[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.

[1141] Shadow Band

There’s been a decent shift in my energy and disposition since I’ve started applying and moving in the direction of returning to work a “normal” job. My sleep schedule has gone all over the place. I’m finding it harder to focus. Broadly, “adrift” and “pensive” have me in a hole of speculation about how to conduct the next few months of my life.

At the same time, I’m still attempting to consume all of media, so it’s a continuous string of podcasts, music, and TV shows. 99% of approximately 95% of my days are spent in self-reflection/conversation with those. I have a couple people I text each day. Fleetingly, I talk to someone who operates in some professional capacity. If you’re curious, 14.4 minutes is 1% of a day. I don’t spend 14.4 minutes speaking to anyone most days nor 14.4 minutes speaking out loud to nearly anyone most days.

I get this impression, pretty often, that even when a conversation is breached, there’s an insistence to “wrap it up.” I speculate it’s because there’s an underlying fear that things will get “awkward” or someone might get the wrong impression that you, I don’t know, might become too friendly? It’s not that there aren’t the natural talkers and “everyone’s friend” types that you can run into, but it feels very accidental when that happens.

Anyway, I suppose that felt relevant to bring up when I think about the large amount of information I glean from these nerds and their podcasts. I’m struck by how often a theme emerges. We just fundamentally talk past each other.

It’s weird to me because the dance of a conversation suggests there’s a shared space or reality. But the closer you listen, or if you do so at an “overwhelm yourself” kind of rate, you realize each player is kind of doing their own thing and more or less looking for validation. I pause every time I hear someone say, “I think that’s exactly right.” Do they? Do they dozens of times throughout a conversation on whatever the topic freely flowed into?

The same thing happens when you get people on different “sides.” A Conversations with Coleman episode really highlighted this for me. Coleman strikes me as an autistic-type. He wants the facts, details, history, data, etc. and will sincerely try to explore a topic in good faith. He’s willing to entertain mouthpieces for nonsense in the spirit of actively mitigating the development of his own idea echo chamber. It’s a laudable goal, but it’s his and his alone, and the strategy for achieving it feels fundamentally flawed by inviting characters in who don’t so much care about Coleman’s ability to reach truer truths. They care about being seen as legitimate by eliciting any exchange from people like Coleman.

I think a lot about what Michael Shermer points out with regard to smart people being able to construct these extremely compelling and convoluted ways to believe dumb shit. I think people like Elon Musk and Bret Weinstein are poster children for this complex or propensity. The deeply unwise thing to do is presume that just because you’re good or accomplished at one or a few particular things, it automatically translates into broader license for drawing conclusions. Fuck, add Jordan Peterson to that poster.

I don’t think I’m getting “smarter” in my hours of listening to nerd people. Whether they criticize books, describe history, or dig into the weeds of ideological and political projects, they’re all seemingly being driven by a similar pretense. Their particular lens is worthy of your Substack subscription. Their particular insight is novel in how it compiles and describes the subject. Their experience of “this historical moment” is capable and “helpful” in getting a handle on…certainly not what we should do…but maybe we’ve laid the foundation for our next intellectual foray calling out for scrutiny and contextualization.

I’m getting this sensibility that’s empathizing with people who know absolutely nothing about politics, history, or pretty much why anything happens anywhere, and don’t feel obligated to try.

This is in conflict with my baseline disposition that, of course, sought out all of these nerds and subscribed and has been listening to for dozens if not hundreds of episodes each. But when I engage in my Coleman-esc sincere effort to not sound like a fucking moron, who am I sharing it with? My dad and 2 or 3 friends extremely occasionally? I’m not converting my time and energy spent into an infinitely regressing meta-analysis in search of my own following and Better Help sponsorship. I’m not writing digressions like these for official publication. I’m not galvanizing democratic support and solidarity to push new better-informed policy agendas. What’s going on?

My mind jumps into thinking about social media influencers, particularly the pretty ones. You can get millions of people to look at you every day by just putting your hot self on display in different outfits at regular intervals. You can be dumb. You can be naive. You can be vapid and very much a product of your carefully maintained bubble. But guess what breaks through? You’re fucking hot, and eyes equal money. It makes me think of McDonald’s. They aren’t advertising to you, they’re normalizing the very essence and idea of Mcdonald’s as food.

So, today, it’s normal to have strange hot people you scroll through with regularity. It’s normal to engage in “debate,” as though the exchange is at all concerned with what debate actually entails, or that it could be considered an exchange altogether. “Binge” became something of a badge of honor. Ceaseless professing of values and virtue signalling stepped in for civic engagement and meaningful sacrifice.

I’m also struck by how much I don’t really see a “fix,” to what I’m experiencing. You set yourself up for a trap if you conceive of something as a “problem,” more than a simple state of things or small description from your perspective. Say I want to “be more social,” so I’ve attended adult game evenings or been to hundreds of concerts and comedy shows. Do you make friends there? The performance is still ongoing. Volleyball is 35 random lonely dudes, 5 married girls, and dispositions possibly less adept at handling being alone. Softball was people seemingly seconds from changing the rules to allow drinking and smoking on the field.

Are these cunty ignorant observations of someone unwilling to even try? Maybe 5%, but they’re not inaccurate nor coming from a place of disgust or hatred. Add to the mix that I know I’m an aberrant personality who routinely and immediately turns people off to entertaining what I might have to say or joke about. Where’s “my people?”

I’ve never been good at finding a home with a group based on superficial qualifiers. I don’t feel “Serbian” despite my last name being a literal Serbian word for smoked meat. I don’t find solidarity in adopting sky-daddy ideas. I’m technically a Cubs, Bears, and Bulls fan and couldn’t tell you a single player on any team nor when they’re playing next. I’ve watched thousands of hours of “okay” television voluntarily before I’ve made myself look at a game at a bar for longer than 5 seconds. I can’t put together what they’re doing has anything to do with me. My sense of fulfillment and identity isn’t a function of group-think or proxy pride.

Different sports teams I’ve attempted to join as an adult started to drift. The ultimate Frisbee guys wanted to start taking the fun games we were playing to more “professional” levels. The dodge-ball crowd drifted to disorganized chaos. I’d also now have a built in 1.5 hour round-trip drive to most anything I might try to join, and I don’t get enough emotional or physical gratification in exchange for the gas and impending car issues to bother with a sincere pursuit or commitment.

“Disassociation” is a word coming to mind. None of it means anything. It’s all to fill the air and kill time. Whether I get fit or fat, I’ll be mostly alone to do whatever it is I’m doing any given day. Whether I know every sordid detail about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, or Russia, or never even whisper their names again, I’m not going to speak on those subjects and “move the needle” on entrenched belief heuristics about power and identity. Even on the pages of my “friends,” facebook isn’t going to show you my thoughts and work to stay sane. It’s not a happy picture or doesn’t match your algorithm preferences. This, if it wasn’t for me, would be one more in an ironic fruitless exercise to toss more into the void.

I’ve dug myself such an isolated hole on social media, that even when I share work I do home renovating, my pets, the concerts with the artists tagged, or anything that you’d think would play the “look at me and how happy cool I am!” game of social media, I have literally never gotten more than 5 likes for any reason. The spam bots barely even fuck with me. I’m like not even part of a fucking hashtag community? I watch people get 30 likes for asking what to make for dinner.

I find these feelings, or lack thereof, especially curious because I have non-trivial and non-superficial friendships and family dynamics. They’re in no way the majority of my daily life. They play an outsized role in orienting how and why I think about how my time is spent. A perfect fool would read any part of this as some form of indictment about them or my inability to appreciate and celebrate “enough.”

But then, isn’t it the case for almost everyone to consider their family and friends non-trivial and non-superficial? Isn’t that the way we perpetuate horribly toxic and stressful family dynamics because they’ve been our Mcdonald’s for the whole of our lives and species’ evolutionary history? Our fruitless exchanges and familiar roles providing a comforting feedback loop in their predictable flavor. Do we ever get “enough” of whatever we believe we’re getting from our families?

