[1210] It's The Way You Want Me

I’m out of sorts. I’m feeling a level of creeping panic and disorientation that hasn’t been around for a while. I’m finding myself in the midst of the “slow creep,” where I’m looking for some kind of “relief” or way to get “anchored,” and as a result of not finding it, am tempting fate with some profoundly questionable decision-making.

The first was to fuck-around in a stupid phone game, spend an obscene amount of money, and then try to get it back. I’m forever, always, at-once, broke, but always find/make the money I need to stay in the piddling first-world-poor place. If I don’t get the money back, nothing materially changes in my life, I just get to point to a new bar/low for stupidest thing I’ve ever spent money on, and I’m someone who has spent thousands attempting to hire people for jobs they couldn’t do and tools I’ve used sparingly to not-at-all yet for years.

That’s more to the point than it sounds. My spending is, hopefully, in service to my actual goals and things that bring me positive feedback. From band T-shirts to instruments, I’m never upset when I actually do use them. I don’t hate the food I eat. Even if it takes me getting to some level of infirm, I do plan to play and complete all of the games I bought. I’ve never wasted a dollar on a friend or in service to time together.

The odds of me getting my money back feel increasingly low, and even if I do, I’ll probably lose access to the game until I re-buy the requisite credits to match the in-game currency. I’ve played this game, every day, for between 5 minutes to several hours, 352 days in a row. I’m part of a team. There’s a rationalizing story I could provide myself that would go something like an infomercial, “For about a $1 a day you too can make friends, fight for your clan, and share memories of increasing conquest!”

It also just feels like an insult to how many useful and “hopeful” and meaningful things I’ve put money towards. It’s not precisely lighting it on fire, but that’s the kind of emotional space it’s occupying. Keep in mind, that’s the second-order effect and feeling. I’m only doing something like that because something else has shifted in me, and I’m not finding a great way to articulate it.

Today, for example, I left work “early,” we’re on a “points” system so I basically just forfeited the effort it would have taken to see anymore clients to get more points. I get home and just sleep. I’ve been groggy all day because I was up early to drive from NW Indiana to work in Indy. Now it’s 10:30 PM, I still have work tomorrow, but my energy is back, and I’m ruminating on this feeling. Part of the reason I left work is because I don’t “need” more points than I’m getting, and I’ve been taking big bites of my time back that are normally spent in work environments.

At the same time, I’m still in debt. As a recent discussion with one of my friends reiterated, it’s never been close to the kind of debt people went in for school, and are still paying back, and whether it gets paid tomorrow or over the course of my debt-consolidation plan, my day-to-day still stays the same.  Shouldn’t one of my “values” be getting debt-free again? Shouldn’t I be “focused” and “mature” and ensure I’m meeting my obligations?

There’s the perpetual rub. It’s all a giant joke. The game is rigged. The opportunities, while theoretically legion, are overstated and require obscene levels of luck and privilege that go just as understated as everything else is preached at nausea-inducing volumes. I say in counseling that an excuse is anything that puts distance between you and some decision, and a reason is something that contributes to taking more responsibility and building more context around decisions. I made the decision to fuck around in the game. I’m in a context that feels hostile, arbitrary, and pointless in explicit and acute ways. i don’t think it’s a coincidence I decided to act that way on July 4th as the monstrous bill is signed into law poised to functionally kill the people I work with every day.

When you map that reality and millions of things that speak to why it’s going to play out as reliably as any atrocious set of behaviors over my lifetime, why not strong gorilla in gambling game instead? Nothing registers as really mattering. Instead of choice paralysis, why not choice spontaneity?  As long as I’m still fed and “they” are still focused on the immigrants and not me - you know, because it’s not like there’s a “and first they came for” poem about that sort of thing, who cares what I’m doing?

This is no way to live, and to listen to conservatives tell it, this is why there’s a resurgence and enthusiasm or “coolness” to becoming religious. Lost? Come right in! All the excuses you need! I don’t know why we think we should be proud of this. We’ve so broken the social contract and reasonable moral exchanges that we’ve gone native and prefer the irrational comforts handed down through authority and magic as though reason hasn’t provided the spoils of Western civilization. If you’re clocking that people are turning religious, that should be your canary that we’re fucking up in a bigger way than is even already being advertised.

