[1075] Wrapped In Plastic

If I’m going to find a place of remote peace, I need to get a better definition of “the problem” and ways to go about “fixing” it.

Every day is a bombardment. The problem is as big as the fate of the country, surviving climate change, or the next pandemic. At every scale, there’s an opportunity to get sucked up into the exciting and thriving drama. I often speak of people as each unto their own black hole that is hungry and waiting to pull you down. The abstraction that is thought, made slightly less abstract through writing, is my ongoing exercise to look for something more tangible, with direction, or conceptualized in a way that it provokes action.

I’ve been done with my last job for 3 weeks, over a week of that time I was in Vegas, and 6 more days of that time I had a show to attend. Part of this last 3 weeks has felt like an eternity. Even after I learned how to sit and watch TV, there’s a large part of me that’s nagging me to “go.” I’ve very slightly boxed it in with a piddling expectation of myself to do at least 5 squats, read a chapter, read an article, and practice an instrument for 30 minutes each day. I’ve not managed to do that every day, slacking in the practice in particular.

I thought I’d have so much more to do. I even wrote about it while in Vegas because I was ready to get home and start. I don’t know if I hyped it up or expected people and time to start magically responding in quicker and more comprehensive ways than they ever have, but I found myself prioritizing my TV shows and doing little collecting/OCD-adjacent organizing of files. I sent a few emails, called a law firm, and then proceed to “chill” without feeling chill.

I also have tabs open with grants to explore. I’ve budgeted for creating a non-profit arm of the wanna-be counseling operation to perhaps help facilitate getting money. I’ve barely toyed with exploring how to modify the website, and the first place I asked pretty much confirmed I, of course and again, was looking to do something no one knows how or ever conceived of doing. Again I get, (and maybe it’s always just an ignorant feeling) stuck, and proceed down my moving pictures path.

I could also be looking more aggressively for a job. I’ve been reticent to begin. What’s the goal? I know what it isn’t. I don’t just want/need “more money.” I was making plenty of money at the last job and, somehow, I could only be persuaded to keep buying concert tickets. I certainly intend to slow down that habit, but the first 2 months of 2024 have about a show every week.

I kind of want to just fuck about. I don’t see, “realistically,” much of anything beyond pain, loneliness, or utter destruction on the horizon. Realistically is in quotes because I can’t see the future and know I’m but one incredibly small distorted window into the world. Very few are ever coming with me to a show. Even fewer are remotely interested in contributing towards anything I’d regard as a larger ambition with the land or in business. I’m not “doing it for the troops” or trying to “save the children.” I talk often enough about being an engine of spite, but even that is starting to sour.

In the most important sense, as I currently exist and carry on, I am alone.

Is that a problem? I’m certainly as capable of being by myself as I am running the party, so it’s a problem insofar as I still desire to joke and talk or be basically human towards anyone. In theory, I can always continue to invite people out even though they won’t come, or go extra hard in celebrating days like yesterday when I went out to eat, bowl, and then watched a movie with my friend. I don’t want to get weird though. I’d like to stay grounded and have a perspective about time spent with people. It’d be cool to consider myself worth hanging out with or as someone more people would seek out and utilize.

But that begs a different kind and set of questions. That phrasing made me think of being a counselor. Experience has taught me that, no, in fact, people do not seek out and utilize. Actually, they make an entire production out of pretending to do just that.

Perhaps it’s that I don’t really want much of anything anymore. Maybe I’ve been informed enough through experience, conversation, and attempts at doing things “better” or “differently” that something about my wants died. It’s entirely possible I’ve been in some kind of zombie state trudging forward with this semblance of ambition or greed that just betrays my day-to-day or sense of what’s actually possible anymore.

I don’t want to be a social worker, so why start a counseling business? It’s an opportunistic and kind of cynical attempt to cash grab. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if I’m actually good or not. My “oversight” doesn’t have the time or interest in reviewing my notes provided I’m not actively hurting someone or threatening her license. I have no one intelligent, accountable, or interested enough to require anything of me than to pass tests and pay fees. Just because I can structure an environment, ask probing questions, and be non-judgmental (read: not hateful and shaming) when I listen does not mean that anyone I’m speaking to is, at their core, interested in that project at all.

I’ve had well over 300 clients in the course of counseling. I’ve had dozens of those clients, and at least 2 or 3 every week, tell me how they wanted to keep in touch. Not a single one has scheduled an appointment 3 weeks later. Not a single one has texted regarding a base touch or to make a referral. Not a single one has asked if I’ve found a way to coordinate getting their Suboxone in conjunction with counseling. Why? Are they all liars? Well, yes. But also, no. They live in the normal world where words don’t really mean anything. For us autistic-types, you can choose to feel heartbreak, disoriented, or to boringly relay the predictable observable pattern and change your expectations or approach. Or, don’t, and disingenuously suffer as though you don’t know what’s going on.

If I frame my sense of “problem” in what might otherwise be reducible to “the human condition,” I will fail indefinitely. People being full of shit is not my problem. At the level of civilization, it may mean the end of us all, but locally, practically, I’m not cursing the heavens that people lie, don’t even know to what extent, and it means I have to temper and humble myself. I’m willing to attempt to capitalize on this propensity, and the seriousness with which I take my role is me combating my cynicism about just how far you can take it.

My problem is attempting to get back my time. I haven’t forgotten that. I want my time. Whether I’m seeing a comedian I’m mildly into, reading all day, or pretending I have a clue how to build something on the land, I want to feel the extent of the possible freedom to do so. In this moment, my computer is begging me to job search, read dozens of pages of grants, or click about government pages for more excuses to spend money for certifications and numbers.

My head isn’t in the game of seeing Ari Shaffir tomorrow. I’m not “excited” by the prospect of getting return calls or emails from those I’ve reached out to. I haven’t felt a genuine sense of growth or progress in almost…2 years? The things or people I’ve attempted to invest in have done nothing but punish me. The things I create register as decorative towels in the bathroom. Sure, it looks a little better, but what’s the real utility there? Is the light above the mirror sitting in a gaping hole? Is the black water flowing to an open pit? Are you sure you’re focused on the right part of this bathroom improvement? Or are you grasping at the only thing you feel you can really do, and now it registers as some kind of meaningful “fuck you” to your otherwise hopeless circumstances?

