[1185] Match Game

Standard disclaimer, I sense there will be acutely disparate threads I'm attempting to weave together.

LeVar Burton exercises a certain kind of wisdom I wish I saw more of. On some of his stories he will include in his preface that there's a content warning in the episode description, "If you're so inclined to read it." He's a sympathetic person who you gather gets a sense of what his characters have represented to people. Even if he's intimately familiar with the kind of life experiences that might harden his shell and deride the idea that we should be coddling each other, he's not dismissive of his potential emotional impact. He's not going to decry "trigger warning!" and virtue signal, he's allowing you to treat yourself as you wish to be treated. He invites you to use your own time to dig up and decide if a short story is going to overwhelm you. It's subtle and thoughtful without capitulating.

A lot of comedians have the same conversation about whether or not "woke" made it impossible to perform. The landscape is always evolving, yet somehow famous comedians stayed famous, employed, and navigated. Ones that might have had to be more subtle and thoughtful in their jokes adjusted and thrived. Those who wanted to beat lazy cliches into ignorant sounding bad jokes cried the loudest. That isn't to say audiences couldn't be blamed for drifting too far into "righteously offended" territory, but it did mean here was again an opportunity to have a nuanced conversation, and either/or drove a hyperbolic discussion into the ground. Somehow, the most "anti-woke" comedians became literal fascist apologists.

Now, we're seemingly culturally viscerally reacting to "DEI." As if, by themselves, the ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion are anathema to a thriving country. Why? Those who were championing the effort refused to be nuanced and wise. They refused the lessons of the giants whose shoulders they professed to stand upon. When you do that, you cede the ground to the crazies. You foment grievances that piddling-middle types sympathize with because there's an incredibly compelling grain of truth wedged directly in their eye. I want a diverse community. I don't want people to be given things they don't deserve or haven't worked for. These ideas aren't at odds with each other in most reasonable people's heads. Institutions have biases and some are particularly corrupt. Every system and institution are not the same. 

This morning I went to breakfast. I work in the Indianapolis area, and every time I go into Sunshine Breakfast, I'm greeted in Spanish. The first 2 times the waitresses gathered I don't speak Spanish (at least not conversationally) and I was able to order without issue. Today, my waitress didn't seem to understand nearly anything I said, and after several extra minutes and assistance from another one, I eventually got my order in and correctly delivered. My first thought was that were I to open a French restaurant in France is that I'd be sure to know the language well enough to take orders.

How do you read that story? As an opportunity to engage on some racist tirade? Are you immediately thinking all sorts of things about my "questionable" instincts? Is it merely confirmation of all the hateful things you'd lump together associated with Trump's rhetoric about immigration? Was it just a mild inconvenience you think I'm foolish for even bothering to bring up? There's a fog. I want it to be simple, but as I discovered, even something that was simple twice, and why I keep returning, wasn't so much the third time. 

You can't build "wisdom" around a floor that's always moving. You can't share values that increasingly only exist between you and whatever your phone is showing you. 

I think, for example, that if you're going to bother to build rules and policy, you should make a good faith effort to follow those rules and policies. We now live in a country where that whole concept is functionally mute. Violently attack police and attempt to overthrow the government? Only "partisans" would care to pursue you in their unfair judgment of your morals merely vying to stop the steal. These kinds of signals trickle down into how, or whether you can at all, set expectations everywhere else.

I'm an adult in the room in my oversight of children every day. Why should they listen to me? There's the classics of, "Because I said so," or "Because I'm the adult," which on their face, are mindless attestations of power. Those rely on both the child's ignorance and the implicit violence I could inflict to force the issue. As is the cultural moment's habit, let's say it's because I'm interested in keeping them "safe." Safe became the new metric for an ever-illusive means of controlling behavior and narratives. How often we belabored the "harm" one might experience innocently discovering LeVar is still reading, and being shocked by the themes or language. 

