[715] Rev Run

I’m still fascinated by traffic.

Traffic is a man made wave carrying, not just H20 molecules, but entire individual stories and intentions all over the world. There’s traffic everywhere I go. Driving to drug studies I’d be lost in the sea of cars clogged in the bleak and concrete of Chicago suburbs. Driving through Fort Wayne, I feel as though I’m right back in The Region with fatter people and more to eat. Evansville rings the same. It’s probably an Indiana thing.

I know the math that plucks “stars” from the sea. I know calling someone a star to regard them as something special and different is an irony we ignore pretty heavily. Without the media coverage, we find stars at every level. People rocket to the tops of their industries. People have a way of navigating social waters or difficult situations like no one else around. A family man can be the star of his castle. A child can always burn brightest in the eyes of their parent.

Driving from the hotel to the training facility, you learn very quickly that Fort Wayne likes to speed. What doesn’t occur to them is there are about 90 stoplights between them and wherever they’re going 5 miles up the road. Speeding to slow down. Speed to cut off and then immediately hit the breaks and halt. Speed to knock the shit out of one of a myriad of potholes. Speed while they smoke, and put on makeup. This is a place where people are trying to get somewhere, and the reality in between doesn’t register.

This area also has an abundance of liquor stores and churches. I didn’t make a count, but when a thought like that occurs to you, it suggests it’s at least more liquor stores and churches than you’re generally used to seeing.

Traffic grabs me because that’s what I’m becoming. I get up early, put on uncomfortable clothes that flaunt sweat, grab my coffee and hotel breakfast, and make my way to presentation after presentation about how to treat LGBT kids like they’re people and not let it slide when a parent who’s just had their kids taken away tries to talk me out of reporting something that could put me in jail. The “standard” of interaction I’ll have to meet is 22 hours of facetime with clients, with apparently a gigantic backlog that’s increasing if I want to be a go-getter and shoot for 35-40.

The leadership, once I begin doing that, will start to tell me I’m “changing lives.” They’ll say they had a feeling about me and were waiting to see how it played out. I’ll get offered a company car. I’ll interrupt hanging out or free time with phone calls or paperwork. I’ll ask questions, in the way that I do, like when I asked a VP of the parent corporation if there was a finder’s fee for finding them a rich disturbed kid, who they cater to, to haul off to The Dominican Republic for 10 months at $5,000 a month. It will make people chuckle and uncomfortable, but they won’t be able to do anything, because it will speak to a truth they like to polish and my numbers will be undeniable.

If I get paid like I anticipate, it won’t be a daily struggle to squeeze the tips out of frat boys, but a weekly reliable paid in full to the professionals story of things that get done on my house. $300 here or there? Yes, please do. I could pick up some small pricey-enough indulgences like collecting cologne or springing for a nice watch. I’ll be able to put a plan in place for my week that I politely berate (hold accountable) my fledglings to where we work on goals and fill out paperwork together. I’ll endear myself to some, alienate others, get paid either way. I’ll think about getting on a healthy meal plan delivered to my door and expanding my gym membership to include a trainer.

I’ll even potentially have the time to have my weekends, or long weekends, to travel and visit. Instead of all day wasting away in a parking lot for a week, I’ll have hard and fast start and stop times to my “free time.” I’ll have stories for days about people suffering a circumstance I’m in no way approaching holistically or with the naivety of my employers. It’ll be routine. I’ll have my snippets about how Florida was rainier than I hoped, but at least there wasn’t snow!

 I will meet very many pleasant people. They will have their families form right before my very eyes. They’ll have their woes and story about what brought them here. They’ll tell me what they believe and use that tone for signaling discomfort for the topic or type of joke. “You see, what it’s really about.” I’ll be asked a dozen times if I have any questions, and I’ll watch them die a little inside when their 5th dad joke in a row fails to land

By any normal measure, I’d be fine. I fit. My cultural conditioning worked. I can sit still. I can play a semantic game as earnestly as any convoluted Christian. I’ll have money. I’ll garner praise. I’ll be able to merely mention my job and wear the gear to be regarded as a “good person.” My hairline, gut, and humor will grow to match the rest of the ensemble. All us jaded old-types will be in on the joke. I’ll disregard the implication of the 40 I guzzle down every night.

How long have you been enthralled reading my familiar story? Are you jealous? Do you wish you had that measure of security to look forward to? Do you wish you had a job that burns out the sincere do-gooder, but makes you laugh at the idea that there’s a single stressful thing involved at all? Is someone going to scream my hearing away? Am I going to be unable to leverage, “Um, hey, I’m the road to getting your kid back, duh.” Will I have to drive even half as long? Is a sick kid puking in the back of my car or filthy apartment my worst nightmare? Will I have to work as many days? Don’t forget, I organized my life where a McJob would pay my yearly bills in 1-3 months, and they want to pay me to be a professional adult.

I appreciate what I have. I find the value in the things that piss me off. I know there’s always work to be done, and when I want to improve, upgrade, or change something, it’s not because I’m living in some unbearable hell. I know that my skill or malleability is particular. I know my perspective has been beaten out of hundreds of thousands of words. I know that I’m the speeding Fort Wayner who dares potholes to break my axle. While most of us might find change uncomfortable, I find the idea of forgetting what really matters to me unbearable.

I didn’t/don’t read so much about the world so that I could put it on the backburner and become personally snug and “mature.” I didn’t get my ability to cut to the heart with a single question or tone by playing along. What Christian organization charges $60,000 a year to send some teenager looking at porn to another country because their rich parents are equally deluded and naive? That’s the question they feel when I ask if there’s a finder’s fee for luring another one into their trap. These righteous lambs spent half this “training” literally trapping us into a church sermon, pitch from Wells Fargo, and insistence we treat gay kids like they’re normal, but also “respect” the “different views” of their parents who act like you assume southern Indiana parents will. I chose to withhold telling them like 90% of my friends are at least bi, and I’m not trying to get fired for calling some old cunt a bigot.

I think my next tattoo, or set of them, are going to symbolize resistance. No matter how good I get at this world, or have already been, no matter how many rewards, no matter how relieved you feel that, “He’s finally figured it out, shut up, grow up, and get paid,” it’s wrong. I want self-sustaining creativity and new culture building. I want the old guardians of my ideals. I want to create the constraints to wiggle around in. And I want my focus to be primarily on the big evidence and trends. I want to shape the world, not pretend to save my region from opioids and several generations of child abuse. To be fair, I don’t want to deliver food, didn’t want to sell alcohol, didn’t want my spine tapped, didn’t want to finish college, or drive a cab, or do yard work, or probably the vast majority of things that constitute my life, so saying what I don’t want to do amounts to less than piss in the wind.

I’m still always going to be looking. I’m looking for the way out. The funds will, at the very least, fuel my business speculation. I am actually going to be “in the world,” so I’ll scrape together bits of information that may prove useful. I’ve learned I can still 9-5 and still get my TV shows in, likely the thing that will accompany my paperwork, which I’m sure I’ll streamline. I won’t get lost in this world. I won’t get comfortable. This cushy bed in the hotel they’ve comped? It’s not mine, and it’s over tonight. The food allowance for dinner? $15 and doesn’t include alcohol, the fuel of any proper social worker, or human in general. I want the gig that hires those who know how to responsibly drink while doing it and to sleep when I want for as long as I want.

