[1260] Crowning Achievements

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

I consider myself a "high-achieving" person. What does that mean?

I have to lead with all the questions, or perhaps assumptions, that follow this kind of claim.

"So, what? You think you're better than everyone else?"

"You think you've achieved something, but what about (fill in amazing person/thing)."

"Oh, another person seeking attention and validation."

"That doesn't sound like much/enough/worthwhile to me."

"So then why can't you fix (fill in thing they know about your life.)"

"Me too! Wanna be autism/ADHD buddies!"

While it might be unwise to make unfair comparisons, it's a different exercise entirely to contextualize something. There's classics like measuring your education. Just by getting a degree, I'm in the "top 38%" of the U.S. population. Whether or not that means something you, or me, or anyone who might hire me, is a world of different questions. My degree didn’t matter for a decade, or anything to me at the time, and then it mattered a lot for things I never saw coming.

I like to use choice examples from my history to "argue" and "attest" to what I think is most indicative of the claim. I think they represent me in the "best" light, and what I'd want anyone to know about what I'm capable of. I have many classics.

In 2nd grade my teacher had a system of filling out these worksheet transparencies for $1, and paid out for every time you could recite a growing number of U.S. capitals. I bled her dry.

In 4th grade we had timed math quizzes where I routinely got done the fastest and was only remotely occasionally beaten by a kid named Jonathan.

In 5th grade I got rich on in-class currency and ran out of things to buy, so started distributing my surplus to the rest of the class, not knowing we were having one final end-of-year multi-room market day. I also completed the day’s homework before the first day’s bell if my teacher made the mistake of listing what we were going to do on the board. Me, Natasha, and Amy had an “extra” class.

In 6th grade, I read every book on the library reading list and passed every computer test, and when the assistant librarian protested against me moving on to reading the 7th grade books, the head librarian told her to kick rocks. Her "fuck you" face turned me off from bothering.

In middle and high school I was in honors classes. I was first chair in band (though, not section leader for marching band, because my band teacher is the same kind of smart-ass I am). Our jazz band won state. I graduated "early" (because we switched to trimesters my senior year, but I only had 5 of 6 classes so I got to come to school late, spend 3 of those classes in band (doing whatever I wanted for 2).

I worked 3 jobs simultaneously in high school if you understand the slave labor that is marching band. One, cart-boy-who-could-push-Target red cards so well I couldn't cash in all the food and CD vouchers I earned messing up your credit. I was promoted twice to management at my first job. I could clean theaters and close the concession stand quicker than anyone the entire 2 years and 8 months I worked there.

Are you noticing a pattern? I'm not talking about friendships, helping anyone, being a "good person," or anything I'm sure most people were better at while I was "doing me."

In college, I got disillusioned because I couldn't take classes where I had read every book on the syllabus and showed I had pockets of more knowledge about things than a T.A.

I threw parties like you see in the movies, designing a house layout for multiple kinds of entertainment and debauchery. I "won" a shot club party I'm still a little confused how I survived the next day. The average number of sexual partners is between 6-11 in a lifetime for men, so I'm 3-5 times sluttier, and don't plan to die soon.

I play 2 instruments well, 7 passably. I'm competent enough to utilize tools in a way that's allowed me to tear down sheds and turn them into rooms to my house. I've started several, technically broken-even, businesses, a non-profit, and otherwise worked 25 different jobs ranging from delivery boy to child welfare assessor. I've gotten certified in forensic interviewing, my real estate broker's license, and to cab drive. I've written at least 1,260 times trying to better understand myself and where/whether I belong.

I've seen 1,815 days worth of television and movies (sped up, no commercials) of 2,190 shows and 4,116 movies. I've seen 1,147 comedy/music/theater performances during 467 concerts/shows, with 882 artists at 137 venues in 41 locations. I own land, my house, 2 working vehicles. The furthest I’ve been west is California, north Montreal, south Florida, and east North Carolina.

I think many people would think about what they have or haven't achieved in terms of their family. I've functionally cut most of mine off. My longest relationship was for 5 years, and I think it's true that we probably spent the back half of it breaking up. I've never seriously wanted kids. Until my mid 20s, I had very little, if no regard, for how I spoke or carried myself in how it made you feel.

