[936] In The End

I need to see if I can find the thread by just talking about different portions of my day and last couple weeks.

My buddy is fostering a kid. The kid has seen more shit and experienced more trauma than most of us will our entire lives. There are detailed historical reasons for much of his behavior and little quirks. He's also capable of just being an asshole.

I like to think that over the course of exploring my own physical and emotional trauma, as well as experience with hundreds of people in a job as entrenched in trauma as it comes, that I have a pretty good radar for the subtle, but important, differences in people's behavior. I'm not quick to box someone into my first and worst idea about them. I'm constantly talking out both what I think they are doing or going through, and what my sense or gut is conjuring in me. At this point, it's like a professional reflex.

Nothing is ever so simple. Nothing is ever as dramatic as it feels. Nothing can't be brought to some level of resolution. Nothing is the end of the story. You should always be asking more questions. You should always be prepared to be wrong. You should not treat your ideas as so fickle and precious that they can't be swayed by new evidence or can't be changed when shown to be wrong.

One of the more exhausting things about being in “social work,” broadly, is that you have mirror neurons that you can't shut off. If you're not actually a blunted unremitting psychopath, other people's drama works on you. It's normal. It's the emotional leverage all weak and insecure people reflexively play on because it's what you do as a baby to get adults to capitulate to your needs. There is no perfect line between crying because you're hungry and bitching and moaning because you're underdeveloped and pathetic.

I get so fucking tired of always being in social work mode. You'd think my world consisted of the machinations of every most dramatic person I've ever met. I'm the ex-boyfriend who, no matter the amount of time, patience, money, or support is still “wrong” for whatever words might be used to describe the negative feelings I perpetually conjure. I'm the one with the “wrong attitude” for having some basic respect and expectation that I should know what to do with my time and be able to feel as though I'm being heard about how many other things I'm working on or obligated to. I'm getting subpoenaed for deigning to touch the case that churned though 7 different caseworkers or providers given the aberrantly combative and mentally unwell people involved. I get whispers that my psychotic mom is curious about me and still willing to tell my dad he's turned me against her, like I'm not the one who provoked a restraining order in a backwards-yet-effective way of preventing her from reaching out to me.

You know what I've been doing lately? Working. Not even working for money, yet. I've been painting and pulling up flooring and shopping for tools and supplies to keep remodeling a home. It's had its delays and there are many things that will be improved upon on the next one, but it's precisely one of the things I've been wanting to learn and do for many years. As with most things, it's infinitely more accessible than you might assume. It's a fair amount to invest in both time and money wise, but it can be done. It can be done pretty quick and it can return more money than I need to cover the basics for a year. Apparently, we're getting into the house flipping game 5 years sooner than the model house-flipper friend/family acquaintance, and he's doing quite well for himself.

I've always wanted several irons in the fire. Counseling is a lot of hurrying-up-to-wait even if we have 3-5 clients, technically. The wait for bureaucracies to get us in systems and call us back is not great. It'll keep inching along, but we ain't getting rich overnight. Home remodeling is one of those, once you're up and doing it, you just do it. The house needs to sell, but there's nothing stopping us from buying what we need and working. That's been generally gratifying, even if energy gets derailed when a kid wishes to be an asshole. I thought I'd be moonlighting as a sales guy for a minute, but I couldn't manage to blow enough positive smoke up people's asses and maintain my sense of self-respect. The fuck ton I've had to blow to try and get my heat working suggests I could still stand to have a modest regular income not based on my plasma.

I really do try to not forget how regal of an existence I maintain. It's all the more viscerally palpable when a disrespectful kid talks endless shit about things he has no means for understanding how to appreciate. I have to constantly remind myself that I can afford to eat the food I want because I've worked to keep my bills low. Each time I say, “I have that tool!” I've saved time, money, and testified to my long-term values and desire to be of tangible and perpetual utility.

I am a certain kind of tool. Never seemingly the one people want. I'm not sure this is so much about me and what I'm good for as much as it is that underlying universal need that's not being met. We have as much access to information and tools as we can ever hope for. We'll still be like the lonely girl on OKCupid who will message me occasionally for entertaining compliments I'm not inclined to give when her fuck-buddy/boyfriend/husband is boring or annoying her. What are you really after with your poly-whatever “evolved” pretense? I'm just a whore who enjoys the idea of a partner who can be basically chill and work with me. I'm not falling in love with you, and you're on OKCupid, you're exceedingly average looking or part of a bulbous left-swiped montage. We're past 30 and live in the mid-west, that's about as good as it gets.

See, I exercised my utility there, but no one likes it. I tell the annoying, hurtful, truth-as-far-as-I-can-tell that has no place in the modern coddled and entitled mind. Oh my god, did I call people fat? That's like, fat shaming, right? No wonder no one loves me or wants to talk. Why shouldn't you be bothered to tell someone cute they're cute? What's wrong with compliments and flirting? Immediately, the narrative takes place of any critical thought or inquiry. I don't care the topic, the age-group, or presumed taboo, there's a ready-made playbook for those unwilling and unable to contend.

My match will be the one I can talk to like I talk to my dudes. If I have to stifle myself until you've left the car, we ain't meant to be. If I have to get self-conscious that I've brought “too much” to the conversation, you're not talking about the things I'm talking about. You're either not capable, not interested, or not worthy. I get older every day, and that's one more reason that I can't spend time worrying about whether or not you “get” the page I'm on. It's not defiant hood-rat meming away the haters. It's dude who's trying to work, enjoy food, and act as though he's responsible for the world.