The main reason this path has concerned me is that I’m aware I’m not an island. I can be shaped and persuaded like anyone. No one ever tries because they don’t really care or are too stupid, but it’s possible. My mind normalizes things pretty quickly as a what I take as a self-protective adaptation. It’s one thing to write pissy blogs, another to start creating new holes in my arm to pick at, or clenching my jaw until teeth wear down. I spent a year at CT. I swear I started there yesterday. Every happy memory of my past was yesterday too. Tomorrow I’ll be 60, bitching about the nuclear fallout not-that-long ago that these goddamn kids are already forgetting! I’ll regret I didn’t do more or prepare or speak explicitly because I was a little too busy, a little too selfish, and too old to fight about things I know I can’t change. Then I’ll wheel my lonely wretched body out under the sun and burn to death like that Furyan in The Chronicles of Riddick.

It hurts just enough. Like pants too tight in the waste. Like a neck propped staring at the wall projection. Like the cut in the eyes and the tongues of the pretenders lecturing you on their nobility and morality. Like the indignity of turning your head and coughing. Like the disrupted quiet as you crumple the remnants of your calorie mistakes. Or the hum of traffic, beckoning.

[703] Well, Come

I'm restless as fuck. I can't focus. I'm flirting with some impulsive feeling to just do something shit. Or, more, decide to behave in a shit way. I'm concerned by how easy it was for me to get a job. I don't like the ready-made structure lined up as my destiny after a concerted effort over the last 7 years to avoid it. I don't want this. Moreover, I don't want to persuade myself that it is what I want. I'll learn it. I'll find a way to profit from it. But it's just going to exercise my tools and perspective to a more deliberate opposite-direction-I-want-to-head direction.

I say that knowing full well I don't have much of a direction. The direction is a feeling and impression. It's a sensitivity to the thoughts that beget more and more thoughts that I don't want. It's a shift in my disposition and what I allow myself to justify saying or getting away with. I want to rush to accept the ludicrous terms and conditions and work at Clustertruck all day tomorrow. Why? Because an overwhelming wave signifying “nothing matters” is washing over me. Who cares about sticking up for labor if I could stand to make a couple hundred dollars the next few days? Who'd bother organizing and speaking out when it will land you, always, on the defensive?

That's what this is. I'm in my fallback. When everything I wanted to do entrepreneurially failed, I was supposed to get the “real world job” and be a “mature hate-my-life” kind of adult who said the words “taxes” and “mortgage” slightly less often than “traffic.” I could politely chat around the water cooler about Stormy Daniels or how that new show looks really good. Every cliché detail you could add to an environment like that I've never framed in anything less than a kind of nightmare scenario.

And of course I'm overstating it. Of course I'm of no measured mind that wants to find any redemption or appreciation for my place and opportunities because this isn't a ya ya sisterhood retreat where I imagine we hug our problems tight before letting them go on a homemade candlelit craft. This won't be any better or worse than everything always. But it is something that I've, for many years, conditioned myself and cautioned myself against rejoining. This signals to me, right or wrong, a lunge backwards.

Perspective would bother to remind me that, I'm not chained like if I had a mortgage or family. It would remind me that I “click on” when there's a human component to engage with and distract myself or talk to. The Law and Order stuff on TV will be my day to day. That's not only exactly my humor and morose sentimentality, but “normal” people find that stuff compelling and interesting. I'm poised to load up my “interesting tidbit” bank.

I'm also stepping into an environment that is habitually understaffed, disorganized, and filled with people with some form of nagging do-gooder or guilt status that craves levity and leadership. I will see holes. I will see ways to make more and more money. Maybe, just maybe, I'll discover something important about myself and the “reason” I found myself on this doorstep at this time. I suppose, having said that, I'm just disappointed this is one more thing that played out exactly like I thought it would. The degree I didn't want, got me a job I didn't want, in a setting I'll probably do fairly well in for more money than I'll immediately have the time to spend or know what to do with. God. Dammit.

I'm going to be most disappointed when I do the work, make more money than I ever have, endear myself to the crowd my childhood conditioning taught me to, and STILL get everything I actually want to do done that works to spite and shun the whole endeavor. Oh, you have a NORMAL job and can't find the time or will? Did that shit. You can't find the time to keep abreast of the arts or catch a show? How close am I to traveling at the speed of light, cause we must not be scooping from the same time bin. Oh, you're depressed and anxious? I ain't seen your 10 page 3-part irrational panic attack and dozen depressive sentiments try to preclude the efforts in service to your day.

The more I act like you, the more vicious I'm going to become. I don't look forward to that. The more I have every liability, every familiar comedian reference, every when-did-that-start aching body part, and I STILL keep the dream alive and know the real goal and mode of being on a perpetuating best-lived kind of day wheel, the glaring hole at the center of your being will swallow me up. Part of me wants to construe my tax debt as a sympathy pain to everyone with student loans, but even then, 2 months of working like I do would pay it off.

Even if it's not precisely a step backwards, it is a step sideways. As I'm on the verge of getting power out to the land, less than a day of dry-walling, and figuring out where my toilet is supposed to flush to, I'm getting a real job? And I'm getting that job because I self-sabotaged the job with all the leeway because the idealist in me knows the sacrifices I was making in service to it weren't exactly adding up. But now, I could work “normal” people hours, and make the same money, or likely more, and use my weekends to work on the land. My paycheck isn't eaten before I make it. That's the key. The mode of living and work I've done before this point still count.

I'm worried as well that the job will make me even more the wrong kind of selfish. I feel up my own ass enough without glombing the culture of “overworked and underpaid.” With the high school dropout work culture you get relationship issues and drug problems. With the “middle-income” crowd it's everything ever referenced while making fun of white people. I know I don't feel as though I have much of “a people,” but I know damn well that those are not my people. Jaded seen-it-all-before types are one thing. To be one, and never think there's an escape for you won't cut it.

As I was annoying friends to write me up as professional references, one told me, “Welcome to the system!” I get the sentiment, but I'm nothing if not a product of the system. The school system. The capitalist brain and motivation suck system. The broken nuclear family system. Hell, the “personal brand share all the time” system as I work through every stupid detail of my illusive mythology. You know what I'd rather have? A system of cooperation and calculated risk. A system that extols the virtues of an engaged life. A system of mutual trust and respect that makes it so your first instinct isn't to be exhausted and put off or angry when presented with something new or unexpected. The world at-large is not going to give me what I need, or change my definition of having a life worth living, no matter how good I get at it or money I make from it.

So I hope you don't treat me differently. I hope you don't think this is me “maturing” or “accepting” that my way doesn't work. Like every negotiated act of compliance, this is the bad needing to be translated into something good. This is one of those last few remaining chains on the road to self-sustainability. This is a calculated risk weighing the consequences to my disposition and mental health. It's still just getting by and making money, which are required, but aren't the goal. I hope you can consistently feel better about whatever it is you're doing for money and where it's taking you in life.

[699] Shame Over

In this 3-part series breaking down quasi-unexpected shifts in the direction of my life, I'd like to potentially explore some perhaps positive direction now that the errant panic got most of its due.

Part of me forgot that I set up my life for precisely this situation. With the cash I have now, and if I had to use a credit card, I'm good until around September. I should be able to find an odd or pointless gig before then, no? More to the point, the idea that an “odd” or “pointless” gig is all that would be available to me is something I find disheartening. As a lover of statistics and data, it doesn't matter how many times I read of the number of “career changes” people my age have been through, it still feels wrong. It will never matter how much room I give myself to fail or adjust to something new. What will always matter is what I perceive as the broken backdrop and general trend.

I'm, still, constantly looking out over traffic. The other day we watched Koyaanisqasi and the movie Human. Transported to scenes of thousands of people inhabiting high rises or living in abject poverty. Close ups into the eyes of equally complex and anxious and intimately involved and woven into their culture individuals. And yet I always find a way to return my attention back to me. I can't feel part of it. I can recognize humanity. I don't hate “the other.” I want, even the dumbest, people on the planet to have access to things and feel like their lives are worth something. But I always return to me.

