[1182] Slow Burn

It’s been a little bit since I’ve dipped back into my onechannel. It’s the playlist I’ve created with every TV show I’ve downloaded that I haven’t specifically sought out to complete watching. Currently, there are 647 shows on it. These are shows I don’t consider worth slowing down from 2x to watch, at least yet. It’s all genres, languages, and eras. It provokes a unique sense in me when I’m immersed in it for hours at a time.

I think to create anything there’s an innate difficulty. I was listening to Mike Birbiglia and Ron Livingston talk about criticizing other people’s scripts and then realizing, “Oh, fuck, it’s hard to ‘just fix this,” whatever you may reflexively think about a line or scene, and then even harder to generate your own thing that isn’t rife with the same problems. Watching so many different types of things has softened me in how I might criticize as more objectively bad or poorly executed shows. It also has me thinking about the “why” so many of these shows exist or how they manage to occupy certain places culturally.

I’m sensing a distinction in comedies, for example. There’s a difference between zOMG RaNdOm, gonzo, irony, camp, or silly. That can be hard to make distinct, particularly from a creator’s point of view who has probably laughed at all of the above, messy mashing of them or otherwise, and considers them all part of their humor. Setting and maintaining a tone across a perhaps indefinite amount of episodes is basically impossible. At an individual level let alone at a professionally creative one.

Imagine having to maintain your “personality” every day, in every setting, and have it collaborated on with different departments so that it “made sense” or “accurately translated” through given constraints. You have a joke that is dead-on your humor and style, but standards and practices has opinions. You have a setting that speaks louder than any character will ever manage, but you can’t afford it. You have an emotionally compelling and pivotal moment in a character’s development, but it happened on the last episode, and season 2 is cancelled.

I often think many creator’s aren’t genuinely deciding on what lens they’re trying to tell a story. They just go with “comedy” and see what happens. That’s why you can get so many shows that might have different skin, but all sound the same or the “vibe” rests in a sort of middling place where you always feel like there’s more of a joke that’s supposed to be coming , but never arrives.

A show I love is Shameless. Part of what made me love it was that I could say, “Yep, that was shameless,” in scene after scene about every character. It knew its identity immediately, shouted it proudly, and doubled down at every opportunity. It didn’t feel like it was filling time in between incidentally shame-ish spaces. It wasn’t trying to persuade you of what reality was like for its characters. It was training the camera on exactly what it wanted and needed to say. If harder-to-believe things grew out of that, they at least had a reliable basin that felt honest to the environment that might breed such outstanding circumstances.

I feel cartoons went the way of arbitrary randomness. I get this sense after I watch a dozen Looney Tunes and then a modern Adult Swim show pops up. You’re tempted to pay attention to every moment of a 7-minute Looney Tunes skit. You’re invited to barely make-out at all what Assy Mcgee is even saying. Looney Tunes has visual jokes every few seconds like 30 Rock has verbal ones in almost every line. A show like Fairfax or Agent Elvis will build a unique enough visual world, but populate it with a kind of detached observational and circumstantial absurdity. What’s the voice? That you, in fact, recognize what people are wearing or are “supposed” to sound like?

I was scrolling though Trakt’s “discover” page and felt hollow. Another cop/murder investigation, or 10. Another doctor show, or 10. Another reboot. Another spin-off. Another “documentary” taking 8 episodes to tell you a 30-minute story. For the years of “identity based” rhetoric and public discourse, no one seems to have one, even and especially if a new show is based on having all of the boxes checked.

I’ve been exceptionally open to new bands and comedians the last 3 years. I’ve added or followed more than I’ve counted, but at least 100. One comedian I followed is coming to my local comedy club. I didn’t recognize him, and was only reminded when I scrolled through my follows. He, at least once, made me laugh, probably on the toilet. I scrolled through his page and decided he had enough of a unique voice and perspective to be worth checking out. I have 10 or more free passes to the club; it’s a no-brainer. Well, I didn’t have plans the weekend he was gonna be there. Now, it would involve an extra hour drive there, plus an even-later night drive, 3 hours instead of 2, to get where I’m otherwise going. Is his voice worth the extra gas money, time, and energy?

It’s mostly the wrong question, at least for me, as I tend to play things by ear based on my energy levels in the moment. I’m more curious about whether he would say it’s worth it. I want to know if he thinks his perspective and goals are things worth shopping around the country looking for laughs more than the thing he finds himself doing because he can.

I don’t think enough people, let alone creators, are asking themselves this. What are you trying to say, why, and what is it going to contribute to our overall experience of life? I don’t mean to suggest that everyone needs to have some deep and coherent purpose to everything they make. (I mean, have you seen how I write?) If you’re going to get on a stage, create or be cast in a TV show, learn the mechanics for bringing your animation, music, or comedy to the masses…I think you should bother more with why “you.”

