[1077] Fate Fell Short

Stuff's kicking around up there again.

There comes a point when the kisses aren't real. This, at least, is in my experience. At some point in a relationship or even in the middle of fooling around or flirting, the kiss is missing whatever drove the initial thrust of it. Things get familiar. Many new things take priority to focus on besides lingering an extra few seconds or taking in a breath. Maybe you get stuck, and the kisses become procedural, performative, or polite. You're no longer checking for evolutionary compatibility and firing up the procreation engine.

To find someone who even "tolerates" feels like a faraway dream to someone like me, let alone someone who genuinely likes who I am or what I'm about. I've been given considerable feedback over the years that "people" are "definitely not about" doing this lol. A friend of mine just sent me a picture calling a discarded baby doll leaning up against a fence "creepy." I said it'd be way creepier if she took it's head off and put it in its lap and drizzled jizz around the neck. That's what I'm about; saying shit like that at every conceivable moment is like a quarter of why I bother to stay alive at all.

I like to paint little professional connection maps in my head when I watch comedians and who shows up in their sketch shows or is in their credits. Michael Che is contributing to me reflecting on the "introspective" types of comedians like Sam Jay or Godfrey. Whether or not something is funny as you're introspecting is, oddly, almost secondary to the task of "saying something about it at all." I found myself chuckling at Che's sketch show. I appreciated the different way to go about it. 

I've seen both Sam Jay and Godfrey live. Sam was funny. Godfrey was…angry? Insecure? Resentful? Sam was writing jokes and showing an appreciation for her circumstances and growth. Godfrey seemed to be high on his own conspiratorial supply. Both were approaching the artform with meditations on the state of the world and identity.  One was more comedy about it, the other obnoxious tragedy.

I return to the idea a lot that I would entertain the idea of doing stand-up, but I hear my voice across so many already. It wouldn't be "my therapy." It doesn't call to me anymore than being a musician does. I think I can craft jokes, am confident enough that I've made people laugh throughout my life, and can avoid saying "ya know" and 'ummm" or "like" 36 times in between every joke. But I don't think it's where I necessarily belong or that it's going to give me what I need. It would be one more thing I've added to a list and checked off.

It's important to me to have some distinction between "comedian" or "stand-up" and "did some comedy." I want there to be a meaningful distinction between being a "writer" and "blogger" or "self-righteous piety" and "professional" or "journalism." Are you funny, or desperate, dedicated, and/or lucky? Are you being "productive" and "driving towards" something or bored and occupying your time with distractions and coping mechanisms?

The overlap regarding sincere kisses and thoughts on comedy runs through my head when I think about how immeasurably driven I was as a teenager. I didn't just have a crush, I was bold and confidentially asserting my "love" and feeling the rush and motivation to do and say ALL THE THINGS. This without the remote inclination that it would have been influenced by a degree of autism. I was running with ankle weights through theaters. I was convinced I would have some thriving business and be functionally retired by 30. The spirit of what drove me as a teenager ran through what became of the party house, the coffee shop, and in ever-humbled attempts to flourish out here on the land.

It's not irrationally driven anymore. I recall Byron remarking before I cut him off that he was, again, considering plans to maybe move out here. I had zero reaction and was pretty dismissive. I've heard that bullshit from everyone forever. It's my clients telling me they'll reach out after I switch roles. It's "I'd love to, but" when it comes to seeing a show. It's the basic human disconnect between a real kiss and what you're supposed to do or say as you feign enthusiasm for the task or situation presented.

Notably, nothing about life has become palpably "harder" than when I was desiring my high school crush, running the party house, starting the coffee shop, or from day 1 of trying to get my house in order verses today. It's been hard or shitty the whole time, but my disposition about it has gone through many shifts. My concepts of "romance" or "love" or "passion" or "drive" I liken to a 70 year old woman, still spry, 3-time divorced, dressed comfortably and confidently asserting her opinions. She's seen it all. She's not broken and despotic, but she's accepted and measured as to how much or whether she's going to invest in anything after herself first. You've met this woman. You want to be more like this woman.

