[925] Future Proofing

If I were to boil down my approach to life, it's to start with "I don't know."

If you recognize you don't know something, you can then empower yourself with a choice to try to.

If I don't know what I want, I can investigate what I have and feelings conjured about those things. Do I want this shit-on-the-floor, smack me in the face in my sleep, sneeze in my mouth, leaves disemboweled mice on the porch, counter-hopping, stomach worm courting cat? My stomach drops a little at the idea of disowning him.

If I don't know what to say, I can say whatever is in the moment and on my mind right now, and see where that takes me. Blogs aren't structured beyond mini-paragraphs prompted by perhaps the last line or word of the one before it. I don't know what's going on in my head, and I'll never account for everything.

Once I reevaluated a lot of the assumptions I made about what I wanted or who I wanted to be, I was able to approach them more deliberately and achieve goals, at least the sense that I'd achieved anything, when it might look otherwise. I used to think it a sign of success to have a big screen TV. It's not unimaginable that many of my ideas of my value or potential were formed around the same age that conjured big screen worship.

One of the biggest switches was in how I conceived of the most valuable thing. I thought it was money, or myself, or my intelligence. Then I got, what felt, like a really good group of friends. It became about time together. My impaired imagination filled with large spaces and cool things rarely included anyone else there. I didn't dream of being married or having kids. I just thought I'd conjure enough money to sort of fuck around or do whatever I wanted. I wholly anticipated being "retired" by 30.

I didn't know what anyone else wanted and assumed I could incorporate them. I'm not entirely sure most people most of the time are doing much of any work to really suss out what they want or how they feel. But, like all dreamers, I was willing to play pretend for a while, and I swing back and forth beyond how much responsibility any party should take for maybe decisions that were made. Not everything I do, perhaps not most things, is altogether conscious and deliberate, but there are key things in high and low stakes moments where I'm pretty confident there was a “me” in there doing something on purpose. Those matter a lot to me, just like writing, because an example gets set, meaning can be examined, and responsibility for choices can take the forefront.

I was recently on a phone call where the founder of the company I started working for was courting business. The gentleman he was talking to was 64 and discussing his coaching business. He described his clients as leaders of the largest, some billion-dollar, companies who are beginning to feel the shift culturally from thinking of their employees as “units of labor” and more as...you know, people. He charges $42,500 to meet with each of them once a month for a year. He is part of an association of hundreds of business leaders, has access to hundreds of acres for retreats, and wishes to build his program and business into something worthy of discussing with Oprah (leaving aside what you may think of what Oprah thinks is worthy.) He was humble, he was focused, and he complimented me on how I described my understanding of leadership, prompting him to then ask me about my background.

It was a moment that I'm still processing for the rest of the context it existed in. The company's founder is a highly-motivated thinker and creator. I signed on because I've watched him grow over many years and he's helped me in my projects in the past. For almost about an hour he discussed the dozens of potential directions to go, sounded thirsty for the client's professional associates, while also managing to remain affable and speaking to the services the client was requesting that he could provide. I'm worried. In the break down of the conversation afterward, a few things felt latched onto that would derail what feels like an extremely high-value professional relationship to have. The way to connect with this client is to reflect the genuine values he has and is building into his brand. I think the founder and company have those values, but I'm left thinking they weren't emphasized as a deliberate point of connection and demonstration that we were listening closely.

It also has me thinking that all of my self-reflection at the “top” of many aspects of life has much to say in service to disillusioned rich people who weren't raised to conceptualize people as individual worlds unto themselves. The dude charging them $42,500 deeply appreciates my insights on leadership and the meaningful feedback loops you should be seeking when you superficially “have it all” already.

I'm learning that while I might have “official” duties in calling people and drawing out information, I'm going to act as something of my “anxiety whisperer” role I cultivated working for DCS. You want the extreme motivation and drive to achieve big things. You can absolutely be overwhelmed with seemingly endless meetings and speculation and different future ideas that blow right on past the few things the client has deliberately asked for. My brain does this to chaos, and one way or another, a stabilizing system will be put in place. It's a company worth investing in and lending your skills to. It has the potential to be one of the most lucrative things I'll ever do and it shouldn't interfere with my ability to do anything else I'm working on at the same time.

[842] Would You, Could You, Be My

I'm so small.

For reasons I can't define, today has maintained a theme. The theme was “neighbors.” I move to the middle of nowhere, already exists a neighbor. I stay for a year or two, several more move in. You've been told to “love thy neighbor.” Depending on which side of the fence you sit, you might be the Ned Flanders, or the Homer Simpson.

