[1099] Choo Choose

The last few days I've been in the space of "trying to persuade myself." It's becoming increasingly obvious that is the main pipe between my otherwise chill sensibilities and any amount of anxiety. I don't want to do what I don't want to do. I don't like the anticipation of what I instinctively imagine it's going to feel like. I think it's the same mechanism behind why you don't want to jump straight into the pool, even if you'll get immediately acclimated, and it doesn't hurt, and it shortens the "suffering."

I'm on unemployment. I've never been on unemployment before, even if I've certainly qualified for it. I have almost no bills and it's not nearly enough. But that's not even my problem. My problem is that it's a humiliating series of reminders about the state of your existence and what your literal state thinks about you.

You'll get it cancelled or penalized if you don't show them you've kept a record of the jobs you've applied to. You have to file every week, inputting the same information you've put in before, but just because they're cunts, they want your finger to slip so they can claim it doesn't match last week. You have to drive to a center an hour away for an hour and a half meeting that ensures you know how to put your resume together, submit cover letters, and get all of the paperwork in order that show you're not just "leaching" off the state.

I've graduated college, opened businesses, literally built my house, and worked for 20 different job environments both blue and white collar from literally scrubbing toilets to handling child removals. I've never been paid enough. I've always worked to concurrently create an environment I hope can directly compete with the exploitative asks and standards of what's otherwise considered "normal" or "inevitable." I paid to not only have my resume updated and professionalized for modern horrifying auto-deny machines, but have submitted dozens of applications and invested in grant-writers and fundraisers after establishing my addiction counseling company as a nonprofit.

So tell me, state of Indiana, what do you think you can teach me about how to pull myself up by my own bootstraps?

I have to create a little profile, fill out some forms, waste time and gas to play their game. Conversely, I need one grant to hit. If it's higher than $10K I'll have at least paid back what I've invested to get them submitted and keep the lights on the rest of the year. I'm one celebratory email away from having achieved what I've been after business wise for many years. My personal expenses, while still higher than what unemployment covers, hover around $10,000 a year. I don't need much to be able to offer free services and keep the bills paid.

It's not more complicated than it has to be. The idea of, "What do you really want?" has been floating around the media I've been listening to. I want the work I do and time I spend to not be "trying to persuade myself." That isn't my time at that point. That's time being hijacked by something I perceive to be a waste or unreasonable. It's why I, at least, would ever "procrastinate." I don't struggle to focus or stay organized. I struggle to swallow and remain pressed up against bullshit.

I noticed the longer I sat alone and marathoned/organized my TV shows and fired back up the video game systems that I don't clench my jaw. My shoulders don't get tight. That sense of dread doesn't kick in until I'm facing the prospect of this condescending paperwork. I can slash pirates all night, predict plot points on my shows, or play the same riffs indefinitely, and I never feel like I feel googling the address of some bullshit company to prove to no one in particular that I'm worthy of basic subsistence. I don't feel like shit paying money I don't have for people I'm investing in to help my business grow. I don't feel hollow reading code and policy to make sure I don't fuck up the taxes or forget a form for my company.

I'm not "shiny." I'm not the fake bullshit that the brain-dead world pretends to find convincing or indicative of competence. You know why I would spend $1000 or more to have you write a grant for me? Because I'm paying you to lie like other people need to hear. I can't do it long enough without giving up, letting my hatred seep through, or my exhaustion make me look like a pleading beggar. I don't want the background muzac on an inoffensive background and script telling you how effective our approach is compared to the other guys. You know why what I do does or doesn't work? It's just fucking real.

You either set a goal that's specific, or you don't. You either dig into the vague language you use to describe your "love" or your feelings towards difficult circumstances, or you don't. You either believe you want to get "completely off everything" and you work through the psychological and bodily pain to do so, or you don't. You can do so alone, or you can do so with someone who understands the struggle of delineating and committing to tough decisions. That's it. That's all it is. Over and over and over and over and over again.

I can whine and complain and pretend to negotiate with the universe about how unfair and ridiculous my circumstances are. I can pretend any one of us "deserves" anything. I can cite a hundred reasons any one of my decisions might look questionable or unreasonable. You know what I do next? I try anyway. I spend the money. I show up. I work. I complain about how unprepared I was to deal with -30 degree weather under my two heated blankets, sandwiched between cats with a heated vest in the mail, utilizing the time to catch-up on subtitled movies.