I can't get the line out of my head, which means there must be more to say about it, “don't try to fight someone else's demons.” The things I want to create or provide would presumably be focused on doing just that. Try to alleviate the struggle for someone else that I didn't like going through. Try to instill the responsibility and make the call to action where no one else would. Show them how to do things because they're hard, because they induce anxiety, because you're deathly afraid of the consequences and are never sure you'll figure it out. But can that really be done, or do you have to live it? Do you have to happen upon someone who’s been through the same thing in order for any real message to get across?

What are society’s demons? Is it a list that ever ends? Is it possible to sum up as one big singular failure of thought related to responsibility or consequences that is the poison at the core of the human animal? I find myself going back to questions like, what is it all for? Why do I care so much? How do I reconcile a species, or at the very least culture, I see on the rapid decline, with meager self-sacrificing punches up? Why am I convinced that something, anything, eventually has to even out and make sense? And worst of all, why, if I'm not the special snowflake constantly plagued and bitching and testing and fighting with this shit, why in the ever-loving fuck is the only thing I ever see fucking memes and bullshit happiness photos? Why is it never, NEVER patience and understanding? Why is it NEVER experimentation or new calculated risks? Why is it NEVER cooperation? At least in my corner of the world. At least with the people I at one time tried to surround myself with.

All I see, time and again, is people running. People making excuses. People acting like just because death comes for us all, might as well be right now. Every opportunity to try. DENIED. Every offer to get involved. GET FUCKED. Every discussion trying to probe out the mangled heart of the manner in which we're living. STOP WITH THE NEGATIVE HARASSMENT ALREADY! Like we can't make decisions. Like certain things aren't worth sacrificing. Like our backs shouldn't feel up against a very specific kind of wall facing the sort of problem that fixes burst forth from our desperate creative desire to live.

For the amount of times I reference the anxiety that kicked me out of studies and that still traps me into thinking I'm never going to figure out problems after giving myself less than a day of even bothering to explore them, I don't say it out loud as often as it feels. I'm responsible for the world. It's my fault for when poor kids don't get fed. It's my fault we're in ridiculous wars. I didn't write the right piece and send it to the correct place to start changing minds and starting the right discussions. It is always and forever my fault. I got myself fired. I allowed the general business environment to get so perverse and exploitative that I provided every excuse for those dumber and weaker than me to adopt everything they needed to fight against themselves. I already allowed it, sometime, somewhere, in something I said or did, and the butterfly effect of reasons culminated in every time I want to cite my “out of control physiology” as the problem.

That's the wrestling match. I used to actually believe in what I was doing. I was nervous and skeptical as hell for my first drug study. I was asking myself constantly what the fuck it was I was doing. You couldn't tell that to my heart rate. Now? I see the entire world resting on my capacity to get into a study. I see the next 12 buildings on the land. I see the parties celebrating my effort. I see trips to the doctor or dentist without a care in the world. I see myself on podiums talking about all of the shit it took to get here, and how it's completely unreasonable to believe you can too without a mountain of help I'm here to provide. I see it all. I see it right now. I'm there right now. And I have no idea when or how it's going to happen.

When I went to do studies, just like when I first started to do Biolife, “it just made sense.” I wanted (x) amount of money and security, so I did the thing that was required of me. The future was even more abstract. The money was maybe going towards alcohol. Now? Everything I've been craving to do like a puppy who's pissed the floor in excitement IS RIGHT THERE! There is no several months wait. There is no paperwork or permission. Show up, get poked, sleep in communal room, pop out and get a fucking driveway! Build a property to rent! Fix your truck and start a new business! It's all RIGHT THE FUCK HERE! And I can't touch it!

This is my version of depression. I feel I have no control, but feel all the weight and responsibility. I'm to blame, and I'm just affected. That's it. It's just there, I don't know what to do about it. I can talk about it for days and never find the words. I can remember the happier times. I can recall when it was dramatically worse. But it is what it is. And I can wish and pray until the cows come home, and I'll still find myself scrolling the classifieds for an understaffed desperate department somewhere to trickle in funds as I navigate the hopeless aging overweight “adult” world of bureaucracy and complacency.

I don't think people stress enough that you don't really have as much time as you think. Especially if you go to college, I've had around 8 years to “be an adult.” What happens in another 20 if I can't monetize the land? 49 writing a teenage angst blog about how I should have figured something out by now? Lamenting I should have met “even 1!” person with the same kind of desires or agenda? Beating myself for still not finding the time to reconnect or visit friends, an alleged end unto themselves, because the timing and funds still weren't right? Yet, to talk of next week sounds foolish when your fate isn't in your hands, let alone the next 20 years.

That's the balance though, right? It's between everything you can't control, and the things that keep it in check. Working for someone else is fundamentally chaotic and insecure. No matter what, no matter where. You've given a huge portion of yourself and future over to whatever your endeavor is, and if you're not figuring a way to get the world from it, you've sacrificed your own. But in a society in decline, where everyone is doped up and sad or busy and desperate, what can you, another poor person provide? Moral vigor and inspiration like Jordan Peterson? Some new stupid gadget or toy? They don't want your space, or at least not yet. You give your useless ramblings away for free.

I want an escape. I want to sell everything, move somewhere poverty-level cheap, and run a banana stand. I want to be like the Kenyan guy I read about who had 500 family members he kept in regular contact with. I still have the focus and desire, but I've co-opted them towards shit like trying to pass the time across my interests more evenly? And then a house party gets thrown over the weekend, and I lose my shit job, so I blow up my routine after a week. It was pointless to start. It suffered a pointless end. What I learn, what new connections I made, all would get funneled into references no one I knew was familiar with and pretend to underlay projects I don't have the time or resources to start. One useless time-killing move after another.

“If I could just find the time, then I would never let another day go by. I'm over getting old. And maybe it's not my weekend, but it's gonna be my year. And I'm so sick of watching while the minutes pass as I go nowhere. And this is my reaction, to everything I fear. Cause I've been going crazy I don't wanna waste another minute here.”

“I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing. Each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race. That's life.”

The last time I felt desperate, I picked up 2 jobs at opposite hours and proceeded, as I do, to work myself to death. I don't want that to happen again. I consciously pulled back on the hours I was working at CT, espousing the idea that it's still definitely not purely about the dollar amount as it is how and why you exercise your time. I have enough time to apply to several hundred jobs if need be. I have less reason to believe my car is going to die on me at any moment. I have leads. I have someone who's still supposed to contact me about starting something on the land tomorrow or Tuesday. I have shit I don't even want that could be sold if things got insanely desperate. I haven't even tried going back to Biolife, the thing that, at one point, actually paid my rent. I was considering looking for more work even while I was spending too much time at CT, so the ground floor mental place is somewhat established already. There's still an infinitesimal chance I enjoy whatever next thing I move into.

I'm going to try and prevent myself from feeling guilty about even mildly freaking out. I think it's okay to consider the world as resting on your shoulders. How else do you become someone for which it actually does? I don't think you have to love the struggle or grind. I don't think you have to make the picture sound rosier or more self-assured than you are. Let it sink in, I'm not even upset I don't have the job. I'm upset that exactly the thing that could or was bound to happen did, exactly as I've talked about, and for reasons that it should have. I've already been here, back whenever I've written about it, just like I'm already in my future. Even with the path laid out behind me, I still struggle with how exactly “I,” let alone “it” all played out like it did. Why I couldn't do better, but can imagine a million ways I could have been worse. How I watch every day how a million people are the million ways I consider worse, probably unfairly, but distinctly.

It's never getting better and I'm fated to feel this way forever. Precisely the kind of positive direction I should end this with.

[698] It's Still A Shame

I knew this would happen. I've spent several hours texting every past order number for the last 3 months this message:

“Hello, I was recently fired from Clustertruck for telling customers that when they “tip,” the first $2.50 of it doesn't go to drivers.

