[1257] Working Girls

I want to tell you a little bit about my job. To me, it’s not a very complicated job, but it has as many moving parts as exist within the people involved. I think it’s odd to call it “social work,” given the people who need to do all the work are the ones I’m tasked with inviting to do so.

“Social work,” is very broad terminology wise. I used to be an assessor for DCS. I’ve done visit supervision for a few companies. I’ve done “case work” in every role, including prison. I’m a CADAC II counselor in an environment that’s so overwhelmed I get routinely called “therapist,” and have been explicitly told by many therapists I’ve worked with who have audited my classes I’m “basically a therapist.” I take this to mean both therapists and I use the same models and strategies, yet are equally helpless to do any real work for you.

I’ve been out of social work for a few months and just got a new job. It’s like riding a bike. It’s a source of perpetual fascination to me that “the problem,” while manifesting in individual ways, is exactly the same whether you’re in prison, in-patient, IOP, or the infinitely grey sea between IOP and OP, or in just maintaining sobriety. It doesn’t matter the drug. It doesn’t matter if you have “too many” rules or “too much” freedom. I’m never without what needs to be done in my approach to the infinite list of what’s presented to me.

At bottom, what most people are suffering in any given moment is a lie.

The suffering is real. Don’t deliberately, or otherwise, mishear me, as is so routine throughout my day. The suffering is anxiety and depression, a series of traumas in the not-so-distant past, medical conditions due to use, aging, or violence. All those things hurt, truly.

The lie looks something like an excuse. The lie operates like a tool that removes the obligation of slowing down or examining your role. The lie looks like the reflection in a funhouse mirror. Technically, if you’re standing in front of it, that is, in fact, you reflected back. The story of refraction, perception, and complicated subjective experience is something of an infinitely long digression approximately 1 in 10 people are interested in exploring long enough to get it.

If you zoom out and take a broad picture of “addiction,” you start the see the pathologies in your clients manifested in your colleagues. Whatever you wish to make of their protective factors, it becomes blindingly obvious that there’s an irresolvable blurriness between “good” and “bad” habits. You can absolutely find yourself compulsively working, eating, “helping” by diving into the infinite flow of drama, peacocking, or blaming your behavior on your ADHD.

If you’re good at boundaries, this leaves you practically hoping to meaningfully contribute to an environment so that it’s less self-destructive, but you might be the most significant observer of what’s already an extremely thin line. Moreover, those, in good faith, that you work with, might not even realize or be that keen to learn about how they’re threatening the whole endeavor.

I think stupid political actors operate the same way. I, who listens to hundreds of hours of political commentary and pays some attention to global affairs, occupies a different semantic universe than someone who can’t tell you who the acting attorney general is. Any subject takes the time, attention, and basic interest in order to be learned. When you learn it deeply enough, you can start to see deeper implications and patterns. If you “don’t care,” you get to ride the lie that your acts, or lack thereof, are of no consequence or significantly less consequence than they actually are.

Frustratingly, unfortunately, ridiculously, because the god you claim to believe in is hysterical, you matter. I can’t fucking stand it. Because in my world, my brain, it means I have to work hard, pay attention, tell the truth, and figure out even basically what the fuck I’m doing with myself any given day. I don’t really get a choice unless I want to suffer like someone addicted to a bad, incorrect, and woefully incomplete story.

I have to traverse the universe of differences between myself who has intimately mapped the degrees to which he matters for decades, and a population who has practiced implicitly and explicitly the idea that they do not matter. And they’ve likely practiced even more aggressively than me to establish their instincts and habits. I think the world of silent complicit “moderates,” suffers the same condition.

I don’t bring my job home with me often. I can respond to a crisis or hit a snag with paperwork, but the souls I’m wrestling with don’t haunt me. I’m very clear about what I want, what it takes, and what I’ll contribute to help. I don’t want anything for you you don’t want for yourself. I will never pretend otherwise when I’m there, and what you’re doing in sober living, it’s work, all the time. We’re not hanging out. We’re not best friends. I’m not your boss or keeper. I’m your opportunity to slow down and your reminder that the work can be done in spite of how you feel.

I’ll help fill out forms. I’ll provide rides. I’ll re-frame the most damming things you’ve shocked yourself by admitting for the first time. I’ll let you cry. I’ll stand in perfect detached non-judgment as we walk down whatever path we must or can. I can’t make you want to live. I can’t make you honest. I can’t make you “believe” in the consequences of your actions and how they make you, or us, suffer. I can’t tie words to emotional meaning if you are unable or unwilling. It’s not my job to save you, trap you, or merely occupy your time with jargon and obligations in a bid to avoid dealing with what I need to work on.

So it goes in the “normal” or “non-addicted” landscape. Do you think we get fascism if most people aren’t just lying, but doing so in such a catastrophic and compulsive way that we’re functionally suicidal? I don’t care what flavor or era of fascism you look at, at bottom, it’s lies. Lies about purity and purpose. Lies about “them.” Lies about capacity and consequences. We know, intellectually, the fire raging that we set. Emotionally, we’re dead. There’s no real and meaningful response to the chaos we’ve sowed. So we take another hit, point the finger, and undermine what little those with the awareness and capacity might yet be able to save.

What I’m describing often manifests in complacency and complicity in the people I work with who might be better at it than average. They use the statistics as license to phone it in or drag quick things out over weeks or months because it keeps the paycheck coming. They tell a story of what they would build or do differently, but they want the same things our clients do. They want the easy win. The functional disability check. They want to bill the state regardless of whether they actually believe they’ve done all they can for someone. Why? They have more official, more standard and socially acceptable lies to maintain.

I’d bet and win every time that you’re so tired and never have enough time. I know that you don’t think I’d ever believe the drama from your so and so! These gas prices, these groceries, and these no good dirty politicians basically fucked your spouse and killed your dog! You're just thinking of the children! You’re the hero. You’re entitled to exacting your revenge with every fired shot across a comment section bow. You know, the realpolitik of purity tests, ironic dismissal, and increasingly AI-generated astro-turfing.

