[1231] Add It Up

I think a lot about when I might believe I’ve “made it.”

I read an interview with a musician who explained that for many bands who don’t define success, it can feel hopeless or antagonizing that they aren’t getting a certain level of attention, money, or opportunities. If and when they are comparing themselves to The Beatles no amount of what they put in or get out is going to feel like “enough”.  This insight, of course, applies to many domains in life outside of music, and I think one of the reasons that explanation has stuck with me is because I’ve tried to apply the lesson to my day-to-day experience.

Is today “enough” for me? I woke up whenever I woke up after going to bed whenever I fell asleep. I was watching what I wanted to watch. I was playing with AI, or stated differently, creatively engaging with a tool I’m interested in and learning about. I’m going to another comedy show tonight after attending one yesterday. I’m digesting an apple fritter I got as a gift yesterday. I’m wearing a new band T. I’m on the verge of again-maximizing my base level of Last War. Food is cooking. I have enough money in the bank for a few beers and my debt consolidation payment coming up.

So far, even with the first few snippets of what I might say about today, yes.

Most of the days of my life look something like this. Even when I have a job, my days circle around the story of my otherwise fair-to-well operating environment. This is in spite of the negligence and fascism of my state and country. Even if, in general, I have a fairly precarious relationship to long-term employment. Even when it starts raining, and you can tell a compelling story about the different insurances I can’t afford.

The concept of “making it” feels all the more on the nose. I have to make a story of my context. I’d go a step further and call it something of an obligation of consciousness. Because my experience exists within some deep and perhaps unanswerable questions about what is “mine” or it means to “experience,” the narrative mechanism of my brain literally needs something constructed to anchor to.

When you’re poor, or poor enough, that constructed story ties intimately with your need to survive. A proud declaration of your “work ethic” might hide that if you didn’t, you’d starve. The hundreds, if not thousands, of times I’ve heard, “It is what it is,” from people in bureaucracies and social work environments. When your nose is pressed right up against the ever-failing human condition, you “accept” all of a sudden deeply “wise” and “obvious” things about what is or isn’t possible.

It works the opposite direction with every rich megalomaniac. You breach the bounds of “average” human activity? Now, all of a sudden, literally anything is possible! Including you being the one to lead us into your imagined future. The same trick is being played on your psyche though.  Your brain is under the impression it’s about “you.”

Many people have intuited ways out of this trap by finding themselves working “in service” to others. The difference between actually doing so and paying lip service to it could not be more clear. At DCS, I saw the people who got off on the power of what they could do to your family. Same in the prison. You can tell the people who are being led by the insecurities or inadequacies and laziness, dragging that posture over the struggling people they purport to serve.  Add to that, and I consider it a plague upon the modern condition, where your otherwise good deeds or service can turn into viral capital.

They say most kids want to be “influencers.” They want the money, prestige, and attention, superficially, like any musician might imagine about the lives of the biggest stars. The story of the work to get there will remain just as obscure. How many hours a day do you want to practice your instrument? How many posts do you want to feel obligated to every day? I question the desire to influence if you can’t wrap your head around the nature of what’s influencing you.

One of the ways I think I’ve found a degree of stability and quelled anxiety was to tell the story of what happened at each moment I got “the thing.” Did my life fundamentally change? Did my energy levels and time get utilized exactly as I imagined they would? Literally, never. I moved to the middle of nowhere, and I do play around with random projects and blast my music in the middle of the night, but it’s not my main preoccupation of time. I bought all the fancy woodworking tools, and have made a handful of things, but I’m not churning out an Etsy store. My “friends” and my friends don’t have any more or less time to spend with me. I’m still lightly concerned about my next unfulfilling job and how much it’s not gonna pay me to keep my head just above water.

One of “the things” I got was the ability to start going to a large number of shows. I’ve clung to that as a thing I both wanted, still want, and sacrifice other things in service towards. It was in making graphs with my show attendance data that informed my feelings about “making it.” It was my hundredth “fun thing” event last night this year. It was 109 last year, 143 the year before that. I’ve been playing catch-up and taking an active role in shaping my story by the things that I enjoy, like music and comedy, and the rituals around getting to where they are on display. You can ask me where to eat, drink, navigate parking, or best place to stand at dozens of venues across the Midwest. I can say, “I saw them open for” dozens of bands who are getting big or who I’m betting will.

I’m working on “more.” Because I want to not just attend these shows, I want to attend them on any day, in any location, they might happen. I want to get to them in a car that’s even more reliable than the ones I’ve been driving. I want a T shirt for every band I’ve even wanted to support a little. Is it a selfish or greedy goal when there’s so much going on in the world? It could be.

I’ve learned that the nature of my wants isn’t about “instead of.” I want it all in concert. Derek Thompson of Plain English and the book about Abundance fame, talks about how he can’t stay locked into one domain of interest. His brain begs the question of the broader metrics and narratives that explain something. I resonated with that idea. I’m not a “woodworker” or “musician” or “political junkie.” I’m not a “counselor” or “landlord” or “fan.” I’m just generally interested in the interplay of things and how we manage to react or work with them. I don’t want anything beyond feeling meaningfully engaged in that interplay. Because I accept that meaning derives from the narrative, I’m interested in continuing to write said narrative.