How am I going to find my brain and focus though? How am I going to find a way around doing dumb shit for its own sake because I can’t otherwise cope with the infinite hollow sucking me into the abyss somewhere just below my heart and brushing against my gut? Writing is by no means a comprehensive fix. I don’t wish to spend the next months/years of my life thinking about all of the other “stuff” I would have, could have, should have bought with that money. It wouldn’t be fair to the honesty of my feeling or perspective. Even my “best” and “most reasonable” projects are similarly undermined and arbitrary, if only because they just have to do with me and my preferences. I can understand that and not beg for a savior to fill in the blanks.

I have at least a somewhat-powerful-videogame-gorilla’s worth of stuff just occupying space an arm’s length away I might touch or use once a month, often less. That gorilla is killing video game zombies as I write this. Was I making some desperate round-about grasp for continued agency? That’s what AI argued in analyzing the last thing I wrote about the situation. Is AI known for it’s propensity to dress-up excuses to make you feel inflated and engaged? What tool built by lonely greedy ideologues could do anything less, better, or most often?

What’s sticking with me is how, I don’t feel “good,” about the mess I’ve created, but I don’t feel bad…enough? Rarely do I operate with the requisite fucks for most things, but I don’t know that the “pain” I’m causing myself is going to have anything to do with how or whether I’m inclined to do something similar again in the future. That bugs the fuck out of me. I don’t want to be known as someone like that. Talk about a complicated phrasing. I don’t want to preemptively justify doing shit like that by “just accepting” that from time to time I’m going to whip out my wallet and chuck it in the lake. Why? In protest? In reactionary panic? Because I’ve ceded to confusion and depravity of my overwhelmingly arbitrary day-to-day existence?

I clearly have considerably more questions than answers. If I get my money back and account suspended, I’ll just be back over at Candy Crush, which I’ve been playing for at least 12 years now, never spending a $1.

[1137] You Had It All

If you're seeing this, I didn't delete it after never finding the point or remote satisfaction.

The word "heuristics" is sticking in my head. If you're not a word nerd, you may not know it simply means the process or method that is "good enough" to be practical. It feels almost personal to someone like me. My living environment is mapped along a heuristic of "functional" as opposed to "aesthetic." If in doubt, I want it to work in service to one or more of my goals 100% more than I care if it looks good.

I apply heuristics when I think about conversing or arguing with people, as well as when I register that I'm being lied to. I can't meticulously go through every individual's thoughts and flag discreet lies. I can reliably gauge how or whether to approach my next question or piece of advice based on a dozen different things related to your word choice, body language, and tone. I've watched people turn extra self-conscious when I say the quiet part out loud in what I'm reading from them that informs what I'm going to say next.

I've been watching a few more interviews and drifting into "debates." Familiar themes about the pitfalls of tribal allegiances get referenced and so many times do the participants wax about "what people in such and such circles do" as opposed to just answering the fucking question presented. Even good faith discussions can't resist pedantic urges and infinite qualifiers when it's not clear if doing so even adds clarity as it contorts fluidity.

I'm skeptical of debate at a conceptual level. I think an array of ill-defined metrics need to be assumed and it's any wonder how one goes about evaluating the "benefits" or "achievements" afterwards. When you're done, does it lead to, say, enacting a new policy or provide instruction on how to change minds about a given subject? Are you sure each participant was qualified to talk on the, perhaps dozens, of subjects that might come up? Is anyone flagging logical inconsistencies and straw-men besides autistic onlookers wringing their hands and screaming at the screen?

I think you can engage in a self-evaluative dialectic exercise to something of a greater effect. Or I think you can engage in a therapeutic exercise with someone versed in helping you organize how to better argue with yourself. I can feel immediately when a question I pose to myself is going to produce, essentially nonsense, no matter how I answer. Whose "foreign policy" is better, Trump's or Biden's? It's an insane question. It skips even the idea of an accessible and generalized heuristic that you might adopt for any given country or because of specific reasons related to your country.

Maybe some years "police the world" makes a lot more sense than others. If you operate under the idea of "no war, ever," you might be perfectly comfortable abandoning Israel and letting Putin take Ukraine because "other people" or "Western values" or "irreconcilable strong-man" don't comport with your heuristic for understanding the world. Maybe you shortcut anyone from the middle east as "terrorist," so Muslim travel ban? Yes, please. Either way, it's your personal preferences, prejudices, and blind spots pretending to be evidence evaluators.

