[1120] You Gotta Work

As someone who has earned the privilege of an excess of time, if there is such a thing, it can be hard to make peace with how much of that time I feel is doing "nothing." It's the worst possible phrasing and first pass at the idea, but I think it's what we collectively feel instinctively when we're not "busy." Whether that busyness is accomplishing anything meaningful, fulfilling, worthwhile, or helpful is another gigantic question after we succumb to the compulsion to be "doing something" regardless.

If you try to analyze the tea leaves of memes, there's a bigger sense of pushback regarding "grinding" and "hustling" and "enriching shareholders." Whether that's translating effectively through "quiet quitting" or exercising some muscle of infantilizing nostalgia is anyone's guess. The pull of chasing the next dollar, or title, at bottom, feels absolute. If you're not trying to "provide for your family," or "prepare for the future," or "capitalize on the trend so you don't get left behind," there's something wrong with, or at least missing, about you.

We've heard our entire lives about "productivity" and having more resources than we know what to do with. You can read about how much food gets wasted and the next industry to do away with people as A.I. gets better (or doesn't, and no one knows how to argue otherwise.) Proposals for a universal basic income are getting their experimental time in the sun for different small pockets of people. We've absorbed the nature of the wealth-siphoning to the rich, paying more in taxes each year, getting price-gouged and scapegoating "inflation," and swallowing Ticketmaster fees because we never know when our favorite artists are going to die so why argue with the greed machine?

It's one of the most counter-intuitive things to do to attempt to pull out. Almost no one is doing it. You need gains! You need growth! You need norms of doing business and modern human, so low, expectations to anchor yourself to. In all of my time to plot, sleep, watch, or otherwise, it can be easy to forget just how long I've played the "normal" game. Was I ever paid "enough?" Hell no. Was my effort ever recognized in a way that didn't get me exploited? Not once. Did the vast majority of my bosses or supervisors care, in any real tangible way, about behaving in sensible and decent ways? Were they going to fight for the right things? Their whole working model to sustain their lives incentivizes otherwise.

This isn't abstract. Recall, I'm currently a counselor. I get word from clients or colleagues about how other counselors conduct themselves in group. I hear of their mental health issues getting laid at the feet of their clients. I hear of their laziness. I hear from the counselors themselves how little they're willing to take responsibility for what they bring, or don't, into a group. A new mom supervisor will hire the deeply unwell counselor to fill a gap if that counselor can perform the dance of saying the right things. Being long-term accountable to what they say? That's not the job or obligation. Unfortunately, that's precisely the the work you have to do if you want to maintain sober thinking. Good luck.

Sober thinking. It's not about refraining from substance use. It's about building, maintaining, and exercising an informed perspective. Once you get out of your own world and recognize the extent of your potential or impact, you find a way to maintain a standard of behavior and pursue goals that show yourself and the world you know what you're talking about. You need to build trust in yourself as much as you might wish to be able to trust anything else. If you can't figure out how to trust yourself, you can't maintain the right expectations that protect a sober thinking environment.

Most people are not thinking from a self-reflective and sober place. They are addicted to the pursuit and ridiculously unfair and captured expectations of modernity. They are addicted to levels of immature emotional drama because there's little else that feels equally as accessible and personal. They're addicted to some version of the same conversation every single day about what they "have to" do because they're baked into the cake of their insisted upon obligations. Little "escapes" here and there are pre-prescribed as well. Your few-days vacation fits neatly into the begrudgingly-allowed request off allotment. Your indulgent bling matches business casual.

It's not your fault until you know better, so there's an endless loop of narratives and distractions to justify pretending not to know better. You could watch a 20-hour set of interviews from old people insisting you shouldn't be so laser focused on sacrificing your life for xyz. That's too long, no one's gonna watch that! I can't tell you how many times a colleague has complained about the absurdities they've witnessed only to default to something like switching roles, giving advice to just ignore or avoid - it is what it is! - or finding some cliche about things evening out over time. Of course, they don't even out. They compound and embolden and normalize iterative ways of self-destruction.

I'm seriously perpetually struck by just how much time there really is. If you feel like you never or don't have the time, here's your sign that you're spending an inordinate amount of it doing or on your way to doing something that isn't serving you like you think it is. I struggle to figure out what I "should" be doing in any moment, often as the residual fallout of otherwise guilt-tripping myself if I don't feel "busy." What's the adult functional equivalent of always being in a classroom? My instincts seek that out. Is the teacher good? Am I learning anything? Am I actually getting prepared for what I'll need later in life? Shut up, sit down, and listen.

I get frustrated by influencers who say things like, "You really can change your life. You just gotta"…fill in the blank with their vague and empty prescription. We've just as egregiously been tricked by ideas of virality and interconnectedness as we have by the velvet bars of normalcy. You exist in a constant state of change, influenced by a literally infinite amount of forces. The "change" needs to come in how you observe those forces, not pretend you can become master and commander of them all. The person so enthusiastic about making a personal brand out of fortune cookies is overwhelmingly hot, already kind of rich, or otherwise plugged into the kinds of infrastructure that would see them having some measure of success had they chosen a different path. They're also almost perfectly corruptible and content with doing or saying whatever it takes to maintain your attention.

To them, and most people, every aspect of their life is a story of their decision-making, not their luck or capture. I do believe we need to be responsible for our decisions. I do not believe we have any grasp on the nature of how we arrive at decisions. I do not believe we have any grasp because I spend inordinate amounts of time looking for the myriad things going on in my head that speak to why I live in a shed, pursue entrepreneurial frustrations, or find myself interested in the music or TV shows that I do. How often do I like a given piece of art more than my sense of novelty in my experience of it? I'm constantly seeking novelty. It speaks to my attitude towards relationships, why I have dozens of half-completed projects, and why no job, ever, will be "enough" for me to feel at home or like I fit if it doesn't change and challenge me.

There are a lot of familiar beats being a DCS assessor. Every household is different. Every kid or tangentially relevant adult a new variable. I don't know who is about to call. I don't know what horror is about to be unmasked. Whether I do or don't have a "passion" for social work (I don't), you don't get a more novel environment than trying to plug into the minds of other people. My pursuits in the social work realm are the evolved drift of my novelty-seeking and trapped circumstances. Some of my goals are to protect the time I have to wake up when I please, sit down and write, hold a counseling session, and then decide on what to do with an absolutely beautiful day. If I can do that in perpetuity, in this field or otherwise, that's going to express my values and demonstrate my sober thinking about how to act on my priorities.

[1091] To Infinity And Beyond

I don't know if my head is feeling particularly random or if I've just got too much time on my hands again.

I watch so much TV. I get my stats sent to me at the end of the year through Trakt. They look more insane given most of it is sped up, but even if they weren't, I can easily sit with it on for hours. 6.7 hours a day on average, according to Trakt, so 3.35. It feels like considerably more than that, but what does that mean? I spend huge portions of time in metaphoric realities.

My brain doesn't care. It needs stimulation. I can only play an instrument for so long before my hand cramps. I can only "grind" in a videogame for so long before all of the years that built up behind me quitting playing for over a decade start to bubble. I don't have the social group that's doing something every day or calling regularly. I'm not obligating my time towards family. It's cold and I'm not inclined to work outdoors in it.