She seems to have a certain lightness about her that I don't think I've achieved. I don't know if that's an innate disposition thing, guy vs girl thing, age thing, or something else entirely. I've certainly tried to be lighter regarding my approach to my professed goals. Some have sat semi-worked on for years. I stopped huffing about debt. I now take as many as 15 months to politely explain in different ways how my idiot-proof high-enough paying job is actually a Huxleyan trap gnawing at my soul and self-respect before I leave with a deep suspicion I shouldn't put them down as a reference.

I don't want the things that distinguish me to be merely about checking boxes. Yes, there's gratification in doing so and collecting and gaining whispers of a perspective on everything I can get my hands on. I'm not alive for the sake of a bucket list or the nicest version of the story I can tell you about the things I've spent money on. I've enjoyed nearly everything I've gone to this year. It's not going to stop me from telling you if I wasn't concurrently in it for the gains in perspective, seeing Godfrey would have been a waste of time and money. I want first hand experiences, and I want them to translate in my ability to communicate or connect.

Yet, I spend almost all of my time alone. I go to most shows alone. I live alone. I work on the land alone. The times I include people into the things I enjoy I often gather a measure of stress or their mind is elsewhere. No matter how much I do or learn about, that has nothing to do with what people care about, practice, or obligate themselves towards. 

When I entertain the idea of joining whatever it is others are doing or say they care about, it sours almost immediately. I might want to keep playing the fun informal Ultimate games? Oh, well, now they want to turn more serious and conduct drills and travel around playing. Ok, how about softball? Everyone is smoking and drinking as they play because it's about the idea of athletics and health, not winning or improving. Let's join the town band! Oh, you don't want me to copy or practice the music, and when I try, an old guy will place his hand over my instrument. Let's join a maker's space! Oh, people abuse it and you'll easily spend a quarter of your time there picking up after them or disproportionately paying extra to have what you need. This also assumes the hours when these activities take places are conducive to whatever job I'm working at the time or the fees aren't needlessly exorbitant.

If you're "passionate," or just ambivalent, about the details for anything or anyone you might obligate yourself towards, you'll lump things into a "cost of doing business" idea that lets you choke down getting taken advantage of. That's what I saw in social work across the board where naive or broken do-gooders spend obscene amounts of their emotional capital, time, and money like so many teachers in a neglected school system. All abuse relationships follow approximately the same pattern, interpersonal or otherwise. There's a slow creep and endless ambiguous responsibility-deficient language. It's kisses at 90% for 3 months, 88% for 4 more, 75% the next 6, each period retraining your concept of "normal."

With so many "new rich" comedians or room in the modern era to attempt to capitalize on the endless connectivity or resources not available in the past, many discussions are about the ebbs and flows of professional careers. Fame happens differently for different people and depending on the mediums from which they rose. The landscape is in constant motion and whether it's podcasting or tik tocking, there's a way to put "whatever" you want to call your voice or brand in front of people. "Your audience"  begets your status as an "entertainer" or "personality" or "influencer" and whether or not they can discern the value of what you're putting into the world, it's only ever been that you're watching in the first place.

I believe that speaks to why I intuitively keep my shit on facebook and blogger and don't sincerely attempt to court elevated levels of attention. Do I think I write "well" or that any of this is "good?" I have no fucking idea. My only metric for success is whether or not I can get rid of headaches or be persuaded to move on with my day that's otherwise hindered when my brain is clogged. Much as you hopefully are able to shit when you need to, if you took a picture of it each time and congratulated yourself or sought likes for its size and texture, we'd be right to be concerned. I'm a blogger who writes obnoxious shit, not a comedian or philosopher writing for the best-seller list or booking agents. When I got the 3rd most followers on that Sondry.com site, it was a clue that what I was writing vibed with people (213 followers!) but it's a niche group that joins a budding blogging platform that could go defunct, and did, at any time. Aren't I supposed to start a Patreon and ask for $5 a month as I release audio versions of each 1 or 2 times a week? 