What does it mean for me to call myself small? I'm a distant memory in the mind of a college acquaintance. I'm a petty fool with indignant statuses to be written off as though they were inscribed on toilet paper. I'm 1 in several billion who may or may not die in some horrifying way tomorrow or lend himself to the infectious chain that takes down someone else. I'm the conscious blip, delirious with ideas of free will, taking infinitely ironic stabs at immortality with every new goal and mangled sentiment.

The smallest speck of dirt in your eye can irritate indefinitely. The smallest bump on your skin can engorge and get infected. The smallest comment of encouragement or scorn can imprint on one who overhears. I'll watch 6 seasons of a show and replay one scene or one line for years. What does it mean to be small? It's an opportunity to persist and move in many directions. Tardigrades can live basically everywhere, including in the vacuum of space.

I am small. I don't feel small. In fact, I feel like I have an over-sized impact on the lives of people I interact with. I feel people remember me, especially when they don't want to. I think how trashy reality television is perceived by me is how people hate-fuck ideas about and from me in their own lives.

All the world's entertainment and horrible examples of how to conduct your life haunt, taunt, and flaunt how much attention and money their branding and berating can garner. The language to escape and justify is an inexhaustible well. I think I share in the egomania which for surely nefarious reasons is compelling by default. Insofar as you aren't interested in yourself, that is. Crazy tiger people, like burnt Jersey trash, mean nothing to fellow egoists.

For the power and purpose of my self-delusions, what's the end, or even the current goal? Why do I practically salivate at the prospect of opening my social circle to people I know want nothing to do with me? Why do I want 100 invitations, gas or flights paid, to be turned down by those who never signed on? Why do I want to reduce myself to an annoying little stain on the mind of people who know I look down on them and resent for not manifesting beyond formative memories described by some smug Oprah's book club blurb advocating for everyone you meet to be a brick in your humble-bragging home about where you're at in life?

Do I need to always be in that opposition space? Do I need to keep jettisoning myself away from the “past” and carry on as if the future won't be the reshuffling reanimated corpse with different players? Do I turn off, genuinely enjoy doing nothing more than trying to have everything at that point? Do I wish the speck of dirt memory to matter to them as much as their, seemingly positive, impression left on me? Am I just in the business of turning a lot of shit into a much happier and hopeful story than could ever exist?

I suppose, I know what happens when I act like that's true. I know who I turn into. I know the impact of my words and behavior significantly faster and with more credible blame. My impact doesn't come with a butterfly-effect convolution meandering the winds of meaning. I know I don't feel right, or think something akin to karma is going to “get me.”

I like to minimize. I don't wish to erase, but I like to keep in context. I like to find the hundredth iteration or true nascent point to a sentiment that made you feel light and bright all day, but is basic as hell. I want to find the utility or point. I want you to use your anger, or disregard it. I want you to contemplate and build on your trauma, or just be quiet and suffer irresponsibly until we're forced to deal with you. I want to fluidly believe each step of my life is a “simple” act of putting the right shapes in the right holes, and not unleash a torrent of half-baked philosophy, anxiety, and tattered hatred imploring to be understood. I try to not feel my hands and wrists as I contemplate countless redundant incidents of manual slavery that belay the comforts of my existence.

Little can be understood. Little fits in many baskets. Big is open to endless interpretation and remixing. Little can pop right out of existence the moment you try to get too hard a grasp of it. Little decisions you make early about who you want to be and how you're going to understand the world compound. The little idea remains the same, and all you can't control is what spins out. Little acts to remind yourself of who you are and how you're oriented keep you true. Little negotiations in your foundation invite cracks. Little plays to ignorance incite death.

I'm a small collection of ideas in a small state on a small spot of land. I make small amounts of money which let me buy up the small tools it takes to dig small holes, walk small paths, and dream for ever more small comforts. I wouldn't invite my Confederate and Trump flag waving neighbors, and yet, they've carried out small favors and offered to help me in my small endeavors. How big of them.

If “the universe,” what have you, ever had a reason to slow me down, it would be for the same fear that my worst impulses would take over with the right momentum and influence. I'm different. It's a small difference that has compounded over time into something beyond me. It can get bigger and wily. I want the world filled with people better than me, better than having been crafted by the selfishness and indulgence, and better than begging for death amidst abundance. I pursue a future I can't conceive as the last interesting story to unfold. I don't want to shed the characteristics that make me small. I want to recognize and respect what they turn into unchecked or ignored.