Given that I want my time, there is a certain comfort in sleeping all day, waking up whenever, staying up all night, reading through books that have otherwise been glaring at me for years, and continuing to marathon the never-ending list of shows. I think a lot about “retirement” when I’m organizing and making lists of TV. One I just combined a bunch of other lists into has 4,325 days worth on it. It includes things like old talk shows (1100 days are just 3 talk shows and 3 soap operas). At my 2x pace, for archaeological purposes of course, in my infirm years, I could be done with all that in about 6 years. 5 I bet if you cut out commercials and intros/credits.

I’ll probably have 5 years behind the wheel or on planes if I get my way. Isn’t it weird to think there’s a way to see every Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Days of our Lives etc. in your “spare” time? Even one of those shows laid on normal sensibilities feels impossible. What does that say about us? What does that say of our perception of what we’re worth if we’re unable to even conceive of ourselves properly within the time that exists?

All this talk of TV, but it’s helping me frame whether or not I have a problem. I, again theoretically, have a decent amount of time left to live. I don’t want to spend it in a rage at an abstract machine. I don’t want to spend it feeling beholden to forces that don’t recognize me or do anything for me. (I’m not making a Libertarian argument against taxes.) I don’t want to spend my time as a Cassandra imploring people to recognize we are, in fact, going to die, and the things we profess to care about need work in their creation, cultivation, and defense. I don’t want to spend my life pretending I have anything people need or find myself attempting to persuade them I’m worth anything.

Very, very rarely, someone genuinely listens to me or follows my advice. I’ve yet to get the feedback, “That was some fucked up shit you told me to do.” Hatsam listened and has turned into a more confident communicator and leader. There's my one client who was emboldened to self-taper after embodying my sincere praise for her demonstrable effort in service to being accountable. Clients who stopped killing themselves working to death I saw their faces loosen and language mellow. Clients who established even one boundary with their family or job reported nothing but smiles and a sense of liberation.

But they had to do the work. I’m just passing along my “common sense” and observation of reality. That is, you’re not listening to me when you’re taking my advice. You’re listening to the part of yourself that sounds like me. You’re finding a way to feel deeper about that blunt “do it” person you have in you that people like me feel plagued and stuck on. I still believe I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I just don’t know if I care to anymore. I don’t trust that I won’t go into darker places out of spite to get what I claim to desire.

Who would stop me? I had a whole blog on that notion not too long ago. Who would even recognize what I was doing? We live in a paradigm where naked criminal pride was not only elected president, but threatens to do so again, perhaps while in jail for unlocking the, in my view, plainly evil, inclinations in us all and celebrating them. We’re getting louder than any other noisy message that literally nothing matters but what you repeat to yourself and the world most often. Whether or not that’s “true” doesn’t even enter into the equation. The consequences and the power of doing so are felt at the cellular level. It’s religious fervor for a Cheeto messiah.

Is my problem that people are born sheep? Certainly not if they’re lining up to pay me, right? Certainly not if they could keep their sheep shit and sheep wool from wafting over into what I’m doing. But that’s the rub of living in a society. I’m never truly by myself or can be left alone. Someone is coming for me. Whether it’s the fallout of explicitly terrorizing forces or the consequences of paralysis and ignorance, the time I presume to have left is under immediate threat. I don’t need something abstract to scare me into a desire to amass wealth and explore options. I live in a society that got hateful and violent over masks and vaccines. The next bug I suspect will be more deadly and we’ll be even less equipped psychologically to deal with it.

I could choose, right now, to abandon larger entrepreneurial goals, Door-dash just enough to cover credit card payments, spend the vast majority of my time alone, eating hot dogs and ramen, and returning to a familiar place for decent chunks of my life. Recall, I spent most of my 20s functionally retired just sitting on drug study money. When my dad was hurt, it was movies, video games, and then more movies and video games for years. I deliberately tried to save money and conserve in college, not spending too much on food, splitting rent half a dozen ways. You think I was going to shows, buying game systems or tools, or investing in a truck and living space? I was practicing my guitar for 10 hours a day every day or going to the pool.

I’ve had many, many “peak leisure” points in my life as I dramatically swing from working myself to death to doing nothing and then back again. What if I just stopped doing that? What if I prioritized doing the minimally viable thing like a store trying to get a single cookie recipe perfect before they even whisper the word “milk.” “One demands milk!” You decry. But perhaps I’ve been fucking up the initial recipe for so long and hocking this mockery of a cookie, I’ve lost the thread as to why I got into cookie sales to begin with. Maybe I’ve wasted so much effort and money for a store, marketing, napkins, and a little bell on the door, but it’s never tasted right. Incidentally, the quality control team lost their ability to smell during covid and have been lying that it’s returned.

I don’t even know if I “need” to feel part of something bigger or more meaningful more than I “want” to. The spell of having a group of friends was incredibly powerful, naive as I was about what they were to constitute. Before I appreciated the extent of religious capture, I genuinely thought people were reasonable and persuadable. Before I literally worked for and as “The Man,” I thought they were filled with intelligent, intimidating adults who knew something “special” or “complicated” others didn’t. Not. Even. Fucking. Close. We’re all just idiots playing out emotional baggage in spiteful leveraged ways and pretending we feel, do, or care more about whatever-the-next-thing is than we do.

Some of us get scared and endlessly whine like Trump. Most of us reflexively find who to blame and go into lawyer mode for our own righteousness. Plenty play the narcissism of condescension and pageantry like my brother. It’s all a show. For who? For you. You’re front row center for every dismal thought, poorly set expectation, or failure of will. You’re here to distract, “entertain,” and pacify you. That’s how you clap for our troops (because they’re for US) while you let them suffer in the street. That’s how you tell me, straight faced, you care about children you target for unnecessary removal. That’s how you detach from any call to action as a summary and uniform dismissal of all things. It feels not only appropriate, but downright required.