Bill Burr is a comedian “the culture” is trying to mythologize. Why Bill? For many, he’s not a typically aggrieved east coast guy. He’s a “legendary ranter.” He’s not merely a funny comedian and creative who has been doing it long enough to have developed adequately. He’s treated more like a scapegoat instead of a goal. He’s what you don’t think you can be, so the more praise and lore you build around him, the less you need to concern yourself with your own comedic voice. Dave Chappelle was that for people previously. Dave recognized when people shifted from even knowing what the joke was about to laughing at the wrong things.

One of the first things that struck me about older, say 50+ years ago TV shows was how bluntly they dealt with issues I think a lot of younger people pretend were invented yesterday. We have these siloed screaming matches about race or gender, and there’s entire series based on those things many have never heard of. The crime or court procedural was dealing with heinous murders and unimaginable violence in black and white. Anything related to sex or its taboos shows up everywhere. You’re never reinventing the wheel, but you should be striving to drive the story in a machine maybe only you can build.

I theorize that people aren’t having genuine engagement with the things life throws at them, so they can’t discover their individual voice forged from the fires or compressive stress. They aren’t literate, so they can’t recognize nor say, “That’s close to what I mean, but here’s my flourish.” They aren’t curious because they’re exhausted by “the grind.” They aren’t genuinely creative, but more performing the performance of creativity in their Tik-Tok clipping and endless stream of podcast conversations.

Network restraints or dead-horse beating that you might recognize on any show, I do think real voices still manage to stick out. I do think shows that tap into the hunger we will always have while we’re alive to meaningfully engage experience altogether will most often win the day. At the same time, the barrier to entry is so low, you might have to sift through 650 shows to find the 5 or 10 worth being slowed down.

I’m decently creative when the inspiration hits. I’m not making a career out of it. I’ve never strived to turn it into something of monetary gain. I crack jokes. I do wood projects. I’ve started writing and creating music. It’s made me all the more sensitive to what is, or isn’t, in someone else’s creation. I get to ask myself if I could say that line, alone, and keep a straight face or feel sincere. I get to embody what I’m feeling, or don’t, as I reflect on what’s on offer. I don’t have emotional reactions to most things through most days. I can bring myself to tears writing and creating music. I can laugh till I cry. Measuring the contrast between connecting to that emotional space and why helps inform whether I even basically believe what you’re trying to tell me through your creative work.

I think it’s important to take as much space and time as you need to eventually “get it right.” The logic and engine of endless content or capitalism suggests that you need to turn into a machine your followers can gorge on indefinitely. I think the spirit of meaningful creation and engagement means you should do what you’re meant to do. Do it when you can, for your own reasons, and if you can both discover and celebrate that place, you’ll connect to that universal that let’s anyone else doing the same thing for themselves recognize and find you.

You might get cancelled, fired, ignored, endlessly misinterpreted and reimagined, but you’ll probably have something we should all slow down and pay attention to.

[1129] E.G.O.A.T.

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[1126] System Processing

This may be more outlining different things in little blurbs to talk about later.

I think about what would happen if Biden lost on the basis of Israel/Hamas. Typing that sentence alone will get this post banned from /r/self on reddit. You know, the self page where you can only reflect on approved topics if they don't get too "political." Trump, who enabled Israel in dramatic and unprecedented ways, who also happens to be trying to overthrow democracy, is your alternative? And alternative, not to what is actually happening or a deep understanding of the nature of the conflict, but alternative to your new religious fervor in service to your miserable concept of what a victim is. It's almost too dumb for words, but then, so is all religion.

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I got some stuff done today. Not a ton of stuff, but some gross stuff, some stuff that won't properly complete until probably around midnight tonight, and some stuff that's been flirting with paralyzing me in an ADHD stupor. I'm happy about it. This is the 2nd weekend this year I don't have a pre-scheduled show to head to. I noticed the surge of energy I had upon waking up almost immediately dissipated after I ate. Usually I forget to eat before I get in the middle of some yard work or project, so I deliberately tried to fuel up, and it worked against me.

I'm almost through the 4th episode of 601 shows, or that's the closest approximation, with some much further along, and some I just added to my list. I went from feeling stuck and overwhelmed at the prospect of watching the shows I had backlogged to feeling energized to add more and more now that I'm approaching them like TV of old times. There's 20 of those 601 I've put on their own playlist to watch sooner. There's 60 that are currently airing that I'm staying on top of. I've used ChatGPT and Advanced Renamer to give me code to make the titles easier to sort, name, and pull from shortcuts. I've been recording clips that either make me laugh, I think I can send as inside jokes, or I imagine I might use if I had a commentary/clip channel. I also signed back up for Drumeo for a 2nd time due to El Estepario. I should spend a lot of time practicing tonight and recording lessons so I don't have to keep paying.