Why we used to listen to anyone was because it was, in fact, keeping us safe. We listened to the elders who survived the precarity of existence and learned a thing or two. We listened to the experts who figured out ways to capitalize and heal. We listened to the writers of myths and journeys with embedded values which tied directly into our ability to survive. Now? The information landscape is so fluid it's psychologically impossible to ground yourself without an innate intelligence, practice, conscious recognition of the ways it's moving through you. The way my mind works, I wouldn't have a prayer of maintaining my values or see ways through the weeds without writing. I go out of my way to stay awash in media, and the disorientation occurs regularly. 

One form this takes is in the whiplash from listening to something like Pod Save America, and then the next episode be Honestly with Bari Weiss. Both kind of annoy me, which helps me stay reflective and critical of what they're saying, and who they're choosing to talk about things with. I feel the Bari crowd simping for religion and MAGA and can feel the permanent smirk they have by successfully persuading at least a million subscribers that they're the new "middle." I feel adrift and nearly drowning listening to Pod Save America reiterate everything that hasn't worked and ruminate on how impossible it feels to coalition build, message, or find remote joy in so much ongoing destruction. 

If I were to just draw from memory what I agreed with from both podcasts, I don't think it would paint me as a radical. 

Democrats are hypocrites when it comes to "money in politics."
Democrats need to be messaging constantly across every medium that will have them, but also be able to credibly speak to the work they're actually doing for the working class.
The conversation around trans issues went off the rails before anyone actually studying things was consulted. It's both okay to acknowledge biology and sex differences and make room to help those with dysphoria or who choose to express their gender differently.
I want a country with strong borders that concerns itself with protecting western values.
I want the people working and living in the country to be able to get citizenship. I think so much of the discussion about the "rule of law" is garbage, pageantry, and disgraceful when you put a convicted felon rapist at the top of the pyramid.
I don't know if I've heard 2 honest conversations about the greed and monopolistic capture that informs prices.
Privacy is important.
Social media shouldn't be given endless power to do whatever they want with our data.
Hating each other isn't going to solve anything, but many people are openly espousing and washing the laundry of the most hateful ideas we've ever popularized.
Your average person isn't sophisticated, nuanced, or remotely interested in their well-being like a proverbial "informed citizen" of a democratic ideal. 

We're dumb animals first, and there's a reason the propaganda works. I've been looking for refuge in this idea for weeks. I keep reminding myself that, even this language right now, is lip gloss on a screaming ape species only not flinging its shit because it's eating to reload. 

While writing this, I got an email from my boss, somewhat retaliatory, somewhat signaling "concern," about my approach to a child that is not appropriate for our program. I say that given their written policy standards, not because I just don't like kids or this one in particular. I've bent over backwards for weeks attempting to not only assess his behavior, but the staff's responses, and the ability to follow a "behavior plan" that's allegedly supposed to mitigate his outbursts. 

No matter how many conversations and emails I've had with her, his parents, the principal, the other staff, and people acquainted with the situation, she still found the temerity to suggest it's something like me fumbling to intervene with this kid not according to his plan that resulted in his write-ups. I genuinely want to quit my job in this moment, because it feels like that kind of "perfectly impossible" scene where you've been contracted for a suicide mission. I'm not going to quit, at least not yet, but it's the kind of existentially hopeless place that's all-too familiar. The purported idealists don't wish to engage the hard reality. The one begging for reality to be taken seriously gets punished. Or, in Trumpian parlance, "I've been hearing things...." Oh, really? Cool, guess nothing matters and we'll just go with whatever you say or heard.

The crazier things feel, I look for definition. Writing is definition. You can "infer" whatever you want from what I say, but I can articulate the feeling, "I want to quit," allow the moments after to play out, and keep my job. I was hired to run a program. When I identify and define the things that were making it previously impossible to run, the next moment shouldn't be suspicion that I'm the problem. Especially not when the problem has been one for years. Now, if you're part of the problem, and my definitions are forcing you into new accountable territory, which you subsequently poorly react to, the fuck am I supposed to do with that? 

