[1038] Vel Non

I'm back. I hate it. I like being home, my stuff, knowing the cats are okay in spite of being out of water and not having the cat box cleaned, but the contrast is jarring. I spent 6 days in Florida hanging out with one of my coolest friends. We talked music and books instead of client drama. We worked hard to walk miles back and forth between stages at Rockville. We had a ton of delicious meals and drinks. It's over. I'm back. I'm trying not to start clenching my jaw, tightening my shoulders and back, or thinking too hard about the pains of crappy vehicle ownership, insurance, or a job that is psychologically antagonistic.

Before Florida, I was in Chicago with my other great friend who's living her own version of the same things I am. Incredibly short-sided and idiot "leadership." Clients/students who are stressed out and ill-equipped. She's wearing 4 different leadership hats and considering her options for transitioning roles. Whether you're welding in Chicago, or in academia in Florida, it's politics, systems that move too slow, if at all, and among many other metrics, monetary and time exploitation presented as a gift you should be grateful for.

As thinkers, doers, and otherwise intelligent types, we all do some version of the same thing. We look at the broader picture, instinctively feel responsible for it, and ask what can be done. The personal saga of perhaps attempting to consume less or grow more or demonstrate through canvas bags and donations where your consciousness lies might flourish. My friend in Chicago wanted to engage in a kind of exploration conversation about how to broadly shift the paradigm or see if I've discovered something she hasn't yet to "fix things."

No matter how idealistic we might be about living sustainably or breaking up or competing with instantiated power, there are dozens of considerations we can immediately swap in to arrest more radical action. Who doesn't like driving 5 to 10 minutes up the road to Target? Who doesn't worry about having job options in densely populated areas?

I'm a dreaming idealist who suffers as such routinely. I make a concerted effort to couch my suffering in an appreciation and honest relaying of my moment or days as they strike me. I, after many, many years of singing the same tune regarding my hopeless hatred for everything I'm made to engage with or waste time on, have not found anything "better" or, most importantly to me, more practical, than to start from this place, literally in a field, and try to have my idealized life on top of the shit sandwich. I was amongst the old and entitled "Owner's Club" getting golf cart rides to the entrance at Rockville. If they have a car payment or mortgage, they're in considerably more debt than me.

I've felt lighter the last week. The mission was clear. Get to the venue, walk to stages, drink water or otherwise, rock out, take videos, eat, get back, shower, chill, repeat. I wasn't even tempted to clench my jaw. My shoulders weren't in my ears. The pain and work it takes to festival right paid off what festivals pay. It was worth it. I contrast this with the amount of work I put in to "stay stable" in my conception of myself with regard to my day job or the feedback and level of conversation I engage in with my colleagues. There's no amount of massaging that really makes the pain go away.

On the broadest scale, I can see how I appear to be trending. I get more and more stuff. I get a little more access. I learn about a new, absurd, hurdle to trying to do anything good in the world, get paid adequately for it, and avoid getting punished by someone who feels threatened you exist and try. I live a cartoonishly privileged life when you compare it to the catastrophic circumstances of what might constitute "average." But it'd be foolish to get deceived by the perks and placations. The foundation is extremely fragile.

Part of that fragility is that I'm only one person. I'm not a society. I'm not even a collection of friends or partners truly working towards a singular goal. The other major catch to being a thinker or doer or feeler of responsibility is that you work alone. You have a vague notion you need to work out to either prove how brilliant you are, or at least hold true to yourself that you believed until the end. It's a recipe for self-destruction that I feel I caught in myself fairly early and build into my imploring that if/when you wanted to come play on my land, you'd be living almost free to experiment in a way I deeply appreciate is a component of your being. I wish to enable that propensity. Please see the effort into gardening I made for a year when I've little interest in doing so myself.

By the numbers, I've spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on things Allie wanted to do, Byron wanted to do, investing in the space and tools for what I thought "we," those born complaining about the things at 15, 25, and now 35 wanted to "fix." I'm still the only one standing out here. We're still intellectualizing and abstracting the struggle and mildly to not-so-mildly resenting the implication that we don't care or haven't worked hard enough in our own miserable little corners. I guarantee we will all fail until the conversation, well, happens at all, but with enough regularity, clarity, and direction to prompt the kind of action that I'm increasingly less inclined to take on my own.

More importantly to me, I'm less inclined to entertain the conversation that doesn't include sacrifice, incredible amounts of discomfort, ticks, shitting in bags, thousands in shared debt investment, or dogged nearly irrational pursuits in leverage and experimentation to get somewhere different. I'm "Owner's Club" and 48 shows left on the year different after building this space over the last 6 years. Shit has flown by. Yet I suspect my effort so far will still prove unpersuasive the next 6 years, like the blogs weren't persuasive before I found the land; and the conversations never took place about what to do with the chunks of study money.

"We're all addicted to something." If 1 in 10 addicts are ever going to stay sober, I think it's almost exactly the same psychological forces that dictate the 1 in 10 smart, empathetic, motivated, do-types to break from their internal dialogue and attempt to pair or match it with someone else. Although, the odds are even lower, because the pool of people is a tenth of the addict pool. I personally know 6, and the efforts we've made so far are still routinely undermined by "life," be it mental health concerns, or undermining and resentments within our own families. I should be flipping my next house, or seeing dozens of clients for a more-than-merely-living wage, or franchising my coffee shop, or rubbing elbows with all the rich successful types who appreciated my insight and enthusiasm at the prospect of getting them to write their own book.

But I'm not doing any of that. I'm here, alone, with the cats, dreading my easiest remote work day tomorrow. I put in a ton of job applications, when I could not get too distracted by the amount of spam email sign-ups and dead deceptive listings. I'm mourning the ease with which I carried my shoulders. The contrast has been striking as I'm thrust back into everyone's drama and emptiness crying out for daddy to make them all feel better. I know why your god flooded everything and let his kid get tortured. He didn't understand the suffering is built in to whether or not it's your creation.

If you're not creating something that constantly rediscovers gratitude and power and connection, you die. You crave death, turn the craving into something noble and worthy of worship, and retool the whole of conscious existence into variations of your death-cult thinking under the instantiated delusion that you won't suffer or will one day achieve eternal bliss.

Your god is a lie, and always has been. The story you've been telling yourself is full of more lies than you know how to identify because you're unwilling to do the work. You're sacrificing your potential, but you can't really conceive of your potential. You're silent until you're selfishly claiming to want empathy or to vent more than excuse yourself. Your god, be it magic sky-daddy rushing in to eventually make it all better, or other self-serving narrative about your value, intelligence, or perspective, it isn't a fart in the vacuum if someone isn't there to sniff, remark, and return fire.

 
My idea for "fixing things" or "changing the world" is to create $15-$20K versions of pop-up sustainable spots where anyone part of the initiative learns how to build, grow, and share in ways they're not used to, but feel better than what they're giving now. It's sustained via regular jobs, menial or otherwise, that we work to transition out of, if we want to, through capital experiments, or self-sustaining practices. You need land, not unlike mine, tools, not unlike what I already have, time, which we have considerably more of than we wish to believe, and some hard conversations about where to set up, who is responsible for what, budgeting, time-delays, catastrophes, time-frames, points of discomfort and sacrifice, and measurable metrics of success. I don't think you have to be errant dreamy hippies fucking off and flirting with tetanus.

I think every worry you bring to the table is valid, or you wouldn't have been invited to it at all. I think I've had every faith in what you're capable of for as long as I've been bitching, talking, or inviting. I think in the next 6 years, if I'm out of debt, if I'm working some job that doesn't make me feel hollow and angry, and if I've accumulated every thing, hobby, or skill I've earnestly thought to acquire, I have an extremely small expectation I will get there alone, and whether it's me and one other person, or me and a dozen, I know how I'm trending amidst the dumpster fire. Do you? Is what you're really after the mild incremental indulgences that accompany playing safe and selfish?

If I had all the money in the world tomorrow, the work remains the same. Do we have a clear enough idea of what it is? It's not look for daddy. It's not merely bemoan circumstances. It's not to get to every show. It's not compound self-serving narratives. It's not to worship the word "but." It's not to bitch to each other about how irrational or unfair or unsympathetic everyone in charge or around us is. It's not to get stuck in guilt for the wasted time or energy. It's not to voraciously charge towards idealistic exit strategies. It's not to pretend we're more emotionally stable or capable than we've proven so far. Whatever country you try to escape to is on the same doomed planet. Whatever job you take has a built-in bureaucracy. Your body is super acquainted with injuries and energy levels by now. Check back with me in 6 years, I guess.

[1037] Shake It Three Times

I'm so thankful. I made it to Chicago, twice, in my truck, and saw Troy Bond, Waterparks, and The Killers sandwiched between in Gary. The weather was fine. The roads didn't pop my tires. My truck didn't scrape the walls of a cramped parking garage. I got to hang out with Smash. I got to spend time with my dad. I got caught up on my TV shows. I cleaned and organized my car. I got great food and good beer. My cats didn't freak out while I was gone. I'm back home at 12:28 AM, wide awake after immediately falling asleep once I got settled in around 6.

I'm living a veritable fantasy in many regards. I'm healthy enough to travel, by myself, to expensive shows I can't technically afford, but no one really bats an eye at the debt figures or downplays their jealousy. I was able to see two of the shows because I work 2 days remotely. In almost exactly 48 hours I should be on a plane to Florida where I'll be gone for 6 days in the "Owner's Club" of Rockville and condo Brandy's parents have up the road. This is arguably the hardest I've ever gone in the "pure indulgence" vein, and I'm counting the party house given I wasn't spending thousands to scale what we were doing.