Fundamentally, we have a very bad sense of what it is we "really" want or need. When we arrive at a relative conclusion, there's no guarantee that we're correct. There's little to no conversation about how to approach or discover this dilemma. I had to write for years before I recognized I want/need my time more than money. I wanted a "floor" to work from more than convenience. Those two sentiments alone guide my decision-making in major ways. I want to express myself creatively more than simply to amass "stuff." I want to spend time with anyone I care about doing just about anything before I'll pick an activity I can do alone.

I am standing deep within a well of my creation regarding discovered and cheered for desires. I defend my perspective line by line every time I get that sense of impending doom that suggests I'm lost in the forest losing my footing on the tree I'm climbing. It's work. It's time invested in a specific direction regarding what makes the most sense big and small decision wise with regard to what I profess to care about. I'm trying to shed one of the hardest taken-for-granted obligations we impose on ourselves that exists. I'm trying to reconnect to the dignity and ownership of my work. I'm trying to match the ideal to a practically felt reality. That shit is fucking hard for an infinite list of reasons outside my own hang-ups or perspective pitfalls.

Eventually I think the work will speak for itself. I don't "believe" it will like there's something magical about it. I'm literally the work speaking for itself every time I do. I'm sitting within my previously achieved goals. You can measure my progress day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year. I get more time and I use it to play more. I get a more stable floor, so I make balanced gambles in service to higher ideals and dreams. The tips of my fingers are back to catcher's mitt status. Anyone who even hints at the next show to see can assume I'm down or are invited in turn to what I'm doing.

And I know what's next. If we get a $5K or a $50K grant, I know the emails and calls I'm making that day. If we spend the next year getting turned down everywhere I attempt to invest in, I know how often I'll need to spend on the road Door Dashing or how much psychological shit I'll need to eat to take up something hourly. I know what kind of people I'll need to find to translate all of my cunty bluntness into roses people like to sniff regarding their own righteousness. I have over a dozen resumes of people who've expressed excitement at the prospect of working in service to our cause. I have several thousands left of damage I can do to the credit cards, or chunks of my land to sell, or pictures of my butthole for OnlyFans.

You might not need a therapist or counselor if you've been riding this train of creative disposition and accountable practice for decades. The vast majority of us haven't. And we don't even realize we haven't because it's normal to go with the flow and follow prescribed paths. It's normal to not kick up dust and fight and work through the incredibly shitty circumstances on offer. Our sympathies blind and comfort us just as much as any punishment. We are pummeled into submission, suffer indefinitely, and cope in any way we possibly can find. If it's with drugs, we then break the fuck out of the only tool that can reorient the approach and frame. If it's through endless busy-ness and faux-obligations, we rehearse distraction and disembodiment until it becomes normal.

One email. I'm one email away from having established a new floor. I'm one decently-sized grant for an amount of money some organization may not even sneeze at away. I'm a handful of decently-monied individuals partnering up. I'm a few hires of "This has deeply touched me" individuals away. The train is moving. Which one are you on?

[1068] Give Me Therapy

I just got this flourish of inspiration to write.

I think about this date I went on a fair amount. I'm not a dater, so that was my first mistake. It was with this tiny therapist, a little older than me. She was partnered, had a kid, and was every ounce of a "theater kid" type energy. It wasn't a "bad" time, but she said something about being in therapy in a way that struck me. She said she believes everyone needs to be in therapy. She said it with an air of self-assuredness if not pretention.

What I imagined was a battle between her ego and insecurity playing out in the conversation we were having. There's this thing about being in a "counselor" or "therapist" role where you might struggle to "turn off" being in observer mode. By occupying so much time in an advisory capacity, you may start to get the impression that pretty much everything you say is "good" or "better" or "helpful" when you're situated against people who have meaningful differences or deficits in their processing or organizing.

Had she merely "just said" it, I could agree with the general sentiment. I don't think that by dawning a therapist or engaging in talking or writing will fix anything by themselves. If you have a genuinely helpful, intuitive, accountable and informed exchange, you might arrive at insight, but the impetus to put that insight to work or the ability to raise your wisdom quotient are entirely different animals. I say this because of how reactively hostile she was to my challenge that, by default, no one is "objective."

