[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.

[988] Compounding Interest

I’ve been having these flurries of inspiration to write on Monday mornings. I listened to part of a philosophy podcast with one of the hosts from Know Your Enemy appearing as a guest. The usual incredibly specific and intellectual banter, questions, and theory ensued. I felt a few familiar things and began to think on the purpose and direction of when I “intellectualize” things, particularly when it comes to what I work on and why.

I’ve known few highs like when I was obsessed with reading about religion and science. I liked the fight. I liked that the purpose of my reading was to argue and organize the best ideas and information. “Obsession” is the correct word. I was watching not just debates and reading things from the most famous names, I was watching the field-specific conferences and speeches getting into the kind of details absolutely no one outside of that particular realm cared to consider or debate.

The energy to dive so deep into that world was held over from my frustration and confusion tied to my ideas of “love” and then my naive sense that human ignorance and injustice could be mitigated with better data and clear ideas. They aren’t replicable conditions, but were I to try, it would be conjuring a series of “impending doom” feelings related to democracy, the environment, and any taken-for-granted luxury we’re not prepared to lose. I listen to these incredibly informed nerds and am envious that I know what it takes to be like them, but I spend most of my time brushing past dozens of topics instead of diving into a few.

It’s the next day and I’ve woken up early, returned to a work environment, and listened to two Sam Harris podcast episodes. The first talked about time-management and the various strategies we use to trick ourselves into thinking we have control or avoid feeling negatively about all we can’t. The second was about wealth and the psychology of markets or how people spend their money. Much of the sentiments from both feel very familiar and I believe to be insights I’ve attempted to build into how I conduct my life. They served as little reminders of the things I’m not suffering as deeply as I have in the past.

Take, for example, my propensity to try and do “everything.” This could easily be conceived of as distracting myself from a “deeper” or “more meaningful” set of behaviors in service to “larger” goals. The thing about me though, I conceive of my goals as both big and small and synonymous with my overall sense of orientation and purpose. There is little difference between my playing Candy Crush while marathoning a season of a show and me making phone calls to search for referrals. Both are concerned with my moment-to-moment sense of my agency and ability to make decisions.

Consider inputting notes. I have 3 sets of notes to put in from groups yesterday. 3 sets of notes I pretty deliberately ignored while I was in the office yesterday and certainly upon getting home. I thought I might do them after getting to the office today about an hour and a half early. I’m writing this instead, or at least, first. I have every intention of getting the notes done, but I’m wired psychologically and through practice to make a certain kind of peace with what’s informing my awareness before I introduce less-gratifying or abjectly meaningless tasks into my experience. It’s a process I’ve learned to begrudge less, but still begrudge because it testifies to my remaining impediments to more agency and choices.

And here we may tie into the sentiments offered yesterday. There was an invigorating sense of control in having an intimate understanding of complex fields of information. I could anticipate what the argument was going to be, the very words they were going to use, and the proper response. I knew there was another book around the corner that was going to be a fun weapon to swing. I also managed to get a better understanding of how intimately my behavior and sense of being in the world was tied to an infinite array of things that had very little to do with “me.” It helped me slow down and mellow out when I started to embody the broader futility of my effort.

It would be foolish to pretend that every moment I spend in an office I didn’t make, making money for people I don’t know and a company I didn’t start, was anything less than an admission of defeat. My initial ideas about how to “own my effort” or enrich myself were wrong. I had to be humbled and give up. I had to sacrifice the foggy dream of what things were supposed to be and ground myself in the practical reliability of sacrificing a certain experience and utilization of my time for the monetary teats I must suckle. I’m less concerned, now, with the sucking than I am with losing the awareness of how hard or long I have to, and whether or not I’m still feeling fulfilled and able to pursue what I put on my plate otherwise.

As such, my concept of “debt” has definitely evolved. Less-consciously, I’ve always known that I’m perpetually indebted. I can’t live in a capitalist society and own property without a lingering bill. I can’t be on-grid and share my ideas with my handful of followers unless I’m spending money in service to transportation to free wifi or paying for the internet. I have to keep or maintain the technology I’m typing on. I’m not growing my own food nor wiping my ass with leaves. I’ve described my debt as a practical corner I box myself into to compel an easier capitulation to these work environments. It’s become something more.