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I'm deep enough into the woods of CASA to start having stronger opinions. It's filled with Lisa Simpsons. If you're curious why volunteer organizations that require high-level organization and competence can work, it's because the already overworked, brilliant, but deeply insecure people who run 1,000 miles a minute to avoid working at their core issues self-select. I say this having been born and bred in that same vein. The problem, and I can't really overstate this, my job is literally, one-for-one, what an assessor and permanency worker, if they were competent, paid enough, and properly supported, would do.

I'm not learning anything new. I'm not getting any special powers. In fact, I'm learning just how over-burdened your average DCS worker is from a new angle. This program takes what I'm finding to be an unbearable (not really) amount of time to over-explain what your life should look like with one case. One singular family. In a month of one day, three hour, online learning courses together, some modules to barely fill out, and a couple in-person base touches, and you get sworn in to "advocate for the child."

They go head over heels to pretend your job isn't actually to be an assessor or permanency worker. But you are doing literally the exact same things I was doing, just for free, and for one family instead of 12-15 at once every week, or maybe 20-30 on your permanency caseload. There's 725 kids who don't have CASA representatives. The existence of CASA altogether is a judge's response to inadequacies he saw in the system back in the 70s. I advocated for children's best interest my entire career. That apparently comes so not-naturally to so many people that no one is willing to hire and pay anyone enough to do so in a sustainable way, and the only way we can even pick at the correct solution is wait for the MCATS-taking, master's graduates with 3 jobs, and wildly successful retirees to step up.

I think I can do more of my inside stuff now and fire back up the squawk box.

[1114] A Mild Infection

A theme about what constitutes "healthy" is bubbling. Health is at once abstract in the positive, but explicit when it goes negative. It's hard or impossible to say someone who can do 105 push-ups is "healthier" than someone who can do 100. Conversely, we can pretty much say anyone without cancer is unquestionably healthier. Again, the opportunity to get specific beckons.

I just got done accidentally watching TikTok Murder Gone Viral. The people killed came from "happy" families, or were literal influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers. They were as superficially "healthy" as modern society can get. They're artistic, funny, well-connected and outgoing. They had clear and present futures and were infinitely consumable. The influenced-to-kill influencers in the first episode had millions of followers and money coming in.

How did these families get implicated in murder? How did they enmesh their lives with the darkest corners life has to offer?

To my ears, there was a fundamental dishonesty. The show resonates as extraordinary examples of perfectly ordinary realities we use to keep pretending. The "fun" Insta-lives that betray our lived experience. Our insecurities regarding our "healthy family" get pushed into their ultimate conclusions. The show interviews "best friends" and grieving parents who all wish they could have "done more." At one level, it's altogether another opportunistic dive into murder porn. At another, it's a chance to examine the stories after-the-fact.

I don't pretend to have a great grasp on some objective sense of "healthy." I do know, personally, that it feels particularly unhealthy to treat my thoughts, words, and actions as analogues for cancer. If what I say and do starts to eat at me or multiply uncontrollably, something needs to change. I'm as stuck in the world of biases and familiar self-destructive patterns as anyone else. I'm not going to notice them without efforts like these. In fact, some of my very first attempts at writing were explicitly trying to resolve my perspective of abusive and controlling boyfriend dynamics carried out on the girl I liked. Whatever healthy was, it wasn't what they were doing, and her description of it didn't match her face and body language.

We know smokers who live to be over a hundred, and people who run ultra-marathons and die in their 60s. We know perfectly blood-pressured people who eat nothing but junk, and those who will shit themselves for days if they eat the wrong things. The contradiction over the word "health" is in every anecdote, and every detail from your life that betrays the worst-sounding examples.

I said I watched the show "accidentally" because it happened to be on the front page of The Pirate Bay, so I added it to my queue, and once I saw it was only 3 episodes, and I could watch it at 3x the speed, I thought "why not." By the numbers, my TV habit would suggest "unhealthy." It doesn't seem to make sense. How can you watch, according to Trakt, the equivalent of 13 or 14 days worth of shows out of every 30? Details like speeding things up, watching things that don't require looking at the screen while driving, not watching intros, credits, or commercials, doing so primarily at night, or doing so while playing a video game or waiting idly start to make the picture clearer. One trip and back to my dad's house is ~12 hours worth of content. Drive into and back from town, 4 a day.

I could imagine my TV habit going into "unhealthy" space if it became compulsive. It would be unhealthy if I had wild swings of emotion were I interrupted or unable to locate what I wanted to watch. Anything, TV just feels like a good analogue, can be the avatar for a set of unhealthy behaviors. The internet and scrolling is normalized to the point that we couldn't measure how many hours we're on our phone if we tried. There's programs for it, and we're not downloading them. They had to literally quell a budding mass hysteria about facebook going offline for less than an hour.