My mom was physically and emotionally abusive. My dad's the nicest person I know, and my grandma held the title before him before she died. He's also an iron-worker, Harley rider, and grew up with a WWII veteran household where both my grandparents worked in the steel mill. A certain work ethic and expectation has been instilled. My grandpa spoke 4 languages and killed Nazis. I barely understand some Spanish and really hope I’m contributing to the world in a way that prevents us from having to kill Nazis again.

I had no control over being born "cute" or "smart" or "talented" or into a free post world war country my grandparents immigrated to. I can't reasonably lay claim to those things. I certainly haven't even spent most of my life passably "wise" or "nice." I could follow certain rules and procedures to what were, in the past, more predictable ends. The abuse from my mother had me pretty-well trained not to play with certain kinds of fire. I graduated around the financial crash, within the neoliberal march towards "globalization," and concentrations of wealth more extreme than has ever existed. I grew up alongside the internet, long enough to remember before it was thing, when it used to be cool, and can now mourn for what it's become.

What "I" could or can achieve on any given day of my life is extremely context specific. Are girls fucking me if I'm not 22 and we're both at least tipsy? Thankfully, yes, but who's going to pretend that wasn't an extremely specific set of conditions that juiced the numbers? Do I graduate college if my dad didn't get settlement money and it was paid for before it began? I went from honor student to learning how to party I felt so betrayed by college, not because I was sheltered or couldn't hack it; it showed me why it was beneath me and how it was a waste of time and money.

I got into social work at 30. The wanna-be entrepreneur who found himself out of a home due to deteriorating communication and relationships with past friends was proving bleak. I started getting put in charge of transporting people's children to supervised visitations and recording/reporting how those visits went. I transferred to the State, where now I was tasked with investigating physical and sexual abuse allegations. What I said had to make sense in court. I had to invite myself into your home in a way that would keep you liking and talking to me. I never found the work itself stressful.

Now, I'm a CADAC II addiction counselor who has been told on more than one occasion I'm better than previous therapists my clients have talked to. I'm not a therapist. I've shadowed other counselor's sessions. I'm inclined to believe them, if only because my approach I feel has little to do with "me." I listen and re-frame. You either do the work or not. I'm not engaged or entertained by trying to judge you or pit our experiences against each other. If what I'm talking about doesn't make sense to you in your terms and within the context of your life, I might as well be speaking bad Spanish.

I suspect, if you've made it this far, at some point you got exasperated or annoyed with the examples I presented from my life in service to my claim. "Who cares?" "What does this have to do with anything?" "This isn't why I internet." That fundamental self-bias is the thing our institutions and traditions, often woefully, invite us to transcend. Give it up to God, right? "We're a family!" your creepy corporate overlord beckons. If you've dropped acid or done shrooms and viscerally experienced the oneness of everything, you might stay psychologically and dispositionally open to investigating just how this, and in fact anything, reflects some aspect of "you."

I think I'm moved to make something of an accounting of my sense of achievement because it feels like I'm on the verge of matching or beating where I've set the bar. I work for a company, and an individual, who I think has real promise of being a long-term business partner who I'm investing my time and resources with at functionally the ground floor. I'm paid an hourly rate that makes the all-encompassing nature of social work worth it. In weeks, not months, I'll be able to materially alter how I spend my time and what I'm able to invest in.

My problem is being perfectly convinced about what I'm capable of or willing to do. That's not a secret to me or anyone around me. My problem is how to get more people on board. I romanticize the college party days precisely because it was something that felt like "us" more than "me." For as many times as people have told me to go fuck myself (they phrase it as, "good luck"), naked tequila parties are a different animal if you're by yourself.

I think we're suffering an immense political crisis. I see up close every day how and why your "average person" cannot exercise the tools or mechanisms of their contexts. Their mental and physical health is poor. The jobs available barely pay. The "basic" life expenses can't be covered. The people who represent them, don't. I spend most of my days trying to speak to the nature of the context they are embedded in so they don't eat themselves alive with the story of what they aren't worth or can't achieve. Consistently waking up on time, getting to work, catching yourself before you say a mean or harmful thing, and allowing yourself to feel good, ever, are real meaningful achievable and worthwhile goals any day you choose to adopt them.

