[1154] Scream Queen

My disposition is shifting into a familiar gear.

For as much as I espouse the value and virtue of having the freedom with my time to do with as I please, it comes with caveats. First, I don’t know anyone with time like I do, so I’m almost always alone. When I have time, it doesn’t mean I have money, or the required tools, or skills, or focus, or motivation, or weather to do the things I otherwise like to do with said time. Most of my hobbies are not ends unto themselves. I’ll fiddle about on one of the instruments, but I have to be in some pretty low places to find the focus to actually write a song and fight with DAWs I don’t understand.

I get dozens of ADHD targeted ads trying to…apologize? for what maliciously might be described as “laziness” or “wasted potential.” You see, I’m actually just without enough structure. I’ve navigated the structures of school and 15 different work environments. I’ve never had issues showing up, doing what was asked, and moving on. Whether I was working 20 hours a day like when I started my coffee shop, or just needing to meet my 1 client for an hour once a week, if the structure is there, I stick to it.

Well, I’ve had no, or not-enough structure for too long, and it’s throwing me into, not precisely a panic, but it’s raising a lot of alarms. I’ve complained about debt for years now, and until the last few months, I’d never paid a dime of interest. Interest is now 9.7% of the money I have spent all year. I cannot psychologically stomach this. As a result, this morning I debt consolidated. How much debt am I in? Right about equal to the amount of money I would have gotten had my uncles not stolen money from me when my grandma died. I’m twice the amount I was expected to make (when it was half as much) from selling a house I spent 10 months renovating. I’m about as much as I would have hoped to make from any sane and reasonable grant for offering counseling and casework services at 20% of what the State overpays shitty monopolies.

Most people are familiar with the horrible, horrible process of applying to jobs in the modern world. You think you’re done just because you have your resume uploaded to half a dozen “the jobs are here!” websites? HA! Spend literally hours on the worst designed systems known to man filling out the same information on buggy spamming websites for prestigious roles like bagging groceries or delivery driving. You know, jobs that absolutely need 7 pages of redundant information.

I’ve gotten really lucky in my life so far. I was able to do drug studies for a couple years and amass enough money to buy my land. As I was trying to transition out here in a smart or patient way, I got fucked. The consequences of that fucking are still playing out. But, what it’s meant in general is that I have not had to spend the vast majority of my adult life swallowing loads of complacent shit about how I’m infinitely bound to whatever my shitty job might have been at the time. $5,000 a year pays my property taxes, electricity, and internet.

When I work shitty jobs, I do the math. It usually costs me somewhere between 25% and 33% of my take-home pay just to drive to the mother fuckers. So, even when I’m technically making enough to cover “basics” (if you’re raised poor enough and know insurance isn’t always part of that equation) I’m still often losing money just because cars break down, gas fluctuates, and the handful of times I’ve tried to meal prep I ended up throwing out half the food I got sick of

I’ve spent my adult life, save the last 3 years, pretty much living as though “fun” isn’t a thing. I’ve gone in debt to get my house in order. I’ve bought “toys” like a new computer because I absolutely needed it for my job and hadn’t upgraded for 15 years. I drive cars that have been crashed into or guzzle damn near as much oil as they do gas. Half my clothing is free giveaways from places like bars or clothes that have somehow maintained some kind of shape since high school. I know how to apply and get SNAP. I know how to cope with being functionally indoors or at home for weeks and months at a time.

I’m the kind of person who should NEVER be in any kind of debt, difficult situation, or piddling “I’ll take any job!” kind of place. I have my degree. I have special skills when it comes to interpersonal professional engagement. I have a supervisory level addiction counseling credential. In the past, I’ve gotten my real estate broker’s license. I’ve engaged hundreds of people at a time at varying levels of ongoing crisis. I’ve learned how to do fun things like woodwork in my free time. I’m a doer. I create. I struggle with every second in which I can describe myself as a “lazy piece of shit” because I didn’t occupy it with something to stimulate my brain or demonstrate my worth. It truly is a pathological base disposition to belabor my strengths as I lament excruciating details impeding my small conceptions of progress.

The self-hatred spilleth over. Now, I want every shitty job. I want to exhaust myself until I’ve paid off the money. I want to ignore my hobbies, TV, or the idea that I deserve a single second of my time doing something like this, instead of moving some box from one side of the room to the other in a warehouse or bagging your groceries at the white trash Dollar Store up the road.

If I could have “simply” maintained an uncritical and complacent disposition, I could have just kept my job enabling addicts to not really improve. What’s wrong with me? I pretty much had my remote position, wasted gas to the office 2 days a week 1.5 hours away aside. This is the critical piece of what is wrong with me. I fucking believe in myself! I try, desperately, to practice the behaviors and beliefs I arrive at after writing. If I think I’m being an exploited and exploitative cunt who is contributing to the veneer of insincere “help” that plagues disingenuous social work, THAT ACTUALLY BUGS THE FUCK OUT OF ME! I can’t ignore the ick. I can’t play along and adopt the catch-phrases.

I have left so many otherwise straight-forward or “comfortable” positions for this reason. Until recently, I haven’t had a job, paying next to nothing or otherwise, that couldn’t pay off my debt in 3 to 6 months. Why wasn’t the debt paid? I needed to go to extreme levels of distraction and coping because I was spending 12 to 15 hours a day poorly playing along. If I couldn’t pack the handful of hours or weekends with other shit to do and think about? I might lose my shit around clients. My mouth will get me fired and more alienated than it already does.

The wild swings between doing “nothing” with all of my free time, to this craving to occupy every second with something on the clock making me any kind of money I know is wrong or inappropriate. But also, I need to hype myself up. I need to get comfortable with the deadening that happens. I need to mourn the loss of the things I’d rather be doing while I’m standing for 8 to 12 hours a day or being directed by someone who gives me immediate pause and cause for concern.

I can’t ever seem to find some happy middle ground with my collection of skills and experience. It’s either 40+ hours a week, in office or equivalent, taking home 70% of my pay and eating 70% of my day, or it’s peanuts in the form of plasma donation and odd-jobs offered to me out of pity, no less appreciated and very needed, from friends and family. Part-time? No no, that’s a trick to get you in the door so they can impose mandatory overtime. Well, that’s the case no matter what role you get.

I also can’t seem to stomach the idea of constantly starting from the bottom. Every field has its “pre-license or certification” “x-hours you need to blah” “a year from now you might be qualified to tie my shoes!” kind of stupid fucking process. It’s fees. It’s tests. It’s arbitrary because the role they hired you for actually needs something they’re gonna take 9 months to even hint at bothering to show you how to do.

I should deliberately avoid trauma-dumping my experience across roles right now.

I had to back myself into a corner that raised my internal threat level. Included in my debt consolidation plan, I’m also thinking about returning to school for my Master’s in counseling. Why? Because I don’t want to pay some greedy asshole for the privilege of using their license number to run my nonprofit. I don’t want to have to keep reminding the people fawning over how I do counseling that I’m not licensed, technically, just “credentialed” and trusted to conduct crisis intervention. It’s about the money and plausible deniability for liability if someone loses their shit, not that any of the companies I worked for genuinely give a fuck. I’m extremely timely and organized with my paperwork, they like that.

I’ve worked 4 jobs at once before. I very nearly passed out, but I did it. I was also 24 and not 36. I also know that when an idea gets stuck like “I’m fucking sick of this, fix it,” I won’t be able to let it go. Before I started writing this, I applied to 15 more jobs, all over the map, but applied nonetheless. I’m getting up at 8, it’s 2:15 right now, no matter how late I stay up, to hit the job placement spot in town. I’m reaching out to people who might let me host a fundraising event for free in their spot. I’ve got the list of things sitting around my house and property that can make their way to facebook marketplace. I can start breaking down the large pile of scrap I collected over years because I thought that’d be a good and consistent form of money-making for too long.

There’s a world where I go into something of a fugue state and fix my problem in a few weeks or couple months, but I genuinely shudder and worry about what the true cost of that would be.

I want balance. I really do. I want a healthy medium between how much TV I can watch, or the 20 years of video games I need to catch up on, or the 80 hours of music production tutorials I need to filter through, or the dozens of pieces of wood I’ll fuck up and my otherwise capacity to deftly psychoanalyze, encourage, and model behavior. I wouldn’t advocate anyone do what I’m gearing up to do. But, more to the point, I’m not at the mercy of the compulsion to try, I just deeply appreciate the utility and my capacity.

The goal is clear, get out of debt. My arms and legs work. I can operate for months on 4 hours of sleep. No one is going to “save me” from myself like when I reached out to my “friend” that helped drive me to this fucked place altogether. I was thinking so naively that it’s worth turning every stone once a certain psychological threshold has been breached. I gathered his distance-putting pretense and superficiality immediately. You know what happened when I called another friend later that day? He sent $200 in anticipation of a work I’m going to do to install workbenches around his garage. He sent it after I told him 8 times not to. My former friend? He doesn’t even think he’s done anything wrong. This isn’t the mind-reading I caution clients against, this is me reading tone and his phrasing, “I can see why you would have that position.” Yeah, I bet.