Big picture, there's a version of what I'm doing that sounds purely selfish and hedonistic. Aren't I worried about pick-your-existential crisis anymore? Don't I think, creepily deeply, that the crowds I surround myself with at shows are statistically full of the dumbest, saddest, and most self-destructive children the world could produce? I mean, they can afford the tickets and get to the venue. I'm often engaged in conversation with people who can't imagine themselves driving for 25 minutes to the nearest comedy club.

I have competing values, but they are anchored by time. I've felt, for most of my life, that time is very short. I've been able to slow it down by hyper-attenuating my experience of any given drama or question. I'm, hopefully, a living embodiment of just how much time we really do have, what can be done with it, and whether or not I can be doctor/astronaut/war hero, I can put up impressive stats on started struggling business ventures, shows consumed, hours behind various instruments, words read and written, miles driven, performances attended, and projects play-grounded. Nothing on that list spot-lit other people.

I read a blog written almost 15 years old where I'm talking about my "robot" or "analyzing" nature. I'm trying to explain why it's impossible to be "friends" with someone I can so easily manipulate. I'm imploring the, college crowd at that point, to not understand me as someone maliciously trying to play with them, just isolated in the knowledge that, in any moment, I can tell the temperature, and I can't understand why they can't. I've never really wanted to have this persistent distance, but it's as real and compelling a fact about my existence as I've ever discovered. It's not me "closing off" or "shutting down." I'm considerably less inclined to entertain the idea I'm a "psychopath" the more I've learned about autism.

I don't just "want" to do all the things I'm doing. I need it. I can't physically function when I come up against feeling too "stuck," be it in a relationship dynamic or a working environment. I need novelty. I need to render some notion of forward movement or progress into existence. I've been thinking about quitting my job. I've been thinking about seeing what I can unlock in myself when I give up the "freedom" to be half-remote 4 days a week to do more in service to my business or breach an entirely new field. I didn't go to school for social work. I didn't want to stay in school until I found a way to make most of my classes related to philosophy, history, and psychology. My innate ability to pick things up or play on familiar human patterns has been plaguing me my entire life. My nearly pathological ability to focus or obsess will manifest in literally any direction I point it, and invariably I will unlock new parts of my story I can't conceive of yet. Why am I not something like a sports-better after building psychological profiles on players and coaches and analyzing stories about their habits and relationships?

It's very weird to psychologically position yourself to fight comfort. I don't want to get set in my ways. I don't want to say, "You'll probably be too tired." There's no more a familiar and shared condition I observe across the people who annoy me the most. I went back and forth for days on whether I should get a ticket to Jeff Arcuri in Louisville the day before my flight. Wouldn't it be "responsible" to be closer to the airport, not spend the extra gas, not throw the logistics of doing your last group of the day into the mix etc.? I felt myself generating excuses to put distance between me and something I sincerely wanted to do. Fuck that, see you soon, Jeff. Let my truck break down on the way to the airport. That just means a touch more in credit card debt or annoying Byron or Hussain with a midnight phone call.

Time is running out, after all. The people who make me laugh or sing will all be memories eventually. I haven't regretted going to a single show. I haven't felt guilty about anything else I'm not spending my money on. I'm merely on the latest iteration of my mission to be what I wish to see. Will a super-fort, health insurance, or sense of community ever make it into the equation? I don't know, and I don't know if I really care or if it matters. Is the world burning down? It seems like it, but I don't really trust myself enough to catastrophize my thinking in how I wish to approach the premise.

I missed my house and worried about the cats. I feel like immediately falling asleep let me reclaim a sense of ownership and safety regarding the space I've built. I have so much to do the next few days. I have so much to spend, be awake for, read about, and drive to. I have so much.

[1029] What If

I haven’t felt the need to write. I’m not entirely sure what’s prompting me to try now. I opened this word document in the middle of the day. It’s 1:08 AM now after I’ve returned from seeing William Shatner and a screening of The Wrath of Khan. There are certainly a few things happening in my life worth discussing. Time continues to race, and where precisely I’m at in space is ever imprecise.
No matter how much time passes, my brother will remind me just how unwise he is. I don’t see him very often, so when he manages to not be an out-and-out douche, I start to trick myself into thinking maybe he’s gotten a little older and measured about things. I need to cut that out. If I’m 34, he just turned 32. He’s got his good job, wife, and series of hobbies. He certainly believes he has “figured some things out” and can “tell it like it is.” It’s cringey and dispiriting to watch too closely.

My persistently reasonable, mellow, steadfastly supportive father has been peeved for days over how my brother spoke to him recently. My brother has created a catastrophized scenario regarding my dad’s health and eyesight. Like most who might profess to be acting out of “just how much they care,” he got elevated and insistent that my dad rectify the problem with his eye, on my brother’s terms, as quickly as possible, and through a series of condescending comments and know-it-all-isms effectively chased my dad away from having dinner with him and his wife on his birthday.

I believe my brother cares, but he is an absolute dipshit. I feel like I got a preview into the kind of social-worker/counselor mode I’m going to have to go into as he overplays his perception of our dad as he gets older or does little to cope and deal with his fears and ignorance. That inability to cope will manifest as more insistence and judgement regarding the step-kids, my step-mom, and invariably me which I’m certain he launched into a self-satisfied series of empty truisms about me after our last phone conversation.

When a situation like this arises, it’s fascinating to me how quickly people get into their camps. The shared goal of something akin to “love and take care of each other” becomes a series of memories used to rehash arguments or prove weak points. Was the swerve because of bad eye-sight, or being tired, or because someone was walking where they shouldn’t? Doesn’t matter, once you adopt a story that your dad is basically blind and ambivalent about whether he hurts himself or others while driving, you’ll say fucking anything with your head held high and hands on your hips. I’m not exactly looking forward to the prospect of putting my brother in his place again, but if anyone’s going to do it…

My brother has the wrong kind of “matter-of-factism” nature. He can’t see the forest for the trees as he espouses the virtue of chop chop chopping and building his own little house and world that *would never* morally or practically be contributing to catastrophic deforestation. This is what people do once they give themselves over to a fundamentally selfish and self-righteous feeling. You can stay mad forever. You can call indefinite abuse the height of love. You can deftly dance around what action and practice you must engage in to be accountable to your emotions. I feel like I’m navigating this constantly, and not just because it’s my job.

Hussain is high anxiety as well. He messaged me tonight saying he wanted the contact information of the Putnam County probation department so that he could tell them to send us more clients. I met with them on Friday, got one of their people signed up and paid for, sent that person to him, and experienced the first glance at what I hope is not a problem I will have to speak to very often. He didn’t reach out to the client immediately. He waited until his priority, picking up a new old car to fix up, was hooked to my truck and he was driving back from Indianapolis. The client, because it’s the weekend, was with her family and couldn’t really talk, and now what was easy-going gung-ho reliable communication is rubbing against his desire to be too busy and chaotically organized. He begs to be overwhelmed.

It's good news that we got a client. I need 10 more, personally, consistently, and then I’m making as much as I do in my current role. I have zero qualms about Hussain as a counselor or his people skills. I have watched him get way behind on paperwork in every role we’ve worked together. I don’t want him begging referral sources, threatening rapport, or courting a chaos of paperwork that I might have to filter through our, also seemingly fairly-often-enough unreliable therapist. I’m going to see if a guided shroom trip will mellow him out.

It was a couple weeks ago I assured Hussain and Byron that I could do what needed to be done to kickstart this whole counseling thing. I get very enthusiastic and energetic when I’m drinking, so when I say 5 days, it might be 2 weeks, but the spirit is there. Practically, it’s meant spending nearly $1000 to get the website set up, pay system in place, video conferencing situated, etc. Could or should I have spent the $1000 before then? It’s a dumb question. I’m taking things day by day. I’m trying not to invite the default overwhelmed state that happens when you plug into the various chaos universes of our clientele. I spent way more than $1000 on concerts and comedy shows over the same period of time, and twice that on a new computer waiting for me to put it together.

At some level, the isolating perspective of what I’ll deem as a certain kind of “wisdom” is antagonizing me. I see the problems very far in advance. It doesn’t paralyze me, but the invitation to be savvy, cold, bold, or otherwise highly manipulative I don’t like. I don’t want to massage my business partner or my family. I want them to see the same shit I do and just give me a day off to worry about anything else. My job is less to counsel clients than it is the people I expect to work with who will then counsel clients. That’s what a manager does, to be sure, but also, it builds an extra barrier. There’s a faint part of me that would “just” like to get along or be friends or be family, but it feels naïve and potentially deadly.

When the flood happens, I want the foundation in place. Whether it’s the flood of my brother’s stupid emotions, flood of clients, or flood of confusion about potential futures insisted upon by the people I work with. What do those fundamentals consist of? Are we communicating respectfully? Are we fairly exercising balance with our time? Are the bills getting paid? Are there reasonable expectations for what to do next and how? So much of this I didn’t have to say out loud when it was the coffee shop because I was just in charge of it all. I guess in a major way I still am with the counseling business, but Hussain is partner, at least officially on paper.