I'm not a "woo woo" person. I do think math says we're all connected, and things have felt elevated, especially the past few days. I've spent years finding a remote "chill" level to operate on in spite of it all, and lately that shit's proving ineffectual. I'm craving an ability or justification of simple and pure reactivity. It's the moment when an addict might relapse. It's when you've reached out to a few people to try and talk to, and they aren't there, and you're stuck, and enough time hasn't passed to make the worst option resonate as catastrophically as it will inevitably feel over time. When all the "little things" stack up back-to-back at otherwise shit times that compound. 

I'm exhausted. I'm going to go back to work, eat a lot of candy, complain about my stomach aching, and then go to a comedy show and drink tonight. The future is bleak.

[1121] The Friendly Ghost

Today feels like a day that could be described as "crazy-making."

Am I sick, hurt, or otherwise dramatically impaired? No. There's been a theme and a confluence of forces though. Let's go.

This week, literally everyone has canceled on me. For work, for fun, for things I was anticipating to use to feel useful and good. I spend pretty much all of my time alone, talking to no one, blazing through TV, playing my instruments, reading, or getting myself into some trouble playing with something I shouldn't because I can't stand feeling idle and useless anymore.

I lay this at no one's feet. I could, theoretically more than practically, invest a considerable amount of time attempting to connect to other people, organizations, or things to do so I don't feel as reliant upon others and their consistency or capacity to manage. And, in fact, that's what I've done in getting started with CASA, and hopefully seeing that spin-off into more first-hand interactions with clients, other volunteers, and the inevitable messes that will bring.

First, one of my attempted hires to fundraise ignores my outreach. I thought she was on the verge of stealing $1,200, tracked her down, got a brief invitation to her life's blow-up, and she's since refunded $500, on what she's proposed is a schedule to refund the whole on her paydays. In the meantime, I patiently idle and refrain from catastrophizing her silence, and now 6th missed scheduled discussion, and who knows how many ignored texts.

Ok. I got an early text that client 1's phone is broken and needs to be rescheduled. I attempt to call client 2 around our meeting time, no response. I text if they are okay. I get a "Not at all, can we talk later today?" I text later in the day, no response. That whole day was designed around another person supposed to come out and talk about plans to upgrade my space. They had other life complications with family illness to deal with, so the project lingers.

I'm left with more idle time. We need to be incredibly clear that whatever I feel about that time, it's not being laid at the feet of "everyone" or anyone I refer to. I do not blame a single person ever for focusing on their sick loved ones or deprioritizing whatever we had planned.

I proceed to go about my days. I go to the symphony for the live music playing of Star Wars as the movie runs. An entire section of kids talked, crinkled pop cans, and just generally made it about them for the entire film. No usher told them to shut up. No seething patron closer to them said anything. They just took what could have been a pretty straightforward enjoyable experience, and my inability to mute them turns them into a few aggrieved lines in another bitching blog.

Before the show, I walked around the continues-to-be-miserable city a bit. There's "cowboy" bars with country music that mostly surround the symphony. There's healthy servings of homeless people ranging from decently aggressively shouting to sleeping in places it's hard to tell if they've closed early or closed permanently. At one point, I'm almost certain a dude was following me. I'm in a "major" city, wandering, feeling isolated and arbitrary, and oh, look, there was also a pro-Palestine protest on the circle where they're screaming an anti-semitic chant and parroting empty party lines.

On the ride to the city, I was listening to some of Peter Boghossian's videos. He's known for setting up hot-button questions and agree/disagree lines he asks people to stand on and defend their position. He's, in a world that made sense, simply trying to remind people that we're here to engage ideas and should have a remote sense of what we're talking about or what might change our minds. Overwhelmingly, the people who brave his exercises are not that articulate, nor claim they can be moved, at least in the moment.