But back to murder. None of these people's tragic behavior or fates happened in a bubble. They whispered something to a friend. They posted their intention. They received praise and attention for their "off-handed" remark or for the example they were setting. Yet, the legions of fans and followers, loving friends and family, remained powerless to keep them alive. Something vital was missing, that I think starts with the story of honesty, and ends with the nature of accountability.

What does that mean?

You might argue that a social media influencer isn't obligated to "tell the truth." In fact, it's regarded as something of a media job. Coke commercials don't advertise how much they contribute to microplastics in the ocean. Leaving aside the assumptions and ethics of big business behavior (and fuck is that a lot to leave aside) the role of "influencer" feels almost too appropriate. They influence as they are influenced to produce the kind of content that fuels a certain form of engagement. It's not engagement that's concerned about how many hours it's engaging or the consequences of its content - at all. Occasionally, you can get Coke to act like it's recycling or cleaning up a waterway.

Is it "healthy" to be an "influencer?" I suspect most people would react to the question with at least a mild disdain because it's "obviously" something we all kind of want, right? Kind of like celebrity. We don't want fans ripping our clothes off or bothered while we're eating, but to strike joy at the very sight of us? To get paid for seemingly no reason beyond our winning personality and talent for talking? Stories of stars being driven mad be damned, you'd do it better. Add to that the story of your current mental health and conception of yourself, and anything that upped your prospects or battled a sense of loneliness and being lost is going to feel perfectly healthy.

I liked when people called my name from across the park because my parties in college reached a certain level of influence and popularity. I did not like being pulled into a random dude's video, after being kicked in the head by several crowd surfers, at Warped Tour after Less Than Jake invited me on stage and I made out with a stranger, making me concert-famous for a day and a half. Whatever "just enough influence" to gratify me is, is somewhere between those examples. I like when people in my field have heard of me, because I take pride in my work and they know I don't fuck around. I don't necessarily like if people feel they have to "warn people" about me in advance of us meeting.

Every abstraction asks the same thing of you in order for it to make sense. Can you ask specific questions about how you feel or behave? Can you then answer those questions honestly? Is your family "healthy?" Yes and no, it's not a good or specific question. Do you respond appropriately to the asks or demands of any given member? Now we're getting somewhere. If your mom's anxiety provokes yours indefinitely, your behavior relative to hers probably needs to change. If you find yourself making excuses and acting in fear when you think on one or more of your dynamics, ding ding ding, you've found a relationship to explore! Almost no one "gets away" from the pool of relationships and habits that groomed them. Why? Well, who's bothering to ask the questions, and when has the cultural influence ever trended towards real honesty more than performative "realness?"

I'm not suggesting you need to be "too blunt" or lay every grievance you've ever had out. I'm saying you can measure the relative "health" of your behavior, environment, and words in these kinds of conversations with yourself. If I didn't get my ass up and do things regularly in service to my other goals, feeling bad about myself and uncontrollably drawn in, I'd have a TV problem. If I surrounded myself with people who make me feel like shit or practiced apologetics for abusive dynamics I have a hard time recognizing, I'd need to work on getting myself as relatively isolated and refocused as I currently am. My goals for the business, my land, or my relationships are all subject to the same scrutiny and can become problems in complicated ways the less I bother to identify patterns and evaluate how I feel.

I don't think it's healthy to seek attention for its own sake. Functionally begging for codepency erases the path to being accountable for what you're putting out and whether you can navigate the attention it is attracting. It strikes me as emotionally immature. It's healthy for a baby to scream for "no reason," not you. I don't think it's healthy to treat a performance, which all social media is, as "normal," cramming the connotative baggage of "good" and "healthy" and "obviously so" into the weight of its consequences. It's healthy to share things that make you laugh, or think, or that you're proud of, but not when it's compulsive or you feel unduly obligated. Most of Prince's music sucks, and has gone unreleased. He's a dead drug addict. If you're moved to conflate his fame and influence with his health, you might have his same problem. The walking dead are still walking, getting those steps in!

[1075] Wrapped In Plastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1007] The Long Com

I want to explore what I mean when I say I want to experience “everything” by way of popular culture, TV, or more. This isn’t true, obviously, on its face. There are plenty of popular things that I have no interest in, but happen to catch because, maybe the mood is right, or I’m otherwise not focused enough to care what’s whizzing past my eyes or in the background. Over the last 5 hours, I’ve caught myself “holing out,” where I find myself falling down an infinite series of thoughts regarding actions I can take in service to this little “project” I’ve been engaging in; I’m building TV channels.

