[1034] Sackboy

At some point, I just have to start this damn thing.

I mentioned to my supervisor that I analogize my work life to the amounts of proverbial shit I have to eat. Groups, while making me eat considerably less, still lets some shit rest on each bite. In an ideal situation, much as when I’m eating actual food, there’s no shit in it. I don’t mean trace amounts because we’re all covered in poo particles. I mean a noticeable, unnecessary smell, flavor, and consistency that poisons the fundamental nature of the meal. Driving 3 hours round trip in a truck, for 10 months now, to conduct a remote role, that’s shit. The shit consists of the sentiment, “Well, you’re technically a hybrid-role counselor. Yes, and you’re technically an out-patient clinic who happens to admit people you shouldn’t and betrays your pill-mill nature with some regularity.

I also recently spoke to my reoccurring dream of being, less “trapped” in a mall or big house, but sometimes I’ll find myself just looking for the exit, and I never find it. I have an idea of where it is, I speed walk my way to where I think I need to go, but then the hallway bends in a way I don’t recognize, or the stairs let me out to the wrong floor, or the final 50 feet extend and get bogged down with rows of obstruction.

My supervisor, in response to my shit-eating analogy said, “Well, nothing’s perfect, right?” I quickly retorted that I’m not after perfection, I just don’t want to eat shit. Whether I found the front door, or safely landed after jumping out of a window, I want to find the exit, and I’m irrationally trapped for what amounts to a lack of imagination or need to wake up.

A common sentiment from the people in Groups is about how they need the structure and accountability. I’m told fairly regularly that it’s appreciated when I, “call me on my shit.” The “shit” clients are referring to is the vague distance-building language they use to skirt past intentionally using a coping skill or engaging in self-care. It’s when they work themselves to death for people who don’t give a fuck about them and then they ask for a dose increase before trying to balance their day or setting a boundary. This is where I can never take credit for your sobriety, because a persistent boundary or a daily balanced practice are merely my suggestion after observation. You either do the work or not.

How do you obligate someone to the work of being their own source of structure and accountability? I implement literal accounting in mindfulness exercises. I hold my people to rules for how the group will be structured. You hold the line and wait. The longer you hold the line and wait, you get “institutionalized” psychologically. We’re the products of a lot of line-holders, healthily or unhealthily. It’s why I have a degree and nightmares in my 30s that I haven’t done my homework. It’s why most of the world, regardless of their health, status, or intelligence, is on some level paying the bills, staying alive, and using language that suggests no genuine desire to be a “leech.”

They’re much more fragile lines than we wish to believe. It’s only a decision away to violate a norm or create something with its own lines that challenges via its very existence. The trap people get into is believing they are establishing new norms or that they’ve created anything in the wake of their reaction to the current standard. To react, destroy, or protest is categorically different than building, protecting, and incorporating. One leaves you at the mercy or folly of what you’re reacting to. The other is filled with work and opportunities if only it can be recognized, maintained, and celebrated.

Work, in my experience, speaks for itself. I, pretty habitually, do as good if not the best job at whatever, at least in a professional context. I clean deeper when I’m scrubbing bathrooms. I’m efficient in my driving and notes. I manage time, people, and policy with ease. This keeps my name out of genuine contention about my value, for all it also conjures regarding my personality. I celebrate myself. I reward myself. I refuse to play along with nonsense when I don’t have to and I don’t lie to you or myself. I work to find the truth of the vagaries in my feelings and ambiguous nature of my motives. The blog, for the infinite amount of things it might say, will speak for itself when I’m done. I’m working.

I had a mild panic moment thinking about my spending. I almost forgot, at least bodily, that I’ve already done the math. When I did it again, I discovered that even including my bills for the rest of the year, all of my spending, driving, food, parking, shows, airfare, etc. amounts to just over one paycheck a month if I stay till the end of the year. If I radically dial back my spending, I’m still out of debt in 3.5 months. 98% of my debt is shows still to come, and my new computer. I, still, just don’t really care, even when my body wants to forget here and there.

I do feel trapped, which is nothing new. I’m trapped by the absurdities of my business relationships, the insurance fuckery and capitalism, and even the weather. A tornado blew away houses kinda like mine about 30 minutes away, so now I spend another $1,000 a year in insurance. I can’t make our therapist answer the phone or troubleshoot a login issue preventing us from moving forward to get empanelled with Medicaid and Medicare. I’m born to a country that doesn’t believe you should pay for anything related to health and goes out of its way to corrupt the systems that tried. Where’s the exit?