This is the most chaos-like I’ve written in a long time. I’ve got like 4 separate things I could bitch indefinitely about. I’m fishing for a sustainable approach to what’s a flatly irresponsible and unrelenting place I’m inviting into my behavior. I’m so beyond whatever levels of anger or frustration I’ve bled onto pages in the past. Or maybe the numbing is doing its job. Or maybe, and this is a symptom of this state of mind, the fact that I’ve eaten 3 pieces of toast and some Cheez-its all day is maybe starting to sink in.

If I get 1 or 3 jobs in the next couple days and my new budgeting spreadsheet put together, it’s entirely possible I’ll write a 3 paragraph matter-of-fact digression about how I’ve solved my problem, and in 3 to 6 months at yada yada pace (with no overtime or a return to dreaded meal prep) this will all register like some frenetic fever dream accident blog reflective of a bygone era. Do I dare hope?

[1085] Bitching

If there's a better time to try and buckle down to do almost nothing but work, it's winter. While I am getting a certain satisfaction in building on reading and playing consistently, I'm not a fool and completely unwilling to acknowledge the debt I would prefer not to be in. I knew I was disrupting an incredibly comfortable applecart in leaving Groups, and I'm almost certain I'm going to despite just as deeply whatever I do next as I've ever done. I continue to wrestle with that, as peace will never be made.

Bear in mind, my whole life gets incredibly simple if I get a grant, let alone 2 grants. I, fundamentally, don't need a lot of money to be comfortable. That's the overarching point I hope really sinks in, both to anyone reading, and my own psyche. I'm not in debt with a mortgage, car payment, kids, or with even $500 let alone $1,000 or more due every month in service to my bills or credit card payments.

I can still seek and work with customers in service to my company, which is arguably at "side-hustle" level indefinitely, but still technically viable and paying me peanuts occasionally. I'm discontented overall though because every time I think about my company, I'm reminded of the stupid people and stupid variables, beyond my control, that fuck me for reasons they refuse to explicate. I am livid regarding the therapist situation. I'm prepared to get obsessive and spend-happy to sue for damages with the last insurance empaneling company if the refund, due in the next few days, doesn't come.

I browse articles online that show the forever-increasing income inequality and moves the sinfully-rich are making to amass even more. It's exhausting and debilitating. Anyone who pretends they aren't functionally rotting away slaving under this system is delusional. They've likely adopted a slave ethic and sense of faux duty or obligation, side-stepping the real personal responsibility to honestly assess their situation and figure out who or what to fight. I don't really know what to do beyond bemoan the situation as well, so who can blame them?

My life gets so simple when I'm able to, even briefly, find the focus to just play my guitar or get lost in a comic book. All I really I want to do anymore is pretty much within arm's reach. This is why I would be contented with a "mindless" job doing "data entry" for "minimum wage." I have to speak in quotes because nothing is real or means what it's supposed to mean. It's another exhausting mental hoop to navigate.

Why even write this? It's nothing new or interesting. I'm just trying to gear up for another headfirst charge into a wall. I'm trying to find the sanity that struggles to maintain in the face of all my insane, desperate, or "fuck it" behaviors.

While it's true there's an infinite amount of work, it's considerably less likely you'll find that work meaningful, impactful, worthy of your time, accountable, or paying you reasonably. We're led to believe there's some form of "noble competition" in our clamoring to survive amidst the overwhelming opportunities to indulge. It's all lies and incredibly stupid. It's all an effort to stay distracted. It has me floundering with, "The system is fucked, maaaaan" vagaries because I have run out of ways to describe it.

I need to read, head into town, eat, kill time, and see a show tonight. I need to see if I can actually get paid to deliver food again. I need to put in more waste-of-time applications to mostly-fake job listings. I need to practice my guitar "extra" because I decided to go to sleep early and wake up to conduct a more-normal daylight hour existence today. I need to acknowledge and incorporate what would otherwise be overwhelming anger I can feel swelling up at the absurdity of my circumstances. Appreciation practice doesn't obfuscate or erase the practical hells.

[932] Storied Toys

I'm as imaginative, creative, willing to fantasize, or naively capable of getting caught up in a compelling story or dream-like narrative as the next guy. There are a great many things I want to believe. That's what moves you, after all. Your genuine, unadulterated and compelling belief in your most hopeful mind's eye. It compels believers into cockpits, buildings. It makes you sappy and pliable after the hundredth re-watch of your favorite movie. It's what chills your spine and coaxes the tears over the edge after the perfect lyrics land on every overloaded sense. And, what a gift, the nature of your existence will do nearly everything it can to keep you from distinguishing troublesome “reality” from every imaginable world you might otherwise occupy.

I think I use my imagination differently. If it's most often an escape, I force mine to explore. My imagination is for running experiments, not pretending. My imagination prompts a search for what action steps I can take to bring it from abstract obscurity into lived and worked demonstrability. I feel trapped, in a sense, in my sense of reality. However I define it. Whatever peace I make with it. It's mine alone. Just like I'll be the only one who writes this. “Me” is trapped by these words, the impressions I leave, and the consequences that follow.

I force my imagination to work. I don't sit around and daydream at “random.” I watch “everything.” I let myself play like the characters on TV. I try to trap what I imagine into what seems possible. If you go about this the wrong way, very little indeed seems possible. If you refuse to trap anything, nothing really is.

We find ourselves trapped in many stories, but can't imagine acknowledging them. We trap ourselves behind big words left deliberately undefined. We trap ourselves within titles meant to do the work of what they're supposed to represent. We box ourselves in to genres quickly parsed by the algorithms more than capable of predicting what you'd like to surround yourself with next. You don't imagine you're trapped because, what else is there? We're thankful for our stories, no? We enjoy relaying our tastes and the warm familiar narratives we've built upon for generations.

Besides, doesn't “trap” make it sound like someone or something set you up? What? Do you think someone is trying to catch you? Or, maybe you take much comfort in how much every trap, humane or otherwise, is just part of your god's plan, and it's your job to fall in, not question. Whether you fall in to a pit of vipers or fall in love, fate is the wind to ride well above analysis. Why, if you're feeling or claiming you're been trapped by a story or ten, wouldn't you know it, just tell yourself a different one.

As someone claiming consciousness, I feel it is existentially imperative to identify and determine as many narratives as may constitute me as are relevant to a worthwhile existence. This is no small task. It's literally an infinite game. I'm always looking for myself. I'm looking for myself in how others conduct themselves. I'm looking for myself in how others tell stories. I'm looking for who is laughing. I'm looking at what and whether you're working. I'm listening for if you're bothering to speak at all.

It's only natural that so much of what I imagine is provoked by TV. It hasn't been until relatively recently (the last 2 years,) I've been able to do much beyond remain focused on providing myself a new floor to imagine from. Whatever you might say about how poorly my ex and I communicated, it was at least clear to me how directly my actions and motivation arose from a desire to help her. I have my latest dream, at least, a strong resemblance of it, so I'm trying to live it and create new things. Whether I'm imagining having the kinds of relationships on screen, or turning over the work to evolve what's displayed on my security cameras, the narrative is important.

I think it takes a big broken imagination to pretend you can “control the narrative.” It's the first move from someone wholly petrified by the responsibility and enormity of their individual task. It's so encapsulating a fear, we formalize it in fascist governance and are born predisposed to the psychological protection it offers. Tell me, do I look “controlled” when I'm searching my imagination in blogs? Perhaps when I'm lashing out or dissecting some forgone fight, inevitable given my disposition? Maybe I seek some kind of security in obscurity, and that's why nothing I say could possibly be understood. Easy to maintain a high-minded conception of yourself if you leave them always incapable of knowing what to criticize.

The narrative is important as long as you wish to get somewhere. Directions that take you in circles are for those that wish only to be dizzy. I wish to not only habitually redefine myself, but see it manifest in the world. I wish to remain worried if I'm fading before I'm due. I wish to imagine myself getting earned attention for doing work I believe in for people I respect...as people, if little else. I want to ride the flow that turns the work into every reason to live and spread the gospel of what's so amazing about now.

Lately, I've been feeling the squeeze, not of precious loved ones, but of what the TV stories and my own memories suggest they are supposed to represent. The TV gives you the lines, the enemy, and inconclusive conclusions. The memories get to marinate in idyllic spices and pair beautifully with wine you're prepared to drink too much of. I have a romantic imagination. It's a romance unacquainted with work and untainted by reality. I am able to recognize my imagination for what it is. It's an engine for desire, even lust. It's a place where the temptation to stop working feels altogether appropriate. It's a place betraying its own power by provoking me to call it a “trap.”