Today, I think it's less mysterious why I lasted as long as I did at DCS or why I continue to take jobs where I'm patiently and actively trying to quell the raging consequences of abuse and negligence that have manifested through my clients' behaviors. I don't know what we can achieve together or what you will go on to do once we sort out the "easy" things I got to take for granted as I flexed the edges of my context. I'm infinitely curious about how good things can be when we all find the right form of peace and prosperity that prompts us to achieve as highly as we can.

There's an order of operations. There's rules. There's a plane of mutual understanding we must all occupy to get there. I'd prefer, most often, we didn't have to be high and drunk to share it. I'd prefer it didn't pop up as lashing out in hatred or exhaustion for the wrong things. I think the more time we spend figuring out how much "I" am shaped by what we're paying attention to, the better chance we have to take responsibility for how we're spending that time and attention.

In the next 6 months, "I" want to have a robustly operational civic-mirror.com because I think I'll have the money to both buy the infrastructure to operate it, and afford the expertise to do it right. I want to have most of the tickets bought for the 100 shows a year average I'm trying to keep for the 5th year. I want to have my fence project completed. I want to be working a "comfortable" 40-50 hour a week schedule 4 days a week in what I hope is a growing partnership. I'd "like" to spend an obscene amount of money eating at Smyth in Chicago, and to seriously consider music/recording lessons.

I like the idea of centralizing what it means to achieve in terms of what you build or create. That doesn't pit "stuff" against a family or skill set. What took a meaningful sacrifice of time to get good at? What aren't you willing to trade for what you know or how you operate now? Are the examples of who you are or what you're worth part of a self-serving narrative, or demonstrative of your values and ongoing work? I want to make money so I can invest and distribute. I want to build accountability tools so I can see the things I want and need manifest within my lifetime and in service to the people I care about. I want to grow in my talent and capacity so I can connect with people who I admire for the work they've done in service to theirs. I want you to feel as capable of solving and organizing your universe as I do mine so we can see what they do combined.

[1259] Swing Low

I’m feeling something of a “chaos energy,” so let’s see if it translates to anything worth reading.

I’m running for office. I did it, literally almost last filing minute, after catching a post from MAD Indiana Voters showing a list of offices running unopposed. It’s a forgone conclusion in most people’s minds that Indiana is a republican/fascist stronghold, right? Pay no mind to Obama winning the state in 2008, that’s ancient history, and we all know politics is about the immediacy of our ever-escalating grievances.

As soon as I filed, my filing was challenged by a local crazy person. A very annoying several hours attending a public hearing I, and dozens of others she had challenged, resulted in time wasted I won’t get back and the immediate reality check for why “people” don’t get involved or “nothing” gets done. These processes and procedures are by design. They slow things down. They make things bureaucratic so they, theoretically, don’t get violent. That morning, adults performed an accountability ritual, respect, and patience towards someone incapable of grasping the concepts for themselves.

Then I attended my first democratic party meeting. I was 1 of 4 people there under the age of 40. I listened to no less than 15 polite asks for money, for shirts, for banners, for flyers, for some quasi-beleaguered group, for someone’s individual effort that’s really set to do something swell. See you at the booth, the cookout, the farmer’s market weeks from now. I was invited to facebook groups, group chats, and email chains. I’ve been told I should be introduced to so and so. They want to support me in any way they can.

My pithy and aggravated way to summarize my experience so far is, it’s like the Nazis are up the road, shooting people, burning down everything I care about, and my compatriots are huddled against a window looking out at the destruction, and the first thing anyone thinks to say is, “We should call a meeting about this.”

There is no leader. There is no faith in the broader structure or coalition. You have a handful of the busy-types trying to project agreeability as they throw ideas into the wind of what “anyone” should do. It’s people spinning wheels. It’s people convinced of their own side-quest. It’s people who make you feel exhausted about the meta-work of how to sort and organize them on top of the real battle at your door.

Cue the stick-in-your-own-bike-spokes commentary. “They’re just trying to make a difference!” “Winning would be great!” “Our chances are small, but if we try in every race our chances improve!” “At this point, I’m happy with any improvement!” These are all real quotes.

I’m a counselor. I have to take vague contradictory and often empty chaos and turn it into specific action that we can measure in order to say anything meaningful about whether or not you’re “getting better.” “Just” is a trigger word for me. “Difference,” from what to what? Why do you think our chances are small? Why do you think I think you’re going to stay perfectly unable to explain yourself? What does “trying” look like, and would Yoda have anything to say about that? What can you say is improved if you refuse to define a floor?