For the question to make any sense to me, I want to be presented with the list of policy decisions that were made, broken down by country, and contextualized with the reasoning or history. That's likely several books long and the reason we have career experts informing these decisions. It's also why I think it's performative and unhelpful to get two, perhaps technically versed individuals, by virtue of their popularity or propensity to talk fast, blazing on through the question in any given "debate." Do we try to "contain" Iran, or find any remote common cause with the Ayatollah? It's a better question than "Whose foreign policy…," but it still requires defining "contain," exploring how it is or is no longer working, and maintaining healthy doubt about his intentions.

I argue with myself all the time. There's a temptation to fall into a form of listless despair. I think a little too highly of myself and what I hope to achieve, so literally every moment in which I can't get a glimpse of how that person should operate, I tempt a certain kind of despotic fate. Writing about it is part of my heuristic. The dread never leaves, but it quiets and I can get back to doing one of the general somethings that keep me occupied or contented-enough. I'm always fighting with myself about what the next thing to do should be. Relax? Definitely when I'm lightheaded after working in the yard. Maybe a little when I go up north and hang out with my dad or with a friend. Almost never when I've sat for a touch too long and the white board with its lists is staring at me and my dozens of projects are screaming that I'll never be any younger and I'm not a professional "whatever" yet.

I'm under a delusion that because I've developed somewhat more consistent of principals and actions I take in service to them, and like, one day, "the world" will make sense and "get it" like I do. It's not a delusion I want or practice, it's seemingly built into my broader and base character. I look around at this space that I've had something to say about every inch of, and it continues to make the kind of sense it needs to for me and how I wish to use it. I rearrange and organize things CONSTANTLY. I try to build my space to flow with my intentionality that whips around with a disorienting viciousness. I don't think I start a single thing, ever, and just do that thing all the way through. Movies and shows? Paused and stopped, or done with Candy Crush or brushing my teeth. Weed whacking? Better stop real quick and pick up trash or fight with random thing that needs to be moved over there exactly now for some reason.

You can chalk this up to ADHD if you want, but I do have the capacity to focus, and focus extremely deeply, when I "truly give a shit." What do I give a shit about? That's anyone's guess. Sometimes it's a particular guest on a show like Real Time with Bill Maher. Sometimes it's me desperately trying to experiment with some disingenuous money-making scheme. Sometimes it's a particularly engaging discussion with someone on the brink of breaking through a particular point regarding a chronic condition. Sometimes I'm drunk and the band is playing the song I know all the words to. I hyper-focused on books I was reading as I was mining them for argumentative ammunition during the god v science years. I obsessively focused on the injustice of depraved "leadership" targeting families, and then me, at DCS.

There's a certain ironic freedom from your ego when you can make it about anything else. It's their fault. It's the messiness of "the world." It's the isms and ists. It's some born-with deficiency I insist you write off, but also never demand an apology for. I think I'm just tired of never feeling like "it's enough."

I'm staring down the barrel of another meaningless, low-paying, unstimulating, and time-wasting job. The thought alone would be suicide-inducing if I didn't have so much I enjoyed living for. Hello again irony. You can continue to live for the things you enjoy provided you sacrifice functionally all of your time in service to what slivers of it you can cut off. Give them your time, your mind, your luck, your chance encounters, and let them box in your dreams and expectations. If you let your head and heart get too big, you'll not only alienate your supports, but yourself.

I don't think I accept the implicit argument of modern life that we need something of a perpetual humbling and modesty regarding the amount of wealth floating around. I don't think we're made better when "the struggle" is over whether we can describe literally anything as "essential to human flourishing," let alone a decent basic healthy and hopeful life. We start at the question of, "Who do you want to be in debt to?" Your followers as you bank on captured attention? Your sponsors? Your overseer because your health insurance is on the line? Your hospital when you don't have said insurance? Your credit card? Predatory home lender? Info-tainment-bubble-makers?

I try not to see just an utterly foolish child when I write something like, "I'm trying to live my values." Any random reader is surely going to scoff and say, "Yeah, aren't we all, asshole?" My extreme doubt after thousands of conversations aside, we come full circle to whether or not the question posed makes any kind of internal sense as stated, and then whether it can be parsed and defined at book-length detail. What are my values? In what order? Do I value my free time more than my horrible mood and thought process when I feel trapped in a bad job? Every day? Every hour? I played my last job day by day and left consciously and deliberately when "it became too much." I'm confident I can do that again, it just feels so pointless.