Her narrative about how she operates or what she's achieved through therapy was threatened. This appeared to cause her to hear my challenge as something like, "Truth is relative." She maybe thought I was criticizing the very idea of seeking a broad view trying to as objectively-as-possible contextualize your life and how you describe it. She might have felt that I was dismissing the difference between those who engage in some form of therapeutic feedback process, and those who ignorantly and confidently espouse entitled animalistic fascism. And she might have felt all of this in an instant when her taken-for-granted authority was checked.

I, obviously, also talk to people for a living, believe I not only gain from the exchange, but have seen people grow and improve themselves through a structured examination and accounting for their experience. I think we all need, as individuals, a strong sense of what that even means. I think you can get there through many ways. I prefer self-reflective writing. Even my closest relationships don't really understand how I operate, so if I don't find the words, argument, or reason to de-clench my jaw, your - perhaps not even as well-read as me - PH.D. or laughable lesser degree isn't going to save me.

Does that impact my ability to counsel effectively? Does that mean I can't maintain a sense of stability or order in my life? Does that provoke you to look for what my diagnosis *should be* were it not for my denial-ridden intransigence? We should always return to the fundamentals. What is the goal? Is it reasonable? Are you building an evidence bank of your effort and accomplishments? Are you finding yourself maintaining or gaining more control over the areas of your life that you want to?

We have to remember, there is no "normal." You could throw literally every single person under some label if you so chose. Most of us unconsciously strive for a semblance of "normal" regardless. We get media feedback, cultural pressure, biological clock knocks, and colloquial lore that passes itself off as timeless wisdom and step-by-step instructions to a Good Life. It's as much a cliche the story of the wine-drinking desperate housewife, the single-mom doing the best she can, and the overworked and underpaid provider whose story of the pride they take in doing so struggles against depression and anxiety.

We're all processes. Everything is in flux, and you plug into the ride, or you disingenuously anchor too long. You react and lash out when the faux-confidence in your status gets threatened. You remain dejected and hopeless when you pretend there isn't another call to make, email to send, step to walk, or question to ask. You look for things to confirm what you already know or stay "comfortable" instead of challenged to push, learn, or evolve.

Several times in my life I've had exceptionally comfortable financial circumstances. I've disrupted them every time. Not through self-destruction and waste, but through exploration and a deep persistent nagging that I am never allowed to remain on some perch. I want the wisdom and work to drive how I structure business, my day-to-day life, and approach to engaging or inviting others into a therapeutic process. I think I have a really good understanding of what "healthy" verses "pathological" looks like because I've been observing in myself what works or doesn't in an ongoing way.

This speaks to my general grievance about feeling fairly alone in getting or pursuing things others profess to want. It's always me that has to get "lucky" or make the extra effort or provide the clarifying and specifying note. It's a responsibility I voluntarily accept, but it's shocking when it feels like I'm the only one aware of how to do so. It's upsetting really. If I wasn't on the call yesterday to get username and password stuff sorted out for the 6th time, what took 50 minutes likely wouldn't have been fixed at all. It's easy to see how leader-types can get caught trying to do everything for everyone all the time.

That's, also, not leadership. Leadership is recognizing the gaps in someone else's knowledge and providing a way that they can plug them in. You don't let your insecurity, frustration, or incomplete judgment of them prevent you from allowing them to fail forward and learn like you have. I had to translate what I thought a philosopher meant and apply it to my life. No one just told me "the right way" and I snapped into focus and followed. I live and feel the reality and difference in being skeptical and open to change verses the miserable gripe-ridden excessive boundary imposing child who thought he knew everything.

I need questions. I need speculation and experimentation. I need to feel growth and potential and reasonable exchange. These aren't optional. These aren't things that just naturally follow once your paycheck hits a certain point. These aren't things that even your "best friend" is interested in recognizing, protecting, or cultivating with you. I would rather be broke with a strong impression of the routes I can explore than loaded and dead inside after beating the drum of company propaganda and saying the same thing to closed minds a thousand times.

There is always something new to explore. There is always a challenge to rise to. Whether or not you or I can articulate it perfectly, I have a nose for sniffing out when your professions betray your posture. It's trained on my own disposition, achievements, and accountability of the moment. Whether I'm inspired, dispirited, or superficially contradictory and confused. Mine is not a naive and empty hope. I just have my awareness of how I feel in behaving and speaking in one way verses another. Then I do the work. Then I look for the wisdom to be reflected back in your words and your examples. That's also why I think we're fucked lol.