I remember writing about the origins and effectiveness of the ironically named “Tea Party.” Idiots ignorantly screaming lies from a bed of oligarchic money in service to inducing a broader cultural psychosis has fundamentally altered our concept of ourselves and politics. They won, hammering the stupid bell, until we all went deaf. What’s the strategy democrats? Knock doors and hand people a spreadsheet? (real suggestion). Generate 6 different websites showing precinct percentages and asking over and over and over again what problems are facing “real people” while it never fucking occurs to you to just sit and talk with them? (real example).

People are addicted to their self-serving stories, exacerbated by social media, but in general as, allegedly, conscious animals. They don’t, actually, vote “issues.” They aren’t, actually, dispositionally situated to be an educated accountable progressive hive-mind. They are situational, relational, and opportunistic. A few buck trends and occasionally find seats of decent power to set a different kind of example. The vast majority, believe it or not, will not nor ever learn or care about the extent of anything you’ve heard on any actual news outlet. They’re Kaleb on Clarkson’s Farm watching the robot planter move 2 miles an hour up and down the field for hours. They’ve never watched a TikTok to the end.

So, what’s the nature of the problem? “Stupid people?” “Voter turnout?” “Attention spans?” “Propaganda?” “Disorganization?” Your favorite excuse is as good as any.

2 out of 3 “average” people will profess a full-throated desire for something akin to a dictatorship. They want a leader. They want direction. They want to be given license to hate a designated enemy. They want life as easy as most of you provide for your pets. How much time are you spending trying to figure out how to persuade your dog to care about climate change? Tell me, honestly, what your cockatoo thinks about the deaths of children and soft power after the cuts to USAID. The fascists have taken over on the power of blind hatred, and you’re still trying to cope with the irony of them co-opting taxation without representation?

I think you’re scared to admit and work with the hate you feel. I think you want to pretend you’re better than Cletus. I think the nature of your addictive self-delusion sets its sights so low.

[1258] Typical

I think it’s every single person’s responsibility to figure out what “balance” means to them.

I don’t mean in some kind of grandiose cosmic sense either. I think people are lazy and unwise when they invoke karma or divine punishment.  If I have to wait for you to get to Hell before I experience a sense of justice or relief, I’m just avoiding the work. I don’t trust that “bad” or “evil” people get their due, nor do I see rewards reaped by those I consider the best of us. Also, don’t take my word for it, talk to them yourself.

That’s what I do. I talk. I talk to myself in writing. I talk to “you,” the disembodied impression I get of the amalgamation of internet commentary, upvotes, and propaganda masquerading as individual identity and thought. I talk to clients. I talk to friends. I talk to people I’ve once conceived of as “family” or “friend” that, for the sake of sense and mental health, are better situated as memories or acquaintances.

There’s a sign you’re talking too much, un an unbalanced way, when you’re just repeating yourself. I work in addiction. My signal to redirect you is around the 3rd or 4th time you’ve said, almost exactly, the same thing to me within the course of a few minutes. The ruminating on a problem or the matter-of-fact, almost rehearsed, restatement of where you’re coming from. When your fundamental disposition is that of betrayed trust, unreliable reality, and out-of-control reactionary behavior, you anchor on something chronic, repeatable.

I think it’s the same reason children watch the same things over and over again. There’s safety and security in what you can predict and reproduce. To the extent your drug use interrupted or broke your developmental capacity, it stands to reason you would default to a “stuck” place. I don’t think it’s a leap to imagine the same structural forces operating in any individual brain mapping onto how we conduct our broader broken cultures. If we’ve raised generations devoid of certain values, practices, or molding circumstances, I think what “we” see today makes almost too much sense.

I’m struck by how often I hear, “I could never believe” or “I would never imagine.” The latest was 30 minutes ago from Scott Pelley on an episode of The Interview. This is a man who has spent almost as much time as I’ve been alive traveling the world, embedding himself into life-threatening situations, and reporting on the vastness of human experience. If he’s capable of being shocked and surprised about the depth of human depravity, disingenuousness, and destruction, we’re talking about something that transcends knowledge and experience.

