[878] Foul Balls

I'm going to try and write a blog from my phone. I reflect on a lot while driving anyway, but having chased out another "friend," talk of a coup, and a recent interaction with someone regarding my facebook available plot post, there's much to sort.

Underneath, I'm always me. I'm always mean. I'm always ready to engage. I've spoken to this before in thinking about Riddick and the scene where a character goes, "but the Furyan in me..." before aiding his kinsman and evaporating in the sun. I'm anchored by this sensibility. I'm considerably worse off as a person when I try to ignore or deny it.

The part of me that maligns hope resides here. When I want to believe I'm speaking to something important and universal, this part calls you all dead inside assholes ready to ignore or lash out. It doesn't fundamentally believe in anything beyond the anxiety certain thoughts and interactions provoke. It's constant. I think if and when people have that same constant sense about themselves, it's riddled with corrosive doubt about its utility and significance.

I think people are broken. I think this because I regularly see the same patterns in how they engage with the world that breed the conditions for their problems to get worse. They celebrate dishonest interactions. They shut out "negativity." They know full-well what "too much" means to them, but have no concept of "enough." They'll feel overwhelmed by anxiety, shut down, defriend, but they'll never find the language or motivation to address the heart of the anxiety. They never get enough of the cycle through bad emotions, self-righteousness, and silence.

I talk all the time. I talk calmly and professionally. I say fuck and cunt as often or moreso. There is a constant flow of thoughts I occasionally am not plagued by and can refrain from voicing. I've habituated relaying my experience, so it lets me draw contrasts and parallels to the crumbs of people's lives that they relay to me. I'm impatient with people who insist every conversation needs to immediately devolve into character assessments and accusations. I can play that game too, and it's boring, immature, and unhelpful. I'm ambivalent enough at my core to choose to engage stupidly, incorrectly, and often.

What's happened is that I've seen no evidence being less than a forceful insistent cunt gets anywhere. I simply don't believe perpetually appeasing feelings and stepping around confrontation is healthy or a strategy for long-term survival. The anger manifests regardless. It becomes intractable and maybe runs for President. It becomes the mechanism by which you tear everything down, now with zero mercy or perspective as to why or whether you actually should.

I like to destroy. I don't like to destroy for destruction's sake, but I like to break things that need broken, and I don't mind picking up the pieces. I've shattered dozens of conceptions of myself. Depending on who you ask, they'll affirm I've brought down businesses that deserved it. I know that I've destroyed things I shouldn't have and don't want to mirror in my future. What I'm not is someone who tries to deny we're living in a perpetual state of creation and destruction which is wholly ambivalent to our preferences and intentions.

This speaks to why I hate victims. This is why issues that could be blocks in a coalition are refered to as "radical" and allies are in short supply. They never get over the idea that they are the most oppressed. Whether it is along racial, sexual, or financial lines, whatever your poison you can build a complex. You can insist, until you're red or blue, the universe has targeted you, your feelings matter the most, your view of the world is the most correct, and any lack of conformity is tantamount to oppression and tyranny. Unfortunately, none of those things will ever be true about you or your position.

When you couch your Identity in how small you feel, introducing the larger perspective is an attack by default. Telling you how unimportant you are isn't a boring circumstantial fact, it's provoking your deepest fears you haven't honestly engaged with. You might pay lip service, but you haven't gone to battle.

This denial plays out in familiar ways. It's uncritical. It surrounds itself in a bubble. It takes pride in turning the complexity of their issues into memes. It has nothing to offer but cliches and insincerity.

It needs to be attacked. Those who are severely traumatized need a steady routine, calm demeanor, and maybe medication. I'm not suggesting everyone needs beat over the head at all times. Are you so traumatized? Am I too much for you? I feel gross even arriving at the question. God forbid my words could break "you," or we're about as fucked as my most damming conceptions.

Switching gears a bit, I met a man about storing cars on my property. If he responds affirmatively to my offer, in a moment I could go from needing at least 2 months of job I don't want to paying off the credit card and then some. I could breathe a touch easier. I could finally say I've drawn ”passive" income. It would only come after 30+ empty, hateful, and unresponsive conversations that came before. The ratio is my concern.

I'm always looking for numbers that describe us in bids to keep things impersonal. When I first heard the sentiment about being lucky if you die with 5 friends you can genuinely rely on, I looked at all of my acquaintances with increased suspicion and coldness. When I see statistics on psychological dispositions, successful businesses, or even results to surveys, I attempt to draw a broad conception of where an "average" person sits or how much weight I should give an idea.

When I learned how to be genuinely enthusiastic about "small" things, it came with the growing appreciation for the aberrant nature of the examples I was setting. Fleetingly small portions of people start things at all, let alone see them through. Few people write, despite what seems like a flurry of words everywhere. Fewer people are listened to or actively shared or shaping the culture.

If 1/30th of people might speak to an appreciable change to my bank account, do we consider in depth what that means logistically? Can't one person or bad interaction derail your mood? Can't you be deceived by 5 or 10 who sound a lot like something you can work with? Mind you, no money has even changed hands yet, the number could be higher in how much shit you have to sift through for a small patch in your general quilt.