I don't trust anything that gets popular that is unconcerned about the means in which it becomes so. Money subsidizes abject corruption and laziness as a matter of routine. The "hype machine" ensures certain bands or TV shows get on all the right platforms. The consequences of endless spamming bullshit from right-ring batshit factories are ever dire. If one of my chief persistent complaints is feeling unrecognized, how perverse would I need to become to consciously decide to weaponize that resentment? How cynical must I become to "go through the motions" that translate to a particular brand of cunt who controls the purse strings or recognized roads of success?

I'm not even an anarchist or necessarily anti-establishment. I'm extremely anti-willful denial. That's it. If you can't honestly say you do a bad job and collect more money than you deserve (thinking specifically about my professional environments measured by the amount of people they keep afraid, dependent, and away from their stated goals,) I can't work with you. If you can't be bothered to even fight for the job you are doing, resentful that I would have any expectation that you defend yourself, go fuck yourselves. You reflexively occupy my posture when you dip into unfair judgments about how someone else conducts themselves. Whether it's the person who cut you off in traffic, or the one who spends their  money in ways you would never. Intuitively, you demand an explanation or seek a means of swallowing your discomfort. When invited to the table to talk about your own bullshit though? Perish the thought. Where do I get off?

So much of me trying to start a business is just spending money and box checking. It's not fun. It's not gratifying in any way. It's me talking myself into levels of debt to try and play along just enough to capitalize while maintaining the vision and dignity to, maybe, one day, do the work in ways that register as genuinely and accountably better. I'm not giddy at the prospect of paying the bills for these free lancers. I have less than 0 interest in spending the next 2 days reading about and applying to become a non-profit. I'm trying not to hate myself at entertaining the very real practical concerns for having any source of money coming in from a new work environment bent on mangling me further. But that work, patience, will, and dream is how I hope to define myself.

I've been to 125 "fun" things this year, with 9 left on the calendar. I celebrate the working vehicles that got me safely to each one and back. I celebrate the good meals I got before or after them. I celebrate the clips I took and go back and watch after uploading to Youtube. I like that I can include my perspective on all of those things in anything I talk about going forward. I like knowing where to park, the good places to grab a drink, and where a seat in a certain spot is worth the money. I like learning that I'd rather go to a dozen $20 "small venue" shows and own too many t-shirts than over spend on "VIP" and try to drink to make up for it over a 4-day festival, excellent company notwithstanding. I like doing an insanely large amount of fun things and knowing what it costs so I can budget if I want to do it bigger another year. I like knowing I can experience that much in less than a year. It makes me feel like there's so much room in life.

You can't take my experiences from me or persuade me that the hell of your office life, small town, or shitty family is where the best perspective lies. 25% of my expenses have gone towards "entertainment" in the last 2 years. That's gas, parking, flights, AirBnbs, 2-item minimums, some tickets for friends or my dad, a couple ridiculous VIPs, and more clothing in the form of band t-shirts than I've bought for myself in life so far combined. 2 years. What can I do with a little more room, a little more time, or combined with someone who recognizes just what it is I'm trying to do and am, in fact, doing?

What are you working on? Is it nothing? Is it that you're not proud to share it to the last few people you know are really watching? Is it what keeps you from coming along to whatever I'm doing? Do you even still like whatever your lips are pressed to?

[1003] Last Drop

I don’t know what I feel. I thought about saying, “I feel weak,” but that doesn’t seem true enough. I feel bored. I feel sad. I feel like I’m sick of fucking trying, and then that feels like the price of admission to ever, proverbially or otherwise, transcend my current condition. You know, I got someone to send me their license number. You know, they don’t have an NPI number, and that can take weeks to get assigned. You know, this delay was partly because the agency I contacted sent me the wrong checklist about what we’d need to get the impaneling process going.

