[1231] Add It Up

I think a lot about when I might believe I’ve “made it.”

I read an interview with a musician who explained that for many bands who don’t define success, it can feel hopeless or antagonizing that they aren’t getting a certain level of attention, money, or opportunities. If and when they are comparing themselves to The Beatles no amount of what they put in or get out is going to feel like “enough”.  This insight, of course, applies to many domains in life outside of music, and I think one of the reasons that explanation has stuck with me is because I’ve tried to apply the lesson to my day-to-day experience.

Is today “enough” for me? I woke up whenever I woke up after going to bed whenever I fell asleep. I was watching what I wanted to watch. I was playing with AI, or stated differently, creatively engaging with a tool I’m interested in and learning about. I’m going to another comedy show tonight after attending one yesterday. I’m digesting an apple fritter I got as a gift yesterday. I’m wearing a new band T. I’m on the verge of again-maximizing my base level of Last War. Food is cooking. I have enough money in the bank for a few beers and my debt consolidation payment coming up.

So far, even with the first few snippets of what I might say about today, yes.

Most of the days of my life look something like this. Even when I have a job, my days circle around the story of my otherwise fair-to-well operating environment. This is in spite of the negligence and fascism of my state and country. Even if, in general, I have a fairly precarious relationship to long-term employment. Even when it starts raining, and you can tell a compelling story about the different insurances I can’t afford.

The concept of “making it” feels all the more on the nose. I have to make a story of my context. I’d go a step further and call it something of an obligation of consciousness. Because my experience exists within some deep and perhaps unanswerable questions about what is “mine” or it means to “experience,” the narrative mechanism of my brain literally needs something constructed to anchor to.

When you’re poor, or poor enough, that constructed story ties intimately with your need to survive. A proud declaration of your “work ethic” might hide that if you didn’t, you’d starve. The hundreds, if not thousands, of times I’ve heard, “It is what it is,” from people in bureaucracies and social work environments. When your nose is pressed right up against the ever-failing human condition, you “accept” all of a sudden deeply “wise” and “obvious” things about what is or isn’t possible.

It works the opposite direction with every rich megalomaniac. You breach the bounds of “average” human activity? Now, all of a sudden, literally anything is possible! Including you being the one to lead us into your imagined future. The same trick is being played on your psyche though.  Your brain is under the impression it’s about “you.”

Many people have intuited ways out of this trap by finding themselves working “in service” to others. The difference between actually doing so and paying lip service to it could not be more clear. At DCS, I saw the people who got off on the power of what they could do to your family. Same in the prison. You can tell the people who are being led by the insecurities or inadequacies and laziness, dragging that posture over the struggling people they purport to serve.  Add to that, and I consider it a plague upon the modern condition, where your otherwise good deeds or service can turn into viral capital.

They say most kids want to be “influencers.” They want the money, prestige, and attention, superficially, like any musician might imagine about the lives of the biggest stars. The story of the work to get there will remain just as obscure. How many hours a day do you want to practice your instrument? How many posts do you want to feel obligated to every day? I question the desire to influence if you can’t wrap your head around the nature of what’s influencing you.

One of the ways I think I’ve found a degree of stability and quelled anxiety was to tell the story of what happened at each moment I got “the thing.” Did my life fundamentally change? Did my energy levels and time get utilized exactly as I imagined they would? Literally, never. I moved to the middle of nowhere, and I do play around with random projects and blast my music in the middle of the night, but it’s not my main preoccupation of time. I bought all the fancy woodworking tools, and have made a handful of things, but I’m not churning out an Etsy store. My “friends” and my friends don’t have any more or less time to spend with me. I’m still lightly concerned about my next unfulfilling job and how much it’s not gonna pay me to keep my head just above water.

One of “the things” I got was the ability to start going to a large number of shows. I’ve clung to that as a thing I both wanted, still want, and sacrifice other things in service towards. It was in making graphs with my show attendance data that informed my feelings about “making it.” It was my hundredth “fun thing” event last night this year. It was 109 last year, 143 the year before that. I’ve been playing catch-up and taking an active role in shaping my story by the things that I enjoy, like music and comedy, and the rituals around getting to where they are on display. You can ask me where to eat, drink, navigate parking, or best place to stand at dozens of venues across the Midwest. I can say, “I saw them open for” dozens of bands who are getting big or who I’m betting will.

I’m working on “more.” Because I want to not just attend these shows, I want to attend them on any day, in any location, they might happen. I want to get to them in a car that’s even more reliable than the ones I’ve been driving. I want a T shirt for every band I’ve even wanted to support a little. Is it a selfish or greedy goal when there’s so much going on in the world? It could be.

I’ve learned that the nature of my wants isn’t about “instead of.” I want it all in concert. Derek Thompson of Plain English and the book about Abundance fame, talks about how he can’t stay locked into one domain of interest. His brain begs the question of the broader metrics and narratives that explain something. I resonated with that idea. I’m not a “woodworker” or “musician” or “political junkie.” I’m not a “counselor” or “landlord” or “fan.” I’m just generally interested in the interplay of things and how we manage to react or work with them. I don’t want anything beyond feeling meaningfully engaged in that interplay. Because I accept that meaning derives from the narrative, I’m interested in continuing to write said narrative.

For me, it’s important that narrative is true. I mean true. I don’t mean “my truth.” I don’t mean arguing the weeds of subjective experience. I mean, for any English speaker, you can read these words. That’s a true statement. I mean, I’m a dude. I mean, I just ate meat, and regardless of how much suffering or intelligence I can attribute to the pig, it was delicious. I feel “intellectually” bad about it, and would eat pig cells grown in a lab and seasoned the same way if it were an affordable and reasonable option. I don’t feel bad enough to stop eating meat today.  It’s not telling a simple story of my righteous vegan posture or ambivalent negligence towards other conscious beings. It’s a true sliver of “me” and what I think it would take to change my behavior.

My relationships to things are always in flux. That’s not about making room for moral relativism. That’s about the exercise of accountability. Those who are innocently confused and those who are motivated to bad-faith reasoning will operate functionally the same way in the face of this idea. I’d call it a simple and easy truth, but for whom there’s an eternal mystical reality, one imagines it’s too disorienting for them to grapple with.  God can be their Rock. I’ll take Chris.

It’s true I want to get lost for weeks arguing with AI until I find it more useful than for torrenting and efficiently organizing my media. It’s true I want to be involved politically creating grassroots infrastructure to combat the rot I perceive at the base of our ability to collectively survive. It’s true I want to watch nearly anything that’s been turned into a TV show that was actually trying to say something. It’s true I want to learn how to produce music, and create worthy-of-sale woodworking things, and have the kind of “fuck you” money that doesn’t blink about empowering my cartoon soldiers on a gambling-adjacent phone game.

There are, easily, a dozen things I could rifle off about genuine desires I have that exist in each moment. Sometimes my presumed ADHD gets a chance to demonstrate that when I’m juggling 6 at once. A couple days ago, I undressed, turned on the shower, noticed something about my bathroom mirrors, and proceeded down a rabbit hole, naked, which included, cooking, power tools, a shattered bowl cleanup, and grime cleaning, before I found my way into the actual shower. Did I want to shower? Or clean? Or cook? Or adjust the mirror? Or not cut myself? Or ensure my tools were organized so I could find one easier next time? Or get that spot addressed while I’m down here? Yes.

I don’t want it all. I don’t want it now. I want to feel like I can do any of it in the moment I really want to do it. I want to celebrate the freedom of ambiguity more than feel trapped by obligations. I want you to feel as freely chosen as I was to choose otherwise. I want the power of my awareness and capacity to build as much as destroy. I want the conversation to start from that mutually shared place and routinely surprise and delight with where it goes. Given that I don’t really know where to begin in that endeavor, I guess I’ll go back to dinner, my shows, and keep my ears open for what the next story is that hits me.

[1208] It's Just That Easy

There’s something so fundamentally human that I think I will go my entire life unable to grasp “completely” or “seriously” or “empathetically.”