I can accept atrocity. So far, I've yet to be so traumatized that I need a permanent “escape” in some form of psychotic break or habitual chemically-induced alteration. I can talk myself into anything, but I can only work in service to so much. What I work on needs to bring about the consequences of what I deem worth doing, not what was most likely to happen whether or not I was there. That's my center and sanity. Everything I bear witness to while I write this is my work, from the stolen plush Steak N Shake claw machine animals holding up my faux insulation blankets to my tick-and-worm-free cat sleeping on my leg. If nothing else proves true, not even your impression of my view, the work to bring this picture into focus means more to me than words will ever capture.

Existence makes a lot more sense when you flirt with whatever makes up the feelings that tell you you need to. It's not the same as being carried away and horny or borrowing from tropes you're allegedly feeling regarding your offspring or insecurities. When you need to make sense of something and you need it to look and feel a certain way in order for all of the problems related to it to make sense as well, you change. You're not a default character. No one can just play you and press your buttons for predictable moves. It becomes insufferable that someone would choose to waste what you've made out of your character in service to their fantasy and ill-attended work. That they would reduce you to their mood or gossip and remain blind to the drive and work that justifies your being; it's like being invited into a suicide pact.

Then what? You rob them of their agency and reduce them to caricatures and cliches as well? You try to hold them responsible to your standards? You piss off and do your own thing? You linger, long enough for it to feel forced, on all of the things you just said meant so much to you? Try to squeeze the precious meaning and motivation for all it's worth when every new foray provokes apoplectic anxiety that perhaps nothing has made sense ever and your oft misconstrued narratives are ultimately suicidal.

My imagination is suffocated by what I don't know. I can't work with what I don't know. I can't fit a missing piece into a puzzle with an indefinite amount of pieces. I can't imagine “fixes” to undefined “problems.” I can't see the road I'm to travel if I'm stuck on a true-believer's doomed plane. What does that leave me with what I must believe about myself? What does that say about what has to be said in order for me to feel like I exist? Would I believe in me if I weren't fighting? Would I trust work I haven't done? Am I to be swept up by all manner of words. however you wish to deploy them. against the ethics and sensibilities I've decided to exist in service to embodying? I want to work, and it takes no work at all to merely exploit. Is there anything so exploited as the story we tell ourselves?

[776] Boo Hoo Bitching

Some days, I wish I wasn't so hollow that I could remember how to cry. That takes a dangerous amount of alcohol, but while I sit here and wallow, I feel like if I could just be a sniveling irrational idiot, maybe it would scratch the right kind of itch.

 

It just never seems to get better. I do not get lasting highs. I do not find “comfort.” I don't get lucky on things that aren't what I was born to take for granted. I don't feel stable. That's a board in the kind of floor I can't build. I don't feel stable for shit. The second I do? Here's a charge. Here's an obligation. Here's a particularly ridiculous case. Here's a frozen Hell storm.

 

I find it insane how much I've been willing to sacrifice, and I still can't seem to figure “it” out. I'm not a good friend or good with people? One field please. I want to create and build to my heart's creative delight? Okay, let me choke down your “real world” and budget in a way that might suggest a prayer. Think you're doing something right? Oh, hey there, did I mention one thing or another that makes sure you're glued to your helpless and flailing existence?

 

I hear so much bullshit every day. So many people lying, not about dumb big and thoughtful things like I must be registering as doing, but about dumb shit. “Well, I didn't actually see him doing coke, but I know for sure he used to, so it must be around the kids.” “I don't have a drug problem, no I won't screen.” “I don't have to punish my kids, they're so well behaved.” “I heard you guys love taking kids away.” “It's HER fault, not MINE!”

 

No responsibility, not a care in the world as they sleep until 2 in the afternoon in their disheveled house. No thought to the wasted time and energy using their spitefulness to weaponize us into nonsense interviews and questionable scenarios. Smoking themselves to death, drinking in “secret,” being poor enough that it probably qualifies as neglect, but not in an illegal way, I go from one house to the next hearing excuse after excuse. And remember, all of these people are the ones with kids. I at least suffer my treachery alone.

 

Is now the time to back track and kiss ass about institutional barriers and sympathy for poverty? I'm not feeling that. Because my point isn't about all the things that fuck you up. My point is about how you respond to them. Where's my caseworker? Who gets to pick up the slack for everyone I wish to blame for why I can't get where I need to be? How do I find ways to internalize blame for things like the weather? I mean, I know how that happens, but who can I commiserate with when I have the unshakable habit of often getting blamed for merely existing in whatever space I'm in?

 

I have you, words in front of me to reflect on indefinitely. You started soaking up tears well in advance of today. You get to carry the weight of flogged and tarred expectations. You get to whine and whine and whine and never make a sound. You get to be that guilty pleasure for the quiet friend now stalker who waits to see if I'll ever get around to doing or saying something properly crazy. Where would I be without you, oh words?

 

I just want to be alone. I want to be alone and do whatever. I want to go back to sleeping until noon with thousands in the bank I don't need. I want to feel normal in my way. It's not normal to watch as much TV as I do. It's not normal to have literally no emotional attachment to a single person or child I encounter throughout my day. It's not normal to keep pretending like every day spent making money for its own sake, or to pay off ridiculous tickets, or to bleed into an endless-array of Hill House never-done renovations, or like I should want to give a fuck about not being the guy who's trying to get himself invited to lunch.

 

I don't belong here. The world has a fair amount of decent-enough people who are trying in spite of themselves. Everyone's got bills and I'm not the first person to get pulled over for something stupid. If I were fat, or ugly, or dumb, or more in tune with a higher degree of childhood trauma working its magic to rob me of any form of productive adult life, I'd probably have a lot more friends. If I were able to drink religious Kool-Aid, I could get the Superman statue at work for my overtly pleasant persona and do finger-guns as I tell people how much I like them.

 

I'm just not. I'm not a nice person. I'm not a good person. I have an incredibly well-crafted mellow shell and “nice smile,” as one dodgy grandma put it, that lets me get my job done and whisper to anxious people like Cesar Milan. I don't want them groveling, pathetic, and deferential because they're terrified of my job title. I don't get off waiving “In the name of child safety!” as I tramp through your house or think it's an everyday thing to have someone take a picture of your refrigerator.

 

Why am I carrying on so much about my job? Is it “burning me out?” If only. I'm burnt out. I'm burnt out on expectations. I'm burnt out again, viciously, stupidly, believing something could go “right” for more than a few moments at a time. In this moment, I feel like I'm always going to be broke. I'm never going to pay things down. I could switch to eating bagged vegetables and Ramen noodles for 3 months, and I'll find myself with $500 cash and a litany of surprises, and not even the marginal joy of good meals to carry me through the pointless days. How depraved to bemoan being fed, no?

 

And no one's coming, no one's calling, no one cares. I could die in this chair tonight, some secret pinched artery that only happens after the exact amount of days I've managed to sleep incorrectly in a chair. I'd be lucky to be pilloried postmortem. I need to sleep. I need to sleep, but I'm afraid it's going to start feeling too good and I'm just not going to get up for an indeterminate amount of time. I'll just sleep through work and use my few sick days. I'll sleep through phone calls that only tell me not enough has been done. I'll sleep through a few hapless “friends” reaching out after they think some line has been crossed. If I have to wait, and wait, and wait, and doubt, and isolate, and conserve, and watch or read and pretend, I'd rather just sleep. God forbid things actually start to work. You think I'm insufferable now...

[705] Fuck Today

Today is a bad day. It's only 2:12, and I've spent most of it asleep. I don't know what else is in store, but it doesn't matter. At around 1 in the morning, I get an email from another useless Craigslist person telling me that I've been strung along in hoping for some help for another 3 weeks. They think there's nothing wrong with keeping someone waiting who's clearly deeply emotionally invested in creating something meaningful and profitable. I woke up at 6 in the morning feeling very tired, and texted the head of a construction company who contacted me yesterday to work on some apartments as a scab that I wasn't willing to risk getting injured on a job site without health insurance. It's been nonstop raining, I was in no way prepared to spend 9 hours pretending the 9/hr was worth it. He thanked me for letting him know, and then said, “good luck.” My email this morning read, “You have accepted the terms and conditions for working at Clustertruck” in 3 separate emails, pressing the thumb down on the point that there is no escape from anti-union, anti-legislation business practices, and you better get in line or starve. I'm trying to find the headspace to drive out to the land to drop off more money for my builder who, 3 different times now, I thought was supposed to be done building the bathroom, but something always comes up.

The Craigslist asshole reminds me of when I tried to be “robotic” in my understanding of how people operate. He echoed the tone and metre of my ex-girlfriend sophomore year of college. “Why, it's unfortunate you feel that way” is one of the most detached and ridiculous phrases you can provide someone when you've pissed them off. I do believe you have a responsibility to cope with your own feelings, but I'm not and have never been under the impression that any one person is an island and we don't affect each other. I feel like a girl who's been waiting for her long term boyfriend to propose after he said he was going to a dozen times. Then when he breaks up with me, he doesn't understand why I'm upset because “it just makes sense for him personally” to pursue women he wants to fuck more.