I'm now back home, where a comment I wrote on, arguably one of the worst places on the internet, reddit, was removed because I described getting into a "pissing match" in a comment to another person who was asking for feedback on what people might want in a new TV-related website. The term, in and of itself, I was told is the #1 rule that's not allowed and the person wrote "p - - - ing" like that as though it's particularly aggressive language or like I said, "I'll piss in your face, cunt!"

It just echoes that ideological capture and perverse power dynamics that I feel plague pretty much every level of my experience.

I know, as much as I know anything, that no one holding a sign on that boring and sad circle is persuadable. I know that no elderly usher at the symphony feels they are obligated and empowered to insist and correct inappropriate behavior. I know those who are eager to belong, be it through their status as a victim or the oppressed, are going to die on a hill that transcends parody when mocked up against real life. I know that my clients who cancel have a vastly different concept of "get better" than I do. I know the "innocent enough" obligations and life circumstances that relegate time someone might spend with me to be practically incidental.

I also know that I feel that I need to escape this overwhelming belief that I can't trust or look forward to things. It's a feeling that stifles my capacity to invest both in myself and in what I can only speculate others get to feel for what's captured them. I don't believe it's worth it, whatever "it" might be, that I'm going to plan, try, or work on for more than a day or so. It's a hollowness that haunts whatever I might do to prepare, or when I stifle one thing and rearrange another, trying to be there and be present and not suck you into this ever-hollowing sense. I can't fill it with the manufactured drama and concern that appears to fuel so much of other people's experience.

Whatever I do or think I can create, I can't erase the context I'm working within. The world's best talker in a country where they don't speak the language is flirting with homelessness and starvation. The shared values and understanding that comes with an ongoing relationship or dynamic of cultural expressions and sets of experiences I just don't really have. It's not "never," but is 6-10 times a year I might get to spend time with my dad or a friend doing something fun count as the kind of fabric I'm trying to weave?

I'm like a ghost. I feel like I just kind of haunt things or memories. You have to think, I'm drawing on my experience of the last decade. It's not just been a particularly lonely or disappointing week or something. This week was just the same record blasted about as loud as I can take. But also, I clearly don't know how to "fix" it. I don't really believe it's a thing I can fix because my efforts to do so only seem to teach me ever-nuanced ways in which the problem compounds and reinforces itself.

You can't afford it? I'll pay. That doesn't matter, it wasn't about being able to afford it. You don't have the time? I'll come to you, work around your schedule. That doesn't matter, it wasn't about not having time. It doesn't interest you? I'll do whatever you want to do, I'm open and amenable like that. That doesn't matter, it wasn't about their lack of interest. When you're feeling good and fun and free, I'm not the one on your mind to call or invite. You were desperately waiting for that window so you could "catch up" on the "fun" you're otherwise indefinitely denied. Every moment where you can feel remotely human or "free" is not one you're trying to interject a bunch of Nick P.-ness into.

There is no striking-up conversations with strangers and informal friends anymore. Maybe that's just a problem with me? Feels bigger, but I don't know. My "best friend" I gave my terms to and they still haven't been met, so I'm not lending myself to get back into his spin. My business partner, who I also see maybe once every 3 or so months, has been barreling towards a crash for probably over a year at this point, refuses to slow down or establish better boundaries or utilize me in any way but to - very maybe - decompress an inch when he bitches about something? I have to tell clients all the time there's a difference between indefinitely complaining and still being a ball of stress and actually coping and incorporating whatever it is that's getting at you and changing your behavior.

I have another friend I see maybe once every 2 or 3 months whose dad might be dying, and she has her own health issues, so it's like where would I get off thinking we should bowl more often? lol I don't know, it's this weird thing where you're invited to pit your desire to feel like you belong or have a friendship against their given tragedy or circumstances. It feels like it would be infinitely unwise and unfair to "blame" as though they're any less stuck within their contexts than you are, but you happen to be the loudest example of anyone you know on how to defy circumstances and work towards what you might actually want and need.