I don’t understand how people stay convinced.

I consider myself a deeply critical person. I’m exercising my judgment about everything, constantly, and it’s why I have simplified heuristics to remain sane. My cars are often old, dented, or cost less than my guitar. I just need it to get me where I’m going and it’s the greatest car it ever has to be. I have no genuine opinion that stems from the type of car that I have.

By contrast, I routinely experience people who functionally identify with their car and consider it an extension of their personality, taste, wisdom, etc. What this does is removes any obligation to say or think about anything “objective” regarding the car. Who cares how it was made, if it’s safe, or if it’s famous for being preferred by some notable despot of history, it’s my car, man, and nothing you can say about it matters.

I’m stuck just seeing “a car,” and it’s a “nice” car or “good” car if it cars correctly. If I need it for a more specific purpose, again, all that’s implicated is my sense of meeting the need. I don’t want to make a long trip in the backseat of a sports car. I don’t want to load wood onto the hood of my Buick. I love my truck because it helps me get work done, not because, “Geeerrr, man, truck!” Or because I want to be seen some kind of way. Incidentally, almost always if someone’s a cunt riding my ass, they’re in a truck.

To me, when you’re convinced, you’re stupid. You’re consciously and deliberately motivated to stay a specific kind of stupid to maintain some relationship to the identity you’ve…let’s call it worked-ish out. You train to prefer dodging skepticism, questions, or critical thoughts about whatever you’re convinced of. This is the maintenance of toxic family or relationship dynamics. This is religion. This is the heights of vitriol in music preferences. This is the irrational basis for war and control.

I’m extremely unconvinced. I’m interested in immediately changing something I’m doing particularly egregiously wrong. I know you can only have so much evidence and there’s always confounds, but I’m starving for ways to do “it” or “things” or “life” in ways that don’t make the whole project feel pointless and stupid. I feel incredibly alone in that posture. I’ve met maybe a handful of people interested in operating the same way, and often it’s extremely domain specific.

Well before the cesspool of the internet, I’ve been the kind of person who has fielded an immense amount of feedback about who I, allegedly, am. Boy howdy, do people sound convinced. I learned very quickly how that seemed to be most often what someone was willing to share, often a less than flattering opinion about how I talk, think, or behave. For most people, I suspect when they encountered the same thing it was pretty disorienting. The people I meet in counseling have an endless treasure trove of the traumas of youth and generational passings-on. I wasn’t one to be convinced. I immediately had thoughts, notes, and questions.

My mom used to call my brother and I “Serbian princes.” She considered us, as single-digit aged children mind you, on some pedestal because my grandmother would cook for us, and otherwise treat us nicely, I guess? My mother grew up in a verbally and mentally abusive home. She saw fit to pass on the tradition. She, clearly, was convinced about herself whatever she was told. So convinced, she found the wisdom to beat, belittle, and terrorize children. Also, you’ll be excited to hear, my brother doesn’t consider it abuse! He’s convinced! Pay no attention to me who has literally removed children, as a DCS assessor, from their homes for 1/10th of what happened to us. Same state, different decades, makes all the difference apparently.

I don’t want to be the kind of person who’s stuck doing something categorically stupid indefinitely. I think violently and routinely beating children is pretty stupid. I think using power in aggressive and domineering ways on people in sensitive situations is stupid. I think conversations where neither side complete sentences and begin to get loud are stupid. I think bending over and asking to take someone’s rapey dick move a little deeper is stupid. I think pretending like you’re too busy, too moral, too smart are all categorically fucking stupid.

I got a classic “criticism” in IOP class the other day. “What could you possibly teach us about addiction if you ain’t going through the same thing?” Many people in recovery, because they’re people, not because they’re in recovery, make a show out of how convinced they are correct. He’s right, no? Addiction is something so categorically different, defined, and dominated by those struggling with it. Obviously. Every scientist studying it. Every debate. Every counselor worth a damn is, or was, chronically abusing a substance in spite of the self-destruction.

Or, this is such an unimaginably stupid question, that it sits squarely at the center of my opening confusion. I don’t know how to sound that stupid on my worst day. I have no analogous topic or sense of defensiveness about something in my life that is like, “Oh, yeah, I sound like that when we talk about…” For most people, it’s their faith that occupies that space. They believe what they believe, circularly, forever, because. I don’t have that. I’m certainly not convinced of any given sky-daddy, nor am I convinced I have any fucking clue what it means to be alive, dead, or inextricably intertwined with everything.

I think it’s stupid to adopt catch phrases. Free Palestine? From what? The terrorists they elected to routinely terrorize? From the influence of Iran? Or are you, most likely, pretending to be an expert on global affairs, religious extremism, or Israeli foreign policy, and accidentally doing an antisemitism? I don’t have to be an expert to listen to 10 hours over 5 days on my drives to and from work the opinions of people who’ve lived, studied, or hobnobbed with the players involved for longer than I’ve been alive. Do you know what my opinion is after all that? You should listen to them too, and share who you’ve been listening to. Then, if we both want to pretend we, as individuals, have a dog in that fight, maybe we talk a few days later.

But people are convinced! The narrative is popular, therefore true! All my favorite bands and friends are saying it, and what’s ever gone wrong with punk or youthful energy? If there was a habit I wish we would adopt globally, it would be starting most sentences with, “I could be wrong, but here’s what I think.” Not picking a side. Not judgmentally labeling someone. Not decrying some grand victimized frame and indictment of power as though you have none.

When you’re convinced, you’re forgoing responsibility or choice. The conclusion gets to do the work for you. More importantly, it gets to take the blame when things invariably go awry. When you demonstrate to me how convinced you are, I return to one of my simple heuristics. “Oh, this is stupid, time to move on.” You’re not actually convinced, you’re woefully incomplete. You don’t like how that feels, so you anchor on literally anything, but especially on things that are culturally normative. Your car. Your girl. Your politics. But always your indignant posture that you met someone who sees through it and how it works instinctively, begrudgingly.

What are we to make then if you’re over there stewing and waiting to decry, “Ha! Fool! You’re convinced beating children is wrong!” Am I so unserious a thinker that I made some gross oversight? Or, in your eager temptuous posture did you not just highlight the nature of what I’m talking about? Are you genuinely trying to debate a child’s experience of abuse, or obfuscating because that’s all you know?

More to the point, I’m not convinced beating children is wrong. That’s not my framing, nor my language. I would describe, in detail, the research, the litany of people’s experiences, and my own, and use a mountain of evidence to say something like, “I’m 99% sure abusing a child is unlikely to get the desired outcome of doing so.” The more specific the scenario, details about the players involved, the better. Unless your goal is to fuck with that child, you’re probably doing it wrong. Don’t you want to know that?

[1207] Extra Ordinary

The last 2 days it’s been incredibly hard to focus. I’m entirely sure if anything happened. I feel like I’ve lost a beat, or like something that was previously animating dropped away. The days prior I was having fun, or trying, in spite of some aggressive feelings I was having towards no one in particular. When the weekend ended and I started back to work, I found it, and frankly still find it, hard to lock in and give a shit.

Yesterday evening I emailed my boss indicating a desire to maybe pull back on some of my work responsibilities and focus. My job, while not proving to be the often immoral and ridiculous environments most show themselves to be very quickly, is pretty messy in some foundational ways. I work for a sober-living/IOP operation. I conduct groups and carry out casework tasks. I’m currently obligated to carry out new person orientation and have been creating material for life-skills and case management that didn’t seem exist…at a company that’s been around for at least 5 years.

At first, this job was supplementing the paltry salary I was getting working for the Y. I got there in the morning after my first Y shift, left before the beginning of my 2nd Y shift. It’s messiness barely touched me. I decided to get myself fired from the Y, then I could neatly become “full time.” The messiness grew. I took steps to try to make it less messy like asking for the materials I’d be teaching in advance so I could make copies. I insisted we get a white board that showed the daily schedule so everyone could be right or wrong in the same way. There’s many, very simple, fixes like that which the place still needs, that I think can be accomplished in relatively short order.