So much of the make-up of your mind is there for you perfectly independent of whether you have the awareness or intention about it. As you grow more aware and make more decisions, it feels like an invitation to the kind of alienation I feel like I’m describing incredibly terribly from bizarre or seemingly arbitrary angles. My mind returns to my “Older woman who’s been 3 times divorced or had spouses die, has enough money, a long braid or butch cut, hiking boots, a glint in her smile, and knows what she wants by now.” Is she ever rolling 20-deep? She doesn’t need the noise or errant opinions about where to go next.

I don’t socialize like a woman. I haven’t had a vastly fulfilling professional or relationship dynamic for so long that it’s time to rest on my laurels and indulge. I’m not soliciting unwanted attention indefinitely. I’m not seeking solidarity with niche groups, co-opting a fetish or hobby in lieu of an identity. I’m also, if you can believe it, not attempting to hold people to some high pretentious standard of engagement or expectations, particularly when I’m just roaming about the world. I just don’t fit, and I never have, and I see no path to a place where I might.

I’ve been in “desperately maintain” or “work exhaustively for forlorn dream” or “see how much I can get away with before it breaks” modes my entire adult life. The attempts to build things with people are, sometimes weirdly violently, rebuked. My attempts to build competing or parallel ways are wrought with complications. If I “pull out” too far I get stuck in abstract write-forever space and eventually a deep foreboding that nothing matters anymore. Who wants that?

[1088] Stay Humanism

There's two ideas I want to explore. The first is a swing back around to the word "entitlement." The second is the various layers involved with "cynicism." They're both in quotes to emphasize how much I hope to transcend any initial connotative assumptions that might already be swimming through your veins. They are the first layer on the feeling wheel, and we need to find the core.

Sometimes, I like to load up my Amazon cart and see what everything I think I want to buy would amount to after shipping, financing, used "like new," and proper quantity. This round was just shy of $3,000. It was mostly books, some tools, and a couple high-priced toys I have no genuine need for. I couldn't help but think to myself how "small" or "undramatic" it felt to look at the price tag.

I've pulled the trigger on a loaded up cart in the past. I still like and play with everything save a couple of the wood-working table equipment pieces. When I pan out, I think how "easy" it should have been for me to afford everything I've got now, and the next things I aspire to. I'm 35. My last job, when I played with an inflation adjustment calculator, would have been worth $350,000 a year in 1973 at my current salary. The ethic, respect, and priorities have massively shifted culturally, and I'm just along for the ride.

In a simple way, I feel "entitled" to whatever book, tool, or increasingly expensive music toy I could ever want for the rest of my life. I feel my output certainly warrants more than I've received, but moreso, what I want isn't about lavish spending and excess more than it's about creative potential and expression. I don't feel guilty about what I want. I don't feel like I squander what I have. I don't feel I demonstrate a lack of appreciation or respect. I want "more."

I want more out of myself. If I can handle the drama of dozens of families and help put fires out again, give me more. If I can direct a budget to equitably pay people and grow a company, rack the dollars up. If I can cram more good habits into every one of my days because I've designed efficient systems or transitioned away from things I could train and allocate, please, leave me to my music and travels. It's been many years of nonstop "first-world poor" living standards. I'm nowhere near equitable amounts of time spent properly doing, enjoying, or exploring what I want with the simultaneous headspace to do it.

I'm obligated. At some level, if I don't pursue or have something like my own business or some challenge like navigating the impossible circumstances I've been, that's first and foremost on my mind. I just watched American Symphony about Jon Batiste who said music is a spiritual practice to him. That's what "searching" or "fighting the ignorant cunts" is for me. When I see what exists and how people use it or get used, there's little else I can think about than what I might do to exist in a more just paradigm. I'm not going to bitch and chainsmoke. I'm not going to disappear into a video game. I'll never capture it in a song. Every day I run through some dream vision of getting to bite a horrible person's throat out (or the metaphorical equivalent) of putting an evil dumb cunt in their place.

I know some of this is prompted by the perpetual injustice I felt growing up, but if anything, actually growing up as taught me the truer extent of the program my mom was on. It didn't have to be hell back then anymore than you have to needlessly suffer today. But I don't think we get that message nor trust ourselves to find the paths to which we're most suited or destined. I don't think we get the message because I see the same error perpetuated by my most intelligent friends, and by every client I can't literally push over a cliff because there's nothing left they need but a boot in their ass to fucking fly.

I think I know what I'm worth. I think I know "at least" what I'm worth. I think it's more than a shed, for as much love as I have for it. I think it's more than working as a food delivery boy. I think it's more than double any salary I've ever been offered. I think if you were me and heard as many well-wishing and thank you thank you thank you and "hand to god" sentiments as I have, you'd be on the verge of having your ego take over completely. Thankfully, I don't really trust people. I trust work. I trust sacrifice. I trust what I see you spending your time on. I trust the silence you offer in service to the things I care about.

When you embody a level of "entitlement" you can start to develop a form of "confidence." Think "confidence man." You know the trick. The more you practice and normalize it, the easier it is to pretend it's not a trick. Whether you're a hapless overgrown child trying to guilt trip your next lonely 30-something target, or a salesman of any type, you spin the same tale. You hook an emotion, and you twist it around your ends. The means by which you do so justify themselves. It's built into a capitalist ethic. It's built into smarmy pickup advice. It's laid on aggressively when you're wielding unearned power.

It makes my stomach drop to imagine behaving like that. Like I'm going over the hill on a roller coaster. There is no end to the drop when you start to behave that way. There is no corner of hell you won't explore. And here we might start knocking at thoughts about "cynicism." It's where I feel many, many people are operating from. Doubt me? How many millions vote for fascism, murder, rape, etc. Nothing but faithful cynics pretend to "see the world as it is" and "just follow orders" by locking step in service to behaviors that make the worst seem inevitable.

Cynicism provides a sense of "freedom." Elon Musk is cynically letting people treat Twitter like 4chan. The fancy fairytale ends justify the means. When what you're selling no one is buying, you get airy and philosophical, pretentiously bludgeoning your point down unreceptive holes. I am not free, very explicitly, to conduct myself in every way I've imagined to achieve my goals. The less I respect that merciful boundary, the less I'll have anything left of myself to recognize or respect.

I think I've done a lot of important work that ripples in ways I'll never know. I think I don't believe in karma, but I do know everything is fundamentally connected to everything else. My "success" or "luck" is intimately involved with the "hope ripples" or "work ripples" I've created so far. When I watch a musician play with every other musician under the sun, plugging into the infinite wave meeting you when you need it, it can serve as a constant visceral reminder if you let it.

I'm about to embark on soliciting funds. I'm not going to sell anyone on the idea that they should give me and what I'm doing money. I'm going to talk about my ideals. I'm going to explore their questions and concerns. I'm going to dip into the well of hope and sincerity that everyone wishes they could believe and take a dip in a little deeper than they do. I haven't cynically given up on the previous ways I've tried to get up and running. I'm evolving my approach because I either believe in the feedback, my work, my potential, and my message, or I don't.

I practice believing in my message through writing. I practice hope in myself every time I encourage Hussain or hire a new Upwork person or "happily" choke down the costs of keeping business requirements up and running. When I feel I'm coming from the right place in how I speak to the "How do I get money" question, then I trod off down that path. I may have a distaste for speaking too often about the "mission" and "values" in the gross normal-empty-speak way people care to hear about what you're doing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a real mission or value I'm looking to espouse.

Fuck, just working out that contradiction is rough on its own. The fact that our language has been so hijacked by so much bullshit that has in turn been rewarded makes it incredibly hard for me to parrot. I don't want to be anything like what exists, but I can't be so divergent no one bothers to engage or finds themselves trusting at all. It's hard to overstate how much this has contributed to "idle" time regarding how to build a proper foundation.