At work, people say things like they can’t believe their spouse would be so abusive or manipulating. They can’t believe the cops or the courts or the people involved in the programs they were apart of would so something so callous or negligent. They can’t believe their own behavior when they were deeper in their addiction. Outside of work, I often get laughs from people who’ve said something like, “I can’t believe you’d say that!” Yes, we’re talking about a colloquial way in which people speak, but also, I believe people genuinely aren’t imagining and reckoning with what’s possible and how often it occurs.

I believe. Mostly, it’s because it doesn’t feel like a belief system. I just see, and hear, and read about, and watch 60 Minutes, and listen to dozens of podcasts, and take in hundreds of stories of woe well-independent of whether I’m getting paid for it that day. I have to balance how often I’m steeped in “drama” altogether with how often I’m talking about TV or music. If I’m not paying attention, it’s literally just drama all the time. My friends are primarily social workers. They have messy family lives. My family is its own brand of chronic condition.

Many, maybe not most, days I feel out of balance. I, generally, have “a lot” or “too much” energy relative to the people around me or the tasks I might adopt. If we just took a snapshot of today, I got up around 10. The weather is a little hot, but I could go outside and get things done. I could play videogames. I could practice an instrument. I could get caught up on my TV shows. I could do the handful of chores. It’s only 4 o’lock. I’ve eaten, spent some time vibe-coding, and watched Tucci in Italy. Every single day there’s a “worthy-day”’s worth of activity, but it rarely “feels balanced.”

Therefore, my task most days, is to dig out what I think I “should” do, and for how long, every day. This gets easier when I obligate myself to a job and “regular” working hours. This gets easier when I’m “forced” to wake up and go to bed around the same times. If there’s any “real” obligation like picking up cat food or needing to mail something, so much of the work is done for me. I write in service to looking for the balance, the signal to “go,” or permission to structure and work within that structure.

Otherwise, it all feels like a blog of “stuff” to “maybe.” I start imagining my “perfect” kind of days, which acts as it’s own anchor because no matter what I do or accomplish, it’s not going to live up to the emotional resonance of artful dreaming. I’m working towards that perfection as often as I can. I look for jobs that don’t consume all my time. I try to budget in a way that let’s me eat what I want, go where I want to go, or live within a window of security most do not afford themselves. That is, the nature of what I’m “pressured” to do any given day isn’t typical. It’s a blessing in the flow and moments in which I’m exercising that freedom. It’s a curse when I’m floating about.

The balance between that floating and a more disciplined day is something hard to discuss because I don’t meet, really anyone, who seems to be as concerned with it as I am. They embody the obligations of their jobs or families. They don’t feel like they have choices really at all, seemingly ever. Again, don’t take my word for it, talk to them. They spend their time appeasing and pacifying or justifying the consequences they experience from others or the nature of their own complacency. “What can they do?” They ask insincerely.

You can do what you attend to. I write because on these floaty/disconcerting days where I technically have freedom, if I don’t do this kind of exercise to focus up and explore where my brain wishes to drift, I’m functionally paralyzed. I won’t do the “easy” things. I won’t find the enjoyment in things I claim to enjoy. It’s hard to do anything because I’m literally not doing the work, yet, of conceiving of myself and the consequences of my relationship to those things. Will I feel “guilty” or “lazy” if I do or don’t? Right now, do I “care?” You don’t know if you don’t ask. You don’t get useful actionable information if you can’t answer honestly.

I’m on verge of a level of productivity and engaging/meaningful work that I’ve never really had before. In the balance between time, money, and operating conditions, I’ve tended to have an overabundance of 1 or 2, and none of the 3rd. It sucks to be poor, but when you have money and time and it decides to rain for 3 weeks, that’s acutely frustrating. Well, I have a job now where I set the schedule, can make enough in a week to afford pretty much any project around the land, any ticket I wish to buy, and any targeted-ad tool I might think is useful. I’m imagining vacations. I’m budgeting things like extending my fort and experimenting with new hobbies.

I watch these travel or cooking shows where people who’ve fished the same waters and cook the same meals for decades look relaxed and happy. They have a routine. They have family. They have the joy of food and wine. They have the weather that literally bakes into a sort of eternal moment you can see they are savoring indefinitely. They’re managing to do so when the backdrop of their existence is plagued by ridiculous and destructive politics. You get a real sense that there’s a way to live, right here and now, every day, in spite of seemingly everyone and everything that can’t figure it out choosing instead to look for ways to kill you.