I consider my voice important because no one is relaying these kinds of thoughts to me. I have to find the practical light in the darkness. I have to prepare for the struggle, develop the coping skills, and denote why I'm not a victim of my disposition, infinitely small perspective, or worst impulses. I'm already comfortable with the inevitable confrontation, loss, or overwhelming hopelessness and precariousness of trying anything at all.

Until you can say the same, I'm not confident in your ability to "human." You can survive and drag the whole of our baggage around with you, but you're not affirming yourself in spite of it all. You can have habits that resemble a healthy and productive way to be, but your stomach won't settle, your breathing won't calm, and your environment will look like significantly more cries and condemnations than gardens and room extensions. You can be like the farm cat I intend to adopt, riddled with ticks and unaware you need a human to pick them off and get you vaccinated.

I've got 57 "friends" and falling. That's 52 to go before I consider myself extremely lucky. I'm demanding. I have expectations. I'm not just tired of the same appeals, empty conversations, and poor excuses for my 30-year-old cohort to find the balls (sometimes literally) to "adult" and do better. I'm as comfortable breaking a bad dynamic as I've ever been. Do the work. You are your own worst enemy. When I start aggressively asserting pyramid schemes, UFOs, or Qanon you can dismiss me with ease. When I'm imploring you to stop turning words into things that aren't said, share science articles that bolster your views, and find enough self-respect to represent yourself with something of more depth than a picture of Obi-Wan or Kermit, I'm not the problem, even when I call you a lazy fuck for doing so.

[715] Rev Run

I’m still fascinated by traffic.

Traffic is a man made wave carrying, not just H20 molecules, but entire individual stories and intentions all over the world. There’s traffic everywhere I go. Driving to drug studies I’d be lost in the sea of cars clogged in the bleak and concrete of Chicago suburbs. Driving through Fort Wayne, I feel as though I’m right back in The Region with fatter people and more to eat. Evansville rings the same. It’s probably an Indiana thing.

I know the math that plucks “stars” from the sea. I know calling someone a star to regard them as something special and different is an irony we ignore pretty heavily. Without the media coverage, we find stars at every level. People rocket to the tops of their industries. People have a way of navigating social waters or difficult situations like no one else around. A family man can be the star of his castle. A child can always burn brightest in the eyes of their parent.

Driving from the hotel to the training facility, you learn very quickly that Fort Wayne likes to speed. What doesn’t occur to them is there are about 90 stoplights between them and wherever they’re going 5 miles up the road. Speeding to slow down. Speed to cut off and then immediately hit the breaks and halt. Speed to knock the shit out of one of a myriad of potholes. Speed while they smoke, and put on makeup. This is a place where people are trying to get somewhere, and the reality in between doesn’t register.

This area also has an abundance of liquor stores and churches. I didn’t make a count, but when a thought like that occurs to you, it suggests it’s at least more liquor stores and churches than you’re generally used to seeing.

Traffic grabs me because that’s what I’m becoming. I get up early, put on uncomfortable clothes that flaunt sweat, grab my coffee and hotel breakfast, and make my way to presentation after presentation about how to treat LGBT kids like they’re people and not let it slide when a parent who’s just had their kids taken away tries to talk me out of reporting something that could put me in jail. The “standard” of interaction I’ll have to meet is 22 hours of facetime with clients, with apparently a gigantic backlog that’s increasing if I want to be a go-getter and shoot for 35-40.

The leadership, once I begin doing that, will start to tell me I’m “changing lives.” They’ll say they had a feeling about me and were waiting to see how it played out. I’ll get offered a company car. I’ll interrupt hanging out or free time with phone calls or paperwork. I’ll ask questions, in the way that I do, like when I asked a VP of the parent corporation if there was a finder’s fee for finding them a rich disturbed kid, who they cater to, to haul off to The Dominican Republic for 10 months at $5,000 a month. It will make people chuckle and uncomfortable, but they won’t be able to do anything, because it will speak to a truth they like to polish and my numbers will be undeniable.

If I get paid like I anticipate, it won’t be a daily struggle to squeeze the tips out of frat boys, but a weekly reliable paid in full to the professionals story of things that get done on my house. $300 here or there? Yes, please do. I could pick up some small pricey-enough indulgences like collecting cologne or springing for a nice watch. I’ll be able to put a plan in place for my week that I politely berate (hold accountable) my fledglings to where we work on goals and fill out paperwork together. I’ll endear myself to some, alienate others, get paid either way. I’ll think about getting on a healthy meal plan delivered to my door and expanding my gym membership to include a trainer.

I’ll even potentially have the time to have my weekends, or long weekends, to travel and visit. Instead of all day wasting away in a parking lot for a week, I’ll have hard and fast start and stop times to my “free time.” I’ll have stories for days about people suffering a circumstance I’m in no way approaching holistically or with the naivety of my employers. It’ll be routine. I’ll have my snippets about how Florida was rainier than I hoped, but at least there wasn’t snow!