I do need to guard against cynical thoughts as it pertains to assumptions about other people. It'll be hard to listen to the fumbling excuses why a successful business can't find the money, care, or concern to contribute. I'll reflexively think to myself about how much I've spent in service to my friends or dad and think, yeah, fuck you buddy and whatever your irrational prejudice or assumptions. The wealth is out there, and ever-more concentrated each day. You think the ones who cling to it for dear life give a fuck about my values? I don't, but some of them at least want to look like they do.

[974] Bloody Needs

I may have lingered a little too long to capture what’s been on my mind, but here we’ll attempt to piece together what’s still floating.

I’ve found myself more capable of “disengaging.” I used to be pretty plugged into the active gobbling up of information. I was ready with details, history, citations, and rehearsed arguments for why “things” “should” look, sound, or operate one way over another. My first bite of it was arguing about the nature of healthy relationships, then I had mounds of religion versus science exchanges. The primary reason I know anything about any philosopher was a manic search for knock-out insights or phrasing for how to conduct life. I didn’t have a specific or parsed understanding of what my problem was. I just knew I needed “more.”

Conversational patterns seem to be the ones I’m most attuned to. I take in so much from TV, books, or news that I can readily recognize when you’re being a parrot verses thinking through something for yourself. A unique, albeit common, perspective literally doesn’t sound like anyone else in an important way. It has a kind of novelty that keeps you hooked when your perspective has that same “more” hunger, and someone is speaking to what’s on your mind in a more individuated and personal way.

A FOX viewer isn’t only “dumb” or “misinformed,” they’re inarticulate about the mess of angry and afraid feelings, so they seek out the confirming narrative to do the work for them. I was drawn to Jordan Peterson not because he was telling me anything necessarily “new,” but he was articulating it in a personal way, imbuing the story with his experience as a clinician and personal struggle trying to understand human depravity. Elon Musk struck me in how he approached acquiring knowledge and the emotional pain of being misunderstood at a fundamental level.

This is why I find criticism akin to, “We’ve heard this all before,” so severely lacking in honesty or depth. If you can so quickly write-off a show because it’s a “cop drama” or a person because they’re “famous for nothing,” you’re making a similar error. This doesn’t mean you have to respect or enjoy those things, but it does mean you’ve handicapped your capacity to understand what draws in other people. Provided you’re still a person, you’re missing a way to tune into yourself.

I think a lot about when I first learned why toddlers watch the same things over and over. Surely the propensity of algorithmic media engagement preys upon that. A movie has demonstrative and predictable patterns, and even still, you can find different emotions or things you missed with each rewatch. This is training. Just like when you remember something, even if .0001% of the memory or retelling changes, it’s not the same each time. Each stroke of a FOX-induced hate-boner is fractionally different and reinforcing. Each chant of a radical mantra or prayer recitation the same thing.

The fact that we have so much to consume information-wise suggests that, whether it be biological or some perfectly obscured mythically epistemological concept, “more” is universal to the human experience. Whether you want more love, sex, or food, it seems extremely rare, if truly in existence at all, that one is just “okay” in or “at peace” in whatever manner they are. I read old blogs and think about how desperately I felt the desire to get power, clean water, air conditioning, a way to communicate from the middle of nowhere, my tools, time to get things done, and the various piles of things I’ve acquired in service to future builds. I couldn’t shut off my “more” valve if I wanted to.

What more do you want when you’re parroting someone else’s script? What if it’s something you can’t get or can’t conceive of how to get? Maybe it’s self-esteem and brainpower. You’re only born with so much brainpower, and maybe you’re surrounded by people who give zero shits how they make you feel. Maybe you can’t begin to understand how to carry a positive conception of yourself independent of their imposing views.

What if you can’t even recognize that you’re running on someone else’s script? This feels like a lot of the tension in generational differences or the thirsty ideologues clinging to post-modern obscurity. A right-wing Christian conservative antagonist should not be able to get so many doctors tripping over their tongue about the question, “What is a woman?” One of the quickest ways you know someone isn’t thinking rationally is circular reasoning. “A woman is however she defines herself.” No. A woman isn’t that, any more than anything is anything because you add more words that still reduce to, “The thing is the thing because it’s the thing.”

An unwillingness to define a “thing,” is a pillar of not thinking. It’s why I hate talking in “ists” and “isms.” You need a PhD in “feminism” to figure out which sect and era’s position you might be speaking from. Do this messily, and you might not even understand if you’re being an advocate or in opposition. That fascist-speak can summarily dismiss “radical feminists” attests to this both, in their irrational fallacious claim, and the in-built weakness of conceiving of your position under the moniker. When you stick to asking questions like, “Do you believe in equal pay” or “Do you hate men?” you figure out the individuated position.

I don’t think a lot of us like to recognize how often we’re not thinking, or how often we notice it in the people we’re feigning closeness towards. I’ve experienced people driven together by mutually shared not-thinking narratives regularly. It’s a behavior that’s rewarded and reinforced unironically. The group can’t be a group if you’re popping your head up too often commenting on the unhealthy nature or inadequate capacity of the group.

I challenge you to count how often you say something like, “Because that’s how I feel.” You feel it “because,” or you feel because you feel. The insistence is to respect feelings that, by regular demonstration are not reflected upon, not given to understanding, and often have pretty dramatic and ongoing consequences. If my mom lost her temper, my shit’s getting broken, I’m getting beat, and we’re building in another layer of generational trauma to explore with indefinite therapy. But I need to respect how she felt? My experience is the same as someone in college challenged to think harder about what some “controversial” speaker is “violently” discussing at a podium or on the street?

The landscape feels locked in this word-obscurity and language of feelings. And the march from someone reasonable and healthy towards the high-stakes chaos of “cancellation” and “de-platforming” I think played out like an abusive relationship. If he only yelled at you in a scary way once in a year and a half, hit you just before year 3, and all-along had made seemingly reasonable arguments at the time to chip away at your autonomy, the drift was almost imperceptible.

If you tried to chronicle the shifts in our cultural dialogue as it pertained to individual well-being, happiness, indulgence, capitalizing, or decadent self-expression, and you’re 7-years old a few years after “greed is good” becomes subconsciously instantiated in the cultural milieu, you don’t have a prayer. “You need a college degree” or “middle-class house, wife, etc.” as laws changed to exploit and prey upon you didn’t get noticed. You’re always being supplied a narrative. You’re always being influenced by your biases and ingrained practices. It’s incredibly hard to dig “you” out of all that.

I tend to write people off who I can’t recognize as their own “You.” You have a problem you speak to time and again and refuse to change how you approach it, perhaps. You have a “strong opinion” about something you’re absolutely incapable of hearing conflicting or rounding evidence about. You engage in things like questioning the person you’re talking to’s motivation for bringing something up or asking at all. You find yourself incapable of drawing a conclusion that isn’t the most damning interpretation of what’s been said or flat out ignores or denies there’s anything else often literally in front of both parties.

It gets old. It doesn’t seem to get old for most people as fast as it should. Everyone seems to have some topic in which they’re as quick to circle up their reasoning as the “irrational” or “asshole” over there. All you have to do is poke something they’re insecure about. Getting old, fat, or ugly? Like a flash! Body-positivity narratives wash over conversations about health and beauty standards. Feeling oppressed? Here’s a hashtag drumbeat for shouting down critics. You can lament the number of “phobics.” You can start a campaign to overthrow the “violent” enemies who use their words in ways that did not respect your feelings.

Meanwhile, big portions of reality appear, to me anyways, like they’re trending towards some catastrophic reshuffling of who lives and dies and whether we really continue down a path that nets more freedom, safety, and self-determination. It’s hard to even recount the number of times I’ve been functionally shouted down or isolated for talking, and I’m just an individual example of what we’ve watched in the media on a global scale. I get incredibly frustrated when I watch otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people invite cunts like Kellyanne Conway to spin and spin and waste time like we don’t already know the fascist playbook. We don’t need to reimagine “doublespeak” and invent the straw-man.