I wonder if that’s the begrudging default “balance” people lay claim to. The one where what they love rests on precarious assumptions. Who would suspect their love or appreciation manifests in spite more than as a cause for its own sake? Do you make the world’s most delicious risotto in lieu of finding, cultivating, recognizing, and protecting those who would preserve your ability to do so for generations? I can point to many things I deeply enjoy. I still think I would prefer a genuine sense that, or I, were safe to enjoy them. As safe as I know we all could be if our actions matched the depth of the words we used.

[1257] Working Girls

I want to tell you a little bit about my job. To me, it’s not a very complicated job, but it has as many moving parts as exist within the people involved. I think it’s odd to call it “social work,” given the people who need to do all the work are the ones I’m tasked with inviting to do so.

“Social work,” is very broad terminology wise. I used to be an assessor for DCS. I’ve done visit supervision for a few companies. I’ve done “case work” in every role, including prison. I’m a CADAC II counselor in an environment that’s so overwhelmed I get routinely called “therapist,” and have been explicitly told by many therapists I’ve worked with who have audited my classes I’m “basically a therapist.” I take this to mean both therapists and I use the same models and strategies, yet are equally helpless to do any real work for you.

I’ve been out of social work for a few months and just got a new job. It’s like riding a bike. It’s a source of perpetual fascination to me that “the problem,” while manifesting in individual ways, is exactly the same whether you’re in prison, in-patient, IOP, or the infinitely grey sea between IOP and OP, or in just maintaining sobriety. It doesn’t matter the drug. It doesn’t matter if you have “too many” rules or “too much” freedom. I’m never without what needs to be done in my approach to the infinite list of what’s presented to me.

At bottom, what most people are suffering in any given moment is a lie.

The suffering is real. Don’t deliberately, or otherwise, mishear me, as is so routine throughout my day. The suffering is anxiety and depression, a series of traumas in the not-so-distant past, medical conditions due to use, aging, or violence. All those things hurt, truly.

The lie looks something like an excuse. The lie operates like a tool that removes the obligation of slowing down or examining your role. The lie looks like the reflection in a funhouse mirror. Technically, if you’re standing in front of it, that is, in fact, you reflected back. The story of refraction, perception, and complicated subjective experience is something of an infinitely long digression approximately 1 in 10 people are interested in exploring long enough to get it.

If you zoom out and take a broad picture of “addiction,” you start the see the pathologies in your clients manifested in your colleagues. Whatever you wish to make of their protective factors, it becomes blindingly obvious that there’s an irresolvable blurriness between “good” and “bad” habits. You can absolutely find yourself compulsively working, eating, “helping” by diving into the infinite flow of drama, peacocking, or blaming your behavior on your ADHD.

If you’re good at boundaries, this leaves you practically hoping to meaningfully contribute to an environment so that it’s less self-destructive, but you might be the most significant observer of what’s already an extremely thin line. Moreover, those, in good faith, that you work with, might not even realize or be that keen to learn about how they’re threatening the whole endeavor.

I think stupid political actors operate the same way. I, who listens to hundreds of hours of political commentary and pays some attention to global affairs, occupies a different semantic universe than someone who can’t tell you who the acting attorney general is. Any subject takes the time, attention, and basic interest in order to be learned. When you learn it deeply enough, you can start to see deeper implications and patterns. If you “don’t care,” you get to ride the lie that your acts, or lack thereof, are of no consequence or significantly less consequence than they actually are.

Frustratingly, unfortunately, ridiculously, because the god you claim to believe in is hysterical, you matter. I can’t fucking stand it. Because in my world, my brain, it means I have to work hard, pay attention, tell the truth, and figure out even basically what the fuck I’m doing with myself any given day. I don’t really get a choice unless I want to suffer like someone addicted to a bad, incorrect, and woefully incomplete story.

I have to traverse the universe of differences between myself who has intimately mapped the degrees to which he matters for decades, and a population who has practiced implicitly and explicitly the idea that they do not matter. And they’ve likely practiced even more aggressively than me to establish their instincts and habits. I think the world of silent complicit “moderates,” suffers the same condition.