I'm confused on what people think my motivation is. I'm very angry that people think I'm not entitled to my anger. I don't think they appreciate the threat. I don't think they look to the future. I don't think they even believe they have lives that overlap and are of any consequence. So when I spend 3 weeks of “deliberate patience” to hear, “actually, I was lying all along” that's a net negative to not only my disposition, but to my concept of why I'm bothering at all. You know why I want to sleep all the time? Because enough of those moments back to back tear me shreds. You know why I signed those terms? Because the glancing blows some editorial from what a labor activist writes isn't going to bring down the exploitation machine we've built into how we work together. Turning down the scab gig at least wasn't me actively pursuing one more cut.

I don't need to conduct my life with any sense of purpose or joy. I can turn into the manipulative and indignant. My last attempt to refrain from inflicting that on the world is to try and sleep. I've already pulled out, stayed up all night, and stuck to my shows. I've picked a library's worth to read, and lined up the instruments to practice. I'm moving to the middle of nowhere. I've whittled down my “friends” into the handful of depressives who are as glued to facebook as I am and subset of adults who barely bother to use it at all anymore. When you recede far enough, you either kill yourself, or you lash out.

It gets worse though. An episode of misdirected anger is one thing, but what happens when you can no longer feel one way or another about it? Something I said hurt? What are you anyway? Another liar? Another person who's given up. Another bag of cliches pretending we're closer than we actually are? Another pseudo-competence for any realm beyond your own preservation? You want to chastise me, or lecture me, suggest a book to read, or wring your hands that you can finally be done listening? It's all on the table. Who cares? I speak to avatars and pixels. My appeals thrown in my face. My ideals trammeled beyond recognition. My words as hollow as my next irrational attention-seeking panic attack.

It's a bad day because writing isn't making it better. I'm going to hunch, and huff, and linger. I'm going to press too hard and dig too deeply into pimples and scabs that aren't popable or pickable. I'm going to just stare. I'm going to stare at the life I'm not living and the people I'll never meet. I'm going to stare at the empty and afraid faces who have the gall to tell me they understand how I should behave.

[499] Color Me Blue

I feel like I’ve been something of a tragic little headcase lately.

Waaah! I’m angry at my friends. Waaaah! Fake and broke social scenes have broken down. Boo-hoo it’s one problem and satirical comment after the next. Of course I’m writing this in the wake of the depressed and foreboding feelings that follow a hangover. Of the various powers of alcohol, it really is the drug that grants me the capacity to feel.

I used to blackout and be told that all I could do was foist lovey-dovey heartfelt sentiments about everyone in the room. Anymore I seem driven by a desire to bring up terrible shit to say that apparently seeks to degrade and remove me from any obligations I might feel towards friendship. What a tired cliche…

I think maybe I have a growing fear for the speculation and skepticism I’ve built in my life. I don’t allow myself the “naivety” to think the new people in the bar cared about our conversation. I don’t expect the majority of people I know to come through for anything I didn’t like actively prime and coax out of them. I’ve had to stifle a solid amount of the pretense that fueled much of my behavior. My identity has been in limbo.

I know once this feeling wears off I’ll go back to normal. I know that while ideas can always haunt me, I’m never a slave to a particular regret or drunk text. I just don’t know what to think about my normal anymore. If I was an impassioned dramatic free-spirit, I might barrel into some kind of expressive medium. I’d put aside all my criticism for there being too many competing and lackluster voices and try something new.

And at least in the moment of feelings like this, it would feel worthwhile. It’s why I write. The need to speak or connect. Blogging is coping more than something I’ve sought anything more than incidental attention for. I’m beholden to throw all my sad sack of shit feelings in a place like this so the damage control aspects of my life can actually be controlled.

It’s that I feel like I’m constantly lying. I’m better at being the friend who picks up where we left off after not talking to you for years than I am the check in and see how you’re doing type. I feel like I stopped paying attention to a lot of potential social cues and qualifiers because they get in the way of me steamrolling through some desperate stab towards more and deeper connections. Or, if I get them right, I’m not convinced on the regular days I’ll find it in me to keep caring.

I’m jealous of when it was easy. Of course it was gross and superficial, but it was easy. You just got together and all got drunk. You just started some random project or group activity. You just did a little flirting and body language cues before disappearing somewhere. And then maybe it wasn’t even that superficial; at least for a little while.

I’ve been grasping in the dark at lines that would hopefully unlock the sentiment behind how I’ve been feeling. My brother the other day said “I never thought I’d be 25 with a master’s degree living at home with my parents.” I had that concern my freshman year with all I’d been reading about kids doing that exact same thing. And so what? What did it get me? What does my knowledge and foresight ever really amount to? You still have to get fucked. You still have to keep falling uphill. I still have to cross my fingers that I’ll finagle a way to build the kind of future I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid.

I’m too hard on everything. I don’t know the happy middle ground. I packed so many expectations into myself I’m choking. Every year that goes by with me being a discontented basement dweller railing about the system and bolstering his capacity for media trivia suggests the larger reality is even heavier and even more fucked than I could possibly have the capacity to ridicule. It makes me feel dead before, during, and after I’ve tried. It makes the anxiety of hope unbearable.

I’ve never wanted to be the cynic. I’ve never considered myself as such. I don’t want to believe it, but it feels like it, that the honor is foisted upon me. Like I could cope with feeling downtrodden and guilty anymore than you can. Like I get some kind of enjoyment when things are actually that bad. Yes, once the hangover subsides, I’ll stop sounding so pathetic and I’ll genuinely be more implacable husk uncontrollably scoffing. But until then, hopefully I’ve been able to peek into what’s been contorting my guts. I’m rather lost.

[487] Bottle of Whine

Well, because it's stuck in my head, let's indulge in a little self-loathing.

This trolling situation is sticking in my craw for several reasons. One being, I don't think I've ever said I'm terribly proud of the stupid shit I do, but I think sometimes I get reactions like I'm sharing so people will pat me on the back. I agree, it's dumb, it's pointless, but if we scrutinize my life, I'm more dumb and pointless than mostly anything else. I'm not saying this in a sad or depressive way, it's just a simple, and terribly accurate, description. 

Certain circles find it “cool” to “nerd out” on TV or video games all the time. I've always called it a veritable waste of time. I say I watch 60 shows. If I were a busy person, I'd be kinda disappointed if I didn't catch maybe 5 to 8 of those. I talk about building my map. When I've spent enough money and discover something a few months from now that does it better, it'll be another failure on the list of things I've gotten excited about that no one really knows how it was supposed to work and, oh well, maybe something else will be tried next year. 

I've never particularly cared about being in that good of shape, but isn't it a testament to the kind of “I'm getting old and feel like dying” feeling how comfortable I am with it? Comfortable is the wrong word, but more resigned. I'm hopping on the treadmill after this, but that's only because I like to contradict myself as I have nothing else to fight with but reddit monsters. If I read the last line over and over again too many times, I’ll end up in bed instead...because...fuck me, that’s why! And the extra 30 pounds? Who cares! I'm old and literally can only change when I keep a persistent shit-on-myself mental dialogue going for months. So the day you see a bathroom six pack selfie, I'm probably about to put a hole in the wall. 

Or let's think about interactions with friends. How many shitty damming things have I said about my mind on that subject? It's awesome as fuck to have people in my life who genuinely enjoy what they do. Is that ever the comment that comes out of my mouth? Fuck no! Better be bland or cold or quasi-shitty. Be on brand, be on brand. I can't even refrain from thinking shitty things when I see someone post how long it took them to do something they're excited about. I've just given my asshole mind an opportunity to say I spend more time on shit I find marginally interesting so that I can half remember a factoid about it months from now. Because I'm just that cool? 

I wish things could just be related to as descriptions. I don't even feel like I'm hating on myself or that I'm sad or that I really have anything but the elevated heart rate of exasperation trying to type fast enough to catch up with my brain. 

I'm not “happy” or “proud” or “impressed” or “attention-seeking” or “cool.” I'm bored. I get involved in whatever is going on around me. That means a general begrudging relationship to existence. The sick irony is that any genuine expression of this feeling is the basis for hurt feelings, significant judgments, and any number of barrels you want to throw in front of your perfectly acceptable stroll through your life. 

I don't like thinking that “my place” is something of an angry loner doing things way too intensely because no one matches my manic energy and bleak demeanor. That means too intensely stupid. Too intensely reading, watching, working, or sleeping. It's a little odd the amount of times I've had to discuss the goings on in my life with police officers, but at the same time, literally nothing bad has ever happened or come of it. I build little bits of absurdity into my life because I have shit else to do. 

What I don't think people understand is there is no fix. Without enough money to stay perpetually distracted, or if my friends drop all their jobs and intensely encourage my ass up the several hundred mountain peaks of Colorado, this is my sad sick little reality. I'm stuck between random drug study money and whatever idea I think I can throw a few thousand dollars at. I'm not invested until I'm all the way in, and then it exhausts. I'm not sure if it's because things “have to,” or if simply people aren't comfortable living “absurdly.” Because, my god, it's hard to take anything, particularly myself, that seriously. 