I suffocate on just immensely oppressive irony as well. You know how I’ll find a girlfriend? Get verbally and physically abusive. I’ll find someone willing to bail me out after I go to jail after we fight. I’ll find someone who in private will defend me and speak highly of how good and honest I am in how I contribute to working things out together. If I start gaslighting, the desire to have kids will overwhelm her. If I develop a drug habit, we’ll get a prime opportunity to discuss all we’ve overcome together. If I just cheat instead of look for a way to be open, she’ll cry that I’m not fucking her enough!

You have a lot of money? Cool, why don’t you use your position in life to back yourself into a corner that needs someone like me to prompt you to be mindful about how often you’re screaming at your loved ones. I hope your newfound peace and clarity will allow you to thrive. God knows I’m not working to open my pool, fixing up my side-project house, or getting together with my extended family that doesn’t try to eat each other alive.

My most panicked and desperate friends will occasionally reach out to me, either looking for solidarity of the sort I’m often unable to provide, or because they know, in fact, how I will respond and then that can be used as the pretext for lashing out. It’s very weird. I can tell they can’t tell they’re doing it, but in magnificent feats of irony, the once (for “fun”) time I might ask for help (or hell, lunch), it’s crickets, excuses, distracted distance, or inevitably wholesale silence if not outright banishment. It’s pretty crazy-making actually, and I think it speaks to why I’m so enthralled with compelling messy family depictions on TV. Do I really wanna be one of the Shameless characters? Fuck no. Do I want to be on the verge of death wandering about the ‘verse? (if you know, you know.) Again, fuck no.

We don’t see what we have. You might profess to want structure and accountability, but it’s baked into what you’re doing, or not, already. You have to look for it. You have to know what it sounds like and speak the truth of it into the world. If I carried on, you might get the impression I’m envious or jealous of the people I see living with relative blindness to the nature of their different privileges. I’m lucky enough to know it’s not about me or them though. We’re all plugged into the inescapable. There is no exit, and the task is to make peace with wandering around. You can wander with an abusive partner, all the money in the world, or with a series of habits that serve to distract, but you can’t not wander unless you choose to stop, set up camp, and draw a line.

I have a lot of lines. Probably more than can be accounted for, but they come through when I write. I’m not going to get caught up in lies. I can’t think straight, feel good, plan, stay organized, be righteously indignant, or care about literally anything if I can’t find as true an understanding of something as I might. You get up and arms about the issue of the day? I’ll keep asking the annoying question until you remove yourself from the reactive space. I think J.K. Rowling is running that program at present. I pay attention when my body crosses lines and explore why. I’m willing and practicing the habit of asking if new ones need to be created and if I’ve crossed one.

I’m not going to be pushed at work into a space where every time my phone goes off I feel stressed or performatively sigh. I’m not going to let my finances get lost in a sea of favors or sentimentality. My cats aren’t guaranteed a spot in my lap. Everything I’ve achieved so far, and plan to get in the future, has been me building the kind of environment in which I hope to thrive. I get to make the drives to my shows, I don’t “have to.” I get to build on my land. I get to play, read, and watch what I want as I please. My conversations about my business are about what meetings I can get invited to, not “If I had my own, I could…” I have my own, and I do.

There’s $700 sitting in my account that wasn’t there a month and a half ago. I’ve spoken with most of the surrounding probation departments (those people are incredibly hard to get on the phone.) I’m showing up on provider lists and getting called. The larger context is still a series of larger mouthfuls of shit, but there’s my miraculous unsullied seed waiting to sprout. The watering can, soil, air, and gardener are all covered in shit, but the work and the ideas that allow the seed to grow form the protective lines worth holding.

It's incredibly lonely, but not lonelier than playing dress-up and pretend. I can make peace with my missing perspective regarding the relationships I thought I was forging. I’ll run on the fumes of my spite until it kills me. It’s movie-magic that puts the whole crew or family on the same page. It’s fake. It’s not something to aspire to what you see on screen, anymore than it is to aspire to the cartoonish mythologies that plague pathological families and religious ideologies. You’re working regardless. Either to normalize shit-eating, sound-making (a lot like saying words, but not quite), and distancing from even the memory of what it takes to be an accountable world builder.

[911] TV Made Me Do It

It's getting late and I'm feeling sickly after doing 50 squats on a plasma donation day, so I'm gonna talk about TV.

I've been thinking a fair amount about how and why I watch so much TV. The easy answers pertain to the mild compulsion to complete things broadly, the informal "points" that seem to accompany the binging or gaining of familiarity, and the general mild interest I maintain for anything I haven't seen yet.