As the negative number continued to rise as the Amazon bills registered in my Personal Capital tracking page, I felt an increasing sense of freedom. All of the things I’d been piling up, anticipating, wanting were on their way or had arrived. I was able to collapse a lot of the longing narratives in my head in one fell swoop. Why am I not practicing piano? The updated, weighted-keys, midi-connecting tool isn’t a dream, it’s plugged in waiting for my time and attention. The tire knocking on my backseat window has my replacement hoist in my hamper waiting to be set where it belongs under my truck. My fraying ratchets won’t need to be relied on as I frantically glance and whatever’s next to be secured in my truck bed. What am I going to do this weekend? At least through October, it’s some show, if nothing else, and probably bowling where I’ll get to continue experimenting with my technique and new ball of proper weight and drilled hole.

I’m functionally building a “life mortgage” that accounts for the myriad narratives I have in my head about how I wish to round-out my day-to-day options and experience. I can’t escape the debt. I can make the debt mean considerably more for my moment-to-moment experience. I can’t stop “thinking so much” or “turn off.” I can corral those thoughts into the series of solved problems condensed into a singular narrative or problem that can be addressed in a number of ways. If the goal now becomes “make money” or “make more money” or “diversify means of acquiring smaller amounts of money with smaller investments of time” it becomes easier to conceive of how I address “all of the goals” I keep on my mind in perpetuity. I don’t have to make practicing the piano compete with inputting notes in a head that’s only going to feel negative regardless, compounded by the knowledge that, until recently, the right piano wasn’t plugged in and waiting.

The word “meaningful” has been creeping into my language. I don’t want it to get away from me. There are a number of things that I’ve acted as though they are meaningful whether my efforts were recognized, reciprocated, or understood even by myself or not. My time is meaningful. I try to spend it in service to demonstrations of my perspective and agency first. That’s why the blog has to exist before the notes. That’s why the stuff gets bought and the debt raises, but the collapsing of the things to think about means more freedom of agency and discretionary use of time. I’m always in debt. It’s barely worth mentioning anymore. I’m always having things about my moment-to-moment being dictated well outside of my conscious control or even desire to be aware of, let alone control. So, how full is my moment?

I’m literally full. I’m going to a concert tomorrow, then driving to Cleveland in a car my friend offered me because he knows it would be that much more expensive to drive my truck. My truck which still runs, has that winch for my spare tire in it, as well as an array of tools I’ve acquired over time. My instruments, cats, and stuff will likely all still be waiting for me when I get back as well as a few new things in the mail. I have half a dozen projects waiting for my attention and effort in progress. I have a job in which I tangibly help people in spite of how nominally gratifying it may be in any way beyond the responsible exercise of power. I’m healthy. I’m listening to music. I don’t “technically” have to do anything for another hour and a half. I have fond memories of hanging out with a friend who we both almost every day email and text well-wishes. My dad’s coming to the concert tomorrow. I had to pause writing this paragraph to help someone get in contact with housing resources and reassure them that it’s okay to ask for help.

In the Morgan Housel episode discussing wealth, Morgan mentions that he did not get a mortgage and while it was the “worst financial decision” given the low interest rate he could have locked in, the psychological gratification of knowing the house is his and not the bank’s is practically indescribable and altogether foreign and absurd to his friends and contacts in the finance world. I get it. I live in a shed. I live in my shed on my land with all of my shit that I can afford with ever-decreasing obligations of my time and effort. Nothing really compares to that. I can own my effort and things in a way that I never will, nor want to, a person. The ownership of the capacity to practice or spend or not transcends the work in service to any instrument or effort to place another screw or move another tire.

It needs to feel real that I can escape or alter my circumstances before I can accept and work with them. It’s why I have to write before I can get up or stomach the sight of the spreadsheet. I have to access my agency and feel the infinite options before the reality of the infinite sacrifice can be swallowed. I’m not complacent. I’m content in my knowledge and potential if not the given action in a given moment.