At the same time, it hit me how often I seem to experience the same pattern in my relationship to work. I show up, experienced, energetic, consistent, and with a good and genuine nature at the prospect of demonstrating the work or a fix. A slow-creep of things that undermine the effort come in, and if I notice and speak to it, I also have to ensure I don’t do so in a hyperbolic or sounding-too-aggrieved type of way. There’s all this excess labor that forms “shouldn’t have to be this way” kind of sentiments in my head and gut.

If I don’t want to be rushed to make copies right before class, and to their credit, they give me the lesson plans in advance for 2 weeks, but forget the 3rd, I’m pulled right back into the anxiety and frustration over something “dumb” and “simple” that I’ve tried to fix several times in asking for the whole curriculum so I can spend one afternoon getting prepared for months in advance. Surely, it’s just a series of .pdfs somewhere. The rush in the morning bleeds into my attitude or sense of preparedness for group. The notes and tasks due after group maybe take a hit. Now I’m angling to “reset” the next day, trust violated, and my grasp of the spirit to make things work better loosened ever so.

On balance, I don’t know if I get 3 out of 5 days a week that I’ve worked there (it’s only been 2 months) that I’ve been able to anticipate, technically, scheduled and easily anticipated things. It’s incredibly disorienting and feels compounded when we’re trying to model behavior we hope our clients will adopt in service to maintaining sobriety. Do as I say, not as I do?

In 2 months, I’ve been witness to improvements. I’ve contributed heavily to them. I’m feeling protective or maybe defensive of my perspective that, for reasons I’ll never understand, needed to be the one to show up and make the changes. I’m worried the changes won’t stick. Or that the people who I’m trying to shape up and do better are stuck in a place that’s going to continually undermine the attempts to create better beats and downstream effects. I, never, just “trust” that my effort will be recognized or rewarded, nor do I think as a rule most people are concerned with quickly and materially altering the consequences of their blind spots.

It seems out of nowhere, but it’s also relevant that I just got some outside work done around my property. It was a reminder that I like shaping up my property and working to build/organize things. It’s something that takes a lot of time and I usually only ever have the time when I don’t have the money or the weather. It’s been incredibly hot lately, I have a little more time, and I’d rather be doing mostly anything here than somewhere else.

It feels key to point out I’m not impatient. I know change takes time. I know I’m not prepared to ride that empty broad sentiment indefinitely. I know I still retain the power to say I don’t want to nor can work as much as I previously thought if the instability feeling persists. I’m not shooting for some vague notion of stability either. I’ve worked for enough companies at all layers of social work and interpersonal drama to know what works or doesn’t independent of the players involved. Paperwork can be a savior. A shared calendar can cut through a lot of noise.

I want to believe really bad, in something beyond my friends, indulgences, and self. I don’t have a magic sky daddy or in-crowd I practice apologetics for. I don't have bad solipsistic philosophy or the personality disorder to uncritically tout my brand and content. I want to show the principles I’ve applied to my life in order to achieve what I have so far in a context explicitly suited to doing so. It feels like such an opportunity for a Shakespearean play-level tragedy to embody the fucking up when you’re proof positive, individually, the fuck ups need not be.

I don’t know if my focus fucking off is me trying to protect myself from what might be yet another catastrophic failure. I don’t know if I’m looking for license to distance myself in a more deliberate and polite way so that I might maintain a reference that won’t throw me under the bus. I don’t know if the heat is just making the ambient space we’re all operating within wonky in a way that can’t be accurately accounted for. I do know that I’ve been pretty locked in and inspired and motivated, and then it aggressively drifted away. It’s not gone. It’s not hopeless. It’s not even got a decently long list of issues that can’t be fixed. No one has shut down attempts to try or deny they are problems altogether like they did at the Y.

My coworkers are overwhelmingly fun and funny people as well. It’s as close to DCS coworkers as I’ve found, and even more raw in places. We’re dealing with about 80 people, on rotation, in early recovery and regularly getting shit on for things both in and out of our control. We got jokes. The elements that were impeding structure and growth were removed from the work landscape, the ones recently hired (basically 85% of the staff is less than 4 months) read as capable and reliable.

I want my focus back. There might be more begging for my attention, but this is my best first guess.

[1200] Quite The Day

Today has all the makings of “a day.”

First, I get an emailing denying a 4-hour punch-card request to make up for 4 hours I did not record last week. The reason it’s denied? It’s our responsibility to manage our punch-ins, and my supervisor has been reminding me several times all week to go in and do so. Superficially, fair enough. But it’s deeper than that.

 

One of the first things I relayed to my supervisor when I got hired was how I’m terrible at the punching in and out. It’s not at a box you have to pass physically, it’s just signing into your phone. Well, my phone, even when I set alerts, even when I program the calendar, likes to pause, silence, or ignore my settings. So, when my A.D.D. self is particularly tired or distracted or has literally anything trying for my attention, I’m gonna miss a punch, which happens a lot.

 

For months, this has been alleviated just fine, either by her in the old system, or by me in the new. Well, 6 months later, I finally miss a day to correct, and my paycheck is 4 hours short. I already get paid terribly, and when you’re missing a tank of gas or two when you commute an hour each way to work, it stings. It stings more when you accidentally miss a MANDATORY meeting because you’re at your second job, you know, because one isn’t enough, and instead of just not getting paid for the 1.5 hours they did things like hand out “employee appreciation” totes (in lieu of money or courtesy), she insists you use 1.5 of your personal time or vacation time hours because, again, that meeting was MANDATORY. A meeting so mandatory, one of the three supervisors that’s supposed to be there has blown off twice.

 

I’m surrounded by a lot of people pretending to be adults, pretending to care, pretending there’s any sense or order about the rules and expectations, and pretending they’re exercising their power with any tact or wisdom. My job bleeds staff every few months. My job gets sued regularly for negligent behavior at its different sites. My job worked aggressively to excuse the violent behavior of children in its care for as long as it could, pinning it on us and the idea that we weren’t being “inclusive” and “accommodating” enough to kids that would feature in an episode of interventionist TV. My high-school kid employee, religious para-professional otherwise housewife, and spouse of someone recently swept up by ICE are expected to dutifully handle getting hit or pulled on and demanded of every day. They’re supposed to 1-on-1 deal with “behaviors” for 3 hours, whilst presumably ignoring every other child in the program as they pretend to be educated or certified in that level of attention and care. Cool.

 

The YMCA is a global brand. They have money. They still raise more off the backs of their poorest families. They refuse to pay employees enough to retain them or train them to do things like keep the kids clean if they shit themselves. They refused to hire the kind of help it would take to monopolize a child’s attention so the room could otherwise function. The latest kid to cause a notable disruption I was castigated for including his teachers in attempting to redirect and calm him down because it was after school. God forbid I include the alleged professionals when our ridiculous unworkable YMCA “plan,” which includes a license to hit other participants, somehow, doesn’t appear to be working.

 

My supervisor, also underpaid and overworked, I feel defaults to this kind of robot or brick-wall just mouthing words she knows doesn’t make sense and doesn’t believe in. She’s younger, looks perpetually overwhelmed, and has shown herself unable to even just generally lead or communicate, let alone engage in an adult human level with her other adult, and often more experienced, leaders. Today is just one of dozens of emails I’ve gotten that tout, so disingenuously, some “letter of the law” kind of sentiment where some common sense and grace would do. I finally broke, and pulled into a parking lot to write her a digression about how much I struggle with what feels like being completely abandoned by her. How every time I need something from her, it’s the hard way or some stupid tit-for-tat fight or pedantic debate. I could quit tomorrow with what I anticipate her response will be.

 

Bear in mind, I have her behavior and responses I can compare directly against another sometimes supervisor, also young, also with her own frustrating blind-spots and peculiarities, who has been demonstrably better. I can also compare her to my newest supervisor who has shown a level of understanding and support I’ve almost never found save for one or two people at DCS, and then way back in the day at Showplace. So while I have her needling in the background, something else comes in.

