[1209] Ladies And Gentlemen

 It’s 12:42 AM, July 5th, and there’s still a handful of explosions in the background. Again, I have not traveled to location where fireworks are on display. Again, I have a deep and abiding feeling that “things” are wrong. I’m otherwise spiraling within my decadent observations and indulgences, wholly unprepared but for my observant practical nihilism and performative recursivity so astutely pointed out by various chat bots.

You hear how convoluted that last line was? See, it’s how the thought came to me, but it’s certainly not clear nor fit for publication. I, like us all, am my own brand and voice, no? If I want to get attention and be marketable, I need to sharpen up. If I want to echo David Foster Wallace or other angsty introspective documentarians of decline, I need to be persistent in my pitches to niche publishers so I can get a rabid 1,000-person-strong fan base.

One of the largest themes that beat up my brain is the story of performance versus truth. Most of my life, I’m treated with an extreme hostility when the other person feels how disinterested and unwilling I am to perform. I’m normal enough. I’ll say “bless you” and hold doors or compliment your clear attempt to be noticed. I won’t cosign your ambivalence to “real” or “heavy” ideas. I won’t pat you on the back for going halfway in your reasoning and action when the requisite moral or sensical behavior exists in the next nanosecond.

I take a certain comfort in the structure of performance. Pretty much every work environment serves to keep me from succumbing to the “freedom” of an unstructured day for indefinite periods of time after paying the bills well in advance. But I have to do extra work. I have to “be normal,” when every ounce of my being wants to rush to the end. I don’t need more ruminating and unpacking of the themes. I don’t need more analysis on the nature of the problem. I have the fix. I often employ the fix in my own life. My life isn’t just mine, so the fix is never comprehensive enough.

Again, that sounds abstract. An AI bot would tell me to anchor that to a specific example of a fix I implement in work or in how I approach my land projects. You know, for publication in a cleaned-up version of this, I’d want the reader to know the existential angst is driven by concrete examples and can translate into action. But also, fuck you if you’re so brain-dead you can’t take any single line and consider if you’ve felt the same or it resonates along an analogous example. Who the fuck am I writing for if not someone with the own running dialogue they’re desperate to see intersected with people like me?

I did something really stupid recently. But, it was only stupid if I don’t get away with it. I spent entirely too much money unlocking a gorilla in the game Last War. I, like all money, have and don’t have it to spend. I have no perfect system for saying war gorilla is “better” or “worse” than the alcohol, food, and concert tickets I otherwise spend my money on. It was stupid because I say so, and because I have deep resentment towards pay-to-play gaming. Also, I can probably get the money back because I immediately reported it as unauthorized spending I blamed on my non-existent nephew.

That I would even have this as a scene to play out in life testifies to the fundamental arbitrariness and decadence of my existence. I go from broke to 1st-world poor or hood-rich in months. I don’t tithe to feed the hungry, I buy band T-shirts of decent players. I’m drinking an over-priced beer I’m not really enjoying. I have 2 phones, one to more easily facilitate my TV and music habits entirely.

Here there’s a temptation to talk about what I do for a living to like leverage against how I assume I might otherwise be perceived as a piece of shit. It’s interesting to me because it would be part of the performance. Don’t you know? I work to help people maintain sobriety! I can get a little loosey-goosey in my spending because I’m a do-gooder! Go me! I work a job like that because I’m incidentally equipped, not because it’s a calling or measure of moral superiority. I’m driven by a desire to be understood and see things I take for granted manifest in new and meaningful ways for people. It’s as much a selfish pursuit as anything else. And, it pays.

“Things,” for me, are so good. Like, so good. I eat what I want. I have incredible friends. My dad and step-mom are unwaveringly supportive. I have back-up plans if shit gets dark. I own several vehicles, land, expensive toys, and cats. I’m healthy and can do the yoga poses on IOP yoga days. My job is weirdly occupying a space where I make just enough money for the amount of time I’m putting in which is allowing me to progress on land projects and not feel burnt out.

And yet, it’s not about me. What I want, at bottom, really has nothing to do with me. I’ve known about me and what I’m capable of for as long as I can remember. I get so bored with myself, I invite stupidly-expensive gorilla stories into my narrative. I want to believe in more than me. I want to genuinely think our collective space can achieve what I do for myself. I want to trust and invest and discover the focus that makes idle occupation of funds or time mute. I want you to have what I have so that we can play a different game of creative exchange instead of whatever you want to make of this fascist hateful hellscape.

It’s when I acutely feel like I don’t know where to go that I turn catastrophically inward and invite arbitrary chaos. I don’t look for people to blame. I don’t scapegoat my sky-daddy. I don’t guilt-trip myself nor respect reflexively shame. I reassert the desire and try once again to articulate the nature of the loneliness. Certainly, let’s watch the movie, grab dinner, drink the beer, see the show, and liberally disperse our opinions. Will it last? Does it deserve to? And although the punishments feel constant and motivated in their ascent, are they translating?