That's why I get to rant on a blog on a social media platform to express my “complicated” ego, and you get to read and judge and disappear into your worlds. Because it's a description. Because it's absurd. Because it matters way more to me to be able to shut the fuck up so I can move on, than a million comments about how you think it comes across as shit. It's a failure of language that “I don't care” became the jaded teenage way of describing certain feelings, or lack thereof, towards life.

“I don't care, it doesn't matter, I'm not terribly concerned, it's of no consequence, who cares what they think, what else is new, you're overreacting, no one's listening, it's fixable, why bother fixing it, why bother doing anything.” Whatever description I'm looking for isn't just any one of those sentiments, but they're all a piece. I try to talk or understand or ask questions or simply own. I try to give other people as much credit as I give myself. And mostly, it's none.

[370] Let's Shit On Me For A Minute

You'd think, for as hopelessly introspective as I'd like to be, maybe, from time to time, I'd figure something out every now and then.

I'm fucking hopeless. Let's take business. I bought my van in like, September? I got the work done. I was terribly insistent on my mechanic people to get tables installed and the generator attached. I had all the dialogue of a budding entrepreneur. I was angst ridden about not getting approved for the right permit at the right time.

And what do I have now? I have a van, paid for, permit ready, equipment checked and ready. And what have I been doing for the last week or so? Sleeping.

You see, not only do I have the motor by which I could run my little egotistical empire, I also have money in the bank. In an exceedingly loud sense, I'm accountable to no one. Sure, there are still people I want to pay back for their willingness and belief in me when it came to starting the mall kiosk. But, this is a problem I could solve in 2 weeks. Notwithstanding, they don't actually expect the money back, I'm just not that big a dick.

I'm in an increasingly confusing and fucking horrible way paralyzed. I belabor the phrase “I always get what I want.” This isn't as awesome as it may sound. What clued me into having that big of an “ego” and ability to make such a crass statement, were things that anyone would be proud to inform themselves as capable of being. I suppose, I just took them too far?

In the world I perceive, people aren't acting like me. For all my effort and understanding and intention or will-power, I'm still amongst the ranks of those I would still count as hopelessly naïve and circumstantial. That is, I don't look to entrepreneurs and and rich folk like “oh boy! You're my crowing example!” Mark Cuban has, after all, referred to “the issues Apple had in China” whilst not talking about modern slavery. Meager and empty head nod mode, engage...

I'm so jaded I want to shit on myself before I begin! What does that mean? I not only opened a coffee shop, found the money, made the calls, navigated and negotiated the terms, paid the rent, and showed up every fucking day, I did it while working other jobs and to the point where, sitting, my body was shutting down from lack of sleep. I have nothing else to prove to myself in “work” regard. Nothing you ever fucking tell me about what you do or how hard you work will match “ yeah, I spent so much time making sure the rent got paid, I sat on a chair and felt like dying/falling asleep because 'hours = money' was as far as I could conceive, for all pragmatic purposes.”

I've talked about working in spite. I don't even hold a grudge at this point. There's nothing new I feel is being taught in me succeeding. My life is succeeding. I'm living for, strong enough, but not business affirmative, ideas I hold from my dad or what I give a fuck about Kristen.

What a weird road you have to travel to think to yourself as “I have no problems.” I've never genuinely worried about my well-being. I've never thought I didn't have a plan. When I'm broke, before I'm broke, I chose to be broke. When I want to do something bigger, it was just as easy and circumstantial. Just ruminating on the idea that it's as simple as “it's up to me,” I guess I find rather terrifying.

I suppose I'm currently spiting myself. I'm spiting what I know to be true. What I've already proven. I'm “lazy” because I can, because your opinion of it means nothing, and when we die broken and alone, whether I made ten or a million dollars hocking coffee, the very idea brought me jaded laughter already. Jesus fucking Christ I think sometimes I'm a sick individual...

[349] Giggity God Damn

Let's talk a little more about my god complex.

I act out of utility. This even more so that I gave up on letting people play their lives out like they saw fit. In order to behave as such, I need to see that things follow. Whether you're following a pattern of thought, or I'm carrying out a pattern of behavior that you behave in a certain way towards. Playing “god” is about evidence. Ego is weak. I don't merely believe anything about myself I can't bring to fruition. It's one of my favorite things about me.

It's why conversations need to be said, and re-said, and re-said again and again. I only make sense in the ongoing movement. The moment I lean towards a definition, I know I need to move past it and change something. This isn't a familiar ground for most people, as far as I can tell. This makes me sound at best petty, at worst, completely fucking insane.

I've stated before that I don't want praise for that which is simple. The “biggest most significant” things I think I'll achieve in life will speak to what I conceive of as simple. The world as it is let's the banal, meaningless, and empty look like triumphs of the human spirit and ingenuity. If no one else is willing to shit on these hopeless conceptions, I'm happy to shit upon myself. My world does not make sense from anything less than that which trumps a conceited plain.

At bottom, I wish it seemed as simple to most people as it does me. I've said that the more I talk to people, the more I give up. The harder it is to believe in anything. I, somehow, came out of this life thing with the ability to choose things people are unable to conceive of themselves as capable of. And all I'm left with is confusion. I'm left to roost on the idea that the whole of humanity could be crippled by the sheer inability to recognize the difference between two things. Sometimes it feels so absurd that to try and put words to it only seems to denigrate what one could conceive of injustice, but worse.

I think you reach a point past circumstance. As far as I can tell, being a tall white male who doesn't look like Shrek has it's advantages, but I know plenty of people with the same things that I would put down like rabid dogs. I thought that the whole “becoming an adult” thing was about handling business and making decisions that, theoretically, made sense for the continuation of this whole working world thing. I just don't believe it. I literally think everyone is shit. And now I just feel bad.

In a way, I love that talking, or bitching, here is selfish. I like to feel better shitting on everything and crossing my fingers that someone, somewhere, might change or enact some big thing based on my words, while realistically thinking I'm a screaming into the ether. I don't have faith. I don't hope. I just do. I know that as long as I'm doing, very little else seems to matter. Let's trust that what I choose to do actually matters, right?

[346] Chip Off The Old Block

I need to feel better about leaving for a week. I think I'll get there by the end.

So much of myself seems to exist in contradiction. I'm dead inside, then I'm overly elated with a trend or mood. I'm the nicest guy who even blacked out says sweet endearing things, then I'm the meanest person I know. The confusing part is that they all feel as “real” or as “me” equally. There never feels like an appropriate place to be one over the other, I just sort of take it in stride and come up with probably too many words to justify.

It's extremely hard to be vulnerable, for example. However you conceive of vulnerability, I guess. It's one thing to wear an aspect of your life on your sleeve, entirely another when you feel like someone you respect or care about is checking out your style. The tension of trying to figure out if your personalities are “compatible” can be palpable. It's been an investment in your sense of self, after all. To what degree should this person be allowed to tinker with it?

One of my biggest issues is that I genuinely don't like hope. I've been reminded that I've made such a sentiment in the past, but it feels louder at the moment. I don't want to believe people like me. I don't want to look too forward into hanging out or getting into a good conversation. And it's not like it's because “things won't live up to the dream” type of bullshit. It's just that it inevitably seems to change for spectacularly bad reasons.

That's where you learn detachment. That's how you forget best friends. It's why I feel myself ever compelled toward perfect moments or vibes and similar personalities, and have practically zero patience for those not on board. It almost feels like you've stolen something when it goes right. Like you're caught up in something so infinitely fleeting, trying to call it “special” feels cheap. And if/when you can create those moments, you've maybe done something that matters.

I find it damn near impossible to keep at it in the world as it stands. So I need to create my own and send out invitations. It'll presumably be easier to do that “losing” 6 days now.

[345] YOU, You Got What I Neeed

I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to reading my utterly scattered thoughts is to think I'm coming from a place of finality.

If you choose, once I put it all together, to read where my mind has been from front to back up to this blog, you should readily believe that I don't know shit! That I've never known shit. That I will continue to strive to even believe I have a grasp on what shit even smells like. It's sort of the nature of the game.

I believe in the ongoing conversation. I think you are allowed to show your most belligerent ridiculous point and then move right along to refining how and why you got there. I think if you settle on one idea, you're really missing the point of putting yourself out there for new ideas. How many times have I said I seek to be challenged? I can't help it if my closest friends are still bitch nigga pussies. I suppose that's just part of the game as well, you bitch nigga pussies.

It really is mind blowing to read old thoughts. It's amazing to feel so on point with something that happened years ago and I may as well have written it yesterday. I love seeing something that I haven't worked out and realizing that I did it better the next time. I'd like to say it's humbling, but it's more like work that's paid off. It's more like looking like a fucking retard for long enough that you finally get to net something positive after endlessly spewing bullshit about where you previously came from.