When I first started with Groups, my boss was very gung-ho about “meeting people where they are” and defending not discharging people for simply missing too many days, generating threatening chaos, or other acts of noncompliance. You see, she had a story of “some” or “any help” that transcended the practical reality of what might be a dozen people’s experience of a member who isn’t suited for this level of harm-reduction care.

Groups is exploding. More and more money and greedy futures are on the line. In 4 months, it’s gone from practically never-discharge-anyone to, “Are these discharges done yet?” She might not be making any more money, but she’s not bound to anything higher than her master’s narrative. When the overall ethos shifted from whatever the analogous, “Don’t be evil” motto any brand that wants to believe the best of itself adopts, you step in line. She was formerly DCS for 12 years. She can swallow a lot of bullshit in the name of The Man or order or keeping her bills paid and kids fed.

Today, the last few hours felt like way more of a struggle than they should have. Again, I have the easiest job one can imagine. I talk about familiar obvious things I’ve said or done a million times, and turn what people share into encouraging sentiments about how much good they’re doing for themselves and the people around them. Any moment in my 4-day week that I choose to focus for even an hour puts me ahead of any outreach effort I may need to make or prep work for the rest of the week. I feel like I’ve been stockpiling reflections for the last few days, and I happened to put extra-curricular personal work things on my plate.

I’ve been working the job long enough now to track trends in certain members. I have about 120 clients. You’re certainly not going to please everyone, or to put it lightly, have a “style” they will all enjoy. A problem that kicks off my existential angst muscle is when I am invited to search for how and what I’m attempting to translate or share is divorced from…meaningful survival and bothering to exist at all.

I attempt to hold people accountable. But more than that, I attempt to teach them how to hold themselves accountable. This is anathema to the automatic fluid adherence to cultural norms or compulsive self-soothing addictive behaviors. It’s also the only “cure” to being a violent wanton ape flinging shit and crashing into every layer of life you never manage to understand. It’s not something you can “disagree” with anymore than I utilize my strong opinion to never drink water and maintain a concurrent desire to live at all.

But we find ourselves, culturally, writ large, acting as though we don’t believe we need to be accountable. Then, like insane narcissists, we double down on the belief, eschew the irony, and seek accountability, told in so many ways but Lord of the Flies will do, from those who don’t deserve it. We’ll take our hatred and resentment out on the innocent, the other, and those who remind us how truly weak and pathetic we are. We absolve ourselves of any individual obligation to our shitty feelings, powerlessness, and hopeless sense that we don’t matter, the people we’re close to don’t love us, and the things we care about are inane and unfulfilling.

So let’s disappear into the woods and grab a gun. Let’s adopt fiery conspiracies. Let’s get evangelical and dominate the conversation so our self-delusion can be shrouded in group protection; psychological, physical, legal, sexual and all the way down to verbal. This is why I consider a liar the most dangerous thing. All animals are honestly animaling. A human is the only one who can weaponize that honest nature into something that kills literally everything.

There’s a level in which I’m forced to “make peace” with the idea that people who run from my groups are not in a place for accountability. Except, that feels like an impossible concession. I don’t excuse you. I decided consciously to stop laying myself over the sword of decisions you were more or less capable of making than me, but still capable nonetheless. I push myself and ask for more. I look defeat and delay and head and heart-wrenching problems in their face. I reflect and look for what I can control. I investigate how complicated and messy and incomplete the story is in every seemingly hopeless moment. I show up on time, practically every day. I do the work in spite of the worst examples I may set.