I used to suffer the lie that I could save the world. I was poised to do it by speaking intelligently, getting attention, and leading a charge. Little did I know. I can save my world, not yours. I can write this blog, not your entry. I can eat my food, watch my shows, play my games and instruments, rock out with my friends, blast my music, drive my car, build my house on my land, and choose the shape my suffering takes. And I can know that I want it that way compared to the alternatives. And I can save and protect and advocate for the ways to get there because I know they exist independent of me, but also die with me, if you’re not practicing the same things.

I find this incredibly empowering, humbling, and energizing. I find this pretty easy to understand because I’ve reached a point in life where the work I do I take for granted. I’ve done more than “try.” I’ve embodied the consequences like a muscle stuck throbbing after an intense workout. It wasn’t an accident. No one granted a wish. I didn’t magically come upon a secret. I worked, and continue to work, one line at a time, one day at a time, one choice to meet my needs, demonstrate my world of values and desires, in any given moment.

I wasn’t able to shut up when I didn’t understand that silence was a choice. I’m never able to empathize with those who seemingly choose to stay silent about the fire daring to engulf us. I couldn’t hear until I recognized the choice to listen. I couldn’t be honest until I recognized the choice to be responsible for maintaining the integrity of words and a shared reality. And now I can’t go back even if I wanted to. For me to want to, I’d have to behave as insistently self-destructively as I observe addicted and non-addicted alike.

So, what’s my job? Is it anything like yours? Are you truly living in service to a world that you actually want to live in? I’m invigorated by Scott Pelley and Stephen Colbert getting fired. They aren’t dead. They’re more alive than their their audiences can recognize. They’re burning hotter than the fascist forces clear-cutting the forest of once trusted institutions. If you’re paying the requisite attention you’ll connect their work to what yours must consist of. You’ll feel it like they feel it. You’ll practice as you preach.

Or, you won’t. I get paid either way.

[991] I'm So Sick

Before I let my brain get too woken up…

It’s safe to say that I live in a fairly perpetual state of disorientation. It isn’t that I don’t have a direction or ideas of the directions I want to go. I feel like I’m trapped. I’ve written about how often I feel “stuck.” Whether I’m citing the practical limitations around a budget or physical limitations of my body, I find myself envious of those who appear to be moving freely about the world. I don’t mean celebrities or rich people. I mean the people who conceived of, built, and began operating the new hospital in town, and every new building on campus between me graduating and today. I mean Jonny Kim who’s the viral Navy Seal, doctor, astronaut by the age of 37.

So much of my self-conception was fueled, innocently enough I’m sure, by my time in school. I don’t think I was particularly “exceptionally” smart, but doing well in school kept me safe, got me praise, money, and like a lot of kids in my era I was told I could grow up to be whatever I wanted. When I “turned it on,” there was little I couldn’t understand or get an A, and when the psychological gains of doing so began to wane, I settled for As and Bs and still way more often than anyone should think about the circumstances for the 4 Cs I got in college.

I was told often, well before I had any concept of what it meant, that I was a “leader.” I don’t know if my parents were just trying to reframe my general obstinate posture or if they recognized a capacity I would later use for the party house and entrepreneurship. Either way, it is deep in my core conception of myself that I don’t just follow along. I don’t “just believe” things. I don’t deny myself a differing view or the opportunity to put my voice to it.

I’m shaped by dozens of formative phrases and incidents of my life. I’m perhaps moved to discuss them because I recently watched Dave Chappelle talk in 2020 about his history and contract issues. He was also full of confidence and potential that was recognized early. He’s at the point in his career where he’s functionally transcending his medium and giving more Carlin-esc speeches-necessary, wise, and still funny-speeches verses doing sets. He was stuck too, in his contract, and then parlayed his fame and love for him into a credible threat and escape.

I make a lot of superficial movement in the world. At bottom, it reduces to spending money. I have money to spend-ish, when I do, it allows me access to the city, parking, venue, restaurants, and less-than-cultivated or prettied-up  picture and video montages of what I’ve been up to. I get a third of the way through any project before the rain starts, budget dries up, heat cranks, or time gets crunchy. It’s become easier over time to notice more psychological gratification in taking an extended lunch or settling in for a show and Candy Crush. Things that started out as pacifying go-go-go anxiety and stress turned into “enjoy it now while you have it.”

I find myself reflexively comparing myself to people like Jonny Kim. Whether or not I’m actually capable of being, or have any genuine desire to be, anything like him. In the least disingenuous way I can say it, fuck the military lol. I still hold respect for doctors, but perhaps ones in different countries who haven’t been co-opted by our corrupt and ignorant system. And I can barely ride several roller coasters back-to-back without feeling pukey, let alone pass the tests NASA requires. Do I want to be like Jonny Kim? No. I want to own myself to the degree of analogous effort and distinction. I want the story of doing so to be a compelling and persistently meaningful personal narrative that helps drive my behavior and focus.

The amount of sacrifice is under-appreciated when it comes to being “high-achieving” or “exceptional.” You don’t do a lot of other things because there’s always a new nuance to incorporate or responsibility to rise to. It doesn’t mean you can’t have, say, a family or hobbies, but it does mean you’re probably feeling like they don’t get the attention you’d like or they might require. It means you now have plugged into the “advance the species” project more than “prioritize me and my life” one. Consciously or unconsciously, you have to believe we can “advance” at all. You have to remain steadfast in your dedication to “helping people.” You have a driving faith-claim that as a source of inspiration and demonstration “things” or “the world” will inch forward and be better overall.