The forever-project and task gets another reiteration. Bring moment-to-moment desire in line with awareness and meaning in a persistent, accountable, and reliable way that speaks to ideals and the means of their practical obtainment. What do I want? Everything I have, some things I don’t, and less-than realized means of compounding my exceptionally desirable moment. So, I guess it’s okay to attend to notes now…ish.

[983] Good Debt

I’m mildly annoyed and been mildly anxious all fucking day and I want to know why.

Fucking Scampi’s on an adventure, so, like any caregiver to something alive I get to imagine he’s dead until he’s home again. Icing. (He arrives the moment I get done writing.)

I ordered a ton of stuff again. I kept doing the math and thinking to myself “Why not now?” So much of my hang-ups towards progress or enjoyment are about, “I don’t need that” or, “Not yet.” You know before I ordered any sizeable or useful amount from Amazon, I had things sitting in my cart for 5 years? There is absolutely no good reason I can’t keep a job that requires less time than I spend doing literally anything else for 6 months. Especially if during that 6 months, I’ve run out of shit to buy, occupy my time with, or use as an excuse to not inch forward on a project. Also, if the house sells as it’s planned to, my cut makes me even again.

I’m annoyed that I want to keep enjoying and building my home, but I don’t think I can stay in the country. I’m annoyed that I still don’t believe a plurality of people will do anything to make “things” better. I’m annoyed that I’ve reached a certain “fat and happy” status, and all I am is still filled with rage that I can’t seem to enjoy it like I’d like because…you know, fucking fascism and impossible heat and dumb lonely drunk ugly people who want to fucking talk to me at concerts like I fucking came there to see them.

I’m fucking annoyed because today I watched an entire season of The Last Kingdom while sitting in an office, an hour and a half and $50 away, I had absolutely no reason to be in. I then capitalized on a crazy pizza deal and stuffed my fat fucking face with slice after slice trying to quell the emptiness and shake up my day of surfing the internet in work-computer-appropriate ways and getting pulled out of the moment when a battle-hardened Dane says “humping” instead of “fucking.”

I’ve been polishing up the land. The weed-whacking brought some psychological satisfaction. The overgrowth is intense, but a commercial weed-whacker reminds you it’s just some bitch ass grass and shit. I’m going to go around and collect all the random wood and get it stacked up and around the bricks tomorrow. I have one group at 11:00. One. Then supervision at 2:30. I’ll have to see if I can play a game of “look busy and answer emails” while sweating to death and organizing, cleaning up just enough for when I need to be on camera.

Barring disaster, by the end of the year, it dawned on me that I’ll have seen over 90% of my favorite bands live, and some more than once. What does that mean? The same will be said for comedians. Will our respective aura-exchanges speak to my karmic  destiny? Until this year, endlessly indulging in shows and splurging on the means of building and creating shit were all abstract concepts pertaining to my idealized self. Now, my idealized self wants reliable health care, a fucking planet that won’t chase me to Mars, and people to have ongoing active fights alongside with towards the achievement of meaningful ends.

I don’t play the lottery because I think I’ve already won it. If I had a large sum of money dropped in my lap, I’m immediately setting up places to live in the most stable countries. Then I’m forming my influence network towards achieving political ends and diversifying power. All the while continuing to go to shows in more exotic locales and from fancier booths, but with pit access. And I’m definitely getting a fancier pool and bowling lane.

I’m annoyed because I’ve watched people live with 5-10 times more debt than me, and get to just about now start their adult lives with new kids and stable housing. Do they still have student loans? I don’t know, but most people I’ve met have pretty well resolved themselves to never paying them back. It wasn’t “good debt.” It was a debt predicated on a naivety at best and lie at worst. I don’t feel my financial debt in the same way I feel like the pain of what my country was supposed to have promised me. I at least get something, as soon as Amazon drops it off, for the money I spend. I at least get to see myself move around my space and see it grow. It’s like cigarettes. Sure, I need health/car insurance, but what are they really getting me If I haven’t crashed or don’t feel sick? Not a fucking nicotine rush of a pool, I can tell you that much.