I think it's interesting how dramatic I've sounded. To relegate what's seemingly the most intense feeling to words in the abyss of facebook has to be a practice in humility, right? I never expect people to get it most of the time. I don't expect fans. I smile for days when someone decides to reveal they're crazy about what I write. I secretly think the people who may follow my shit the most will never reveal themselves. Who wants to say “I was that fucking crazy too!” or “holy shit, you wouldn't believe the irrational lengths I went to justifying that stupid ass position as well!

I've run the gauntlet. It's amazing to me to think about the myriad topics I've hit. It's hard to believe that somehow I haven't considered “x” with relation to “y” at least when it comes to relationships or how we conduct ourselves in life. It's hard to believe there will be more to say, but I think it's pretty obvious there will be.

I just hope it does things for you as it has for me. Sometimes, what I put out or how I phrase something is so...embarrassing. Like, who in their right mind says shit like that? That I simply must believe in the capacity for empathy over my ability to start giving a fuck what you think. That sounds harsh, but I'd be doing a really bad job of explaining anything if I capitulated to your bastardized conceptions of where I was coming from. Never take it personally.

I guess I just want to help. I wouldn't mind people being “like me,” but more so I'd like them to really get where they're coming from. I think whatever ridiculous stupid shit I go through, the best thing I can do is relate it as honestly as it seems to cut. Why would I take any pride or purpose in “ranting” if not to hijack your brain for a second and make you realize that to one degree or another I'm likely right there with you?

I'll keep talking if you're listening. As it goes with everything else, I rely on you to explain when I've over-stayed my welcome. In one vein, who am I to offer even the remotest advice? I've certainly said before you likely have to live somethings for yourself and figure it out the hard way. In the other vein, please just don't be fucking retarded. It really makes the struggle and words feel futile. It wholly reduces intent and perspective to naïve speculation. It just becomes sad.

[340] And Keep Your Feet On The Ground

I'm always going to be a bad human being. I'll act in spite of. I'll make examples that you thought never needed be made. I'll burden myself with the responsibility of reminding you of the kind of reality I see. Some people appreciate this. I think most wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.

I can't forget. I'm unable to escape. “Just be happy” is not on my menu. “That's life” isn't either. I merely like to be an expression. I want to show the opposite of what you took for granted. Just because. People don't operate like this. This I'm highly convinced is a weird corner I've managed to back myself into. I'm never content. I'm never accepting. I'm not me if I'm not showing you why you got it the fuck wrong.

It's a good thing I have fun with it. I'm flabbergasted I have friends sometimes though. I know I can reign in comments and play nice enough. But fuck me if I don't feel like you're doing me a favor in putting up with the coyly codified “cynicism” I thank you. And I think it's wrong to think it comes from a place of anger. It's more provocation. I've learned how to be baited, now I play with what might get you on the hook.

I try to settle on “why I do things” with an answer that screams “because it makes sense!” Whether it's “for good or for bad” I think that there's something to be, at the very least discussed in my particular form of reaction. Maybe you're not interested in what I think I'm trying to say. That's never been the point.

I feel like I'm constantly hinting at my personality. You think you have a good enough idea and it only so vaguely potentially influences what you think from time to time, sure. I don't think I'll have an opportunity to actualize without a veritable Herculean effort over the course of many years. It's frustrating on one end, but absolutely necessary and appropriate on the other.

I want more people on my side. I feel like for all my “lofty” ideas and even loftier ideals, it's all good in theory, or at the very least not concerning those who would “fundamentally morally stand in opposition” of some edict in particular. I can scream into a crowd and not turn a head. That's kind of terrifying to me.

Resolving yourself to be alone is a weird thing. You let the pragmatism take over. You make caveats for people who proport to be with you. But at the end of the day, much as the schizophrenic is better at diagnosing the person claiming to suffer from schizophrenia, you're alone until you get called out or related to in a particular way. I really hope I'm able to tell a compelling story before it's all over. That's really all I want.

[336] It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing

I've been inside a kind of deadness lately. It's not sad or dramatic. It's flat. Maybe it's just a special kind of tired. I'm not sure, but all I know is that it's a special kind of non-feeling. To generally run rather tepid when it comes to things, then to get excited, is very much a high. It's not a terribly lasting high, but the contrast is noteworthy. But when nothing seems to register, even if it's for a short time, it becomes noteworthy as well.

A few examples. While everyone is naming their new babies after a fictional pair of meth dealers, I can call it a pretty good episode. While I'm assuming there's an invigorating passion to spend the next several months flying new machines and blowing people up, I'm reminded I have 2 video games I haven't opened and a 3rd I've been playing for months and might be half way through. I think about how quick, although I know it's not that quick, friends seem to pass through your life and really really want to press people to figure out why or why not I should be someone in their life. I see more people getting shot up and think “of course...onto more pressing concerns like dick cutting pictures.” I'm getting back into business and realize that whether it does or doesn't work, I'll know what to do.

It's all just stuff that's happening.

To the point on friends, I don't like to feel as if I'm treating them as passing acquaintances. It influences very much what I do or don't and how I engage with them. I can believe that it can be viewed as a kind of insecurity. Like, just act natural Nick P! It's your friends after all. But I understand relationships as work. Me, natural, doesn't treat people as people. So I need to dial back natural for better things like respect. I deliberately hinder my mind of thinking of friends as “marginally intentional beings with fleeting pithy feelings I need to deliberately navigate in order to achieve x, y, and z.”

In that instance, I'd rather be misunderstood as a bumbling idiot killing the mood or deliberately awkward, instead of understood as someone who would treat you that way.

I'm certain this is hard to understand, mostly because it has everything to do with me and nothing really to do with you. It's the odd ways I can be made to think or feel and the work my rules do or don't help with that. To say I take my friendships personally is to say I have as much invested in the story I can tell about myself as I can about our relationship. It's an ever-present conversation during a high stakes game.

I don't think winning belongs to the smart, or loud. Sincerity wins. They believe you when you believe you. It's less what you say than it is they believe you. Feeling this deep in your gut and knowing what it means is what necessitates my “anti-behavior.” If I can't make you aware of a path I see, I might find myself on it and not terribly comfortable, nor necessarily convinced against, what it means if I keep following it. So help me keep dialogue open. The more I can fumble over words and persistently go nowhere, probably dunk, in person, the less I can recede so far into my head that I can't hear anything.

I want to feel normal, but not at your expense.

[335] Put One Foot In Front Of The Other One

Now, I believe myself to be at the perfect level of drunken introspectiveness, thus making everything I'm about to write simply magic.

You know how I like read about world affairs and post the “best” links I find to summarize how basically shit a lot of things are? I know like ex military people and my “old” friends are into that shit, but does it click with anyone under 30? I can't really tell. It seems like minimum wage jobs and shitty papers will always take precedent to (just tried to drink a beer without taking the cap off) what's actually happening in life. I wouldn't mind a “I follow current affairs!” comment either, because I need to better gauge my overall people may give a shit meter.

I went to ballroom dance call-outs today. I will always be amazed and intrigued by the people who just sit down next to you and want to start a conversation. It's not that I can't, it's just that I'm bad at pretending I care right now. You may be super cool. I just don't know why yet and that's why my body language would suggest you're shit. You're probably not shit, but fuck me, I'm bad at pretending I care. Gimme a minute. But I think what we did at ballroom dancing is part of the epitome of what you're supposed to be able to do in life. Meet random cute people and shake your ass for no reason. It's kind of the best you can hope for and it's totally awesome.

So by the rules of obvious and duh mother fucker, why is it hard to figure out “global action plans” that don't involve killing everything? Like I said before, it's always present in my mind. Having fun and doing nothing and “wasting” money all exist with the backdrop of how I conceive of our species treating itself. Sure, I got to dance with a tiny hot girl (amongst other hot girls) and could turn on the flirting if I wasn't sweating like a goddamn fountain. But in what real world does any of that shit matter?

I wonder, and frankly hope it doesn't happen, if I'll ever start to take “myself” too seriously. I see what happens to public intellectuals that spend so much time researching and writing and putting their moral foot on top of all the bullshit. I can't say I see the kinds of change they're likely hoping for. I can't see their personal understanding doing much of anything like moving big chess pieces of culture that need to change. I suppose I'm trying to justify my apathy. If someone who gives a shit doesn't care....hahahaha just keep laughing.

Be real! That's the goal right? Be that like jaded voice that doesn't get blamed for being jaded. Just say those things. Be the constant stream of shit that everyone can get a whiff of when they feel themselves taking too much for granted. It's tough dude. How do you practice an innate wanting attachment to things when you are infinitely prepared to let them go? The word genuine takes a very long walk. You can't justify laziness anymore than you can in achieving dweeb status about “some issue in particular.”

I guess you just get used to making excuses, UNBEARABLY IRONICALLY. Because we all just tryin' to live n shit, right?