I think I get treated pretty reflexively as though I'm not deeply feeling the levels of hatred I tend to engender from “people.” I stress the word “people” and not “individuals,” “friends,” or “clients,” and even “friends” retains a precarious position. I'm fucking exhausted in trying to cope with so much negativity and hatred for what I stand for. As I keep searching for the depths of why I clench my jaw, it's with dire and chaotic “hope” that it will reveal itself to be something less insidious and more controllable than what I feel the truth to be in my bones.

I've already lost, in a sense. I know “feelings” win. I once wrote that “sincerity” wins. It does, but so many useless and helpless and unaccountable feelings are felt that they dictate the rules well before you get around to owning them or expressing them in a real and sincere way. So, I lose. If I genuinely express the depths of my feelings, I fucking destroy people. I'm unforgivable, and I've succumbed to the baby emotional leverage they were looking to evoke all along. A six-foot steel “irony” placard gets to shoot its way from my dickhead, and the cycle repeats. Sincerely share, try, demonstrate – get shit on, blamed, condescended to – retreat, write, speculate, explore – Try to relate, create – get called names, ignored/silent treatment – isolate, read, plan – find reason to get up and go out or make small investment - general life “fuck you” setback – wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm not as hung up on people being little emotional whiny cunts as I sound. It's more heartbroken. That thing I feel in my bones? It's the practical door closing for a means of addressing it in my overall “world domination” scheme. I could have any number of “Great Man” traits and unique spin on what it takes to succeed, but I won't transcend my environment, I'll just be iterative dictations molded by it. I can't escape. I can't buy my way out. I can't implore them to “do better.” In my bones, I've got this solipsistic nihilism about “others,” so vague, so-named, and their ability to be self-aware and accountable. I'm at their errant mercy. How else do people fall to a “woke” or otherwise disembodied online mob of judgment and hatred? People aren't even awake to how full of hate they are and insist I must empathize with in every waking moment. But their perspective, like so many babies, is going to shame and exhaust the world into submission.

There's a 1/3 shot I'm going to have to tell someone to shut the fuck up during a movie in a theater. This is anecdotal, but the trend has held for several years, dating back to Episode VII The Force Awakens. It's one of the little absurdities I like to use as indicative of the debauchery perhaps only a Larry David could really convey. You'll never guess who's the “wrong” one between me telling you to shut the fuck up and you talking. It's me! Of course, I'm not wrong, and you should shut the fuck up. I earned money. I paid for a movie. I have as much a right for nominal escapes into stories as the next cunt. There's a deal, a contract, and a reasonable expectation. That this paragraph exists at all I hope testifies to how generally hopeless and ridiculous it feels to exist as me having to defend silence in a theater. Maybe your experience is different and you're wondering how we collectively forgot how to stop sign. The underlying principle and shame is the same.

I've been put in a position to have to strong-arm for my paycheck! Because I thought there were deals and expectations and things like getting paid on time were a mutually understood shouldn't-really-have-to-explain-or-defend-this kind of thing. Fuck me though, I had that wrong too! Think those who held the keys are ever going to feel guilt and offer an apology for prolonging my literal shivering as I've tried to navigate my heat situation? Fuck no! I was rude in politely asking when I might expect to get paid, giving them a chance to disburse it in chunks, and once offering to work for functionally free if that was required (not an offer taken up on). Fuck me again! Right!? Who would fucking dare to offer to pay off my debts or account for the whispers of unfairness and impropriety by meticulously scheduling ways in which they could contribute without disrupting their life otherwise? WHAT A FUCKING MONSTER FOR EXPECTING ME TO BE ON TIME AND CLEAR IN MY DIRECTIONS!

You don't give a fuck about me or my life. You never have. You, “people,” are the pageantry. You are the artful decadent façade of living forever through your earnest and deep feelings and reckless indulgence masked by words like “passion” or “believe.” You are the things I'm talking past. You are the things I'm constantly reminding myself not to exploit by lending my awareness or capacity to your chaos. You can continue to resent that, but it's not going to make it any less true. And, for “them,” as I was literally told not weeks ago, “It's not really about whether or not what you said is true...” Ok, sweetheart.

I'm a pretty natural flirt. I sense out the lines of decorum and seek to plant muddy boot steps on the other side. I know the difference between you falling for me and you falling for what I know you want to hear more than anything. I want to make the jokes that routinely cross the lines. I want to obliterate the boundaries of what I expect out of myself physically, mentally, and interpersonally. That involves playing a different game than the one on offer. That involves finding myself in the interchange between here and what I work on out there. I'm not going to be constitutive of your shitty and incomplete words. I'm not “just” what's ragged and left of being battered by incoherent seas of emotion. I'm hardly even merely the best or worst things I claim about myself. It's one of my superpowers, evolving, adapting, and creating the more comprehensive narrative that gives license to mild reprieves between cycles.

I hate nothing about myself. I know I'm just a different kind of tool for a different series of purposes than can be utilized or recognized by “people.” That's okay. My work exists in my own space, in the worlds of people who recognize what I am, and in the ongoing consequences of what I tried to bring to those living under considerably more stress and confusion or pain than I may ever experience.

We make things so much harder than they need to be. Quasi-co-parenting a teenager should resonate with anyone who's had or been adjacent to one. What are you mad at? We're out of Sprite? GUESS THAT'S THE END OF EVER DRINKING SPRITE AGAIN! Or, it's not, and we can go to the store, right now, if it's that serious, which it's not nor ever will be. Really, though, what are you mad at? Me? I find it hard to believe because you can't really see me, anymore than the teenager who wants to trash talk my truck which literally hauled his trash away the morning it also hauled his ungrateful ass to school. Trauma be dammed, I know when you're just being an asshole.