I was in debt before I ever chose to get more. I'm operating under systematic heuristics that have captured our imaginations. If I do something, like live in a shed, or try to start my own business in direct competition and defiance, my projects are already under water; drowned out by the noise of opinions, egos, fears, judgments and condescending "good luck" sentiments. What I want to do is continue to access and celebrate a feeling that I don't often get from other people, and when I do, it's overwhelmingly betrayed. I keep the faith, do the work, iterate, and crave the next failure so I can learn. I get left to my own devices to do so.

But I've committed one of the biggest sins in the eyes of a system heuristic. I'm not a part of the group, the family, the fan club, or the company. My values don't map to colloquial conversation as I'm not trying to get along and fit in. In fact, I'm trying to destroy much of what you instinctively hold dear. I'm trying to live, and work, and create in such a loud way you find it fucking impossible to unhear or unread me. That's what different writers and thinkers have done for me over the years.

I can cope with failure. I can cope with chronic uncertainty. I can cope with the pain of learning curves and financial burdens. I can't cope with an insistence I performatively shit on my values. I don't care if it's in the form of polite passive aggression from someone disinclined to fight with me about it. I don't care if it's the company I work for trying to hijack my language to justify their negligence. I don't care if it's lazy policy prescriptions and laws designed to nudge you away from adopting agency or holding people accountable.

But I can only viscerally feel the hatred and remain sensitive to when I'm under attack because I want the truth to win. I want the priorities to make a certain kind of sense regardless of your born-to disposition. I want it to be easy to identify when someone is being a lying lazy piece of shit versus utterly hamstrung by a culture of myopic ho-hummers pointing fingers and neurotically rocking in anxious safe spaces. I want us all to have reliable heuristics for bloviating suicide-inducing posture that makes even entertaining the concept of fascism as a governing prospect too stupid and boring to even whisper to your best friend.

Most things don't, and shouldn't, require us to get into the weeds unless we've wholly forgone some shared notion of why we bother to stay alive. Is it to wake up every day eager to find the next person to get shitty with online? Is it to exhaust yourself with endless punditry about who's on the verge of destroying the world? Is it to work so much you tell everyone "I would, but" or you only find solidarity with a tribe you simultaneously can't escape?

I need to stay escaping. I need to feel the connection between my choices and my well-being. I will begrudge every system, of thought or otherwise, that continues to fuck me. I will also continue to strive for those feelings of possibility, stability, and sense that I can barely, if ever, find in my corner of the world.

[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?

[991] I'm So Sick

Before I let my brain get too woken up…

It’s safe to say that I live in a fairly perpetual state of disorientation. It isn’t that I don’t have a direction or ideas of the directions I want to go. I feel like I’m trapped. I’ve written about how often I feel “stuck.” Whether I’m citing the practical limitations around a budget or physical limitations of my body, I find myself envious of those who appear to be moving freely about the world. I don’t mean celebrities or rich people. I mean the people who conceived of, built, and began operating the new hospital in town, and every new building on campus between me graduating and today. I mean Jonny Kim who’s the viral Navy Seal, doctor, astronaut by the age of 37.

So much of my self-conception was fueled, innocently enough I’m sure, by my time in school. I don’t think I was particularly “exceptionally” smart, but doing well in school kept me safe, got me praise, money, and like a lot of kids in my era I was told I could grow up to be whatever I wanted. When I “turned it on,” there was little I couldn’t understand or get an A, and when the psychological gains of doing so began to wane, I settled for As and Bs and still way more often than anyone should think about the circumstances for the 4 Cs I got in college.

I was told often, well before I had any concept of what it meant, that I was a “leader.” I don’t know if my parents were just trying to reframe my general obstinate posture or if they recognized a capacity I would later use for the party house and entrepreneurship. Either way, it is deep in my core conception of myself that I don’t just follow along. I don’t “just believe” things. I don’t deny myself a differing view or the opportunity to put my voice to it.

I’m shaped by dozens of formative phrases and incidents of my life. I’m perhaps moved to discuss them because I recently watched Dave Chappelle talk in 2020 about his history and contract issues. He was also full of confidence and potential that was recognized early. He’s at the point in his career where he’s functionally transcending his medium and giving more Carlin-esc speeches-necessary, wise, and still funny-speeches verses doing sets. He was stuck too, in his contract, and then parlayed his fame and love for him into a credible threat and escape.