 

A parent emails her and me about how she thinks I’m “annoyed” by her special needs child and have made it my goal to remove kids from the program who have elevated needs. She alleges we’re not following or enforcing the right plans for ensuring her son can continue to participate. This is a child who is weirdly strong, and been forceful with my tiny staff who relayed their fear in the past. This is a kid who has held up items about to swing on me with them. This is a kid who has left the room to run outside. This is a kid who, his mother has stated plainly, has a condition that severely impedes his ability to control impulses. I’ve ripped up a write-up he absolutely deserved at one point, months ago, in an effort to accommodate and be patient and incorporate information mom was then willing to share. Someone, that write-up rip up guy is also targeting her kid. Her kid was targeted by the last site director, so naturally I am too, and I waited until 3 weeks before school was out to turn the screws.

 

Do I have any faith my supervisor will back me up? Doubtful. I suspect from mom’s response to mine that she at least played it neutral, but this is a girl I had to fight for 3 months about a child who, every single day, would have total meltdowns, screaming for 20 to 30 minutes stints, kicking and hitting tables, tearing things off the walls, and throwing things at other kids in response to staff asking him to sit down or line up for the bathroom. When I explained my plight in front of her boss, a complete 180 and now it’s, “You know I supported you!” No, I articulated your negligence to someone who, ultimately, doesn’t even really care to be bothered.

 

There’s much I can assume my supervisor doesn’t give a shit about regarding my life or what contributes to my ability to meet their professed aims. During my interview, it was a running joke all of the second and third jobs the rest of the site director’s had because, “You know, the job doesn’t pay much. Seriously, you get that right? Ha ha! We all work so much! We just believe in these kids and the mission!” That’s all fun and games until the practical reality and small asks I make to be accommodated come to fruition. Then, “You’re expected to be X Y Z, as we discussed during your interview.” Yeah, bitch, along with 100 other things you conveniently forget when it suits you.

 

I’ve been actively making peace with the shit all adults have to eat about their broad cliche levels of negligence, laziness, incoherence, and waste of most work environments. I was finding my pace and routine and setting up to just kinda ride. But then I get these emails. Then I find myself needing to negotiate time or a space. And it’s like a triggering event that just spikes my sense of absurdity, angst, and exhaustion. I’m already eating shit, just like you, why are you making me dance? Why do I need to be punished on top of the struggle?

 

The answer, always, of course, is because I am an unyielding puncture through the artifice of their farce. When you learn how to behave, play along, and survive by unshakeable allegiance to The Party, any remote criticism or ask to be “human” is an invitation to the whole world behind it of taking larger chunks of responsibility. We don't have a basically functional culture that can pronounce words like “responsibility” or “accountability.” Why would some helpless 27-year old who’s had exactly one job, pretending to be a leader at the Y, find the inclination for a robust longstanding and reasonable human professional partnership? She got an even shittier education than you, was encultured by the shameless and insecure, and is now terrified of literally everything I say to her. That doesn’t feel “winnable” or like a real problem to be solved.

 

Therefore, I take it day by day. My power remains in my ability to explore the entire world of possibilities I’m otherwise ignoring by staying plugged into this system. I’ve got my head to barely above water when it comes to bill-paying. I have the 2nd job I can always up my hours with, or I can situate around some other pursuit. I can’t escape the thought that maybe life does, indeed, have to* be this way for some mysterious reason the further you pan out. Maybe each new little ridiculous or hellish scene is just driving me to an inevitable destiny. A destiny it’s impossible to see as I contemplate the guilt of a mother who wishes she’d aborted her special needs child. A fate I won’t find beating up on the lost skinny white girls with all of my questions and criticisms of their intransigence and naivety.

 

As I contemplate this, I learn my cousin is about to die. I’m considering telling my job it’s my brother and taking bereavement time. I’m sure they’ll ask for a death certificate.

[1192] Babble Babble Bitch Bitch

I need to try to identify another pattern. A few days ago I felt I had good examples at different scales of what I was looking for. Of course, I got busy or distracted, and now I need to try and claw away what I thought I had from my latest mental fog.

I’m often curious about “transformation” or “evolution” in people. Elon Musk is someone I felt immediately drawn to when I first saw him on like 60 minutes back in college matter-of-factly talking about what society needed to do to not kill itself. As someone who considers himself an adept reader of people’s bullshit, I didn’t sense that he was coming from anywhere insincere, and at the time, the proof was what had so far been accomplished at his companies.

Jordan Peterson also occupied a prominent spot in me being interested in what he had to say or how he arrived there. There’s hundreds of hours of him not being a Christian or fascist apologist, notably, before his star began to rise out of control and the peaks of his illness were reached.

In my life, I reflect on what brought me together with girlfriends, my best friends, work cohorts, or what I thought constitutes my family.

We’ve gone through, at least a rhetorical revolution, as it pertains to the fluidity of identity, the loci of power, and the nature of harm or what will save us.

Meanwhile, I feel like I’ve, overwhelmingly so, pretty much staid the same. That isn’t to say I haven’t “matured” or “tempered” or found ways to better emotionally regulate. It doesn’t mean I’ve continued to fight as vociferously for causes or actions I was particularly naive about. It just means my broadest lens has focused around the same things in spite of my environment.

There’s something that feels stable in me that I don’t recognize in the same way from other people.

The thing I do recognize in others is what we’re witness to from the likes of Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, or our exes, but specifically the ones that, on paper and emotionally, made the most sense. The nature of the transformation feels almost impossible to account for, and people seem to only try decades later or after all the major players have died.

The word that keeps creeping in is “honesty.” The nature of the change I believe has to do with how you understand that word. I think most people understand it as some extension of the phrase, “Your feelings are valid.” It’s a very complicated and disingenuous phrasing that hides its arbitrary redundancy. I would say instead, “You have feelings.” When I see people struggle with what to do with their feelings, it’s often they wish to automatically suppress and obscure them. Perhaps that first phrasing is trying to make a persuasive argument that ignites your capacity to feel them altogether. I don’t know that it’s working.

I honestly don’t believe Elon Or Jordan started evil. I think they believe they are “deathly” honest. I think I had the same complex when I was younger, thinking “harsh” or “real” expressions of my opinion were the same thing as being honest. I would apply one exacting mode of determining the “objective truth” of a situation, and let the consequences be what they may. I wasn’t feeling necessarily insecure or scared or much of anything at all. I just didn’t care, because I was “right.” I wasn't prepared to accept, let alone be interested in embodying, the depth of my existential ignorance.

I think each step on the path to evil is the avoidance or ignoring of your conscious. You avoid and ignore by leaning into emotional expressions that act as justification. Whether it’s John Oliver tearing up on air, Jordan Peterson’s snarl, or your car-ranting TikTok star wanna-be, it’s the same dance away from what a more honest and accountable expression would look like. I think Elon knows the math doesn’t add up in crippling federal institutions for anyone but himself. I think Jordan knows it’s an embarrassing fascist inversion of the X-Men to compare them to Trump acolytes. I think the daily devotional resigned sentiments offered to me about the nature of a work environment, the future, or our responsibility to fix or work differently are driven by the same mechanism.

I don’t get the impression people know what they can trust about themselves. Or, they only trust the worst things about themselves. Or, they only trust their woefully incomplete conception about how the worst things about them actually play out. They know their anxiety is going to win. They know if they try they’ll fail and it will all have been a waste. They know which thing after thing doesn’t matter. They know they’re going to get too tired, or distracted, or someone in their life is going to object and dissuade. I’ve had thousands of conversations about what isn’t possible or what someone isn’t really like or capable of for every one about limitless potential for anything besides chaos.

I feel they’re all fundamentally dishonest. I think we’ve achieved our current levels of decadence because critical masses of people dragged perhaps their own predilections to lie to themselves kicking and screaming into a future they otherwise believed could be worked and fought for. I don’t think that internal investigation or discussion even has to do with the future. I think it has to do with asking yourself, what else are you missing from “right now.” What isn’t making its way into your conversation that’s just as true as the details of your complacent or complicit rut?

