[1101] Resistance Is Futile

I want to do something a little different and muse a bit about social media, and one comment I've received in response to my writing in particular. It follows:

"See that? Yep, those are your guts, spilled randomly on the internet. I see them too.

Have you gotten enough out?

I don't really understand why you involved me in the whole thing though, seems the kind of conversation you have with *you,* but I hope you got something out of the process.

Anyways, well... okay, that was interesting, but I'm off to my own life again.

For the record? Seems like you are probably harder on yourself than you need to be, and hopefully you also take as much effort giving yourself grace.

Wait, hold up, no, before you're tempted to summon up another 1000 words, I didn't say I wanted to hear about it...I'm just saying."

This feels like a masterpiece. It strikes me as convoluted. It feels embarrassed. It succinctly captured the energy I feel one must anticipate in trying to do anything creatively or self-constructively and put it online. He's trying to detach himself, but also seems to feel provoked. I have to go over it line by line.

"See that? Yep, those are your guts, spilled randomly on the internet. I see them too."

I hear Daniel Stern's voice in Wonder Years. Almost like he's trying to add a bit of whimsy to the idea of him bothering to speak at all. I imagine some version of him is either actively patting my head or desperately resisting the urge to. This is the initial distance creating sentiment. Eeewww, dude, look icky guts. Now we're all a party to your gross guts! But maybe you couldn't help yourself, so take a seat and listen up.

"Have you gotten enough out?"

This isn't a sincere question. This is whomever failed to guide this person mocking them, now channeled at me. The blog he's responding to I state several times over is the 1,100th I've written over 20 years. He's existentially exhausted by the idea of being this thoughtful regarding anything. Incidentally, if you scroll through his posts, he's offering old-guy wisdom after having seen it all himself. He's cooked, in his mind. It's time to dole out advice in the last place anyone's willing to listen, but then what else is probably new for him?

"I don't really understand why you involved me in the whole thing though…"

This part is the most telling, not about this guy, but what the internet does to you. Philosophize This does a good job of explaining Byung Chul-Han's description of our narcissism bred from our internet circumstances. Who can even flirt with saying a sentence like this if they're not compulsively self-involved? I don't know who anyone is that responds to anything I say. They're a disembodied voice from either the vague hate or vague mildly-encouraging camps that pop up. Charitably, this could just be a really poor phrasing of, "I don't understand what I was to take away from this." But, I put this to every reader of anything someone has written, figure out why you bothered in the first place. Don't throw that the writing exists in the writer's face and act like something's been done to you.

"seems the kind of conversation you have with *you,* but I hope you got something out of the process."

So, yes, obviously, and this is also stated in the blog. I'm literally, every time, showing what complicated introspection to keep my head straight and values expressed looks like. Maybe you don't need to do all that. I'm jealous. Sometimes, in fact only ever drunk and in years-apart fashion, I get told how much I help someone else think about their own circumstances. It's unnatural to spend as much time as we do up our own asses and not just be mindlessly pumping out TikTok videos or craving sad music in response.

"Anyways, well... okay, that was interesting, but I'm off to my own life again."

I hear versions of this a lot. I'm called "interesting" a lot. It's less pain-inducing than when someone wishes me luck, but they're in the same spirit. I'm some "thing" that the person engaging it shouldn't really be handling but for it's quaint novelty and clear struggle with itself. They don't know how to help me release my head from the proverbial fence or bucket, so they have to still say something right? So, interesting you had all those…*thoughts* ::shudder:: Why don't we put them in their own special place waaaaay far away from what all us normals are doing over here.

"For the record? Seems like you are probably harder on yourself than you need to be, and hopefully you also take as much effort giving yourself grace."

Here's where the crack in the ironic armor shows up. A person who was simply and merely in touch with their own perspective, struggles and incompleteness and all, would just say this. It wouldn't have to be qualified and buried in all of the other inanity. This is the decent person who connected with something in the writing he's too tired or down on himself about exploring any further. People read thinking things out in this way as some kind of outsized effort. And it is, for them. Most of us are thinking ourselves in circles, getting paralyzed, and then doubling down on our crippling depression and anxiety, addictions, or fucking meme speak. If he'd just said this, this blog wouldn't exist.