As much as I want “more” money, time, or freedom to fuck off and do whatever strikes me in a given moment, I have a deep hunger for time around people who have found themselves, or are making a genuine concerted effort to figure out what parts are missing. I suspect I’ll be typing this same kind of story from an increasingly regal circumstance I occupy in the future. I don’t really believe that the culture I’m plugged into will provide me much beyond more stuff. I’m incredibly thankful I can eek out the friendly individual here and there, but I do, most often, feel the chill on connecting or speaking at all, let alone to what’s really on my mind. I don’t find it valuable or worthy to share with people who can only mindlessly consume and relish in the absurd antagonism of obscurity.

[782] Dildo Bars

Let's try something different. Here we're gonna be mildly tipsy, take the first launch-pad thought, and try to get something down before I make a series of poor drunken decisions in going out. No rambling teary-eyed angst fest wondering how my brain decided to capitulate at the zero hour. No lamentation I didn't decide to sleep with someone I wasn't into. No guilt over my propensity to manipulate and smile too big about the absolutely boring nothingness you told me, but are convinced I find fascinating. Oh man, I'm changing the whole game with this one.

 

Anyway. I just watched a man play piano for elephants. One of the captions said, “They say elephants never forget, maybe they'll remember Paul forever!” Or something close. Forever. What an idea. What a persistently reassuring thing. Forever you'll reside in heaven. Forever your impact will be felt by those who come after you. Forever the universe undulates and resets because, as you're certainly well aware, “nothingness” is too unstable, and after enough quantum fluctuations, something akin to everything we've ever known is not just inevitable, but infinitely so.

 

Shooting for the idea of “forever” I don't think is necessarily bad. The day your baby is going to die is not what's on the mind of parents. Underwritten is the expectation that humans will colonize the stars, or at the very least they'll have that same kind of bitchin party you once called the greatest night of your life. Selfish genes be damned! If forever wasn't a thing, I wouldn't be made to suffer the infinite hole of my perspective, if my solipsistic argument would be sufficient alone.

 

But on to better things. Are there? You can really feel the arbitrary free-form to this bullshit tonight, no? I'm trying incredibly hard to have the basement division of my subconscious brain persuade me that “hefty” middle-class wife/life is as good or equal to the kind of Bezos-adjacent (I'm in no way as moral as I suspect Elon's Asperger's compels him) kind of life. I was seriously entertaining the idea of being a slumlord-esc person the other day. Whether it's attract poor people to the land I already own, or invest in other properties and put up affordable, hard to destroy green-based things elsewhere.

 

Think, I'm still bitching, but I'm bitching about more and more minute things. My air conditioning isn't set up! Well, the whole house is, and it's paid for, and so is the land, and everything I need less maybe a water pump. I'm down to the particulars. When I had the coffee shop, it's analogous to complaining about not having 15 varieties of tea instead of 3. My first-world ass is showing. I'm finding myself moved to want to make that happen in a big way at the expense of people I have no respect for. It's not money=value in some strict fashion. But I'm ever-more convinced the world looks the way it does because there are people who actually embody the kind of people depicted in places like Atlas Shrugged, and those who do everything in their power to absolve themselves or attempt to hijack the work. My work is bordering on making me insufferably smug.

 

I don't fear repercussions. That is, I know how to navigate the world at large, and get that people can hit back, and know there are laws and whatnot. But I don't think there's a kind of “cosmic comeuppance.” I don't believe in Karma. I don't think anyone gives a shit or there's any manifestation of consciousness that could accurately do the math, let alone long enough to ensure the result was an accurate one. So, I'm tempted to pursue those kind amoral rich cliches. You know what happens when DCS shows up to your bed bug house? We foot the thousand dollar bill for your slumlord. Go us! And we didn't even fix the problem because they exist in more places than your house alone.

 

I know you can't get crazy with it. I don't even want to get crazy with it. But I want white people entitled reparations. I want the kind of life I was “promised” or envisioned for myself. I want all the lost time between when I was 20 and now that I could have shaken my youthful ass and went about whoring that didn't have to be coupled with a mature and measured tone of my “adult” 30 year-old self. It sucks knowing better! I want to be an idiot and confident in that, or at least, I want to take what I couldn't squeeze out of it from somewhere else. This is a horrid thing, don't get it twisted. You shouldn't behave this way, nor should I. I just, I don't know, don't really care. Or, if I care a little, I can feel it slipping.

 

The only reason why it would is from a misguided sense of pride and ego as well. There is no respectable “individual” without one, I'm sorely convinced. The “damage” left to account by your God I imagine. The idea that I would unlock that kind of “cheat code” freedom to explore those darker exploitative corners is really dawning on me. Who's going to stop me? Haven't I, in my own long-form convoluted way, been begging you to?

 

Lol, this is goofy and long enough. I'm gonna finish these beers, take a few shots, and find a way to the bars for a series of ridiculous and dumb conversations, and I'm not even going to sabotage myself if there's a decent-enough honey who's trying to mack. And 90% of the reason I framed it that way is the smirk it caused on my face. Peace, ninjas.

[766] Deuces

I'm searching for a car. This entices many things I do not like to happen all at once. Leaving aside that I know next to nothing about cars, brands decide to shit the bed for some years and certain models have fatal flaws that you can find if you want to dig through 7 quasi-reliable ratings pages per each make year. They all basically resemble the same few things to me. I'm the same person that thought I might get a used but reasonable beater when I turned 16 who's main concern is getting from point A to B. But as you're no doubt aware, many cars, of all shapes, ages, and sizes, occupy a wide array of potential in that space between.

I find it default overwhelming and frustrating. Not least of which because even the people who I know who seem to know the most about cars differ seemingly arbitrarily. Ford? Shit, but such and such model from x year can be great! KIA? Garbage, but totally affordable and 2013 wasn't terrible if you can stand to look at it. I had a Mini, right? BMW! Oh...you caught them on those junky corruption years, so your brand new car will blow the transmission, have its back hatch rust off, and 7 other things you'd never believe should go wrong with a car less than 5 years old. I've legitimately only ever believed in Tesla, in big part because I think Elon Musk is the kind of obsessive autistic type that couldn't produce total shit on purpose or it would kill him. (edit 2024: Oh, how people change.)

I think about the slogans. “Built to last!” “Built Ford tough!” “Unlike any other.” I recently watched Russell Brand's latest stand-up show, and he reiterates how we're perpetually beat over the head with bullshit wording and advertising and politicking to the point where any degree of sincerity, even the world's biggest fuck up like Trump, we'd be ravenous for. It's my inbuilt disdain for anyone who's forced to be put into a “lemme sell you something” posture. Let things be for sale. Let me buy them because they're actually good or useful. You can take it a personal route and think it dishonest and disingenuous to flout all of your best traits and pictures on a dating site while you lure someone in to lie to them for a few months before the cracks start showing.

I crave a form of stability even while occupying an intellectual attitude that everything's always changing and nothing is forever. At the same time, I occupy, as this book I started on the physics of “now” points out, every waking minute of my conscious existence. This remains constant. Each ounce of pain and pleasure trapped by my choice to hold or capacity to relish. I can build environments that persuade this persistent moment something is more stable and consistent that I'm otherwise exposed to and enagaged with.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

New section days later.

I've spent the last 3 hours looking at and playing with my finances. No matter how you shake it, If I can escape the specter of rent, I'll have 50% of my income to do whatever the hell I please with it. Well, that's not precisely true. I'll be able to pay in advance on my car loan, or the same with back taxes, or make 1 kinda-large and unnecessary purchase each month with little to no repercussions. My finances are dead even in me being able to work for a year at the “normal” pace of eating and drinking what I like and enjoying some moderately priced entertainment and paying off all the bills and becoming debt free, or I can hardcore mode it, spend every penny on bills and Ramen noodles, and be done in like 8 months. This also barring any pursuit of extra income.