I don’t bring my job home with me often. I can respond to a crisis or hit a snag with paperwork, but the souls I’m wrestling with don’t haunt me. I’m very clear about what I want, what it takes, and what I’ll contribute to help. I don’t want anything for you you don’t want for yourself. I will never pretend otherwise when I’m there, and what you’re doing in sober living, it’s work, all the time. We’re not hanging out. We’re not best friends. I’m not your boss or keeper. I’m your opportunity to slow down and your reminder that the work can be done in spite of how you feel.

I’ll help fill out forms. I’ll provide rides. I’ll re-frame the most damming things you’ve shocked yourself by admitting for the first time. I’ll let you cry. I’ll stand in perfect detached non-judgment as we walk down whatever path we must or can. I can’t make you want to live. I can’t make you honest. I can’t make you “believe” in the consequences of your actions and how they make you, or us, suffer. I can’t tie words to emotional meaning if you are unable or unwilling. It’s not my job to save you, trap you, or merely occupy your time with jargon and obligations in a bid to avoid dealing with what I need to work on.

So it goes in the “normal” or “non-addicted” landscape. Do you think we get fascism if most people aren’t just lying, but doing so in such a catastrophic and compulsive way that we’re functionally suicidal? I don’t care what flavor or era of fascism you look at, at bottom, it’s lies. Lies about purity and purpose. Lies about “them.” Lies about capacity and consequences. We know, intellectually, the fire raging that we set. Emotionally, we’re dead. There’s no real and meaningful response to the chaos we’ve sowed. So we take another hit, point the finger, and undermine what little those with the awareness and capacity might yet be able to save.

What I’m describing often manifests in complacency and complicity in the people I work with who might be better at it than average. They use the statistics as license to phone it in or drag quick things out over weeks or months because it keeps the paycheck coming. They tell a story of what they would build or do differently, but they want the same things our clients do. They want the easy win. The functional disability check. They want to bill the state regardless of whether they actually believe they’ve done all they can for someone. Why? They have more official, more standard and socially acceptable lies to maintain.

I’d bet and win every time that you’re so tired and never have enough time. I know that you don’t think I’d ever believe the drama from your so and so! These gas prices, these groceries, and these no good dirty politicians basically fucked your spouse and killed your dog! You're just thinking of the children! You’re the hero. You’re entitled to exacting your revenge with every fired shot across a comment section bow. You know, the realpolitik of purity tests, ironic dismissal, and increasingly AI-generated astro-turfing.

I used to suffer the lie that I could save the world. I was poised to do it by speaking intelligently, getting attention, and leading a charge. Little did I know. I can save my world, not yours. I can write this blog, not your entry. I can eat my food, watch my shows, play my games and instruments, rock out with my friends, blast my music, drive my car, build my house on my land, and choose the shape my suffering takes. And I can know that I want it that way compared to the alternatives. And I can save and protect and advocate for the ways to get there because I know they exist independent of me, but also die with me, if you’re not practicing the same things.

I find this incredibly empowering, humbling, and energizing. I find this pretty easy to understand because I’ve reached a point in life where the work I do I take for granted. I’ve done more than “try.” I’ve embodied the consequences like a muscle stuck throbbing after an intense workout. It wasn’t an accident. No one granted a wish. I didn’t magically come upon a secret. I worked, and continue to work, one line at a time, one day at a time, one choice to meet my needs, demonstrate my world of values and desires, in any given moment.

I wasn’t able to shut up when I didn’t understand that silence was a choice. I’m never able to empathize with those who seemingly choose to stay silent about the fire daring to engulf us. I couldn’t hear until I recognized the choice to listen. I couldn’t be honest until I recognized the choice to be responsible for maintaining the integrity of words and a shared reality. And now I can’t go back even if I wanted to. For me to want to, I’d have to behave as insistently self-destructively as I observe addicted and non-addicted alike.

So, what’s my job? Is it anything like yours? Are you truly living in service to a world that you actually want to live in? I’m invigorated by Scott Pelley and Stephen Colbert getting fired. They aren’t dead. They’re more alive than their their audiences can recognize. They’re burning hotter than the fascist forces clear-cutting the forest of once trusted institutions. If you’re paying the requisite attention you’ll connect their work to what yours must consist of. You’ll feel it like they feel it. You’ll practice as you preach.

Or, you won’t. I get paid either way.