I have no more practiced a habit than sitting around. Of course I'm fidgeting and ADHD-ing, and rearranging furniture or books. But I'm an isolated, sedentary indulger more than anything. The TV show is paused while I write this, but whether it starts up immediately after, or while I'm driving, or while I'm waiting around before a concert or comedy show, something is on.

I almost use it to mark time. I've always been suspicious that we've got an incredible amount of time, and yet most of us will claim how much of it is lost, never to be found. I feel in some ways I've practiced slowing down so much, that it makes sense to not only watch things sped up, but fit as much as I can into all of this space that's in the here and now. It makes me happy to think if it takes you a month to watch a season, I can get it done in a few hours.

I've always been that way though. I was perfectly comfortable cheating on old video games if it would help me get to the end. I took pride in speed reading. I would get my homework done as quickly as you told me what was required for that day, then become a pain in the ass the rest of the day with nothing to do. If it's a physical task, like moving hundreds of bricks or pallets, I'm going until I start shutting down and hurting myself because I can't focus anymore. I used to speed constantly. Even if it doesn't sound particularly musical or show up in any song you care about, I like seeing and hearing speed picking and El Estepario tapping drum sticks like hummingbird flaps.

Almost married to this preference and propensity is a desire to be "comprehensive." To this day, I feel a sense of injustice, I even think I've written about this before, on a 3rd grade report I was assigned to write about a U.S. State. I was told, explicitly, not to provide every town and city. That just didn't make sense or sit right with me, so I printed one anyway for the state of Texas. I had all the other stuff she asked for too, but you and I both know you're not reporting on a state if you don't even know what towns and cities are in it. Duh. I got a C, and note in red that said "I told you not to give me a list of cities."

I watched a video recently explaining the difference in the sizes of infinities. Not all are equal or "as infinite" as the next. I don't know what sense can be made of the sentiment, but I feel like I hop between different infinities. It can simply be a matter of descriptive word choice categorizing what I'm engaging. The broadest concept might be "media." If I can watch or listen to it, I could plug in to that infinity and keep a rather opaque resolution on what all that noise is doing for me. Distill it down into movies, shows, books, podcasts, news, music, lessons, lectures, clips. Break all of those into genres. Each one provides a lifetime. An infinite sea from which to draw inspiration or distraction.

I think I seek both simultaneously. I notice the duality across a lot of these infinite spaces. I'm both full, comfortable, safe, and warm, yet my muscles are tight; my head and eyes are begging to start hurting. I'm full of salt, fat, the wrong carbs, and I'm protected only to the extent of my proximity to dangers I can't see coming. I'm mostly warm provided a given part of my body is against a heated blanket. No one state is in the extreme, and no one shift to a little bit more or less in either direction suggests something "meaningfully better."

That is, I'm "comfortable enough" to continue to sit here and type. I'm lucid enough. I'm TV-satiated enough to keep it paused. I'm satisfied enough with my body to not think more closely about what I'm feeding it. I've got enough of an ambivalence towards my debt to work just enough to keep its minimums paid on time. In turn, that's enough for the credit card companies and capitalist machines that want nothing less than me to never feel satisfied enough with the amount of things I own.

I think we employ the language of "enough" miserably. "Why can't I be enough!" we might scream at our romantically idealized notion of the person we claim to love. They cheat. They grow distant. Instinctively you might feel like it's about you and everything missing. It seems like it's only when we've had enough misery, and not just enough misery, but enough misery with the right prerequisites and under specific conditions, that we move to change something. Could we change sooner? It's a question of what resolution your infinity is dialed into. If you're a big corporate monstrosity who deals in "data" or "information," which can be indefinitely mined, tweaked, and reinterpreted, it doesn't interest you to curb greenhouse emissions until a more specific descriptive number threshold from outside your preferred genre makes a compelling impact.

The presence of so many infinities suggests to me that they are the rule and so by definition, nothing, ever, will be "classically" enough. Enough doesn't exist that way. All the self-esteem genres telling you you're beautiful enough or smart enough or worthy of love just as you are are lies. Not malicious lies, mind you, just lies that don't understand the nature of the game we're stuck playing. No one idea is meant to account for the whole of anything. Innocently, you might just consider it a mathematical impossibility that you'll ever be complete. You will instead be enough to suffice across a different set of infinite domains.

You might be fuckable to a lot of people, including your designated "soulmate." You might find yourself entertained by Star Wars AND Star Trek, or all of science fiction AND sports, or find the requisite levels of continued enjoyment in studying quantum mechanics and vibing with Bluey. It's never either/or. There's not conflict or contradiction. There's different levels of your experience you can access an infinite amount of ways.

From the outside, you can't necessarily tell if anyone is actually doing that or just adopting the infinite linguistic disguises that claim to. We peacock values we don't know how to practice. We're a beleaguered and confused "middle" who lazily votes for fascism, or downplays how fascism happens, because we literally don't know any better. We can't see our infinite capacity for destruction anymore than we regularly entertain ideas of our infinite potential.

As I was cleaning up old emails I came across old fights. There's math breakdowns I've sent former supervisors of how much money and time I'm wasting working for them. There's back and forths with me and one of my exes. There's exchanges I've had in pissing-match format with people online. I save this stuff for the same reason I keep almost all of my writing from back when I started at 15. I have new eyes at 35. Infinite gaps in my perspective are sometimes traversed by a more infinite truth. Was I arguing like an entitled immature cunt? Or had I figured something out, and now it was time to die nobly on the hills of my choosing instead of at the mercy of my combatant? As time goes on, I'm thankful to discover far more of the latter.

I think there's something of an inevitability towards people seeking "spiritual" or "religious" scape-goatery with its embodied allegory for the infinite. This especially so when paired with the sense of never feeling like you're enough. Fancy that, here's a thing that calls it "sin," and conveniently lasts forever to match the infinite sea of whatever you need it to in any given moment. Infinitely insecure? No worries, these paring rituals are blessed and divine. Infinitely attracted to children? Check out these power dynamics and forgiveness concepts. Righteously indignant and protective of your ignorance? Brother, we'll point you in the direction of where to blow yourself up straight into the arms of the infinite reward that matches your commitment.

My only excuse, at least when I've slowed down, written, picked a direction, and decided something is worth fighting and biting about, is an ongoing infinite conversation that ends the moment the decision is made, and starts up again the moment the decision is being evaluated for change. I don't get to pawn my failings off on Jesus and claim forgiveness. I have to weigh the evidence. I have to describe what I can make of the context. I can count the amount of people who seemingly never want to talk to me again or the extreme limits of my network. I have to see who keeps coming back and wrestle with why. I have to make sure it's not because I'm taking advantage of their infinite capacity to feed something I might disingenuously or greedily eat indefinitely.

There's peace in attending to this duality. But the peace doesn't feel like anything more than potential. I don't feel "good" or "bad." It's still hard to use the word "hope" without sarcasm dripping off my tongue. If I "hate" something, it's really just the same thing over and over, the seeming lack of sense, awareness, or accountability, playing out across genres of situations. Will I be "happy" if every one of my dreams comes true? Hundreds of my dreams have come true, and continue to remain true every day. I would not describe myself as "happy" lol.