I plan to reach out to other probation departments. I’m going to make my rounds at places where addicts meet. I told them I knew what to do next, and in 3 weeks I made us $150 and impressed a room full of probation officers. My “matter-of-fact” sensibility is bolstered by work and numbers. I know what we have to do next. I know how to make people confident in our ability. I need him, and anyone I bring on board, to back that up with how I engage people and organize time. Exactly like me? Of course not. But if I send you someone to get scheduled, in service to our joint operation and rapport building with different locations, you make the fucking call NOW, not tomorrow. I don’t want to have to build my own calendar of people filling in my ever-fleeting free time on top of doing all the management stuff and mood-tending while still doing my regular day job. Again, I have every reason to believe in someone’s person-to-person or counseling capacity, but they’re often miserable at the crucial details related to time-management.

I think about that when it comes to getting to all of these shows. I’m almost never late to anything. If I am, it’s usually some other obligation like work and someone’s having a too-coincidental meltdown. I’ve been irritatingly surprised at the $35 parking fee I refused to pay for one concert and spent time driving around a neighborhood, missing the opener. Any other time I’m late it’s because I’m waiting on someone else. I might be late to work a handful of times in a year if I oversleep or something. I’m hyper-conscious of how I’m using my time, and constantly estimating different scenarios to provide buffers or in thinking about how to occupy all of the time in between. I legitimately try to pay attention and be mindful in as persistent a manner as I can.

I want right now to not suck and make sense. If there’s something I can control, like calling and coordinating with you, I feel obligated to do it. Why wait? So I can have one more thing to think about? So I can forget? I’m not saying you’re always perfectly situated or in the mood to do any and every thing you “should” in this precise moment, but if you respect what it takes to maintain a kind of balance and perspective regarding your work, you don’t wait for the anxiety to dictate how you go about your obligations. I made us serious money. Take what I’m telling you about how to protect and secure it more seriously.

That just makes me think about the house flipping. Fuck does that still cut deep and the whole bait-n-switch fuckery feel like a reminder to stay cold and calculating. I tried so fucking hard to work fast, believe, demonstrate, and get a little engine of making enough doing something fun and potentially hugely profitable work. The time pissed away. The investment squandered. The example wholly unrecognized. For as much as people go on about how little they trust others, I can’t think of anything bigger in recent memory that threatened my capacity to trust. What is it all for if you can pour your blood, sweat, and tears into something only to be told the largest benefactors are actually the real victims and I should be lucky to get what I did?

I work. I work really fucking hard. Whether I’m breaking my back sweating to death or wear the weathered resolve of navigating dozens of your problems every week, I’m feeling myself demand more from the systems I don’t feel the right kind of support from. What do I need from them? Take 5% of the fucking time I do trying to keep my shit together to remind yourself what matters, what you can or can’t do, and what’s worth valuing in a dynamic. You think anyone’s going to work as hard for what I want as I did on the house? You think Hussain won’t throw himself off an anxiety cliff if I don’t constantly redirect? You think my family with its incredibly shit track record of emotional accountability and honest discussion is going to just resolve itself?

No, my probably-autistic ass has to cut through the noise and keep the peace and wax poetic in blogs because…I want more? I can check the impulse to expect the wrong things from the forces that will antagonize and test me indefinitely?

William Shatner ends his performance recalling his thoughts upon going into space. He reiterates that we’re specks and going to die and asks several times, “What are we going to do?” to alleviate ourselves of the consequences of climate change. We? We’re not going to do anything. It’s going to have to be assholes like me that have to do it. My task isn’t necessarily climate change at this resolution, but his point is much broader. You’re either stirring up and tending to the familiar drama of your irascible ego and insecurities, or you’re focused on building a broader conception of yourself and your place in the world. Who’s team are you on? Each one I try to join usually only has room for one person who doesn’t even know what fucking game they’re playing.

[1021] Tribe

I did absolutely nothing to prepare myself for getting back into “work mode” after my trip to Phoenix, so now I’m finding it a bit of a struggle to pull it together to knock out my handful of tasks. I had many times I wished to write in the last few days. The last several times I’ve written it registered as annoying and wasting time and effort repeating myself. A few major themes arose this time though I wish to explore. A general recounting of the trip I also want recorded.

Again, I found myself on a plane. It felt a little less “enlightening” or “liberating” and more “routine” than the one earlier. Flying is fascinating every time, but like all things, you can habituate and take for granted what’s happening. I needed to get to several somewheres for this trip, driving wasn’t going to cut it, so quick trip across the country, and now I’m back home.

“Tribes” came to mind. Bill Maher talks a lot about the tribal nature of the country and our politics, but I don’t know that I let it sink in as deeply as it felt on this trip. We want to belong so deeply. I was listening to some of the people’s conversations around me, and it’s always striking when they talk about the band members like they’re friends. They just use their first names like they’re talking about a brother. They talk about their lives as though they aren’t experiencing them through Instagram updates. There’s this deep connection, seemingly less about whatever band, than just the desire to feel like these people are representing something much more than themselves through their music.

When we talk about “politics” and whether or not our message is “inclusive” enough, I think we somehow completely miss the notion of the tribal identity. Who feels like they belong in the narrative around speech policing and identity games? It’s eggshells and resentment. You know what resonates with tribe members? I, me, mine. “Protecting” whatever abstract notion of things like “freedom” or “the unborn” that you can slap the designator on. Anger and hatred are felt across all tribe members no matter what their political compass might tilt towards. Who do you really feel is on your team? Who’s angry at the same things you are?

Do you know your enemy? When we’re trying to explore what or whether it’s worth getting angry about, things get complicated because we’re not taught to look for a soup of causation. There are many ingredients in the mix that speak to the overall taste and expression. If you want to be indefinitely incensed by abstract “isms” and “ists” you’ll never get to the heart of your issues. If you want to bemoan “poverty” or “injustice” or “inequality” you’re not giving people the specific tools to address how it’s manifesting, not just in their lives, but as a measure of their perception of their lives.

A poor person who grows up poor doesn’t think they’re poor. A rich person who grew up rich doesn’t think they’re selfish and entitled. Dumb people don’t think they’re dumb. Hippies don’t think they smell. It’s never enough to offer soap, “educate,” bemoan what’s “fair,” or talk in terms of a “minimum wage” when it’s all an infinitely abstract and individualized series of perceptional markers. “Hate?” “Hope?” Those win elections. You personally hate or hope for things. You get on the ground and validate, you win.

I don’t care how similar your experience sounds to someone else’s you experience it in the confines of your individual mind. You can get help in how to identify similar trail markers or environmental stimuli, but you have to recognize and choose to walk the path yourself. If you have a strong notion or set of experiences and evidence to suggest how people find that path, your wisdom and insight means nothing if you can’t recognize the nature of the road they’re currently on.

I saw Mest, Zebrahead, and Unwritten Law. The venue was excellent if only because the doors were opened between sets to cool down the room. The crowd was energetic and respectful. There were mosh pits, crowd surfing, free things thrown and collected. I had good tacos at the restaurant portion of the venue. I was first in line, front and center at the stage, and I got there, to the AirBnb, and the airport in timely and safe ways. I had breakfast at an award-winning nationally recognized spot. I got to familiarize myself with a bit of downtown Phoenix and Tempe. It’s about as good of a trip as you could ask for.

I then came up against the ambivalence and disregard of Frontier Airlines. I’m still embroiled in what will almost certainly be a civil suit for the return of $200 they’ve effectively stolen from me. I come off a great trip with a 10+ hour delay keeping me stuck in the Phoenix airport, overpaying to eat, and searching for a way to stay comfortable and plugged in until my flight that was supposed to arrive at 12:30 in the afternoon now ensures I’ll get home at 11:30 PM. I had a decent amount I planned to get done that day, all still pending and contributing to the mental backlog that is preventing me from moving on to my work obligations. The stress of the situation was 5% being made to wait, and 95% the attitude and posture of Frontier.

My tribal principals regarding what’s fair and who should be accountable have been violated. I’m not driven through a persistent uncontrollable rage to try and get my money back, and were I to “let it go,” when I don’t need or want to would functionally enable the continued taking advantage. I didn’t eat enough yesterday, given my wonky schedule and headspace, so combined with the stress of arguing with Frontier, I started getting light-headed and feeling generally “off.” I forgot my keyboard at work, and even drove to work in the first place intending to use the many hours before my first group to do everything I’m hoping to achieve when I get done writing today.

I have the practice and self-awareness to know when, and over what, it’s worth calling it quits. I sent $150 to a guy whose shitty car I was going to buy. He’s poor, excuse-making, and full of shit. I tried, nominally, for a month or so to politely explore how he might return the money for the car that was sent to the junk yard and never received. It’s extremely unlikely I’m getting that money back, and weeks ago I deleted the chat bubble on facebook that was our only means of communicating. That’s a different kind of stupid and impoverished situation. He doesn’t know how poor and dumb he is, nor how badly he smells. I knew I was gambling. I’ve heard the song he was singing from hundreds of similarly situated clients over the years.

The second we stopped bothering to police ourselves in service to the wrong kind of entitled and selfish claims or ownership and self-expression is when we forgot how to dutifully and justifiably punish the obviously objectionable. It’s most frequently a story of “they did” verses “I can.” It’s reflexive and fluid. “He manipulated me! They control the narrative! They’re the ones with the most power!” As though you don’t have a brain or agency. Well, you don’t. You’ve donated it to the dialogue that keeps you disenfranchised and at the lack of mercy from whatever’s not really thinking about you in the first place.