It’s another “weird” and “particular” thing that I’m doing that I can’t really discuss or share with anyone else. The closest analogues are going to be whatever Netflix cultivates for you, or your particular set of subscriptions on YouTube. Everything I’m using for my “channels” has been downloaded, renamed, shuffled about my hard drives, and been a kind of time investment that courts a confused dog head tilt. The “purpose” also feels terribly obscure until I get this contented feeling as my vision comes to life. Were I a programmer, I could probably build something to do what I’m doing by hand in a manner of moments. I’ve tried to find and pay for someone to do what I want for these channels in the past.

I’m organizing and ordering my shows to play in order and by how I conceive of them per my interest and emotional salience. Given there’s an incredible amount of TV, most of it is only going to resonate at the level of it’s structure. When an individual show sticks out, I get an opportunity to reflect on why. I’m searching for thought-provoking surprises and insight into myself. I just watched the first episodes of about 30 different shows over the last few days from I Love Lucy to the modern One Day At A Time. I went on ahead to complete One Day At A Time, as well I noticed Malcolm in the Middle stuck out to me.

Something is invariably lost in watching an older-than-you show. You can’t experience what audiences at the time did when something was “revolutionary” for its era. What you can do is gain insight into how long certain themes have been on people’s minds, and see how far we have or haven’t come in dealing with those issues. I don’t underestimate the impact of TV on its ability to mold minds, particularly with the current circus and psychosis we’ve been going through with fascism flirtation lately. I’ve listened to a number of Trump biographers and historians who are convinced without his TV shows, he never would have been president.

What resonates with me about any particular show? Is it familiar? Is it personal? I vibe with Bernie Mac and Malcolm because it feels more “real” than most shows. Ms. Pat is a modern analogue. One Day At A Time and pretty much every Norman Lear show aimed to have real discussions where a lot of artifice and cheese would otherwise dominate. We all want to bask in the glory of some lie or another, even if it’s that our preferred TV show is more or less “real” than the drama we experience in actual life. You don’t really find a tension-ridden, yet still happy and respectful conversation with fascists, no matter what the last episode of One Day At A Time suggests. It, like all TV, leaves you with a dream. They suggest you can always fade to black with an open-ended imagination and “perfect family” in tact without feeling the consequences of things going wrong or staying neglected.

Perhaps that speaks to my interest in TV broadly. The more debased and simple our media, the more we can surmise that the population lusting for it is basic and simple-minded. I can’t really stomach most of reality TV, and haven’t been able to since I was a child. My mother was almost obsessed with Anna Nicole-Smith. She liked 90210. She’s an absolute lunatic pushing 60, and was emotionally immature and abusive to me growing up. Does “dumb” TV “cause” that? Of course not. Could I design a test with better-than-average predictive capacity that assessed your TV watching habits and the health of your relationships? That’s something much further down my rabbit hole, but it’s not hard for me to imagine.

For a good portion of my life, I thought I only watched “good” things. You know, the preferences of a young boy with goofy comedies and action movies with the biggest stars. Subtitles? Miss me with that. Slow, conversational, or romantic things? Boring. You get older, and you realize more and more not just the appeal, but what each “weird” or “different” or “bad” movie is attempting to speak to. You find yourself drawn to rom-coms? Maybe there’s an immense loneliness. Or maybe there’s an intense childhood naivety that’s positively inflamed with each stoked memory of the beautiful faces tacked to the first time you saw them. Was your first crush Anna Chlumsky from My Girl, or one of Kevin’s girlfriends from The Wonder Years, or Topanga? Or were you not a straight white guy like me? [2022 gotta qualify everything!]

Now, I watch TV from an analysis and almost researching place. If I have no interest in The Flash, or the vast majority of what DC has ever produced, I want to figure out the qualitative difference for me and the culture at large why I’ll put up with the weaknesses and cringe moments of Agents of S.H.I.E.LD. but struggle, if not almost get angry, at any isolated 10 seconds of an Arrow or CW show broadly. A line from Bill Maher recently was about not forgetting, “We’re entertainers, and what we create needs to be entertaining,” (not a direct quote.) Your brain has been worked on a great deal to be persuaded that a certain style, format, word choice, and subject matter is entertaining. One way you can observe that is by watching TV that all “fits” in its genre or style across time. The Black family, Latino family, Asian family, white families, rich people, poor people, working-class people, gays, country folk, city folk, and even dinosaurs and aliens all speak the same language!

You get a Larry Sanders who breaks the 4^th wall and then you get to ask if it’s a case study in subversion or a meta-subversion of the impetus to think for yourself and individuate once more. Is any real insight or success built from an individuated voice? Is it just the dawning of familiar clothes and walking down familiar streets reminding us all that we’ve been here before, will be here again, and don’t need to worry about ever moving or changing into something new or unfamiliar?