I need something real to look forward to. I like playing my guitar and reading. I like to play some video games or moderate exercise. I NEED TO CREATE. Or, at least, I need to trick myself into thinking my expenses are speaking to my creations. I can't tell you how many times I've dreamt of digging holes. Why? Because a big enough hole is now a pool, or a fire pit, or a drainage system. Instead of my sitting stupid with too much energy on the couch while I debate whether I want to waste money on seeing a movie for the sake of leaving the house, I'd be blasting one of the thousand I have on my projector while I kill so many itch birds one shovel-full at a time I'll hardly be able to believe it.

I started looking for a different job, as if I don't basically enjoy this one, or like there was something “better” than the “even” state I'm in now. I don't plan to leave. I just wanted to see what my disposition might be situated for now that I've allowed Lifeline and DCS to pound me into this glob. I was also inspired by a story from Jennifer Lopez, or it happens with plenty of celebrities and famous-adjacent, about lying about their credentials and getting the job anyway, making some change or endearing themselves as one more in their infinite series of positive loop footholds. I can't help but think I'm “hindered” by my sense of...morality? Fairness? Wisdom? As if my current, arguably great state, was handed to me, and I've been searching for and missing some gimmick this whole time. I know, very well, better than that, but it feels that way nonetheless.

I'm increasingly sensitive to the idea of our capacity to zero in on the negative and have it allow a disproportionate affect on our attitude and well-being. I feel like I've exercised against this generally for years by writing, but even more, I want to tap into that next level, “Who do I want to be like that I'm not” when it comes to seeing people who seem to have something figured out. Patrick Stewart comes to mind. I struggle to think of who would follow him.Tom Hanks?

Part of what makes me insufferable is my ability and willingness to bear down on the present moment. That was the motivation to get all my shit done “now” and independently. That's reading past eyestrain or depression levels. That's playing until your fingers fail. I repeat, NOTHING ABOUT LIFE IS LIKE THAT. You get your paycheck every 2 weeks. Someone's not going to call you back for 3 days. A miscommunication or 12 will see the month-long task take over a year. I can't. I can't operate like that. You have to go to a place that zens-out and rides along in order to survive, but holy fuck, when I reach for my shotgun posture, I mean, I'VE BEEN 30 FOR ALMOST 6 MONTHS. And while that's sorta-true, but at least a month off, it's that mind frame that presses you to get shit done BECAUSE DEATH IS WAITING.

I have nothing new to say. This was told to me during a drunken verbal battle I have no idea how it got started. It's true, but the problem isn't that I need to reiterate. The problem is that the underlying problem never gets addressed. The problem is that efforts to address it bleed out over months and make it look like I don't have a goddamn clue. There's never anything new to say, from anyone, save a few physicists. But it does need to be constantly addressed and rearranged and brought into our collective consciousness. I certainly need to see myself dying to climb out of my bowels and stomach as I waste away on a couch pretending I'm not allowed weekends.

The reality is such that once something takes off, it shoots to the moon. Some stupid idea, some experiment, some trendy blog post. If you've laid the groundwork and prepared for all the coming potential, someone's begging to discover you or collaborate or exploit. The tools for gaming the systems of attention and marketing are as detailed as you could ask for and dirt cheap. But you have to be on the move. You have to be paying attention. You have to say, over and over again, who you are, what you're about, and what you hope to achieve, and then get to work.

[724] Dent

Midway through a “Vice News Tonight” episode talking about kids born with deficiencies due to Zika, I had a thought. Well, there were several.

Initially, I thought about winning the genetic lottery. I've alluded to my general good health, size, looks, brain etc. that I enjoy or have used well-enough in life. I don't really struggle to learn or remember things, at least when I care about them. I don't have some deformity to hide or that I'm particularly insecure about. I'm not bleeding money on hospital bills. And despite my capacity to describe an ongoing crisis that is the set of my various neuroses, there's hardly a day I'm not laughing, lounging, or otherwise throwing things into my life that I enjoy.

The point is that I have it good. I have it really good. I suspect many people don't believe they have it as good as I do. And I think this lack of belief in themselves is why I find myself relatively alone in what I choose to worry about or try to fix. If you're not “the problem,” something external needs to be. That isn't to say you aren't a problem or won't become one, but it does mean your perspective on how those problems are nested and where your attention can go are different.

I don't need to be entertained, for example. I'm not craving vacation or my next day off. As I've gotten to know more “regular” people, each moment off seems like a craving and clawing. They're consumed by what they think they should be worried about, and then nothing else gets in. By the time there's room to look up or breath, they're literally desperate for air. If all of your brainpower is spent fretting over shitty software, corruption in the system, and the inescapable hole modernity has born you into, every new issue makes the flashing lights and noises all the more chaotic.

That's how you get selfish. Each escape has to trump the last period of desperation. Say you're worried about being single or dying alone. Say you hold that worry for years. Then here comes a chance to get married! Is marriage right for you? Who cares! Fantasy time. Well-wishing and professional pictures abound. The driver of your decision can get ignored, or worse, celebrated as of course I was afraid, but no more! That is to say, were you healthy, good looking, and smart before you got married? Your mind can zero in on some glaring presumed hole and block out what else you've been doing or what you might instead.

I see many different futures for myself. I believe they're as attainable as anything because I've done the math or prepared the floor to allow me to fuck up in forward motion as often as it will take. But that's sort of like my dream wedding. I read stories of Elon Musk sleeping on the shop floor and get jealous. He gets to work himself to death on something important and what's genuinely the best there is to offer. I want that. If I didn't, I never would have ran up and down theater aisles like cleaning up popcorn was the most important thing in the world. I wouldn't be able to have zero guilt about starting the coffee shop because every second of it was exactly me and what I wanted to do. I keep tasting appetizers of my ideal meal.

The problem I have is being unable to know what to do with myself with all this “belief.” Maybe it's like being an earnest disciple on a planet where everyone's already been converted, just not to believe in what you do. One of the things I think made me so angry about my friend group in college was that we all seemed to have the same “problem.” All were as smart or smarter. All looked good. All could figure out one thing or another to keep floating on by or achieve some goal. So I didn't understand why that goal wouldn't be the world. 

I don't know why I'm not comfortable living out of a van traveling between national parks. I don't know why it seemed the exact opposite thing to do to lean into ideas of monogamous relationships and middle-class comforts. I don't know why I couldn't maintain the idea of a “real job” after getting an advanced degree and paying back debts for years. I don't know why it always feels like there's more to sacrifice, and it's worthwhile to do so, in order to achieve otherwise dreamlike ends. I can watch so many lives running in parallel that feel familiar or safe. How could a set of my equals not feel like it's all a little too easy? Where's the guilt?

With my non-physically-presenting brain conditions, I do my exhaustive pursuing of things, adopt “your” shitty real-world jobs, fight for every inch of progress on some big dream, write, watch, read, and think incredibly hard about working out regularly. I've got a month and a half to blame youthful indiscretions on my 20's. I don't have a lot of money, but I also never planned to have a lot of money, because nothing I ever read suggested I should expect to find said money. And I still feel there's so much to do moving forward. I still think tomorrow could be the day some friend of a friend here's about me or some random Craigslist person turns out not to be shit and we work together to build something real.

That's a word that gets shot to hell when you're in the fog of day to day existence. Real? Well, I'm here, aren't I? I showed up. I answered your email. I feel the weight of busywork and the humidity. But what about the dark matter? What about the indefinite future your particles could arrive in, or indeed are already inhabiting, just less and less so with each new concession? Real means something. Like we all do when we break statistics and trends and create the conditions to capitalize on luck. We don't live in an environment where we can take anything for granted. But every day, all I see is people who do. Plans and meetings months in advance. Dream partners one day or exes coming back. The party neatly scheduled between 8:30pm and 11:00pm, because you don't want to get home too late before work the next morning.