The next thing I genuinely have to look forward to is any time spent with “you.” I pretty much know how the concerts are gonna go. My favorite comedians I suspect aren’t going to struggle the nights I see them. I’m going to struggle through the salt in my eyes as I keep erecting walls and rooves in my little corner of the world. But, what are we gonna talk about? Who knows!? Me and Hussain debated faith and god by accident for 2 hours last night. Didn’t see that shit coming, and am still definitely over sky daddy talk, lol even if it’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t actually act like a malignant religious person, and can hear, “You put your bitches in black sacks,” half a dozen times without getting angry.

Anyway, I’m less annoyed and anxious now. I might be able to finish Tiger & Bunny and get to sleep before 2.

[975] Mo Mo Mo

I need to spend some time thinking about my motivation. In no way will I be able to synthesize the thoughts before now because I’ve passed up at least 3 times I probably should have started writing.

I do things, often enough, after being backed into a corner. I create debt for myself so I can get a “real job” and provide the justification to submit myself to the pain that entails. I might physically exhaust myself on some task so I can shake off the “I’m not doing enough” feeling. I create these kind of high-stakes social dynamics that pit your sense of cordial duty against my righteous indignation, so by the time we’ve disassociated, I don’t have to pretend there’s a bridge worth repairing.

I had a lot of energy when I was in high school, college, and right after college, to push an incredibly strong notion of “excelling.” It could be attached to anything. I could take pride in the sheer amount of TV I was able to watch, or the efficiency with which I made money doing drug studies. Academically, the designation of “A” had lost its muster, so I tested how A/B-ish I could be with the least amount of effort possible, and I decided to get really good at partying. I was pumping a certain kind of psychologically gratifying, albeit arbitrary, stats. Who cares if I can go from zero to coffee shop in 4 months? Just me.

I seem to do things in a disproportionate way, just not precisely the things I’d really rather be doing. When I get the chance to do what I’d rather be doing, the rules of life are still at play. This speaks to an underlying motivation at play at all times. I want to exist in a way that renders those life circumstances mute. I want to always have the money, the time, or the help. I can’t change the weather, but I can build a considerable amount indoors. If there’s a rule that would stop me, I want to have the means to undermine or circumvent it. This could also be a complicated way of describing the drive towards creative self-expression.

The desire to accomplish “small” things plays by more viscerally practical rules. I almost never leave trash laying around. Shit’s in the way. I don’t have a lot of space, and I don’t want shit in the way. I may dawdle on doing dishes because until they’re in the way of me eating or making food, they’re where dirty dishes belong. When you own a house, something’s always broken or missing, but it gets ridiculous to think that you’ll account for it all in every moment you notice that the milk is low or bugs’ nest isn’t easily accessible. There’s less “do it now” with those things, and they get grouped for weekends or those days where you’re just really into getting things done.

I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast, and he brought up how we’re always looking for the next thing, living in this illusion that obtaining it will make us happy. I was watching a Louis Theroux documentary as a compulsive millionaire gambler blew through hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a few days. I’ve noticed the eyes of the bewitched with their hollow desperate and craving emptiness for recognition of their suffering when their persona wears thin. I suppose I’m lucky to have maintained a kind of motivation to not end up perpetually in that state.

I don’t like to feel bad. This may seem like a weird thing to have to state so plainly. I think it’s important to do so though. It’s more than obvious. I don’t like to feel bad so much, that I will write for years until I feel a little bit better. I don’t like to feel bad to such a degree, that I will work myself to death to ensure the thoughts in my head align with a decent-to-exceptional conception of myself. I might habitually bite off more than I can chew, but I took the bite, and I’m still chewing. The moment I felt what rolfing could do for my physical well-being, that money was gone. My food budget is so high because the shittiest I tend to feel is when I haven’t eaten enough. Again, we could describe this as being up against a kind of pain-threshold wall.

When I think about how we evolve, it’s selection pressure. What is the environment selecting for? What genes are being activated under the current constraints? If we talk about different “classes” and the cultures they entail, is it down to the biology that iterating obnoxious selfishness plays out in superficially different ways? You can complain about black-on-black violence as a loud example, but how many people suffer and die as a result of greed? Why is greed good in rich culture? The environment dictates the conditions for remaining in said environment. You might not consider yourself rich, certainly not Bezos-rich, so the nature of your greed, familiar, common, is hardly noticed. You’ve got an HOA to answer to, and you earned your privacy fence.