I make a lot of superficial movement in the world. At bottom, it reduces to spending money. I have money to spend-ish, when I do, it allows me access to the city, parking, venue, restaurants, and less-than-cultivated or prettied-up  picture and video montages of what I’ve been up to. I get a third of the way through any project before the rain starts, budget dries up, heat cranks, or time gets crunchy. It’s become easier over time to notice more psychological gratification in taking an extended lunch or settling in for a show and Candy Crush. Things that started out as pacifying go-go-go anxiety and stress turned into “enjoy it now while you have it.”

I find myself reflexively comparing myself to people like Jonny Kim. Whether or not I’m actually capable of being, or have any genuine desire to be, anything like him. In the least disingenuous way I can say it, fuck the military lol. I still hold respect for doctors, but perhaps ones in different countries who haven’t been co-opted by our corrupt and ignorant system. And I can barely ride several roller coasters back-to-back without feeling pukey, let alone pass the tests NASA requires. Do I want to be like Jonny Kim? No. I want to own myself to the degree of analogous effort and distinction. I want the story of doing so to be a compelling and persistently meaningful personal narrative that helps drive my behavior and focus.

The amount of sacrifice is under-appreciated when it comes to being “high-achieving” or “exceptional.” You don’t do a lot of other things because there’s always a new nuance to incorporate or responsibility to rise to. It doesn’t mean you can’t have, say, a family or hobbies, but it does mean you’re probably feeling like they don’t get the attention you’d like or they might require. It means you now have plugged into the “advance the species” project more than “prioritize me and my life” one. Consciously or unconsciously, you have to believe we can “advance” at all. You have to remain steadfast in your dedication to “helping people.” You have a driving faith-claim that as a source of inspiration and demonstration “things” or “the world” will inch forward and be better overall.

Perhaps this is where I don’t have faith. I appreciate Charlamagne tha God’s recent discussion with Stephen Colbert. He’s persistently that matter-of-fact voice about the chaos and ever-analyzing his in-the-moment experience that only those with the same kind of anxiety can appreciate. We’re on the precipice of losing the country. He gets it. I get it. Noam Chomsky gets it. Historians and some of the more inflammatory voices of commentators and observers do too.

We don’t have people in power who represent us. I’ve watched the country, not just “struggle,” but defy notions of accountability and growth. I don’t make more money each year. I don’t find new friends with more time and opportunities. I find myself escalating my indulgent side. I find myself “wishing” for someone to give me a call to finally release me from my mockery of obligations. I don’t feel as though I have the power to lead myself out of the largest context and consequences.

I can spend a year of my life making phone calls and sending emails and waiting and waiting and waiting and I still can’t find a way to do literally the job I’m doing, but for myself? That’s a beyond-broken system. It’s defying the essence of self-determination, value, and individuality. Then each step you take to “fight back” becomes another self-defeating mockery. How do I discard my observations about addicts and addiction and then with a straight-face tell other professionals, “We don’t take insurance?” Every practice that doesn’t started with taking insurance, and after filtering through hundreds found their reliable self-payers, and closed the door to Medicaid. How do you “speed up” an office that loses your paperwork, an agency that lies to you or has an axe to grind, or follow ever-differing instructions from people not qualified to offer them?

But that’s just my smallest sliver of experience. What if you’re a Florida teacher being told someone observing your classroom for 12 hours is tantamount to your time in school, debt, and professional experience? What if you’re the half of the country or minority group watching the systematic obliteration of your rights? What if you’re a fat kid being told there’s nothing to see or worry about, just keep eating and loving yourself and things will turn out alright? What if you’re a kid with a bullet-proof backpack? What if your small sliver of experience is equally exhausted, desperate, confused, and unable to lead a kind of life that doesn’t suggest futile and pointless struggle as the raging fire dictates the context?

That’s the heart of my restless and distracted soul. I’m not okay. “Things” aren’t good. I feel threatened. I feel sick. I feel immense hatred. And no amount of good books or TV shows are going to make me forget. No amount of skill I demonstrate on an instrument is going to put out the fire. No nerding-out on the history or rounding-out the context is going to erase the ever-present threat stabbing away at any remote confidence I have for our collective survival and understanding of what’s going on. We are not built for it. Individuals can cut paths that peacock a certain respect or intelligence, but “we” don’t exist and the animal that is human is as dumb and annoying as my cat resting on my armchair staring at me, expectant, selfish, ignorant of its motivations and mine.