Apparently, you never can tell with someone like me?

[726] Ok, Stupid

I turned my OKCupid profile into a long “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” bad sorta-poem. I want it preserved cus it was fun.

What I'm doing with my 

I want a girl who loves having her boobs played with.

I want a girl to prove it's possible to get bored with them. 

I want a girl who reminds me of my exes. 

I want a girl who likes I've more good memories than bad. 

I want a girl who's kind of a whore. 

I want a girl who doesn't glorify sex. 

I want a girl who uses big words. 

I want a girl who doesn't think they're that big. 

I want a girl with kind of a weird laugh. 

I want a girl who can be alone. 

I want a girl who isn't resolved to her fate. 

I want a girl who'll call me out on my weight. 

I want a girl in a sun dress in June. 

I want a girl not afraid to sing along. 

I want a girl who's wise and polite. 

I want a girl who can put up a fight.

My worst quality 

I want a girl who can see through what I say. 

I want a girl who's got so many questions. 

I want a girl with the things that she likes. 

I want a girl that can be left or right. 

I want a girl who acts like herself 

Not "like a girl" or "like a boy" just with something to say. 

I want a girl who appreciates bad writing. 

I want a girl who knows tomorrow's another day. 

I want a girl who's ready to delete her profile. 

I want a girl who's bored and stays anyway. 

I want a girl who will dance in the street. 

I want a girl who's okay with going grey.

The first thing people notice about me 

I want a girl with creative energy. 

I want a girl who can start without me. 

I want a girl who's first to the table. 

I want a girl who winks at me while you pray. 

I want a girl with her nerd and TV shirts. 

I want a girl who's hair will flow all day. 

I want a girl who will crack the joke. 

I want a girl who can say anything. 

I want a girl who cares my arm is asleep. 

I want a girl who knows that I don't care. 

I want a girl that I can see myself in. 

I want a girl who thought of sex just then. 

I want a girl who's available and wicked 

I want a girl to take to see the show. 

I want a girl who hates her job 

But in the off hours finds the point of it all. 

I want a girl who knows who to blame. 

I want a girl with incidental fame.

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

I want a girl who's seen it all. 

I want a girl who can never get enough. 

I want a girl with a taste for finer things. 

I want a girl who can eat on the run. 

I want a girl who's never thought she fit. 

I want a girl who's one in a million fans. 

I want a girl who's down for the late show. 

I want a girl on which tomorrow depends. 

I want a girl who's been a proper book worm. 

I want a girl with her own sacred space. 

I want a girl who believes in something. 

I want a girl who can save my place.

I want a girl who's spent a little too much. 

I want a girl who knows it was worth it. 

I want a girl who creates her own luck. 

I want a girl with the power to change. 

I want a girl who takes it all in stride. 

I want a girl who thinks it's not that strange.

My partner should be

I want a girl who should be what suits her. 

I want a girl who's hung on for this long. 

I want a girl who wants to know what's next. 

Thong thong, thong thong thong thong. 

I want a girl in the spirit of truth. 

I want a girl who will take her time. 

I want a girl who will shoot the tequila 

I want a girl who prefers it with lime. 

I want a girl who's not so scarred and afraid 

Who turns her pain into power and charges ahead 

I want a girl who's happy to cook. 

I want a girl who knows it's my turn. 

I want a girl who doesn't need to perform. 

I want a girl who knows the stage his hers. 

I want a girl with a plan of attack 

I want a girl who can play it by ear 

I want a girl with her tongue down my throat 

I want a girl who can kiss so sincere. 

I want a girl who says of course it is her day
 her week, her month, and even her year.

I spend a lot of time thinking about 

I want a girl who knows what feels right. 

I want a girl who can think it through. 

I want a girl who can tolerate risk. 

I want a girl who thinks so too. 

I want a girl who will scratch my back. 

I want a girl who'll be my emergency contact. 

I want a girl I could stare at all day. 

I want a girl who won't look away. 

I want a girl who's as busy as a bee. 

I want a girl who wants to start a colony.

When I die, I will

I want a girl who knows the end is nigh. 

I want a girl on a responsible high. 

I want a girl who's post STD. 

I want a girl who can go viral and live. 

I want a girl with her own vehicle. 

I want a girl who goes where she pleases. 

I want a girl who gets noticed and praised. 

I want a girl who can mutually raise. 

I want a girl who will do the work. 

I want a girl who's too old for this shit. 

I want a girl who will stay the execution. 

I want a girl who is fire and lit.

My biggest regret 

I want a girl who appreciates "hey." 

I want a girl who's already impressed. 

I want a girl who borrows without stealing. 

I want a girl who knows how to invest. 

I want a girl who will try random things. 

I want a girl who comes in under budget. 

I want a girl who can drop the ball 

And then shoot it, or kick it, against the wall 

I want a girl who is mildly obsessive 

I want a girl who can pull away. 

I want a girl with too many sleepless nights 

I want a girl who knows it'll be okay.

You should message me if 

I want a girl who can roll with the worst. 

I want a girl who wants to hear it straight.  

I want a girl who's playlist has this song. 

I want a girl who doesn't really date. 

I want a girl who can be a good friend. 

I want a girl who bothers to check in. 

I want a girl who can grow on me. 