I’ve never thought I could help or save anyone. I wasn’t saving children. I wasn't lapping up the praise from clients. I look at every compliment about my looks from the blind with the same elevated suspicion. My concern then becomes whether or not I can save myself. I’m not a “prepper” by disposition. The things I’d like to save myself from aren’t really things I personally struggle with. You know, you invite me to dinner, I’m there pretty much every time. You, always, too busy, broke, or not seeing my texts I’d love to never experience again lol, and it’s nothing I can fix that doesn’t beg for detachment.

Do I even want to share my experience? Writing is, and always has been, for me. I need to feel better, alone, forming a narrative that when I go back and read dozens of times, I better articulate what’s otherwise an agonizing and antagonizing fog of angst and consternation. You can “like” my posts. Do you share in what they say? If I explicitly ask someone to comment, just like a client in group, they’ll have loads to say. If I wait around looking for someone to speak or share something back, I’m as alone as I ever get. I don’t know if there’s two more contradictory words than “social media.”

We’re content hubs for consumption. I’m consuming shows. They’re not inspiring me to create or join their ranks.We consume our families, never giving them what they need, even if it’s just honesty, because it would impede our ability to feast on them in the future. It’s a feast to fuel the narrative of our relationship to them, their pathology we’re *immensely grateful* we don’t share, and the lesson we can all learn by caricaturing their example. We let our work consume us, because we don’t really want to be here. We don’t want to feel like *this is the choice I made? We don’t want to acknowledge how much we destroy in ourselves and others by being gluttons for punishment.

Slow. Be slow. Be simple. Flow. I have $2000 in cash, $11,000 in debt and minimum payments for bills and card payments reaching about $500 a month in total. I haven’t looked that deeply for any kind of job, let alone one that would pull in $500 a month. I don’t have to do much of anything. I’m not obligated to keep beating my head against the wall of (my most-forgiving framing) the human condition. I’m not necessary. I don’t matter. They can’t see me. Do whatever you want to do, even if it’s next to “nothing.” No one gives a fuck or is keeping score except you.

[783] He Made Me Watch

This is in several pieces I'll separate with lines that I've been writing over the course of a few days. Part of me thinks the common thread is as obvious/opaque as anything, and part of me is just happy that all of it constitutes the kind of “I have to talk” vibe, which has always been the point.

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At the end of the day, there is a baseline “you.” No matter how many times you're polite, there's maybe a shark swimming in the waters of your eyes. No matter how many times you're defeated, there's a boxer pulling themselves up on your heartstrings as the count hits 9. Maybe you spend years mocking yourself up against a kind of manliest archetype or expectation, and then the floweriest fairy springs forth for your kid's college graduation, straight-life be damned.

I don't know that I've ever wanted to believe “the best” of anyone. It's rarely been my experience, and the only people I've found myself tending to do so about have been routinely taken advantage of. This likely kicked of my nice “fetish.” To be of some kind of genuine goodness is the kind of ethereal contradiction I leave it to faith to blind you towards.

I invert the habit. I'd rather be prickly and surprise you with outpourings of goodwill or something that surprises me. It feels more personally honest. I don't want to be here, I barely want to know you, and I'm doing everything in my power to take my mind off the myriad things I reflexively say “I hate” about. There's the wizened edge of people who've seen it all before, and there's the despotic cynic. I feel I work incredibly hard, if not merely psychologically, to not reduce my attitude and prospects to the ferociousness of my feelings.

Lucky, or not, for me, I can usually tell when I'm “too emotional” because it very much feels that way. I talk of wanting to destroy things. My chest swells. I ball my fists. I throw something. By now, this whole process happens in a flash. That means, I can “freak out,” do a bit of useless muttering to myself, and within 6 minutes find myself right back here, picking apart who I don't want to be.

My baseline dreams of being “crazy.” I wish I felt as compelled to act a fool for as long as it's taken me to find the control to do this instead. To try and become aware of your baseline is a gigantic actively working task I do not believe people really do until they're forced. Then, say they figure it out, there's no guarantee they won't revel or suffer in what they discover. I say again, I refuse to be a martyr, even to my own absurdity. How many obnoxious MTV reality personalities flaunt how horrible they are? You can love it, and be rewarded for it.

I have clients who swim in the infinite sea of grey in how humans are going to interact with each other. When they are “nice,” I can't let myself slip and believe they're real. Yes, we do get calls to the normal people's houses, and they answer their phones, and sign all the paperwork really quick, and you're not stepping around cat shit as your hair and coat soak up cigarette smoke and stale milk scent. They have reasonable explanations for why we're there, and they don't get angry or spend 30 minutes trying to talk themselves out of a hole. But there's a fundamentally different kind of person walking alongside us. Whispering zombies perhaps?

Can you dream of having DCS show up at your house growing up 12 or more times throughout the course of your life? Maybe. I called my mom’s bluff one of the times she dared me to call them. Broadly speaking though, do you grasp the difference between why they didn't come to your house, and they show up almost monthly at others? Your baseline family and concept of what's acceptable isn't too far deviated from the norm. Your “crazy” doesn't love it. Your crazy has the capacity for shame, or the ability to pause and reflect on the reasons something may be going wrong in your life, and what may be done to account for it. You don't surprise people with shitty texts the moment they wake up because, like some nascent Pokemon, you hurt yourself in your confusion, and are looking for someone to blame.

It's exceedingly dangerous to fall under your own spell. Don't think you're too smart, too moral, too correct. The exacting nature of your understanding is precisely what tears you and everything down. This is why I write. I have inclinations and “clarity” of mind enough to power through shitty feelings. But with each word, the approximate thing I'm trying to grasp grows more defined and starts to disappear into the sea simultaneously. That's the whole exercise. Take something extremely personally and show how it maps onto experiences at large. Consider a single offense or compelling feeling, and translate it into the language of coping or persistence. Turn bottomless pain and frustration into finite pages to step on until you reach something you can comfortably-enough stand, sit, or pass out and die on.