I make small decisions over time until something big exists as order or chaos. I watch my creations as though they had been there all along or were inevitable. I see what work is left to be done, move a stone, dig a hole, and huff a new engine fume. I keep inviting. I keep celebrating. I keep posting the world's weakest landscaping pictures of the inches we add. I watch my language evolve into more “we” sentiments. I wonder what we will resolve to as the world continues to burn. I wonder if when I've crossed over some superficial mental or cultivated environmental line I'll forget about what drove me there. We'll have so much left to do and think about.

[816] On Complex Thought and Layered Meaning

I've written several versions and limbs of this blog before. I might link to them as the mood finds me, but for now, I want to see how much has been lost in the time I've waited to begin writing.

I get both mildly flattered and a touch uncomfortable when I'm told I'm smart. I'm not embarrassed about understanding things, and I certainly lord myself over the things and people I think I get better than they get themselves. It doesn't mean everything boils down to manipulation, but it's been hard to get into a flow of my social work job without receding into a kind of character I've long since stripped of its playful novelty. Whether you think there's different veins of intelligence or not, I think you need a kind of baseline.

What are things people have considered smart? We'll use the term "genius-level athlete." We like to find scientists who, by virtue of their field, are genius for even being able to pronounce certain terms, let alone manipulate them. Brilliant writers wrap us up in stories and capture imaginations of millions well-independent of personal taste or general familiarity of literature. Hell, if you thought my writing was awesome, Grammarly would punch us both in the dick and dare us to pay a premium to get rid of "incorrect" passive voice.

Across the potential domains of intelligence, there's a degree of complexity. Can you figure out the mind-games the quarterback is playing with the defense? No? He's brilliant! Can you fluently swing between keys and read the mixolydian pattern as the improviser wails? Fuck no? "I could never do that!" If you don't speak the language, and you regard the potential gibberish to translate as respect and admiration, extreme consequences can follow. This is as true for those bent on hero-worship as it is for those who believe everything they tell themselves.

We also make a distinction between being smart and being wise. Wisdom can learn from someone else's mistake, and it's merely smart to learn from your own. Wisdom watches. Often, we have a solemn respect for the person remaining calm in the storm, letting things play out, or maybe only feigning a degree of disinterest. The reactive hothead gets put in their place. The mad scientist doesn't bet on the unified heart of the world who'd revolt. The tale of ego or pride destroying in very foreseeable ways is persistent lore for a reason.

I like to say several things at once. I like to be in the middle of a dozen things. My best blog titles, to me, are when they stand for at least 4 or 5 things. Maybe a song title comes to mind that seems to capture the essence, and then happens to have killer relevant lines if you know the words. Maybe it ties itself in a nice bow to the last line. My brain automatically tends to run in different directions at once, and it gives zero shits if I'm comfortable picking one road or another. Try as I might, I'm often reacting. I'm feeling something turn or drop in my stomach. I'm persuading myself the dread is something less significant, and it's my burden, nay, “mature duty,” to combat it until the next practical reality can roll around.

Today provided some insight into that. I was getting my job done. I was making my rounds. I had a plan to write up some loose ends. I was going to be done early. I started getting afraid. It was too easy. I was playing along. I knew the tasks and just did them in a line. When I got to the end of the line, then what? So I sabotaged it. I let the last hour of my day go to some bullshitting and tying up one loose end instead of 5 or 6. What are we supposed to say about this?

I don't like the band Tool. I find their music boring, and every time I try, I just can't. Their “complexity” is often cited. Complexity for complexity's sake I've never considered compelling. Me telling you of the dozen things I'm doing half-assed isn't compelling either. It doesn't make me move on them any faster, nor does it make me proud to tell you how far I haven't gotten. I could write the 12 minute song that spends the first 4 minutes adding an extra note, instrument, or flourish. I could also attempt to write a 4 minute song that says more than “because I can.” Is there a degree of “smart” or “wisdom” in doing either? Is my inability to be brought to tears by Tool, as one reviewer I read, simply my inability to appreciate the beautiful and brilliant language?

This all would matter less to me if we didn't make terrible judgements based on our impressions of these tastes and capacities to understand. I'll never quite swallow that Trump is president. For my brain, attempting to run in every direction, the reaction to that news and fact is to so many suicidal and dark places, it's genuinely hard to spend any time reflecting without wanting to give up. What do you say to the absence of organized thought? What do you say to burned nuggets of wisdom? What's the exercise of existing when survival is predicated on both strangling as damming a selfish conception of yourself in the world as it is denying anything beyond you exists?