I want a girl who I can defend. 

I want a girl who would call me right now. 

I want a girl who's stuck in the moment. 

I want a girl who takes care of herself 

But knows it's pretty cool when someone is there. 

I want a girl who says time is an illusion. 

I want a girl who says she's still a kid. 

I want a girl who can doubt her best. 

I want a girl who I want to be like. 

I want a girl who knows that I like me. 

I want a girl, not "the" or a "dream."

[694] Don't Know How To Hate That

Lately, I've been feeling a little lighter. I can usually only tell such things based on how many times I refrain from cursing students not showing up on time or from leaving my car horn alone. Still, I find I clench my jaw a fair to excessive amount regardless, so nothing's perfect. What's weird, I suppose, is that I'm looking forward to being broke. Like, just broke. In $80 I won't even have credit card debt. I won't be bleeding. I won't have something quite yet in works, but I'll be broke, and that will be basically okay. The last chain I adopted is $95 a month on an installment plan to keep tax assholes out of mine. I could beg for more money. I could pay that in plasma.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be an “entrepreneur.” It's kind of a stupid word to me. How I've conducted my life has had exactly nothing to do with a job title or some sort of “free” or “independent” spirit and connotation. I just want what I do to manifest in as great a measure as I can make it. When I was hauling ass at my first jobs, I expected raises and promotions and free shit. People were happy to give them to me. When I was doing my homework before the first bell rang and amassing a small fortune, my first spark as to what I was truly made out of flickered on.

Recently, I've heard accounts of people who knew they were going to be on a famous stage or knew they wanted to become some arbiter of justice or peace after they encountered a hero when they were younger. It's a familiar conviction. What is it about some kids that just know something about who they are or want to be? Why do some stories look like this massive build up of compounding forces until the inevitable finally clicks?

I've also been reading about how randomness effects whether or not people as “talented” or “smart” or “motivated” and “gritty” manage to get anywhere in life. The role that luck has to play is not inconsequential. Born with more money and better contacts? Get a “small million dollar loan?” For me, I had to wake up to the reality of my situation pretty quickly. I have support, but not fail spectacularly and bankrupt everyone around me kind of leeway. As time goes on and people grow comfortable or more precarious, there is no few grand hiding just around the corner to fix a big issue.

So then I think about my lifestyle. I take care of my shit. I live within my means. I guilt trip myself over indulges. I had an older acquaintance tell me that I should take more time to stop and smell the roses. I explained to him that I've already lead a perfectly self-indulgent life, and I could bother to be steeped in meaningful work more often. My concept of what that looks like has changed considerably over the years.

The biggest bit though is how I look with all of my built up potential hanging out in my field. Everything I do I try to treat as a down payment or investment. Money spends easy. Building something that generates it and enthusiasm is considerably harder than anyone bothers to cope with. It's why I hate forums and attempting to reach out. You learn extremely quickly that, well, at this point, literally no one will even take a hand out of the chance to buy into property. I try to wrap my head around what I'd be filled with if I stumbled across a post where someone said, “Here's my field, what can we build in it? You get your half, I get mine.”

When this kind of shit happens, where I'm made to feel, not just “different,” but like out and out wrong or perfectly backwards and annoying for going about things the way I do, I start to mythologize myself. Like, surely, I can't be the only one! I have so many examples of people doing what I want to do well. I didn't conjure this shit from the ether. And what part of any money-making endeavor, particularly if you didn't come from money, is supposed to be easy? No one talks about the last minute trips hauling supplies in the middle of the freezing night on your ill-suited car so you can help get something complete on a time crunch. And maybe while you're doing it, you come back covered in ticks, and you dropped a board on your foot, or shit car decided to die on the ride back. That's what “entrepreneurship” means to me. You do what needs to be done, now. You take it in stride. You ask for as much failure as quick as possible for as little money as you can make it cost you, learn, change, and try again. I'm not “gambling,” I'm barely “speculating,” and I'm not taking any more or less risk than I would with my life as it's managed to look so far.

The “failure” of the things I do comes to mind at this point. You know what a “failed” coffee van venture is? A great work van with a generator and equipment to work with whenever the time comes. The “failed” coffee shop was proof of concept for even shitty business, and a shit ton of supplies that don't just disappear. You know what happens when you buy land and build on it? The value increases dramatically. You know how you live comfortably when you're old so you don't end up working until you're 70 after your pension got wiped out and now you're waxing your poorly conceived business ideas to the enthusiastic “kid" at the bar? You start now. You invest now. You try and fail and work right fucking now. You accept that you're already dead, and your only shot at heaven is this life. If you can do better, do better. Be better. Fix the obvious, then fix the subtle, then double down on the exact right thing you should be doing to get the best out of yourself every chance you get. To the best of your ability and understanding is what you owe yourself. Anything less is death.

What else in life offers that kind of perpetual effort for self improvement? I saw a post on facebook about a famous pianist getting asked why they still practiced at 90. They said, “I think I'm getting better” or something similar. Do people feel that in their day to day lives? Are you practicing and improving and learning something new with your job? It's great if you are, I just have never managed to figure out how to feel the same way about anything I've ever been employed to do. There's usually “the way we do things” which, try as you might, there's usually pretty severe consequences for pushing against too hard.