In reviewing my personality assessment, I decided that I didn't want to be “typical” in my levels of neuroticism anymore. The places I've compelled my perspective have turned into “patience” or “cool” or “confidence” or “comedy” or some measure of things I watch people envy about me every day. My capacity to mirror the tension in the room is something a supervisor recently said is something you can't teach. I'm always feeling guilty. That's the gift of my crazy mom. I have an exacting scientific barometer for anxiety that tells me where you are at all times. When I'm not using it, it's eating me from the inside out. This needs a fix.

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A persistent theme of people always finding the fault in you is that, one way or another, you're taking the responsibility for it. Be it the tension in your jaw, or in their unwillingness to engage or define it. It's yours. What's the response? Dive right back in? Keep sacrificing for their sake? Jesus the shit out of the place? No. You leave. You reduce your interactions. You parse out your thoughts in excruciatingly painful detail, and give them every possible chance to keep reaming you further. Because you've learned your place as the person capable and finally, at their insistence, willing to keep piling it on. You turn it into a process. You draw selfish satisfaction. Where else would you go? Prison bitches survive.

I speak too quickly, which isn't to say that's a good thing nor that it's coherently coupled. If there's a battle back and forth of compelling feelings, I rarely win, because I just feel stupid saying the same things over again or pretending loud equals correct. Another reason to write. Your first and tenth, or 800th draft might not quite get there. Whatever you're talking about is constantly changing, and you can literally track the weird bend conversations take whether they're pretending to be hyper-critical, or just shooting the shit. It doesn't really matter if the underlying mechanism is about breaking whatever's in front of you.

The pattern of my life of having things break down and me finding myself more and more isolated is, superficially, me perpetually failing to grasp the problem of keeping people in my life. But, and stop me if you've heard this before, if you simply refuse to go beyond "I have a problem with you!" I still feel comfortable blaming “you.” “You” have a “problem” with “me” in the exact same manner the same is true for me about you in all of my blogs. Certainly I draw from interactions or memories, but I never know how personal it feels or sounds until many many years later, maybe. Just like you didn't write your favorite love song, but damn if it isn't so true!

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I hate me when I don't try. I hate me when I feel dishonest. I hate me when I think I'm trying to persuade myself of something I don't really believe in in a short-hand ridiculous way in order to appease someone I don't respect. I make enough of these statements over time to have a fairly solid grasp of the things I hate or dislike, and discover not-quite by accident all of the things I like in contrast. If you don't understand why I exist in this moment as the culmination of my failures and spite, I can only guess that your understanding of what you hate is more pallid or obscure. It's easy to like a lot of things you're unable or unwilling to think about. Old news. It's easier to like obviously easy things when you consider how much hatred needs to be overcome in order to find the mildest, but more persistent, sense of satisfaction.

[761] No Problemo

I'm looking for a problem.

Usually when I start writing, there's something pressing. My head is posing a problem. The mash-up hasn't turned into a brilliant display of abstract art only I can decode. Increasingly, I'm finding it hard to figure out what's on my mind. I'm no doubt still thinking. I'm still pressed to do certain things or maintain my principle framing of issues. But, it's changing.

My singular focus for the last 2 or 3 years has been to “settle” my land. I'm literally a few hundred dollars away, and for all intents and purposes my mind considers it done. What's my biggest indication? I've went and seen 2 concerts, went out with friends 2 weekends in a row, and didn't think twice about fixing my car at the same time I bought the supplies to finish up the bones of the house and labor. I eat out nearly every day. I'm buying things like belts without metal so they'll stop fucking with me at the detector when I go into court. I'm deferring funds to preference and prevention.

The nature of my overarching problem isn't to establish an inexpensive place to live from which to spring forth all of my creative endeavors anymore. Now I get to pick and hopefully balance. Now I get to wait for sickness or an accident to bleed me dry, except, if I can stave it off long enough, I'll also have insurance. I'm eking over the edge of “hood rich” status, after what feels like a lifetime of making the joke, and I'm looking off into the abyss.

I could try and make a problem out of my past. No old person finds you interesting when you do that, and no young person is smart enough to grasp why their current behavior will make them feel like you soon enough. I could complain about the price of equipment or paint as I refine the grounds and move from “survivable” to “humble abode.” I'm already starting to micromanage some of my social behavior. I'm realizing that 25-30 “this is my life in the service industry” crowd are very different from “I got too tired working myself to death and being pretentious so I got a 'real job'” as I've described myself. I don't actually want to smoke or snort myself to an early death or get into a slew of self-destructive flings with line cooks.

I also don't want something necessarily approaching “normal.” I'm not comfortable making the statement, “If I don't have kids by 35, I'm going to (x)” as I overheard in the office about hitting the sperm bank if not knocked up by 30. I'm not above the practical considerations with body clocks nor do I root against single moms, but the idea that a kid is simply part of the calculus instead of the ethos or opportunity kind of creeps me out. I want my house to grow to fit exactly what I'm asking of it. If that includes castle towers and a room akin to a ball pit, but with pillows, so be it. If I end up raising some exotic animal who nobody realized were doper than cats and most dog breeds combined, I'm open to the possibility. But I promise I'll be okay if I don't have a lemur at 32.

I want to believe I've sort of “wised up” in taking the Jordan Peterson advice about having something stable before you try to be all creative. I've pretty much always known I'm not the starving artist type, either because I enjoy showering or am not that creative. The idea of living in a band van for months, or with 20 hippies in shared space we shouldn't enter while Venus is at 22 degrees has never rang as particularly appealing. I've always known I could “play-along” with the “adults” and do precisely what I'm doing now. I took it for granted the people I used to cavort with knew as much about themselves as well, and didn't think basement dwelling was the long-term vision.

I think perhaps my new overarching goal is to find where things meet. First, and I hate this, it would speak to the irony wearing a yin-yang for most of your life and never finding that balanced place. You know, the eternal underlying drum beat of existence kind of irony. Second, it's something that I think manifests from throwing yourself into competing forces. What's the middle ground, in these divided times, between my liberal hippie idealism, and my deliberate move away from an ignorant caricature of my neighbors just now? Surely something to discover.