I’m not okay. “It’s” not okay. “Things” aren’t okay. “We’re” not a thing. The country, if not literally a good portion of the world is on fire. I’m over here doing what? Haphazardly “counseling” those instinctively dosing themselves into oblivion to help cope with the pain? Because being numb with rotten teeth is preferable to medical debt and a big smile as they come to destroy what you’ve worked for or love? We’re not brave enough to even SPEAK!

We won’t even speak. We won’t talk about the big and obvious fucked up things. We won’t do it, ever. Not just for years, but ever. We won’t talk about how we’ve fucked up. We won’t talk about what it will actually take in actual work to change something today, right now, let alone in 10 years. The only people talking are the psychopaths, just as miserable and small and pathetic as we are, but with more fluid motion to exercise their greed and disdain for existence. And we won’t call them greedy and disdainful, we’ll celebrate how much they’ve “earned” and “innovated.” It is forever opposite-day in the mind of the damned. No story will sweep in and account for the deliberate ignorance or sacrifice itself on our behalf.

“Everybody knows there’s a party at the end of the world.”

The fact that I have this perspective and don’t know what it “means” is of ongoing concern. Do I pack up and leave the country? Do I power through my home projects? Do I double-down on the party? Do I make a more concerted effort to recruit and bolster physical or financial defenses? Right now, by default, I’m just playing along by ear. Things certainly “look” normal, as they have in every society the day before shit went crazy. We’re already crazy. It’s already happening, and has been, and we never talk about it. We never share anything but a meme. We don’t vote, we don’t fight unless it’s with a Russian bot, and we don’t really feel more than an overall foreboding that’s best not explored.

The vast majority of the world informing my experience is on some level suicidal. I have a friend actively disengaged from the larger political and historical context and conversation. I can’t blame her. I have professional connections that, even in places of power and relative comfort, can’t or won’t organize or find a momentum of sustained prosperity. I’ve been offering no-rent and creative expression for 3 or 4 years now, and not a single person has been able to enjoy or play with that for longer than a year without the greater anxiety or unaddressed nature of our problems winning the day.

The communication gets resented. The trust never exists. The real work and sacrifice go unacknowledged. The concept of how or why to connect reduced to social media pageantry or compulsion of your genes and cultural expectations. When I talk about being “alone,” it’s that singular lines of blogs like these would occasionally show up on the tongues of those I felt closest to after they were ridiculously drunk. Then, hush. Then, race away and get very busy before turning defensive and angry.

I will never forget when one of my friends said, “I think it’s going to have to be for Trump, man” when we were discussing politics and who to vote for before he was elected. This friend was intelligent, kind-hearted, and just an outsized positive presence on any occasion, but he fell under the spell of the malaise and inarticulate fog. He was, of course, busy and a professional and comes from a “normal” middle-to-upper-middle class background with an extended family and series of things on his mind a million miles away from the word “fascism,” which he’s perfectly capable of understanding intellectually.

But “we” aren’t wise enough to contend with how we aren’t intellectual. We don’t make the time to develop robust systems for determining what information is going to be used in service to our decision making. We watch people like me struggle endlessly to determine inches of movement, and figure it’s a lot easier to plug into the streams of consciousness that already presume to have figured something out. We’ll suicidally sacrifice ourselves with proud demonstrations of how little we appreciate what we’re actually worth. It’s routine. It’s normal. It’s, “Trump, I guess” because he “seems” to resemble the anger and confusion you haven’t been practicing putting better words to.

Barring a black swan event of currently inconceivable means, it’s not getting better. I might have a year or two to escape the country. I might have enough money to buy my way into a graduate program or immigrate to the country somewhere with a home-rehab immigration system. That fucking sucks. That’s fucking despicable. That’s something I’m talking about now, 1 or 2 years early, so when you’re mock “horrified” that coked-out Don Jr. is burning a 10-year-old who had an abortion at the stake in primetime (how “hyperbolic” can I get when the standard is already mass child slaughter?) I don’t fall under your spell.

Purely as an automatic predilection for survival, I complain about clenching my jaw or simple logistics.  I act like there’s a greater nobility or efficacy in attending to day-to-day details. The effort needs to be spent fighting or speaking to the problems dictating my greatest context, but who am I speaking to? What am I fighting against? Should I punch my friend until he comes to his senses? I can’t really help myself from continuing to scream into the silent abyss. Is this how I’ve transformed my conception of “the fight” into a series of indulgences and doing “regular” jobs? I do those jobs just long enough to flirt with getting fired as the microcosm demonstrations of our larger failures of leadership and imagination become too much to bear.