There are “individual” voices. People stick out from the baseline, and they get famous or infamous. I’m a fucking individual, whether I can chuckle at an array of sitcoms or not, and whether I occupy a dozen cliché boxes about men or otherwise. I think it’s often read into a certain kind of dignity and obligation when one invokes the “individual.” Individuals are supposed to be “aware” and “real” and it’s the individual who will recycle and sacrifice their comfort or benefits of joining the herd to stand for a beleaguered minority opinion. Being an individual has no inherent dignity in and of itself. See: Kanye West.

Marc Maron, Al Jackson, Bert Kreisher, Kyle Kinane, Jessica Kirson, and others are individuals who have provided me pain-inducing laughter. Are they not popular or good at what they do by tapping into universally-relatable themes? Are they not mining the stories from their lives and shaping them around comedic timing and language? I barely, if ever, remember what any given comedian was actually talking about, no matter how much they’ve made me laugh. I’m immersed in how they’re telling it. I notice the difference in how Bert Kreisher tells a story from the first time I heard it, to the 100^th time he has to perform it, and how it does or doesn’t make me feel each time I hear it.

We know internally that a certain pacing, structure, predictability, and familiarity sell. It’s why we buy tickets and subscribe. It’s why we find ourselves perpetually frustrated when “I thought!...” doesn’t match up with reality. Our thoughts are continually subverted by different narrative structures ever-aligned with what’s most entertaining. You get generational trauma from habituated denial and abuses going unaccounted for. You get generational stupidity from the habitual subversion of any accountable and meaningful engagement with the information patternizing your mind.

I’ve drifted a bit away from the exploration of the hole I find myself in. What does it serve me to develop a “deeper” and “more comprehensive” opinion of media across ages? Why occupy my “idle” time with The Golden Girls and not another phone call looking for a referral for my new business? It’s not an either/or and is a different class of ways to engage my time, but another way of phrasing it might be, aren’t there considerably more useful ways to exercise my time? Doesn’t my business mean more to me than seeing what generic caricatures are arguing about?

I’m someone who recognizes how little interest he has in TV the moment there’s anyone to do something actually real with. What I seem to discover over most minutes of most days is that those opportunities don’t exist that often for me. What’s “actually real” mean? Exchange with other conscious entities. Whether it’s conversation, dinner, traveling, or vibing to the same tunes. When you don’t have that, or you don’t recognize the quality of it, I think the TV characters take on a new perverse kind of meaning. They are where you find a happy home. They are where you find a reliable and consistent setting. They are where you find trust, growth, resolution, and predictability that is otherwise never on offer unless you’re courting familiar misery.

I don’t watch TV while you’re sitting next to me unless I’m trying to introduce you to something I find compelling; unless I’m trying to share something. Why I’m sharing it is most often to see if you’ll laugh too or have something interesting to say about how the drama is portrayed. My TV-watching habit may have started as an OCD accounting for things I enjoyed when I was younger or desire to claim more of that “everythingness” I’m after, but it’s turned into this preoccupation with trying to “connect” with people in the only way on offer. I can’t pretend to care about my regional sports team to the extent people do, but the disconnect and superficiality is deadened when it comes to shows we may have both seen. It was good, wasn’t it? Like that throw to 1^st base…or that comment from the new demagogue.

I think creators need to bear in mind the contexts on both sides of their own mind. “You,” eager to breakout and make a name for yourself, and “you” modeled around your heroes and cliches of your preferred mediums. What do “I” ever want to say? I’m mostly discovering that with each new thing I write, after whatever I’ve watched pushes me to do so. I have ever-vague, until the decision needs to be made, concepts of what I value and think I/we need to survive. So I watch TV indefinitely until you call me to do literally anything else. I know, through examining my own circumstances, that you aren’t feeling like you’re doing anything particularly more or less “meaningful” than me, or your version of watching TV, so you feel like there’s nothing to exchange. Like there’s nothing to protect or insulate from the influence of our different contexts. I think this is an ongoing torture and tragedy of what it means both to us as individuals and our potential relationship. Our obligation to use our voice is indefinitely sublimated.

In fact, this blog is what I want from all of my TV watching. I want to find what moves me out or away from the task of building a 150-show channel and spending money and time looking for programmers so I can keep a running dialogue of family-friendly and network-approved ways to not-discuss things in my head. Why do I need their jokes? I’m not hearing any of yours. Why do I need their drama? They engage and resolve it in a way you don’t and seemingly never will. Why do I need their structure? We’re not building anything together. Why do I need their family? You want nothing to do with me, as such. My character needs to fit into a narrative you can stomach and summarize. That I’m still being written, and doing the writing, doesn’t work because it naturally obligates you to do the same. You might whisper that obligation to yourself in private, and then proceed to never do so, so then it’s any wonder why I’m able to conjure so much resentment and silence.