As I'm rounding 2^nd base on my way to 30, I'm wondering, what's the alternative? If I wasn't navigating the things I am now in service to my desire to own and create with relative freedom and abandon, how else could I have gone about it? No “real job” has provided me the kind of mental security or self-respect to think something as drastic as, “I can totally do this, just for these (x) amount of years, and then my real life begins!” Like, at least I'm killing 2 or 3 birds with one stone in marathoning TV, books and podcasts, and drumming when I do ClusterTruck. It's basically just the thing that interrupts my otherwise attempting to be occupied attention.

A weird hard part about going about things the way I do is the endless waves of bullshit enthusiasm. I don't mean from people who've been following along or friends I know who are up to their own important things. I mean if I post some Maron-esc rant describing the kind of partner or help I need, and then 2 idiots chime in with how cool and motivating I am. Am I? Motivating? You read my story, my begging appeal from my knees, and your take away was 5 empty lines about your new motivation? Don't talk to me about your dreams, work on them. Incorporate them into what I'm doing. Stop wasting our time.

Here too I think about if differences in people just become more pronounced over time, or if they were already huge and there to begin with, but each either succumbs to their particular life forces or not. I could be 5 roommates deep, gaming all day, working IT for IU, have a car payment, and resolved myself to the excessively-average girl in the office after I watch the carnage between the rest of the pack failing with her. That's something I could've done. I could have screamed “fuck it” and went buck wild with my land cash and traveled or gambled or bought something showy under the deep understanding that “you only live once.” I could have catfished lonely OKCupid girls with dyed hair and nose rings into thinking I was deep and super nice and then moved us towards some kind of family unit. Try to be “normal” and “resolved.” It's in trying to imagine myself doing anything else that I start to question “free will.” I literally don't know how else I can be for it to seem even remotely “correct.” When I actually get back to practicing music every day, lose 30 pounds, and find where I left my half-inch of hairline, I'll be like 90% of my best self. It's presumed philanthropy and political engagement that might round out the last 10%. My honest desire and pursuit does most of the work for me already.

My ongoing freak-out concern about time notwithstanding, I have 1 month out of the year I need to work to live as well or better than I have lived since getting out of college. There's no gun to my head that says I need to spend $1800 RIGHT NOW to fix the moving truck. More than half of my yearly bills aren't even due until the fall, or don't necessarily need to be hooked up in the first place. It's just by definition lighter. I've erased variables that work to clench my jaw. I've consolidated the big mess of expenses into a story about number of days and hours, and how I'm going to corrupt those days to fit my agenda even if I'm forced to work in service to someone else's. I don't know how to hate that.

Here seems an important point. How often do I talk about things I hate? My driving force is about moving to a place where I'm as befuddled as I could possibly be in trying to regard my circumstances as anything more than impossible to hate. That's the voice in the back of my head. That's what sees me through drama and broken relationships. People won't talk or help? You can't find a reason to hate ones that will. Want to complain about your job or future prospects? Better get to creating in all this empty space you gave yourself. Better use your former rent money to promote and build. Tired of being surrounded by idiots? I suppose a desert would be more remote, but no one's going to bother you there. I can still find plenty to hate about my circumstances for sure, but it is possible for it to fall away. I can subject myself to a different environment that hopefully breeds the best kind of me. And since no one cares to build it for me, and I can't change for the better without doing so, nothing really matters that doesn't speak to that. Smell the roses? Help me learn how to grow them, and I'll smell the hell out of our effort.

[663] D.O.A.

I'm in a weird mood, so let's see what there is to say about it. I'm not negative. I've managed to persuade what is formally a group of friends that I am. To my knowledge, “negative” means that I speak to things that are less than fun or exciting on too frequent a basis and it affects their mood. I'm assuming there is no distinction between saying negative things and being a negative person for the purposes of their description.

It's worth noting, this isn't a charge I hear routinely from anyone else I spent as much or more time with. If it's shared across my relationships, this emboldened cache decided to build up the significance of my impact into a pretense for no longer talking to me. Something important as well, this is a group of people who say things like, “I completely agree” or “I totally understand” before hours later finding themselves cursing at me or name calling.

I know it's not just about them. I hasten to remove their names from any digressions I go into picking their words apart. I know it's not just about me. No healthy individual, in my view, should be so moved to end all contact with you for being methodical and polite in trying to ask questions or explain where you're coming from. There is no other option for people to relate at all, let alone well, unless time and patience is taken to listen close and try to empathize. When that makes you blindingly mad, it's just not my fault.

I love that this has been a problem long enough that there's a discernible pattern, and I'm so relieved that clinical psychologists, of course including my favorite Jordan Peterson, document this behavior as well. The first 5 or so minutes of this speak explicitly too it. I don't have to rely on my own selfish motives in protecting my ego or oversell their example as something indicative of a personal greater moral or intellectual failing. They aren't special. With respect to the world at large and the things I choose to talk about, let alone how, neither am I.

I find it at the base of the reasons I think I'll feel genuinely more relieved than scared when it's my turn to die, provided it doesn't happen in some dramatic and painful fashion, that every little joy or proper expression of dopamine I manage in a day is extremely hard fought. If this is me negative, I hesitate to spend too much time mulling over where my head was at under my abusive mom. I struggle to place where the teenager prepared to blow up cars and shoot up living rooms (with paint balls) fits in the greater “negative” story of my life. To label someone harkens to wearing an A on your chest in that abortion story I'm not going to bother googling. You're forever and only this one thing for how it makes the people around you feel.