But even more than that. I liken the kind of problem I'm looking for is the one rich people have to deal with. Athletes that grew up poor are often kind of dumb, but they know they want to “give back,” but their contributions, if not personally gratifying, do little to nothing to stem the tide of systemic problems. So what's their responsibility when they can no longer play or aren't getting as much coming in as they may feel needs to go out? Using your voice and platform remain important, but practically, how do we get rid of rich people guilt? When can we agree they deserve to keep it all?

It's not precisely in money, but this is the question I ask of myself when it comes to how I feel. When do I actually feel like I deserve happiness? I mean the kind of happiness that isn't derived from me making fun of something or having a wildly good time punishing idiots. When do I just get to believe in the relationships I've made or the friendships I want to preserve without the guilt that I'm going to say or do something to fuck them up? Does it ever reach some kind of “unconditional” stage? Is it a worthwhile or tangible problem to try and adopt to tackle? Is it something I can even address individually, or as my increasingly suspicion, through some roundabout reshaping of how I conceive of myself?

Back to rich people; they get addicted and abused. They're born unhealthy and with bad philosophies. They're people, exacerbated by their wealth. The point where that wealth meets survivable existence seems to be nearly out of reach. Do we selfishly hoard what we have and try to wait out disaster? Like any group or class of people, they seems to swim together in their own fog of similar pathology. The servers all drink together after work because they're all sore and angry and been through every kitchen in town and hooked up with every waitress that would have them. The rich all drink together because nobody understands them, the degrees of their brilliance or depravity, and after all, life is short, so enjoy it.

What do I aspire to be in acting or accessing like the rich via the methods of the poor? I envy the third-world areas who are getting to build their houses out of plastic blocks made by this Spanish-speaking company that has zero interest in internationally shipping me said blocks. Talk about a freaking cost and effort saver. Would choking down the aesthetics and emulating “moderate,” by global standards, entitle me to something else? Or is that just a stupid word altogether and we're literally, at all times, deciding what our balance is? I found the company, did the work, reached out, got the land, and every other piece that would go into getting my own Lego house, what else should I expect?

That whole mechanism has been fucked with, though. I'm not talking about my new starter-house on a little acreage at 22 with my college-educated job where I made $55,000 starting out. We've instilled a “poor dad” mindset in people. Live day by day. Buy things verses invest. Don't expect your skills or interests matter for shit because you're fundamentally taken advantage of. I've clawed my way back into asserting those interests in fact do matter. I don't want to be afraid of financial ruin and be subconsciously dictated to seek out as much as I can get before it all gets swept away. I want the kind of stability that comes with building the disaster into my life. I want to be able to roll in and out of anywhere.

The problem will be keeping it together after a series of too many wins. I'm going to fall under the same delusion that genuinely thought everyone was having as much fun as me at my parties. All the while I'm working out what to do next or who to include will engender resentment and insecurity. All the potential and excitement I'll have to be the sole cheerleader for and bearer of the majority of the work and direction. I'll say a million and one times what I advocate for and who I like and what we can achieve, and I'll watch as a shadow and insular mockery subverts my best intentions. And then I'll return to the same question, is what's been created worth what's being destroyed? Does this lie at the nexus of worthwhile pursuits and insights in spite of it all?

I mean, I'd throw the parties again.

[724] Dent

Midway through a “Vice News Tonight” episode talking about kids born with deficiencies due to Zika, I had a thought. Well, there were several.

Initially, I thought about winning the genetic lottery. I've alluded to my general good health, size, looks, brain etc. that I enjoy or have used well-enough in life. I don't really struggle to learn or remember things, at least when I care about them. I don't have some deformity to hide or that I'm particularly insecure about. I'm not bleeding money on hospital bills. And despite my capacity to describe an ongoing crisis that is the set of my various neuroses, there's hardly a day I'm not laughing, lounging, or otherwise throwing things into my life that I enjoy.

The point is that I have it good. I have it really good. I suspect many people don't believe they have it as good as I do. And I think this lack of belief in themselves is why I find myself relatively alone in what I choose to worry about or try to fix. If you're not “the problem,” something external needs to be. That isn't to say you aren't a problem or won't become one, but it does mean your perspective on how those problems are nested and where your attention can go are different.

I don't need to be entertained, for example. I'm not craving vacation or my next day off. As I've gotten to know more “regular” people, each moment off seems like a craving and clawing. They're consumed by what they think they should be worried about, and then nothing else gets in. By the time there's room to look up or breath, they're literally desperate for air. If all of your brainpower is spent fretting over shitty software, corruption in the system, and the inescapable hole modernity has born you into, every new issue makes the flashing lights and noises all the more chaotic.

That's how you get selfish. Each escape has to trump the last period of desperation. Say you're worried about being single or dying alone. Say you hold that worry for years. Then here comes a chance to get married! Is marriage right for you? Who cares! Fantasy time. Well-wishing and professional pictures abound. The driver of your decision can get ignored, or worse, celebrated as of course I was afraid, but no more! That is to say, were you healthy, good looking, and smart before you got married? Your mind can zero in on some glaring presumed hole and block out what else you've been doing or what you might instead.

I see many different futures for myself. I believe they're as attainable as anything because I've done the math or prepared the floor to allow me to fuck up in forward motion as often as it will take. But that's sort of like my dream wedding. I read stories of Elon Musk sleeping on the shop floor and get jealous. He gets to work himself to death on something important and what's genuinely the best there is to offer. I want that. If I didn't, I never would have ran up and down theater aisles like cleaning up popcorn was the most important thing in the world. I wouldn't be able to have zero guilt about starting the coffee shop because every second of it was exactly me and what I wanted to do. I keep tasting appetizers of my ideal meal.

The problem I have is being unable to know what to do with myself with all this “belief.” Maybe it's like being an earnest disciple on a planet where everyone's already been converted, just not to believe in what you do. One of the things I think made me so angry about my friend group in college was that we all seemed to have the same “problem.” All were as smart or smarter. All looked good. All could figure out one thing or another to keep floating on by or achieve some goal. So I didn't understand why that goal wouldn't be the world. 