I’ve removed a lot of the walls in my journey through this shed-life thing. It’s sweltering outside, and cool in here. I’m still inconvenienced in my bathroom and kitchen setups, but I’m not flinging shit out the window nor going hungry. All of my effort to build more is in service to creating new corners to get backed into. I have the tools, now they need a home. If they’re not running, why did I buy the tools? Indefinite hobby and selective guilt await. If I think someone is special or unique, well, surely, they deserve my effort to create something cool! I get to take it a step further. If I don’t dictate, complicate, or imbue my work into a larger context, I just sit and wait for things to happen. I refresh facebook and reddit. I marathon TV and don’t think too hard about the gross juxtaposition of “marathon” and “TV.”

It’s been insufferably hot lately. You think I’m building my workshop in that? I already barely drink enough water or eat right, let alone wear sunscreen or generally go about things that would suggest to you I don’t like to feel bad. If I feel faint upon opening the door, game over for that idea. Are there things that need to be done indoors? Kinda, but no, not really. If I choose to rearrange the furniture again, it’s hard to say what’s been accomplished beyond it feeling good to pretend exercise and experience the different room flow.

This is a restatement that the vast majority of my “problems” are, not. I’m not a jaded and broken millionaire feeding machines hundred-dollar bills, but I’m also not a millionaire. I’m not cripplingly sick or in mental turmoil, but I don’t have health insurance. I know how to swim, I’m not drowning, but the only race I’m in is against death, which serious as it might sound, I can’t win.

I really do feel like I have made a concerted effort over time to be okay with whatever “this” moment is. I affirm my health, wealth, comfort, kitties, conveniences, computers, and capacity for compartmentalizing my competing conceptions. It doesn’t take away from my desire to proverbially “take over the world,” but it does mean I don’t suffer the anxiousness or depressive guilt by not “excelling” via being busy or “above” in my concerns for how I’m spending my time. If I had millions of dollars right now, you know what I’d probably still be? Alone. It might be with someone(s) happy to spend my money with me in the next room of fancier architecture in a distant locale, but people I consign to my larger goals would be just that, paid for.

Part of me feels like that’s an incredibly real scenario because of how hard it’s been to get people to join, with weeks or months-notice or otherwise, what I’ve been up to. I do have friends and my dad who are down, it’s not a desert in spite of what the weather suggests. But I’ve had people kind of flirt with the idea of spending time together or doing stuff. I’m not their priority, which is perfectly fine, it just naturally translates that will continue to hold whether I’m inviting you to Fiji or a comedy show. You’ll have a life and obligations that I’m supposed to what? Pay you to put aside like any good capitalist?

It feels like I’m talking about that sneaking suspicion we all might have that there really is no “our” page, goal, or reality. That doesn’t mean reality won’t kill us all the same or that we don’t rhyme, but it does heartily explain the appeal of religion. You don’t want to go through a series of thoughtful, accountable, and painful evolutions in thought or behavior? Check out this brand-new forgiveness for sale! Just give it up to God! You can be as free as Sam Harris in his disposing of free will! Good is good, evil is evil, and we’re all just along for the circularly-reasoned ride! Yee-haw! I still believe “consciousness” is the “what” that makes the indeterminate determinate, so I struggle, or futilely refuse, to be a happy cog. I didn’t will myself into existence, but if I maintain my faculties and shoot myself in the head anyway, you’re gonna get an attestation of the nature of my will, messily depicted and ironically incomplete in its finality.

The last time I used “motivation” in the title of a blog was in January 2013. A few lines from that blog stick out to me, but as I started to mine them, it seems inadequate to the task. You should read it after this one. What’s clear, is that at least 9 years ago, I still hated the idea of getting a normal job, knew no one would respect me or my time like I might, and I acknowledge the conditional nature of my being. I was aware of the clarity that having a goal provides. I was suspicious of the form my potential impact on the world could take. I lamented people who couldn’t pair their best ideas with any practical actions.

Do I even remember what I was doing in 2013? 2 years after college I was probably failing at the mobile coffee van and circling the pillow of the loner-in-the-basement status I was about to adopt. A month later I was speaking to the comfort I felt thinking Kristen and I were in the same kind of relationship and I was understood lol. Maybe we were at that point, who knows, I only have one-sided small and garbled snapshots.