When I think about the list of things that I've managed to make people feel bad over, I see confounding results. Offering money and drinks has garnered shit-talking, resentment, and fights. People feel inadequate or poor. Offering places to stay has never motivated a person quicker to seek an escape route. The idea that it's my couch or living room registers as a certain kind of pain. I once made a girl cry for asking a question about her ex-boyfriend. Certain people practically snarl when I offer an explanation for anything I do, let alone try to describe a feeling. It's rarely if ever physical intimidation that even garners a flinch. I can string together a list of profanity, and people take it more as a joyous parlor trick.

I know what the conflict is. I know people feel fundamentally inadequate. I know I surrounded myself with those cliché “smart” kids who got too fat or comfortable or old and pay lip service to a handful of figures that made it to the top. I know that people are scared about how little they feel or how their feelings change, and they don't have the words for dealing with them any quicker than I might find them over the course of a dozen blogs on the subject. I know that the language we do adopt to describe ourselves is overwrought and impossible to live up to. It's deliberately misleading and manically hopeful, so the more we presume to know what we're talking about in adopting that language, the more we spiral out of control. I know people are jealous of other people's facade. No matter how much I bitch, ten seconds later I might be talking about an OKCupid hookup with the sexless depressive. No matter how many times I tweak my back or overspend trying to make my land a cool place to be, it'll be mine, and no one will feel they have a stake in it.

It's the kind of problem described when people run through de-cluttering self-help books or when someone offers a dozen reasons they never learned an instrument. “Talented” musicians are most often obsessive-compulsives who put that tick towards their instrument. They started young so the years and years of class or instruction get summed up as “cool piano player” in the eyes of everyone who proclaims they wish they could do the same thing. Do you? Do you want to play the same dozen notes several thousand times over the course of a few years? No. To want something in earnest is to want the journey and the work. They opt for the grind of an RPG or rungs of their corporate ladder. They hold their job in their hands, ask if it brings them joy, and default to ideas about benefits and free lunch to aid in throwing out gnawing dreams.

What confuses me is that, in our own minds, I think we all work “as hard.” This could be me giving them too much credit. At the very least, I know people are tired and disenfranchised. I know they have about 2 minutes of conversation before the story of their debt appears. I know they still manage to make that god forsaken one time a year base touch with all of their “loves” and “friends.” But they don't want to get anywhere together. They want to struggle alone and pretend their shame is hidden. They want to keep playing into the personal identity story they were maybe sold on as children.

For my part, at the end of my 80 hour week, I need to believe that sooner than later, I'll never have to do that again unless it's in service to something I'm infatuated with. But for them? Garnished paychecks, growing health issues, scared of the wrong catastrophe hitting at the wrong time of month? To kill yourself at a job and not see the future would be unbearable. For my purposes, if it is unbearable, if you are suffering, if you are tired, if you think you're doing too much or care so hard, why does that need to become my fault? I don't substitute my “I feel like death” sentiments with me smiling in the park on a snowy day, so I'm negative?

However bad I'm feeling about any particular day or my place in the world, it doesn't get better when I try to pretend otherwise. I've watched myself, or been too blacked out, as I lash out. I start to act like you. It's why I tend to forgive and forget drunk nights that bring out the sober heart in you. Your sober self can be sad as fuck or irrationally angry, you just might not really find out about it until you decide to drink.

I want people to do better by themselves more than I want to insist they stop calling me negative. I'm not crumbling under the weight of its truth, I'm just aggravated and bored with the people so lazy and disrespectful that they've sacrificed their voice. They're running from their responsibilities and losing opportunities for growth and understanding. They stopped paying attention to who they wanted to be. They stopped seeing what roles we could play in each other's lives. To me, that's death. That's the ultimate negative thing. You can carry on about the moral and intellectual disgraces coming out of the era where a democrat barely beats a pedophile, but you've left it to those people to be the last ones with any capacity to truly believe in something. Wins have to “surprise” you so you perk up for a day and decide to call your Senator. You're always looking outside for the validation and excuse.

Maybe I just hit on something there too. These kids all grew up getting the good grades and praise. There's always been some outside affirmation of what they were doing. Their major was correct by default. Their hobby was interesting or their relationship was cute. Perhaps there's been a massive uncontrolled positive feedback loop that ensures any “negative” introduced into it needs to be washed away. I live in a world where things aren't inevitably getting better. I live in a world of subtlety, contradiction, and nuances. I try to work in my impending and hastening death into my reasoning to do anything daily. You can't meaningfully tag that to an Instagram picture.

I don't really morn the dead. My relationships were good enough for the drunkeness or jokes, but these were never the people who wanted to do the same kind of work, or they'd be here with me. They wouldn't resent me. They'd be able to recognize my efforts and ethics and how long it takes before you can savor any satisfaction from the riff you've been rehearsing for years. I can't decide if they know they're dead. I can't pin point if it happened before I ever met them, sometime in the middle of knowing each other, or crystallized when we came apart. I do know that the fights and “innocent misunderstandings” are inevitable with people like that though. I know there is no proper approach or right way to speak. The valuable commodity is maintaining your identity in spite of it all, and you can't expect them to recognize you when they haven't been paying attention to what they've become.

[556] Wait But Why?

I want to discuss a question that I promise doesn't bug me. I want to discuss it because it comes up over and over again with, I can only assume, every one of my friends at one point or another. I don't find it insulting or necessarily hard to understand. I think its roots can be explored and I have a few ideas I think are plausible.

“Why are you friends with Nick?”

To be honest, the best answer I have for anyone being friends with me is because they see an important part of themselves reflected back. I've fashioned myself for a long time as something of an expression of almost pure id. I used to point to monetary benefits when it came to pimping out the house or my access to a car and willingness to chauffeur people around. That stuff is always weak and superficial of course, but for the pragmatist it might be easier to look past my mouth.