I haven't felt real in a very long time. I'm not excited to meet each day. I don't know quite if I'll be able to persuade myself against doing something stupid “because” and “why not.” I don't have much focus beyond the haze of failed attempts to get things done I've trained myself to never expect will happen anymore. They won't without a hundred more phone calls, dozens of online posts, hundreds or thousands of wasted dollars, and a hundred more blogs decrying the same problem in slightly different ways. No one wants to help. No one believes. They're comfortable doing whatever it is they do. They don't even want to TALK about it because, well, you'll rub off on them in guilt-inducing and embarrassing ways, and haven't you made enough people resent you already?

It's still right now is the point. You're still young enough. You've got time to fail. You've got as many hats to wear as you can reach for. I may have squandered my shot at ever getting a six pack before I turned 30, but you don't have to say you were too afraid or lazy to indulge your idealism. You don't have a brain deficiency. You're not hungry. You've got more money than you'd like to admit, and you might not appreciate the nature of the sacrifices you'd have to make. But there's worse things. You could be old and have the same problems. You could die an old cliché. You could be hungry and alone or have your own sick kid. Think those will feel like the times to do something more or different?

[716] Chance Encounters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[664] Crawl Tall

One of the things I used to pride myself on, and still do to a certain extent, was the ability to get things done fast. I didn't just want to get an A, I wanted to be the first one done. I'm still the guy who cuts through parking lots to save time driving places. I'll risk my back to transport more than I can reasonably carry 2x16s so I can make less trips. There's always this push to not just get it done, but get it done now.

I know people like Elon Musk have the same sense. You don't get to Mars thinking to yourself it's time to wait around for the funds or technology to catch up. For those of us with less specific ambitions, I wonder if my “now” is speaking to the “let me help stave off a nuclear holocaust” sense or “there's starving people now, lets feed them all” or “somehow, literally no one is tracking this important number.” I mean, I got a tattoo that symbolizes, for lack of a better explanation, inherent evil, or maybe rephrased, evil inherent in us all, and that's an all-the-time right now kind of thing to be contending with. Every good decision suggests you could be doing the opposite and vice versa. I should probably go to the gym every time I pick fast food instead.

Just like if you overdo it with shitty food you'll get fat, if you keep stepping in service to what's easy or “evil” or less than you wish for yourself, that's where you'll end up. You'll remove the “now” from your sensibilities because there's always time to be self-indulgent. There's always time to employ a selfish excuse for your behavior. It's a solid way to connect with the world around you, as everyone else is waiting for their ideas about themselves to catch up to their day to day reality too. You'll fit in.

I think it speaks to the reason I'll watch old or uncomplicated shows sped up. I want to experience more, now. I just got the extension on my house completed, and now I can feel myself raring to go insulate it, but the weather is shit and the work to turn it into a bathroom requires more money than I currently have. I've had patience imposed on me for several years at this point, and while I know how long it takes to get what I want done, I don't know what my money situation will be like or if the car will implode. I have to temper myself, constantly, or I have all of this energy that just turns into pure and needless frustration.

I feel as though some people would say, “Turn that energy into something else productive!” To me, it's not enough to simply have the energy, you have to have the focus and time. I still mostly have to work most of my time in order to move forward and stay ahead on bills. I think a lot about the rich white “geniuses” that discovered so many things in science. You might stumble across a few fundamental truths about the universe if you had your entire lifetime to kill searching. In less than 10 years I've seen whole schools get constructed, businesses turnover, apartments and condos flood the landscape. I need a day or two here and there. I need the thousand dollars, and the week I can feel comfortable not working. It's, of course, precisely when I can't get into drug studies now I have all of these things I could be occupying my time with besides television. I still feel my stomach sink and heart flutter at even the thought of attempting a screening.

I suppose what's hardest about having this volatile and excited energy is the constant pressure to pause it. It's not anymore healthy to be manic than it is depressive. But I crave the flow of constant creative production. I'd love to wake up early each day excited for the work to do, go home exhausted, and start up doing it all over again, always seeing the larger goals getting closer and closer. It's why I don't hesitate to spend my savings to finally get something done. My goal isn't to have an extra $1000. It's to have a place to shower and shit and store things I don't want in the house proper. I want my own place to live. I want to know that all of my money is going towards paying it off, and getting the little things done while I'm out there like sapling removal and trash burning. I want to blast my music or shows at all hours of the night.

I feel like I say too often how close I am. I'm as close or as far as I've ever been or ever will be. It's hard to exercise the idea that there's only “now” when now doesn't look like what you want it to. I want that meal plan and personal trainer, that schedule to get lessons and rehearse music, that time in the greenhouse, the conversation about the next step in the map, that scheduled time to get furniture moved, and that weekend fire party now. I want it now, and tomorrow, and the day after for as far as I can see. And when that itch is scratched I want the next thing. You can't do it out of order or pretend otherwise. Or, I can't.

I'm never finding the 100K a year job, hell, the 50K a year job. The jobs once professionals are clinging to are about to be taken over. “Benefits” are never coming back. The oligarchy wins. So I need, more than anything, to be able to ride it out or escape it. That means off-grid super-cheap living situation. To occupy the privileged place of business speculation is hard enough as it is if you don't want to simply lie and hustle your way through dozens of things you're not interested in or are barely qualified for.

I don't even know if I had anything to say in this. I just feel awake. I feel like I should be buying insulation, cutting drywall, and pricing plumbing parts. I should be doing piano scales. I should be compiling and organizing the best journalism and maps to tell different kinds of stories. Or I should be learning how to afford the outsourcing of what I want with as little money thrown to dozens of Indian men at random as possible. But I can't, yet. Not really. I can half-ass and try to give myself a story. Be half-paying attention during a trumpet lesson, overpay for parts in service to expediency, or barely glean ten words from that in-depth look at what's about to fuck humanity for the next 20 years.

I want to explode in the best way. I want to pursue like college never let me. I want to build as extravagantly as I imagined when I played with blocks. I want to celebrate like nothing matters but the party in the moment, and I want to wrap as many people up in my world as are worthy. And I want to do it right now. Every little piece that falls into place suggests I'm still on the path. If I could blackout and wake up a year from now, presuming things went well or were tolerable, I would. That seems like a weird thing to say if my concern is time, right? But if I could just have an even floor, I could run faster. The cuts and scrapes of crawling through the woods aren't helping anything.

[649] Cuntsequence

I want to be very careful. The intent is to shy as far away from “mere complaining” as possible. My instinct is telling me that given the nature of the subject matter this will take some time to try and do well. I have to talk, but I’m wary that my “have to” mechanism is slowly breaking down in potentially hazardous ways.

Maybe we start with an “inspirational” video someone posted about something Elon Musk said regarding “never giving up.” Depending on the degree of fanboy (it’s always boys), you can find any degree of problems throughout Musk’s life that he conquered which in turn can serve as your own motivation. You’re bullied now? Well, wipe the blood from your nose, your future is in the stars! One might envision a tongue-in-cheek inspirational poster saying something like “How many rockets would you crash in order to achieve immortality?”

Our culture is nothing if not full of the idea that we can piggyback other peoples’ accomplishments. Their troubles are more “generally human,” and thus if we tap into our immortal connected spirit, everything gets better.

I’m losing that thread.

To get it out of the way, I don’t have problems. I invent problems. I adopt problems. I impose problems. I anticipate having problems in the future, but I don’t have problems. My mind is annoying, but if the worst I have to do is this, hardly a problem. No one is forcing me to eat like shit, work too much, or swallow anymore than the next guy in some abstract denunciation regarding the problems of capitalism.

Perhaps I can’t tell the difference between whether I’ve lost something or if I’ve never had it. I like to consider myself a man of consequence. I put my time or my mind to something and “things” find a way to resolve themselves in ways I sought. That means, more often than anything else, chasing away waterfalls of crappy people and circumstances that get in the way. It might be said that I’m just a persistent shit shoveler more than I have some particular talent or tact. That’s what this is, right? Shoveling one scoop of my dumping mind. I never know how big the pile is.