I don't know why I'm not comfortable living out of a van traveling between national parks. I don't know why it seemed the exact opposite thing to do to lean into ideas of monogamous relationships and middle-class comforts. I don't know why I couldn't maintain the idea of a “real job” after getting an advanced degree and paying back debts for years. I don't know why it always feels like there's more to sacrifice, and it's worthwhile to do so, in order to achieve otherwise dreamlike ends. I can watch so many lives running in parallel that feel familiar or safe. How could a set of my equals not feel like it's all a little too easy? Where's the guilt?

With my non-physically-presenting brain conditions, I do my exhaustive pursuing of things, adopt “your” shitty real-world jobs, fight for every inch of progress on some big dream, write, watch, read, and think incredibly hard about working out regularly. I've got a month and a half to blame youthful indiscretions on my 20's. I don't have a lot of money, but I also never planned to have a lot of money, because nothing I ever read suggested I should expect to find said money. And I still feel there's so much to do moving forward. I still think tomorrow could be the day some friend of a friend here's about me or some random Craigslist person turns out not to be shit and we work together to build something real.

That's a word that gets shot to hell when you're in the fog of day to day existence. Real? Well, I'm here, aren't I? I showed up. I answered your email. I feel the weight of busywork and the humidity. But what about the dark matter? What about the indefinite future your particles could arrive in, or indeed are already inhabiting, just less and less so with each new concession? Real means something. Like we all do when we break statistics and trends and create the conditions to capitalize on luck. We don't live in an environment where we can take anything for granted. But every day, all I see is people who do. Plans and meetings months in advance. Dream partners one day or exes coming back. The party neatly scheduled between 8:30pm and 11:00pm, because you don't want to get home too late before work the next morning.

I haven't felt real in a very long time. I'm not excited to meet each day. I don't know quite if I'll be able to persuade myself against doing something stupid “because” and “why not.” I don't have much focus beyond the haze of failed attempts to get things done I've trained myself to never expect will happen anymore. They won't without a hundred more phone calls, dozens of online posts, hundreds or thousands of wasted dollars, and a hundred more blogs decrying the same problem in slightly different ways. No one wants to help. No one believes. They're comfortable doing whatever it is they do. They don't even want to TALK about it because, well, you'll rub off on them in guilt-inducing and embarrassing ways, and haven't you made enough people resent you already?

It's still right now is the point. You're still young enough. You've got time to fail. You've got as many hats to wear as you can reach for. I may have squandered my shot at ever getting a six pack before I turned 30, but you don't have to say you were too afraid or lazy to indulge your idealism. You don't have a brain deficiency. You're not hungry. You've got more money than you'd like to admit, and you might not appreciate the nature of the sacrifices you'd have to make. But there's worse things. You could be old and have the same problems. You could die an old cliché. You could be hungry and alone or have your own sick kid. Think those will feel like the times to do something more or different?

[348] Whao Oh Ohho Mona Lisa

The difference between effort and effortless can't be overstated. What I find most intriguing is that I know when I'm trying too hard. I can hear every syllable being “too much.” I can immediately run to the questions of “was that appropriate? Did it make them laugh?” You're not immune to doing the shit you rally against just because you point out it's a clear failing of your personality.

Tonight was a vibe night. I danced harder than I should have. I talked to however many random people. I very much made it look like I'm verily the most interesting person you should be engaging with at the bar. Really, truly, I'm not fucking bragging. I'm ever and endlessly struck by how “easy” it is to do these things. It's like being called “nice” for paying for a meal. Like, seriously, fuck you, who the fuck else would I pay for? You won, stop trying to congratulate me because you're not a fucking asshole.

I wish I wasn't an anomaly. Don't get me wrong, as an egomaniac, it's really great to consider myself something special, if only from the feedback of people I'm surely to judge beyond what they're due. But damn. It doesn't feel like work. It's just sort of, upholding an ideal. It's living what I think everyone knows, but for reasons I legitimately don't understand, aren't behaving like. Can someone please explain this to me? Fear just feels like a cop-out.

I cringe sometimes when I look at old blogs. Like, I don't think I was terribly clear when I said my friends were “bitch nigga ass pussies.” All that really meant was that I don't get any sort of public feedback when what I'm saying should be considered full of shit. I assumed there was likely something to be said, and nobody said it, thus rendering said inability as “bitch nigga ass pussy” status. I know I follow things up with “don't take it personally” but I'm not terribly confident that it always gets through as I meant...so, there, I fixed it.

I think we're a weird generation. Everything is fast forwarded. Our parents maybe had to take 30 years before they learned something we get on Buzzfeed (what a horrible fucking website) and the irony only gets to sting that much more. You'll get to make stupid marriage decisions and job decisions that, even if you follow for 5 years will feel like a fucking eternity compared to our parents. I think that's why a lot of the shit I rail about is only a glancing blow. You're stuck in the mindset I am; things move quick, even if I'm wrong, I'll flip a switch and BAM it's different.

I still think there's something to be said for not fucking up what you don't need to. The more I look at my life and time goes by, I'm really doing exactly as I think I should. It'd be such a waste to be on whatever pedestal I consider myself and have to sacrifice what it could represent for the ideals of the norm. Seriously, how the fuck do you say “I'm smarter than you” without being a dick? I want to know. I want things to be constructive, not pretentious. I literally can't avoid it. I'm committed to not being a cliched idiot, that doesn't mean I'm not an idiot or won't do idiotic things, but god fucking damn I'm really trying to not be cliché, and I don't know how to convey the message. I'm stuck just doing me and waiting for people to follow along. It fucking sucks. This isn't fun.

It's not hard. That's what gets me. Did you pick milk over orange juice this morning? That's the extent of effort you need to not be a fucking idiot. I really hate when people will fight tooth and nail as if they were born without the capacity for choice that I somehow inherited. I just wonder, what the fuck is it you think you'll learn? Do you need to have some really stupid decision vibrate in your bones before you give the lessons of hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of people before you any respect? Yes, it's at this point I feel very comfortable as a loner pretending that people are worth connecting with beyond fleeting cursory needs.