I started watching TV aggressively when I found myself with considerably "too much" time on my hands after college. I had money in the bank and no worries about bills from doing the drug studies (also little to do beyond watch TV in those). None of my friends were particularly not-busy nor interested in making any more time to do things together than they did. When left listening to my internal body clock and with nowhere to be, I'm immediately up all night so there's certainly no better time nor excuse to find a screen, right?

I remember thinking to myself I only watched "good" shows. There was a certain dignity in it for me. The critically acclaimed, show-up-on-every-list type shows. I never got the inclination to watch things sped up. I just would have felt a kind of foolish or missing out if I couldn't marvel at The Wire.

It moved into a space of trying to understand the shows my parents watched and making up for the cartoons I never got to see all of growing up. I think around the time I started watching ER is when it occurred to me to start speeding things up. 331 episodes are not carried by particularly thought-provoking or plot-moving intricate details.

I broke my thought process of only watching "good" shows with Arrow. I know people who were really into that show and I still have no idea why. I wanted to be able to argue details. I wanted to mock and joke more effectively. I wanted to see if there was something there that I was perhaps blind to, but I doubted it. The same can be said for Twin Peaks which I've authored pages of arguments against all for nothing when I discovered a fan video detailing just what it is Lynch was after. But the "fight" with an ardent, if equally oblivious fan, was fun.

A lot of progress recording sites were experimented with and Trakt started getting its legs. It compiled lists of the "Top 250" movies or shows of all time. It would start telling me what was coming or what else was getting an unnecessary reboot. I could turn watching TV into a collecting exercise. If you don't know, I used to obsessively copy down animal names into a notebook, filling every inch, searching through encyclopedias, and parents' friends' books when they doubted my efforts. It feels good to click the little check mark and shame the non-believer.

I started developing an affinity for certain actors or story-tellers. I could start to discern when someone was trying for something verses working for a paycheck. I started getting a hint of feeling like an "insider," who knew little details about career paths or projects. I wasn't getting nearly as obsessed as I was about animal names, but it's gratifying to chase an instinct down a google rabbit hole and discover you were able to recognize an individual's voice or be right in who they claimed to be influenced by.

Part of me also wished to prove a point about time. There's so much of it. Over the period of years where my friends were becoming less social fun and exploratory and more hyper paranoid and focused on how to "adult," I felt like I was carrying a certain kind of flag for the existence I have now, and I wanted to prove I could still do all the little things in service to it, watch as much TV as they played video games, or significantly more, and still move towards what examples I'd prefer stood out about my pursuits and goals. I'm not butt-hurt people spend their time otherwise, I'm ashamed they don't also get at what they said was really important.

I wasn't just watching TV, or when I had to, working all day and night to get things moving here. I was getting myself immensely stressed out about the state of the world reading article after article. At one point, not unlike when I obsessed over religion and would respond to things with book-length answers, you could name a country, and I could name a damning thing or several about it. I remember an instance at Sports where I caught myself off-guard in how much I was talking about Malaysia when prompted. TV offset that to some degree.

I weened myself down from reading about the world, at least from "news" sources. More time for TV. I completed lists. I got used to the idea of subtitles, in fact preferring them for things better watched sped up. I would marathon anything explicitly recommended. Awards lists, "cult classics," whatever shoddy hipster website said was underrated or niche. I wanted to know what shows meant the most to individual countries. I wanted to know what movies or characters other characters were referencing. I wanted to see every series or project the characters from my favorite shows got involved with. You think I watched Suits for Suits? I really liked Suits, but Zoë, dammit.

I learned that my reformulated concept of "good" shows causes me to slow them down. The dialogue feels like it matters or the jokes deserve the timing. The scenes are begging to be taken in and the plot, inevitably recycled in some manner, tastes a little different in how the actor is portraying it or the line was tweaked. It's how you can get nuances in "cop show" or "angry alcoholic/smoking white guy." It's how I'm confident in agreeing that representation is important, but woke or purely identity-based storytelling can still be boring as fuck if the characters, ethos, or perspective doesn't transcend superficial presumptions of value and avoid reducing to cliches. Luther, Atlanta, The Mindy Project, Broad City, Ramy, and the first few seasons of Girls figured out something Insecure, Master of None, Lady Dynamite, and the back half of Girls did not.

Currently, TV is something of a meditation. Maybe I'm reaffirming my view that a good portion of what exists on thoughtful-nerd-TV shows are shameless rip-offs of The Twilight Zone. Any time there's "family" magic that keeps a show running is something of an interesting miracle to think about why those people in that setting or with that set of writers in this era. There's still plenty of the compulsion pushing me through sped up third-spin-off series like Power Book III and The Flash (I managed to refuse the shitty DC rabbit hole, mostly.) But I can put them on while I drive or clean or weed whack.

