If I’m going to find a place of remote peace, I need to get a better definition of “the problem” and ways to go about “fixing” it.
Every day is a bombardment. The problem is as big as the fate of the country, surviving climate change, or the next pandemic. At every scale, there’s an opportunity to get sucked up into the exciting and thriving drama. I often speak of people as each unto their own black hole that is hungry and waiting to pull you down. The abstraction that is thought, made slightly less abstract through writing, is my ongoing exercise to look for something more tangible, with direction, or conceptualized in a way that it provokes action.
I’ve been done with my last job for 3 weeks, over a week of that time I was in Vegas, and 6 more days of that time I had a show to attend. Part of this last 3 weeks has felt like an eternity. Even after I learned how to sit and watch TV, there’s a large part of me that’s nagging me to “go.” I’ve very slightly boxed it in with a piddling expectation of myself to do at least 5 squats, read a chapter, read an article, and practice an instrument for 30 minutes each day. I’ve not managed to do that every day, slacking in the practice in particular.
I thought I’d have so much more to do. I even wrote about it while in Vegas because I was ready to get home and start. I don’t know if I hyped it up or expected people and time to start magically responding in quicker and more comprehensive ways than they ever have, but I found myself prioritizing my TV shows and doing little collecting/OCD-adjacent organizing of files. I sent a few emails, called a law firm, and then proceed to “chill” without feeling chill.
I also have tabs open with grants to explore. I’ve budgeted for creating a non-profit arm of the wanna-be counseling operation to perhaps help facilitate getting money. I’ve barely toyed with exploring how to modify the website, and the first place I asked pretty much confirmed I, of course and again, was looking to do something no one knows how or ever conceived of doing. Again I get, (and maybe it’s always just an ignorant feeling) stuck, and proceed down my moving pictures path.
I could also be looking more aggressively for a job. I’ve been reticent to begin. What’s the goal? I know what it isn’t. I don’t just want/need “more money.” I was making plenty of money at the last job and, somehow, I could only be persuaded to keep buying concert tickets. I certainly intend to slow down that habit, but the first 2 months of 2024 have about a show every week.
I kind of want to just fuck about. I don’t see, “realistically,” much of anything beyond pain, loneliness, or utter destruction on the horizon. Realistically is in quotes because I can’t see the future and know I’m but one incredibly small distorted window into the world. Very few are ever coming with me to a show. Even fewer are remotely interested in contributing towards anything I’d regard as a larger ambition with the land or in business. I’m not “doing it for the troops” or trying to “save the children.” I talk often enough about being an engine of spite, but even that is starting to sour.
In the most important sense, as I currently exist and carry on, I am alone.
Is that a problem? I’m certainly as capable of being by myself as I am running the party, so it’s a problem insofar as I still desire to joke and talk or be basically human towards anyone. In theory, I can always continue to invite people out even though they won’t come, or go extra hard in celebrating days like yesterday when I went out to eat, bowl, and then watched a movie with my friend. I don’t want to get weird though. I’d like to stay grounded and have a perspective about time spent with people. It’d be cool to consider myself worth hanging out with or as someone more people would seek out and utilize.
But that begs a different kind and set of questions. That phrasing made me think of being a counselor. Experience has taught me that, no, in fact, people do not seek out and utilize. Actually, they make an entire production out of pretending to do just that.
Perhaps it’s that I don’t really want much of anything anymore. Maybe I’ve been informed enough through experience, conversation, and attempts at doing things “better” or “differently” that something about my wants died. It’s entirely possible I’ve been in some kind of zombie state trudging forward with this semblance of ambition or greed that just betrays my day-to-day or sense of what’s actually possible anymore.
I don’t want to be a social worker, so why start a counseling business? It’s an opportunistic and kind of cynical attempt to cash grab. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if I’m actually good or not. My “oversight” doesn’t have the time or interest in reviewing my notes provided I’m not actively hurting someone or threatening her license. I have no one intelligent, accountable, or interested enough to require anything of me than to pass tests and pay fees. Just because I can structure an environment, ask probing questions, and be non-judgmental (read: not hateful and shaming) when I listen does not mean that anyone I’m speaking to is, at their core, interested in that project at all.
I’ve had well over 300 clients in the course of counseling. I’ve had dozens of those clients, and at least 2 or 3 every week, tell me how they wanted to keep in touch. Not a single one has scheduled an appointment 3 weeks later. Not a single one has texted regarding a base touch or to make a referral. Not a single one has asked if I’ve found a way to coordinate getting their Suboxone in conjunction with counseling. Why? Are they all liars? Well, yes. But also, no. They live in the normal world where words don’t really mean anything. For us autistic-types, you can choose to feel heartbreak, disoriented, or to boringly relay the predictable observable pattern and change your expectations or approach. Or, don’t, and disingenuously suffer as though you don’t know what’s going on.