It’s easy to get lost. I repeat myself a lot. In going through and scanning some old blogs I’ve like reignited the memory of the “stuck” and anxious place that I fairly-well grounded into the center of my being. 9 years ago? I was in a long-term relationship. I was just starting to do drug studies. I had a lot of ideas and energy to put behind my informal “retire by 30” plan. Was my motivation fundamentally different than it is today? In the greatest sense, no. I still want the same non-physical things. I don’t feel like I have any less “energy” than I did then, it’s just not sporadically involving itself with more than I can reasonably address in any given moment.

I think I feared that if I calmed down, I would start to “settle” and look and sound like all of the people I grew a severe distaste for. The ones who have every excuse not to move to the middle of nowhere and try to get out ahead of our modern fall of civilization. The ones who blow superficial smoke up every ass of interaction because that’s what polite society expects. The ones who just stay silent and suffer indefinitely and live vicariously through comedian commentary or the pleasant pictures whirring by. It was harder to recognize or accept my “alone” status because I was with someone. I wasn’t so far removed from college and there was still a fair amount of people left to drift away. My environment dictated, for as much as I was talking about it.

That I’m where I am in life now, I think speaks to how much I’ve maintained a sense of self and orientation in spite. My capacity, happiness, or direction isn’t fundamentally dictated nor rooted in “you.” I choose friends. I chose to suffer the discrepancies and loss. All these new babies hitting the scene are going to die. You knew that when you got into baby-making mode. They may even die before you, and isn’t that colloquially understood as the worst kind of tragedy? Surely it wasn’t thoughts like those that fed your motivation to have a child. I thought, probably incorrectly, that I envied people who found their deepest sense of purpose and drive to ensure their children grew up and passed those genes on. What a burden to carry if you don’t know why you’re doing it.

You can linguistically reduce all efforts to procreate or proliferate literature to the same nihilistic absurdity. You can ignore that it might just feel good. It doesn’t have to be deep. You may just exist to be personally gratified, at least the conscious part of you, for as long as you can. A kid gets wrapped up in that? All the more collateral damage. I mean, child brides are still a thing, and I don’t know if you know how many kids are molested growing up, but you’re not gonna find a statistic that won’t remind you how woefully under-reported the 25-30% of the known cases are speaking to.

Have you noticed the drift in this blog? How did I get to child molesting? Isn’t this about motivation? As I continue to describe my spite engine as moving me right along, it’s no wonder the sheer amount of atrocity that’s pressed right up against how I conceive of my effort and best conception of the world. To talk of “my motivation” or “spite engine” is just a personal understanding of the marriage and dance at the conflicted ever-changing heart of existence. I think about death constantly, and it makes me want to live a certain way. I still don’t know that the reasoning I apply for my own existence I would use in service to a new child, but I also don’t think early-abortion cells, or any persons, are going to an afterlife.

Motivation feels like a calculation. I want many things at once. I want them in perpetuity. I’ve both experienced intellectually and emotionally the reality and diminishing returns of the mere acquisition. You can’t just make a friend. You have to celebrate, and work with, and evolve together. You can’t just buy things or amass wealth; you have to put them to work. Things like Amazon and SpaceX are incidental giants who need to create giant corners to get backed into like I need to pile up a few dishes and turn 2x4s into adult building blocks.

We’re shaped by these unconscious desires to belong to something “more” and beyond ourselves. The endless irony being, we perpetuate circumstances that keep us isolated, angry, and feeling almost perfectly misunderstood. We keep up the façade that we can’t learn or connect, share in our goals and motivation, by staying silent unless it’s to say something disparaging or superficial. My motivation is inextricably tied to my awareness and the demonstration and repeatability of that awareness. I know I’m going to die not feeling really any more or less happy than I have for the last 9 if not 18 years since I started writing.

I don’t make it a secret that I want you to speak, or that I’m going to. I won’t be surprised if things turn out as bad as those who’ve been paying attention say they will. I won’t lose my motivation to fight or create or move the hell out of the way. There is no illusion about life I need to paint over how I actually feel and think, even if I didn’t “will” every impression I could extract. I will the words. I will the movement. I’m not at the mercy of my chaotic and contradictory heart. I dance with the chaos, and in so doing, create an order that suggests balanced direction. Who could get tired doing that?