I'm happy when I can share something. I'm happy when I feel like there's a real connected intention brought to the same space. That's why I don't get along with people who are "just doing their job" in realms like counseling or DCS that require far more personal responsibility and integrity for them to meaningfully represent their impact. It doesn't mean they'll be conducted that way, but it does mean when you fuck about, we all get to experience the infinite cascade of finding out. That's how a 5-10% minority eats 80% of the time and space we pretend can't exist in service to anything else.

We can ground that specifically. It's every abusive family member one of my clients "can't help" but wrap themselves around. That's the frequent flyers of our prison and healthcare systems. It's any monopoly of power and wealth. It's the job, family, or hobby you know someone is abusing to eschew a conversation about balance or the real extent of their responsibilities. It's the jaded cynicism of pundits and influential personalities beating fear and hate drums. It's virtue-signaling language you try to stuff every conceivable, especially its opposite, idea into. You know, because pumping gas can be "green" too and words are "violence."

Whatever scale or frame we choose to adopt has to start with the acknowledgement, acceptance, and voluntarily adopted responsibility for the choice altogether. You choose to respect and weigh evidence, or you bolster the strength of errant faith claims. You choose to "stare into the void" or touch the infinite capacity of your potential, and you can allow yourself to feel diminished and helpless, or emboldened to carry on more deliberately in a manner you can increasingly see fits. Fits what? Fits your given moment. If you see the same things I do, maybe we start manifesting things we both wish to see verses a random array of noise we struggle to cope with.

I care very little, if at all, about what I'm watching if I have someone to watch it with. We can share in how bad it was or jokes we make about it or references years later. The parties I threw weren't about collecting hangovers. The business I want to run isn't about being catastrophically rich or irrational defiance to conformity and oversight. The access to the freedom and headspace to enjoy my time isn't so I am always available to tend to another cat. Insofar as the vast majority of the people I'm connected to aren't coming or inviting or speaking at all, it's easy to believe you're meaningfully different, and maybe not in ways you really want to be.

But I write. I search. I try. I work. I invest. I continue to acknowledge the infinite ways I can describe my experience until I find a frame that allows me to choose, and feel like it was a real choice, a step in a direction I want instead of a direction I "have to." If that practically translates into all I can really do is keep picking my words and hills to die on, that's what I'll do. If I must be in debt, I want to know it services experiences and things I can hide from repo men or the consequences of bankruptcy. If my writing has no capacity to "wake up" others in the way different authors have helped me to, I can trust it will at least continue to help me to when I've drifted too far into the wrong infinity.

[1065] Good Boy

I don't consider myself a "good" person. More to the point, I don't think the sentence or sentiment makes any sense. I liken it to saying, "You're a good dog." A dog is a dog. It has dog tendencies, and depending on the breed and kind of engagement, you can lessen or exacerbate those tendencies. The "goodness" of the dog depends on variables internal and external. Our concept of a good dog varies with each observer. My good dog responds to commands, doesn't errantly bark, and refrains from tearing my shit or other dogs to pieces. Your good dog may routinely lick you inside your mouth.

I don't consider myself particularly disciplined either. I'm a product of a fair amount of conditioning, and it's hard to think of myself as not constantly looking for ways to push boundaries. I'm like Byron's dog Ike. It knows not to lick me, yet you can see the compulsive lick wheels turning non-stop. He can respond to demands, but is just as likely to take off into traffic. He's incredibly afraid of the dumbest things, but will occasionally decide it's time to throw down and fight at the dog park.

If there is one metric I attempt to remain consistent in, it's in matching my words to my actions. I try to build in leeway for things I'm not entirely sure I can pull off. I might say something like, "If I practice 3-8 hours a day again, I bet I could come close to sounding like that," when I watch an incredible guitar performance. I'll qualify the amount of work I'd like to do with, "If I'm in the mood," or "weather providing" or "if something doesn't come up." In talking or writing like this, I don't ever really need to make promises. I don't need to sell myself or make some "extra" pseudo-commitment profession. Whether I'm looking to be praiseworthy or condemning and judgmental, you can frame it in a sincere and balanced way.

I think about this a lot when it comes to my approach to people who begin to annoy the fuck out of me or who seem to betray me in ways I couldn't find myself justifying. In my reflection on dropping Byron, I spoke to moving out, and the darkness I was kept in. That's been damn near every single year from every single person I've lived with. No one, it appears, cares how much it costs or how much work it takes to get a house you're renting back in order and packed up. No one knew or prepared to work out where they're going to live year to year? No one thought twice about paying the ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

I would never just abandon a living situation that wasn't otherwise threatening me. I would never expect someone to throw out my shit or clean up after me. I would never contemplate moving and just keep that from them. These are the kinds of things that create financial holes, to say nothing of the psychological ones, that can take years to get out of. If it's not deliberately malicious, what can we say about people who are routinely selfish and willing to inflict such drama via, if nothing else and very forgivingly, "absent-mindedness." They dash into the street, and you're on the hook for the medical bills.

I had a client text me, 2 days in a row, about not getting a 14-day script. He's a relatively long-term client. He knows how the system works, or doesn't. He knows I have nothing to do with writing, retrieving, or even looking at and accessing the systems to do with prescriptions. Yet, he felt compelled to interject his bullshit into my day, distraught that having to do jury duty appears to have registered in our software that he didn't have perfect attendance. This isn't a 2 minute conversation let alone a dozen texts over 2 days one. I, because he's a "good" or "nice-enough" client, unwisely, responded at all, very briefly blaming the software, holiday, and finally requesting we speak about it when I'm actually at work. Of course, he kept talking, so I stopped.

There's a "good person" narrative at this juncture that starts to nag you. Don't you wish to alleviate, to whatever degree you can, the confusion of your "good" clients? If it's not going to annoy the fuck out of me (qualifying statement) I don't mind sending a very quick 5 word-ish text. Another member messaged coincidentally about the same time for the box code to get screens. Should she, and anyone who's been doing this program for years and heard the box code dozens of times know it? Sure. She's also a good client, and the box code doesn't obligate me to drama, here you go, I can move on quick.

I can recognize the difference between how either attempts for my attention register. I consciously refrain from saying "makes me feel," because I know it's my underlying habits or desires that fuel just how annoyed or otherwise I'm going to be when you come at me with your bullshit. I didn't have to respond to my first client at all. In one sense, I violated my own boundary. In another, I made a bet that talking back would help more than hurt. In yet another, I was expressly espousing my values to treat my "good" clients with a little more leeway and privilege.

It's not black and white. Depending on how hard I lean into any of those sensibilities, I could nag myself with guilt for not holding strong. I could be conjuring a tale of my desire for taking risks and hedging with unstable and inappropriate means. I could simply pat myself on the back for consciously elevating an individual, even if he managed to disappoint me.

My goodness. It's all so convoluted and layered. It's all of the senses at once, and my unconscious and pre-verbal parts of my brain cycle through each layer until I can land them line-by-line here.

My sense of whether or not I'm "good" has been shaped by how I was raised. My dad being the unconditional love type, and my mom ensuring it was metric and fear-based. I was good if my grades were good. I was good if I responded to the threat of violence with compliance. To this day, I still feel what I'd describe as a "standing guilty conscience" as though I've done something wrong or punishment is inevitable. 