My living situation is shoveling shit. Whether it’s the shit of passive aggressive bitchiness, the being ignored or lied to by, pushing dozens, of construction people, or the fake concern and regard my job has for its “independent contractors.” I can strive and thrive, I can huff and fling. I can kill time and get blackout drunk and say things I don’t remember or believe. Why? I’m living in increasingly “there is no cause and effect” terms. I’m holding no regard for people with shortcuts and quasi-racist sentiments. Sober me would have said it was entitled idiotic white people who signaled to the rest of the developing world that they should be like that too. Blackout drunk me has a grudge against all of the Indians who don’t tip, and apparently takes it out on an Uber driver.

Worse than my lazy degradation into, honestly, I struggle to call it racism because I don’t care about Indian people anymore than I do others, but let’s run with it to make the point even greater. I don’t even care. I’m not worried about being perceived as a racist, let alone whatever lazy inanities I was spewing blacked out. I’m trying to care. I’m trying to figure out why I should give a shit about anyone, especially ones I don’t know, and I can’t. My efforts as of late are being served nothing but shit on a stick and resentment and sneers, it must feel like it’s my time to get on board.

And yes, it’s as lazy and typical and obviously morally defunct as anything and anyone else, and I don’t care. Add back into the equation me thinking of myself as a man of consequence. What happens then? What happens when it’s “not just a joke” anymore? What happens when my intentionality and break down results in actual harms? I’m not poised to hit the streets with a tiki torch angling to beat someone up, but what if I break something important? What if I do the equivalent of laying down under a train speeding over my body in an attempt to “get something back” about what’s missing in my experience or lack of meaningful action? It’s worth noting as an aside how, in these moments, I respect absolutely no one who doesn’t bother with the details for why they’re not “sharing their life” with someone else. I don’t need the provocation.

I can feel my eyes changing. I’m seeing myself in the lonely old men in the beater cars in front of mine. More cliche than thought finds its way to my lips. I’m not just eating like shit, but doing so voraciously, with an energetic spike that sees plenty of happy big bellied dudes with a litter of kids and no shame. If that were my goal, staying “in shape” is likely only to alienate me from the increasingly goofy-looking, fat, and lonely population.

I don’t know that I deserve to be angry at myself. Everything I do is about “the future,” besides drinking. It makes sense to have a house without bills and rent, right? But that’s not what I’m allowed to talk about. I have to talk about being lied to. I have to talk about being “too much” in needing a floor to sleep on. I have to talk about drunk nights out when all I wanted to do was go bowling. But, even when you wait, even when you plan, even when you give them a week or more, I know how to get 9 people to not go bowling that said they would. Or, I know their work is more important, their meal prep, their mis scheduling, their waiting to hear back from, their other thing that usually happens around then.

There was a thread about being the friend who “always texts first.” Apparently there are a lot of lonely sad extroverts with terrible friend groups. I’ve heard at least a dozen times the last week about how hard it is to make friends as an adult. Quickly follows is some placating sentiment about fluidity and maturity that never speaks to the heart of it. Was something lost, or was it never there to begin with? Do I think it’s a coincidence I’ll probably never be invited to another “friend’s” wedding now that I’m no longer with my ex? By the numbers, I’ve been “loner” me for considerably longer than whatever romance I attempted to make out of my time in college.

That seems to speak to the deepest compulsion. You want a family, even if it’s a bad one, even if it’s a lie. I want my TV families. I want the best for my dad and stepmom even if their surrounding family generally suck. I want to believe the laughs were genuine, the parties weren’t bad excuses, and the plans could actually come true. Is that the world we’re living in? Is that just the world being thrust into my experience, corrupting my otherwise persistent nature?

It’s that I’m fed up with having to rely on people. Cross my fingers for a big tip. Be strung along by white trash incidentally, barely, more knowledgeable and having of the time to get shit done I need. Talk down to the man-child so I can inhabit his space. Be constantly ignored by anyone fleetingly actually capable. I’m living at the whims of the weather and precisely ZERO people I respect. I want to be blacked out of that world. I want to tear down the idea that there’s anything left of a responsible reliable actor who’s capable of navigating it. No one is. No one should be forced to pretend they can. Money doesn’t work, trust is a joke, hard work gets you heart palpitations and one giant cramp consisting of your whole body. What’s the fucking point? Judge me, get angry, give your lazy opinion in reaction to mine. It’s meaningless, directionless babble that only hurts when you’re dumb enough to keep playing along.

I want to go back to learning. I want to sit in my box all day, read terrible things about the world, spend all my money on my projects, and be left the fuck alone. You know how hard it is to get there? Want to take a guess how many steps it takes to be left the fuck alone? Wanna know how many thousands of dollars and stupid conversations and hiccups and cancers you have to cure? I can barely listen to anyone but myself anymore. It’s a loop or a marble sorting game of debased emptiness. And I’m a man of consequence. I put it all here. What do I expect from the equally disorganized idiots who won’t take an active role in their self-destruction?

[634] Savage

Fair warning, I can tell right away, this isn’t one you should bother with. I don’t care if it’s the most redundant thing I’ve ever written. I don’t care if it goes on for a dozen pages. I don’t care if you immediately get the sense that the lacking and pitiful voice used to launch this warning remains intransigently smug yet full of woe.

I’ve tried to write this blog before. The one where I state plainly my stupid brain attached to my stupid heart that gets it pumped up and stressed out. I tried to find a context for why it made sense. I tried to explain the path forward in spite of it. I tried to understand it like there’s a reason.

If I get another person to tell me to “just breath” and “relax” and “don’t think about it” with regard to slowing the speed of my heart, I may slowly steer my car into oncoming traffic, making sure to choose a semi so no one gets hurt. I’m not a monster.

There’s nothing even at stake. Progress on my website? A strawbale addition to my garage? The moving van getting fixed? A riding lawn mower? I can, in theory, make half the amount of money in the same time I would have been gone. A month of my life then? What am I nervous about? It’s the wrong question though.

I’m stuck in this moment. I’ve been stuck here since, I think around 14. It’s why I can’t let shit go. It’s why I have to try and understand instead of forgive. It’s why I have the same dreams as an over-eager child. It’s why I harp on the relationships in my life that have lasted longer than a class period. It’s why I read blogs from 10 years ago and find the exact sentiment I needed today. I’m nervous about exactly what got me fucked up from the beginning, my entire life crashing down around me for no good goddamn reason.

The only antidote I’ve found is some measure of progress. Never a simple dollar amount, but a structure or a tool. I haven’t progressed until one of you assholes figures out what it is I’m doing and is working along side me when it’s not convenient. I haven’t progressed until people I admire see something I’ve built and begin to wonder how it can help influence their lives and endeavors.

I’m stuck in this moment, and I don’t want to be. This moment is horrifyingly lonely. This moment doesn’t sleep on a bed most nights of the week. This moment is sweaty basketball shorts and awkward conversations in a parking lot wrought with bees, flies, and the smell of garbage, occasionally interrupted by the world’s most obnoxious train conductor. This moment has my head swelling beyond comprehension at the temples for something trying to get out. This moment is a sunken hole at the dead center of my chest that can’t be breathed away or beared down on.

I spent a little gas money. I ate too much shitty food. I put a little more wear on my torn car. This didn’t even really matter, and I couldn’t get it done. I couldn’t sit politely and calmly for a procedure that’s the dead easiest fucking thing to pass! I used to love getting the cuff put on! As a kid I thought it was cool. After marathoning ER I was particularly interested in what the readouts at the Wal-Mart booths said. To fail one has meant to fail them all, if I can hijack a bad paraphrasing of some philosophical statement someone made.