Wherever you go, you can overhear a conversation about a person’s sports team. Mest is from Chicago, and their lead singer spoke of the Bears’ first draft pick for doing so terribly. He’s as much in his punk-rock tribe as he is his sports team’s tribe. The bouncers were discussing the fate of, I forget what teams were competing in the playoffs, but I think they were close enough to Phoenix. The trivia nerds playing on the patio outside of the venue overwhelmingly answered that Larry Bird played for The Lakers. We’re constantly indicating what tribes we do and don’t belong to. Even when we’re wholly not part of it, we know which one is closest or what we’d default to if cornered. We’re disinclined to access that which unites independent of our familiarity or preferences.

I wish I had a bigger tribe. I wish I had more in common with people than where we were from or that we saw the same TV show. I wish I had people who I could dedicate my effort to enabling and they were inclined to reciprocate. Instead, we all generally get walled off into our own worlds. I’m not downplaying or denying the impact the friends and connections I have in my life, but I see it in our dynamics as well. I’m very lucky to ever get someone on board to come to a show. I’m almost never called to come join whatever someone else is doing. They’re either not doing anything, or we’re just not in that kind of tribe, if we’re really in one altogether. I’m not suggesting they aren’t “maintaining their family” or “defending their stability and status quo,” but I talk to enough people in a regular way who make literally no time for themselves to enjoy, indulge, decompress, or even acknowledge there’s a world beyond the bounds of their stress and obligations. I would literally invite everyone I remotely liked to everything I ever do, just as I did with the party house. I’d be right back here whining about how they’re all too tired, busy, poor, or more into “their tribe’s music” to enjoy anything about the show we might head to.

People in my tribe might be kind of bored if invited to a football game, but would recognize an opportunity to drink more or make funny comments, people watch, and spend time with their friend. People in my tribe are looking to build and experience. That’s the prevailing character trait of Hussain, Byron, and Hatsam. They’ve contributed to growth and building things up or creating something new. Where others talk, they do, or did. You make the best of the ongoing shit sandwich of life or your options. You acknowledge the absurdity, dig that much deeper, and come out mangled but self-assured about what you’re capable of. I can walk to the top of mountains. My former tribe apparently plagued by the idea of how I must not be enjoying myself.

What are you using your tribes for? To self-validate like a basic politician getting you to agree to what you already agree with and stay blind to the consequences of their votes? Does your desire to belong lead you down paths that I tripped all over in trying to befriend the wrong characters? Do you pretend your favorite team or band feels connected to you and your details like you might in hoarding and reciting information about them? You’re just a person first, and they’re just a player. Are you capable of recognizing what they’re playing? Are you willing to see what you’re playing at?

[1019] No Accounting For Taste

Oh boy, I’m back home. I wasn’t gone for terribly long, but long enough to register the contrast between feeling perpetually “stuck” and “waiting” otherwise engaged in responsibilities and less-than-fulfilling thoughts and exercising the illusion of freedom with a friend over drinks, mini golf, and delicious food.

I come home to a stained bathroom. I broke the handle on my sink faucet when it was frozen before I left. When it got warm, eruptive chaos ensued. It appeared to Byron who came upon the mess that the flow of water was dangerously close to the space heater I had running in an attempt to ensure the cats’ water stayed unfrozen. I get to imagine whether it would have simply shorted out and blown a breaker, or burned everything down.

 

The GFCI outlet that popped, wisely insisted upon by Jim, housed the series of extensions that power my refrigerator. It was off long enough to have many sticky things melt, leaving a mess that I haven’t even entertained the thought of when to bother addressing. The spewing water drenched the cat food and isn’t suitable to drink, so today I’ve been finding puke and shit leaks on various parts of the floor. It’s all feeling a little Final Destination-y.

 

My friend Brandy in Orlando is perhaps the easiest person I can talk to about an array of topics that have nothing to do with social work. I had to pause several times and point out how much I appreciated that we were able to talk about shows we’ve seen or when music and musicians have found us at different periods in our lives. She’s a doctor and teacher, so I got insight into college students from freshman through grad school, as well as university politics. We fluidly made reference to dozens of authors, speakers, thinkers, and creatives and didn’t miss a beat with those awkward dead/polite faces you catch from people who don’t independently seek out new information or interesting things to learn about.

 

She’s one of those people who are so smart it’s easy to feel crazy and ask yourself too many “how” and “why” questions because you can’t quite wrap your head around the general ignorance and depravity of the world you’re made to navigate. We’re able to speak freely regarding our relationships and perspectives and how to pragmatically achieve greater happiness and stability. She’s as powerful an example as I could have asked for as far as reminders that we’re never really stuck, and when you’re willing to assess and move on your situation, you can do an immense amount of work, emotional or otherwise, in short order.

 

It’s New Years Eve. We’re prompted to think about the past year and what we want going forward. I want more structure. I am in less debt than I was last year. I am in an easier job. I’ve got more things already bought and on the menu book wise and by way of entertainment. I’ve got more things to fix and pay for regarding my home environment, and a more concerted effort to tackle them. The things I’m doing by way of indulgence still register with a degree of superficiality. That is, it’s great that I can afford the concert, but I’m still in regular need of Byron’s or Planet Fitness’s shower. I bought a car off Hussain that added another 2 weeks to my “have to work” narrative. My health insurance is about avoiding fines, not insuring health.

 

I put together a list of people to cold-call regarding looking for clients. It’s 800+ numbers long. Flying from Indianapolis to Orlando, it was another nice visceral reminder of just how many people there are. Thousands you can see at once along highways. City-centers lit up. Every single person is a world unto themselves and they are connected to everyone else in big and small ways in an infinitely changing and dynamic landscape. I thought to myself about the power and impact of music and celebrity when I looked over the landscape. How many of those little dots have never heard of Adam Sandler or Tom Hanks? If I blasted “We Are the Champions” from the plane, I bet everyone could sing along. There’s a universality that you can bolster your behavior with to access that which connects everything. It’s why fascism will always be an option. “Hate” transcends every little point of light. The work you can do with the ambiguity towards the unknown remains the same.

 

In the span of a few hours I went from a beautiful day with great company and an excellent meal to the rain and gray and psychological trappings of Florida’s insecure twin, Indiana. Florida has all of the same stores, but also higher-end and better ones. It has the same people, but the crazy is more diverse. You need distance from what you’re used to as often as you can get it. The things that need to remain true and what you’re really after need to shine brightly and be just as obvious to you as it should be to clean up where the cat took a shit outside the box.

 

I know who and what I want to trust and why. I know that if I’ve been led to hell through someone else’s negligence, ambivalence, or malice, it wasn’t because I lead with a judgmental or spiteful attitude in my attempt to connect or build. The friends who I can continue to engage in the mutually assuring and uplifting exchange massively outweigh the baggage of the ones who can’t be bothered. It’s a state of perpetual mourning when you think about how vital that is to your well-being and how callously it’s been rendered mute or worthy of resentment.

 

I’ve never wanted to be the person who’s like, “I’ve got A-level friends, B-level friends….” Etc. I’ve discussed being “on the level,” to be sure, but that’s about an awareness and capacity more than how much or whether I want to bother with you as an individual. I clearly don’t need friends where we have much in common besides work or a shared disposition even if I’ve been starving for years to talk to another encyclopedia. I’m going to keep doing things. I’m going to try to return to a kind of deliberate enthusiasm for more grindy type of things that will hopefully make me feel more stable.

 

It occurred to me that I had the energy, and probably still do, to give and receive from considerably more than most are prepared to. This analysis prompted some by the various pathologies associated with those in the poly community. I don’t “need” anything I’m unwilling to work in order to achieve for myself. I’ll fly or drive to the friends that are worth it. I have an incredibly robust understanding of the character traits I respect and need to see reciprocated in order to thrive. I draw a deep and resounding enthusiasm from the opportunity to spend time with them. That’s not something to be squandered and begged for. That’s not something to be afraid and ashamed of as though some petty slight or pithy detail, floating above so many ant-like figures from a plane, should be the governing rule.

 

What I can’t fix, at least yet, is people recognizing for themselves the same potential freedom and what the work looks like to orient as though you’re not at the mercy of your circumstances. You’re too busy? You’re too tired? You don’t have the money? If you’re reading this, you have at least one friend who has the proclivity to create worlds where the opposite is true. But what’s that really mean if you’re not friend enough to yourself to even recognize what’s being offered?

[1016] After Ours

Don’t bother.

There’s the thought keeping me from writing. Don’t bother reiterating. Don’t bother wasting more hours of your life pretending you’ll arrive at some “conclusion.” It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth it. You don’t feel enough of anything to justify more empty words in service to your ingratitude and impatience. Fuck you, sit down, watch another one of your little TV shows. Clog your gut with more pink Starbursts.

I don’t want to be useless and mediocre. I think they go hand in hand. A thing that’s not useful for whatever it is you’re doing with it is, by definition “of only moderate quality; not very good.” “Moderate quality” seems like a contradiction. Are you having a quality time, or not? Or is “quality” one of those disguised useless terms that infuses the real description with nothing information? Is it a “quality” piece of clothing? Is it expensive? Is it keeping you warm, comfortable, or dry feel like the relevant pieces of information.

What is the “quality” of my experience? I just got home from a Straight No Chaser show. I’ve never been to an acapella show before. My first instinct on most acts I’ve seen online, confirmed ever more in person, is awkward Christian summer camp energy. Do you understand what I said? Did I have a “good’ time? Did I like the songs? I only knew a couple and I had no specific complaints. Would I see them again and again? Was it “worth the money?”