It's not "real" guilt. It's the irrational kind you can't take responsibility for. It's what forms when you've been made into a victim. Your abusive or neglectful caregiver can be as significant a contributor to that as your cultural environment. There's adults still thinking they're going to Hell for jerking off. The Protestant "work ethic" is a recipe for chronic unfulfilling self-imposed slavery. 

The real problem with this not-real guilt is less about the endless ways in which it may play out as selfish and entitled. It's significantly more about realizing how all-encompassing it can become. It's us needing to own how punishing our environments are, so we can form a responsible and accountable approach to what they've done to us. Very few of us appear to even entertain the conversation. It's more of a cultural parody at this point about the levels of anxiety and depression and everyone's need for therapy and simply more exposure and acceptance a-la shows like Sex Education.

We're foundationally irrationally guilty, we don't know of what, and if we don't already feel like we're being punished, we intuit that more punishment is coming. Our insincere parroting of words gives us zero capacity or insight on how to approach this. We reduce what accessing the real and meaningful guilt might provoke in behavior change to the pithy ether of melodrama and religiosity.

I don't wish to be "a person." I want to be me. I want to believe I'm making decisions to orient around things I care about, equitable relationships, and my potential. If my debt was compulsive hoarding to fill a black hole, like it is with my uncle, I'd expect to hear criticism about that from people concerned about me. If my aberrant or impulsive decision-making was courting interpersonal, financial, and legal trouble, a "good" friend or person talks about it. That's the implicit lesson of like almost all TV. There's bonds that can't be broken as they drive towards genuine resolution of the plot. It's another tool in service to rendering us blind when the lines and goals haven't been explicitly written for us.

I can't remember the last time I deliberately and consciously tried to hurt someone. This lack of recall stands against how frequently I've been accused of doing so. Just as it was in my mother's household, before I had the language of developmentally appropriate stages and the neurochemistry of the pre-frontal cortex, I was always in the wrong. Moreover, I couldn't even imagine that someone else had the agency or their role to play. I think about this in particular when it came to throwing parties in college. Hundreds of people's drunken behavior was routinely laid at my feet, and I was right there to pick it up. I didn't think twice. It was "my" party, after all. I wasn't 1 of 5 on the lease, 6 living there. I wasn't 1 of 100 places to drink or act out that IU has to offer. Through sheer force of will and charm you'd think I literally cast a spell on my attendees.

And in a way, by having any intention and direction at all, I did. And if and when that goes awry, the responsibility follows. I'm fine with that, considerably less so with the next step to act like you can party all by yourself. I don't have my hand up your ass mouthing your justifications or holding your jaw shut.

The road from distancing yourself from that irrationally guilty space that blames everything around you to responsible adulthood is a framing and self-talk problem. You may not see the 100 people around you at the party, but I promise you they see a scapegoat. You may not see the work, family, or political environment you're ever-molded by, but they have your number and know what you're good for when they can't be bothered.

I hardly recognize everything I've bought and built to try to find more contentedness and occasional "happiness." I'm not just out here alone playing music all day, deeply contemplating compelling media, and full of cheer for the examples I'm trying to set. I know most people can't even really see me. I know I'm going to be expected to clean up so much dog shit and the other animals are going look on ambivalently to bemused. It just hits really hard sometimes when the bubble you're cultivating gets aggressively barked at or slobbered on. I'm fucking tired of having to treat people like dogs, from my "best friend" to my "good clients," and I literally have to if I'm going to survive. 

I'm the only one who gets to kill me.

[982] That Was Easy

Something’s missing.

This is probably one of the most consistent thoughts I have even if it never sounds so precise. I’ll eat something, but it won’t quite hit the spot. I’ll discover a new and useful tool, but it just doesn’t meet what I’d ideally like it to do. An endless blur of TV drones on with dialogue that doesn’t get there and plot points playing out an existential crisis one cliché and predictable episode at a time. I write, and am lucky to find maybe half of what I wished to say because I’m trying to capture what’s missing; the empty or wanting feeling more often persists than gets alleviated.

I’ve named consistently what’s been missing from my experience. From getting into this habit, I’ve been able to zero in more on both the nature of my desires, and what does or does not change upon acquiring them. I know how to match my words to the process of altering my feelings. It never has been, nor will ever be, that I “just don’t feel” or “don’t care.” I’m doing work. I recognize the language, tone, body language, and series of spontaneous utterances that tell me when you’re doing the work too.

What is “the work?”

I’ve spoken about “the machine” I put together that tried to colloquially break down for my clients at the methadone clinic a means for processing their thoughts and actions. I took from what helped or inspired me, and walked people through headings that started with “responsibility.” For as increasingly controversial and perhaps pettiness and anger that I have begun to observe from Jordan Peterson, I think he was spot on when he stressed personal responsibility.

I think many get confused when you talk about personal responsibility. They believe they’re supposed to “feel” some kind of way about “everything.” It comes across like an obligation, most often unwanted, and unfair. It is all of those things. Literally no one chooses to exist. By default, you aren’t asked to cope with what you look like, sound like, how much brain power you don’t have, or the series of horrendous circumstances you might find yourself in. To even suggest you have a responsibility is the most unfair thing possible. You caused none of it, and now you have to clean up? Now you have to fight? Now you have to sacrifice and risk whatever otherwise happiness or stability you’ve achieved? Who in their right fucking mind would bother?

So let’s be the rational actor, disappearing into their little world. They work hard, they send their kids to school, they recycle, and hell, they even donate to charity and vote. This plays out with regularity, tinged with righteous indignation, most often unvoiced, for those who can’t be bothered to leave you alone to “do you.” You’ll just move to a “blue state” or you’ll hole up with a gun cache and wait for the threat or until the leadership unleashes you. It’s pretty much chaos at all times, as far as you can tell from the headlines…just keep swimming.

I’ve felt like I’m surrounded by fish with so many missing memories. Whether it was about things we were supposed to have meant to each other, or the reasons we drunkenly blathered for why we were going to create something. When I talk about the superficial nature of my relationships, it has a lot to do with shaking off the responsibility to understand or engage. I know it’s often dangerous and disingenuous to take your personal experience and try to map things writ large, but I’ve been deeply examining the minutia of my experience for so long, I’m hardly, if ever, surprised or confused by “everything” being shit or things breaking down.

I’m not so naïve as to think it’s just not “my friends” who don’t wish to have an ongoing dialogue that tackles difficult subjects. That’s people. I’m fascinated with Sam Jay who seems to have built a brand around having dialogues. Will “the culture” be better for it? Or is it treated like a niche window into how a handful of people discuss their lives in something of a Taxi Cab Confessions manner with a comedic twist?

I don’t know that we’re built for “democracy.” I don’t think people are really thinking. I think they follow scripts, occasionally they get backed into corners or alter their mind chemically, and then what might be considered an actual thought or several start to come out. Because our brains are always doing “something,” we conceive of this as “thinking.” You think you thought about what you wanted to eat. You think you have an opinion on an inflammatory headline. You think you don’t like how something feels, so it’s bad, should be cancelled, or isn’t worth your time and attention.

I don’t respect liars. Part of my ongoing disconnect with people is their willingness to lie. It’s almost always lies of omission, but those omissions add up to a lot of work not being done. It’s lies dictated by fear for real repercussions that preclude even entertaining ways of changing or fixing something.