You just…you have to. I’m not suicidal, but I don’t know how I wouldn’t have killed myself if I left who I was going to be up to whims of my circumstances or opinions of others. I don’t know how I would break depressive cycles, because no one was going to help me or listen long enough to work me out of it. I don’t know how I would have developed an approach to anxiety. I don’t know why I would bother to take risks in business and moving to this fucking field and building a fort. I don’t fucking know anything without practicing accountability. When I get too in my own head, I can count how many books I haven’t read to send me in another direction. When I want to pretend like I live anything less than a privileged regal existence, I can count the cashflow and number of people still dreaming of clean water and mosquito nets.

You don’t get to tell me any story that absolves you or who you’re tasked with working with of who they are and what they did or did not do when presented with the same fucking choice we’re given in every moment of every day. You pay attention and make a decision, or else. You pay attention to self-servicing and self-destructive things and you’ll make decisions to keep that going. You don’t pay attention at all, you’re at the mercy of how everyone else wishes to self-destruct, or you ride the security of those who don’t know any better as to why they should let you die off.

I ask people to pay attention to things they tell me they wish to improve on. I don’t say, “Here’s your assignment,” I say, “What do you notice about yourself you wish you did better?” Do you know what they tell me? They want to be more patient. They want to be less angry. They want to be talking less shit in their heads about the people around them. They want to be able to say “no” and set boundaries. They want to recognize when they’re taking their frustrations out on their children. They want to stop spiraling in negative and depressive thoughts. And you know what? When they pay attention, record what they’re noticing, and redirect themselves THEY FEEL FUCKING BETTER! They come to group excited to share. They attend to what others are saying. They begin to meet a reasonable expectation to just start attending to what’s going on in their own heads. They treat themselves and others better. They believe because they can “see the point” of what’s been recorded at the end of their pencil.

What’s the alternative? That’s a dead serious question. What other option do you have? Especially when you’re an addict, and by not paying attention, you almost immediately find yourself in some form of life-destroying space. Do you think you’re any less addicted to your narrative? Do you have any idea how much I wish I could ride the high of the ideas I had about where I’d be in life by now? My pride comes from the ongoing effort. I’m writing this after work, after a fun, if flirting-with-disaster weekend, and after taking another step in service to getting my business running. What is my alternative? Stop spending, sit isolated for months playing my piano, reading, watching TV, and writing what would almost-certainly get described as a “screed” excoriating society for all I’ve deliberately and delinquently checked-out of?

They say actors wish they were musicians, and incidentally, so many musicians end up acting. Whether it’s a perceived nobility or respect or simple grass-is-greener thinking, those who reach heights that give them the freedom to flow into new creative outlets seem to do so almost habitually. Whether or not what they create is “good” or culturally relevant is beyond the point. We access layers that we allow ourselves, and I think this works both directions. You ride fame and money into connections that get you on stages. You ride excuses and self-immolating narratives to the sublimation of everyone and everything. The creative energy will provide an infinitely irrational meta-narrative from which to proclaim your rule.

I saw Sam Jay at The Comedy Attic, and found she had a compelling point in her reiterating, “We’re all trash.” Her identity spans from junior man to woman to black to fat and all of which with their own groups she finds exasperating in their capacity to bitch and pretend like they aren’t shit. Sam’s takeaway is that she’s not going to focus on the big picture things and just keep trying to figure things out for herself. As long as what you’re doing isn’t trying to control or impose what you believe on someone else, fair game. Free and free alike. I think it’s an admirable position, and I don’t want to belittle Sam in conceiving of it as “merely naïve.” As I’ve thought about it the last few days, I can’t escape the impracticality and underestimating of what the religious or insecure or weak or invisible person’s compulsion is. Regaining a semblance of control at explicitly your expense is the name of the game.