I think for Elon there’s a discussion about compulsivity, the coldness autism can inspire, and the danger of ego. I think for Jordan it’s his desperate longing to fit into something greater than he’s achieved through being an intellectual or via accident in bonding with his wife as children. I think he knows his story isn’t remotely typical or realistic, but he sounds so sure of himself when he’s excoriating modern attitudes and practices, no? At home, it was fairly easy for me to see the differences in disposition and, let’s say moral core, as to why a relationship wasn’t going to work. With family, I can see the placating apologetics employed to keep the peace. The catch-phrases at DCS and now the YMCA are all to do with “care” and “safety” devoid of discussions about demonstrated betrayals.

Capital or attention-based “success” is a unique form of capture. We’ve never had the kind of chance to transcend the lanes we’re born into that we do today, and we’ve never been able to witness the transformation so closely. Mostly, we’ve just been captured by our family, region, or work culture. Now, with so many new avenues competing for our attention and our unwillingness or inability to articulate how they work, I think we default to angry ambivalent animalistic survival modes of expression. That’s “me and mine.” That’s apologetics for sin. That’s cliches and average days because nothing more could or should be expected.

You can go back to my first writing, deeply emotional and angst-ridden 15-year old me lusting and confused and still find the things about me I consider my stabilizing core. I tread in obscenity and trying to be light-hearted. The title is:

“If You’re A Girl You Better Fucking Read This”

I’m curious and constantly asking questions.

“Okay, so this is like a call-out for the inner workings of the womanly mind.”

I’m responding to what I see as a self-destructive pattern.

“Over and over, I talk to my friends who have been in relationships that do nothing but fuck them square in the ass, and despite my warnings and suggestions, they still fawn over the assholes that fucked them over.”

I’m offering concrete examples of the behavior I think is wrong.

“If your boyfriend makes you cry, orders you to do things, or makes your friends and family uncomfortable... leave his ass now. It's plain and simple.”

Today, I stop being so prescriptive, and have had hundreds more interactions with people about domestic violence or emotionally manipulative dynamics, but at bottom, it speaks to a core belief I don’t think is unreasonable. It’s not evidence of a healthy dynamic to me if that’s the nature of yours.

I continue to lay out my “answers” and “harsh truths” about 90% of guys being in it for the pussy, and attempting to anticipate the feedback that often comes in from questioning girls as to why they’re excusing something.

I didn’t know the word “limerence” back then. I wouldn’t have copped to the writing being a passive aggressive way to trigger some form of introspection in my targets or side-building as I looked for ways to air dirty laundry. I knew my feelings were intense, I didn’t know how to address them, and it was occupying my thoughts in an unsustainable and compulsive way. Something broke, so I started to search through writing. I didn’t find a way to talk her into dating me. I found the world of information that wasn’t yet informing how I could understand myself against or in service to that world.

The fervor and fascism of pop-cultists and apologists rides the kind of energy I was on at 15. It’s totalizing. It’s self-reinforcing. It’s an artificial motivation bred from untempered inarticulate ignorance. It’s probably where the wisdom of “hate the sin, not the sinner” comes from and why so many are compelled by the idea that they have to give up their pathological behavior to something external. What’s juicier than the idea that the absolutely necessary sacrifice to find salvation is His problem, not mine?

I had to give up being “convinced.” I had to stop pretending I knew the truth in any form that I wasn’t actively manifesting or participating in. As long as I work, then the “deepest” or “most practical” truth is that I will more likely get the consequences of that work. If I’m working on the wrong shit, I will compound my problems. If I “believe” that which I’m unwilling to fight for or achieve, I’m playing a rhetorical game with myself in order to avoid responsibility. If I’m unwilling to define the nature of that work, from writing, to advocating and speaking at all, then I’m at the mercy of the people or plans that can account for my chaotic drag on the future.

No one is coming to save you. I don’t think you could recognize who’s even trying. They also can’t hammer for you what you need nailed to a cross. It’s not immigrants or trans people. It’s not the concepts of diversity, equity, or inclusion. It’s whatever is keeping you from being consistently curious, concerned about those getting fucked with, or capable of building the case that doesn’t depend on how passionately you can scream or cry through it.

[1153] Mean

I’ve written maybe 7 pages over the last week of noise. I’m not in a wholly chaotic and ambivalent place, but zeroing in on something specific to explore has been elusive. Maybe this will get me there.

A few weeks ago, I came across an explanation for why so much abhorrent behavior is tolerated in different work environments. There are things I, and people in my circles, find it “incomprehensible” to do, and a common refrain I hear is some complaint about why a colleague gets paid more, isn’t fired, or is otherwise ignored when they do something that, my friend or higher-achieving person, would never.

The explanation was that we’re more a collection of average-to-shit than not. When you have someone who can legitimately do something better than you, you’re a threat. Almost always you’re going to have a boss that is exceptionally average, typically lazy, and aspiring to the middle of the road maintain basic survival space. This was true when I worked at a movie theater all the way up to the literal head of the Indiana Department of Child Services.

“Average” is the key word. Most of us, probably too often, can speak to areas in which we excel. We ruminate particularly deeply on our strengths or past achievements when we want to fuel a narrative of what we’re entitled to or our worth. As a society, I would put money on the idea that almost all of us have said something to the effect of, “I hate people.” Whether that’s true or just true-enough, it’s a gut-level reaction to our approximate engagement with “your average person.”

I try to depersonalize how I understand the average person. Every baby that’s born functionally resets the species. Whatever genetic information that carries through, it’s only informed in a passively selected way. All of the religious baggage you might wish to stain that baby’s brain with, all of the “cultural norms,” or pathological circularly reasoned spaces need practice. The infinite sea of things that baby will stay ignorant about as it grows up will be as diverse as any individual, but no less infinite.

What happens if you are “generally” an improvement on what’s average? Say you’re pretty. Say you’re smart. Say you’re exceptionally agreeable. You don’t have to be above average to recognize the potential desirability and exploitability of people like that. You can simply want to jerk off to a pretty face, pawn off the responsibility for cleaning the oceans, and abuse the persistently self-immolating patience of your exhausted-mommy-esc spouse.

When one of those people gains the confidence or self-awareness, now you’re in trouble. The smart person might dictate, in excruciating detail, how you aren’t living up to your responsibilities. The pretty person recognizes the control they have over your emotional well-being which might translate into a certain control over your finances. The agreeable one plots underneath the outward displays of social chaos as no one suspects they have an agenda beyond affirming yours.

When you’re average, you’re safe. You don’t become a target. You aren’t immediately resented. People aren’t deeply suspicious that you’ll just “do anything you please.” I think back to the party house. I engineered the conditions, but at a certain point, I became like this evil mastermind presumed to be…I guess…pulling the strings of hundreds of people coming over almost every weekend? People were practically sling-shooting their sense of agency and self-control at me if anything remotely went wrong towards the end of the party years. “We” were no longer partying together, I fucked up for organizing it in the first place altogether. You certainly can’t be blamed for moving into what I pitched, explicitly, as a party house, right?

As average habits go, finding someone to blame is as biblically cliche as it gets. Even when we may be more accurate than not in assigning the blame, we’re still exercising the wrong muscles. I’m a big Bernie Sanders fan. I think millionaires and billionaires are “victims” of our disingenuous systems. Why? By the numbers, you can call someone rich. By their psychology, or history, or wisdom, or rules we incentivize them to play by though? I blame the species-level messaging. We’re still scapegoating our own poor understanding of macro-economic systems. We’re still refusing to lead with a collective ethic versus entrench behind our narrative presumptions.