For me, it’s important that narrative is true. I mean true. I don’t mean “my truth.” I don’t mean arguing the weeds of subjective experience. I mean, for any English speaker, you can read these words. That’s a true statement. I mean, I’m a dude. I mean, I just ate meat, and regardless of how much suffering or intelligence I can attribute to the pig, it was delicious. I feel “intellectually” bad about it, and would eat pig cells grown in a lab and seasoned the same way if it were an affordable and reasonable option. I don’t feel bad enough to stop eating meat today.  It’s not telling a simple story of my righteous vegan posture or ambivalent negligence towards other conscious beings. It’s a true sliver of “me” and what I think it would take to change my behavior.

My relationships to things are always in flux. That’s not about making room for moral relativism. That’s about the exercise of accountability. Those who are innocently confused and those who are motivated to bad-faith reasoning will operate functionally the same way in the face of this idea. I’d call it a simple and easy truth, but for whom there’s an eternal mystical reality, one imagines it’s too disorienting for them to grapple with.  God can be their Rock. I’ll take Chris.

It’s true I want to get lost for weeks arguing with AI until I find it more useful than for torrenting and efficiently organizing my media. It’s true I want to be involved politically creating grassroots infrastructure to combat the rot I perceive at the base of our ability to collectively survive. It’s true I want to watch nearly anything that’s been turned into a TV show that was actually trying to say something. It’s true I want to learn how to produce music, and create worthy-of-sale woodworking things, and have the kind of “fuck you” money that doesn’t blink about empowering my cartoon soldiers on a gambling-adjacent phone game.

There are, easily, a dozen things I could rifle off about genuine desires I have that exist in each moment. Sometimes my presumed ADHD gets a chance to demonstrate that when I’m juggling 6 at once. A couple days ago, I undressed, turned on the shower, noticed something about my bathroom mirrors, and proceeded down a rabbit hole, naked, which included, cooking, power tools, a shattered bowl cleanup, and grime cleaning, before I found my way into the actual shower. Did I want to shower? Or clean? Or cook? Or adjust the mirror? Or not cut myself? Or ensure my tools were organized so I could find one easier next time? Or get that spot addressed while I’m down here? Yes.

I don’t want it all. I don’t want it now. I want to feel like I can do any of it in the moment I really want to do it. I want to celebrate the freedom of ambiguity more than feel trapped by obligations. I want you to feel as freely chosen as I was to choose otherwise. I want the power of my awareness and capacity to build as much as destroy. I want the conversation to start from that mutually shared place and routinely surprise and delight with where it goes. Given that I don’t really know where to begin in that endeavor, I guess I’ll go back to dinner, my shows, and keep my ears open for what the next story is that hits me.

[966] The Music Man

I’m pretty sleepy. I think I’m still gonna try to capture some thoughts. It’s 1:06 AM the night of a Beach Bunny show I’ve returned from. After the show, I got a burger at my new favorite burger spot in Indianapolis. There was a gentleman playing classical guitar pieces outside of it, and as I walked up, he was playing a piece I’ve practiced in the past. He got a dollar.

As I’ve veered hard into the “live shows” sort of category of monetary focus, a few things about music are unfolding. Music has always occupied kind of a weird place for me psychologically. Band was a thing I “did” more than “enjoyed.” I never got the inclination to practice outside of the classes I took. That’s not to say it wasn’t gratifying being a bigger fish playing-wise in the small pond of high school or that I don’t like we won 1st in jazz band competition. But overall, it was more that I “did” music, not growing to appreciate it and feel it for its many layers.

I don’t know if it’s a function of getting older, or just my general curiosity peaking deeper into music as a whole, but my relationship to it is evolving. When I first started listening to music in a more active way, I did kind of the same thing I’m doing now. I downloaded everything I could, ripped all of my friends’ CDs, and began building my library. I took pride in the mix my Ipod would spit out. Now, I’m buying as many shows as I can fit on a calendar, and opening every article cluing me into new bands. I’m watching shows that dissect songs and interview artists.

A few things are becoming apparent. I’m hesitant to keep “going hard” on the music line. The “magic” of amazing tracks or emotionally evocative pieces I’m starting to conceive of as the work or process that brought them to life. It’s starting to feel accessible, and like I might want to write and record songs. I don’t really like how that feels, and I don’t really think after I’ve steered myself into thousands of dollars of recording equipment, I’ll start pumping out appreciably decent tracks.

I think about how popular or deeply felt certain tracks are that I don’t care about. I think about all of the songs and artists I’ve connected with that others don’t like. What’s the nature of the connection? It’s as though no song is particularly “great” or “iconic” more than different types of songs are going to find pockets of timing and promotion that thrust them deep into the collective, at least in your language, consciousness.

I get tired of hearing what a “genius” any given artist is. When you hear constant fawning over the instrumentation, phrasing, or tone, I just feel like there’s a tendency to redundantly overstate what is the same technique any good to great musician is going to have to learn. How many times can you talk about an athlete’s motion before you point out, “Yeah, their arms and legs have to do that to run fast.”