[1010] Caught In The Act

There are going to be a lot of disparate threads in this one, but what else is new?

Last night was unexpectedly eventful, and then 5 minutes ago even more happened. That’s the nature of things, if you genuinely don’t believe what might otherwise be “natural consequences” of the pieces involved.

I went out with a new person. We had a good conversation, she paid for dinner, we did a little parking lot smooching before saying goodbye. She’s a therapist to rich people, works part-time making full-time money, and is familiar in her “need to be doing something” energy that has her adopting endless hobbies and connecting with all sorts of people. It’s rare that I meet someone that makes me feel like I want to slow them down to breathe.

In the course of our conversation, she said, “You have an avoidant personality type.” She also insisted she was a really good therapist several times. Her thesis, no one is more compelling at convincing ourselves of whatever it is we want to hear than ourselves. If you’re not in therapy, which she is, you’re likely enmeshed in a series of self-delusional excuses keeping you from accessing hidden trauma or truths or otherwise. When I asked her what differentiated “excuse” from “reason,” to her, there is none. My first instinct regarding her posture and confidence is that she’s very comfortable expressing her newfound knowledge of herself and how to orient and turn it into a therapeutic practice, but she’s not crazy about being pressed or challenged on her core assumptions. If that’s true, she will remain an at-arm’s-length acquaintance.

I don’t know if I’d have to spend any real amount of energy convincing you, dear reader, of my confrontational and pro-active insistence that I resolve, complete, or obtain insight propensity, but nonetheless, given that I look for people to ever bother to analyze or say things about me, I have to take what I can get. I also get the impression that I was being tested, which I dislike. But, again, I’m willing to approach that feeling with a “if true” posture and sensibility. For as good as I may be at analyzing, manipulating, or otherwise nailing your deepest darkest fears and insecurities, I’m never providing the complete picture, nor willing to die on some ego hill.

While I was driving to this meet-up (which I refuse to call “date”), I got a call from my (fancies himself neighborhood watch and gossip) about, “These idiots shooting on your land.” The idiots in question where my best friend, his kid, and his kid’s friend. I have a giant dirt pile, wet, situated in the middle of my property sitting towards the end of a slight hill that climbs behind it. We’ve shot into it before without issue. I’ve gone shooting with my buddy and the kid in the past. According to my pissed off neighbor, there was apparently no accuracy and bullets were flying just over head of his dad, and if I remember correctly, in his version his dad’s house. Mind you, they would have had to be shooting at and through my house to be in the direction of his father’s, so I’m chalking that up to his hysterical moment.

Now, I’ve been shooting with my buddy and the kid before. I have watched the kid click the trigger as quick as possible unloading as many bullets as he can into the woods. I also have a pretty extreme prejudice against the kid who generally annoys the fuck out of me, tends to foil or complicate anything regarding me and my plans, and appears to remain wholly ungrateful and ambivalent about the amount of extreme privileges he’s allowed with regard to driving, drug use, and responsibility given the extent of his, still in the process of being diagnosed, issues. I could use all of that and easily determine I don’t want it out here potentially antagonizing the neighbors. I don’t trust the kid, his friend, and I’ve told my friend the extent to which I think the kid gets away with things in his care. I say, “I don’t care, come on out.” I don’t get 10 minutes up the road before the angry calls come in.

Here’s a deeper complication. It was the first day of hunting season, so the woods are filled with limp-dick cousin-fucks looking to bag them a deer. This is where my neighbor was, camped out on his land, way down the line of where a higher-shot bullet or 3 would almost certainly catch the tops of trees. To my neighbor, “They almost shot me!” To me, knowing this neighbor has enthusiastically rallied with the Nazi Trump train that rolled through town, thinks to himself, I kinda wish they had. My neighbor’s son apparently came onto my property with a gun and unable to calm down as he interrogated my friend and the kids. There’s a version of that story where my friend shoots that guy, “stood his ground” on property he was invited to, and now we’ve got a whole new level of chaos and bad blood.

In my text designed to wholly feed the ego of my panicked neighbor, I said things like, “Of course, I’m mad at those idiots, you’re so right, this is serious, I’ll never allow them to come here for that again!” I took it a step a further and said, “This is why I hate fucking guns. They aren’t toys. I don’t understand the “fun,” and now I look like an irresponsible cunt for allowing them to come out.” The text tone shifts. Triggered neighbor says guns aren’t the problem, idiots with them are, but he would just appreciate me not allowing idiots back to my land. I thought I moved to the middle of nowhere, but nope, idiots just the same, wandering the woods to feel manly and even as the bullets fly overhead, it’s not the gun or any of the stupid fuck culture and entertainment around them, it’s that that guy over there is the idiot.