That is, if we don’t generally, on average, believe and behave as if power and money are corrupting forces, in our heart of hearts, we’re not going to do the practical work to claw back the money it takes for all of us to live better. It’s analogous to addiction. We’re absolutely sold and stuck on agency-crippling notions. We refuse or are never invited to do the work of explicitly stating those notions. So, in the abstract, in the grey, we flail. Without a goal, we default to the norms. We succumb to induced states of propaganda and irrelevance.

I think average is unduly and overwhelmingly deadly. Average is the output of unsympathetic, unconscious, and ambivalent natural selection. What’s “natural” is going to be insufficient if there’s any real “we” in this collective exercise to survive beyond this given moment. We need to define and enable other areas of exceptional human behavior and achievement. We need to do it in the same way we do with Hollywood. I want the Brad Pitt’s of social work to be making 6 figures, not their greedy share-holding bosses or subsidized firm bilking the government. The money is, and has always been, there. The values aren’t.

I genuinely struggle with the idea of wanting to “excel.” I want to be, not just better than average, but exceptionally good at things I do. It’s a borderline pathological disposition that’s taken me many years to find a remotely mellow way to relate to it. I’m literally thankful for getting older and having some energy zapped and thus forced to slow and calm down if I didn’t want to hurt myself. My experience of life has often left me dumbfounded in how people respond to the desire to live and act in service to “more than average.”

It’s worse than that though, because I’m still scarred by the responses I’ve gotten from people for being basically human or competent too. When I called the police to wellness check a friend who vague-booked a suicidal-sounding message, the look on like 7 people’s faces around me was like, “Why bother?” I still can’t fucking figure that one out and you’d think I wouldn’t need a larger display for why I shouldn’t have continued being friends with them. Each client at DCS I informed of their rights or treated with respect and not as though I was a wanna-be cop who needed to threaten them, more than half of the leadership maintained the not-so-quiet condescending and flabbergasted posture because, in their minds, you get better outcomes when people are scared, angry, and lied to?

Round we circle to looking like a threat. When you hold an above-average decency and engagement standard, the insecure cunts who’ve bullied their way to positions of power or influence know that, were you ever in direct competition to something, people are going to prefer you. People are going to be looking for the solutions-focused patient leader more than the threatening asshole. (Innate fascist tendencies and patterns aside. Or, once they subside.)

If I’m not doing something that I create, or where I can be more or less left alone, or where I can do a dozen other things that serve as coping, I’m stuck in an impossible situation. I can’t help but notice when you’re being inefficient. I can’t help but notice when you’re getting in your own, or especially my, way. I can’t help when people like me more than you. I can’t help that I’ve developed in a way that does not allow me to accept “average” where better can be achieved, often with less effort, once we’ve made a detailed account of the nature of the process or problem.

I’m not on auto-pilot. I’m not using every opportunity to speak with someone to unload prepared remarks or cliches. It is what it is? It’s also not what it’s fucking not. And it’s also not making much fucking sense, stressing everyone out, and does not have to be this way. We need to recognize we’re in a constant, moment to moment battle, for control. Control of what? Hopefully, with any sense, how we define and practice our values. How we dignify our work and time. How we celebrate and long for each day instead of justify and excuse all that we haven’t lived up to.

[1151] Friendly Refiner

 A good portion of how I understand the world is extracted from conversations and observations on relationships. I’m a pretty big believer that you can get to know a ton about yourself through introspection, but it’s still less than half of the necessary information if you don’t invoke who is, has, or you’d like to be shaping you.

For many years, before I ever knew what it actually symbolized or its history, I wore a yin yang necklace. I was literally drawn to it, noticing it dangling from a display at the Lake County Fair when I was in middle school. To this day, 25-ish years later, I’ve never read that deeply into Chinese philosophy, because the interconnected and counterbalanced symbol itself pretty much matched my intuition. It helped to have a kind of reminder imprint.

Balance is a much different place from dependence. “Codependency” is when there’s an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, and the other enables. These are not distinct and discreet measurements when you’re attempting to assess “excessive,” and as a matter of basic existence, one might argue we psychologically rely on our loved ones, networks, or imbued sense of self bred from our culture.

One of the things I’ve had to practically discuss and work out is how to balance healthy doses of traumatizing and often nakedly destructive forces against the appropriate level of State intervention, or against an individual’s sense of self and safety and security. At DCS, with a policy for children to remain with family if at all possible, that’s remaining with a sometimes wild cast of characters. In addiction counseling, you get clients describing physically and emotionally abusive partner dynamics all the time, and yet, they’re so otherwise unstable, that the abuse becomes “less bad” than being alone.

I think this is a really hard thing to understand for most people. One reason, life might not be as bad as it definitely is if you’ve occupied a certain level of wealth for a certain level of time. The exact same kinds of drama and mental health issues do not play out the same between the people attending their remote counseling session from the bench they slept on, and the people who can go to adult summer camp indefinitely. If you tell a story of someone’s impoverished circumstances to a “regular” middle-class person, they’ll tell you and them exactly what to do based on their sense of horror about it all.

Thankfully, I’ve had limited exposure in my personal life with cop-show plot levels of relationship dynamics. It’s not zero, but it’s never been remotely close to chronic. This means when I’m reflecting on what I think a “healthy” relationship is, I have the prolonged explanations and explorations of dramatic incidents from my life. I also have the dynamics, few and far between, that have sustained my more positive and prescriptive behavior.

One of the places I’ve landed is the question, “Do they even treat you like a friend?” I’ve struggled with the word “friend” for a long time, but even my proved-to-be-superficial relationships were friendly in a way that I often see missing in people’s dynamics. It’s like a movie trope to see two outwardly hateful people speak terribly to one another or occupy their own physical space, and then something weird happens that sheds a light on their deep and abiding love for one another. I think that’s a horrible and entirely misleading picture.

You can’t really see how someone is being a friend if you don’t know what constitutes you being one. I have a knack for being everyone’s “not-therapist.” Being up my own ass, reading all the things I do, and desperately trying to cling to my life values each day has lent itself to an awareness and perspective that I’ve received a waterfall of feedback suggesting it’s helpful. Getting certified as an addiction counselor was a pretty natural extension of my practice already, and if I had the money I’d become a therapist just because.

I’m also “too giving.” I want to be wanted. So when you need something from me, I’m extremely likely to go out of my way or do anything I can to help. I’m so like this, that I can recall the handful of times I’ve ever told someone no when their issues had reached a point that I would no longer be able to balance.

These two pieces alone give me enough of the half of a relationship puzzle to inform whether or not I think you’re being friendly in return. I don’t think you need to be a not-therapist to me nor be willing to give me any and everything at the drop of a hat. I do think you need to respect and recognize those things about me, and not take advantage of them. What would taking advantage look like? Attempting to use me to justify, instead of explore and fix, the things on your mind. Attempting to squeeze my effort and goodwill until I’m threatened financially or my life ends up in danger.

The third thing about me is that I’ve developed a really good ability to read and connect with people. That’s a deadly tool in the hands of someone who isn’t concerned with being transparent, friendly, or balanced. It follows then that I’m my best version of being a friend when I listen, give as much as I can, and refrain from unduly utilizing what I know about how you operate.

We make this very complicated for ourselves. An example that stuck out for me once was a speaker talking about how if our pet got sick and we picked up a prescription, we’d make sure it got the whole thing at the same time every day with the right food and cuddles until it was better. We won’t take our own prescriptions, if even go to the doctor. Now, this example is royally fucked by the practical issues of the American healthcare system, but the sentiment rang true at the conceptional level and in my experience working with people.

I know people who will work two jobs, take care of kids, put up with endless bullshit from their emotionally unwell parents or siblings, get demeaned by a boss, deal with health issues, and the impending psychological terror of whatever anniversary that’s coming up that they’ve never coped with. They’ll simultaneously struggle to take even 30 minutes for themselves a day to breathe, relax, or watch their favorite show. It’s a package of guilt, chronic stress, and “survivor mode.” They forget how to be friendly to themselves.