If I frame my sense of “problem” in what might otherwise be reducible to “the human condition,” I will fail indefinitely. People being full of shit is not my problem. At the level of civilization, it may mean the end of us all, but locally, practically, I’m not cursing the heavens that people lie, don’t even know to what extent, and it means I have to temper and humble myself. I’m willing to attempt to capitalize on this propensity, and the seriousness with which I take my role is me combating my cynicism about just how far you can take it.
My problem is attempting to get back my time. I haven’t forgotten that. I want my time. Whether I’m seeing a comedian I’m mildly into, reading all day, or pretending I have a clue how to build something on the land, I want to feel the extent of the possible freedom to do so. In this moment, my computer is begging me to job search, read dozens of pages of grants, or click about government pages for more excuses to spend money for certifications and numbers.
My head isn’t in the game of seeing Ari Shaffir tomorrow. I’m not “excited” by the prospect of getting return calls or emails from those I’ve reached out to. I haven’t felt a genuine sense of growth or progress in almost…2 years? The things or people I’ve attempted to invest in have done nothing but punish me. The things I create register as decorative towels in the bathroom. Sure, it looks a little better, but what’s the real utility there? Is the light above the mirror sitting in a gaping hole? Is the black water flowing to an open pit? Are you sure you’re focused on the right part of this bathroom improvement? Or are you grasping at the only thing you feel you can really do, and now it registers as some kind of meaningful “fuck you” to your otherwise hopeless circumstances?
Given that I want my time, there is a certain comfort in sleeping all day, waking up whenever, staying up all night, reading through books that have otherwise been glaring at me for years, and continuing to marathon the never-ending list of shows. I think a lot about “retirement” when I’m organizing and making lists of TV. One I just combined a bunch of other lists into has 4,325 days worth on it. It includes things like old talk shows (1100 days are just 3 talk shows and 3 soap operas). At my 2x pace, for archaeological purposes of course, in my infirm years, I could be done with all that in about 6 years. 5 I bet if you cut out commercials and intros/credits.
I’ll probably have 5 years behind the wheel or on planes if I get my way. Isn’t it weird to think there’s a way to see every Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Days of our Lives etc. in your “spare” time? Even one of those shows laid on normal sensibilities feels impossible. What does that say about us? What does that say of our perception of what we’re worth if we’re unable to even conceive of ourselves properly within the time that exists?
All this talk of TV, but it’s helping me frame whether or not I have a problem. I, again theoretically, have a decent amount of time left to live. I don’t want to spend it in a rage at an abstract machine. I don’t want to spend it feeling beholden to forces that don’t recognize me or do anything for me. (I’m not making a Libertarian argument against taxes.) I don’t want to spend my time as a Cassandra imploring people to recognize we are, in fact, going to die, and the things we profess to care about need work in their creation, cultivation, and defense. I don’t want to spend my life pretending I have anything people need or find myself attempting to persuade them I’m worth anything.
Very, very rarely, someone genuinely listens to me or follows my advice. I’ve yet to get the feedback, “That was some fucked up shit you told me to do.” Hatsam listened and has turned into a more confident communicator and leader. There's my one client who was emboldened to self-taper after embodying my sincere praise for her demonstrable effort in service to being accountable. Clients who stopped killing themselves working to death I saw their faces loosen and language mellow. Clients who established even one boundary with their family or job reported nothing but smiles and a sense of liberation.
But they had to do the work. I’m just passing along my “common sense” and observation of reality. That is, you’re not listening to me when you’re taking my advice. You’re listening to the part of yourself that sounds like me. You’re finding a way to feel deeper about that blunt “do it” person you have in you that people like me feel plagued and stuck on. I still believe I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I just don’t know if I care to anymore. I don’t trust that I won’t go into darker places out of spite to get what I claim to desire.
Who would stop me? I had a whole blog on that notion not too long ago. Who would even recognize what I was doing? We live in a paradigm where naked criminal pride was not only elected president, but threatens to do so again, perhaps while in jail for unlocking the, in my view, plainly evil, inclinations in us all and celebrating them. We’re getting louder than any other noisy message that literally nothing matters but what you repeat to yourself and the world most often. Whether or not that’s “true” doesn’t even enter into the equation. The consequences and the power of doing so are felt at the cellular level. It’s religious fervor for a Cheeto messiah.
Is my problem that people are born sheep? Certainly not if they’re lining up to pay me, right? Certainly not if they could keep their sheep shit and sheep wool from wafting over into what I’m doing. But that’s the rub of living in a society. I’m never truly by myself or can be left alone. Someone is coming for me. Whether it’s the fallout of explicitly terrorizing forces or the consequences of paralysis and ignorance, the time I presume to have left is under immediate threat. I don’t need something abstract to scare me into a desire to amass wealth and explore options. I live in a society that got hateful and violent over masks and vaccines. The next bug I suspect will be more deadly and we’ll be even less equipped psychologically to deal with it.