You know who doesn’t lie like that? Crazy people. They lie loud and proud and with their entire being. They lie for generations and build it into institutions. They lie through things literally understood throughout time as “deadly sins” and are proud, greedy, and grow fat off your silence, fear, or indifference. You know why history is wrought with war and martyrs? It’s not that ancient civilizations didn’t have rational people. They weren’t full of those incapable of empathically understanding their neighbor. The crazy, ever waiting, got louder and louder until they ate themselves alive. We’re just playing out our modern version of the script.

I’ve definitely chilled in my enthusiasm for people the more I…tried. The more I worked. The more I invited. The more I carried the enthusiasm. The more I rooted for and believed in. The more I sacrificed, the less pull people had on me. I’m dispositionally pretty distant, but also, when I tried not to be, I tried not to be like how I do things. I went all-in. I’m not going to truly challenge my worst ideas about who and how to manipulate unless I give myself over to the idea that there are people it’s worth it not to behave like that towards. Did I pick the wrong batch of people? Almost certainly, but I can’t deny what it taught me.

Today we have “ghosting,” because so many of our bonds are so fragile and arbitrary. My “style” or manner of communication set myself up to be “ghosted” by dozens of people in short succession. Whether it be gossipy rumor mills or the facebook chat that doesn’t get responded to for months, the message is clear. I don’t matter, at least to them. How much suffering might it cause a person who locates their “missing” piece in the interactions with people who want nothing to do with them? I wouldn’t wish that on most. At least with someone like me, it’s not a secret that I didn’t generally make you “feel good” nor do any better of a job of that today than I did then.

I’m always struck by the contrast in assessments of my behavior, words, or choice interactions with what I consider actually bad if not considerably worse things. I don’t mean to suggest that because big bad things happen in the world that you should ignore critical feedback or not take responsibility for your actions, but I’ve never found people more thoughtful, more vocal, or more willing to share than when they were angry with me. Not the world, not themselves, but what’s fucked up about me was ever so clear and particularly worth singular condemnation. It’s a point of ongoing fascination, not because I’m regularly eliciting negative feedback, but because the reasons why I see infused all over.

I say the quiet part out loud. I say anything at all, but I most often choose to say the prickly things. Moreover, I disagree the prickly things can be dealt with when we carry ourselves like so many balloons. You can’t “cancel” fascism. You can’t “persuade” me that fat is beautiful, on myself or otherwise. When conservatives bemoan a “woke agenda,” it’s scenes in Star Trek that go on way too long with the awkward non-binary kid staring at her(oops) gay dad in all of his glorious understanding. And I don’t even mean to suggest that these are particularly relevant or strong points and topics to get all fussy about. It’s just what’s on offer today. The march - the practical, detailed, and deliberate crazy is working to erode rights because it’s working. It’s working on the means by which things exist or don’t.

The crazy march voices its lies. It’s proud in its opposition. It’s not been a secret that Roe v Wade was a target. It’s not been a secret the billions of opinions offered as to what Jesus meant. It’s not a secret that the country is failing. It’s not a secret that homemade signs and megaphones mean precisely dick to those with money, influence, and organized decades-long systems for instantiating power.

What’s the work? Did I ever get around to answering the question? First, acknowledge how complicated “everything” is. You don’t get to silence people; I don’t care how hot your topic is or righteous your cause. You don’t have to invite David Duke to speak at your graduation ceremony or entertain him on your platform, but he gets to speak. But that’s easy to understand if you’re remotely thoughtful. Really, what is the work?

You have to stop lying. You have to speak up, but you have to do so in a way that isn’t furious concurrence with the status quo of your social circle. You have to own that the moment you choose to take anything from the shelf of life, you have to follow or establish the rules of the store. Right now we’re letting the crazy lock us inside and poison the food because they “believe” a whole series of incoherent self-gratifying catch-phrases. Like that bitch in “The Mist,” they need to be shot in the head, and preferably before they literally need to be shot in the head.

What is the work? You have to keep asking. The work is to build bravery, coalitions, and organize around deep understandings of the history and context in which decisions get made and power flows. I don’t have half a dozen friends who’ve been on this journey since college on this land with a series of practical responses to the things we worried and complained about graduating high school the year before the financial crash. We heard about climate change back then. We saw Sarah Palin. We fucked off, moved to different corners, got all in our feelings and suffered in adult silence in our jobs and relative first-world poverty. Brilliant set of go-getters we were.

All of this rests on what you think your responsibility is though. Is it to yourself? Certainly, in some important sense. You have to be in a good spot if you want to help others. Is it to “the world?” Now you’re just kind of being naively vague. You certainly don’t feel like you have a responsibility to talk to me lol. We get older and decide it’s just about our sliver of the world. We forget, very actively, that there is no “personal” world. Just the one we’re all plugged into for better or mostly worse. When “our” world is characterized by silence, and pithy rallies in lieu of seized power, “my” sliver gets sharper, cutting away at my dreamiest conception of where I am financially, psychologically, or socially.

I try to conduct myself in a manner I think serves “the” world, subjectively processed, but not persuaded by. I’m comfortable asserting how much I don’t know. I’m able to label when and why and how I have patience to entertain difficult subjects or judgments. I try incredibly hard to give as honest an appraisal as I can of what I see, hear, and experience in those pre-verbal parts of my brain that tell me time and again how much I’m missing. The thing about what’s missing is that it’s not just lost to time or impossible to find. It’s just what people refuse to do until they’re forced. Be honest. Fight. Talk about what “no one” wants to talk about.

I’m weirdly ambivalent about Roe getting overturned. I wish I could believe that maybe we’ll get some real anger this time. But what has history taught me? Do Black lives still matter? I could have swore with George Floyd’s blessing we’d be seeing some real change in society this time. Can you remember the last person to get #metoo-ed? Weren’t there so many feelings and testimonies and major revelations associated? Like the Panama Papers or those Occupy Wall Street guys! It’s almost like there’s this pattern of “outrage” that begets increasingly horrible circumstances as all of the ignorantly incensed retreat after failing to identify and address which mechanisms and holders of power don’t give a fuck about them.

It's going to be really hard to abandon the land. I’ve put in a lot of work. It’s a huge indication of what I “believe” in. It testifies to what I think the proper response to the chaos around us is. Salvage, conserve, diversify, learn new shit, give yourself more time, money, and space to create, reconceive of your space and how it can be used, and build into your bones how long it takes to achieve something meaningful. I’d bet $1000 that the videogame junkies are still videogaming and the middle-management jobs are just barely paying the bills, and the reality of so many lives hastily pursued in service of placating “discomfort” is crystalizing in joints, arteries, and daily happy-pills. But what do I know? No one’s going to talk about that unless it’s on-brand or a trending meme or can be summarized by a change in profile picture.

If I wanted to pretend I wasn’t living in a fascist country, I could continue to laud my efforts and chop, grind, and stack away without a care in the world. If I wanted to pretend like I didn’t expect myself to have a “house house” and a considerably higher bank account by 34, I could ride this train into oblivion. My country failed me. My peers failed themselves. I won’t let myself get sucked into my own narrative. I will keep talking about what’s missing. I will continue to feel bad because I allow myself the obligation and dignity of a responsibility to change my circumstances. I can plan and invest and demonstrate that I believe in more than either my most fanciful or damming conceptions.