The whole of where my experience lies seems outside the realm of this line of questioning. I went for a small book’s worth of reasons, all of those and more will inform if and when I go again to them or any other band. I wanted to experience “something” remotely novel, affordable, and that would occupy my time I’m not otherwise in front of the TV, fast food window, or work environment.

Why am I parsing through an abstraction on awareness and time expenditure? I was asked by my boss if I’m “happy” working at Groups. This has caused me several days of ongoing mild panic. I genuinely want to “snap” at questions like that. I feel at once so many things. It’s, “Does baby have to boo boo?” from a doctor meant to be investigating a twisted bowel. It’s, “Live, Love, Laugh!” on the wall of the suicide hotline office. It’s limp. It’s pathetic. It’s shallow and shitty and fuck her for asking such a bold and fucking ridiculous question.

I got asked because I’ve been increasingly introduced into the drama between my office managers. I, again, drive an hour and a half at least once a week to sit in an office to do a remote job. I come face to face with overworked and underpaid secretaries who get regularly screamed at and threatened by our drug-addled population. As they get more burnt, it translates into how/whether they handle our people in professional ways. This spills over into whether anyone takes the program on the whole seriously, which they already have enough reason and ways to not do so anyway.

Am I happy about that? Do I like that my office managers’ leadership has deliberately and consistently removed herself from solving anything they’ve brought to her? Am I happy I waste gas and time driving to the office to plug into the failures and drama? Do I like working for a company paying me a fraction of what they’re billing my service for? Am I happy I have a schedule so scattered that I literally can’t be more efficient? Am I happy that I’m not challenged or driven to do anything but the bare minimum? I NEED MONEY! That is the only reason I have ever occupied any role ever. Money. Always. Whatever other perk or privilege is a thousand years removed from “money, please.” Happiness has NEVER factored into it. Am I stuck or placated? I’m probably still at the job. Am I out of debt? I find myself showing up, waking up, and shutting up. Fucking happy? You fucking cunt!

I’M NEVER FUCKING HAPPY. It’s probably a good summation as to why I don’t have friends. I’ll stick with the over-statement because it depicts a larger truth. I don’t want to be friends, colleagues, or concert-going with someone fucking miserable and oblivious enough to think any of this is about “happiness.”

I’m not happy bowling because I wish for more instruction and consistent practice. I’m not happy building on the land because I need more money, more time, and better weather. It’d be great if every time I took out the trailer a tire wasn’t flat. I’m not happy reading because I’m either learning more about what I can’t use or fix or feel like I’m mocking myself in trying to desperately “escape” whatever circumstance I’m in. I have so many books I’m genuinely interested in reading, and I can’t. They’re like my instruments. I don’t have the freedom. My mind is not available to “just play” or “just read.” I have to keep furiously scratching a compulsive itch to worry or reflect or mindlessly vibe through TV shows and Candy Crush levels.

I’m not happy and I’m not free. I’m play-acting all the fucking time. I pretend to be professional. I pretend to care. I pretend to be polite. I pretend I have anything figured out in terms of indulgence and ownership and the perks of being “hood rich.” When I do my budget I constantly, and I mean constantly, remind myself “only 5 paychecks and I’m even” or “Only until February…if I can just sit and do nothing.” Then you know what happens when you tell yourself that long enough? Insurance needs to be renewed. Property taxes are due. Contacts run out. My air conditioner will break. A tire needs replaced. My cats get fleas. I get sick. Someone needs a loan. I get bored and indulgent and spend too much on another ticket, drive, and pair of cocktails.

It’s stopped feeling like a climb or “requisite sacrifice” to get anywhere. It feels like a miserable slog through layers of shit, deliberately laid or otherwise. I was driven to create the coffee shop and throw the house parties. I was driven as a kid to do well in school. I was motivated to connect and share and try to build and celebrate. Now I just wait. I just wait and bitch and share pictures of musicians and comics living their dreams. I wait till you’re free or maybe return a text. I wait on insurance companies and for the next opportunity to piss away another 25 minutes inputting redundant information. I wait for the meeting to be over, the month to be over, and the payment to hit.

I don’t want to be present in most of my moments. I want to be with my TV shows. I struggle sometimes to watch them while I’m otherwise waiting, sitting at a bar until the show starts or at the restaurant eating alone. Until the comic is starting or the band starts playing, I’m just around disease vectors and people who seem mostly together because they match heights and looks. Do I want to feel my feet and back ache in the standing-room only venue? Do I want to huff your vape runoff or farts? Do I want to watch a band I enjoy through your hair? Does it make me happy to freeze outside for an hour or more in order to get an appreciable spot to witness what’s happening and costing too much due to monopolies and greed?

I fuck up and listen to smart plugged-in people talk about their accomplishments. I hear people talk like how my brain works about their areas of expertise. They get hyper-detailed. They know the subject has a dozen layers and it’s not going to make sense unless they find a way to speak to them all and tie them all together. “When I was writing my first book…,” “When I owned a pharmacy and was doing what Mark Cuban was doing 8 years before him…” So many bands remind us how grateful they are that they “get to do this for a living, and it’s because of you!” Whether they’re selling out the venue or not, there’s a culture, direction, and presumably sense of purpose that I lack. They don’t need 2000 words per song or joke. They don’t need $1400 every two weeks. They need to load up the van, move to the next gig, and play.

Why can’t I just play?

I don’t want to be useless and mediocre. When I think of playing, I think of children. If you drop obvious sentiments, they epitomize uselessness and mediocrity. I don’t really remember the last time I felt like a child. I have memories of going to the park and playing in playgrounds. Playing implies that you’ve nothing else to obligate yourself towards but that free self-expression. You have energy, so you run. There are other kids, so now it’s a chase or a thing to throw rocks at. I feel obligated. I feel responsible for living a certain kind of way that conforms with my best approximations or what might be derived from what I write.

I’m trying so fucking hard. I’m trying to be the constant cheerleader. I’m trying to understand the “reasons” verses miserable excuses I can or can’t move in some direction. I’m trying to derive layers of meaning from the shows I seek and artists I invest in. I’m trying to not lose sight of the veritable miracles I’ve been able to pull off so far. But there’s a healthy dose of suffering in each moment. The stakes and pressure are real. I’m running contingency plans. I’m mourning previous conceptions of dreams and myself. I’m tired and anxious not because I don’t have energy or anything to worry about, but because the fight feels less and less worth fighting and I’m exactly the kind of person who can carry out dramatic reflexive course shifts in spite of the consequences. I’m daring “the universe,” embodied by my supervisor, to keep asking me if I’m “happy.”

I’m embarrassed, ashamed, annoyed and restless. I’m fucking angry as fuck that I’m so angry it’s the same deadness-as-self-preservation I felt growing up. I’m lost. I’m first-world-poor. I’m distracted. I’m alone. I’m bored. I’m unfulfilled and meandering and eating like shit and spending money on so many wet bandages ill-suited for open wounds. I’m as full of hate and despair as I can imagine anyone with less impulse control and perspective can be before they hurt themselves or others. I don’t want another superficial interaction. I don’t want to dance around. (But fuck do I miss dancing!)

I need to disappear into a hole. I have from the 22^nd until the new year off. I dream of either reading a dozen books, or getting a lot of yard work done. If it rains, I need to stop myself from just wasting away, waiting around my dad’s house until dinner or thinking to myself I can get through several layers of each channel’s first episodes! Did you catch that perk? I get all that time to contemplate how much my job cares about me and makes me comfortable. That’s so nice of them. Way better than more money, a stake, vote, or sense of ownership and belonging to a mutually instantiated and protected culture of health care and accountability. Aren’t I “happy” to have the time off? Don’t you wish you had that time off?

I feel like I’m somehow lost or the only one acknowledging the broader context. Byron has increasingly said “Black people are the canary in the coal mine,” with regard to the slow-moving coup and creeping fascism. It’s beyond fucked Hershel Walker even came close. If that’s not scaring you to death in an ongoing way, you seem absolutely insane to me. If you can’t imagine striking, unionizing, or ever remotely speaking to your “authority” or “representative” about the detailed shit of your circumstances, we’re not on the same planet. What do you think is in store for your kids? What do you presume insulates this ignorant country from collapsing like any other? Are you “happy” to just not think about such depressing things? Are you all just making wildly more money, enjoying your time, and figuring out this life thing better than me?

[1012] Swing Life Away

I’m so confused. The other day, I envisioned myself hanging from one of my ceiling 2x4s and writing a facebook status, “Bye, can someone please grab the cats?” I’m not suicidal, but I let my curiosity and taboo orientation ride the thought waves to see if I’ll be “moved” or “jarred” one way or another. The takeaway is that thinking about that made me feel nothing. It was just a thought. It didn’t instruct. It didn’t cause fear. I don’t feel guilty. There I am, just dangling, and then a smirk slowly starts to appear at the idea that, you know, this is really about the cats and making sure they’re okay.

I’m more confused by what, if anything, my “purpose” is. I know I have to make my own decisions and own each moment I’m alive. I know there’s a certain gratification and sense of being/belonging in helping others. I don’t mean to echo too loudly the sentiment of a forlorn teen. I just mean that I’m built a certain way. My truck hauls things a regular car can’t. It’s built to. I’m built in a way that can contemplate tragedy and crisis in detached and pragmatic ways. I’m built in a way that voraciously consumes and aggregates information. I’m quick. I’m well-rehearsed.