What this means if if you tip $0, a driver makes $4.50. If you tip $2, the driver makes $4.50. They want you believing we make “100% of tips” as the app tells you if you try to tip $0.

The effect on drivers is a loss of money for trips that take them across town.

The effect for the kitchen is tricking you into subsidizing what they pay drivers.

I've made several thousand trips for Clustertruck, as have many drivers who were finally pushed to leave.

I ask that if you order CT, you consider if that's a model you support, and for the drivers still there, I hope you consider tipping in cash, as it's the only way a driver can approach a living wage.

Thank you for your time.”

I suppose predictably given the vast age differences between people on a college campus, I've had mostly supportive “Thanks for the info!” responses, and a few “Fuck off, the food is lit, you're salty you're fired, it's embarrassing someone your age has a job like that.”

The reason I have to keep writing is because my stomach is in knots at what I think is the kind of “inevitable” regarding people and business as usual. I think it's a really fucked up lie and I want people to know about it, and yet I'm fighting off a headache and am anxious as hell. What I consider to be doing as the right thing is considerably more annoying and nerve racking than swallowing the bullshit.

I'm worried by all the people who didn't respond. I know “the crowd” tells itself a story about why they do or don't care or why they will or won't believe what I've got to say. The “silent majority” will get the food they like and have their own problems, and will be happy to forget that remembering to tip a dollar or two in cash makes a huge difference. Because that's the posture towards most if not all things.

I find myself empathizing with a phrase I hate. “If I can just reach one person!” I know one person potentially matters. One started talking with me about passing the info along to actual labor organizers. A few have told me they don't want to order from there anymore, and many have said it's a fucked system or they'll switch to cash. I got more than one person, and I don't know how big of an impact that makes, but it still feels important. It still feels worth the anxiety and pushing my luck at the job.

It's so easy not to bother. It's so easy to keep your head down. Or, it must be for everyone but me. The world suggests that to marinate in a corrupt and morally bankrupt behavior as long as you get something out of it is the right thing to do. I asked Byron the other day if he could tell me one thing that wasn't corrupted. There are individuals for sure. There are charities that ensure money gets used exactly as it's intended. But for every one thing that isn't corrupt or is “acceptably” and “pragmatically” so, you'll get a hundred thousand that revel in their deception. This world is either designed for the devils, or a dramatic and painful tale about the last few remaining angels.

Here I want to point out that statistics about things getting better or people living longer have nothing to do with what I'm getting at. If the core is rotten, there's no amount of decoration or upgrades that change it, and disaster is looming. That core is the fear that keeps you from taking any risk, let alone with your livelihood. It's the silence and even attack against an obvious injustice. Think about that. The linguistic landscape is so fucked, injustice is no longer obvious! I'm literally chastised for having a job in this era! I'm told it's “harassment” to work or own or want for more than the next insecure person to hear about it.

My head's gonna fucking explode. There's a book's worth of shit to talk about in what's been involved with this job and how jobs and expectations have deteriorated. I wrote about the bullshit of Steak N Shake when I left there, I've detailed how weird and inappropriate the drug study environment can be and elicited a “that was very interesting” comment from a study coordinator. The cab business was its own joke. The liquor store at least kept things simple if you didn't mind potentially having a gun go off next to your ear. Kroger was unbearable. What you might say about Showplace, at least the people that stuck around had each other's backs.

I suppose we return to the idea that I want what I've already had. I don't mind working nonstop, but I want to feel like it matters or there's some kind of equitable payout. I've felt that way in the past. I want to own what I do, and have been there. I've been in environments where everyone didn't hate each other or try to take advantage, I'd like what I create to act morally and fairly as well.

I know I'm the squeaky wheel. I know I'm different and “interesting” or peculiar. But seriously, it only has to do with wanting to do shit right. It's not weird to not want to be lied to or be complicit in it. It's not weird to want a living wage. It's not weird to want to have even relative security if your job fails. It's not weird to respect your time and try to pack it with as much of what you want to do as is possible.

Except, it is in a world where most are silent, or need to be provoked and encouraged like they're hibernating bears. It's weird to be like me if you don't consider yourself interesting or having anything peculiar about you. It's weird if you never bother to learn or don't care to define what we should consider doing the right thing is in the first place! It's weird to be me if you're “comfortable” living with 4 roommates your entire life, and not because you choose to, but because you'll never make enough money no matter how far you advance. It's weird if time is as burdensome to you as it is to me, but instead of engaging it, you smoke, or get high, or play video games, or work yourself to death, or adopt a different distracting problem. It takes so much more than anyone cares to fucking give.

So many people just give themselves over. They gave up and they don't even know what it is they gave. Maybe I don't want to be too friendly to the angry old man who has the same thing to say about the shitty job every day, but I respect where he's coming from. I know he's correct. I know he'll never be less angry without my help in some fashion, and if we're going to interact, it behooves us to figure out a real and proper fix if I'm to remain sane.

Anxiety might just be a too complicated word for fear. I'm deathly afraid of catching fire. My influence happens almost automatically and accidentally. What do I do with any real power? “Real power.” It won't be an immediate shift to see how I can fuck people with it at least. I won't pour over how to get one by a distracted and struggling public. But then, I don't really want much to do with the public. It's hard, if not impossible, to juggle so many people if they're unwilling or unable to take any responsibility for themselves.

Maybe the worst part of this whole thing is it fucked up my #yearofeveryday. I didn't exercise yesterday and didn't read 5 comics. I let myself get distracted and my head filled up with all the drama from work. The “structure” I had tried to plug myself into with a routine that included work and a relative dollar amount blew up as quickly as I tried to create it. My attempt at balance blown away by an insatiable desire to not be complicit. It doesn't even feel worth asking you if it was worth it. Your silence has always spoken volumes, and makes it all the more obvious to me why I have to put myself through the bullshit.

All of it, all of the time, is a lie. It's not a thing you can talk about, it's a thing you have to feel and force to transform you. Which lies are you going to accept? What's the acceptable level at which you can betray yourself? Every fiber of my being wants me out in the street with a megaphone declaring injustice, and I'm going to roast in my confusion and headache, lying to myself about how important or consequential I can be. Lying about looking forward to the prospect of another duplicitous job. Lying about ever getting where I need to be because I'm the only one playing my game, so there can never be a winner.

Fuck everything, why do I even bother?

[697] It's A Shame

Part of me wanted to sit and let what I have to say marinate for a little bit. There's a kind of chaotic satisfaction I'm trying to temper in trying to develop a plan for going forward.

I got fired. It's the first time I've ever been fired, and it happened because I refused to put my head in the sand and keep pretending the company I worked for, Clustertruck, wasn't lying to customers in order to steal driver tips. I'd made my appeals to management over the year I worked there. I delivered thousands of orders without incident. Eventually, I tried to compensate for the loss of money you take in going across town (sometimes 40 minutes to get back to the kitchen) and only making $4.50. The unwitting customer might've tipped you $1 or $2, but that money isn't realized unless it's in cash. This was a point of confusion and frustration for me when I first started, not understanding people were actually tipping, just not in the land of double-speak.

So I started telling customers on the far trips how they could be part of the solution. This translated into a couple of them complaining to management and, of course, construing my words into a some weak bitching about my job or “tip solicitation.” Neither of which were true. The person willing to spend $9-$12 for an egg and toast isn't altogether concerned for the plight of the a delivery driver, so the explanation I was offering was more than a little lost in translation.