"Wait, hold up, no, before you're tempted to summon up another 1000 words, I didn't say I wanted to hear about it...I'm just saying."

Now here's the internal rejection and reaction to doing or saying something nice and even the remote idea that I would recognize, respond, and try to connect. Can you think of anything more distasteful in the modern environment than to say or discover something *real* being said and exchanged? Let's strangle that baby in the crib, allude once again to "just how many words there are, gosh." And pretend like we didn't enter the arena of a "social network" where the rules are to crash your siloed thinking into someone else's and pretend there's no consequences and no real person on the other side.

After all, he's "just saying." 

All of that said and explored, I posted my living arrangements online. I played by the internet rules and was handsomely rewarded in internet points. The overwhelming sentiments were, "This is why I come here." I, robustly and unambiguously a male, have created a living space unlike many others. The novelty was enjoyed and reviled. It was judged as both dangerous and about to burst into flames, and as paradise. Both a genius hacker and musical prodigy live here as likely as a serial killer basement dwelling end of the world prepping troll. The only things that really made it through were one or two genuinely sincere people willing to explain in more depth the hazards of extension cords, and the people who recognized how much my inner-child never died.

That post got some 1,500 upvotes, and 645 comments. None of those comments warranted their own blog. Those people weren't engaging with me in the same way someone who reads what I'm thinking about how and why I create the things I do. They weren't engaging with me at all. They were nicely surprised by their niche subreddit delivering at continued just-enough intervals. A few were worth some fun exchanges. It started to get redundant and lazy with people who weren't reading what others had said before.

And in a day and a half, it's on to the next thing. I can't even say "I" liked or didn't the attention because I wasn't the star of the show. All I did was get a little bit more inside my head about how soon and what it's going to cost me to get normal outlets. But, ultimately, it could be argued I "did the internet right." I let a superficial glance at my circumstances field superficial engagement to everyone's "delight." It didn't garner enough attention to make the news. It didn't prompt any of them to think, "What else has this guy posted?" If I'd taken slightly better pictures and added more with an ability to read the titles on my books, video games, or band stickers, I bet I would have driven just a touch more engagement lol.

I think the internet has made my experience of people even worse. That is, the ironic detachment craving the next thing, fake performative relationships protecting informal "rules" to conform to, and the airs people take on in trying to politely belittle you for "not getting it" were exhausting before we built that brand of nihilism into how we understand the zeitgeist. We're not serious thinkers or actors on the world. It's always a qualified and calculated performance.

If you can talk real fast and make influential people feel validated, they'll platform your Ben Shapiro stick-up-my-ass charade and you'll be celebrated and rewarded with money. If you can tie yourself in knots justifying every nakedly stupid fascist comment and move your Nazi wanna-be dictator or insurrectionist "representative" makes, you'll get to feel like you're a part of history and doing something religion-level righteous enabling them. And then somehow again in defying them every time the bare minimum leaks out of you! This is how you can listen to people genuinely be flabbergasted that their actions resulted in pain or death. They were just performing. None of this was meant to be taken seriously.

For better or worse, in the fairyland you might occupy that suggests you should interpret me with some kind of flattering filter or wisened birdseye distance, I aspire to be a serious person. Not self conscious, but to act like what I do and say has consequences. I want to be consistent. I want to have reasons. I want to really connect and really create and really change the things that piss me off, confuse me, or seem to feel as perfectly avoidable catastrophes if we pay closer attention and talk and think better. Welcome to the process. Resist the urge to blame me for stapling your eyes open and forcing you to recite it.

[1020] Missed You

I hope I can take my time with this. I had a lot of fun and helpful ideas on the drive home, but I don’t know that I’ll recall them all. First one is easy. I’m allowing myself to use the word “hope” again. I haven’t found a good substitute, and I think I’m aware enough to not allow hopes and dreams to supersede any amount of work it would actually take to get something. I think I’m fundamentally a hopeful person, but that always felt like a kind of shameful notion. Fuck hope, work. Why bother hoping if you can do? And then as you pay attention to so many things you can’t do anything to help or fix, the desire for them no less antagonizes, and you’re hopeful, if not still helpless.