When you don’t live for anything that you’ve learned or fought for, you live in contrast to your antagonist. When you’re not wise enough to forgive or incorporate your demons, you see them everywhere. When you’re not big or stable enough to tread into high waters, you’ll do anything to capture more air than you could breathe in a lifetime because you have no sense of proportion and an innate fear that any risk is the one that will end your ironically miserable one. Christians won’t leave you alone. Trump won’t stop. Haven’t you heard of the “gay agenda?” Don’t you know the only way to stop men from raping is to bag your women? There’s no such thing as a held-harmless free to do as you please idea. It’s going to infringe, impose, or desire more than you’re willing to pay.

That returns to my broad and often-argued point. You’re always paying something. You’re always fighting. You’re always building something up that is bound for eventual destruction. Whether it’s consistently mowing your lawn, keeping your self-esteem so you can show up and smile, or building the next argument for comprehensively dealing with the absurdity of existing at all, it’s all the same game, same obligation, same demonstration of your awareness, and in service to the same end. You get to have, hopefully, more moments than not that persuade you it’s worth staying alive at all. Does the nice lawn feel good? Do you enjoy the company of people who’ve tended to find themselves and don’t wish to give you shit and judge you? Don’t you love feeling “normal” or “responsible” in your title or ability to maintain your family and obligations? Why would you let someone deceive themselves that they’re worth the same as you who’s willing to do the work? Why would you give your life, as though you’re play acting some Jesus-caricature, for those who literally can’t be bothered to recognize what it is to live as you do? You raise kids to a point where you fucking must expect them to be an adult.

There’s no god raising us. There’s no authority, older than sin or otherwise, that is going to bestow upon you the infinite wisdom in a holy book, system of laws, or anarchistic decree. You wise the fuck up, hold other people accountable, or we all die. We die in big and small ways ANYWAY, and yet you’d have us do it faster and in more painful ways than we can conceive until it manifests as different crises of addiction, war, personality cults, and “post-truth” analyses.

We can’t all just get along. I can’t take you seriously when you don’t. I don’t respect myself when I sit and spin and get super smug about what I’m capable of or who I think I am. I respect when I’ve spoken to how I’ve managed to break the narrative spell again. I respect when I can patiently engage the next step through the desert that provides me just a drop at a time’s worth of water in service to the next tortured step. If we are so collectively not in a place to even acknowledge fascism, the severity of our mental health problems, the depravity of how we conceive of our neighbors, or the inevitable death of not experiencing some form of collective wake-up call about what it takes to survive and sustain, now the inherent wisdom of Sam Jay’s point becomes king. Find a way for you and yours to survive until it all burns down. Even if they’re coming for you, practice your ducking and weaving.

I’m not there yet, but I don’t think she’s wrong, and I don’t have money to seriously entertain a kind of “escape” like that too seriously without it manifesting as another one of tomorrow’s antagonisms.

I’ve tried, passively and with force, to make sure what I was thinking or where I wished to go wasn’t just in my head. You could read on your own time, or not. You can watch what I literally build to test and manifest. I, still, get drunk and text heartfelt “wish you were here!” things to people who won’t own how little they actually want to do with me. I take what I can control, the impressions you’ve given me, and respond as I want my best self to respond. Open, forgiving, trying, and not allowing “hope” to look like some platitude I’m unwilling to speak and work for. I don’t hope you’ll hang out; I invite you. You show up or don’t. I don’t hope you’ll read; I write. I don’t hope we’ll get back together or live like the old days; I pay the price of honest vulnerable expression and the many ways it manifests. I don’t do it perfectly or never delete, but I do it so often I’ve become all-but intolerant of those acting incapable of the same while professing to desire what I do.

I want as many words as it takes to feel better. I want as many opportunities as I can recognize. I want as many friends who will actually respond and encourage and grow and change with me. I want to damn that which belongs in hell and defend whatever’s left of why I bother to stay alive. I’m not imposing and justifying, just looking to acknowledge and celebrate. My expectations are about preserving me, not controlling you. I think when I “force” people to think of their lives the same way, they realize how little of themselves actually exists or there’s nothing they can recognize as worth preserving. All the more my fault and burden, I guess.

[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.