Perhaps this is where I don’t have faith. I appreciate Charlamagne tha God’s recent discussion with Stephen Colbert. He’s persistently that matter-of-fact voice about the chaos and ever-analyzing his in-the-moment experience that only those with the same kind of anxiety can appreciate. We’re on the precipice of losing the country. He gets it. I get it. Noam Chomsky gets it. Historians and some of the more inflammatory voices of commentators and observers do too.

We don’t have people in power who represent us. I’ve watched the country, not just “struggle,” but defy notions of accountability and growth. I don’t make more money each year. I don’t find new friends with more time and opportunities. I find myself escalating my indulgent side. I find myself “wishing” for someone to give me a call to finally release me from my mockery of obligations. I don’t feel as though I have the power to lead myself out of the largest context and consequences.

I can spend a year of my life making phone calls and sending emails and waiting and waiting and waiting and I still can’t find a way to do literally the job I’m doing, but for myself? That’s a beyond-broken system. It’s defying the essence of self-determination, value, and individuality. Then each step you take to “fight back” becomes another self-defeating mockery. How do I discard my observations about addicts and addiction and then with a straight-face tell other professionals, “We don’t take insurance?” Every practice that doesn’t started with taking insurance, and after filtering through hundreds found their reliable self-payers, and closed the door to Medicaid. How do you “speed up” an office that loses your paperwork, an agency that lies to you or has an axe to grind, or follow ever-differing instructions from people not qualified to offer them?

But that’s just my smallest sliver of experience. What if you’re a Florida teacher being told someone observing your classroom for 12 hours is tantamount to your time in school, debt, and professional experience? What if you’re the half of the country or minority group watching the systematic obliteration of your rights? What if you’re a fat kid being told there’s nothing to see or worry about, just keep eating and loving yourself and things will turn out alright? What if you’re a kid with a bullet-proof backpack? What if your small sliver of experience is equally exhausted, desperate, confused, and unable to lead a kind of life that doesn’t suggest futile and pointless struggle as the raging fire dictates the context?

That’s the heart of my restless and distracted soul. I’m not okay. “Things” aren’t good. I feel threatened. I feel sick. I feel immense hatred. And no amount of good books or TV shows are going to make me forget. No amount of skill I demonstrate on an instrument is going to put out the fire. No nerding-out on the history or rounding-out the context is going to erase the ever-present threat stabbing away at any remote confidence I have for our collective survival and understanding of what’s going on. We are not built for it. Individuals can cut paths that peacock a certain respect or intelligence, but “we” don’t exist and the animal that is human is as dumb and annoying as my cat resting on my armchair staring at me, expectant, selfish, ignorant of its motivations and mine.

I’m not okay. “It’s” not okay. “Things” aren’t okay. “We’re” not a thing. The country, if not literally a good portion of the world is on fire. I’m over here doing what? Haphazardly “counseling” those instinctively dosing themselves into oblivion to help cope with the pain? Because being numb with rotten teeth is preferable to medical debt and a big smile as they come to destroy what you’ve worked for or love? We’re not brave enough to even SPEAK!

We won’t even speak. We won’t talk about the big and obvious fucked up things. We won’t do it, ever. Not just for years, but ever. We won’t talk about how we’ve fucked up. We won’t talk about what it will actually take in actual work to change something today, right now, let alone in 10 years. The only people talking are the psychopaths, just as miserable and small and pathetic as we are, but with more fluid motion to exercise their greed and disdain for existence. And we won’t call them greedy and disdainful, we’ll celebrate how much they’ve “earned” and “innovated.” It is forever opposite-day in the mind of the damned. No story will sweep in and account for the deliberate ignorance or sacrifice itself on our behalf.

“Everybody knows there’s a party at the end of the world.”

The fact that I have this perspective and don’t know what it “means” is of ongoing concern. Do I pack up and leave the country? Do I power through my home projects? Do I double-down on the party? Do I make a more concerted effort to recruit and bolster physical or financial defenses? Right now, by default, I’m just playing along by ear. Things certainly “look” normal, as they have in every society the day before shit went crazy. We’re already crazy. It’s already happening, and has been, and we never talk about it. We never share anything but a meme. We don’t vote, we don’t fight unless it’s with a Russian bot, and we don’t really feel more than an overall foreboding that’s best not explored.

The vast majority of the world informing my experience is on some level suicidal. I have a friend actively disengaged from the larger political and historical context and conversation. I can’t blame her. I have professional connections that, even in places of power and relative comfort, can’t or won’t organize or find a momentum of sustained prosperity. I’ve been offering no-rent and creative expression for 3 or 4 years now, and not a single person has been able to enjoy or play with that for longer than a year without the greater anxiety or unaddressed nature of our problems winning the day.

The communication gets resented. The trust never exists. The real work and sacrifice go unacknowledged. The concept of how or why to connect reduced to social media pageantry or compulsion of your genes and cultural expectations. When I talk about being “alone,” it’s that singular lines of blogs like these would occasionally show up on the tongues of those I felt closest to after they were ridiculously drunk. Then, hush. Then, race away and get very busy before turning defensive and angry.

I will never forget when one of my friends said, “I think it’s going to have to be for Trump, man” when we were discussing politics and who to vote for before he was elected. This friend was intelligent, kind-hearted, and just an outsized positive presence on any occasion, but he fell under the spell of the malaise and inarticulate fog. He was, of course, busy and a professional and comes from a “normal” middle-to-upper-middle class background with an extended family and series of things on his mind a million miles away from the word “fascism,” which he’s perfectly capable of understanding intellectually.

But “we” aren’t wise enough to contend with how we aren’t intellectual. We don’t make the time to develop robust systems for determining what information is going to be used in service to our decision making. We watch people like me struggle endlessly to determine inches of movement, and figure it’s a lot easier to plug into the streams of consciousness that already presume to have figured something out. We’ll suicidally sacrifice ourselves with proud demonstrations of how little we appreciate what we’re actually worth. It’s routine. It’s normal. It’s, “Trump, I guess” because he “seems” to resemble the anger and confusion you haven’t been practicing putting better words to.