[716] Chance Encounters

If I can't find something to write about, does that mean things are okay, or that I'm dead inside? I don't feel dead, but I certainly never trust that things are okay. I know, I know. It's not either/or. It's a false premise to begin with. I don't write for the exact same reason every time. “Dead inside” is a vague characterization I've used to mean actual stagnated capacity for feeling and general jaded indifference. “Things” being “okay” or not has nothing to do with digging up something specific and coherent to talk about. I'm no less in a ponder-worthy situation that I'm finding hard to explore without all the palpably raw push of a headache or anxiety.

I'm “normalizing.” I'm getting too old to fight too ferociously. I'm skeptical enough of my posture and where it's gotten me to begin exploring new paths. I'm taking on a matter-of-fact approach to how day to day life operates, and why it's reasonable and expected people should behave that way. Free alcohol at a fundraiser!? No, put in a few dollars and sip a tiny cup. Mingle. Try not to hog the watermelon pieces. Meeting canceled? Congratulations! You just got paid to do literally nothing but try and cross your fingers. Want to talk about big plans and realms of influence over time? A few short years and handful of conversations with the right movers and money makers and acceptance is practically guaranteed. It's everything I've ever said it would be.

A persistent theme in Byron's assessment of me is that I should figure out a “work/life balance.” In my view, he's operating under the presumption that I don't have one, or the one I have is one he can't recognize. I'd prefer a “meaning/practical” balance. I watch enough, lounge enough, find cheats for turning my job into the “incidental” thing that doesn't preoccupy my mind as much as things I'd rather have in there. I don't find a lot of meaning in my life unless I'm building the tools to form the culture and crowd I want to create with in the future. Finding cushy jobs and self-assured associations can do a lot of work in obscuring how meaningless your life registers. I want it constantly scalding my temples.

It's meaningful to have lived it. I have to try and fail. I have to grow exhausted. I'm not hell bent on self-destruction or “the hard way” as some kind of bravado and ego driven ethos. I'm attempting to explore old themes and ways of conducting a life with a modern bent. I appreciate the excesses of capitalism while I stress the word excess. It's a false narrative to think of things as “falling behind” when I'm focusing on reading vs watching vs listening, so whether it's picking 5 things from each category to do a day, or powering through a chunk until the end, it will always be too much and an ever-fleeting source of inspiration. What matters is that it feels like a choice instead of an obligation or punishment. I've read myself uncharacteristically sad. I've looked at a 35 episode backlog as a weird thing to burden myself with.

My criticism of the “normal” world has much to do with how I feel it's molded people to stop thinking or talking like they did when I knew them in school. It remains a source of mild fear that I'll do what I think I'm going to do, and still get everything I want normally put aside as a regret or pipe dream. “If only I had the time to play the piano!” So they sell it instead. “If only I had the money!” I'd like to show what mild sacrifices and a proper budget can do for your savings in a year. I don't have the added obligations of a spouse or children, which I'm told are significant contributors to why the world looks the way it does.

I choose a certain degree of pain. I want to work through stomach-dropping feelings of contemplating the people I care about finding intimacy and connection with someone else. I want to act better than that feeling. In comparison to the amount of things I'm lax about, the self-imposed difficulty I actually choose pales in comparison. I wouldn't mind being primarily vegetarian. Everything I read suggests better health and longevity. I forgo the “pain” of prepping meals or learning new recipes to make it seem more palatable. I want to know the consequences, personally, of being the CEO sleeping on the factory floor to handle issues at precisely the moment they come up. I believe the testimony of every ex Amazon or Tesla employee who described a level of danger or slavery, because it's a familiar feeling I harbor within myself. You don't get to Mars or take over every industry on the planet feeling comfortable getting paid to do nothing.