I almost posted a tipsy status saying something like, “I want to do big things.” It’s a stupid statement. It’s the first pass of an idea, vague, nonsensical, and empty for its very “hopeful” sensibility not backed by any tangible commitment or sacrifice. I felt like it bubbled up as a reminder. I want to make a discernible impact on the whole of experience. I want to shift “things” and demonstrate an awareness or capability with power that you can measure independent of opinions. That hasn’t stopped being true no matter the seemingly infinite series of humbling scenarios I’m meant to swallow with regard to my budget, time, or energy.

There’s a chance for a role at work to be fully remote. I want it, but of course I don’t. I want it so bad that I continue to work to create my own business, again. What kind of “exotic” locales could I be in while I conduct my groups? How much “freer” would I feel if I could literally plan to spend more time with friends located much farther than 20 minutes from me? I bet I spend less on gas to and from the airport with $9 a day parking than I do driving to bumfuck Bedford.

Today has been weird. I haven’t felt anxious in a bit. Once I figured out it was my righteous “fuck you” impulse that spoke to my difficulty doing “easy” notes for work, I pretty much mellowed out. Then, ex-girlfriend comes back into the picture, and I’ve just been off. It’s not even confusing or complicated to me, but I’m in this observer state. I don’t feel seen by her. The last time I reached out, I was admonished, and it was made clear to me that if there was going to be any kind of “friendship” going forward, it was going to be on her terms and at her pace. Umm, great, but friendship is an exchange. What do you have to give to the person who can’t see you?

She suggested we walk around a trail at the dam near my house. I’m tired, don’t give a fuck about trails, it’s cold, and I’ve been less than adequately active for months. It felt like an analogy for our dynamic on the whole. I was just along for the ride. She spent a year or so discovering more about herself and finding the capacity to apologize. Cool, good for her. It has nothing to do with me. You want to spend time with me and have a “low key” or chill environment? Come bowing or let’s get food. That would suggest you have a remote inclination about what I’m into or would put me more at ease with you.

And I could just say “no.” I could just be like, look, I don’t trust you, I’m not angry at you, but you don’t make me feel good and I don’t want to have a dumb forever non-conversation about what it takes to look and feel like a friend, but I appreciate your effort or the direction you feel you’re trending. What does that get me? I couldn’t begin to pretend to understand how that might register to her. So, instead, I’ll be tired and complicit in my own caricature, walking along the forest path small-talking like I’ve recovered from the severe blow to my hopes and dreams come back to manifest as a perhaps more self-aware ex who confidently dictates the means by which we might relate.

Whatever.

I both enjoy and am a touch worried about how much I’ve learned to shut the fuck up and let things go. I’m literally too old. I’m 34. I really don’t need to say anything most of the time. I’ve seen it before. I see you coming. I’m not lacking in confidence or direction. I’m not an insecure or proud know-nothing powering through idyllic fantasies. I just want to hang out, build some shit, laugh, watch my shows, and not entertain too deeply the thought that were my plane to go down, I’d be getting off easy.

I’m taking more planes. I’m barely in less debt than I normally am, and I’m being way more deliberate about booking the flight, getting the place to stay, and just manifesting that “do shit and see people” ethos I wanted to be at 10 years ago. I don’t care about the debt. Even if I have money in the bank, I’m still in debt. There will always be utility bills and property taxes. I’ll always have to eat. My car…is a car, and I have 3 of them. So, debt? Oh well, at least I visited wherever, saw the band or friend, and get to talk about it again in whatever blog comes next.

I’ve been refreshing myself on different philosophers lately too. So many seemingly concerned with finding the best ways to live and think about things. Meta questioners by default mostly folding their arms after a quasi-circular reasoned thing registers as a novel way to state the obvious by the onlookers.