I hated the job. It was as monotonous as any other. It was proud of its lack of obligation to its workers. It had many good and motivated personalities leave once it set in how they were getting particularly manipulated or taken advantage of. I justified it by trying to kill two birds with one stone. I drummed on my wheel or tried to practice my trumpet. I watched my shows, and I showed up an hour or two early to get reading done. I spent 80+ hour weeks to learn that true aggregate numbers of what you could expect to make there, and after 23 eleven hour days, you might finally start to feel like you can breath a little, as long as you're on SNAP, don't want health insurance, and nothing goes wrong.

I've so organized my life that I can weather nearly any type of employment and still keep my head above water, so what's at stake is more to do with my ability to look shining on resumes and pop into an “eager A student” persona during an interview. Turns out, my degree may actually be potentially useful for finding a job in a field related to family case management or children in need services. This area only explored because Byron clued me into the general hole these agencies are unable to keep filled, and the many people who can't deal with the “stress” of seeing the true horrors of what people do to each other or go through. ::yawn::

There's a larger issue though that speaks to the culture and psychology. In my appeals to try and improve working conditions, I was attacked by fellow workers. I've been texting every customer number in my phone who I delivered to the lie that CT operates under to “grow fast” and “disrupt the food industry.” Most are supportive. The PR team and different managers adorn befuddled looks and shrug their shoulders as they pay deference to “The Algorithm” impervious to common sense that could make the kitchen run smoother. CT is a tech company masquerading as a “fixer” and “innovative” food company. They merely invented software that obscure language and tries to figure out exacting metrics for exploiting its workforce.

But what they're doing is celebrated and persistently defended. It's a land where earnest concerns or complaints are forgotten and ignored. It's where, you're an independent contractor, idiot! is said without irony or reflection as to what they really means. It's Ooo-rah at the “company's success” when none of it will ever trickle-down to you. The hostility is one thing from lashing out insecure ignorant drivers. The silence and denial from those who brought the company, or ones like it, into existence is what kills me.

It's a general trend of people adopting the language and attitude of the “most moral” and “most efficient” which completely “disrupts” how people understand themselves or responsibility to each other. It's across industries and services. Schools aren't bad. Greed is. Redlining is. When you're racist and defund schools, or stash owed taxes overseas, you bankrupt how society functions. When you make a public good “compete” with a for-profit entity offered and available to a privileged few, you ensure society will continue in its decline. How many piddling faux-apologies do you hear from the owners of “gig-economy” apologists about the ground-level realities their drivers or couriers experience? How many people would “choose” to deliver food if good-paying jobs in their field were available all along? I don't want to spiral too far away from the point, but there's an entirely corrupted culture of what a “job” constitutes, your obligation to it, and what it should be able to provide that we willing hand ourselves over to, degrading the gains made my unions.

I spent the better part of a year in my car, in a parking lot, driving food around. I got a lot of watching and reading and playing done, as I did when I was doing drug studies, but I was/am still at the mercy of whatever morally bankrupt institution comfortable espousing the language of “business as usual.” Part of me thinks my subconscious will to not be a fucked up piece of shit again self-sabotaged knowing it was time to move on and put my back against a wall in order to figure out something new. I still firmly believe that just because everything around you is a lying piece of shit, you don't have to be, even when and while you're compelled to play along to a degree for practicality sake.

I suppose I again feel a measure of hopelessness because I'll never “escape” culture. It doesn't get better than feeding off the table-scraps of the self-righteously deluded if you're unwilling or unable to create something else. Co-ops that work exist. People who own their labor and earn to give are out there. There are charities who's money goes to helping instead of salaries. There are voices that remain morally sound and consistent after their camps turn on them. I want to be like those examples, I want to work like those examples, and I want what I say to remain true in spite of whatever consequences may come. Every time you give up an inch, in a way, you're giving up the whole world, and figuring out how to walk the line of what you “have” to do and how to manage the breakdown of the illusion seems a nearly impossible task.

The biggest part of me is most proud that I'm already fatalistically and dispositionally set for scenarios like this. I can remain “poor” for long enough to work at Wendy's (if things, dear god, ever got that terrible) and maintain the life I've established. I don't know what I'd do if I got fired or laid-off and had deeper obligations or debts. My concept of “progress” is what me and mine can create, not number of years or more sophisticated titles. And honestly, in the interim, perhaps there's much I could be doing as far as prepping the land or exploring options I never would pursue sitting and waiting in the parking lot. My mental environment has an opportunity to move on. 

I don't like feeling desperate all the time. Desperate to cling to something bad just because it's there and barely meeting a need. A quasi-reliable $100 a day isn't something to sneeze at, as long as you don't get too far into the weeds on what it means to procure it. But anymore I'm more desperate for sincerity. I'm desperate for a work ethic that's not making excuses for itself or how it operates. If your business model requires lies and exploitation, maybe that's not the kind of business the world needs. Maybe you don't deserve to profit any further. Whatever I create in life, it shouldn't have you thinking of 1984 as I insist I'm not stealing from the people I work with.

However desperate I feel, I'll never be so much so as the people who run, cry, or fight against the truth of what they're a part of. I need to live with myself, every day. I need to know that if I'm getting fired, it wasn't telling people to fuck off and throwing food at them in frustration, but because an easily corrected perceivable wrong was disrupting every level of honest communication and causing no longer tolerable strife. I want to be alive to keep the fight alive and not be a martyr for the cause, but if I have to go down occasionally for some reason, I can live with this one.

[668] Swan Song

If I had a plan, it might include the following things.

I'd use my next 2 days off to learn how to build a website that forms the basis of all the things I'm trying to do at once. The purpose of this website would be to organize and give me a landing page to promote what I seek or create in the real world. I'd find a better website than Udemy, which, the first course I paid for, managed to show itself not to be up to date and buggy. I'd attempt to utilize a domain name and hosting I keep alive, at an arguably completely unnecessary expense so far, and put out a “bad” beginner conception of what I'm after. I'd do all of this from my screen in the living room where undoubtedly the time I wish to use to focus and learn will be interrupted by slamming kitchen drawers, the same piano song practiced for hours, and the shouting of “ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball” for several more hours.

On this site I would list things I have for sale, things I need to get accomplished in order to make my house livable, a daily goal list, and integrate my hobbies. I've thought for a while about having something more personal and reflective of the integrated nature of the mind as something to market for people, with a lesson plan on how to alter it as they change and grow. Myspace was good about letting you change the code and integrate things to make it personal. I want you to feel like you can actually connect or help me without having to rely on you catching the right status at the right time of day. Though you’d as well ignore it as earnestly given you’re your own graves to dig.

That would be the first half of the plan. The next parts involve having money I don't.

My problem is a feeling of general helplessness. I don't care if that's overstated. It's still “the holidays,” which means even while I'm working, the numbers coming in are less than reassuring. Say I were bored and wanted to do more “little things” like sapling removal, the weather has made that impossible. I'm starting to again get headaches like I had when I was growing up. They're reminiscent of the “constant stress” that you take for granted is normal until you're old enough to read about and better define emotional abuse. I'm starting to get the impression that “existing” is becoming a problem again, though I know it's partly that I have few outlets for real discussion, and partly because the harsh annoying reality of my situation is bleeding into others' in too real a way.

I think I've expressed this to some extent in the past, but the issue is that I'm not confused about what I want and need. I know exactly how I'd spend my next $10,000 were it available to me. I know that, if I had nothing else, I was willing to take the floor and my tablet, and now coming home hoping for the couch and my TV are registering as an overstep. I feel like the dad who comes home from work, and his wife doesn't bother to cook dinner. Except here, the wife doesn't just not want to cook, but hogs the TV, runs the laundry in the middle of the night, and let's the dog shit in my boots. It's like the more you're ignored for your effort or that even the smallest amount of your needs aren't being met, it's not just getting more frustrated or angry, you just don't want to exist. I don't know what to do or say that won't end up in a fight. I don't even know how to experiment with making the situation better.