What's most striking isn't things being exactly as I thought they would. What's been weird, and again this has developed over time, is the flat acceptance of any premise. Let me unpack that. I've been compelled to accept, one way or another, every step of my life that's gotten me to this point. Every mess that befalls business creation, every shit or broken relationship, every job I didn't give a shit about, and every purely mental criticism of my insistence to meticulously chronicle it for the last 5 people on the planet who can stand to read me at length. I go to a fund raiser, okay, this is who I am, polite tiny cheese piece eater. I hop into a co-worker I've never met's car, and can proceed to have a good conversation for several hours. It doesn't matter what else is going on, that's where we are. My opinion doesn't matter, as long as the task is being observed as “correct” by enough of those watching.

A line from Waking Life has been creeping into my head lately. The whole paragraph goes, “When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that's what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.” Those last two lines have been echoing.

I think intuitively I act like this is true despite everything I might do to the contrary. Nothing is more dynamic or full of potential than a person. Nothing is so seemingly contradictory yet consistent. Nothing can choose to obsess and find itself so conflicted it can go properly mad. I'm studying people in all of my TV shows. I'm distilling people down to trends and attitudes in taking in histories and philosophies. Disorganized people are going to get me killed because they and their considerably worse conceptions of what it means to be a person are held accountable to self-destructive gods removed from their own.

It's not a secret why I'm “naturally” suited to deal with the social work field. How many times have I heard concerns over “burn out?” Dozens. Wide-eyed idealists join up thinking they're going to help! Who knew that your good will and faith don't counteract meth and generational abuse? Everyone except you. Me though? The one with one foot in low-key reasonable parenting and one mentally and emotionally abusive? I know the reality on both sides. I know the abject futility and the undying support. I know the world is both, all the time, all at once, in everything we do. The choice to observe yourself in terms that are “better” or bolstered by the evidence isn't “bias.” It's work. It's a fight. I can do my job better than everyone, and internally be at a fever pitch running the opposite direction. It's a concert, not a contradiction.

I think to myself that I want “the best.” It's a bad characterization. I want the most meaningful. I want the friendships that observe the same fluidity of conversation as I can manage with strangers. I want the the reality of the good and bad acknowledged and worked with, not taken for granted and swept aside. I'm not gonna “pray” things get better. I want to identify and turn things into markers and tools. Whether it's my experience or money, this is just another waylay in my generally dismissive and combative take on so-called existence. Just like tomorrow will be, or the next year if I choose to regard it as such. It's why writing reminds me how often my words are betrayed. How full all the “nothing” I've been doing really is. You know how easy it is to talk for a few hours when you've seen every episode of every favorite show of your new acquaintance?

Perhaps I've been a perfect moron in not wading into the world of “working-people” beyond the measure of barely-sustaining McJobs. I argued I found utility in them at the time. I might not have softened a few choice edges that would have seen me fired or quitting early. I might not have had a choice at all and am still tumbling down a probability matrix looking nothing like how I would've designed it. The point is, the moment is either bearable or not depending on whether I can see options and freedom as a result of what I'm doing. Money is options. The nature of this job provides plenty of drive time freedom to watch or listen at my leisure. Learning there are new people worth talking to and making jokes with at length pulls your selfish head out of your ass long enough to take a look around.

If we take that Waking Life paragraph, I could perhaps soften how I consider the ever-falling away relationships in school or life. If nothing else, it was meaningful at the time, and it sucks you changed for the worse, or my ideas about you did the same. I think it's a cheap trick to try and consider people in your life as mere chapters of your sordid past or interpersonal hurdles on your way to self-actualization. I've previously likened people to songs. I suppose I don't understand why the tent just doesn't get bigger. Why the “love” people endlessly drone on about can't find its way into anything than the mouths of the world's biggest hypocrites or handful of genuinely earnest. Why thousands of polite acquaintances are better than a handful of deeply rooted working connections.

Did you hear about the Pokemon Go meet-up in some big city where hundreds of people showed up, the game crashed, and they all went home? This phenomenon hitting every nostalgic and future-tempting button, uniting old and new alike, big and small town, and it didn't actually seem capable of connecting people. It wasn't quite augmented reality. It wasn't quite social. It was a time-intense spectacle. It was an in-group qualifier. It was a chance to be popular for no reason. The people were secondary. The “shared interest” category would read “myself.” What makes you love Pokemon or yearn for the past are deeply human points of potential connection that capturing the same rare bird will never be. But we're still hunting.