 I will meet very many pleasant people. They will have their families form right before my very eyes. They’ll have their woes and story about what brought them here. They’ll tell me what they believe and use that tone for signaling discomfort for the topic or type of joke. “You see, what it’s really about.” I’ll be asked a dozen times if I have any questions, and I’ll watch them die a little inside when their 5th dad joke in a row fails to land

By any normal measure, I’d be fine. I fit. My cultural conditioning worked. I can sit still. I can play a semantic game as earnestly as any convoluted Christian. I’ll have money. I’ll garner praise. I’ll be able to merely mention my job and wear the gear to be regarded as a “good person.” My hairline, gut, and humor will grow to match the rest of the ensemble. All us jaded old-types will be in on the joke. I’ll disregard the implication of the 40 I guzzle down every night.

How long have you been enthralled reading my familiar story? Are you jealous? Do you wish you had that measure of security to look forward to? Do you wish you had a job that burns out the sincere do-gooder, but makes you laugh at the idea that there’s a single stressful thing involved at all? Is someone going to scream my hearing away? Am I going to be unable to leverage, “Um, hey, I’m the road to getting your kid back, duh.” Will I have to drive even half as long? Is a sick kid puking in the back of my car or filthy apartment my worst nightmare? Will I have to work as many days? Don’t forget, I organized my life where a McJob would pay my yearly bills in 1-3 months, and they want to pay me to be a professional adult.

I appreciate what I have. I find the value in the things that piss me off. I know there’s always work to be done, and when I want to improve, upgrade, or change something, it’s not because I’m living in some unbearable hell. I know that my skill or malleability is particular. I know my perspective has been beaten out of hundreds of thousands of words. I know that I’m the speeding Fort Wayner who dares potholes to break my axle. While most of us might find change uncomfortable, I find the idea of forgetting what really matters to me unbearable.

I didn’t/don’t read so much about the world so that I could put it on the backburner and become personally snug and “mature.” I didn’t get my ability to cut to the heart with a single question or tone by playing along. What Christian organization charges $60,000 a year to send some teenager looking at porn to another country because their rich parents are equally deluded and naive? That’s the question they feel when I ask if there’s a finder’s fee for luring another one into their trap. These righteous lambs spent half this “training” literally trapping us into a church sermon, pitch from Wells Fargo, and insistence we treat gay kids like they’re normal, but also “respect” the “different views” of their parents who act like you assume southern Indiana parents will. I chose to withhold telling them like 90% of my friends are at least bi, and I’m not trying to get fired for calling some old cunt a bigot.

I think my next tattoo, or set of them, are going to symbolize resistance. No matter how good I get at this world, or have already been, no matter how many rewards, no matter how relieved you feel that, “He’s finally figured it out, shut up, grow up, and get paid,” it’s wrong. I want self-sustaining creativity and new culture building. I want the old guardians of my ideals. I want to create the constraints to wiggle around in. And I want my focus to be primarily on the big evidence and trends. I want to shape the world, not pretend to save my region from opioids and several generations of child abuse. To be fair, I don’t want to deliver food, didn’t want to sell alcohol, didn’t want my spine tapped, didn’t want to finish college, or drive a cab, or do yard work, or probably the vast majority of things that constitute my life, so saying what I don’t want to do amounts to less than piss in the wind.

I’m still always going to be looking. I’m looking for the way out. The funds will, at the very least, fuel my business speculation. I am actually going to be “in the world,” so I’ll scrape together bits of information that may prove useful. I’ve learned I can still 9-5 and still get my TV shows in, likely the thing that will accompany my paperwork, which I’m sure I’ll streamline. I won’t get lost in this world. I won’t get comfortable. This cushy bed in the hotel they’ve comped? It’s not mine, and it’s over tonight. The food allowance for dinner? $15 and doesn’t include alcohol, the fuel of any proper social worker, or human in general. I want the gig that hires those who know how to responsibly drink while doing it and to sleep when I want for as long as I want.

The main reason this path has concerned me is that I’m aware I’m not an island. I can be shaped and persuaded like anyone. No one ever tries because they don’t really care or are too stupid, but it’s possible. My mind normalizes things pretty quickly as a what I take as a self-protective adaptation. It’s one thing to write pissy blogs, another to start creating new holes in my arm to pick at, or clenching my jaw until teeth wear down. I spent a year at CT. I swear I started there yesterday. Every happy memory of my past was yesterday too. Tomorrow I’ll be 60, bitching about the nuclear fallout not-that-long ago that these goddamn kids are already forgetting! I’ll regret I didn’t do more or prepare or speak explicitly because I was a little too busy, a little too selfish, and too old to fight about things I know I can’t change. Then I’ll wheel my lonely wretched body out under the sun and burn to death like that Furyan in The Chronicles of Riddick.

It hurts just enough. Like pants too tight in the waste. Like a neck propped staring at the wall projection. Like the cut in the eyes and the tongues of the pretenders lecturing you on their nobility and morality. Like the indignity of turning your head and coughing. Like the disrupted quiet as you crumple the remnants of your calorie mistakes. Or the hum of traffic, beckoning.