My grandparents, if nothing else, worked. They worked to survive. My aunts and uncles all had/have jobs, made it through school. If we reduce the concept of “work” to “made money,” you can better account for their pathological and selfish behavior. Money keeps the bills paid, work keeps the house clean, discipline keeps you in line with the disciplinarian right up until they die or their power is usurped. “Work” is the common refrain for dictating orientation and purpose. You work to provide for your family. You work to distinguish yourself…at work. You work because no one is going to work for you, particularly in your faux representative democracy.

I discuss work often in how I do counseling. You don’t just show up, take your medicine, and blithely check in each week. You have to practice learning how to identify your feelings. You have to practice patience. You have to train your sense of responsibility and ownership. This takes existential-level work that your clients aren’t just bad at, but have literally been using substances to a degree that it perhaps cripples their ability to ever discover how. What, then, are we to say about the nature, purpose, or impact of their work?

I’m 34. In that time, I’ve worked hard enough on at least one instrument to have proven myself capable of performing techniques at one point in my life I would have described as “godlike.” I’ve worked to learn about the world to the point where I was spending thousands of dollars trying to build a website to organize and sort it all to become something useful for connecting and finding patterns. I’ve worked 3 jobs at once and 20-hour days for several years. I’ve worked 4 times longer in a role that burns people out routinely and would have stayed were it not for shit management. I’ve scrubbed the fuck out of a bathroom caked in grime of a mentally unwell client. I’ve created and ran a coffee shop, party house, done well in school, and been a person who has averaged reading more than a book a day. I’ve transported thousands of bricks and built out my house. I’ve hauled scrap, tires, pallets and torn down barns. I’ve been management and general labor. I’ve remodeled a house. I’ve been a part of a winning sports team and a jazz band. I’m working in counseling while trying to get my own business running.

I’ve scratched the surface. In that time I’ve also watched thousands of TV episodes, hundreds of movies, and dicked around, literally, or in days spent in the fog of “I’m not doing enough” or “Where to now?” or “Wanna spend hours driving around until we land somewhere to eat?” I’ve had 3 serious-enough relationships, entire weeks spent by the pool, and thousands wasted or gambled on less than meaningful pursuits. I’ve been to well over 100 concerts, dozens of comedy shows and several theme parks. I’ve beaten as completely possible that it is to beat 50 or so video games and spent as many or more hours playing them socially.

Almost never does it feel like “enough.” There’s work, forever, on whatever you choose, but the times I felt like anything I was doing mattered, whether it was drinking to oblivion or doing something around the house, was when I thought it was shared.

I’m confused because I don’t know what’s been shared. I don’t appear in pictures with most of the people I knew in college, let alone high school outside of a yearbook. My relationships appear to have been overwhelmingly built on a combination of naivety and “romantic” notions of who I am or what it means to be together. No matter what I watch, read, or play I’m not in some active conversation or exploration of the topic. I’m still the kid at dinner trying to tell his exhausted and disinterested mom about his day and getting shut down. Were we sharing a meal back then, or was she obligated to feed us?

I’m thankful for Hussain in sharing the struggle of getting the business started. I’m thankful I get to add “home renovator” via Byron to my list of accomplishments for every infuriating and baffling piece of crazy that has fucked that project. I will always boast about my partnership with Hatsam and the support our parents gave us. Friends certainly contributed back then. What was it to? Whether it was the shop or the parties, who was really there?

I’ve all-but stopped writing goofy paragraphs on old friends timelines for their birthdays. We’re not going to call each other. It doesn’t mean anything more or less to them than the unwashed uncapitalized mass “happy birthday” messages from the other veritable strangers. Anymore there’s several I’m convinced would be confused and offended I even bothered. What do I make of the time together? What do I allow myself to be convinced of about the nature of the friendship or words exchanged? Is it a measure of “wisdom” to maintain a kind of military-detachment that expects you or them to ship out or die at any moment?

I don’t seem to understand what I’m built for. If I bring everyone together to party and celebrate, I’m actually the target for scorn and resentment. If I reach out first, second, or a seventh and fifteenth time, now I’m a borderline creep or disingenuous puppy who can’t register it’s been abandoned. If I focus on learning and nerd shit, who cares? I’m not figuring out a way to get paid for what I know and the slurry of Patreon professionals are barely skirting by producing content every day and appearing on TV. I can’t persuade myself to take music seriously enough to sacrifice anything in service to again reaching my heights. Even if I’ve created for myself an adult playground with tools and space, I come up against some hard limits in the weather, time, budget, and tolerance for risk and pain while occupying the middle of nowhere.

I’m told, pretty regularly, about my capacity for building rapport and trust. I’ve watched people light up that they get to keep me as a counselor when they change group times. I’ve been told I can be talked to and seem like I really care in a way others don’t. I’ve watched the disappointment and anger as I’ve switched roles or the fear that I’m more abandoning you than saving myself. I’m not high on my own supply of self-serving narrative bullshit. I have a particular, high-powered, and special or different use. I can only seem to find it working in service to things that take advantage of me or treat me like a threat to what’s understood as a “normal” or “decent” way of existing. I can be really good at building trust and being encouraging, and line the pockets of a company that won’t provide insurance that covers the contacts in both of my eyes. I can give away the space to pursue dreams and create and be yelled at and looked at with ongoing suspicion about what I really want.

Even if I figured out what I was built for, who am I working for? An abstract notion of “the youth” and “their future?” I’m well past the point of believing I can “help” any fucking moron who has made a career of avoiding responsibility or bothering to define words. I can’t “save” you from yourself nor single-handedly fix my environment or problems of communication any better than an entitled billionaire.

Is this what I’m here for? Am I to keep reporting on the relative futility of it all? Am I just meant to watch and record as I confirm under different conditions how useless my hands and brain really are upon subjection to the infinite spin of errant interpretation and superficial relationships? What am I fucking doing? My best guess is “trying to amass money.” After that? Eat. Travel around and look for a remote sense of security. Build something, maybe better, maybe just more headaches, and keep people from…hurting themselves? Feeling victimized once more? News flash, I could have the best business in the world and you know what it can’t do? Make people pick up the phone, show up, or recognize anything about what it took to create.

You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself. I have no idea how to “help myself” be less suspicious about how or whether I’m capable of finding and maintaining meaningful relationships. Useful ones, sure. If your investment in me is on your terms, it’s not an investment in me. It’s not a recognition of me. I don’t exist beyond a narrative fixture in a fantasy. I wasn’t looking for a “wife” or “girlfriend,” and still aren’t. I cared about the people and what they wanted to do. I wanted to help and give and invest, and I can’t really explain how persistently that was denied and thrown back in my face. At the moment I might start to suspect that I could be a positive or consistent good in someone’s life, they pull out, and I’m a laundry list of problems and gaps and not-enoughs.

The “healthiest” relationships I could point to do a fucking circus extravaganza of not seriously discussing or fixing areas of contention. The overall sense of companionship or stability trumps the work and devastating consequences of battling things out. That’s the rule. Keep the image alive. Don’t race to the bottom where neither of you will find peace or solidarity in sharing a truth more precious than the most accessible and translatable narrative. Keep the sunglasses on your black eye teeth beaming pictures. Stay busy and distracted so you can better forget there was ever a smell coming from the basement at all.

We build families of this stuff. We’ve built entire nations on empty notions codified in anecdotes and lore. What do you win for speaking to that? Exile from the nation. Even if you play along, you don’t feel safe. Your soul no longer belongs to them. Any tenuous truce between your perspective and their power over you can get shattered in an instant. My uncles stole my grandmother’s house when she died and cut me out of the will. Do I isolate from them, be rude at Thanksgiving, and watch the proceeds of its sale when they die get sent to the church? Do I hurt and disappoint my dad who loves his brothers and his sons and just wants peace and prosperity for us all? Do I mock and practice ingratitude for the intangible things my grandparents have given me, their examples still being talked about now?

So I can mediate a crisis between you and the State, or between you and a problem you don’t have the time or notion on how, but perhaps intention to figure out, or with myself when it comes to a physical activity, socializing foray, or hobby preoccupation, but not within my thieving or leaching family. Got it, universe. I can invite a conversation about any given line from a digression like this, and I’m only going to catch those perfectly unwilling to quote, focus, or bother to do really any work to understand what was actually said or grasp the sentiment offered more than incoherently shit their feelings and demand I see and trust they know more than me. I can spend hundreds of hours on a given preoccupation or thinker and in seconds they, and I, will be caricatured.

Is that friendly? Am I just being impatient and “too serious” in wanting to get as far away from that crazy-making behavior as possible? If I’m feeling isolated or antsy, and I join the sports team where everyone smokes, drinks, and is overweight, am I in the wrong for feeling like I still don’t fit in? If I discuss the lengths I go to approach the myriad problems I might identify, can you begin to understand how isolating it is when you’re met with that look like a dog who’s waiting for you to drop something for them to eat? Like you’re speaking Chinese or talking about moving grains of sand one at a time across a vast distance.