Blame language is overwhelmingly a move to adopt nonsense framing, but emotionally, you're like, am I just supposed to kinda glide through the air until I happen to crash into you? To be extra clear, this feels like an existential thing with everyone to some degree or another. I do not get the sense there's any remotely deliberate care and focus to cultivate and protect a mutually beneficial dynamic. It's like every hangout is getting away with murder or their mind is physically unable to be present because it's been captured by the superficially "chosen" drama.

I mean it in a more damming way than that, which implicates this litany of sick family members. I think we're also gluttonous. When you're not choosing the drama, you're feeding on the familiar sensibilities of your relationship to it. Aren't you needed? Doesn't that maybe scratch the itch that I'm taking 9,000 words to articulate? I'd like to feel useful and needed and like a "good boy" for doing what I'm supposed to by way of expressed care. I don't. No matter how much people tell me I help or what I say makes sense, it does nothing for me, and I don't think a single person has even tried to articulate to me they understand why.

It's pretty easy to disregard everything you're not doing to gain control or a sense of personal responsibility and agency by attending to everyone else. There's also the unyielding irony where I'm witness to what appears to be people who will go to the ends of the earth for especially the ones who don't deserve or can't truly receive what's being offered. Almost like each party knows what's on offer isn't made of what either of them needs, but this perverse Munchausien bargain is struck. What kind of massive deserves-to-be-alienated cunt would try to turn your lovingly devoted heart into the problem!? You're right, I see it now why no one wants to hang out lol.

[1119] Improvised & Explosive

It's been a struggle to write the last few weeks. I've started, stopped, erased, and just moved on 6 or 7 times. Almost nothing I've done or thought about has felt "worth it." I've had annoying things happen. I've been mildly inspired by a handful of things I've watched or read. But, what's the point? I usually write because I need to feel better. If I'm not really feeling one way or another, what then?

I've been considerably more observant of myself. I'm watching each beat of a situation as it might elevate. When I'm hungry, begging to get even more frustrated about my dead car, annoying service agents, and prices to fix things, I'm feeling each decision on the way to saying something shitty to someone who can't shake themselves out of call-center mode. When I think I want to be social and interject myself into a random conversation at the bar, I pull out immediately when the polite signal to fuck off shows up, then go home almost as quickly as I decided to try being out.

Yesterday, I went to a comedy show. I drove my truck, and was quickly reminded of the gas cost disparity against driving my Scion. I get parked, and Parkmobile with it's defaulted to my Scion information, takes my $7.25 and does not allow me to change the vehicle I get parked. Of course. Their chat "person" cites policy, kicks the can to Indianapolis parking, and when I called them, they told me to email someone else as they also couldn't be bothered. I get a response this morning that says they can only refund with a confirmed meter malfunction and that it's the responsibility of the driver to indicate the correct parking spot. I did indicate the correct parking spot.

It clicked with me the nature of the shitty soup we're all swimming in. How quickly and "reasonably" we take these kinds of scenarios for granted and "normal." Of course, it would take nothing for an entry-level program to let you select the right license plate, but 1,000 or 10,000 oversights a day or week or month is capitalism. In a world with common sense or decency, this would never be a conversation I needed to have with anyone, let alone 3 or 4 people over several days, and only likely getting them to capitulate through some level of fraud or exhaustion. The "peace" I make with losing the $7.25 is going to look like a measure of ongoing property destruction or defiling of Indianapolis.

That's my bargain. I refuse to go quietly into the night of getting taken advantage of. You want to talk about the immaturity or disrespect, save your breath. I'm not choosing violence, I'm forced to contend with the policies of violence that are designed to make us all feel like we're helpless. Institutional theft and laziness is not a standard I'm willing to live by.

Any time I get a cog to break, you might be tempted to call that "hope" or a win. But the point is that I shouldn't be prompted to and training for how to break people. Yes, I've, fairly routinely, exhausted people into doing the right thing. That's not sustainable.