Perhaps I should slow down though. It's a question I'm asking just as often to my friends about who they associate with. Say you come home from work and have nothing positive to say about your coworkers, my first question certainly rings with the memory of your frustrations before you hit the town with them. It's easy to blurt out the question of friendship when you've no context for the long history a pair or group might have. At the darkest end you could be asking about the pure emotional or tangible extraction someone is getting out of stringing their prey along.

With regard to me though, I find it gets a little more complicated for the ones asking. Say they asked Kristen. Sweet, innocent, Kristen. Their mental model for her didn't jive even remotely with what they think of me. The confusion, though superficial, speaks to those disingenuous mental shortcuts unthoughtful people take when considering potentially complex human beings. In other words, it's a failure of imagination more than necessarily something insidious. This crowd would make sweeping generalizations about open relationships or draw an uncrossable line that protects their judgment from your explanation. Childish, boring, moving on.

Then there's people who genuinely can't appreciate for a moment my brand of exceedingly dark humor. I make the spousal abuse or cancer joke, they're looking around the room at all the people not up in arms or shuffling me out the door. These are moralizers. They seek less to protect their judgments than to impose and control with them. Flippant or funny disarms those who want to move against you. If they're fuming in the corner and you get even one person to crack a smile, their confusion rests in the disconnect between their pseudo-reality where things are good and make sense, and mine where I guess I'm just trying to hurt people or something. Who could befriend such an untamed beast?

The excessively hilarious one is when they ask Byron why he's my friend. There's almost no words for the level of irony. It's hard to explain knowing someone who basically inhabits your brain. In the deepest possible sense that I've encountered in life, it's like asking why you would bother liking yourself. Our style differences are not brain or disposition differences, but the clean cut politely spoken professional that holds your hand or speaks your language is a jarring contrast from the curly haired ripped jeans despot cursing for what you're positive is absolutely no reason.

Objectively, were I to give reasons for someone to be or not to be my friend, well, pick your favorite drunkest and craziest sounding blog. It's not that I think I'm special or particularly worse or “crazier” than anybody else, but there seems to be a key to my madness. I know my shit.

There's different ways to know your shit, and not all of them are equal. For many, confidence springs forth from their resolve to accept their lot. Whether it's their average or lacking look, motivation, or general mental state. I find it no coincidence that OKCupid matches me highest with every punk rock looking girl with dyed hair and a septum piercing who's rebel attitude and crass jokes make her the life of her small world...if she can be bothered. Smart people in general get a whiff of how they can run something and settle pretty nicely into “know their shit” status.

Then there's bookworm types. They can learn every fact in the world or the particulars of their job, but if you tried to turn them inward you're begging for a substance problem or major depression. The isolated academic types speak a very particular language to a particular crowd and understand the world through an endless stream of books and theories that help shield them from any personal insight that might leak through. Maybe think of Ben Carson. A man who could literally save your life by cutting into your brain, but can't figure out the deadly consequences of playing with fascism.

Then there's that last page of self-help books kind of knowing your shit. When you've therapied to death your past trauma or daily anxieties and you stumble from one realization to the next until you float out to sea on a contemplative island. This speaks to my brand. I'm not just confident in many things I do, I've done or will do a lot of work in explaining the story of how I got there. I'll do it to such a point that you'll start questioning why you got upset in the first place. I sit so deep in my own world that you'll start blaming me for your back pains on the seat you chose.

This is the best explanation I have for people I've know for years or managed more than an acquaintance with who just go radio silent. I was simply comfortable with our dynamic, refused to read minds even when they were begging me to, thus I am to blame. This helps me explain people who actively spoke out against me with, to my knowledge, no if even negative provocation. The girl roomy who re-befriended our other roommate who choked her while disavowing me, who threw him off her, will always be illustrative. She fashioned herself as someone who knew shit, but when faced with the reality, she's just choking against the wall, and how dare someone like me step in and remind her.

The irony of being my friend is that I'm exceedingly transparent and easy as hell to disarm. Well, that is, if you're a person. If you're an insecure husk who's needlessly provoked, I'm a nightmare. If you have an opinion of yourself that you value which allows you to see through my superficial behavior, we get along seamlessly. And yes, this is in utter spite of any and all of the worst shit I can be or have done. I'll always find it odd and unfair that people approach me as if my day to day is setting fires or seeking out people to make cry. At bottom, the reason I'm making you uncomfortable is because you're not comfortable with yourself.

This means that when I make a racist joke, you haven't worked out your relationship to race, so you scoop from your general knee jerk impression of what you think “the culture” would do. If I insult you or your family, you might have deep seeded issues with your big ass ears that even 30 years on the planet never helped you with, and a friendly gathering over drinks is not where you wanted to cope with your thoughts about your dad. To be clear, there is more than a little difference between dark and cold jokes and being genuinely mean-spirited. It does exist. If you don't believe me, you're suffering from something I'm the absolute last person to help you deal with.

Never forget, if you're not laughing (which you usually are) I'm cracking the joke for me. I repeat that shit to myself when my mind wanders and lose my shit days later. I love my humor. I love it so much and it brings me so much joy that I revel in the resentment and anger it conjures from those who think it has anything real to do with them. Of course, when it does, when it feels real, you can take that as a chance for introspection or exploring context, or you can keep blaming me like my joyous coping mechanism will be cried or sneered out of existence. My best guess, it's here to stay, but feel free to slut shame.