I'm currently at, approximately recorded of course, 43,532 plays of 1,082 shows and 2,892 movies. I like to play with the numbers. One movie a day for 8 years is all it takes to catch up. Combined is 1,194 days worth. And I keep the bills paid, chores done, yard work, read/audiobook, podcast, and spend a solid amount of time listening to music or meandering about town.

I like to think about what's my favorite and why. Inevitably, it's what has a prayer of staying on my mind for any length of time. Right now, that's Rick and Morty, Mr. Inbetween, Last Week Tonight, Dave, Mr. Pickles, One Piece, Impractical Jokers, and Ted Lasso. I like to think I've found a place for each individual show like I've tried to cut out for each person as an individual. I want to be able to discern the voice and respect the slight skews in the perspective. We're constantly iterating and reflecting different things about our eras and headspaces. Maybe you find that vibe from looking at art or unpacking layers of music, but I think at bottom, for the true connoisseurs, we're all looking to connect with the same thing. Or even just connect at all.

I don't feel guilty about "wasted time." I'm not watching TV "instead" of otherwise respectable adult or responsible things. I'm sticking it into all of the cracks that would otherwise be filled with something equally absurd or "unproductive" as if I have some quota to fill before I die. It's free. It's considerably less interesting, even my favorites, than if you elect to actually go bowling, eat dinner, or talk about and help create what we may do together. It's a tool to keep me from anchoring myself to something that might be considerably more mentally or physically taxing. I know I'm obsessive and know how it can work against me.

I take a lot of pride out of knowing "something" about topics, even if it's just to like or dislike. I like the enthusiasm bubbling up when you tell me you're considering watching one of my favorite shows. I'm not memorizing air dates or converting my speech into a series of one-liners from shows, but sometimes something will stick and show up in a blog or just keep replaying in my head until I figure out why. I smile to myself when professions of "I waste so much time!" are made. Like, if you lock yourself into this moment, I promise, you'll start finding all the time you need.

[795] First To Last

I'm pausing halfway through one of, if not the, best episode of Game of Thrones I've seen. I don't even know if this will have anything to do with the show, but this is feeling like the thing I need to do before I finish it.

I went to a bookstore today. I looked around and then eventually asked if they had the two latest Firefly books. The cute hippie-adjacent girl said they didn't have anything by the author, and then said, “You know, if it's meant to be, it'll be.” She smiled, and settled back into her, what I take to be generally chill life and work task at hand. Of course, as pleasurable a sentiment as I'm sure that is for her own life, I'm moved to disagree. Before she offered that sentiment, she said they could order it if I wanted. I'd also bet that she's heard of Amazon. I also already have the books on Kindle.

Nothing, to me, is “meant to be.” The essence of the drama and perpetual confusion in life is that things are indefinite and indeterminate. We're watching. We're watching our favorite shows, and watching the stories play out in our books. We're fictionalizing our past and present in order to cope and move past and generate “Hang in there baby!” sentiments to usher later generations along. You weren't meant to find your spouse or have your kids. You weren't meant to find a lost kitten and nurse it back to health. It wasn't written in the clouds that I was to walk out of that bookstore without hard copies.

If it was, “responsibility” wouldn't be a thing. “Justice” would be a laughable notion. “Progress” would be impossible. That is to say, all of that could also be true, and I'm flatly upside down on your God's vision for us all. Fine, but then the conversation's over, you don't get to lament either of us ending up in hell, and you've without irony robbed your savior of the reason to forgive people. That things aren't meant to be is what makes them special and worth fighting for. That things could go in more directions than you could imagine is why we continue to watch familiar themes in different worlds. Even if it's an old joke to consider which Game of Thrones characters are going to die anymore, you still don't know. Even if I know which Firefly characters have died, I still don't know what's in store for who's left.

What you don't know is what keeps you going. The fork interaction where someone you meet wisps you away. The state you find yourself in after enough new or difficult experiences. I was reading old blogs. So much of myself is still right here in what I wrote 7 or more years ago. I'm still hashing the same fights, carrying the same stress, still befuddled beyond befuddlement at how so much could go so wrong, while I otherwise seem to enjoy a regal, albeit with the loneliness of a king, life. I don't know what tomorrow brings. I don't know when I'll find myself no longer clenching my jaw. I don't know how quickly things can shift to dramatically worse or better. A car swerved into my lane today as I was coming back from the land. The driver completely ran me off the road in order for me to avoid getting hit. Her, teary-eyed and shaking, I catch up with 30 yards up the road and learn it stalled and she lost control, my initial anger immediately quashed.