It's always going to suck. I’m always going to feel alone. And I get to die either way, I’m just trying to avoid it happening via stray bullet or my neighbor making me a bogey-man. It’d be illegal to abort me at least.

I’m missing my match. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of educated people saying considerably more articulate and cited versions of my sentiments. It’s not that I don’t have people in my life who work as hard as I do, especially when it’s work none of us care to be doing for the money offered. It’s certainly not that there aren’t people who are angry and exhausted and trying in some manner or another. But if I met me? If I had another person who could do what I do like I do it, be loud about it, encourage and be open to exploring and trying and investing. Who did things “now” because time is precious, showed up because to be invited is an honor, and could pair incisive yet hilarious observation with the spirit of inherent knowledge that there’s a way through provided we do the work ourselves? Jesus wouldn’t have a prayer. I’ve been lucky enough to have 4 people who flicker on and off in riding with me at that level. But I’m a junkie. I want it all the time. And if we weren’t running out of time when I started, we sure as fuck don’t have any now.

I just have my back, the integrity of my tools, the patience extended for jobs and tasks that don’t recognize me, my debt, and my will or motivation to turn any nice day into something “more productive” than my mere enjoyment of it. That humbles you and chills you out. I learned how to watch “all TV,” and how to allow myself to read nonfiction, or enjoy a beer or hobby. I can do all that alone or surrounded by people. I can speak to when I’m not feeling like I’m fighting the good fight as well as I’d like. I may only be able to take so much responsibility for the mismatch between what I feel is my responsibility and how I’m able to respond to it, but at least I fucking claim the responsibility, talk about its nature, and try to own what is or isn’t working. Here’s another 4 and a half pages none of us have the time or energy for sorting out. I’ll be sure to reread it several times so I can still allow myself to sleep.

[969] Insecurity Blanket

I’ve just had a thought about a “binding force” as it pertains to my work environments, and what I attempt to not fall prey to when I’m alone.

It would be too simple to call it a kind of “mediocrity.” It functions that way, to be sure. It’s a consequence of a lack of accountability. It provides a sense of security. Let’s just talk about what it sounds and looks like.

At DCS, no matter how bad a job you are doing, the person “in charge” will do one of two things. They’ll intervene in your behavior, take up the conversation that needed to be had, and attempt to fix the problem. Or, they’ll defer to their boss, their obligations, talk about how many counties there are, and basically ignore you. They will speak to how there is functionally no real oversight without a companion Avengers-level threat to kick people into motion.

The security comes from the size of the organization. Even if someone tried to watch, they can’t, unless the problem gets too large and provokes a death or lawsuit.

At the methadone clinic or in prison counseling, it’s much the same, but the problems are less variable and if anyone dies it’s only a junkie, right? You can remain poorly organized, fail your audits, and bleed employees, provided you’re just another operation that was bought by a national conglomerate. People are watching, rather closely, but only the bottom line. They’re not concerned with your performance across anything human or factoring in anything practical.

The security comes from the size of the bank account, addict population, and number of clinics under one umbrella. A few dozen or hundred can burnout or die, and it’s an overall rounding error on the books.

Maybe you want to sell books! What does becoming an author at a small publishing company have in common with big bureaucratic structures? There’s deference to all of your other obligations and priorities. There’s trading on the goodwill of the highly conscientious to obscure the lack of organization. Provided the ownership tows self-soothing party lines about the vision and purpose that you can recite in harmony, no need to scrutinize, be on time, or connect with the language underneath the business book buzz words.

The security comes from following the templates laid out by larger organizations and infusing them with elevated interpersonal baggage to help gin up the fog about who is responsible.

It’s a lot easier to identify failure points with smaller structures. There were 5 employees when I drove a taxi. If you didn’t make your shift, that was you. There weren’t offices for the schedule to get lost in or a lack of clarity on who to contact about where you were supposed to be. The number of times I’ve been maliciously classified as “independent contractor” tries to lay this “I don’t want the responsibility” backdrop bare. The smaller you are, the more personal it feels, and the less you can avoid the difficult conversations around what you did or didn’t do or don’t know.

Whittling down further, in a partnership or relationship you see similar dynamics. You can usually tell if a relationship is healthy or not based on how people respond to each other’s concerns or perspectives. Are you “too busy” to find the mental space for your partner? Is it wholly beyond your control to inform how they might feel about your living arrangements or social dynamic? Do you think God will step in and provide where you can’t?

When you’re just alone, and perhaps this is why I gravitate towards sentiments about being an individual and finding a personally honest thread, you can witness how this (in)security force works in you. You too tired to practice? You deserve some indulgence? You ashamed to speak to how you actually feel or think and wish to blame whatever happened to you or maybe belabor a traumatic past? The excuse, just like the responsibility, is open to you in every moment. Whether or not I play my guitar and the reasons I give myself for doing so are on me. I can’t stop the rain in my desire to complete my wood shop, but I can decide if I want to bare the humidity and set up a tent for when it stops.

It’s a singular thread and conversation with yourself from which all catastrophe or great things spring forth. Do you even acknowledge how much you can take responsibility for in any given moment? Do you respect the power you’ve been given? How many people do you reflexively find fault in before you get to you? Do you ever get to you? As someone who appears to be in the business of courting blame, I can’t say I hear nearly ever how it’s your fault.

This is why I own when I’m a dick. That’s me being accountable. I meant it. I knew when I turned up the snark. I didn’t “just react.” I probably spent months trying to play nice (or dumb in my language), and you didn’t get something fixed or even really try to make it better. At DCS, this meant sometimes destroying families. At the methadone clinic, people died. When you overwork yourself, you don’t just take years off your life, but the world closes in on you, and it does not appear like there are other opportunities or outlets for recognition or dollar amounts you deserve.

We seek security in the story we tell ourselves about what we can or can’t do, say, or see altogether. This is how I can immediately see when people are almost complete failures when it comes to a personally honest account of their life. It’s all the little things. When my stomach drops at the thought of going into work, I write about it. When my relationship with a new friend or coworker creates competing impulses, I explore. When the work I set out for myself needs to account for new details like increased financial or physical costs, I do the math and modify as needed. I’m not just feeling my way through the dark and yelling at you when we bump into each other.

When I look around my house and I see the sheer amount of shit I own, it’s hard to deny how many of my “problems” are part of a narrative fantasy to help keep me oriented around my preferences. The only real debt I truly have is a lack of a meaningful collaborative project. I’m not financially burdened as much as I’m boxing myself into a quasi-stable mode of living that comes with getting “real” jobs and eating time with toys and distractions. I like being able to go to the comedy clubs and concerts. I’d like considerably more a team of 5 people making a credible attack on various levels of power or speaking in organized and deliberate ways on how to achieve practically sustainable living and working arrangements.

I can get a job, buy toys, keep the bills paid, build my little castle, and play my music. I can’t talk you into joining me. You’ll help me here and there, but our mission isn’t the same. I discover time and again how many missions do not comport with my own, because mine attempts an outsized recognition of what I’m capable of and truly desire. I can continue to reiterate that I don’t just want money, or what’s in my Amazon cart, or even time. After all, I have time now. I’ve had considerably more time in the past. But time without the money, or the friends, or an actionable plan just leaves me to spend too much time finding things to get angry about online. I’ve been home for the last 3 days or so and it feels like an eternity. I look at what I’ve built and think, “That’s all?” I have a fucking problem lol, and it’s not much to do with “me” than it is “us.” There is no us in my world, or it comes in spurts, or resents how I conduct me.