Barring a black swan event of currently inconceivable means, it’s not getting better. I might have a year or two to escape the country. I might have enough money to buy my way into a graduate program or immigrate to the country somewhere with a home-rehab immigration system. That fucking sucks. That’s fucking despicable. That’s something I’m talking about now, 1 or 2 years early, so when you’re mock “horrified” that coked-out Don Jr. is burning a 10-year-old who had an abortion at the stake in primetime (how “hyperbolic” can I get when the standard is already mass child slaughter?) I don’t fall under your spell.

Purely as an automatic predilection for survival, I complain about clenching my jaw or simple logistics.  I act like there’s a greater nobility or efficacy in attending to day-to-day details. The effort needs to be spent fighting or speaking to the problems dictating my greatest context, but who am I speaking to? What am I fighting against? Should I punch my friend until he comes to his senses? I can’t really help myself from continuing to scream into the silent abyss. Is this how I’ve transformed my conception of “the fight” into a series of indulgences and doing “regular” jobs? I do those jobs just long enough to flirt with getting fired as the microcosm demonstrations of our larger failures of leadership and imagination become too much to bear.

I can’t look away. More importantly, I don’t wish to. I don’t wish I’d stop talking, I wish someone would talk back. I wish I could trust anything about anyone that didn’t reduce to self-protection or indulgence. I can’t. I’m fighting to thrive in a world built on so many lies and confusions to do much of anything but pull out and run is going to feel like a futile mockery. It’s going to keep me as isolated and alone as it’s proven thus far. I can stay angry, or pretend hopeful, or I can make a better escape plan. I can engage the mockery with the ambivalence or play that seem to compete with my best notions of how I’ve conducted myself in the past. I need to start saving.

[924] You're A Shining Star

 I think there's a lot left unsaid about what it means to all have cell phones. Or, the things said are of a constant refrain. Hearing Drew Barrymore and Stephen Colbert talk about the 90s as the last time it was great to be famous has stuck with me. How much are we prone to being anxious by default because, unconsciously, we functionally can't fuck up anymore? How many people really want to go viral for losing their shit? How long have we been under the veil of "cancellation?" I think it's psychologically important to be able to not just have the room to fuck up, but cope and grieve with it in a way that isn't being scrutinized at the same time. In writing, I've clearly taken the opposite approach, but I recognized my need for accountability and sense that I had any remote control over what I was feeling or how I moved in the world. Most people ain't trying to write.

Our entire set of cultural narratives regarding redemption, forgiveness, or growth are knee-capped from the beginning. You're pre-scared of any bad thing you could do or what bad things you've done will say about you decades later. People have generally treated me as a poster child for what's to be shamed and erased, at least those with whom I perhaps had a more superficial relationship than I felt. What if I never learned to adapt and move on or incorporate? What if this passionately anxious bubble is squeezing every interaction and it's altogether impossible to orient after the path towards meaningful relationships has been obliterated?

How have we adapted? We've turned the arrested perpetual shame into fascism. We've decided to double-down on the bad bits and try to force them into something to be proud of. We've tried to distance ourselves from personal identities or cultural norms in service to brands and algorithmic destinies. The only currency left is attention, whether it takes the form of shame, grievance, or entertainment doesn't really matter. The point is to let yourself be hijacked or create the next hijacking thing. Can you spin or market instead of embody? Can you read the pre-approved script and do your time in negative attention jail? Rest assured, we're all waiting on the story of your comeback well-independent of what or whether you've learned or changed anything along the way.

You're not allowed on the path to "responsibility" or "accountability," not just because it wouldn't be recognized were it to still exist, but also no one is interested. Here, a fun irony to what I've pursued in writing. Practically, we're generally first-world poor, stressed, forcefully humbled by the world we've inherited, streaming, and doggedly trying to bolster that brand narrative that makes it fun to dance on Tik-Tok and talk depression. This is not to belittle the means in which people are trying to cope and connect, but doesn't it just feel way sadder, desperate, and misplaced than we're acknowledging? I'm imagining a judge do a hand dance as he explains why he's decided to grant the removal of your children. Simply calling that a terrible and uncomfortable statement of their judgment wouldn't begin to cover how we arrived at that display.

For many years I've been playing a game of ongoing reorientation and reassessment. I've been trying to figure out if the pieces in front of me could lead to the kind of world I imagine. I've been “hopeful” and getting myself worked up as my head turns over all of the potential things I could be or who we could be to each other. I've tried incredibly hard to “accept people where they are” and gotten dramatically more polished in how I speak to people. I've looked for ways to approach the most difficult situations that, obviously doesn't exhaustively cover how they might be understood, but allows for healthy doubt and a sense of progress. By default, that project is a “forgiving” one.

Forgiveness is a concept that has definitely evolved for me. I read or heard something recently that “the kingdom of heaven” is to be recognized here on Earth and within yourself when you exercise your capacity for forgiveness. I find the notion insightful and a considerably easier sell than all the metaphysical bullshit. To forgive used to mean that I just understood something well enough that I didn't have to obsessively think about it anymore. That's what put a barrier between corrosive thoughts about my mom and my otherwise better mental health as I learned more about generational trauma. Do I forgive her as a person? Nah, she'd need to discover and define accountability and responsibility alongside what might be explained by her upbringing, just like I try to.

There's a similar line I take with the “friends” I romanticized. I don't hold petty resentments about how often or not we talk. I watched the series of decisions to talk or not in deliberately shitty ways. I've watched in-group out-group and fear takeover. I've been an array of caricatures. I feel the silence. In my heart of hearts, I know what I wish for in terms of things being “better” or how I wish I didn't reflexively hang my concept of what could be better on anything requiring their input. But isn't that the rub and contradiction again? We don't have a shared path. We don't have articulated if remotely salient goals, let alone ones we share. I can't be your friend without you. Why I want anything less of a friend than what I'm prepared to be is my baggage to unpack.