I think I feel perfectly desperate to live along some pretty basic lines of fairness and common sense. I know how complex that "simple" statement really is. To this day, the incidents from my life that I'm most incensed by, I never get push back on. You don't want to pay twice for a parking spot, whether you "have the money" or not. I, technically, don't, having been in debt the last few years, or my entire adult life, depending on your frame of reference. How can a college-educated single person who lives in the middle of nowhere be in debt? We've normalized the grift. Those with the power feel entitled to capitalize on your innocent missteps, ignorance, or desperate circumstances. You're too busy, tired, or blind to bother with how deep the hooks have set in.

I'm not. I have the time. I have the autistic superpower to make the "trivial" my number one priority until I'm satisfied. Again, it's not sustainable, but it is possible, and I've succeeded enough to feel like it's worth it every time I try. Also, trying in and of itself speaks to the broader principle and point. We don't lose the world through millions of people just turning evil and burning everything down. We lose it through negligence. We lose it through taking things for granted and refusing to protect timeless basic shit. That battle is never over.

I'm in the nonprofit business of teaching "coping skills." The catch in attempting to teach such things is that they need to be translated into your own individualized language. I write, for example. But, if I write to "feel better," I'm the only one who knows whether or not I'm writing in a way that gets there. I'm writing with a purpose to expose myself to difficult or trying thoughts and circumstances and hopefully get them incorporated. I want to think about and find the focus for the hundreds of things I care about or would prefer to do. A large or chronic problem has a habit of totalizing my awareness. Instinctively, luckily, I was able to discover the light at the end of many meandering tunnels into my thoughts.

If I conceive of the world as a series of chronic and unhelpful problems, fixes range from elusive to impossible. I observe the consequences of what I perceive to be chronic conditioning, and I locate courses of action within my agency. You don't want to provide a reasonable refund? Ok, I can choose to behave unreasonably and in a reactionary way until I'm satiated. It's not the preferred fix, but it's on the table. I've bemoaned "capitalism" and the pathologies of American myopia as much as anyone, so I rearranged my entire life to spend more time in the void and in search for asymmetric attacks.

Coping is complex because you don't even realize you're doing it. I see people who have next-to-zero capacity for recognizing how they are or aren't coping. Then, I see people who are utilizing refined and specialized versions of basic coping skills ultimately against themselves. Say you have a supportive family, money to indulge indefinitely, are well-read on the chronic behavior patterns you emulate, and exercise, eat right, and sleep just fine. Great recipe for working yourself to death and downplaying how much the capitalist machine is eating you alive. This appeared to be the fate of all of my smart-enough middle-to-upper-middle-income and management types I lost contact with from college. Why pay too much attention to a thousand injustices 5 days a week, when 2 you get to sip expensive whisky and climb a rock!?

I think about all of the paths I didn't follow as a result of my demonstrated classroom ability I hesitate to call "intelligence." I read a lot. I read about how people succumb to the miserable echoing trends culturally that manifest in unique ways for their field. Previously "sacred" or "exalted" paths riddled with horrifying modern realities. Doctors experiencing a suicide crisis. Researchers publishing "popular," and unscientific, crap to keep the grants flowing. Nurses getting screwed by traveling nurses who essentially function as scabs who get paid more to eschew long-term benefits and undermine unions. A lack of leadership in the trades selling out members and cutting corners. Lawyers living 3 and 4 deep and still barely affording rent. "Teachers" not even needing degrees. Pick an industry, you'll find the rot immediately. Anyone else still mourning what DeJoy's done to the post office?

How do you cope? How do you learn that's what you're currently poorly doing? Who tells you that all of the best things about your have been weaponized against you and exploited past the point of you even being able to recognize how they were supposed to function in an environment that wasn't originally designed to kill you? First, you have to accept it's your responsibility to listen to and respond to the persistent antagonizing voices. You don't have to become obsessive and compulsive chasing down your $7.25, but this paperboy understands the principle in demanding his two dollars.