[332] Cynics, Save The World

There’s utility in being a cynic. You don’t have to waste time playing pretend with the other children. When you’re government is fucked, it’s easy to recognize that it’s not in fact a democracy and there is little hope. When you see how we handle foreign relationships, you don’t have to guess that the impacts will be many and lingering. Before we get too far, it may help to have George Carlin in your head as much of this is written after a morning spent contemplating his prescriptions.

There is little I disagree with when it comes to Carlin. I don’t think we’re going to last. I think we’re addicted to things we don’t need that don’t work and don’t matter. I think this is a circus where the “happiest” amongst us look on in sheer wonder and awe at the kind of display you couldn’t ask for if you tried. He observes and reports, much of his act is memorization feats essentially word for word the astounding dialogue of our times. I think we’re infinitely selfish, in the bad way, and it’s all about squeezing whatever little satisfaction we can out of everything and everyone, consequences be damned. I think it’s every bit as bad as he states if not worse and we are in the throes of our inevitable demise.

Yet, I’m unable to detach. Maybe it’s because of my age or my wide-eyed naïve ideals. Maybe my definition of “hope” is so small and penetrated that a goal becomes so modest it’s barely a goal worth having. Sure, I want to let go and ride it out and watch, but I think in particular with me, it would have dramatically destructive consequences. Carlin can let go and feel like he needs to talk. I’d let go and start saying “I don’t see a reason not to.” But we’ve known for some time how and why I keep myself in check.

I want to believe there is a not so hidden genius in his method and advice to just detach. There’s still some level of irony in not caring about anything “but.” It’s a psychological necessity sometimes, sure, but it’s not the only, or necessarily the best means by which people are happy or found some level of contentedness. I think he knew that and that’s why he kept getting on stage. I also think he knows that when you reach rock bottom you start to figure things out in a different way. Whether you need to drop off and not care or vehemently disagree with him, you’re still going to end up in a more thoughtful and attentive place, exercising that brain he believed we’ve all taken for granted.

But let’s go back to being cynical. Only when you cut out the bullshit are you capable of identifying and addressing a situation for what it is. If you call it a problem, you’ll know better how to fix it. If you call it a shit show, you’ll know better where you want to sit. You’ll never catch me seriously wondering what a god thinks about my sex habits or the Reese’s I stole from Wal-Mart. I think you can easily assume that, but more-so, I’d be completely useless to you. I wouldn’t even accidentally come across something “new” or insightful or ever make an awesome metaphor again. You didn’t come here for bullshit…usually.

Because I haven’t just sat on my rose-colored glasses and effectively threw them into a wood chipper, I feel a sense of overall clarity even when attempting to explain my confusion. At the very least, I’m not making it up. I’m not sad or pissed off for no reason and likewise for when something feels genuinely hopeful. Carlin talked of a phrase “when you scratch a cynic you see a jaded idealist.” I think an intrinsic property of being an idealist is an inability to let go of the ideas you think will actually work. No real idealist gives up because they are painfully stuck with a brain full of ideals. It’s a burden and work. When it gets to be too much it seems to be a passive aggressive taking of the reigns to describe how you’re going to just sit back and watch it burn.

Carlin stated that he doesn’t even know if he’d be the same kind of person if he started his career today. With the kinds of technology and rapidly changing environment, who’s to say his perspective wouldn’t have been carried a little farther. When you saw something as a 20 year old in 1960 is not how I saw something as a 20 year old because I got to see what you saw when I was 15, plus 50 more examples and how and whether potential solutions played out all over the world. I can’t so easily set into “this is how it works” when I know how to change it and change it quickly.

I think it’s the cynic that knows how people think. They know what to say to make people think. They know what you feel when your thoughts take you places, and they know how you avoid them and what it would take to make you unable to avoid them. I think people recognize that they need to be saved and can’t do it themselves because they don’t have the correct language or attitude. They’re too stressed, they’re too afraid, they’re at the end of not just one horrible decision that has created a hole where adopting an “I don’t give a fuck” attitude isn’t enough. I think people say save me and the cynic says you aren’t worthy. You are the problem. You are what you’re afraid of. And who’s admitting that? Not without a smile and laugh, that is.

We will live and die by our superstitions, our allegiances to branding and the status quo. And we’ll do it slowly using soft language and remaining “decent enough” until our time runs out. This is convention and it’s why I hate convention. It’s why I’m always asking why and asking YOU why and wanting to know more. You may not care about the consequences or want the short term fix, but I’m compelled to call-out a junkie.

The nicest way I can put it is that I want the species to last for me and mine. It’s sheer ego. I want my kids happy and healthy. I want my friends recognized and admired for what they are. I want the big human middle finger staring in the empty abyss of space for as long as I can, and I want to know that it’s mine. As far as I know, I’m the only kind of thing on this planet that can appreciate what it’s flipping off. Anyone else along for the ride is just circumstance. “They” can’t be fixed, nor is “the world” broken. It’s every intention, good or bad, and if you want yours to last, that's what needs to be accounted for.

[331] It's An Acquired Taste

I’m going to run with the idea that it’s all perfectly arbitrary. There’s no reason someone should be pent up with so much rage for longer than a day or so. Therefore, it is necessary and important that I find a way to become happy again.

My difficulties awaken when I start to make judgment calls. I’d say the sliver of wisdom, and it’s only a sliver, in not judging a person is a clearer path to happier thoughts about them. I’m currently weighed down by the idea of responsibility. Really, truly, the idea of responsibility is causing stress. This begs the question, responsible for what?

The simple answer is “life.” It’s being responsible for what you do and say, who you associate with, what your hobbies are, projecting, if you have one, a message. More specifically it’s a responsibility to awareness. For example, I can comfortably say I’m an idiot just like all the other idiots save for one thing, I know how to acknowledge and admit it.

This one little difference is generally what sets me up to like you forever or constantly insist to myself that you sell not just our relationship short, but yourself in everything you do. If I didn’t think of myself as an idiot, I wouldn’t constantly write things that are rife with opportunity to get judged, picked apart, and potentially thrown back in my face. I’m asking for the controversy because I don’t want to remain an idiot.

Right now, I’m an idiot because I have all the time in the world and I’m here, writing about how I have all the time in the world and it’s not quite as I remember it. Maybe I’m languishing on thoughts about my friends, maybe I’m just not as excited to scrape and spend to get back to work, or maybe I’m too plagued by my generations’ late 80s early 90s birth window and focusing is a thing of the past. I don’t really know.

What I do know is that I’m definitely not only or specifically angry at myself. When I think of that dammed responsibility it’s a vague enough construct to apply across the board from a friend to a newscast to a very poorly worded retort on a facebook comment. It just seems like everyone (read “everyone” as the majority of people in my experience thus far, there, now I never have to say it again) is making the same error. Everyone prefers to hear and see what they want and respond in kind. They refuse to take the actual point, and do the work, to figure out what and if there is a proper response.

I can raise a concern to a friend, they can respond with the brilliance of their long term earning potential. I can watch a newscast about Treyvon Martin and am offered the reasoned and appropriate expertise of Nick Cannon. I can offer an opinion on a “funny” article online and am only met with the learned and insightful point that different people find different things funny. I sometimes feel like my head must exist in a fairy land where I expect something to make sense so often, and am so often denied, that maybe I’m just a well-functioning psychotic. That would make a handful of you people crazy too; or morbidly encouraging.

How I want to be responsible does not match up in how I currently am. It’s not to scale. That doesn’t mean I don’t hold true to me or maintain a kind of demeanor, but I know I’m failing, I know there’s more room to work than I even have words for. It makes all the little things disinteresting. Part of the reason I was so motivated to learn everything I could about science/god stuff was the mission of going out and trying to celebrate reason and evidence and see about changing a lot of bad ideas. But it doesn’t just have to be your faith that you’re intractable about and there is no persuading the persistent fairy tale teller.

My cynicism or mean jokes is the “best” way I’ve come up with to express just how darkly I see the world. Your happiness, to me, is a selfish trip doing the best you can to forget that you don’t really have a functioning country, people die all the time for no reason, you don’t really give a shit and the hopeless feeling you get when you have to give a shit propels you ever farther towards what feels good. It so often gets characterized as preachy, but thinking about this shit really does start to fuck with me! Shocked?

Not only can I barely do anything about it, I’m seemingly the only one who’s frequently plagued by it. I’m the only one who can’t allow himself the kind of reckless abandonment that marginalizes things until they *somehow* get better later. I feel like I see people cheating. It’s too easy. They adhere to a construct for stability in a world unstable. They adorn laurels of praise and reinforcement from people who never expected otherwise; as if there’s dignity and wisdom hidden away in repeating the same failed experiments.

In one way, I’m not trying to shit all over your happiness, but in an increasingly depressing manner I really really do want to shit all over your happiness. I find myself envying not what people have, but their ability to put what I can’t aside. Oh what it would be to have the ability to focus on one small thing like a lover or job. If only I was content to be Joe Blue-Collar or even Burnout Benny, everyone’s favorite druggie friend!