Our community, our friendship, or what draws our attention cannot continue to exist rooted in this diffuse shame and fear. You can't be primed to fight or flee without wholly degrading your faculties needed to assess and feel embedded in the world. I know I need other people. I know I can only get so far, if you can call it “far” at all, by myself. I know I desire the understanding of what's happening to me, why I take courses of action, or what I choose to pursue. I know I've managed to understand, forgive, and incorporate the worst parts of myself independent of outside judgments. Are we capable of doing that on the whole? Will privacy, ambiguity, or what it means to really struggle and prevail instantiate as mockery and romantic tropes?

The ease of access and interconnections is always haunting. Don't you want to be reminded of your difficult past and follow the people who've left? They're right there, a click away. Haven't thought about them in months or years? We can fix that. Thought you were over it and moved on? Even if you have, let's suggest just intermittently enough that you haven't. Let's re-fire that drama you've otherwise incorporated or hashed a dozen times. For a brain like mine, I'm in a kind of eyes-stapled-open hell if I can't spit out what's vying to stay stuck on repeat. I even know it's going to get stuck and how I need to respond, and it doesn't make it any easier to feel my brain baste in those juices.

I try to build the kind of environments and maintain the kind of relationships that will better serve that mental propensity. Wherever I'm looking or whatever I'm working on, I want it to be something that adds, helps, or is relevant to one or hundred goals I'm pursuing in any moment. When you do that enough, you significantly weaken that which is lesser or distracting in it's power to overtake your attention and ongoing cognition. You're not reduced to a cliché or a meme or mindlessly reenacting the trauma patterns your brain may have trained on. Whether you write or just have the best people to talk to, I think we all need to up our effort in recognizing what we're paying attention to and why. We have to rebuild the path and consider that we may have yet to even bothered with traversing it.

[821] Orgasm Addict

I just want to write a bad blog because my head wants to hurt. I've been recording and organizing the books I got for free. The journey we've been on together has amounted to a fair amount of effort for so far indiscernible gain. I can't help but to view it as a larger persistent analogy.

I'm all about the probabilistic thinking. I very much doubt anyone's particular “brilliance” or special effort. I believe there's more luck involved even before I pick up a book making a case for just how much. As such, whatever the cost of these books in labor or space, the ideas they give me remain invaluable. I want to hold them hostage as a sales tactic. I want to create ways of quickly organizing and displaying them. I want to try to read some of them.

If life is a similar series of a kind of randomness, I want to set myself up for as many “what to do with all these books?” kind of scenarios. Ideally, the books are supposed to be a series of individuals with a capacity for honesty and introspection you don't otherwise find in a “normal” distribution of people. It's as much the experimentation in business running or marketing as it is toying with websites and general attention seeking. I think the secret to my success will be tying everything I do to everything else. You came because you read a crazy flier. You stayed, or you bought something, because I made it part of my world, and you wanted to be associated.

I think a lot about an infinite sea of associations. Whether I remember the character names or not, I'm associated with thousands of stories. I have a familiarity, or parity of experience. I think a lot about the confused, almost angry look I got from an acquaintance when I said I watch some shows sped up. She didn't understand opening as many small doors of connection as possible. I take it she's getting all she needs from her life.

I think about comedians who say they sounded like their favorites when they first started out. Who do you sound like if you don't put in the time and effort to differentiate? What happens when you no longer borrow from enough sources to push the needle on the topics of importance and interest? This is the concern I have for myself right now. I have a thousand worlds staring at me from the corner. I have books on construction. I have Oprah's book club stamps across covers. I have as many windows for new insight as I do in looking for lines that stick in my thousand TV shows. And they're heavy. Any they fall over when you stack them too high. And they're covered in dust and make me sneeze, and are in “good” to “acceptable” condition, waiting to waste their life on someone else's shelf who can shell out the four dollars.

I think about helping yourself before you can help others. For how many years have I tried to differentiate between the “right and wrong kind of selfish?” My thoughts came from what seemed like nakedly self-destructive acts meant to put distance and shame in the space where a conversation and personal responsibility needed to take place. As I get older, I feel I need to be more conservative with myself. It's harder to juggle things that aren't arranged in a way that makes things simpler. It's harder to have the patience for really bad words and wasted time where an adult or consequences are necessary. It's hard to watch yourself act in a way that seems to betray where your mind was most at ease. Does it have to get hard before it's easy? Or are we just trying too hard to run too many poorly conceived ideas at once?

Whether or not I get my bills paid in advance, the way my life is organized, I'll still need ten thousand dollars a year. Cars need registered and property taxes are a thing. I'm tied to the grid and can't share my piddling thoughts without the interwebs. I'm freer, but I'm not free. I've got people in mind I'd like to spend that extra time with. I've got less than the naive hope it would take to think it's going to amount to more than a weekend or so year without some perfectly random intrusions of money or impropriety.

So I think about the slog. I think about the little pieces I put in place for the families I interact with every day. I think about picking up the pieces and giving the direction they can't seem to find for themselves, and I think about having someone to do that for me. I think about how that plays into me not going to the gym unless it's with someone. I was recently invited to run, something I wouldn't have done on my own, so I ran. I think about wishing I had someone to call me a fat cunt every day, daring me to eat better, so I could have that push-back and accountability. Discovering or respecting that someone has intention or credible expectations of you is something I can get behind and find motivating.

Here I want to break off a bit and explore intention verses attention.