I knew all along how terrible “normal” working conditions and expectations were. All of the time I spent alone reading about the world was it's own kind of depressing for sure, but at least there, I could just look away. Things got better when I stopped shaping my mind with the horribleness of the world. Here, it's the more active physical participation in your own demise. I'm not building anything of value for myself by sitting in the ClusterTruck parking lot. I'm scraping together cash at the expense of literally my whole day if I rush to get chores or errands done in the morning and plan on less sleep. “Multi-tasking” in marathoning TV even feels cheap. If I didn't have the car beeping at me the entire time, I used to just find myself driving in silence, catching my reflection in my tablet looking disheveled and blank.

I paused the 3^rd installment of “Atlas Shrugged” the movie series to start writing this. To be sure it, like the other 2 movies, are pretty terrible. No matter your shorthand opinion of Rand, I still can't shake the impression her books left on me and think I empathize with the general sentiment expressed in her philosophy and lines from her characters. You need an individual mind behind things. You need people who are capable and willing to excel. You need to respect the degree in which the contributions literally power the world. Her characters were actual creatives and geniuses. They actually built things and understood their crafts. They weren't bestowed cash and donned smug smiles claiming to be the best after political worming and exploitation. Lesser-evil Paul Ryans exist in her world, while the heroes provided, and took pride in what they made.

I'm my mind first. My “labor” is as replaceable as anyone else with a car and the ability to refrain from screaming “fuck you” at annoying customers. If I can't get my mind right, I have nothing. If I can't be “happy” or “understood” in what I'm doing, how it feels, or how long it has to take, it's game over. I consider it a problem that I can't persuade myself to fit in more “good” behaviors to try and combat the “bad” of constant exploitation. It really would only cause more stress to try and be “fit” in the middle of the night after work. I might punch a trumpet through a window if I felt like I was making progress only to be interrupted by a stupid conversation from someone knocking at it. Is this me being “negative,” or another attempt to find peace and clarity? Go on, insist.

If I were less ambitious and found myself unable to part with more money for what is certainly information just as poorly related for free as it is “structured” in some online class, I'd finish the last half of this 3^rd volume of The Runaways comics, and maybe power through more Civil War. I'd compile and condense the information I've saved on reddit for years into action-plans going forward. You know, there are dozens, DOZENS, of solo-entrepreneurs with great niche ideas that just followed these 3, 5, or 12 steps to go from 0 to 100K within a year with barely the money or know-how before they started. Maybe I can discover how to be as smart as them. I might pop over to the land and see if the tarp I laid out has blown over or if I can find what happened to my Bioshock and Borderlands games. If there's not a noble reason like those, it'd just be a waste of gas.

If I discovered I actually hate myself more than I'm letting on, I'd just marathon shows with subtitles and recent movie releases. Then at some point I'd hit Wal-Mart to pick up the handful of ingredients to make 3 types of meals I'd prepare for the next week or two. I'd consider heavily on drinking about a 1/5^th alone and seeing if that motivates me to wander the bars in search of more poor decisions. None of this could begin until I had fully realized the first goal of pretending to be asleep well into the afternoon.

Time is moving too slow. I'll be lucky to feel barely comfortable by 30 at this rate. I'd have to find a way to shake off the psychological and physical damage of too much work. I'd be praying the entire time that I only have to pay for the bills that already exist or I can see coming. Every single day is going to be the same conversation about what “more” I could be doing and how my head is hurting or what I'd rather be doing. I was prepared for nothingness and monotony when the weather was good and I thought I was making progress on the house. Now I'm just digging myself out of tax holes, freezing and waiting, and begging for a mental “reason” my efforts were turned into thievery and destroyed supplies. I'm making stupid mistakes and oversights because I can't be bothered to add another layer of bullshit.

The only reason I'm even awake at 6 is because it's actual alone time! I used to like to stay up all night, it felt natural, before I realized how quickly that wasn't going to be compatible with working all day. Now I'm just risking throwing off my rhythm for the sake of some quite time. The noise is 3 paragraphs of me bitching earlier. Hours later I can bother to start thinking again. My whole life feels way too noisy right now.

I'm going to finish this movie and then go to bed. Spoiler alert, the heroes will return, and the motor of the world will start back up. Her characters got to run to a secret escape in the mountains. They got to live in service to their, in the movie, very poorly worded and fundamentally naive ideals. I've been reading along with it about how Rand alienated so many people who didn't understand or jive with her philosophy. I wonder if “my philosophy” is doing the same thing to me, except, I don't have one that isn't a kind of value for critical thought and truth that sees me catching shitty consequences or silence. You tell me, should I not be talking to you? Should I accept or better appreciate the level I currently inhabit? I'm only kidding, I know I have no one to talk to. I know you think all sorts of deep and private things that I'm not allowed to speak to. I know my whiny contempt is the heart of all my problems and none of the “objective reality” raining fire.

Let's see what tomorrow takes.

[661] Goo Goo

I'm sure half of this headache is sitting in my car for the last eleven and a half hours, and half the stupid “conversation” I got into, but I'm still hoping to feel better after explaining it anyway.

All at once. My body reacts all at once to people or phrases or conversations. A dozen lines of what's “wrong” or “right” flood my head, and I mostly react with a scowl, chuckle, or blank expression (meant to convey I'm about to explode). It's exciting and anxiety inducing and altogether hopeless.

Someone complains about delivering food across town. It's a complaint I've made to some degree before. I was written off, “politely handled,” and then ignored. So a new person brings up the complaint, I offer a comment that was tantamount to the same one I got. “We're going to look into this to make sure we know how to fix it right.”

First, his problem is a simple one. If you spent 30-40 minutes on the road and are dependent on the goodwill and tip of your customer, often you're coming back to the kitchen having made $4.50. A scoundrel's rate if there ever was one. You're missing out on the orders building, you're getting a line of cars now being added to the queue to keep up to contend with, and every minute you're out on the road is one where you could be hit, pop a tire, or be subjected to the problems of what are generally poor condition cars.

I chime in, yes, like an idiot. I tell him that I've grown resolved to viewing this job like all jobs. We're “independent contractors,” after all, so we have no expectation of a reliable wage. The company didn't want to worry about health or car insurance, why would they be that sympathetic to your gas and time? There's a line around the block for other poor people who are happy to lap up what the company is serving. Keep in mind, customers think they're tipping you, but it's actually helping the kitchen not have to pay you as much. My, purely speculative, suspicion is that if you get out of line or start to disappoint as a driver, they tweak the program to discourage you from working with them further as “being annoying” isn't cause enough to simply fire you, like they've done to the last people of any influence who whispered about paying drivers more. It's not like we could form a union and compel higher wages.

Do you think I got a good response to that? Because the answer is no. Instead of taking the ideas away that, “Huh, you know what? Why don't we try for a union!?” or perhaps, “It was shady they got fired or shipped away!” or, “Why don't they just actually pay us out our tips the customers think they're paying?” or, “A pooled insurance or gas incentive would help out a lot!” Nope, I get, “Wait, 5 minutes ago you were on my side, and now you think they're actively trying to discourage me?” You know, because if you didn't zero in on the speculation, why would I bother speaking?

I informed him we're on the same side, said it was a losing one, and then asked him how he'd like me to help after he said “with that attitude” of course we're on the losing one. He didn't respond.

The real problem, more of course, isn't that you can get stuck delivering too far and not get paid enough. The real problem is that, in the aggregate, I can work for 80 hours a week, average 10 an hour, and still be struggling to pay for things like car repairs. The real problem is that we're not unionized or have any expectation of health or car insurance. The real problem is that it takes an idiot helming the complaint who will swallow an idiot's “fix” that will amount to dodging everything truly important. Whether they pay a little more or simply decrease the order radius, none of that will speak to you putting your ass and time on the line indefinitely if you want to get anything from this, or any other, job.