There I dangle. My environment kills me. It’s often by design, but mostly through negligence. It’s a silence that crushes my head and restricts my heart and punctures ears. It’s a look, so infused, by the layers of dream-work laid over the necessary shoveling I’m discussing. It’s the void behind your eyes betrayed by the fear, anger, and sadness. The people I “counsel” are overwhelmingly terrified of me. They shrink if we meet in person. They say “hey” and grab what they need and leave. It’s not “me,” of course, they’re reacting to. It’s how they feel. It’s why they became addicted. It’s why they’re tuning in, to the extent they are, to what I have to say and not the other way around. That’s the ongoing tragedy. I’ll be read as some smug or proud braggart by someone who feels just like them who’ll gleefully skip past the invitation to own and explore how they’ve weaponized their weakness and victimhood.

I’ve said too much. Who was this for? It’s 4:04 AM and I’ve got to get a nap in before gearing up to head north for Thanksgiving. I’m just kidding, I know who it’s for. All of the blogs, always, are for me. Because I’m the only one who can give me what I need. I have to find the words or reason to keep playing along while I otherwise swing in the breeze. I’m thankful I don’t want to die, but I’m still incredibly confused about what I’m supposed to live for when I feel like you’d prefer it if I were dead. Not everyone, just almost everyone who’s gotten to know me. I’m also thankful I thrive on spite.

[973] Invitation To Destruction

I can’t say that anything is pressing, but we’re due for a quick jaunt through the old mindscape.

The last few weeks my primary focus has been the building of my workshop. As with most things I endeavor to do, it’s been harder and more complicated than I anticipated. But, given that I’ve resolved myself psychologically to $10,000 or so in debt provided I have a workshop (and maybe working pool), it’s more a question of the weather and my will to get things done. Well, I also took a 5-day detour to help assemble a gazebo, and then to Kentucky Kingdom. Now, I’m home, the weather’s perfect, but damn is it feeling right to just exist by myself and collect.

For the trip to Kentucky, an acquaintance joined us, Byron’s adopted kid, and 3 of the kid’s friends. This is an acquaintance I’ve lived with and known for several years. He’s one of Byron’s charges who has been “nudged” away from the wholly self-destructive and immature tracks that he was on when we first met him, only to drift back. He now has a good job, bought a house well outside of his resources, and is slowly trending towards killing himself because he can sense how trapped and irresponsible he has made his circumstances. He has a girl who’s much younger than him, and acts like it, and has tried unsuccessfully to address his issues with extensive acid use.

He tricked me. We went to lunch and began talking about how my buddy’s kid, in coming from a poverty and hood-rat setting, associates with at least one who sells guns, or these bootleg poor-quality gun-adjacent things, to get by. That kid has no parents. Another of his friends is 16 and alcohol dependent. Some line or another struck me as the conversation began to be about how to logistically and legally assist the transportation of weapons and to what lengths we might “excuse” how they deviated from the trip plans to acquire and smoke weed. We’re adult men in our 30s. I’m not going to employ my brainpower to sort ratchet shit for teenagers.

I began to point out the discrepancy in what I thought the example we might set could be, and what our conversation had devolved into. This made the acquaintance quite incensed. To him, these kids are nothing. He’s never going to see them again, he said. We can’t “save” them, and it’s not our job to interject ourselves into their lives like we’re their parents or can fix anything. Leaving aside that these kids are 1 degree away from the one my buddy needs to protect, he was striking at a bigger denunciation. He disagrees, seemingly, with the larger scope of what adult men are to be responsible for.

Both Byron and I have seen first hand what mild interventions can do to course correct someone’s shitty direction. It’s not a “theory” that if you provide guidance or a consistent standard, people will fall in line behind it. From a purely practical and experiential place, there’s reason enough to say something, do something, or be present and the one denying them when they ask for alcohol. On top of this though, this acquaintance is literally the product of being redirected. Moreover, to the extent that he has eschewed that larger responsibility to own his shitty reasoning and dismissal of intervening where he could, the sadder and more chaotic the life he has led. I at one point just asked him how he finds himself arguing against attempting to help idiot poor kids do better. It’s a weird position to try to defend.

Eventually, as he denied he was saying anything unreasonable, got louder and talked over everything attempting to be said, and it turned into a level of immature inanity I didn’t sign up for, I literally walked away from the table, and eventually restaurant, when it continued outside. A bit of a stroll around Louisville and 45 or so minutes later, we reconvened at the car and returned to the park.

Other news, my ex has reached out to me after almost a year. She wrote perhaps half a dozen pages suggesting some serious self-reflection and growth. There were apologies, nice things said about me, and an invitation to keep investigating how she might both better understand herself or get me on the same page about the depth and nature of her feelings. It almost immediately turned to chaos when, as she later pointed out, she responded to my response to her from a place of emotion. She got very judgmental and accusatory, I got pissed and wrote a thing I was happy to amend before sending, and then more clarity and apologies were introduced.

It’s been a reminder that this whole process of introspection and being honest with oneself is literally a skill that needs to be practiced. It doesn’t matter if you’re smart, hard-working, good-looking, or from some kind of background, you might have absolutely terrible words and thoughts about how you relate to others. You don’t have to be arguing against gun-running addict children to struggle with the task of orienting yourself.

I consider myself at something of the other end of that “what’s my responsibility” spectrum. Whether I’m perfectly feeble or inadequate to address the needs of addicted youth, befuddled acquaintances, or sincere and dramatic ex-girlfriends, I do accept that given my awareness and work, I have something of a responsibility to all of it. That responsibility often looks like keeping my cool and finding the patience or walking away. I’m not going to hit suicidal sad boy, ridicule emotional instability (unless it’s coming from my mother), nor pretend that I deserve to run a fucking addiction clinic if I personally am acquainted with someone, a child no less, who I’m willing to ignore (even in thought!), because…it doesn’t serve me? I don’t believe we’re all connected? I don’t have anything to offer in what I’ve learned? It’s hard to conceive of myself as so small and naïve.

I find myself feeling a touch overwhelmed in the number of things I try to be responsible for. Who says I need to get the workshop done? Me. Who says I have to say yes to invitations to help or talk? Again, me. Who says I need to keep reaching out and exploring avenues for my own business and the things I hope to generate over time? Who says I ever have to open my mouth when the topic of conversation appears to violate a whole host of my best conceptions of myself?

In one sense, yes, I’m invited to fights I don’t want and each individuals’ brand of self-destruction. But also, I’m constantly swinging. In my manner and in what I respect, speak to, or work on, it’s a threat by default. It’s why you feel small when you feel small. I spend more time trying to improve on my hobbies than I’m witness to people in their careers, relationships, or sense of ownership and well-being. Even if I don’t and won’t do what I think I’m capable of each day, I slumped outside and at least arranged the pieces to about where they need to be so when the moment strikes to get the fuck back to work, I can own the inches I moved in between. 

[968] Glass Aye

 Awareness builds.

I was thinking again about Waking Life and the first time I saw it. I was struggling for a way to orient my perception. The movie clued me into something I couldn’t yet articulate. It was thoughtful, but with an ease. I knew it had hooked me and I knew I’d be watching it again and again like a toddler forming the anticipatory framework in rewatches of its favorite Disney movie. I still think about the movie fairly often. It’s why it’s my favorite movie. It lives in me. It helps transform who I am in an active way. It can be relied upon like a friend to offer the words in a way only they can.

I consider myself a function of the different things I’ve become aware of. When I was a mess of uncontrollable feelings, I learned how to describe those feelings in a manner that allowed for more control over time. The more I dictated, the more I could direct. When I felt at the mercy of butterflies and anxiety, I dug through history and philosophy and so depersonalized “my” problem that it transformed into a mere thing to be dealt with like any other. I discovered intentionality.

This is different from “choosing not to feel.” I felt. I felt deep, but I was able to identify the compelling feeling as a complex mix of bad and good. Bad, in that it was desperate, compulsive, and depressed. Good in that it seemed to motivate and invigorate in a manner I suspect is not unlike methamphetamine. I didn’t “get better” at my feelings until I acknowledged, until I learned, how to give them the credit for how complicated they were. I had to nod to the contradictions. I had to track what they were tangibly netting me.

People don’t do this. If they’re lucky, they get old enough to get too tired to fight against what might be their “hidden” inclinations otherwise. Liberated old ladies or people who’ve had serious health scares carry a similar air. It’s like the veil is lifted and it’s easier to prioritize and assert who they are and what they want. I think no matter who you are, it’s work. You don’t pursue healthier relationships, leave religion, or stand up to any prevailing opinion or crowd unless you’ve first decided there’s work worth doing. You only have so many mental and physical resources, and overwhelmingly people seem to decide it’s not worth spending them going against the tide.

Well, unfortunately, we’re modern. We have instant communication. We have individuated algorithm means by which to isolate and embolden opinions. We have the most significant gap in wealth distribution since there’s been people, and those in power do literally everything in their power to instantiate “business as usual.” Whether it’s actual business in keeping the cash flowing, or psychological conditioning in keeping you too busy, angry, or exhausted to volunteer for some of the most distasteful work there is.

Is that speculation? Am I being hyperbolic? I think I’m just aware of things like January 6th and Trump. I think I listen to the capitalistic reasoning for destroying the planet and endless greed in my Nazi Senators’ facebook posts. I think I watch the word-for-word thought soup and salad spew out of the entitled and incensed when presented with the opportunity to work against their indoctrination. We’re just running the same story with more dangerous weapons and catastrophic means of communication.