I like attention. I don't want it for its own sake, but I'm always seeking the laugh or the admiration and respect for when I do something better or different. I truly felt at home when I was on stage at Warped. I walk into rooms and theaters, and envision myself giving speeches. I rehearse what I'll say on Colbert. I know, just by virtue of my personality, I'm a literal aberration from the norm in ways that will garner attention. I speak different. I respect my feelings less. I approach problems from an assumed inevitable creative way it can be fixed or reduced. I always want to bite. Containing or organizing that is the task of life. Making it something worth courting those who would find their own intentions with it is the work worth doing.

When I intend to do something, the rest fades. The drive doesn't feel so long. The show isn't a painful marathon of intermittent focus. The day at work isn't the thing otherwise impeding my only route to happiness. It takes the smallest goal to get there. It's why I love food. Whatever else in your day, you get to have a goal with a high probability of a great pay-off and feeling. I don't know who's going to choose to yell at me instead of engage when I call people, but I do know how the burger is going to taste. I can prove the value of my intention.

The larger task? Can you pretend to know the influence of an intentioned life? Can you regard the consequences as “good” on faith? If it doesn't fill you up like a good meal, can the value be measured in other ways? I certainly find myself able to invest more of my time and effort into others' lives when I feel like I'm getting things done and organized in my own life. I remember just the act of doing my laundry made me feel considerably better about typing up the notes on a few cases a few weeks ago. So what's going to last longer than a meal or spin-cycle? With any luck, and some work, your relationships. Your investment and intention for other people.

I suspect this is why people express what having kids has meant to them. I suspect this is why so many kids are living out the consequences of neglect and people grow to resent each other. If you genuinely care, all of the adages about helping other people being the highest calling or way to draw the most from your lived experience may prove to be true. If you hate yourself and/or the space you occupy in the world, it's going to be someone else's problem, one way or another. This is the baggage I attempt to keep from dumping on people. I share what I hate or think you're doing wrong. Rarely are you in a place to engage or cope with that. I don't always react to being triggered in ways I respect either.

Existing in the space as someone else's problem is familiar to me. I've often felt like something to be dealt with or compromised around. If the mean wasn't paired with the funny, I'd be that much lonelier. If I wasn't smart enough to talk my way out of something ridiculous, how much more trouble would I find? If I wasn't large and angry enough to silence, at least to my ear, a degree of immature emotional dissent, how many ways would I find myself petty and distracted by fake villains or tyrannical justice? It's my intention to not be at the mercy of the world that gives me my value. I'll take the judgment as the worst if, by the numbers, I can prove to be better or the best. I'm certain I'll identify a stream of quantifiable problems related to you and your environment while you over-burden the value of your gut reactions or prescribed morality with regard to me. I can maintain my standard for friendships and allow myself the view from the eyes of the people who dare to say they love me (which I still discourage, though less emphatically than I used to) or make them think.

Perpetual good is the smallest shift when it's at the hand of the collective in the right direction. I alone might need ten thousand dollars a year in order to live minimally first-world. That's 5 months of my current time-stupid job. Together with your resources? I don't want to say I'll never know, but the divorces and mid-life crises definitely haven't kicked in yet. I also won't give you the credit to think you've got more you'd like to do than get by the way you are. I'll never be able to tell whether that's bad or good beyond the amount I'm able to lodge my way into your head as the problems I have with things wedge their way into mine.

[711] YITV

I was recently asked why I watch so much TV. I proceeded to give a 10+ minute answer as though I'd been rehearsing it for weeks. I've discussed it before, but maybe not in a comprehensive way. I'm also kind of bored of watching TV at the moment, see myself staying up much later than is necessary, and figure why not break into the night with something light.

Like any habit, it doesn't start in a vacuum. The road is paved with dozens of things I've attempted to do instead. I'm as easily pulled away from a show as there is a suggestion to do so. But when all else fails, one thing remains certain. There is always something to watch.

Before it was TV, it was reading. If you're not focused on fiction, that will bring you down in a hurry. During drug study life, I had all day every day to read about the world. I made sure to sleep through the day and start reading sometime in the afternoon, but the idea is the same. Now, your busy and adult friends who might share an article or two every couple of weeks are up against your 5 a day that you've distilled down from the 25 or 30 you read that day. This means you have nothing in common to talk about, and when you do opine, it's at a level of derision and detail that little miss “helpful sharer” didn't want to engage you at. Low mood and active alienation isn't sustainable.

Before reading, it was the clinging to the last strings of hope for “together” things like consistently dancing on Tuesdays or trying new things at cheap enough spots around town. I had weeks and weeks of events rollerskating, ice skating, water sliding, movie going and hosting, sports and lunches, which week after week were either ignored or started to look like some increasingly desperate move to cling to youth more than anyone's genuine engagement to spend time together. The burden of getting older and adopting new responsibilities I'll say killed that, but I think there was a considerable amount of no longer wanting to fake what I wasn't actually faking taking hold too.

Before that people were actually around to just hang about and do nothing or anything with. Before that was coffee shop and business fervor. Before that school. Then back to partying, before school again. Then work and school all the time. The point is, there's been stages and differing degrees of focus at each one. Would I rather everyday be able to build or create at my leisure? Duh. Would it be nice to engage with people who want more for themselves than what they can scrape together or lie about over drinks? I'd kill every former conversational partner for a shot at a single one.

But why has TV persisted? It's my personal Elizabeth Warren. What can you do at basically every level of mental involvement? Sit around, or walk the treadmill, or do some yoga, while the moving pictures talk at you. I'll of course focus in on something quality, but the rest is to help keep my mind from attacking me. I need to be engaged in something, might as well be a show.

You might be wondering, why do I have to be engaged? Why can't you sit back and relax or enjoy yourself? Mind you, this is usually where we spring into judgments on my character, but nonetheless, I wonder, what makes you think I could get more relaxed? I've been a “sit and stare” kind of person the majority of my life. I was glued to my video games as a kid; at least my memory of being so wants to leave me befuddled that I developed any athletic ability. I grew up poor enough where loading up on free library movies and binge watching TV were the thing to do well before the term “binge watch” came into the popular lexicon.