As is always the case, there's never room or time for referencing some labor struggle from history. It's never going to be worded correctly all of the other little things that would make life working easier as long as the issue raised demands too much yet simultaneously faux focus. They'll find what amounts to a duct tape fix, and we'll keep driving, and they'll keep expanding, and life will go on just as precariously. All of the energy and curse words and empty, “BUT WE REALLY DO CARE ABOUT OUR DRIVERS!” will get eaten up and echoed until we find our next resting state until a new person pops up about something else that won't really be fixed.

Meanwhile, if anyone dares address me, it's with the sunken shoulders and dead eyes a mother with an endlessly crying child might. Empty, exhausted, screaming, “WHAT DO YOU WANT!?” as if I don't articulate it. These people exist in that feeling-laden space that every ignorant tyrant abuses to hold themselves harmless for being completely oblivious to the harms they perpetuate. “I want to get paid more.” We're looking into it. I've worked 80 hours this week for no bonus or incentive. You can always just sign off. Deflect, excuse, and outright lie. They're a tech company first, trying to zero in on the perfect pain point that can keep a driver feeling rewarded just a bit more than hurt so they keep driving. If they could pay you $4.75 a delivery instead of $7, they would. Chris Rock said it best.

You can't fix labor and wages anymore than you can envision the entire country being able to fix things. We're morally bankrupt, uninspired, unintelligent, and more willing to eat our own than find the patience to recognize what's actually been said or the reality of our own circumstances. My job sucks as much dick as anyone else's, they've just hidden it behind a kind of lottery and lies to the customers who aren't going to ask questions. They at once want to mine us for answers and good ideas, and provide nothing in return. My biggest takeaway from each shift is the season of TV I get through, not that someone understands my plight or is looking out for me and my interests.

I deleted everything I said on the comment train. I know that this is the extent of my voice, and every time I venture beyond it I'm going to overstep, over-speak, and alienate. I'm going to watch people adjusting the mirror and debating its cleanliness while the car is on fire about every topic until the day I die. As long as I'm going to work alongside them, I need to accept their terms and burn along with them. Or, you know, suffer a fate worse than death and get called pretentious and get posted to /r/iamverysmart for my deep and pressing concerns and knowledge regarding the underprivileged working class. Because you're never allowed to just suffer one death.

[629] Just A Little Bit Special

I really think this is going to be one worth paying attention to.

I know I need to accept it. I’m “weird.” Except, I’m not just weird. I’m “different.” I’m “particular.” I’m “sooo Nick P.” that when you warn your friends about me, nothing really supplements like the real thing.

I challenge people. A more deliberate way to phrase that is I accost people. Very often, I ask them, “What is your goal?” In Bloomington, you meet very many fat white semi-drunk kids at the wee hours, and they overwhelmingly have the same story.

“I thought this, and then I gave up.” “Who are you, drunk asshole, to question me?.” “This was fun until I realized your questions were serious, so here’s the finger in the window as we walk away.”


How many times do I call you special? What amount of privilege do I grant you in opting for you to read between the lines versus writing for a form of popularity contest?

Brass tax, you’re special because I respect that I’m special.

I can’t pretend anymore. Kendrick says, “Be humble.” I can be humble about facts. My perception isn’t just different, it’s actually special. My friends aren’t just circumstance, they beget possibility. My phrasing and pathetic little individual window into the world is a degree of difference that warrants the word “special.”


And fuck you for fucking days, I don’t want to believe it. I’m a student of history. We’re all little ink farts in the story of myriad cliches that came before us. Your god fucking forbid I crawl far enough into my ass to denote a measure of difference.

Except…

No matter what I do, beyond even my awareness, I do it different. I just learned tonight that, even with taking days off, I’m the number one driver for ClusterTruck. I’ve spent more time, made more money, than everyone who’s worked for the Bloomington branch. I did not know this. I did not suspect this. It took drunk dispatchers to hi five and hug me as they explained my position in the hierarchy.

The point of bringing up that example is to tell you it was a mother fucking accident. How the fuck do I get off being number one taking days off? Well, I didn’t aspire to be. I’m accidentally at the top of shit I never even fucking meant to be. That shit has to mean something. That has to fucking matter. Right?

::Break down sobbing for 20...35 seconds::

I don’t simply want to piss people off. But I don’t know what to do. In reality, I’m closer to 50 people I would grant special status to. They don’t respect themselves like that. They don’t believe.

Yesterday, I was talking to another Bloomington entrepreneur. He’s had the extreme highs and lows. He recognizes that he is always trying to give back and prop up and afford the people in his life opportunities they don’t deserve. I feel like I have the exact opposite problem. I have people who were smart enough to get hitched or find the job that pays the bills. They are solidly middle to upper class white and rich regardless. Their dreams and goals are empty, “We should meet up!” sentiments once a year. Broke ass asking for a dollar and quasi-content rich white asshole have the same thing in common. They aren’t going anywhere.

My buddy Andrew’s phone decided to call me accidentally. We talked for an hour and a half. That wasn’t because we’re living terribly interesting lives that need that much time to explain. It’s because Andrew is someone you should always be able to talk to because he’s thinking. He has goals. He’s an individual in spite of himself or his circumstances.That’s what I miss. You can’t “recapture” the past, in some perverse sense, but you can respect the players involved that shaped your perspective about what you want in the world. I want conversations with Andrew, and Amber, and Tony, and Corbin, and Chelsea even if she doesn’t like me, and Brett, and Nick, and Alex, and Smash, and Davis, and Kristen, and Hatsam, and whatever members of their drunken families want to show up to celebrate some dumbass meager achievement together.

Time is running out. To one degree or another I’ve managed to live my preferred degree of “freedom.” But I know I’m a failure. I don’t want to see you once a year. I want to see you when I want to see you. I’m like a solid month away from that, but the point remains. I know when the people in my life have materially changed my perception of myself and my place in the world. Me “struggling” by myself in my ignorant corner “doing the best I know how” is not enough. It’s not right. I’d be broke as fuck being able to joke like I joke around someone before I’d have a million dollars and no one with enough vacation time to enjoy it with me.

My heart is broken. I think about me and Kristen for example. It’s really not up to me why we broke up. Shit was real for me. In her words there was more good than bad. She said she ran. Obviously some random hookup means little in the light of the person you just want to “be” with. But if something that dope and that real can go to shit, who am I kidding about our friendships in lieu of parties and outings? I can’t see you once a year, if that, and think we’re really on the same page. I get why the dynamic would have to change or die, but that doesn’t mean I’d respect it.

You have to conduct your life as if everything matters. You have to believe that you’re taking in words from a balls out special mother fucker who wouldn’t date or fuck with your eyes were you not something keen and different from the world at large. You have to. You have to fucking get it.

What's important for me is that I get it. My life is a series of, “I’ve never heard that before” and “You’re number 1” even without my fucking knowledge or endorsement, let alone my best effort. By extension, the different, the, by the numbers number fucking one, says you need to fucking fix something you defacto different people who apparently only have my ass barraging you.

We get to die anyway. Try. Work. Own it. Scare and surprise me with your enthusiasm. My worst few days is leagues above the rest. Combine fucking powers like the Power Rangers. Play in my field. Own your status and get fat white kids to flick you off in the window on their way out of Steak N Shake after they’ve failed to answer what their goals are.

I miss you hard. But more, I miss who I figured out I was when you came into my life. I miss seeing myself as an extension or piece of a greater whole. I miss wanting to be less Nick P. so I could introduce new people into “my crowd.” The goal remains the same. I’m after a mindset, not a dollar amount. I’m after an atmosphere. It’s impossibly easy to lose.