It's two days later.

I’ve been listening to Philosophize This! segments. I’m reminded in simplified ways that the vast majority of remotely “novel” insights I’ve ever infused into my perspective are pieces of what stuck from classes in college or reading. Each philosopher answering and undermining and substituting their words and versions to help explain just what it is we’re made of and why we bother.

I’m here at the beginnings of the last couple days where faint anxiety has started to creep back in. For a while there I was pretty smooth, working out why notes were such a chore and resolving myself to work at my own pace and/or in advance. My stomach still drops a little at the prospect of working each day, but it registers as an insult to the idea of suffering to bother mentioning it (over and over and over again). I feel bad I missed my friend’s text. Part of me heard my phone 2 hours ago, but a larger portion of me was in my own head. I put on a cheesy movie from 2002 and proceeded to play with sewing a pair of pants I’ve been saving for several years for repair because they fit so well. They deserve a person who actually knows how to sew or with the patience to watch more Youtube videos.

I tried to go to the gym today. My body was reaching that odd state of discomfort that knows it needs to be pushed in a way that I haven’t in a while. I thought I had the clothes packed and discovered otherwise in the parking lot. My plan was to use the energy working out tends to give me to come home and work some notes in advance. I act as if I’m not going to be up until 2 or 3 anyway. I’ve been fighting the temptation to maximize a level of debt to spur myself into more movement. At bottom, I know I need to move, I just rarely seem to identify what that’s supposed to look like each day.

For all of the different schools of thought and means of describing the same restless-human-syndrome, I find myself drawn towards the “everything at once” and “all is connected” sensibility. I think it’s why writing persuades me in a persistent way that it’s actually working at doing something. It’s an analogy for the perpetual process. The words can be infinitely translated and reinterpreted. Every time I return to them, they mean something just a hair different to me than they did before. They’re an embodied “form,” mathematically described, yet perfectly abstract and inaccessible until you activate your machinery for determining meaning. It really is a fascinating “thing.” When I’m dead, they get to act as different reincarnations. In summary of everything I’ve written, you might gather I’m rather angry and don’t like jobs.

It’s the next day.

I’ve just gotten off another dumb interaction in the world of sales. I find it fascinating there are people who have been in business for decades selling crap to idiots with cliches and soulless imploring who don’t have the persuasive skill and coherence I intuited at 15 fucking up your credit with Target red cards. I’m too sharp a weapon, man. I need to take your kids or go at 35 felons at once. I recognize my capacity to make “instant-friends.” Why can’t I get introduced to ones with money or influence lol? Is there truly nothing of value that needs introduced to someone who could use it? It’s always got to get gross and kinda forced or hidden under the corporate-speak that doesn’t let you engage with thoughts about how you’ve abused their ignorance or sold your soul?

I have to end this thing at some point. This week already feels incredibly long and I have a party I was invited to Thursday, Louis C.K. Sunday, and didn’t realize I’m off on Monday. I’m caught up on notes.

I say often how I’m lied to dozens of times a day. I think people mistake this as though I feel I’m somehow on the receiving end of deliberate attempts at deception. No no, it’s the colloquial language lies. It’s body language lies. It’s professed standards and competencies with no discernable measurement or distinction worthy of holding. I’m awash in lies and they make me extremely sensitive to when there are attempts to cajole me with them. I find commercials often psychologically tortuous. I hear on repeat the “wrong” word like “opportunity” you’re calling the cold-calling bait-n-switch “sales” job. Your acronyms and mission statements mean nothing to me. All the hyper-insisted upon “I’m sorry” “I don’t know” and “good luck” sentiments fogging your mind and air.

If I’m a philosophical cliché in being ever-restless and striving to individuate or manifest my power as described in dozens of works and religious traditions, so be it, but whatever I’m after I’m wholly convinced is impossible to achieve while under the spell of so much bullshit. If nothing else, no matter how obscure what it means to exist may be, you don’t do it better lying. You don’t do it better calling those lies “pretending” or “professional” or “mature” or anything that helps conceal and disguise the intention to hide.