The Beatles’ documentary was illustrative. Playing things at random, throwing out phrases here and there. Just like that, a hit single is born. Getting its first taste of public perception after being sang by The Beatles, of course. At a certain point in an artist’s popularity, it’s like giving too many props to the hedge fund manager’s kid for “starting his own company.”

When I listen to artists talk about their work, it often feels empty and cliché. You mean, songs evolve over time and mean different things to different people? You’re shy about sharing what the song actually means or how it was actually inspired because it’ll ruin it for someone else? That chord progression came from ripping off an old beat or rhythm previously ripped off on another song? You spent days in Pro-tools trying to make something that didn’t sound quite right sound good? You hate your own voice? Those words came from a low and lonely place and you really wanted the background noise to make the listener as disoriented and uncomfortable as you felt, or the opposite of that? You’re a stickler for good and personal lyrics?

These things aren’t unique. There’s an inherent “magic” to your individual experience or capacity, perhaps, but the story of how you exercise or display it is old news. Add what’s happening in modern times where few are really learning their instruments more than mixing sounds together and the superficial depth of the expression screams a little louder.

I like that I’m seeing these shows and learning of newer artists. I like that I have more points of reference and inspiration. I like that I am getting more to think about than other people’s problems or work-related bullshit. I like the suggestion that maybe my life is actually trending towards me being able to play or otherwise engage music in a way I’ve dreamed about when I was younger. I like that I can connect to so many shows and songs in spite of what I guess would sound like a pessimism for how they were conceived.

The concerts serve as a provocation. Are you dancing hard enough? Do you know the words? If you’re not having enough fun, trying to distract yourself from the pain in your back or feet from standing, what are we to make of the power of the music to take you outside of yourself? I’ve had two girls at two different shows make it a point to ask and/or apologize if they bump into me while they’re dancing or having fun. Are you fucking kidding me? WE’RE AT A CONCERT. If your anxiety or politeness is working harder than your “I fucking vibe with this song!” I think there’s something wrong. My first concert was Ozzfest, Warped Tour a week or two later. This was 2006 or 7. No one was apologizing for throwing themselves into you or fighting their way closer to the stage or kicking you in the head from crowd surfing. And that’s how it was supposed to be.

I make up rhymes or poems or goofy words for songs that lend themselves to improvising over. Most are duds, but when I can capture a moment or a feeling or my brain’s working really well, sometimes it’s really funny or flows easy or hits a chord in a satisfying way. Whatever the medium, it’s like there’s an eternal baseline we’re trying to return to via creative expression. How do you find that vibration? How do you stay there? Why, if it connects with millions, doesn’t it with millions or billions more? What makes it wax and wane in popularity or relevance? How many singers can have “the most beautiful” voice that just speaks to your soul if you’re listening close? Why are we paying the less than brilliant producers just as exorbitantly as any other with an occasional hit?

I want some things to retain a “magical” sense. I don’t want to know that a part in your song that gave me chills was an afterthought. I’ve had songs get “spoiled,” at least briefly, with new information about what they were about or in noticing something about the lyrics or artist. Ultimately, I let the songs connect because I want them to. A line from Fall Out Boy rings in my head often. “The songs you grow to like, never stick at first.” That was, in fact, a song I had to grow to like. I’m letting many more “small” bands occupy more of my listening time and effort than my “favorites.” I’m still debating investing the time and energy to see Rise Against, Senses Fail, and The Used in Cleveland, and all of those bands I’ve rocked as hard out to as any I’ve ever. I know many of their songs. I’ve also seen them all before, twice with Rise Against, and that appears to tell me I don’t “have” to work that hard to do so again, even if I’ll enjoy them like any other band I don’t skip when the shuffle plays them.

This is definitely my first pass in thinking about music in this way. All technical and exploratory like the docu-series and Rick Beato extrapolations I watch. What makes a song great? You do. How, when, and why? That’s more interesting to me than following the artist in their process. Maybe I’m just envious or deeply suspicious about the nature of a musical connection as much as I am of any other. I don’t know.

[938] Big Boy

It’s hard to tell precisely where I’m at right now. A couple days ago, I thought I might write the familiar stuck phrases in my head, tired, cliche, endlessly wrapping nonetheless, curious if I might actually spit out a mild insight or find a moment’s peace. That long moment subsided, and I decided to keep reorienting and cleaning my house. Yesterday, I felt my familiar boost of energy as the night carried on, cleaned more, cooked, and decided to buy every missing power tool one might need to run a professional woodworking shop.

Now, to be sure, I’m not a professional woodworker. The whole thing was put on a credit card. I will be pretty tightly squeezing the equipment into my freshly cleaned and organized garage-esc space. What was I thinking?

I made the decision to do so over 6 or so hours. I would add things to my cart, then go back to organizing. I would think about things that I’ve searched dozens of times, consult with my project board, and catch mental whiffs of frustrating passages read or videos watched where the person attempting to help or teach casually mentions the thing they use that I don’t have.

I’m a person who, as little as 4 years ago, habitually eschewed debt. If I didn’t have the cash, I didn’t even bother entertaining the idea that I could have something. What if it got repossessed!? What of all my friends being extremely stressed out and feeling stuck in miserable jobs because of the interest and their student loans? Debt felt like an irrational gamble predicated on impulsivity and a lack of wisdom.