I could choose, right now, to abandon larger entrepreneurial goals, Door-dash just enough to cover credit card payments, spend the vast majority of my time alone, eating hot dogs and ramen, and returning to a familiar place for decent chunks of my life. Recall, I spent most of my 20s functionally retired just sitting on drug study money. When my dad was hurt, it was movies, video games, and then more movies and video games for years. I deliberately tried to save money and conserve in college, not spending too much on food, splitting rent half a dozen ways. You think I was going to shows, buying game systems or tools, or investing in a truck and living space? I was practicing my guitar for 10 hours a day every day or going to the pool.
I’ve had many, many “peak leisure” points in my life as I dramatically swing from working myself to death to doing nothing and then back again. What if I just stopped doing that? What if I prioritized doing the minimally viable thing like a store trying to get a single cookie recipe perfect before they even whisper the word “milk.” “One demands milk!” You decry. But perhaps I’ve been fucking up the initial recipe for so long and hocking this mockery of a cookie, I’ve lost the thread as to why I got into cookie sales to begin with. Maybe I’ve wasted so much effort and money for a store, marketing, napkins, and a little bell on the door, but it’s never tasted right. Incidentally, the quality control team lost their ability to smell during covid and have been lying that it’s returned.
I don’t even know if I “need” to feel part of something bigger or more meaningful more than I “want” to. The spell of having a group of friends was incredibly powerful, naive as I was about what they were to constitute. Before I appreciated the extent of religious capture, I genuinely thought people were reasonable and persuadable. Before I literally worked for and as “The Man,” I thought they were filled with intelligent, intimidating adults who knew something “special” or “complicated” others didn’t. Not. Even. Fucking. Close. We’re all just idiots playing out emotional baggage in spiteful leveraged ways and pretending we feel, do, or care more about whatever-the-next-thing is than we do.
Some of us get scared and endlessly whine like Trump. Most of us reflexively find who to blame and go into lawyer mode for our own righteousness. Plenty play the narcissism of condescension and pageantry like my brother. It’s all a show. For who? For you. You’re front row center for every dismal thought, poorly set expectation, or failure of will. You’re here to distract, “entertain,” and pacify you. That’s how you clap for our troops (because they’re for US) while you let them suffer in the street. That’s how you tell me, straight faced, you care about children you target for unnecessary removal. That’s how you detach from any call to action as a summary and uniform dismissal of all things. It feels not only appropriate, but downright required.
I’ve never thought I could help or save anyone. I wasn’t saving children. I wasn't lapping up the praise from clients. I look at every compliment about my looks from the blind with the same elevated suspicion. My concern then becomes whether or not I can save myself. I’m not a “prepper” by disposition. The things I’d like to save myself from aren’t really things I personally struggle with. You know, you invite me to dinner, I’m there pretty much every time. You, always, too busy, broke, or not seeing my texts I’d love to never experience again lol, and it’s nothing I can fix that doesn’t beg for detachment.
Do I even want to share my experience? Writing is, and always has been, for me. I need to feel better, alone, forming a narrative that when I go back and read dozens of times, I better articulate what’s otherwise an agonizing and antagonizing fog of angst and consternation. You can “like” my posts. Do you share in what they say? If I explicitly ask someone to comment, just like a client in group, they’ll have loads to say. If I wait around looking for someone to speak or share something back, I’m as alone as I ever get. I don’t know if there’s two more contradictory words than “social media.”
We’re content hubs for consumption. I’m consuming shows. They’re not inspiring me to create or join their ranks.We consume our families, never giving them what they need, even if it’s just honesty, because it would impede our ability to feast on them in the future. It’s a feast to fuel the narrative of our relationship to them, their pathology we’re *immensely grateful* we don’t share, and the lesson we can all learn by caricaturing their example. We let our work consume us, because we don’t really want to be here. We don’t want to feel like *this is the choice I made? We don’t want to acknowledge how much we destroy in ourselves and others by being gluttons for punishment.
Slow. Be slow. Be simple. Flow. I have $2000 in cash, $11,000 in debt and minimum payments for bills and card payments reaching about $500 a month in total. I haven’t looked that deeply for any kind of job, let alone one that would pull in $500 a month. I don’t have to do much of anything. I’m not obligated to keep beating my head against the wall of (my most-forgiving framing) the human condition. I’m not necessary. I don’t matter. They can’t see me. Do whatever you want to do, even if it’s next to “nothing.” No one gives a fuck or is keeping score except you.