I can’t look away. More importantly, I don’t wish to. I don’t wish I’d stop talking, I wish someone would talk back. I wish I could trust anything about anyone that didn’t reduce to self-protection or indulgence. I can’t. I’m fighting to thrive in a world built on so many lies and confusions to do much of anything but pull out and run is going to feel like a futile mockery. It’s going to keep me as isolated and alone as it’s proven thus far. I can stay angry, or pretend hopeful, or I can make a better escape plan. I can engage the mockery with the ambivalence or play that seem to compete with my best notions of how I’ve conducted myself in the past. I need to start saving.

[988] Compounding Interest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[980] This Too Shall Pass

 It’s hard to say if a lot has been on my mind, or if I’ve just had too much time to myself, but here we are again. The last thing I wrote was my 1000^th post to blogger. Every time I hit a “milestone” like that, I look for some kind of “extraness” in the air. I also beat my 8000^th level of Candy Crush today. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they both feel the same “meh.”

I think I just want to drill old themes. I’m feeling self-satisfied, or like I earned a kind of pretension about “things” or “the state of the world.” Does anyone remember when the “new atheists” first hit the scene? The God Delusion was all the rage and there were a series of debates and documentaries over the next few years that I couldn’t get enough of. At the heart of the fervor was a question on the method and discernability of truth. Do you adopt faith, or reason?

In the giant pile of books I read during that period, The Portable Atheist I remember leaving an impression because it provided historical accounts. The same fights I had been having online were recorded in ancient times. Word for word arguments and reasoning. It signaled the beginning of the end of my infatuation with the subject matter. The past reached out and told me, explicitly, I was never going to “win” the “argument.” In fact, it never was, nor ever will be, about an argument or “different views.” Something deeper, simpler, or just else was going on.

That we live in a world with seemingly unfettered access to all information, and yet are still compelled by fascism, propaganda, and try desperately to justify moves that control speech I think underscores the insight from above. “Everything” exists, or has existed, forever, and your agency, or lack thereof, is resulting in competing environments. You might think of those who say democracy has to be continually fought for. You might study various revolutions and discover they all rhyme. Your better angel is nestled inextricably against every evil thing you’re capable of. To the extent you deny or shy away from considering that idea, you rob yourself of your agency, and those with the most intention lead you around by the nose.

I think this is how I get the great distinction as the one to blame. I think a lot about the incidents I believe have lent themselves to the “ghosting” by my former college group. “We” didn’t party together. “I” threw the party, created an atmosphere where people just happened to find themselves hooking up and doing drugs. Something bad happens at the party? There’s a clear ringleader. No one else could have stepped in, banded together, or used their voice because, well, I was just so compelling, overwhelming, and every other slew of judgments volleyed over the years. So, of course if someone alleges rape, I probably did it. Of course, I knew that providing access to acid would result in a shitty afternoon for anyone who had to engage with Dave. A man can choose to go to war, but he can’t choose me shoving drugs down his throat.

To be sure, I’m not denying my capacity of my own agency. That’s, incidentally, the precise thing people utilize. I know how people tick. I own my power. Naturally, that’s not to be trusted, because when you’re surrounded by people who don’t recognize their agency, there’s literally nothing and no one else to blame if you won’t just pawn things off to your god. This works insidiously in the other direction when you consider “strong men” like Trump. Malignant narcissism is a manipulating force. You’re not going to describe yourself as victimized by the fascist. You’re going to revel in the symbolic embodiment of all it claims to be!

We do this, in our respective camps, until we die or the cows come home. We have little snippets of art or religious lore to suggest to us how to behave better, but they fall prey to that deeper, simpler, other thing. We don’t really know a great many things, in fact, an infinite number of things. Whatever can be said of our consciousness, it was much simpler in baser-animal form for most of conscious existence. All we had were “beliefs.” My cat “believes” it’s going to starve if I don’t feed it when it’s hungry. My cat “believes” it “deserves” to eat from the trash, sleep on me, bug me for affection, or to play with things that are not toys.