I got a credit card, and then another, and then 2 more. I always kept them paid off. My limits were raised. My credit score became “excellent.” My home was not bought outright. My truck I threw on my highest limit card at the time. All have continued to be paid off, and I’ve only had to deal with interest in amounts I’ve most often been able to pay with reward points back.

It’s hard to ignore what people go into debt for. I know plenty who are still paying off their degree 10 years later. It didn’t get them a job that would pay “enough.” My car loan made me absolutely miserable. The truck I loved having, using, and paying down. The car loan has me still thinking I subconsciously decided to crash it and get the insurance to cover it (which it did). My house I worked myself to death for, getting desperate enough to ask acquaintances and all-but-estranged family members for a short-term $2000 loan so I might take a day off. Wedding rings, 30-year mortgages, major medical debt rack up the practically infinite bill. My stupid stepping-on-shit cat cost me $100 yesterday too.

I try to make investments in myself. I bought tools. I bought a means of turning the wood I have that’s in danger of rotting into smooth and straight pieces I can use for more than crooked “aesthetic negotiations.” I spent less on those tools than I did my truck, and they will enable me to practice building things, nearly anything I could dream of, while I’m up all night pacing and wondering how I’m so discontented despite access to so much of the world.

It hit me, not now, but after I clicked to complete the order. Just like every blog, I need to feel like I’m representing, working, or creating what’s “pressing” in the moment. I was watching “Get Back,” the new Beatles documentary, and it was immensely gratifying to see them create songs like I create songs, or blogs, or poems, or improvised structures that inevitably blow over in the wind. The act of creation, of being present, of watching something manifest that represents what you are, can do, or were thinking is my drug. It’s my perpetual reason. It’s what tempers my frustration, doubt, or pure hatred for everything that seemingly stands in the way of my flowing and extracting from any given moment. In this way, plans are either a treat or torturous. My brain started flowing, expecting, dreaming. How much rises to wake you up.

I think it’s pretty easy to forget that you have to practice what you wish to be. It’s not enough for me to own my stabbin’ cabin in the middle of nowhere, I have to exercise it. When I tell you I can pay my bills a year in advance with a month or two of a Mc-paycheck, what does that mean? How do I exercise that sentiment? I’m probably not running to work for a fast-food joint to show you how I’m basking in the glory. I’m exercising it by betting on myself and making an investment on what my mind gets up to with the tools in front of me and excuses removed.

I’m constantly oscillating between what distinguishes an “excuse” from a “reason.” I’ve built a room extension with wood that hasn’t seen a jointer and planer. It stands, it doesn’t seem keen to be about to blow over, but it’s certainly what I refer to as a “negotiated” space. I got a room, but a room built by an amateur with twisty wood. It functions as intended, and I’m probably more prone to criticizing it more harshly than it deserves. Regardless, the next room can be square, level, plumb, and true, using wood that cost me nothing but gas and time.

As well, I’m not working. It feels like a ridiculous thing to say, because of course over the last few months I’ve been renovating my buddy’s house so we can flip it. I built more of my fence, then picked it up when that section blew over. I’ve hauled trash and cleaned up both our properties. I’ve spent 150 hours attempting to get through the intransigent cuntiness of DCS “leadership” in trying to become a service provider. I’ve spent as many hours writing proposals, listening to tutorials, and navigating rounds and rounds of phone calls. It doesn’t pay well, quick, or at all, but it’s work.

I try really hard to keep my focus on the things I can actually do and control. I know DCS is akin to a timeless Greek godly entity merrily ass-fucking its way through anyone bothering to carry a hole. “Fuck fuck fuck away!” it bleats. As such, when I create a burnout loop attempting to contemplate why “power” “always” “seems” to be concentrated among the worst possible people with the worst intentions, senses of self-respect or esteem, and who would literally let people die through perpetually chosen negligence…who am I helping? How does that help me learn or create wood pieces singularly worth what I paid for the tools to create them? When does that prompt me to unclench my jaw, make some more phone calls, or hand out fliers and cards with our services?

When I deign to give advice, while there is a lot of merely listening and motivational interviewing, it’s to accept the nature of the beast and attempt to account for its many details. Most people don’t know what it really means to be addicted, especially the addicts. They might know pain in deeply personal and cascading ways, but they don’t understand how to turn it into anything else. I know people don’t care about my pain, not least of which because they’re people with their own. I learned how to create blogs. I learned how to marry my coping mechanism dying to be represented and heard into a work ethic humbled enough to spend hours scrubbing bathrooms and patient enough to juke and quiet screams and tears.

What’s the nature of the beast? To blindly fuck you independent of your feelings, intentions, or good works. Does a few grand sound like the biggest gamble when the game you’re playing in life broadly is trying to kill you with the snow on the road and mutating virus? If I have to work in a factory for 3 months, will I barely recall what it felt or smelled like as with every other gig? Who’s betting on me not finding private counseling patients when every provider in the area is perpetually closed for bookings? Who thinks we don’t have grants to pursue, deals to cut, and remote options to explore? Why reduce my life and effort to something meager and mild that begs for the mercy of abject pieces of shit?