One of the things that confused and bugged me for a very long time was how to wrap my head around my friendships petering out. Beyond the ones that just went silent, there’s the ones that went out with someone lobbing some observation or judgment about who I was or what I was thinking, as if they ever really cared to know in the first place. I wasn’t giving myself credit for both the kind of friend I was trying to be, nor recognizing that simply existing around each other or being polite is not the same thing as establishing a friendship.

I discovered “normal” people were mostly in the pageantry and pretend game. They need you to perform and defer your actual sense of self and agency to their insecurities. I’m the type of person where literally anyone I might recognize or have enjoyed their company for an hour, I would invite “back in” in a heartbeat. I’ve been pretty confident in myself and who I am for a good portion of my young-adult to adult life. My perception of your, at the time, positive energy or influence is the thing I’d seek more of. I’d know it’s there. You can’t deny it, even if you’ve drifted into normal life morass as we’ve gotten older.

Maybe a way to illustrate this is to think about Christmas cards. If you or your family sent those out, how many people made the list that you might never talk to for years? It’s like your friend’s list on facebook. There’s like 10 people that sign on anymore, and if you’re lucky, 1% of them will notice when it’s your birthday. That kind of superficial engagement passes for normal “friendship.” It always felt fake and like a waste to me, and even when I tried to spice it up with personalized and creative messages on birthdays, they seemed to fall flat or get ignored over time.

I’ve got a lot of practical behaviors that inform my sense of friendly behavior. I’m not trying to yell. I don’t expect you to do anything for me that I’m unprepared to do for myself. I’m not lying to you about what I feel or don’t. If and when I have the money, I’m excited by the prospect of buying your ticket, meal, the gas etc. I’m one of those people who is physically unable to stop himself from voicing what he thinks is fucked up, and if that’s something about you or how we’re relating, I’ll do so out of respect and hope it can be fixed, and in a respectful way. I’m not going to ghost you after years nor stay vague and passive aggressive about the road forward. If only! I was treated the same way.

I believe it’s important to living well that you find your center independent of anyone else. The moment I return to the kind of teenager I was ensconced in limerence, be it with a person or too-compelling idea, I’ve hit a codependent state and am looking for ways to enable it. The adult version is to belabor the story of how many years you’ve been with someone, or employ a cliche about not knowing who you’d be without them, or reflexively listing all of the services they provide you that justifies whatever you need them to.

I do not think you can truly be of service to other people if you’re unable or unwilling to figure your own shit out. What happens when someone you care about dies? They’re going to. Sooner than you think. Mostly sooner than you think because you never think about it. What happens if you get critically injured? I think about this one all the time. If I lose a hand, I’m thinking about how to get a chip that let’s me write with brain waves or a robot one that types faster than I ever could. The point is about looking forward and rooting in the idea that life, my life, is worth it for it’s own sake, despite what may happen or my inability to square my ideas with my actions in any given moment.

I think we collectively reel at the idea of abusing animals. We’re animals. We’re our own kind of confused, dumb, and helpless. Give yourself pets and treats. Find habits and ideas you can cuddle up next to. Ask yourself what the people who treat you best would do, and then if you’re doing the same for yourself. If not, that should give you pause. If you don’t have people treating you that well, that should inform some larger shifts in your behavior or priorities. They will become you way more than you’ll become them, because they don’t have a real and friendly relationship with themselves, so neither will you.

[1150] Seething Is Believing

I want to talk about lying.

A couple days ago, I somewhat accidentally brain-dumped on one of my friends. I was reflecting on my efforts over the last few years, and the conclusion I came to was that I was first and foremost severely affected by lies.

If you’re a long-time listener first-time caller, you’ll know that lying was a particular pain point for my mother. She would flip the fuck out and engage in the most dramatic displays of violence or breaking my shit if she felt she was being lied to. As an adult, I can figure out that she was very poorly coping with how often she probably felt betrayed in life, but it no less left an imprint on me.

But I’m not here to talk about the past. I want to provide a framework for understanding lies. I think between lies and the truth, it’s much easier to discern lies. Often, they’re as simple as the exact opposite of whatever it is someone is telling you. Most insidiously, they’re something we “deeply believe” is the truth, only betrayed by a faint whisper that, for me, manifests in my gut.

Let’s begin.

We’re familiar with the idea of “white lies.” These are presumed moral behaviors to save someone unnecessary pain. When I was deep in my god vs. science debating, inevitably you’d get challenged on whether or not you’d lie to your dying grandmother if she professed that she would see you in heaven. Are you, atheist cunt, so devout in your lack of belief you’d stamp on your grandmother’s sentiment? It’s an absurd scenario that most remotely human people would navigate without issue, white-lying because not believing in something doesn’t give you license to be a dick.

We have what I call “political lies.” These are the kinds of lies you literally have to tell to occupy certain positions of leadership, or any time you’re speaking to more than 1 person. It’s a fool’s errand to blame a politician for “tacking to the middle” for this reason. It’s in the job description to compromise. It’s the nature of democracy and new information. You’re going to be lying, but it’s not even your fault more than it’s the nature of the incredibly complex arena we’ve constructed to mitigate our differences.

Modernity has hopefully shed some light on the distinction between these kinds of lies and the next batch, “operative lies.” These are lies that work. Work for what? Work for you. They can be about anything, for anything, as long as you feel they are keeping you safe. That’s their primary function, to keep you locked in mentally to “wherever you are” that you deem is where you need to be. Any arena can be abused for your purpose, be it national politics, your family, your job, or your artfully cultivated circle that might even only contain you and your pets.

Operative lies are the important ones to parse further. An operative lie becomes pathological when most outside observers would judge you to be self-destructing along normative metrics. This is where addiction falls. The sense of “this is where I’m safe” bar gets set too low, so all of the operative lies you employ end up servicing destruction to your relationships, finances, and health. This is part of the reason I am professionally suspicious of literally anything my clients tell me. Addiction shuffles your whole self-concept and what constitutes lying.

Here’s where it gets even trickier and scarier. Operative lies are how we house a collective and cooperative society. It’s not just out of the mouths of our campaigners and would-be leaders. We’re each baked into “normative lies” that operate to keep things copacetic.

This feels almost “too obvious” to speak to, except we confuse how to relate to these different levels of lying all the time. I can also personally attest to how often I’m punished for violations of these normative lies, and it’s no small part of why I’m choosing to explore now.

One of the biggest normative lies I’ve been at the mercy of was an implicit understanding after explicit commentary about the inevitability of my successful future. It’s the “go to college, get a good job, you’ll be set” lie. It wasn’t said maliciously. They weren’t saying it to a kid who was flunking school or unmotivated. But it was a normal expectation bred from incomplete information. I’m certainly one of millions who’ve been through that rough awakening.

For my generation, it seemed to be the start of a major transition away from functional operative lying guiding fair-enough norms of society, into the chaos of pathological lies that only serviced the operations of those with power. The bar got set too low. We collectively began shifting our language around self-destructive new norms to operate at this unsustainable level.

In this new jungle of habitual pathological lying, every playbook for success has a sort of standing refutation built into the brain of everyone you might engage. And they don’t even realize it! Because the self-destruction doesn’t look like an overdose. It doesn’t look like self-harm that needs hospitalization.

What does it look like?

It looks like my time at DCS, where a catch-phrase like, “I care about the children” placates over aggressive, illegal, and policy-violating behavior, while the state massively under-pays and under-trains those tasked with keeping them safe. People who do care and behave as they should get punished and chased away. The underlying shameful cheeky sick satisfaction of those who embody Mean Girl bullshit are ultimately steering the ship.

It looks like the dozens of people who advertise themselves as having the specific set of skills you’re looking for, and 2 of them proving capable of doing what they advertise. Yet, they get paid, get reviews, and leave you feeling incredibly confused by how they command such a high hourly rate to not help you accomplish what they said they could.

It looks like friends who devolve into acquaintances and then into memories. There used to be a village. There used to be friends you held on to your whole life. The bar for engaging or working together got set somewhere in the story of the sanctity of your individual dreams and capacity, and we’ve slowly eroded the meaning of belonging to anything bigger than ourselves. We don’t think we exist past whatever is in our head, and don’t bother being shaped by influences vastly different, but vital to illuminating our depths.