I'd like it go to away. I wish feeling like a broken record wasn't the default but god forsaken endlessly correct analogy. I want to exist in a world where I have to work to be special. I don't want to have to persuade pretty girls they're pretty, or smart people they're smart, or anybody who should take some solace in whatever they were born with for semi-granted. But that's the playing field. And it's pathetic and it's gut dropping and the only truth is change so I'll shut the fuck up and wait, I guess.

Work, you fuckers.

[330] Problem Solved

Is it even possible to fix a problem?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[325] Talkin' Bout My Mo-ti-va-ti-on

Let’s talk motivation. Say you’re interviewing a psychopathic killer. If they worked for the mob, their reasons to kill can range from “he pissed me off” to “I was getting paid.” There isn’t an emotional component; it’s simply about what they were expected to do or what they were going to get out of it. But, say your killer is the Iceman, who has a clear emotional attachment to his family. He can choke a guy out over his back and not bat an eye, but the idea of not being with his family while in prison makes him tear up.

I want to know why people are so pushed to go places in their heads. Why is the brain so segmented into seemingly non-overlapping parts? Where did I go and why did I choose to be so motivated to learn about something in the past? How and why does that motivation change with new information, and are those changes good, bad, or arbitrary?

I’m dreading the idea of getting a normal job and working all the time despite my bigger motivation to make and save money. When I look at my capacity, I’m not allowed to doubt myself. Now, I understand Jay-Z believes it ain’t about where you been it’s about where you goin, but if I start pretending I know where I’m going, things are just going to get messy. I’m a conditional being after all, with maybe the worst case of presumptive intentional ego and free will that can exist.

It’s just the clarity with a goal in mind is unmistakable. You don’t read, you search and prepare an argument. You don’t talk, you persuade. You don’t suggest, you order, and people listen. It’s brilliant. I think what might put me back in that mode is currently a goal that feels out of reach. At least, out of reach if I’m to go about getting it while also adhering to a set of conditions that tend to bode happiness and are fairly easy to defend. Let that shit go and I’m practically a slave were it not for all the money I’d be making.

The “emotional” component to my motivation is more of an invigoration. It’s not “this makes me happy.” It’s cycling through the laundry list of implications and potential and never being able to shut it off. It’s something I know I can use to motivate or educate other people. It’s the precursor disposition for what’s needed to dramatically change someone.

Is it worth it to “mock” that for something that simply isn’t worthy? By what “right,” if we’re to believe in such things and maintain a semblance of order and respectability, do I subject that or ignore that or hand it over to the highest bidder? No one will value my time like I do, so why should I play along? I think I might just have a big problem with a limited perspective on ANYTHING else I could do to find a work around. Problem being, everyone else seems to be out of ideas as well. There’s a million ways to make money and spend time, there’s like a handful of ways to do it correctly.

How you define what’s correct is all about what you decide to obligate yourself towards. If killing people equaled a paycheck, sure you got what you wanted and didn’t get caught, but it’s hard to say you got the money in the right way. Is “killing yourself,” or at the very least suffocating or ignoring ideas for money, worth it? See Wall Street, or lawyers.

My concern is the realm of ideas, and I’m supposed to knowingly trample on mine and expect people to find good reason to stick behind theirs? I’d have a kill switch against anything I’ve ever advocated for at the level of mind. Talking myself into a shitty situation is not the same thing as acknowledging “how things are” and it is likely better to consider something as beyond the reach of my circumstance than capacity.

The clichés don’t work. Persistence is most likely to get you somewhere, it’s not guaranteed. Every one person you see loving what they do, there’s thousands who didn’t know what else they were going to be able to. It’s not enough to be smart or motivated. It’s not enough to be nice or genuine. There’s a whole world to contend with. The day I “get my shot,” which is a horribly small way to state it given the circumstances I was born into, it will be because someone with a little (or lot) more money sees that I’m a workhorse or have thought a lot about something. I’ll be only and just as good as when I threw on ankle weights to run through and clean theaters.

And then what? I do something that catches on and I run the media circuit? Two idiots in Colorado get to put all the tv channels on their budget web page because they’ll cook you a burrito and clean up after a party. Brilliant entrepreneurs? I bet you’re dying to look up their interviews on Youtube this second. Or maybe I just do something personally gratifying. Let’s cross our fingers I’ve got a moral core in tune with what will also logically and calculably account for the positive change I bring the planet. This, just so it can inevitably change again. Because who knows if we’ll ever decide to cement things like honesty or accountability into our culture for good.

I can’t seem to find those middle ground people. Ones who start with a philosophy but don’t ignore what may be required practically. You either get hippies or whatever it is “normal” people say and do. Or you get people with excellent advice if we pretend they didn’t have a giant backdrop to suggest, provide, and work in for their “insight” that isn’t always readily available or scalable to your problem.

Keep in mind, I’ve all but signed away everything but the memory of a flame on the candle I hold in my heart for humanity. That could change, but it doesn’t seem like it will any time soon. It’s only the sheer weight of demoralizing sadness with the idea I can’t shake off. Lucky me.

[222] Fix It Bitch

How do I propose to fix things? To me, this kind of comes across as asking the Ethiopian kid why he doesn’t just start a farm if he’s so hungry, or maybe the Canadian to read a book if they feel so stupid. It seems to miss the real issues. You’re still Canadian.

So Nick, you like to bitch. Always on facebook with your views and rants and yada yada. Do something about it bitch! Sure, I can agree with you from time to time, even give you a little shit just to see how well you can defend, but I clearly have much less invested in whatever the topic at hand is than you do. Why aren’t you spending every waking minute fighting this monstrous pile of problems you have with the world? Remember you’re an American! Your will and your will alone is going to save you.