I said some time ago that I haven’t been me for a very long time. I get hints of it at a house party. I can get lost in the flow of some work out on the land. But it’s few and far between. This money would have suggested I could move faster. Something in my mind’s eye might have been able to take up residence next to the garage. I don’t know, none of that sounds dramatic enough. Or, it’s not the heart of it. I just would have been able to work on what matters instead of work at what’s paying me.

I don’t matter. At least, I don’t know how else to state it. I know I’m one car in traffic in the suburbs of Chicago in all his grand failure glory driving past an infinite array of disappointments and ailments that are a universe away from being a headfucked asshole who didn’t get to nab an extra 5 grand. I know I’m small. While my heart defiantly beats harder and my breath gets shorter I try to persuade myself. Fuck me and what I want to do. Fuck me and what I could create. Fuck me to the degree I believe my own bullshit. Fuck every selfish aim and its incidental potential impact. Fuck thinking you have any control. Fuck blaming yourself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and fucking over and over again. Fuck trying. Fuck visualizing yourself hanging from an extension cord because if your head’s already about to pop, might as well seek a direction that will actually feel like a fucking relief, right?

I’m so tired. I’m so tired of talking. I’m so tired of waiting. I’m so tired of thinking the exact same things because they’re right and worth it and when they can’t be done you don’t get to move on.

Enough times it’s happened where while I’m writing I manage to just knock out of the park a line that sticks with me for weeks. Something like that happens or a calm will wash over me. My breathing will return to normal. My brain will feel less packed. I’ve never been able to do that thinking about this study anxiety. Maybe I’ve talked around the edges of it, maybe not. Maybe I have even the basest understanding of psychosomatic responses, maybe I’m such an inbuilt contrarian I’ve robbed myself of the capacity to change.

The last paragraph was started after I put this down and just forced myself to sleep. I pick up writing again after 13 hours. I had a dream that isn’t exactly recurring, but it’s a similar theme. I find myself in a giant bathroom with many different doors leading out of it. Some are locked. Some seem like they’re going to lead somewhere. Some have people's names on them like they’re reserved. This one had someone telling me about a space I had occupied being taken over by some people who didn’t really have any business taking it over. Someone led me through this giant bathroom that was supposed to act as a shortcut, but only ended up as a dead end. I try every door on the wall on my race back to where we entered and realize I’ve wasted a ton of time not just going to my space the way I knew how instead of following their advice and direction. The last door I tried had “reserved for Elon Musk” which I reasoned harked back to a time when he occupied that hallway or room and nobody had taken down the sign.

As far as my psychoanalytic capacity goes, I find this dream pretty on the nose. I’m anxious over the wasted time. I’m sick of terrible naive advice on how to do something or get somewhere people have no experience contending with. I want my name on a wall. I want to know that were I to leave my shit somewhere it has every right to be, someone’s going to remove the interlopers without me having to make a mad dash to keep a lid on things.

A previous bathroom, again it being large, related to me being unable to find a stall or urinal that wasn’t absolutely disgusting to use. So it was kick open a door, huff, move on, find the layout of another one provided no privacy, find the floor flooded in the next, then 4 loud ridiculous people I knew I couldn’t stand might be ambling closer just beyond eyesight so I move onto the next. Every option shitty.

I don’t take my problems seriously enough. At least I don’t respect them. I don’t know how to perpetually wallow. It gets boring. On the car ride back I couldn’t help but recall things I recognized that made me think of some stupid or hilarious thing my friends and I did growing up. I have a kind of blindness for what things are “supposed” to mean. In the same way that I use words in ways that constantly piss people off for what I consider “no reason,” I don’t know what it means precisely when I don’t get into a study or if I were to get colon cancer, as has just happened to my uncle.

I don’t believe in karma, so trying to play some metaphysical math game is out. I don’t pretend like I know the future, so I can’t rule out my highway tragedy on the day I leave the center, having spent my last 20 days confined to kinda shitty food and odd company. I’d prefer imagining myself with more money right now, but there’s an infinite list of things that might happen in the same amount of time that speak to an infinite amount of potentials, if my head doesn’t know how to drop the anxiety as the cuff inflates, it certainly figured out how to drown itself in the ambiguities that follow.

I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of life. It’s still true. It doesn’t mean I can’t be or there aren’t features I enjoy, but overall, I’ve spent considerably more time as a toy of ignorant forces than I have being anything I’d genuinely like to consider calling “me.” I have no reason to be a fan of that. I have no reason to consider my circumstances particularly blessed. I lucked out. It’s not my responsibility to mask “luck worship” as “deep appreciation” or pretend most of the examples set for me regarding other’s luck are anything beyond escapist selfish indulgence. I was lucky to be born smart, if you ignore all of the mental health risks and social isolation that poses. I was lucky to be born good enough looking if you want to see how fast you can race to considering the vast majority of the people you meet as “unfuckable.” I was lucky enough to have a few solid examples of how to behave even fleetingly morally even as I see what befalls those who bother to give a shit.

I haven’t felt able to enjoy the fruits of what I’ve set up. Sure, the “rent” on the garage is paid up for 2 months, but I still only took a day off a week, and that was usually because I had shit to do errand wise, or really needed to shower, so it hardly felt like a day off. I work all day, at the expense of my muscles, my attention, my car, so I can move faster, not because I have to do anything. I can work 2 days a month and still have a place to sleep. Add another day a year, I pay off that gym membership for that year. Add another, there’s my car insurance. I decided to hang out at my dad’s for another day, because I can, this place has air conditioning and a bed.

I’m living my poor man’s version of the billion dollar deal that didn’t go through to bring a football team to a new city, if you want to consult a recycled plot Ballers took from Entourage. Now I need to piss off to do whatever poor billionaires do in the meantime. Try to make more money they hardly need and look for opportunities to pat themselves on the back for “giving back” in wanton fashion. I need what every fat girl with fatalistic confidence who hit me up on OKCupid needs; a friend or partner to share in the future with who matches my private wit and intensity who can see past the surface and cultivate a life on the things that matter! Now, I can’t do that for them, I don’t expect anyone to do it with me.

So it’s the wrong way to approach the question. What do I really need then? I’ve always had the answer. The attractive environment. I need to be that bird who decorates his nest and puts on a dance. I’m just a horny bird who can’t dance hard enough and who knows the choice decorations are a few miles beyond where my wings start cramping. People fall for the artifice. They cultivate their personal illusions, and yours can’t be any more damming or less inviting than what they’ve rehearsed. Beauty is an illusion? Tell that to a soft cock in a sexual neighborhood it doesn’t belong. What you need is the capacity to deceive and maintain that deception. This explains why at the front of my years of writing there’s so much talk about manipulation.

I’ve found myself pretending I want what others have. I’ll think I want “the regular job” with “benefits” and a retirement account. I’ll act like I want to get up and put on clothes that make me unrecognizable. I want to pretend that they’re getting paid much more than I am or have any more free time or free mental space. I don’t exactly fall for this illusion of “security,” but I know the social animal in me is screaming for an environment that I might fit into without buttoning up my shirt and lips. Baby rape and crackhead jokes fly pretty freely at the local DCS office? Hey, I might fit in where the reality is always considerably worse than the joke.

I know I don’t want what all that entails though. I know it because I’m not there. I’ve never really been one to force myself into an untenable situation for any longer than was necessary. Is that what this moment is? Necessary? Are there forces at work that squeeze the fuck out of my chest that know more about what needs to happen down the line? When you run out of answers, appeals to the unknown unknowns are always tempting. I can entertain the thought, but I’m not that big of an idiot to claim it’s real.

I’m sure here shorty I’ll get bored of sitting here and drive back to town. I’ll line up in the CT queue, start the next episode of some show I’m barely interested in. I’ll make another $100 and then pull my car into the corner and beckon back pain until the morning where I’ll do it again. I’ll try to keep a lookout for any “reason” “the universe” “decided” I don’t require money in an even easier fashion and the “purpose” of pursuing my goals “alone” and “too slowly.” I clearly don’t understand anything, so the idea that I’d even be able to identify it if I saw it is suspect at best.