I got a better idea of how to repay your debts and practice what it means to exist as a function of those debts. Speak to what has been afforded to you. If you can’t spend your money on something that is just going to produce interest and dividends by default, give yourself the tools and the chance to work them. I’ve made 30-odd scrap runs, helped people move, transported wholly unsafe lengths of wood, pulled hundreds of saplings, and loved every minute my truck enabled me to move and make the world. My house has allowed me to incubate the counseling business, experiment and learn in building, and house the dozen projects and futures I’m watching and betting on in any given moment.

If getting older has taught me anything, you aren’t doing anything alone. You’re ambivalent, complicit, or actively engaged in any given moment. Perhaps that’s where I find the real depth of my sadness. I know it’s not just one dumb cunt in a leadership role at DCS. I know it’s not just a singularly malicious billionaire or supervillain. It takes a village to perpetuate the assumptions. Ignorance, and justifications for life “as it is.” We accidentally stumble into solidarity for Black lives or unionization. We’re surprised at the chance to witness justice or accountability. We wake up every day betting the world will look like it did yesterday, and we’ll do everything in our power to deny our role in why it does. We’ll ask, “Who can blame me?” because life does suck, and you are poor, monetarily and of spirit.

I blame you. I blame you like I blame myself when I clench my jaw after handing the keys over to my most irrational and excuse-making feelings to drive me into walls I can’t scale alone. I’m always singing from a catalog of familiar songs. Are they building me up and prompting an enthusiastic recitation, or resonating like overplayed torture?

There’s still a world where I just sell everything and attempt to gain residency and higher degrees in another country. There’s still a world where a new variant comes raging back. The stock market still needs to crash. What if Gamestop actually does go into the millions? In the meantime, I’ll have the tools, a wood-burning stove, and debt I might pay off primarily with plasma or the sale of my Pokemon cards. Whichever choice I can land on that doesn’t catastrophize my circumstances or lock me and my jaw into an illusion of “stuck.” Maybe I just need a reminder shroom trip of how loose things really are. Maybe I need to go back to being the kid who went door to door to shovel snow and mow lawns. Those guys always seem to drive the biggest trucks.

[770] Shawshank Mode

This exists with a mission. I actually want to find something by the end. I don't really care about what's to be discovered along the way. I want the explicit feeling of a kind of charged energy or intention after doing away with whatever is daring fog to take over.

 

I'm so normal. I wake up at a consistent time each day and get tired around the same times at night, even on weekends. I entertain the thought of going out to do something irresponsible before quickly receding back to my couch. I even forwent a beer I was considering drinking, no doubt my subconscious trying to protect me from the unbearable stomach acid that creeps in if I eat or drink in the late hours (sips beer while proof-reading). I watch my shows. I pay my taxes. I get in inane troubleshooting conversations with Amazon representatives. I wear about the same outfit each day. I rearrange furniture like a troubled housewife looking for fulfillment beyond her kids and kitchen.

 

There's this huge problem I have with this. While I have hands, feet, and a face all connected to a body with other human things and capabilities, I'm actually a robot. The voice in my head that provokes these digressions is just a mirrored and entangled interpretation of infinite waves, and I never know where it's going or what it will get up to next. All the human body stuff tries to compel it one way, the news another, broken plans and working environments another. It's one thing to have an overbearing parent, perhaps, it's another to have every waking moment be compelling you to do this, that, or the other.

 

And then the irony! I've got no direction! I pick a direction, and the weather tells me what to do. I set an obligation, and I find myself slowly start to resent things that make me happy. Don't turn your hobbies into chores in a weak attempt at being “productive.” No one cares what you're learning or how good you are at music, the cynic in me says. I care that I represent mediums in a way that matches how I feel about them. I don't want to be a shitty musician winging it all the time. I don't want to Bob Ross my way into skirting over the years of practice for something passable. I don't want to compile ever-higher stacks of notes and books I'll never be able to talk about with anyone outside of an online forum.

 

What do us non-humans do? Or, what did I used to do? That's just it. I did. I just did! I just searched for and bought land. I just went to drug studies and faced whatever fears or skepticism I had. I just talked smooth and went for what's now hotly demonized flirtations. I challenged and antagonized. Now? I sit, and wait. I felt what happens when you burn too bright too fast, and persuaded myself sitting and waiting was best. Then I tried to regiment that spirit into something “wise” and incremental. But I don't work incrementally. I work now.

 

It's incredibly hard to explain to people what you're attempting to create when it's the ever-fleeting moment. When it's the spirit of momentum and infused enthusiasm. When it's the “peer pressure” to be or do a certain way. I piggy-backed what I liked about friends in college into pressuring myself to achieve more and faster. That's the vital human component, something to push against, I need. I also need hands at work, but I don't have selection pressure. I'm now only that thing that people think maybe has a better than chance shot of doing something interesting one day. In my head, I was maintaining an idea that whatever I was working on was exactly what I needed to be doing, and doing fast, right now, and whatever it cost it cost, time or money wise.

 

There's obviously holes in that strategy, but it also carries a certain kind of wisdom about not holding back and taking chances as they're afforded. Each new “normal” obligation I add to my pot, the less I get to be “at the ready.” It feels dumb to spend $500 for ten hours of website work when that puts me up 2 and half car payments. That's a problem. That's why I have my tiny house, so come hell or high water, that problem is designed to be phased out.