There's a way to describe the insanity of a chaotic mind as “it's own kind of intelligence.” I'd call this disingenuous, but we do it all the time. We don't want to believe the people we associate with don't have their niche. We prefer the polite language of “accepting differences” where the language of cutting dead weight would be better suited. This especially when it's “family.” This proclivity when we feel ashamed or are reminded of when we've slipped. To my mind, insanity comes in equal doses as opportunities to create a little order. Then we make the “wise” move to incorporate it into our language, even if in practice we have no idea if we're keeping a balance or managing to grasp the concepts of “order” or “chaos” altogether.

Order feels very tired. I got my house in order, and the loudest indicator of how to spend most of my time has been to mostly watch TV. I wish I felt worse about that. It's not like before, where that's all I really could do. Now, I'm doing it after I spend my whole day utterly subsumed by order. I don't make the rules. I barely rattle the cages for a little leeway here and there. I'm tired after work, not because it's hard, but because it's easy. Watching TV makes me tired. Doing the grunt work of scanning and organizing books does the same thing. Trying, and failing, half a dozen times to uproot a stubborn tree makes it one more.

The individual daily acts that eat up your time and disengage you are what we add up at the end to claim a form of “meaningful life.” How many rallies did you go to for your designation as “long-time activist?” How many classes do you teach before you're a cherished educator? How many times do I get to be told the work I'm doing is important before I start to believe it? Does it matter if I don't know where August went as long as a few dozen families got a slightly milder impression about the imposing nature of DCS? What if I was pretty-much dead inside the whole time they were thanking me? What if every sacrifice I made for them made me resentful for not recognizing similar ones made in service to me?

How quick and easy it would be at this point to resolve to the complex nature of being. “Everything is everything!” “It's just a ride!” “Karma, bro!” Why acknowledge and work with your own experience, especially if you can't trust it, especially when there's an infinite justification to keep it playfully light and confusing?

I continue to return to the idea that it has to be by you and for you, but to the extent that you even bother to describe yourself, and to the ability to orient and depict accurately. Trump voters have the 3-10 ego lines, and that's their existence, so burn everything else down. Radical leftists have the religious idealism that serves the same purpose. The idiot merely needs to speak and dance. The intelligent can hide behind their complex-sounding narratives or philosophies that amount to “I'm scared too, and can't be bothered.”

If you get a thousand bad reviews for your deeply personal work (and, lo, what isn't deeply personal?) should you care? Should you care if it sells like Oprah? Should you care if you're prepared to recant and be forgiven before you die? The ego-driven YouTube “celebrities” and charging bulls of housewife fables aren't slowing down. The entertainment sits ass-to-face with the news for thousands of scrolls. Where do you exist in it all? Watching? Reporting? Capitalizing? Fighting as hard as an immigrant kid with all the pizazz of a pyramid scheme pitchman? Do you know the difference between your story and struggle, and the words laid before you? Do I? Can I?

You know what I want before I'm exhausted doing whatever it is I want to do? Someone to do it with. And more than that, real individuals with their own thoughts and fights and words that when mixed with mine create a better narrative and we discover the working wisdom. I want my best conception of my friends to hold true and to believe there's more than just biding my time until the list of tasks is inevitably done, and the paycheck hits, and the options for dinner are within driving distance. Who's qualified to review you besides those who know you? And who knows you but the ones who are paying attention for your sake and for theirs? Who am I trying to impress? For how long has it been the abstraction of what I take to be people's conception of me to live up to the hype? You know who never asks me what I'm doing? Almost everyone.

So is it time to wisely move on from another mild mental crisis and get back to organizing books and reinforcing shelves? I'm certainly going to finish the last 3 episodes before I get to 450 in One Piece. Should I approach my next 3 days off of training-vacation with renewed vigor at the prospect of learning how to forensically interview children? Should I sleep a little sounder knowing I got more confusing, laughably “wise” or “smart” words out for me to read a thousand times looking for what I really said later? Does it matter? Do you care? Do I? I've watched myself over the last few weeks, months, and years, and keep seeing it manifest as words. I don't know what to make of them, or myself. I don't know that I want anymore access or luxury than I have now, as I'm almost positive I'd have so little occasion to share it. If only because I'm perfectly ignorant about what I can provide, or what it is that's really needed.