I can’t get the conversations I want because just referencing the topic generally makes people defensive. I can’t get the solutions I want because they either take a fuck ton of time and/or money, and a lot of speculation and chance regarding the future. I certainly am not “happening upon” an intense and intelligent debate about any topics, let alone one’s I may have something to contribute to. It just gets old. Of course I could find a corner of the internet to satiate any flatly intellectual itching, but it’s not enough. I’m not just a fact reader. I don’t understand things merely as a collection of web pages or scholarly articles.

The only way I find myself being able to justify anything is to accept that it’s all perfectly arbitrary. That it simply doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, outside of what you do or don’t think about it. There’s no moral imperative, responsibility is funny, and to stress out and think about anything besides the lengths of your self-determination is the height of folly. The only glaring problem with this is how it makes zero sense if you want or have kids, or friends, or find yourself enjoying the endless spoils from those you’ll never know. It’s simply, even if you can’t do much, you can at least think and talk. It can’t just be the responsibility of the “activists” or “smart people who will figure it out eventually.”

I crave a kind of feedback that hints at tearing down peoples’ worlds. They don’t like that, because after all, look what it does to me. I guess it’s time to draw up a lengthy analogy about the taste of beer.

[330] Problem Solved

Is it even possible to fix a problem?

As I find myself writing, still deeply rooted with the thought that I do not have real problems, I find that I don’t give myself really any credit in having this disposition. I didn’t have real problems when I was ridiculously broke, and I have even less real problems now that I have the money to restart business and live fairly comfortably for another year.

I’m intrigued by how often people get angry at this prospect. I’m also intrigued by how often they get angry that I expect things from people and my relationships. Furthermore, their anger over and insistence upon telling me I’m in denial is flatly amazing. It appears that many people simply don’t want to be better and are insulted at the presumed insinuation. I don’t know why.

Surely I’ve become “better” over time. Whether it’s with a calmer reaction or more information, it’s hard to argue that yelling and swinging solve things just as well. I find when I read old blogs that if my actions don’t change the meaning they take on grows under different lights. I’d say it’s precisely this that has mitigated much of the heartache concerning how and what to think of my friends. I’m still working on translating that to the whole of humanity.

The denial charge I find most insidious. It’s sickeningly ironic. Even when I try to invent problems or bitch about a circumstance, they just don’t resonate as real. More so, they aren’t mine. I didn’t hijack a truck, pop a tire, and burn through $50 worth of gas. I had to alleviate the situation, but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t choose that, that happened to me; it happened in and around my world. I don’t deny I wasn’t having a terrible amount of fun in fixing it. I also know how it felt, and continues to feel, having resolved it; this extending on from the moment it was resolved. I still ate, hit the gym, and Kristen’s in my bed. It wasn’t a real problem.

The “hot conversation” I got in about what I expect from people and what I expect from myself as “people” was the next most confusing. I won’t say it was structured or had much of a point besides tipsy squabbling, but what I remember most was a point about “well people don’t act that way.” I think we initially got into it because I got the usual eye roll and “pfft” noise about how an open relationship works. In any event, it quickly derailed and I honestly have no real memory of why.

All I took away was that I had been in that conversation many times before; not because there was a discernible topic by any means, but because I knew the second nothing could be conceded or taken for what it meant, instead of what it meant personally, it had nowhere to go from that onset. It’s unfortunate, but it was easier to navigate when there was nothing to lose. Surely voices didn’t have to rise, but who even knew such a scenario was even to play out until it was upon us? It couldn’t be “fixed” with anything but reflection. I read “tomato soup” and all I got was worms.

But this speaks to the nature of all my not real problems. My circumstances allow for an endless stream of misfired conversation starters. But I didn’t walk into someone’s house with derogatory comments and a misunderstood position, my voice raised to a level of expectation met only by the utmost polite and tranquil engagement this side of Downton Abbey. I suppose as “best” I can, I simply try not to be those kinds of problems. I create the problems I want. I’ll have the same conversation time and again to my frustration for the last sordid soul on Earth who actually came prepared to have it. I’ll drop of something of relative value in a semi-sketchy situation and take the damn car keys with me next time.

My “problem” comes in the form of what I’m willing to do, not what happens to me. Most of the time simply choosing fixes it just fine. A lot of my solutions come the same way except I didn’t die and give me money; that was my grandma. She helped create the conditions, influenced an environment so that I could keep not having real problems. Maybe once I get big enough or people read my voice in the English that it’s speaking they’ll start to figure out why they want me to have their anger and their problems. It’s not even that I don’t want them. I just can’t even accept them with the significance you need them to have. I can’t take and fix what’s not mine. You can shape someone’s world, but you can’t dictate their disposition.

[329] Who is En Nui Nui

A round of reading old blogs later….

I can chase a rabbit no problem. I want to assert a more specific goal. I simply want to experiment. The underlying motivation will be for global change, none too specific, but with the idea of things getting better. I want to explore a ton of vague-ish ideas and to pull any number of conjectures I can and put them under a spotlight.

My robot blog reminds me I’m only as good as the information I get. My “past love” blogs remind me of how easy it is to be retarded. A hundred or so on perspective tell me there needs to be more words for the word perspective. But all of my ramblings, for better or worse, are part of the experiment. I follow where my head goes at the time and cross my fingers. I have to take for granted that when people are doing things, retarded or otherwise, they’re doing just as much experimenting as me.

It’s why I really try not to make things personal. I need to draw analogies to grasp things. I, in some form or another, care about your lives and every new piece of information is a launch pad. I think I come across as “having all the answers” when I really only have many of them. ::wink:: The only reason to even talk in such terms would be to see how individuals sway a group. Patterns rule my life, and I’m sure it applies to when I make presumptive errors.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of people needing drama. How much of our perceived issues in the world are part of the fake fog of bullshit that isn’t really there for anything but boredom? How many problems are created when your resolve others? Maybe alone is significantly worse than “someone” for many people in a relationship and the idea of “being your full self” is an utterly foreign concept. Maybe there’s a ground floor act required regardless of the social or power systems that undermines ideas of change to begin with. Things I will need to collect more information about and experiment with.

I think I’m preparing myself to feel “less burdened.” That isn’t to say I don’t need to move fast, don’t care, have grown to accept, or anything resembling complacency. I think I’ve just become overwhelmed with the infinite potential for further answers and exploration, even amidst things that were easier to take for granted. I want to take more things with a grain of salt, not because I think they’re even good, but because I want to try to understand them even further. I think it’ll help slow me down as well and hopefully preempt these headaches.

[327] Just Be In The Know

I feel like before I die I should ever be striving to convey what I consider to be the truth of my disposition. Foremost because I think it has longstanding implications for your disposition. I don’t want people to be confused. I don’t want you to read my other despotic or seemingly judgmental blogs with the wrong back drop. There’s just a fundamental state I maintain that I think needs to be celebrated.

I have no problems. I don’t hesitate to type it. When I’m bitching about your relationship or life or some confusion, it amounts to “existential angst.” I cannot complain. Another idea I’d like to beat into the ground and restate in everything I ever write; I have peaked. I’m healthy, fed, and intellectually quelled with a roof over my head. I do and always remember my place in lieu of the rest of the world.

The problem is in how people perceive this. You get a lot of jealousy. Like, “why the fuck do you think you’re so happy!?” And I think this has everything to do with missing the point. I call life a game. It’s an exercise. It’s a learning experience. It’s the consequences of cause and effect. It’s not about me, or you, or any one thing you want to base you pathetic conception on. I have fun with it. I play with it. I know that if it were over tomorrow, I was playing the game I wanted to play.

It’s what I hope to change when I get more influence. I want more people to realize that no one is like you. Your perspective has something important for the world at large. No one is going to sound like me. While there are business leaders I idolize and comedians that speak so closely to what I would say on stage, nobody says it or does it like me. Therefore, my message and method is important and has consequence and can impact in potentially significant ways provided I’m speaking to what we all know and think, but speaking to it in my way.

I wish you would think of your life as not having problems. It’s such an unnecessary burden to bog your day or psyche down with bullshit that doesn’t speak to anything. Like, if I feel anxiety, it’s about how I’m going to react to something. Do I beat the ever loving fuck out of you or make a smart ass comment or maybe just shut the fuck up and turn away. I’m not genuinely worried about anything. I’m more concerned with the message I sent and the conception I’d have to defend about myself given a scenario.

I just can’t wait. I really can’t wait. Provided I don’t up and die randomly in a car crash, I cannot wait for the stage. The opportunity to be me or speak me or lay it out like I’m desperately waiting to hear it be said will be a fucking thrill. And I hope I have you laughing. I hope the mother fuckers that know me are like “haha I bet he..OH SHIT HE JUST and are cracking their shit up while the world spends their time judging and re-characterizing. I’d get off on the idea of confusing the fuck out of people or rattling the cages of those not in the know.

It’s around the fucking corner. Get excited.