 

I don't “relax.” The reason my jaw clenches is because my natural non-human state is in devouring information, churning through people, and forcefully asserting myself all over the place. It makes me think of when people criticize my writing as though there's something to be gained from bemoaning the compulsion. You know how little shame I offer the drug addicts I talk to? There's an underlying guiding principal not being addressed, not mere decision making gone awry.

 

For some reason, this feels like the time to differentiate suffering from making yourself suffer. You can make yourself suffer by just restricting your diet. You suffer when you're starving. I'm not making myself clench my jaw. I'm starving for something no amount of regular paychecks and comfort can provide. And just like the populations starving for healthy food or non-destructive work and play environments, without huge investment, cultivation, and a fair amount of luck, there is no way to resolve in a healthy way. Here's where the stoics or Buddhists detach. I only detach as things and people become dead to me. I'm not entirely convinced this is the best strategy.

 

So what do I do? I could just keep writing and writing and writing. This is one of the few times I'm notably at the kind of “current moment” space I always want to be. It's this, or when people are freaking out or yelling at me. Talk about a weird wake-up call there. I'm the guy who's an embodied contradiction, right? So when you're flipping the fuck out, I'm having the best time possible. I'm certain I learned this as a self-preservation habit after enough crazy exploits with my mother, probably.

 

I have to stop writing at some point. I've got 60 books on my Kindle. I've got hundreds of comic book histories to try and get lost in. Those 15 games I bought for my PlayStation I've managed to complete less than half of one of. There's always something to do, right? There's always ways to leap right out of the moment and keep pretending you're going to find the right inspiration from the obscure line in a song or someone else's characters.

 

My concern is remaining outside of the realm of doing dramatic and rash things. It's not like I have a hankering at this moment, but it wasn't that long ago I took acid on a whim at 3 in the morning. Nothing bad happened, but neither did anything particularly good. I just managed to like The Beatles less. It was another petty attempt to externalize the responsibility for finding what I need and, no shit, it didn't work. To think we have such a stunted culture that you can have any number of rising YouTube personalities and celebrity types feel very good about pumping out mantras of having goals and making dreams manifest, but no one gets around to discussing what happens as things linger on the vine. No one deals with those who simply can't get what it is they need. If there's a will there's a way? Horse shit. It's like “life happens for a reason.” Yeah, maybe it's a bad one, as you can have any number of terrible ways you fill a hole.

 

Even in the “down” time my life feels trapped in, I search for that “productive” angle. Here again, irony, as I mock the idea of finding inspiration from a line, and that damn BuzzFeed article on burnout struck me in rethinking my “on-ness” as pathology more than productivity. I've always kind of been like that. But then, I've always been finding ways to cope in becoming mildly-ocd, neurotic, and, as I'm learning, maybe overcoming PTSD. I'm very slow to label, despite the many on offer, and I'm all-but prohibitive in my advocacy for constant medication. I think I have my shit, you have yours, and there's always a conversation about how to shovel it together. Not every veteran jumps at loud noises and I stopped dodging people moving to scratch their face or brush hair years ago.

 

The main thing that concerns me is that I'm starting to get headaches again. I'm sure they're partly from finding every wrong way to sleep on a couch, but even after the stretching and readjusting, I'll get them from just the...stagnation...of sitting doing whatever it is I'm doing at work or home. It's the old constant screen-time story coupled with the tragedy of soured expectations. It's the tunnel vision of praying towards the God of Payday. It's the professional-speak dressing up the mess of “state minimum standards” as “responsible 360 investigation.” You can be doing good work and doing well while still be doing the wrong thing. That isn't lost on me. There is no amount of deference paid to my job title that will feel like someone reacting to the environments I'd otherwise prefer to be creating. And that's even with one client calling me “the coolest guy he's ever met.”

 

I need an obsession. I feel best lost in something I can devour. I don't need it to even be something I like, but it has to be a degree of meaningful involvement that I find myself basically doing it all the time. It was supposed to be the fucking land! Manual labor has so many concurrent benefits, and I thought I was going to be ankle deep in so much dirt. One board at a time, one trip to Lowe's at a time. One weird but workable way of transporting something that has no business in a vehicle my size after another. Then the moment when you stand back and eye your handiwork or attention to detail. I don't want random “skills” or credentials that might maybe one day speak to something, like when I got my real estate license or in attempts to learn coding. I don't want to be the foremost expert on Marvel trivia or Smash Bros combos. I don't want to keep making failed attempts to ingratiate myself to the weird pockets of townies who technically share my interests, but in no way jive with the kind of non-person I am.

 

So at least we're pushing out some of the things I don't want to do. I still want to watch TV, but that usually has a hard and fast stop mechanism built in when I can't be bothered to focus my brain or eyes anymore. I do want to keep going to dance classes, which, after months of berating, I've dragged a friend into. I do want to keep planning interesting visits with friends in driving distance, and maybe one day be bothered to coordinate rides from airports. I want to keep writing away the fog. I'm not depressed or particularly sad. I'm comfort fog. I pay bills. I eat. I watch. I am not I, just American fallout. I really do want to play my guitar more. I look forward, more than most things, to being able to just be loud. I'm very likely going to make one of my “personal care” or “toys” expenses be as many online training and theory classes as I can find.