It gets deeper though. Because a bad or mean joke is still a pretty wimpy metric for judgment, right? You don't have to know anything to be crass. The dirty part is feeling yourself concede. It's your smile betraying your indignation. It's your stupefied look as my half-drunk comment cuts you in two. You thought I didn't see your look? You thought I didn't notice the tone? You thought my questions weren't a bit leading? Did you think your posture found an invisibility cloak? Did you pretend there was something secret I couldn't figure out about you that I haven't already dug out of myself ten times over? That's when it truly bites.

Then you have no choice but to accept I both understand and legitimately disrespect how you're going about where you're coming from. There is no protest or negotiation. I'm not going to find myself enlightened about how I went about speaking to you. I'm not on your emotional level and that makes you feel bad. You haven't sought out my brand of knowing shit, and that makes me feel nothing about you besides fleeting frustration of a classist air. Engaging with that kind of person then becomes this exhausting negotiation and navigation of the febrile feelings. One I'm brilliant at when I adopt the style you're familiar with on Byron. I still just find it in me to always pick on children.

That's a hefty amount of rationalization there Nick, but why? Why does any of it speak to being your friend? What do you really bring to the table but bad words and explanations I don't buy!?

I've said it before, but it bears repeating, sincerity wins. I don't just dream about the best parties and making movie moments, I build them. I don't pretend to hold you in high or low esteem without having tested our relationship for what I hoped to get out of it. When I say I want the same mental and financial security for my friends that I seek for myself, I get my spine tapped so I can afford the land to invite people to as a refuge or for experimenting. If I call you a cunt, I think you're a cunt, but more importantly, you're probably actually a cunt. 

Whatever you hate about me, you can trust it. When I'm in an out-pour of goodwill and sentimentality, you can trust that too. I'll be dammed if I'm ever as confused as you about how and why I approach my relationships. At least as dammed as you, that is. And I think people like to be able to trust, as I very well know, nothing ever seems like it can be trusted. My worst self isn't some outward display of stupidity or negativity, it's when I stop inviting you in to read about it.

I'm a person who laughs until it hurts about his demons, routinely, practically daily. I put on display as much truth as I can discover in the moment. I work with and engage my contradictory and confusing nature instead of merely suffering it. You tend to learn a lot more shit than people ever want to give you credit for because they can't really see or hear you over their own issues. I might as well have a superpower in my capacity to recognize or disarm them. Why I don't use it to smooth everything over and make everyone happy, like they perpetually fail to do, is somehow baffling. As if I should sacrifice the path to my best relationships to their selfishly small conception of being.

I think there's any number of areas in your life you're wishing you could be a little more like me. So rarely do people give me a reason to believe the relationship can go both ways.

[312] Land Hooooooo

I will say this as concisely and honestly as I can. I do not seek to judge, I do not pretend to have all or perfect knowledge, and I am not after a fight. I’m writing after many conversations and avenues of feedback, and matching those against my own observations. I hope before feathers are ruffled a conversation can be had, and if it is shown that a ship may be headed in the wrong direction, we can steer it back.

I feel the group dynamic changing. My current theory is that it boils down to how the boys treat the girls. I think there’s a lot of side bar conversations about what someone feels verses where the other person is coming from or if there’s just some over thought or insecurity playing into things. But, ultimately I think those pale in comparison to a kind of respect that seems to be slowly eroding.

I’ve got it in me to be as big a perv as the best of them. Lately though, I find myself turned off to how I hear girls in general talked about, or the endless awkward encounters they seem to find themselves in when relating to our group. I think there is a distance being put between our girl friends’ feelings and the sort of “we’re so hot” persona. Whether it’s an in-group out-group thing related to climbing or fitness, I don’t know.

I can see an overzealous attitude or misplaced confidence push “the group” apart. Particularly when it comes to roping in our girls as one’s in a queue in between Okcupid hookups. I feel like there has been a steadily increasing creepy factor that shrouds the guy/girl interactions. Whether it’s Asher-esc touching where no touching need be, or lingering hugs and deep breaths just because someone’s going to bed or entered the room, there’s a subtext. It’s like Mad Men, enter a room, pour a drink, invite someone into the room, and pour another drink; I’m hammered just watching before 10 am.

I now worry about introducing new people into the group. Where once I was ridiculously proud and interested in what a new cool personality would do around a bunch of cool people, I’m significantly more worried about “the sharks circling.” If I say “hey, I messaged Jen and brought her around” the awkward what-the-hell-are-you-talking about response is to say your percentage match is higher or you’ve spent more time texting or making out with her. I’m not trying to compete, I didn’t message her to eventually fuck, and that gets kind of lost when everyone’s initial response is to caveman the conversation to some level of “dibs.”

I’m concerned because I think the people most likely to pick up on the how and why things are changing are the same one’s we don’t see around as often. I’ve at least been the asshole long enough who can watch and predict that if shit got too wrong I could cut ties and go about my day. But the nice people and the emotionally involved people or the willing to make excuses for you/us people aren’t even up to it anymore.

Confidence, a concern for your health or appearance, and even a good group of friends are no substitute for humility. I don’t even want to pretend like I’m trying to point fingers because I can conjure a good ten reasons, for each of our friends, completely outside what’s been witnessed or talked about that can speak towards how different things have played out. The only “secret” to getting along with people or having a satisfying sex life that I wish wouldn’t get lost is a sense of honesty and respect for how you’re spending that time and who you’re doing it with.