It looks like the thousand and one “I’ve got a secret!” Instagram ads about making money, reaching the “next level” of whatever your hobby, and any commercial that’s telling how you must spend more money and acquire more things.

The thing I believe cuts through all the noise is inside us all.

Maybe you think my broader and somewhat hastily conceived categories are confusing and woefully incomplete. That’s fine, I literally just made them up based on my operating instincts. What I do in response to each of the categories is what makes them easier to understand. I listen to my body in how it feels to try and believe in one of the lies at each level.

Let’s go back to dying grandma. “I believe you’ll disappear into nothing and there is no god, let alone heaven!” If you can say that, full-throated, and not recoil, okay, you, psychopath, there is no deeper truth for you than seeking the consequences of that behavior in that moment. A normal person is going to feel like they’re lying. They’ll pull back. They’ll feel “off.” The truth is illuminated, how much they care about grandma, in shutting up and playing along.

Take an extra moment and think about the truth being illuminated from the lie. How you manifest your care for grandma is through silence or nodding along.

Let’s look at political lies. “I’m anti-fracking!” There’s too many competing and convoluted truths to be revealed. Is it true you care about the environment then? Is it true you’re concerned about corrupt corporate capture of energy? Is it true you need to align your views with the party? Is it true based on information today, or information that might be changing faster than we can process? The only truth that can be reliably revealed is that the person saying it thinks it helps more than hurts their chance to get elected.

How about these personally operative lies? What do you need to tell yourself to get by every day? Some of my classics are about being smart and still decent-looking. I point to the stuff I own, interests, work I do around the house or stuff I make. I talk about the struggle to create and stay cheerleading for unknown possible positive outcomes. These things aren’t lies, but taken as a whole, can give me pause and a reason to reflect on if that day, in that moment, I’m living up to the story or including enough humbling detail. I know when I don’t feel like a champ, king, or boss no matter how well I eat that day, how many shows I’m headed to that week, or storied my accomplishments on an instrument or weed whacker.

That said, whatever my personal failings to find focus, motivation, or the ability to account for a consequential detail, I’m not less embedded in a deeply sick and delusionally lying era. At this rate, I’m probably not going to be much richer than I am now, but you’ll hear routinely how “the average American” still suffers from the complex of being a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.” We’re still teetering on full-blown, albeit incredibly stupid, fascism. We’re praying for a long and jovial ride on renewed “hope,” as a nice substitute for investment, sacrifice, and accountability.

To me, we’re still stuck at the misplaced bar. We’re still addicted. We’re operating under lies that tear us apart, little by little, and then all at once, as they infect each new thing we care about or took for granted. And it feels impossible to combat because we don’t even listen to ourselves. We’re getting super-charged algorithmic ways to play someone else’s game and learn someone else’s language. It’s self-reinforcing through the lies underneath pretension, gate-keeping, language-policing, and every instance of cliche insecure lashing out.

The truth of my circumstances has come out through my genuine adoption and beliefs in the lies. I keep learning the hard way. I keep putting my time, my money (credit card debt), my energy, and my future in the hands of people and systems who can’t understand how to hear the truth of themselves, let alone me.

I’m constantly looking for a way to establish a true and persistent “floor.” A place I can work from and believe in that isn’t riddled with the kinds of lies that tear down what they profess to build. I’m leaning deliberately towards my friends and family that haven’t played on what I got conditioned to feel was normal. I’m every ounce of every hopeful, forward-thinking, genuinely believing in himself asshole who has appeared on 1,150 blogs over 21 years. I won’t let myself forget how to recognize a lie.

I swear, on everything, I’m trying. Nothing about me recoils over that.

[1143] Deep Breath In

 Ok, I’ve tried to ride it out, but shit isn’t passing.

Around 3 PM, I got a very, it would be comically sad, email with [insert client name] not even auto-filled with my name to be rejected for a job. This is boring by itself. But, I’ve worked for the state of Indiana before, and this job would have been in the Monroe County Jail. I’m speculating, but I think someone, somewhere, has marked my file in a way that prevents me from working for the State anymore.

Why do I think this? Well, it’s recently prevented me from even volunteering to be part of CASA because, “My testimony would be in question” given my voiced disapproval for what I witnessed and was subjected to as a DCS assessor. Who cares how engaging, insightful, and meaningfully contributing I was? Who cares if I was actually fucking correct in my concerns and had genuinely exhausted my options?

Let me be extremely clear for the stranger on the street. I’ve committed no crimes. I’ve threatened nobody. I’ve never violated a policy. I’ve never even cussed-out a supervisor. I’ve never raised my voice.

I wrote a letter. I was in direct communication with the head of Indiana’s DCS, we had lunch once, for months. I was sharing concerns in a deliberate and respectful manner with management up and down the chain for months. What did I get? An extreme cunt supervisor, a complicit boss above her, and broader DCS regional apparatus situated directly against me when I finally broke and wrote my letter. Naturally, it got passed around beyond who it was sent to.

I wrote about specific examples of negligence. We’re talking life and death levels of disregard. I’m not complaining that the storage closet is out of pencils. I’m upset that you’re directing me to bring police into environments that don’t require it, tell parents to escalate the drama in their home after they’ve reached out for help, or make up and over-hype allegations to paint a damming picture that doesn’t exist.

From that point on, I made the enemies list. I attempted to start my own casework company and get contracted. The people we talked to said a dozen times “Oh my God! That’s so good, we need providers! We’re lacking so many resources!” The day before we were to get a contract? Radio silence. Flooded with new paperwork and expectations and told to bid against multi-million dollar cabals that monopolize the service space. I think Laura, specifically, accounts for that.

The lies and slander Natalie was willing to put into my mid-term review I’m sure flag my state profile in some kind of way. Natalie who I worked under for 2 fucking weeks, who was allowed to “evaluate” me at the end of my 2 year rope of service in that role instead of my actual fucking supervisor who I never had even a hiccup with.

You can make the argument that I eventually threw all “professional” respect out the window, and you would be nominally correct. What you’ll have a hard time answering more completely and comprehensively is what the fuck else I was supposed to do. You won’t find me unjust in my outrage at their behavior, lack of response, and then targeting of me unless you’re built like them. I don’t think you need any particular sympathy for anyone who gets embroiled with the State to not what someone with the power to break up your family to do so in a consciously deliberate and malicious way.

One of my supervisors argued we’re worse than the police; we won’t just shoot you, we’ll drag you through hell and make you dance for us as we leverage your children.

That brings us back to today. I don’t want to work in a prison environment again. I would have found a way to put up with it for $37 an hour. I would want to be rejected from that role because I was unqualified or unfit or unreasonable. Because I’m being haunted by negligent Mean Girls shit? This brings up my existential anxiety about the absurd conditions I’m trying to operate under altogether.

I’ve mellowed considerably in my ambition and feverish drive to set examples and do the vague outlandish goals I set for myself as a younger person. What does mellow look like? Continuing to develop my house, go to 2-5 shows a week, watch all of TV, and now begin learning how to record music. I’m not too old. I’m not too tired. I’m not just so outraged and exhausted by how fucking stupid everything is to self-destruct. But my fucking god, people. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I’ve got an interview tomorrow (well, later today) for a job that won’t call itself a job, requires an hour commute, and would pay me approximately $400 a month after bills and gas. It’d be on par with plasma donation before those cash cows got stingy.

I reflexively, now, pivot to the conversation about how much bigger the world is than these petty bitches and this kind of bullshit, but I’m not sure it is. I think part of the reason I, if not us all, suffer this kind of posture indefinitely is because it’s baked in. It breeds and morphs and manifests until it’s the self-justified norm. It’s hard not to see things through the analogy of addiction having been counseling people the last couple years. The universal drug is self-righteous bullshit, and far too many are huffing away.

Happy birthday to me.

[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.