 

As much as I hate this language, I don't know how else to say it. I feel like “the universe,” having not gotten its clues through to me in any other way, just added numbers for me to stare at as evidence that I need to slow my thinking down and keep pillaging whatever it is I can make of my circumstances. No doubt I'll miss it and end up reincarnated or something until I figure it out. That's another idea I hate as well. I read a few short stories suggesting you eventually live through every life that's ever been, and by the end you get to like graduate to God-level or something. Fuck all that noise. What a useless idea that you need to be every gassed Jew to figure out why you shouldn't do that or every starved child before it sinks in surrounding them in greed wars was evil from the get-go.

 

I do find it striking that I manage to remain dead even, basically always, with regard to how I manage my finances. It's easier to make adjustments bi-weekly than think to myself I need to save for 6 months to buy (x) which may or may not be relevant by then. I didn't hesitate to spend the 15 thousand for the land. It was just math. 3 years of rent and utilities? I'll take the permanent spot. I didn't blow that money on indulgences or trips. My life generally stays about the same with or without extra money until certain conditions and thresholds have been met. If I had $50,000 in the bank, we start playing a new game. How long would that take? In theory, less than 2 years, if I never eat out, don't drink anything but water, don't buy anything new or fun, pay special attention to how I use my gas pedal, learn to love my functional clothing, and just generally adopt the mode and mindset of a poor kid who's stuck where he is with no expectation of moving.

 

Then what? I'm 32, accumulated a solid amount of personal and sick days. I've let the land basically stay static so as to pay off taxes and the car. I've cracked a few times and still pay for the gym or bowling I sporadically attend. I'm very tired and increasingly arthritic. I watch the seasons pass. I just float along with the sea of my circumstances. Surely, the world around me will resent that if I'm saying I'm dead at 30, to “waste my youth” as one of my co-workers expressed recently, by not appreciating 32, it will be as much or more egregious an offense. (She was upset I took a dance class...? I genuinely don't get it.) The over-arching story of my life could still start with the BuzzFeed-esc line YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR TOTALLY REIMAGINES HOW PEOPLE LIVE CLICK TO FIND OUT HOW as I thump my Thomas Jefferson fact about writing the Constitution at 33, so there's still time. And surely, every day in between won't be devoid of reading or surprises or morning laughs at the insanity my coworkers bring to safety staffing. It won't be bad, it just won't be right. One must always leave out the details and get airy and flip to really sell the angst. 

 

The truth is that I've been slowly making myself accept that story. Whatever you practice, you reinforce in your brain. The headaches are literally my brain molding to better cope and deal with a measure of complacency and “acceptance” as the alternative is pounding forlorn pain for what can never be. If I can fight back the in-love impulses that wretched my stomach and ratcheted my brain, I can snuff the palpable but mild disdain for every waking moment I'm not exuding the spirit of an overzealous teen-spirit awardee. You know, using grit and grinding my teeth in a way we can all respect. Of course, I'm always going to be looking for the hard out. I'm always going to try to talk myself into the poor financial decisions, like this New Orleans trip that just got canceled because I'm tired of feeling like I'm never caught up, and I don't need to spend $300-$400 for 22 hours in a car and a weekend of stranger's tits. It's something to do, not what I really need or want to be doing.

 

So maybe that's the motivation? Stay vigilant against all of the means that would seek to distract you. I didn't hesitate to turn down smoking, drugs, and booze before the moment I no longer did. I can just turn monetary temptations into the same thing. Keep the eye on the prize. Stop pretending like it's a good idea to blow half a paycheck over a weekend just because you can if you're only going to be thinking about your car debt or next room on your house. What's the reality for me? I'll sacrifice nearly everything and everyone in an effort to keep clawing at some goal or in alleviating some problem. There's probably an excessively long conversation discussing whether or not that's doing me any favors, but I think the evidence is fairly on my side when I feel better doing me.

 

There's always the rebranding and reimagining of the past. Remember #yearofbeingboring? That could easily be #yearofwatchingthebestmovies or #yearoftoomuchusefulinformation. That’s the fun and arbitrary nature of it all, after all. Do what you want, just don't try to bend the truth so far it snaps back and knocks you out. Again I return to the idea that maybe I'm just meant to be more alone, hunkered down, and disappeared for a while. Maybe every connotatively sad word I use to describe it sparks a kind of perpetual revolt and opposite feeling in my audience, sparse as they may be, their waves of influence no less compelling. It's clearly not my job to speculate or pretend I know the future. So, as with it all, right now, I just need to stop.

[436] Beacon of Dope

Take an immediately hyperbolic sentiment like, “I don’t believe in free speech.”

I’ve been feeling my gut want to flirt with expressing and justifying this sentiment for the past couple days. I’m provoked by statements that I think I can show to be threatening, deadly. I have a waning conception of “freedom.” I’m so steeped in how “I” can “break down” or “justify” what the statement means to me. I feel a crippling sense of irony seeping into every new line.