This just in, we hardly ever create our circumstances. A whole ton of shit happened before I popped onto the scene in 1988, and I venture to guess people back then had about as much a clue as we do now. Why didn’t the 1988 bitchers just do something!? It seems so easy. What do you even want to do in the first place?

I want to change thoughts.

No, not just change them for the sake of changing them. I could whip my dick out and piss down your leg and I’m positive it will distract you from the Vivaldi symphony you were humming inside. I can’t really think of what that helps besides my smile at the thought. Let me illustrate via example of how I want thoughts to be conducted via mock conversations.

“Hey dude, this invisible man told me something about who you should have sex with.”

“Really? Was he cloaked with that new invisible technology I heard about on the military channel?”

“Ya, what else could it be, magic?”

“Hey dudette, did you know John McCain owns 6 houses?”

“Really? Does he have a lot of kids or family, because 1 doesn’t go into 6 without some crazy quantum stuff going on.”

“No, luckily when our government found out they told him the same thing. The waste, greed, and self-entitlement don’t outweigh the social cost and messages we send to our society about well-being”

“Hi, this is Article 10 section b. of the treaty you signed not to conduct war for insufficient reason.”

“I see your document and counter that I don’t care.”

“Go directly to jail.”

“You mean that this is the only planet we know humans to be currently living on and need water and an atmosphere?”

“I don’t find these compelling enough reason to all but cease and desist pursuing resources that can make it explode.”

“That’s why you’re seated next to that crazy politician while regulatory commissions and scientists break up and repurpose your equipment.”

We allow ourselves to be sold on this bullshit, become complacent with the results, and lose all will even to meagerly bitch on facebook about it.

When. You. Become. Specific. Objective. Reality. Exists.

Is cutting bad? It’s the wrong question. Should a girl with low self-esteem and the excuse, “this is the only way to make me feel” cut. Probably not. Should the masochist cut in an expression of sexual release? Could be dangerous, but certainly a different circumstance. It becomes a question about personal responsibility and societal impact over “moral truth.”

We need to allow questions to become as complicated as what they are trying to hide. This is what happens to my brain when I hear certain questions. For example, is sex before marriage bad? Ridiculously involved question! Unprotected sex? Sex with who? What state of mind would you venture a guess they were in? What pros or cons does marriage bring to sex? Bad for her or him or him or all three? Bad as in disease, emotions, location? Oral? Why are we supposing marriage and sex have anything to do with each other in the first place? It turns into an endless ball of philosophical speculation about the subjective experiences with sex and beliefs about marriage.

Is it not more coherent to tell someone the story and purpose of marriage given different time periods and across various belief systems and let them decide if they agree or disagree with a particular method? Is it not more responsible to teach people all the pros and cons of having the various kinds of sex and allowing them to figure out what’s best for their health and well-being? Is it not reasonable to assume that regardless of who’s fucking who under what conditions, if you find or pick people who are proven to be safe and mature, it’s really none of your fucking business or concern what’s going on elsewhere?

The financial crisis surely had thousands of people with little to large hands at play. Blame them all. More importantly, get them all to blame themselves. Is it not the whistleblower that can expel a wave of shit that indicts a mass of people? What if you can convince that mass of people to account for their own fuck ups, and then figure a way to fix them instead? What if a hundred accountable people worked at Lehman Brothers? Maybe only a few would need to be punished. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. Maybe bonuses and salaries would better reflect achievement and contributions instead of cronyism. And whatever could be said about the ones that went under, it goes double for Goldman Sachs.

You make excuses when you don’t accept objective reality. I would equate the same fallacy and damaging habit of keeping an abusive boyfriend with how we conduct ourselves in government or religious institutions. Of course, why be so eager to flock to such structures unless you’re predisposed against personal responsibility in the first place? I shouldn’t have to convince my friends that they’re boyfriend beats them or is scarily controlling any more than I should have to convince someone that if they don’t like the two party system, stop voting into it. Is the fear of being ostracized or judged really greater than whether or not you’ll have a job next week? Is the objective case for something better a change so uncertain and dangerous you’re willing to perpetuate your circumstances? Well, obviously at this point.

This is why I’m at my core opposed to magic thinking. I don’t see what it does but allow you to be selfish in a destructive manner. It persuades you that you have more control than you do. It allows you to literally outright deny evidence in front of your face. It distracts you from the very obvious things you could be doing to get a more humble and honest kind of satisfaction. And this assumes I would dignify what you get from many of those beliefs as satisfaction. So what am I doing about it?

I’m at least bitching enough to try and garner the questions and conversations in a direction that will bring the specific problems to light and hopefully answers to address them. I’m at least trying ever so fucking hard to be an example of feeling utterly alone in my head while still espousing ideas and ideals that I’ve yet to have a single fucking person tell me I’m so ridiculously destructive or outlandish to hold. I’m asking if it can be done with a “bitchy” solo blog, what can be done with two, or three, a campus or country?

It’s easy to be another protester, whistle blower, hot head, egomaniac, “intellectual,” and servant. History has told our story hundreds of thousands of times and we refuse to change this instant. We are not prepared to be accountable today. Even allowing for how little control I actually have in a parent system, I still manage to maintain too high a sense of responsibility for shit people couldn’t imagine.

I should’ve seen Javon was a psychopath and worked harder to find a better roommate. When her shit gets stolen or spilled on, all that matters is that it was my party. Never mind the months she had to buy a lockable doorknob that was left up to me too. I invited Chris to live there as well despite the anger I saw in him. Whether I bought the alcohol or not I’m still responsible for the drunken rabble in my house. If Rin’s pole gets broken, I have to pay for it. If Hatsam puts in ten applications, I have to find the eleventh that gets him hired. If the world goes to shit, I have to devise some master strategy or feel guilty and responsible for not fixing it all instead of merely bitching on facebook.

If I’m going to continue feeling this way, I’m at least going to keep bitching until I’m ignored or collaborated with. I’m much happier taking responsibility than pretending I don’t want any. Most people I encounter are happy to give it to me. I don’t know if this is extremely endearing and a sign of my potential or me just the proud scapegoat for people’s emotional instability. Forgive me for leaning towards the latter.