[593] Just Keep Swimming

I'm growing increasingly unsettled by how much of my life constitutes a form of circumstantial spite.

No matter how old I get, I feel what I've been bred for. I'm as white working-class middle-income cliché as they come and had every expectation drilled into me about how to do even better. After pushing 29 years, I'm some form or another of what a non-discerning author has to say about “Millennials.” If you broke me into parts, the easy boring way to say something about them would be about how the past shapes us and we couldn't improve without mistakes. Snore. I find that I've taken my repulsion impulse and crafted a borderline extreme alt-personality that plays up everything I ever thought I wouldn't be or didn't want. There's something to be said about “maturity” and personality changing over time as memories condense and life becomes familiar, but it's more deliberate.

Attacking head-on will bog me down, so maybe I can just point to instances and behaviors. I'm old enough, and have had it be a problem long enough, that I know eating like shit or right before bed burns a hole through my stomach. In a forgone conclusion about my inevitable death anyway, I still make the same shitty decisions on a regular enough schedule to warrant mentioning. That approach to life and my body is a learned behavior. Eating like shit as a kid was ignorance and the environment (parents and grandparents encouraging norms). Eating like shit now is like my version of smoking.

I think about how I learned to be so “mean.” Often I borrow a line about the amount of people who've been abused or grew up in shitty households that don't turn into the kind of monsters that raised them. It's a grand celebration of my mother's cruelty every time I get a phone call or visit from police for something obscene I've said. In the same breath, I don't know what situations warrant more vitriol than when I'm actually moved to spew it. But the “coldness” I have towards all of the emotionality I'm accused of not understanding used to be out-of-control compulsion easily taught by and inherited from the pro.

I think about doing studies. I can't think of a more opposite approach to how I envisioned my “work” life than to discover how to get paid for sleeping and watching TV. I never shake the anxiety about all of my “wasted” time, even if I'm reading or doing something I enjoy. Underneath me is an inexhaustible work horse. The path to the most money required taming it. And unlike 16 year old me who could work 2 jobs, one running the entire shift, and then march in band, when I dip back into that overdrive, I come home needing the massager to work out the mounting kinks. I made $450 in 3 “days” with ClusterTruck (most of it spoken for and just getting back to “even” after my car shit the bed again) but still feel guilty when I'm home if there's a chance to pull in just a little bit more by staying on for 10 or 11 hours instead of 8.

School used to define me. I absolutely thought my road to anywhere I wanted to get in life was going to be through my approach and love of learning. I visit the grave of my strangled joy at being in college almost daily. I was so unbelievably saddened by the reality of “higher education.” Probably no singular experience shaped a kind of “fuck everything” attitude than slogging through it and getting my degree. I love the train wreck in slow motion imagery as every piece of my working future had to get replaced as it tumbled off the track in a violent blaze and cacophonous rancor.

More molding came upon the chance to do the coffee shop. It didn't matter that we made money. All that matters is that forces who don't care about you will conspire to fuck you, and even when you've attempted to account for everything, one or more of those things is a lie you had little choice but to rely on. The first opportunity I got to do something, finally anything, (that wasn't partying) that could potentially and aggressively speak to me and my values and ability, and it was no less subjected to a will and circumstances much greater than I could contend.

It's not my intention to simply write off everything I've experienced as some massive ball of negativity. Nor do I think every important lesson I've worked into my being I'd be better off without or want to learn an even harder way down the line. I just want to be careful that I'm not “stuck” in a kind of “opposite autopilot.” I mean, I'm attempting to move and build on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere in a state I absolutely hate. How much potential do I really see? Is it possible I've driven myself to a kind of crazed loner who's only shot at peace is as close to isolation as you can get without getting lost in the woods or desert?

I wanted to be a cliché. I wanted the program as it was sold to me. I didn't want to have to look at the one or two friends doing something resembling what I wanted and think I look like some crazy mouthpiece to over-intellectualized despotism; too blind and ferocious to notice the froth and beard resemble more mangy dog than wizened priorities and resolve. I wanted the “safe space” for my brand of over-achieving and smarm. I would have reveled in the usual praise and accolades with my picture on the wall or extra nod of acknowledgment for my insight about the last quarter. I would have been one of my uncles, owning too much hobby shit, while living somewhat modestly, and finding more room for innocent alliances through sports or gentleman's clubs.

To say it out loud makes me think like the disembodied soul attempting to write my story. Who'd want to read that shit? They could just pick up my uncles' books, right? “He worked non-stop” is the same simple way to describe scores of Asians who end up dead each year from overdoing it. “He did well in school” doesn't even get me Ivy League credentials or a claim to valedictorian status. I hear stories almost daily of 8 year olds raped by multiple family members, kids O.D.ing on mommy's Aderall cocaine mix, and babies getting their dicks punched...and while it's fairly disingenuous to draw a comparison between abuse and its effects on children, I'm willing to concede none of those things happened to me so I probably lost some kind of excuse battle there.

There's still a very large and very compelling sense ingrained in me that draws pride from the credentials or the cash. It's not in a “make it rain” or “I insist you call me Dr.” sense either. It's that I started to play a different game when I saw how easy and, well, sad, it was to compete at that level. Growing technology and trends only made it look all the more unpalatable. Paris Hilton makes money from being dumb and looking pretty? Funny and intriguing when you're young and it's new. An entire generation raised on turning cameras onto themselves being obnoxious or wasting their time completely changes the concept of “earning money.” Every year the smartest professions are being replaced by new algorithms and machinery that render all those years of struggle in school mute. Why kill myself to become a doctor when even if I were the best in the world, my very humanity would bring a higher probability of your death than your latest super-smart phone tracking your vitals?

I never got to close the circle on that “normal” conception of my capacity or where I fit. There was a time I used to be as pretentious about the shows that I would watch as I was when I thought a peanut butter and honey sandwich was an appalling affront to decency well-beneath me who's certainly not poor and deserves normal jelly! My embarrassing mindless mother just forgot to buy me another meal ticket! (I could be a difficult child) Now, of course I'd put honey on most things and watch more shows than likely nearly all the people who get paid to write increasingly pointless reviews for Rotten Tomatoes.

I have no sense of “normalcy.” Nothing is consistent. It's probably more that nothing has ever really been consistent and I'm just more attuned to it, but still. I don't know who I'm living with EVERY YEAR for the last 10 years. I don't know how much money I'll have month to month, let alone year to year. I don't regularly practice just one instrument, let alone one or 2 songs to get them to a point of mastery or performance worthy. I haven't worked the same job for longer than 3 or 4 months, besides doing studies or the coffee shop, in those years as well. My “social cohort” moved all over the country. The online world grows increasingly younger and inane. Value is measured in commodification and trending hashtags. I can't even live modestly and make nearly no money without inviting problems from the IRS or greedy rental companies. I don't even eat or sleep at the same times each day.

And I got confused about the appeal of a large stable quiet field away from it all? It's a wonder 200 families and friends depicted on screen draw me in to familiar worlds I might hope to anchor my thoughts in? Shit, there's what 5 years of a relationship was probably speaking to as well. If only we'd played on each others' heart strings and opted for manipulation games instead! I could have avoided my motivations and shock from the 3^rd rail labeled DESPERATE FOR STABILITY.

I've done my best in trying to document what about me has declined or grown, be it in my descriptive capacity or actions. In that sense I feel lucky for as concrete as one could imagine, without numerative quantifiers, relative shifts and what motivated them. It's hard to overstate the components and impact of a genuinely stable foundation and what it takes to build something lasting and real. I'm a fish without a school. In a sea of words I've found myself drowning. My leaky boat made of an “expansive perspective” being rowed with an “inexhaustible will” is supposed to get me to shore in a contest of my own invention. I see plenty of circling beasts counting on me not getting there.