Again, I’m falling over the edge of thoughts provoked by the world of music. Watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony specifically. Whether the artist being celebrated is alive or dead, it feels like a eulogy to me. Nothing is genuinely bad at ceremonies like that. The tears are real. They flow from the kind of emotion that springs from a place so much bigger than you or your song. Somehow you and everyone you’ve touched are sharing the same moment.

And that’s the dreamy way to state it. Is it somehow more or less real than other things I could say? Timeless classics I’ve never heard of don’t bring me to tears. I can understand the marketing behind including artists that span generations and styles. I’ve looked up the biggest names and attempted to listen deeply and hop into the boat of emotionality and passion that you can feel from each person expressing themselves about their respective hero. I’m, often, just not that into them.

There’s so much to be said about the personal nature of experience. To my mind, it’s the difference between creating for personal reasons and the infinitely different ways your creation can be experienced. I think you approach a danger zone that pits “popularity” against “truth” and can only mangle what either could mean.

There can be no doubt as to your reaction. You felt the tears fall, the chills on the back of your neck, the unstoppable butterflies and urge to dance. In the moment, it doesn’t have to mean anything “more.” I imagine it’s the same sort of rush from winning a championship or nailing a job interview. You don’t want to hear about the handicaps working against the other team or that the person they were really after couldn’t make it. Aspects that are just as true, just as immediate and relevant independent of your awareness of them.

I think this is why you can experience, though I haven’t lately, people who are scarily passionate about a band. It doesn’t matter to them how many came before, nothing has moved them “like this” before or since. How could you not understand!? Then be prepared to tread lightly in how you talk about their gem. Objectivity needs to be left outside. Just feel it. But I also think this is the difference between the litany of videos of crying little girls at a Taylor Swift concert compared to the zero crying older women videos after seeing Paul McCartney for the 40th time.

Here I begin again thinking about “truth.” Perhaps that woman was a shrieking crying girl back in The Beatles’ heyday. Perhaps the power of their music then is felt just as deeply as it is today, but her sway and lighter mean as much or more than the tears back then. Perhaps there’s an extremely detailed handbook for making superstars willing to put in the time with a dedicated industry geared towards hijacking the naive, fallible, and inattentive brain. Perhaps that doesn’t matter.

For all my “cynicism,” a word I still use under protest, I’m no less compelled by musical heroes. That is, I can listen to Ringo Starr sing in an annoying “old guy voice” wrapping up the celebration of Rock and Roll’s latest wave of paid respects and think “eh I’m really not into this performance or song...holy shit is it cool to see THE BEATLES and GREEN DAY playing together!” Look at all those legends trading solos and singing about how they get by with a little help from their friends too!

I want to maybe shift down a gear and hit a new tone. I’ve been thinking a lot about the last book I read on empathy. At the same time I’ve been listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts. At the heart of the messages I’ve received is to work harder on putting yourself into the other person’s shoes. Before you bang the drum of patriotism or rush to signify someone as “evil,” genuinely ask yourself how you’d behave, what you’re government would do, and what’s really at stake.

Here I see the power of music. It’s an open invitation to jump into someone else’s world, cynically contrived or not. Empathy splashed around to be basked in at your leisure or desperation. Justification rendered impotent and insulting. You could no more question divine love for orphans when you absolutely should.

I think transformative artists and compelling work needs to be respected, protected, and inducted. I like feeling a fire or comfort from the right song at the right time. I remain “stuck” more concerned with the truth about Imagine not dictating our foreign policy. I get by knowing most of my friends are stressed, broke, and more lonely than they’d let on. I can actually play American Idiot, and no matter how angrily I sing or loud I crank the amp, we’re still pretty fucking idiotic.

I come back to my truth. I don’t seek to disrespect or degrade the work that has moved me too. It’s just work in a very specific self-indulgent direction. Self-indulgent doesn’t have to mean “bad” or “selfish.” It just needs a more dramatic fissure than a liberal artist getting pissed off at a crazy person co-opting their message and sound.

I pick up on habits of self-justification. How you feel being all that matters. The difference between how an artist speaks to you about war and your appreciation for the reasons we engage in and perpetuate wars cannot be understated. It’s bathing in a pool of empathic feelings not tied to the deeper reality, deeper consequence. I can’t call you “wrong” about what U2 means to you, but I can know how fucked Live Aid left Africa. No one was really trying to walk around in Africa’s shoes, even if they really felt like they were doing something good.

There’s a kind of happiness and motivation that is unmatched when you’re working in service to the bigger picture. I hit large periods of not playing music because I feel too dishonest. I’m not expressing as much as copying or drilling. I’m not telling a story as much as I’m trying to distract myself. I don’t want to see an old nuclear silo, poorly maintained and understaffed in nowhere Ohio, “accidentally” turn the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame into a wasteland. The situation not made better by my favorite bands in hazmat suits standing atop the rubble vigorously belting out a protest song.

The equivocation remains at the level of feeling and awareness. I’m not telling bands to fix war. I’m telling you to not allow yourself the feeling that they might. Your brain doesn’t split hairs about what you feel or can be made to believe. Certain truths need a louder volume. They need to beat harder than your heart and your fist. They need to ring with the many voices of adopted and respected realities you’re not habituated in seeking or figuring out. We sing alone and will die together.