And I don’t mean to overstate this, because I have irons in the fire, and collaborators, and friends good for the things they’re good for, but it doesn’t scale. The connection breaks when you try to attach it to a long-term investment or vision. It gets routinely undermined by how incensed you feel about what you probably are fucking up and can’t cope with owning. I like to remind you when I don’t miss a day of work, cancel class, or show up late because I’m celebrating my attentiveness. I like to show you how many hours and dollars it takes to run a proper experiment in salvaging or sustainability because you need to feel the work before you comfort yourself with the narrative.

I cannot persuade myself only to sit and play my guitar, or my videogames, or disappear indefinitely into shows and YouTube. I don’t have kids. My bills aren’t incredibly high. I’m not the head of any organization. But who I am, or the tools I’ve been given, don’t exist, can’t exist, unless they exist relative to my experience, work, and recognition of the world around me. I live in nation teetering on fascism. I live in an environment poised to make us all extinct. My brain doesn’t shut off just because I travel somewhere or find some new preoccupation. It’s all happening all at once and in every moment.

I can bare the weight of that perpetual existential crisis. I’m not going to kill myself or drink myself stupid. I’m not going to get depressed and retreat. I’m not going to stay silent. I’m going to keep calling out “you” for not bothering me for anything but the placation or indulgence of your feeble feelings. I’m going to keep questioning what you’re really working on and point out the elaborate excuse-ridden nature of the children’s game you’re calling “adulting.”

Don’t get the impression that any of this matters, either. It only matters to ME. It matters that I write the blogs, build the wood shop, get the pallets, be on time, or achieve a level of technical sophistication in how quickly I can move my fingers along an instrument. I don’t need you to come on board. I don’t need you to invite me into your thing or entreat the baggage I would bring. I know that the things I need have nothing to do with me at all, they just exist at the ends of my patience or willingness to manipulate. I have gained considerably more patience over the years and my heart isn’t in manipulating.

I am going to ask that you pay attention though. I can’t make you read the blog, but I can make sure it says you should recognize how bad you are at being honest with yourself. Are you happy, full, or fulfilled? Are your days filled with meaningful interactions or mildly gratifying indulgences? Does something call to you when it gets too quiet? Did you reach out, speak out, or take a punch in a worthwhile fight? Did you sacrifice something that matters in service to something that matters more? Whose fault is it, me for pointing it out, or you for running away?

[879] First Response

The theme is familiar, the layers are many, and the word is “responsibility.” I’ve said a fair amount about responsibility already, but a mild “crisis” today has put it back into focus.

In the past, I’ve said things to the effect of “I’m always responsible” or “it’s always up to me” or “it’s always my fault.” I’ve lamented how often people were happy to thrust responsibility on me for starting the party (no one who attends can be bothered to take any or start their own), making the comment (no one with ears should feel attacked or uncomfortable), or otherwise forcing my will, perspective, or intention onto an otherwise perfectly innocent situation (no no, *you absolutely are negative*, just too proud, defensive, blind, judgmental, etc to see it).

A few days ago, my car functionally lost its breaks. I took it to a shop nearby, two days later, they hit me with a $4500 bill. I’m a social worker. I’m already in $2000 debt. That shit ain’t getting fixed at that shop for that amount. As it happens, I work for a company that has company cars. You’re able to get one after 90 days. Whether or not that actually happens is based on what has previously been explained as a messy and imperfect system. They have cars sitting around, but not the keys to pilot them. They have every aspect of their business online, except the sign-out for who needs an available van and when.

I live an hour from work. Yesterday, I was assigned a new case in my neighborhood. I went to what should have been a 30 minute run through of house-keeping paperwork. It turned into a 3 hour marathon attempting to persuade a pedophile idiot that his overprotective wife was not “losing her rights” by not being allowed to attend the supervised visit. It’s 8 pm by the time I’m done, 10 minutes away from my house, 50 from the office. I went home. The rule is to have non-personal cars back at the office each day.

Allie would have picked me up. I could have told myself a story about the ups and downs of social work and how this was just a “tough day” that went long and I can focus extra on “self care” over my Friday/Saturday weekend. I wouldn’t have inconvenienced a worker who needed the car today, who texted me to explain the details of his plight, only to find himself apologizing to me when I explained my struggling experience to mesh with the same scatter-brained conception of management and accountability that seems to plague the social work field. When I told him I tried to get out ahead of today, weeks ago, he said, “Oh! I know exactly what you’re talking about!” relaying the familiar feeling of attempting to anticipate something and do better, only to get shit on.

I did try. I explained that my work truck is just that, one I work with. It was in rough shape before I put two thousand pounds of space heaters in it. It's needed brakes, calipers, rods, and a general inspection for a minute. I return to, I’m a social worker already in debt; a fancy well-running truck is a fantasy us poor people don’t indulge. When it breaks bad enough you have to take it to a shop, you pray it’ll only put you another month behind. I told my supervisor I was on track to spend $600 a month just in gas to do the job. Not anything extra, like commuting, or taking mini trips across the state trying to bilk the mileage reimbursement. Just the picking up and transporting between visit locations and getting to clients. I also offered to pay a premium on what it already costs to have a company car for personal use.

“Yeah, it sucks, but you just have to deal.”

This company was happy to send me on the road with other people’s children in a car that was not mechanically sound. It worked “well-enough” for a couple weeks. They were only concerned I had the right insurance, another extra expense when I didn’t carry enough. I’ve had grinding brakes on other vehicles for many months before. It wasn't even on my radar that they would just give out, as they did when I was alone and pulling into the work parking lot. How terrible of a thought can you conjure as to what could’ve happened in bad weather or on the wrong turn?

When I said how much I put into fixing past issues with my truck, my supervisor turned it into a pissing match citing $1300 for one past employee’s misfortune to my $800 several months ago. He relayed a story of not having spare keys for vehicles that were used by two employees on vacation. Whether or not spare keys could be obtained was beyond the point, he could only think to pile on to the disorganized sentiment as evidence of our mutual futility. When I learned of the bill, I relayed it to him immediately, and explained there was no price point I could currently entertain that was going to get it to bare-minimum status. His only question, “How soon can you get it fixed??” felt like a slap.

Our last staffing, my supervisor started leaning on the idea that the “sympathy period” for being a new hire was over. 3 weeks in, 3 completely and last-minute changes or additions to my schedule, and if I wasn’t making my hours, it was going to be a challenge to consider me full-time and allow for all the “benefits.” Last staffing he relayed to me that 3 people previously hired took 3 to 6 months before they had relatively consistent schedules. I’ve had exactly zero say in who I got, what times they were used to, or whether or not I could retain ones after they wanted to foist a problem client onto me after he’d chewed through 8 previous caseworkers.

So, disorganized, implicit threats, side-eye from my regional manager after I sent an email to our “I’m here to help new hires!” guy detailing my experience, and I’m sitting at home on my “day off” having spent a good portion of the day returning the van, answering texts, and writing emails in attempts to troubleshoot how to get a car from a company that contracts with a rental car company. My truck is still in the parking lot an hour away needing to be towed to...who knows where, and I’ve got two coworkers who are car savvy that might be able to help me make the repairs for 90% less money over a considerably longer period of time.