I think the internet allowed us to accelerate the march to the cliché of, “You believe what you believe, I’ll believe what I believe.” When the god verses science talk was kicking off, I didn’t just get to “debate” with other interested intellectuals who had studied the same material, it was a free-for-all of every opinion and potentially patently crazy view vying to snuff out facts and figures. You can’t tolerate the intolerable. It didn’t occur to me that those people weren’t after the same thing and weren’t governed by the same rules. After all, to them, it looks and feels like they’re doing “god’s work” and are the correct and righteous camp. Even those not on their side adopt that rationale to “respect other’s beliefs” routinely.

For what might be innocently lazy reasons, this all feels acceptable until you’re at the end of the judgement stick. All of a sudden, you and your reasons wish to be understood. You’re magically cured of the de facto group reasoning, and it becomes important both you and them agree on why you shouldn’t be burned at the stake. If you’ve spent all your time thus far swimming in familiar pools and schools, you probably don’t realize in the same way there is no argument, you can’t win, and fire awaits provided you keep making appeals to the crucifiers.

What do you do? Do I obsess every day that I’ve been accused of rape? No, but I evaluate drunken circumstances and the hook-up culture I helped cultivate and don’t try to recreate the circumstances. Has my behavior been questionable? Absolutely. Have I ever forced someone to fuck? Fuck no. I’m not scared to talk about it or say it either lol. It’s not controversial to me to not rape someone and then talk about how you didn’t do so even if you can empathize with drunk regret. I don’t need to attack someone’s feelings or credibility to understand the perspective that localizes me as the one responsible. Could I have guessed Dave’s time on acid wasn’t going to go great? It was better than even odds. You know what neither I, nor any of his “friends” did, tell him not to. He was adamant he was going to do more. Personally, I kind of prefer that he at least did it around people and not by himself given the state of his mental health at the time.

The begrudging truth, independent of our subjective opinions, is we cultivate the landscape together, or it cultivates us. We take responsibility for choices we acknowledge and we can examine the routes we took to get there. Is it littered with finger-pointing? It’s why I’ve trained myself to blame “you,” the voiceless, formless, ironic void that I speak into when I find the urge to reiterate the infinite moment we’re either suffering or utilizing.

How do you arrive at truth? Is it even possible? This is the garbage being used politically to obfuscate important lines in how we identify ourselves. Those fed up with the game follow the leader to whatever claims they make. Those maybe angry enough at the deterioration get loud and occupy space. Those with the resources, perspective, or otherwise manifest as personally gratifying consequences and efforts to preserve environments, mental and physical, that instantiate their power. The fundamental irony being that we can’t really know our power, because we don’t know the contributions and deficits offered in every moment of our attempted exercise of it. Moreover, we don’t want to know. It would interrupt our personal narrative. It would make us feel insignificant and uncomfortable. It might disrupt our ideas of who and what we’re responsible to.

Personally, I feel on the border of “too powerful.” I say this only because of my attitude to that $42 bottle of wine, if you’ve been paying attention to me. I do slip, in that, I’m human, and forgo the amount of agency or power I might otherwise exert. I can’t control my heart rate and blood pressure.  I can’t reflexively think “positive” or “forgiving” thoughts when people do things I feel license to get pissed off about. I feel like the world is closing in on me. The more I pay attention to those incidents, the less I feel I know what my responses are supposed to represent if they’re merely reactive. I stop existing in those moments.

To that end, to the extent I want to just “feel good” in my loathing or sense of injustice, I can adopt a reactionary and judgmental posture that refuses to engage with the infinite question and situation at hand. I can judge myself as lazy or unworthy of the brain and body I’ve been given. I can call my exercise of time “wasteful.”  I can set psychological barriers to my enjoyment or prejudge the consequences of my actions as though I don’t have meaningful reasons for why I do anything.

I don’t want people needlessly harmed by who I am or how I behave. I won’t deny seeing how their behavior doesn’t return the favor. Whether it’s the “harm” of being a dumb loud cunt in an environment where you should be quieter, or the physical and psychological harm of playing with human vulnerability. I’ve generally chosen the pursuit of incorporating the negative feedback, exploring where it came from, and identifying the circumstances under which I might act or believe the same. It’s been a lot of work. It’s been over 1000 dives into how I’m using my words and orienting myself, and I’m still working stories from college, if not my childhood, into the dough.

What are you doing? I’m kidding lol. I know you’re not gonna tell me. You won’t even tell yourself.