A TV character is always going to have the right thing to say. Right for them. Right for the era. Right for the family dynamic. An arc begets an inevitable conclusion. We don’t engage the consequences of an abstract “perpetual conclusion” we’re living within. This moment is that conclusion where you take responsibility and obligate yourself to a purposeful engagement with the world, other conscious beings, or not. This moment you seek inspiration, or you don’t. This moment you’re living in service to your highest ideals, or you’re at the mercy of the neglected end of so many consequences. Evidence of your awareness of this moment is in the utilization of your speech. When you don’t speak at all, you conscript us to death. Perhaps the most sincere and impactful TV producers recognize their feeble attempts to communicate this in any other manner than the familiar formats so practicality requires acquiescence.

Perhaps, whether it’s the cheesiest TV show or the most convoluted yet on-point philosophical digression, the question of what drove it to exist and the impetus to understand it for how it impacts the culture or individual remains the same. I don’t think you can understand either unless you understand both. How does your individual move and orient in the world? What is that individual over there attempting to move you or orient you around instead? Are you or they malicious, ignorant, or both? Are you or they consistent, and in what? Will you allow a de facto ignorance to let you off the hook for taking more responsibility, using your voice, or seeing clearly the mess you’re making?

I’m not going to find “me” or “my personality” in a TV show. I’m not going to join the family. I’m not going to let myself off the hook of building what I know I need or speaking to what I think is missing. I need accountable individuals speaking to how they’ve brought themselves a little bit more stability, predictability, trust, and meaning into their day. Where do you think I’ll find that?

 

[1000] Warped

As the year starts to feel like it’s winding down, and as I’m back home trying to recover from an immense amount of walking over the last few days in ill-equipped shoes, here we go on my (not-technically) 1000^th digression.

I would call my position in life extremely privileged. From small things to grand scheme, I can point to what I like about being me and, more important to me, what I wouldn’t like about being someone else. I can readily dream about becoming any number of things in manageable timelines and within different budget restraints. I’m almost always feeling healthy. I’m never hungry. I’m capable of learning new things, stepping back and thinking about difficult subjects, and confident in my ability to “go,” “do,” or “be” whatever example I wish to set in any given moment. I feel so powerful that I primarily worry about what happens if and when I let that power get out of hand.

Each thing I do to demonstrate that I’m more than under some debilitating delusion often serves as something that isolates me. Whether I turn on a capacity to, seemingly, over-indulge in seeing “all the shows” or dive into an interesting subject, I’m doing something I can’t really relate to others, or doing so in a superficial way. Take TV, where if I watch “everything,” and you have a favorite show you’re often quoting from watching it so often, I’m not watching it the same way, so even if we share liking it, it’s different. If we both work in the same field, I’m not haplessly trying to “help,” or make up for my childhood, or falling for the manipulations of the desperate and addicted. I’m trying to manage and hold accountable and utilize my perspective verses pray for mercy from it.

I like lists. I’ve posted my list of things I’ve been doing all year several times. Each thing I move to the “did that” category is a little dopamine rush. The lines on that list represent hours of driving, walking, singing along, laughs, money, good luck in weather and traffic, Instagram posts liked by the artists themselves, story reference points, food beforehand, solidarity, cultural appreciation, and inspiration. They, occasionally, represent a shared experience with anyone I’ve known for longer than a day. I have all the power in the world right up to the point after the invitation.

I try to be what I feel I don’t have. I’ll be very deliberate in how I speak to this. I have people who will invite me to things. I have people who will tolerate me. I have people who I think like me. I don’t have someone who would genuinely like to see me or extend an invitation to pretty much any show or activity like Cedar Point. I occupy a very specific place in people’s minds, and it’s not something “easy” that can just be around or part of whatever they’re doing. I, in an explicitly opposite manner, would think I’d died and found out I was wrong about heaven if any combination of anyone I’ve met or enjoyed were around in a reliable way to hang, meet each other, or otherwise buy-in to a series of life experiences that preferred togetherness verses being apart.

Jordan Peterson, his ongoing convoluted legacy aside, still delivers lines that keep me thinking, even if I find them more worth challenging than incorporating. He’s said to be the kind of person who is best for someone else as opposed to finding someone worthy of you. It was a sentiment offered to men who are struggling to find a mate. Peterson is a big proponent of marriage and recognizes a lot of the mental crisis space modern men occupy. I don’t share their plight, and I get what he’s getting at in offering the advice, but I also recognize how that would play out in someone like me. I, still, worry about persuading myself into being an unrepentant manipulator. The second I recognize what you need me to be, well, are we to disregard the details as long as we post smiling pictures and make an earnest attempt at an honest family?

