and humble the empty "help" and "passion" blind cunts profess from their entitled perches and insecure bubbles. I want so many things, in unashamed ways, and I know what must die in order to get them.
Until then, the ever-precarious story of inflaming and infusing incidents remains a work in progress.
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