It happens that quickly. That's the kind of danger and death scenarios always at play in my head. That's how I stopped getting “shocked” when one of my favorite characters dies. We're already dead. We're already living the high-stakes shootout depicted a thousand times. We're screaming out our battle cry with every painful experience and doubt, and defying the gods by continuing to exist. When you invest yourself and your experience that dramatically, you can let everyone die around you, because the larger war with death is here.

I almost got it perfectly wrong the other night. I thought I was going to write my first blog from the land, annoyed that I couldn't get moving as fast as I wanted in dropping off my TVs. I wanted to arrange and pay out the ass to do something “unnecessarily now.” And I wanted to take the indifferent posture of those around me as a deep hatred for me. I forget that it's never really personal. However selfish and insistent I think I might be, I'll never compare to the world around me. My battle, my story, has to remain that. My war is how I'm killing myself.

For all of my words over the years, it occurred to me that I've never invented one. Everything about “me” is a collection of things, abstracts, grunts and sounds handed down to me. What if I didn't have language? Who would I think I was? What if every single “why” had to manifest as a course of action in the world to find out the result? It's a trippy place to consider. How many horrible words could you use to beat yourself up with if you didn't know them? How meaningful would your relationships register if you didn't have the story superimposed over what they felt, or didn't feel, like? What direction would you head if north, west, east, and south were as arbitrary a path as how you experience wind?

The warriors would excite you. The bold and beautiful would put you under a spell. The dedicated and reliable you'd put yourself near. The curious would show you where to look. The fearful you'd try to protect and comfort. It's as simple as the envy we hold for pets in their singular focus or expectations. I create a story along the direction I want to go. Whether it's as brilliant as a classic, or perfunctory as the CW, I'm going to attract or repel the cast best suited for the narrative. This fire-breathing dragon needs to keep incinerating the dead.

[58] It Goes Beyond Art

Why do we feel for characters in stories? Getting emotionally involved with a cartoon figure in a final fantasy game or guy portrayed by such and such actor that was in another movie you like. The people hurling the air at a hundred miles per hour and your gut starts wrenching. It doesn't have to even be the main character that will get hurt or killed and your literally sad that that person is no longer with us. I feel like there are some movies or games that I get more emotionally involved with than I do the people around me. They tell stories of way more struggle and hardship than I'm looking for, yet it doesn't matter how many times a person gets shot, how many times they said a sentence they thought would be their last, I still find myself wanting to be there and wanting to be them.  How these makeshift families get formed between the characters that are so strong.  It's such a weird form of chemistry I'd venture to call it love. Pure love and passion that someone has put into telling a story that you couldn't help yourself if you tried to not want more of it. I just got done watching the movie Serenity which was formed after the fans of the show Firefly decided that simply calling something cancelled was not enough to consider it dead.  These people portray that love in a such a way that I don't want to think that there won't be another movie or that they won't bring the show back. The deeper connection that makes them a family no matter who leaves or what threats get passes back and forth. So many crazy experiences they all share. It just really is bothering me think that I can find this feeling from watching a tv show, playing a game, or reading a book, but don't feel a part of something like it in my everyday life.  There's no homework or bills in these worlds. Stay alive and stay together. So simple and direct that I find it amazing how much more truth and love is exchanged than in real life. Well then again, perhaps there's the catch.

When I say I want to be free and simple I feel like if I could escape to the adventurous and dramatic worlds that don't exist and be surround by the types of people that seem to "get it" in the same way I do, then no matter what boss battle was up next, or spiraling spaceship falling out of the sky I was on, if any moment was potentially my time to die I would never be afraid and never feel alone.  This is the very reason god was created. It's why I get frustrated when people talk of giving their lives and acting on the behalf of one. As wrong as it would be for me to lose myself completely into a world of spaceships and powers it's just as wrong  for people to get lost in their faith.  I truly do understand that feeling, everyone does. I see the true passion come through the beautiful artwork and stories of the things I like. You can say the same for your interests. Try to convince me, I dare you, to downplay the significances they had in my life. How they influenced my thoughts or actions. How they helped me adapt a new mannerism or way of looking at things. This is the significance that I try to respect in people's lives no matter what they attribute it to. Where is the line when it goes from being an important part in the intricate machine that it essentially you, and instead become  a whole mess of "the rest" that real life is always pilling on? Life is a game, earth is the playing field, you have your will to be set, go. All the stress, all the lack of love is just other players trying to cheat you out of what your trying to win. They will get in your way until you may not even realize what you've won or what you should be looking for.

This is a glaring endorsement for both the series Firefly and the movie Serenity and I hope they can move you in the same kind of way they have me.