Where and what are we to make of the different levels of responsibility? We’re pretty reflexive in regarding how we exercise our care and attention as fair to good. From my little perch, I feel I have a responsibility to keep myself fed and housed, so I get a job. The terms of that job implicate me at different levels, from the reliability of my car, to my ability to regulate my mood enough to deal with the incredibly dumb or hostile in an ongoing basis. I have to attempt to communicate clearly to management and clients. I have to maintain standards of safety and timing. I have to be comprehensive and record every single text message I send. I have to make less than inflation-adjusted minimum wage.

I think, in spite of the ask or “requirement,” my responsibility stops at donating my car. It stops before any remaining health in that car is exhausted to anything beyond things that are making me money or getting me where I need to go. I think I stop wanting to take responsibility when the response to my efforts to mitigate problems at my less-than-accounted-for levels go ignored or are deliberately downplayed. I think I’m less inclined to take responsibility when I’m in an environment that trains the impulse out of you.

I’ve been a manager. I’ve been a supervisor. They’ve been at a “smaller” scale than all that is involved with social work, but I know my impulses and ideas on how I would try to fix something were a similar problem brought to me. I’d have asked or told me where to go to find out if paying a premium might work, not reiterated the policy (changed as recently as within the last few months in response to two idiots drag racing in company cars). I’d have offered to get you home if you were going to be functionally stranded at night having dropped off the car like a good policy soldier. I would have asked Enterprise for a goddamn spare key, or paid the expedited shipping to get it sent from wherever they were on vacation (and, goddammit, Covid, they shouldn’t be far).

Why would I do that? Because I’m in the business of parents seeing their children. I’m in the business of keeping people in their home and retaining rights. I’m trying to save time and money by keeping people from selling all of their worldly possessions to keep their kids in diapers. I’m not enabling you on aimless joyrides or feeling resentful that you’d feel so ”entitled” to be able to carry out your duties without losing money.

Here we hit the existential crisis. I see parallels in my day-to-day that are mere echoes of our cultural failings and reckoning. We haven’t figured out that things “don’t have to be this way.” It is entirely possible to pay people fairly. It isn’t just your right, but your duty to be indignant about being taken advantage of. We can acknowledge when we see problems coming and plan, like building dams to stop inevitable floods or refraining from building in the floodplain altogether. Increasingly, we can no longer claim ignorance about the grounds on which we’re building houses.

If you don’t know better, you can chalk anything up to “that’s life.” Richard Wolff explains that he used to give talks about “the system” and people would have blank stares. They had no idea it wasn’t normal to work 3 jobs, be stressed out and exhausted, and not have healthcare because “capitalism” and the ethics that come along with it were beaten into them their whole lives. Now, to someone like me, saying “duty” to describe maximizing profits to rich shareholders sounds beyond absurd, not matter-of-fact good business. Our duty is to each other, and we can’t pretend that we’re able to serve when we’re knee-capped by willful blindness.

We’re not paid enough. Our cars aren’t up to the hundreds of miles a week driving. You don’t have a problem of “morale,” you have a problem with “truth.” Maybe your organization is trying to grow beyond what it can pay for. Maybe it’s not making the right kind of sacrificing and elevating the right kinds of behaviors to deserve to survive. This is such a common and familiar theme, you can easily trick yourself into thinking it’s just the way things are or that there’s something universal about what failures humans are.

We’re now prepared to be crippled by our resilience. Every possible rationalization comes to a head. Every horror story shared not to sympathize and build solidarity, but to one-up and belittle. Think of the kids that need to be fed! Just one more week I need to make it through. Think of how bad that guy has it! My wage at least has “teen” in it! That’s good money! You’re not being responsible enough!! Pick up not just your emotional baggage, but the tab, and please smile after swallowing every offered platitude. There you go!

I felt on the verge of breaking on the ride into town today. The naked ass of “existence, so-insisted” was working its way past my eyes, into my brainstem, and down into my chest and guts. Again, my attempts at exercising responsibility and foresight were denied. Again, I’m made to play last-minute and wag-the-finger at the expedient and desperate move to not be compelled off the plank into the seas of endless sacrifice. Again, I’m met with the idea that I’m on my own, or at the mercy of how much I want my baggage to spill into the lives of my friends or family. Allie’s not a cab service. If you’re upset I can’t afford a nicer car, you need to spend some time alone until better thoughts start to hit you.

The great irony is that we’re always all responsible all the time. We structure society to give a stronger resolution for obligations and responsibilities for those at the top, and they may or may not have a genuine aptitude or moral authority. As a piddling regular Nazi, it’s you who carries out the order. It’s you who accepts the conditions. It’s you who shoots deserters. I feel left out to dry. My friend offered to let me use a spare car he happens to have he’s been keeping for a buddy overseas. That’s not his job or responsibility, he chose to make it his job and responsibility. It’s still not. Nor was it his job to buy this asshole client a phone so he could keep progressing through his visits.

It’s easy to blame yourself when you don’t know who to otherwise. It’s easy to act like it’s not a big deal when you happen to have the fix or the ability to move past the issue quickly. This is why rich people suck. “Life,” as we’re made to worship through ritual excuses, doesn’t “happen” to them in the same way. Bad things certainly do, because life sucks, but they won’t be broken by a totaled vehicle. They’ll have nightmares about how long they were on the phone with an insurance company. This is why competent people get exhausted or a really dark bent. They don’t grasp they’re being taken advantage of, or don’t want to admit it, and become the loudest cheerleader that pretends they’re on “top” and everything is copacetic if you could just find that team spirit.

When I get the opportunity, as I’ve attempted to create it myself, I want people as partners. If I make more, it'll be because I do more, but we don’t have to pretend I’m benign in my desire or use of power and money. That's what we’ve done. We’ve glorified opportunists, exploiters, and psychopaths as “founders” with some kind of special wisdom because their thing happens to exist instead of someone else’s. What could a doctor (this company’s founder) who studies mental health have besides anything but the best intentions? Ask the growing amount of money coming from government contracts, because when I find out it’s a penchant for Fabergé eggs, I’m going to demand more than a basically functioning car.

I’m still operating under the pseudo-bearable plight and obligation to continually speak truth to power. I still believe that I influence people, they influence me, and though I may never see or meet them, what I say and how I say it matters. It matters now, it will matter later. In order to take responsibility you need the means, the tools, and the will and wisdom to discern how to go about it at different levels. I’m responsible for myself, my people, my home, and the ones I attempt to help as they exhaust my time and patience each day. I certainly “asked” for some level of drama and obligation by taking this job, but that ask was compelled by a whole lot of forces beyond my control that need to be spoken to as well. Whether you can actually do something meaningful within such a domineering system to change or corrode is the open question.

I’m going to try and fix my truck. I’m going to rely on my friends to help, pay just enough to keep the chaos in some makeshift car bay long enough to keep making barely enough to fix barely enough. I went into work with all of the equipment they issued me prepared to just leave it and get off the familiar wheel as quickly as I was able to recognize it. My friends’ willingness to unfairly share the responsibility is going to stoke my sensibility as well. Fuck the world that gorges on those sacrifices.