Most often, when someone is telling me a story, it’s a pretty dramatic one. They’re experiencing relationship drama, they’re sick, their job is every level of exploitative and doesn’t pay enough, or the most recent article they’ve read about gas or the environment or the economy portends imminent calamity. They’ll trot back to work, pop on Netflix, and plan their next vacation, but boy oh boy, don’t you know the end is nigh? Don’t you know that “life” is always happening and we’re helpless to do anything about it? We can’t even leave the house without encountering a sign that questions the merits of how we define gender! What is the world coming to? Has anyone ever been so harmed?

Ignorance destroys.

Ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, destroys life. You eat the poison mushroom and die. You burn the witch. You turn off that damn science program because The Big Bang is an atheist plot to send you to hell! Ignorance destroys relationships, the concept of a family, and any dreamy future envisioned by sci-fi. It’s not hard to spot. It reflexively shuts things down. It doesn’t push a conversation to a later day, it denies there’s anything to be acknowledged altogether. This is how people “snap” or sometimes emotionally breakdown into places from which they can’t recover.

Ignorance is so good at its job, it’s a law of physics. Entropy. You can justify being ignorant your whole life, and on balance, you’re nothing but a universal dictum and destiny for every one of our particles. Isn’t that neat? You can smear shit on the walls of Congress, shoot at Muslim boogeymen in the woods, and tell Jesus you really didn’t mean those thoughts you had about your teenage daughter’s friends, and it will all devolve into so much dust. In the meantime, you keep your community, your “strong opinions” and sense of self. Your brain, by itself, can’t tell the difference between the pageantry and the life. It’s just there to fuck bitches and form patterns, and it’s probably out of bitches.

What’s the value of being aware? You’ve climbed the mountain, you’re wise enough to know you know nothing. Okay. So now what? You’re still labeled by all of the in-groups and not allowed to enter. Your individuated dreams may not comport with your physical location opportunities. Hey, wait. I just equated becoming aware to becoming an individual. That’s probably not a correct thing to do. For surely, if you’re aware, you’re keen to observe the constitutive parts of your being. Aren’t I frequently attesting to merely passing along ideas of those much smarter than me? Aren’t “my” values ones demonstrated for me?

Let’s make it worse. Groups of ignorant fucks build all sorts of things. They make things to worship. They make laws. They make endless streams of propaganda. They make a fuck load of money. I’d argue this is the wrong layer of analysis to claim they’re building or making anything but the bed we all get to die in, but if you need fast and dirty practical analysis fodder, they’re offering it through a firehose.

Maybe your awareness allows you the ability to manipulate and navigate the muck above. Feels a little cheap and like a waste of your potential though. Gaining awareness bestows upon you potential. Why waste it on the mercy of the crazies? Why obtain potential at all? We can keep getting abstract, or we can pretend we’re embodied and have things or people in our lives that mean something to us. We don’t have to know why they mean anything; we just have to be aware that they do. It’s the only way things can make sense.

Do you want to destroy your family? Most people might reflexively reel at the question and say, “No!” A savvy pollster would recognize a few problems in the phrasing. A person perpetually open to analyzing word choices and underlying motivations or primed thinking can’t take the question or answer seriously on their face. Some people think their family will be destroyed, even go to hell, by accepting a gay family member. Some people think their family will be destroyed by a Russian bomb aimed at a hospital they’re hiding in.

I still don’t think I’ve answered the reason or value of awareness. At least for me, it plagues my thought. I’m always in a form of doubt. It’s like a low hum tummy tinnitus. “Hmmmmmm, maybe.” Maybe she “loves” me, maybe I’m “smart” enough to pull something off, maybe you appreciate I “give a shit” or am a “hard worker.” Wouldn’t it be nice if it were true? But my goddamn awareness and “individual” perception won’t let me take the win. I don’t believe anything; I’m constantly weighing everything.

But, that isn’t entirely true. Mostly because I don’t have a good concept of the word “belief.” I feel or see the consequences of what people do in my life. I don’t “believe” my dad loves me. I’ve watched him respond in supportive and caring ways to literally everything I’ve ever said or done in life. Belief doesn’t factor into it. Dude demonstrates and does the work as dad. Friends inconvenience and sacrifice for one another. Byron, Hussain, and Corbin have all lent me cars. I think people do what they believe or they don’t really believe it. I know I’d reflexively be keen to be, not-quote/unquoted, friends with people I haven’t talked to in years. I believe nothing that’s transpired conversationally rises to the level of disownment. I still think I’ll be relevant again one day when the kids are grown and the divorces kick off.

As such, I feel and see the things I work on and embody. I ride few highs like when I’m collecting bricks or pallets. I wanna learn how to make shitty wood look cool or become useful? I have it! I can go do that right the fuck now. I can make the things I’ve written or said out loud dozens of times real. I can manifest. I can celebrate that my muscles still work and that I’m young and healthy enough to take this impossible to understand existence and build something from it. More than “something,” but something meaningful. Something that stands as a demonstration of my values.

So much of that story is filled in before we ever get here. You need to love Jesus! You need to love your family! In spite of abuses and contradictions! It doesn’t matter how you actually feel, play the goddamn part! Get your education! Get a job! Vote Republican! Defend your nation! Buy fucking everything! Meet the standard that exists for reasons no one can remember, but we’ll be damned if your hair is long or you’re pierced and tattooed! Don’t fuck anything that isn’t your wife and she better be a girl!

And it’s not all bad, because you get fed, and you do learn things, and some of the values actually translate into healthy ways of living. You have a considerably small incentive to rock the boat, particularly if you’re not trained to look for what’s meaningful to you. Isn’t it obvious? Continuing to eat! Continuing to garner the love and connection from your peers and family. What the fuck kind of question is that to go looking for what’s meaningful? You’re just trying to antagonize and stir the pot!

What if your awareness builds to the point that you find it incredibly meaningful that as many of us survive and survive objectively well for as long as possible? Well, fuck. Now you have to find a way to incorporate the crazy. You have to work within the absurdist nightmare of the consequences of fundamentalism and pure deadly irrationality. Fun… You have to “fix your face” when you engage with harrowing abusive or neglectful tales that literally cannot be made up and you will never see dramatized on TV. You’ll have to take all of the tools you utilized to pull yourself just a hair over the fog and see if they can be configured in a way to appeal to a crowd viciously addicted to smoking.

And today, you have to do it in competition with literally anything that might go viral or a power broker who can silence you for any reason. You’re up against the evangelicals, monopolies, bored money, your own ignorance, instantiated power, and bad luck. Your awareness bringing you any peace in that moment? You feel like a super hero yet? It mostly feels like a torture and taunt. “Good luck, fuckboi!” Jaunty condescension wins the day and insecurities stay safely buried.

Still, something deep echoes. In my basest conception of myself, as one among and apart of all, I know I cause ripples. I know I want those ripples to come from coherent, rounded, invested and accountable thoughts. I haven’t yet found a word to replace “selfish” in how I think about this. I just say the good and bad kinds of selfish. I think I’m an incredibly good kind of selfish in attempting to genuinely help people with the tools I’ve used to help myself. Whether that’s a literal physical tool I can lend you, or my healthy productive body, or the words I’ve used to find peace for my gut and head.

I’m old enough to see how my ripples have played out, whether in shitty things like incensing the wrong cunts in power or in building new, less dramatized, friendships after gaining a broader awareness of what I got confused about previous ones. I retain every piece of the puzzle that got me so far completed. I be ratchet. I can be case manager. I can be sadist. I can be not-doctor indefinite open ear. I work to be in a mode of learning, trying, and experimenting. I practice honesty and writing. I show up and do many things I don’t want to do because I’m aware of how they speak to what’s actually meaningful.

How would you trust yourself to land on or stick with a “meaningful” thing? What if you thought your kids were gonna do it for you and they don’t? What if you’ve invested decades of your life with an ill-suited partner? What if you’re mentally or physically unable to pursue whatever it was anymore? What if it changes over time, as it almost inevitably will? Was the effort worth it? If I had to sell everything on the land, did I just waste my time if I have to “start over” somewhere else? You probably don’t know what’s meaningful if that’s your mindset. I wouldn’t trade the things I’ve learned and become as a result of moving out here for anything. I shaped my environment and it shapes me in return, if I let it.

I learn pretty regularly how unwilling people are to let me shape them lol. I’m just another person in their environment, after all. Not a particularly important one or with any special insight into their lives or thought processes. It’s not like I have a kitschy book or catchphrase bolstering my bid for your attention or vote. I’m no more aware of what you “really need” than you are. I only know what gets my blood pumping. I only know the infinite well of motivation or direction I draw from as I do the work to account for my experience. I only know the glory in reveling in the completion of labor for the highest ideals. Popsicles and ice cream tastes different after yard work and hauling things.

I may be stuck in the present, but I live in the future. I have dozens of woodworking projects in a truck parked on my land right now, and dozens more I’ll be retrieving tomorrow. I have tools and intention. I have working limbs and a healthy-enough brain. Before I had the pieces, I had the blogs telling you what I was after, and before those I had all of the other things I built or was trying to build. I want your individuated awareness because it is an infinite sea from which nothing I could predict or do can build. I can’t write the song on your heart. I can’t love the way you can. I can’t work out what you find meaningful. I can’t train your patience or bravery. I, good kind of selfishly, want everything you can be and for you to know how much power is really there. It’s more powerful than a god or shitty abusive family members. It’s considerably more powerful than your opinionated friends. But it’s a lot of work, perhaps an infinite amount, in order to inform the entropy how you’re going to breakdown.