Admittedly, I also like TV worlds considerably more than the real one. It'd be dope as hell to have a huge extended Modern Family where our hijinks would never overtake how we care about each other and eventual resolution. The deep mystery and high stakes of The Americans is as close as I'll ever get to play spy. Violence and the wonders of mysticism in Vikings makes you want to believe in destiny. Stories, be they in TV, movie, or comic book form, are actually going somewhere. They're going to be there each week. They're going to end. You can rely on them in a way the regular world will never provide. The Challenge and Impractical Jokers are going to make me laugh, every single time. Brockmire was suggested to me out of the blue, and my gut hurt all day from laughing.

TV also functions as sort of my last remaining bridge into anyone bothering to connect with me. I post a poem about another lonely and sleepless night, easy to forget. I post that Legion is perfection, now we're cooking with gas. I had an old show FlashForward on while I was delivering food, and wouldn't you know it, the guy handing me the bags remembered that show and liked it back then! It's easy to debate the superiority of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D over anything DC. It's considerably harder to debate the intricacies of the Marvel Civil War and what lessons those characters might impart to how we conduct our lives.

Given that I watch so much of it across different times and genres, TV is still a huge source of inspiration. You know what I never found googling different “green” ways to live? A water system they set up in the ground of a desert home on Homestead Rescue, also suggested to me be someone else who opened up via commenting on what I was watching at the time. TV gives me lines to explore whether I can be a friend or family member like what's being depicted. It keeps me constantly turning over in my head what it means to be an actor and whether any pursuit of fame or being seen isn't fundamentally corrupt. I get to lose myself in a way that makes me think of both Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman who both have decried not wanting or not being good at being themselves.

As a window into the soul, if you're not out amongst the people, you can infer what they're like. Reality and soap opera TV overwhelming? I bet there's a mathematical formula that could consider the TV variables that would have spit out Trump as president. Does it get easier to see through people's motivations when the hype machine cup runs over and the praise outweighs what you can pick out on screen? Constantly. You don't need “The 25 Best Shows this March” to watch. That you can get that, and 25 more lists as long or longer seems to speak to not just me having an overwhelming amount of time to watch or desire to connect.

I've managed to find some truly break-out interesting things or worthwhile people as well. Sometimes the musical guest sends shivers. I can hear about everything, but seeing how someone talks about what they worked on can spark my interest to add it to the queue. It's a feedback loop. Is 90% of everything James Corden does or says on the show throwaway things to sleep to? Sure. He's also an incredibly charismatic geeky fanboy who's enthusiasm has bled onto me numerous times. I don't need to see the same jokes recycled across The Daily Show, Colbert, The Opposition, Real Time with Bill Maher, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Our Cartoon President, and The President Show. I like discovering lesser known but influential people Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper interview who reside at the level of whose works I want to map. Colbert acts as a barometer of “Joe Everyman” morality and sentiment. Long-form discourse at every opportunity is invaluable. Samantha Bee reminds us of what The Daily Show isn't anymore and does a lot of actual fund raising and awareness causing real change. And watching others' catharsis is an invitation to keep tabs on how people are working through what I perceive as suicidal circumstances.

TV is a search for a voice when no one cares to read what you're actually saying. It's attempting to pick up the pulse of what “the world” seems to be craving, be it the apocalypse in so many versions, or redemption, or family, or cheese, or just to abuse the safe and familiar. What to make of people patting each other on the back for “discovering” that as long as it's the black people who are rich and there's a fight for the crown it can be called revolutionary! At some important level, what we're creating is a testament to what we genuinely feel and think right now. Is our media landscape a reflection of something that amounts to more than a cultural psychosis or blindness? How broad are we looking? How willing are we to explore not just “that” something got popular, but why? What am I saying in watching so much TV? Well, pick a blog. Or pick up the bones of what I used to say and work towards before I leaned on my supplement.

I used to love saving shows to watch with my ex. Such a stupidly simple and common thing that says, “I want to spent all of this time with you.” I found considerably more laughs watching Archer as a group when we visited Colorado than I tend to on my own. I've watched shows I can't stand, and in describing why, turned friends onto them who've said it's now one of their favorites. In broadening my horizon of what I was willing to watch, I got to understand why my dad advocated for Friday Night Lights and plan to check out Lillyhammer because he used the same tone. I've gotten songs stuck in my head and discovered casting and production trends that I consistently admire and never would have found otherwise. You drop the right show name anywhere on the TV web and you get likes and nods out of the woodwork. It's a huge connective tissue of influence and ideas we take as for granted as water.

There's also a healthy dose of my obsessive tendency to “watch everything” at play. I tried to quit watching Arrow and The Flash cold turkey, and succumbed to the sunk-cost fallacy. Why watch 6 seasons and 17 episodes of something if you're not just going to get to the end, especially if you've been speeding up the playback and barely paying attention already? If I'm going to lock in, or at least feel the pull to, the things I do, the visual media environment is where I've carved out a large enough chunk of meaning that I do not find in the rest of my life. And while I have to be dragged through a job, or the struggles of home building, or the failures of interpersonal interaction, I can hop on and ride as many fanciful, dramatic, or life-affirming tales as are running.

My “balance” isn't between “relaxing” doing something like mountain climbing or camping and the everyday stress of real life. I'm always flirting with sanity verses insanity. I'm strung out on meaning verses emptiness. I need engagement against rotting. I'm proof positive that there are way more hours in the day than you might be willing to bother with. When you're stuck in this moment, and you can't seem to pursue anything “more” meaningful, whether it's words coming out here, or words coming in from media, something needs to happen. I'm still not prepared to stare at the ocean or a stream unless I'm tripping acid, and mountains are still giant piles of dirt. I envy whatever you're getting from wandering around and looking at those things instead.