Again, I try to be what I feel I don’t have. You don’t have to “discover” and “play to” what I freely offer up about what I desire or how I wish to go about getting it. You know I want companionship, honest companionship, built on a shared desire and individual perspectives drawing from and contributing what only we can. I don’t want to play you or spend our time together with me probing for vulnerabilities. I can’t really stress that enough, particularly because I’m so good at it, I fucking enjoyed being a DCS assessor. Playing on vulnerability, stress, ignorance, and with more power than damn near anyone should be trusted with is like checkers. You move in specific ways, hop here and there, but there’s only 1 of 2 ways the game is gonna end. I can’t figure out why people either pretend not to know the rules, get bored and give up, or don’t copy what I’m doing.

No one shares their intimate convoluted or seemingly contradictory and angry confused thoughts? Here’s my thousandth, one fucking thousandth, stab. It’s here I can iterate on how much I appreciate about my life in spite of what seems to come up short. It’s here I can explore why turns of phrase stay lodged or images from an endless ream of experiences stick out. The answer to “why,” is so often “for the record.” Just so I can record that I did so. I showed up. I saw. I invited. I tried. I’m still trying.

The “Is For Lovers” festival I went to is one of the several that have spiraled off from the ending of Warped Tour. I almost want to call the force that was that tour a “movement.” I think it’s as large a unifying marker of a certain style and sensibility that most of my cohort has and there’s a reason it’s having a cultural resurgence. All that angst and anxiety didn’t go anywhere. All the emotionality turned into fascism, and the still-arbitrary directions we’re headed have at least turned into a little extra in the bank after 15 years to “splurge” on an hour or 3 drive and $100 or less ticket to scream, “I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare,” in your 30s.

Ironically, the music starts back up after the pandemic, and you can still feel the hesitation to turn the numbers in any direction outside of the circle pit. Where do you want us to go? Up off our feet! Side to side! Along the wall of death! I will not be able to shake the dissatisfaction of attending female-lead shows where abortion or voting don’t make it through the mic after Roe. It’s not just girls who need to be speaking up, of course, but the only show I’ve been to that’s made even slight mention to the veritable pending dystopia, I forget, because it was almost in passing before firing up the next song. The viral Dropkick Murphys video trumps anything I’ve encountered in person.

We’re scared, or more specifically, you’re scared. You’ve been scared, for many many years, and you’ve been quiet for even more. Just like you don’t think to speak your mind about me until I’m months or years-removed from the picture, and then of course not actually to me, you don’t speak to the raging dumpster fire in real time. You don’t locate a hose, bucket, or even bother to spit at it. You grow psychologically “conservative,” trying to protect your precious concert, idea of family, or “empowering” opinion in spite of literally everything else. I call myself a spite engine, but what I’m contradicting is the fundamental existential spite that works to kill everything I try to be. I want the testimony to affirm, not struggle through choking and tears to defend and excuse the indefensible and inexcusable.

I’m not complacent about not having the kind of connection or solidarity I seek. I’m still sensitive to the resentment it conjures when I’m prepared to sacrifice in service to it. I’m mostly just confused, because time still feels illusory to me. I don’t know why you’d wait until tomorrow to do something better that doesn’t cost you anything. I don’t know why you’d prevent yourself from coming to the show or keep antagonizing yourself with my presence. I’m 34. You can’t tell me, “When you get older you’re gonna realize!” as though I don’t appreciate the use of my limbs or made a certain kind of peace with my impending heart failure. Like I haven’t been in relationships or worked consistently or been responsible for people’s lives.

We’re not really together, right? Like hundreds of isolated anxious bags of feels all at the same show, but finding no genuine peace or resolution as they bang their head or throw themselves against the pit.

I don’t really believe I’m ever going to find what I want. I know what I want is a process, and I’m practicing my process, and I’m making bets on ways I can turn that process into something capable of processing more. It’s not a “thing” or “person” to find. It’s not a few years away or “over there.” It’s no more lost than it is a secret to anyone who isn’t practicing the same thing as faithfully as I try to. I’m honestly sad that in all the years since college we haven’t figured out anything about what brought us together that would bring us back. I’m terrified that I could hold in such high regard people who won’t speak or answer back. I don’t think the insecurities or drama of this era are unique in the choices on offer for how to live and orient in the world.

I know the power of doing things poorly, with deception, or in secret. I know the insane impact of even one extra hand to help in doing something better or the right way. We’re not choosing the right way. We’re not fighting to put our energy into things we believe are worth the time and money. We don’t believe in each other, because we’re not speaking to each other, and even when we get the stage, we’re scared and unwilling to say what needs to be said. I don’t really see us getting better nor think the music will save us. I don’t think the lives you’ve cut out for yourselves thus far will have any more room for me or what I’m doing than they have so far. I don’t really think you know what I’m doing though, anymore than you know how to play checkers.

I’m sure you’d just tell me you don’t like checkers and tell me I can’t expect everyone to play my game like I invented the fucking thing lol on your way to blissfully ignoring the point.