[428] Do Or Do Not

I think there's an important distinction between types of people that isn't often talked about. When attempts are made to talk about it we tend to regard people as “optimists” who contrast with the “pessimists.” I think the distinction has less to do with your positive or negative outlook on life. I think the distinction lies in how you are socialized to think about your circumstances. That is, it's the difference between people who “want to live” and those who are “waiting to die.”

I get hung up on old movies, shows, and documentaries about bands and political theater. You get the impression that there is a genuine underlying cultural sensibility and understanding. Regardless of what you can say about misogynistic and civil rights failures, people seemed to “get it” in a way that I absolutely cannot find today. This is surely part media bias and rose colored glasses, but at the same time, I think it's the same reason I tend to get along with older people in general if not old women in particular.

Old women seemed to be socialized to “take care of the family.” A very life affirming, always on the go, navigate a million moving parts including your children's needs, husband's emotional distance, and whatever the neighborhood gossip or family secrets. Men were just expected to work and provide. Being tired at the end of the day and teaching a few life skills was tantamount to good parenting. While I was antiquing the other day, a couple of older women lamented that you can't just get into a fight now-a-days without getting sued or put in jail and, no exaggeration said, “in my day things were different.”

It's often talked about “the simpler times.” When what you knew you knew and what you didn't you didn't. Information wasn't being uploaded to the cloud to be checked and debated endlessly every minute. You didn't have a million TV channels and competing sources for your attention like the 1000 people you follow on twitter or the hundreds of friends and their meme pictures and statuses. I genuinely think from a psychological standpoint, this was a better circumstance than what we have today.

I think this because I consider myself an educated person without a fucking clue as to what I should be doing. I spend so much time “doing everything” and absolutely none of it has felt like the “right” thing to do in anything but philosophical or health terms. That is, I don't want to be a wage slave if I don't have to, and I respect my time to a greater degree than my money. I feel a genuine sense of responsibility towards the world because I chose to adopt a stake in it. How I got to a point of adopting that stake is a long and complicated picture that I don't think the modern era makes clear.

Today, if you can even define “friend,” when you don't like them you click an "x" and add a new one. We'll have more jobs by the time we're 25 than our parents had their entire lives. What does that do for your conception of a relationship? A relationship to your job, your town, neighbors, coworkers, or how you conceive of your work? I used to think the words “union” and “collective bargaining” went hand in hand, but with union membership at like...7? 8? percent, and if you poll people, you'd think 1900-1935ish didn't exist in this country. We've destroyed respect for your effort, time, and health.

I was listening to a Jack White song where he says something like “we're not entitled to a single damn thing.” If that's true, does that mean we don't owe anybody anything? Because surely someone is entitled to my basic respect for their being. Perhaps you only get the idea of entitlement when you subscribe to wanting to be alive in the first place. But what is it to entitle something? You are held in trust. You should be living up to said title or taking responsibility for claiming ownership of something. Do we just overwhelmingly abdicate responsibility and therefore feel like we don't deserve things?

I've been wanting to shit on myself for trying. And I feel like that has way more to do with the overall culture than with me. It's that no matter what you're doing, you're being punished. I got the degree, for an exorbitant amount of money. I'll let you talk to my fellow graduate and friend what it feels like to apply for 100+ jobs, in the same field, and get nothing for it because I skipped that headache and went for opening my own business. There again, punished for not being able to afford a lawyer with better advice, or a lawyer to sue when you were lied to and sunk costs, also by “the terrorists,” often mislabeled as Islamic extremists, who gouge you on insurance, rent, and of any scraps of self-respect you might have left. You're certainly being punished in a minimum wage anything. And now, I'm finding a way to punish myself in the stress of trying to rely on my blood pressure and drug studies to even begin something resembling savings or investment.

And I'm still supposed to remember that by not being in debt and having my bills paid for a year, I'm doing better than nearly everyone on the planet. At such point I'm supposed to what? Bend the knee and thank the gods? It isn't about me.

It's concordantly hard to deal with having, barely, examples of people who “represent me” in the public eye. As far as the political realm there's maybe 4; Warren, Sanders, the Seattle Green chick, and Nader. With celebrities, Michael Moore on a good day and I suppose Russell Brand is a little batty, but he speaks true shit and gets his hands dirty.(edit 2024. Oh, how people change.) Writers like Naomi Klein, Chomsky, Hedges (most of the time), and Taibbi. I can give as much shit about Bill Maher as your fundie uncle, but when he's lucid I can nod along. Mostly, I prefer Jon Stewart or Colbert, and increasingly Oliver if we have to leave real reporting up to comedians. Thankfully, albeit very recently, Vice's HBO show is filling such a massive void their facebook editorials should feel ashamed of sharing the same name.

But each name or organization I could point to feels like a pebble. They belong to the old women, and me, who have the time to read their books and “educated liberals” who can laugh more than cry about what's being reported. It's for the people who can afford HBO or aren't so baffled by technology they can figure out torrenting is easier than Yahoo Mail.

My world feels so small. It's why when I like my friends, I really like my friends, drunk “fuck everything” blogs aside. It's why I'm really sad when one of them gives up or becomes too busy or writes off my genuine concern as “just what Nick P. does or thinks.” I'm pushing a full stop when it comes to existential exploration and the exhaustion that comes with putting yourself out there so often to ill or non-defined ends. I don't want to be Nader publishing a book about all my letters that didn't get answered and call that not giving up.

Literally all I can do is wait and learn more. But even if I figure out something new to try, I feel like I'm going to be doing it alone, and setting myself up for a new punishment. Still none of those personal wins or promises to yourself are gonna matter. If I don't consider it about me, I can't endorse you making it about you. But, I want to choose life. That includes how our culture helps or hurts, even and especially for those who feel like they're stuck waiting around to die.