I didn’t ask to engage with any of my neighbors. They came to talk to me, investigate me, debate whether I was a “nigger” behind my back, and otherwise entertain themselves with the human crap that plagues small-town ignorance and poverty. And now, here I get to sit surely to be indefinitely scrutinized for anything I attempt to do out here going forward. Why, precisely? Is there a “reason” I allowed my friend to come out, or am I just making excuses for not trusting my hyper vigilant and judgmental gut? Did I avoid sharing anything about my perspective save my ambivalence to the idea of a fascist getting shot?

20 minutes ago, my buddy calls me to say his father had a stroke. He’s in the hospital. There are half a dozen reasons to believe pretty much any day his father could have had a stroke in the last 10 years, but it happened today. He’s still alive and presumably stabilizing.

You want to play in the woods with your gun, shoot at dirt with your gun, drink and smoke, live the healthiest and insidiest life possible, you all still get to die. If there’s anything culturally, individually, or routinely avoided, it’s deeply engaging with the death we’re helping to facilitate or downplay. I caught myself looking for an excuse to be more incensed or worried about the fallout of the shooting and my pissy neighbors. Ultimately, I know that I’m colder and sicker than they can imagine, and if they come after me in passive aggressive or otherwise ways, I’ll handle it. I don’t like that I’ve been invited to entertain that thought via an extended kindness to my friend and shuttering of my distaste for his kid, but here we are.

If there’s anything I’d love to “avoid” though, it’d be these kinds of idiot interactions over things that, in a serious way, have nothing to do with me. I’m not eschewing the idea that we’re all connected or that I don’t believe in mutual exchange and sacrifice for friends, but I am not a gun enthusiast. I’m not a hunter. When I moved here, I couldn’t even see my neighbors, let alone have campers parked all around with kids running around and at least one dog who’s been willing to bite me. I didn’t adopt a fucking kid. I thought, after the better part of a year making appeals to my network to hang out more and do fun things or make money, that I was simply going to make a foray into expanding my social network. In doing so, I wouldn’t provide myself with any excuses or resentful narratives about the nature of what they’re otherwise obligating themselves to. And I did shoot my shot, and was polite and charming enough to garner light lip service after a few short hours.

My new therapist friend asserted the “objective” nature of a therapist who has nothing invested in the outcome of what they’re telling you. I challenged, one, the capacity for any human to be “objective,” per se, and two, given her own explanation of those hidden truths therapy is supposed to ferret out, why we should believe any therapist isn’t under the spell of theirs. I think, if you’re really about that “objective” truth game, you do it like me, and let every single person in your life that you’ve shared your truth with pigeon-hole, abandon, judge, silent-treatment, or take up the pontificating mantel that details for you how much you hurt people, are blind, or are just mean and not caring. I lose money and comfort and connections as a matter of routine in trying to find the “objective” or “better” means of existing. I don’t want to lie to you; you really really really want me to lie to you. I’m not particularly wise nor brave in acknowledging just how far I could weave tentacles in betting on the weakness, ignorance, and ego of useful targets.

I think I’ve done a pretty amazing job of not behaving like that. When you avoid responsibility, the little evil villain in you takes over. People need to be punished and retribution needs to be had. They aren’t old and infirm on the verge of a stroke, they’re maliciously interfering with your plans to make money and dominate! I didn’t suppress my angry and judgmental feelings nor keep them hidden, I chose to trust not only my friend and his supervision of the teens, but my neighbor to be remotely civil in how he engaged with what was, hopefully, more of an accident than one more instance of a shooting behavior I’ve been personally witness to.

Now, does this whole digression just suffice as a big avoidance mechanism? Should I keep the flame of the situation alive and make continued forays into ass-kissing and ingratiating? Do I have some hidden pattern of making excuses for my friends and how they conduct their lives that has just manifested again in something that needs downplaying? Do I have something unresolved regarding my indifference to the death of fascists or the depths I might sink if my neighbor’s get all Hatfield and McCoy on me? I struggle to believe that there’s someone willing to scrutinize or question to the extent I am. I have sincere doubts that anyone, an “objective therapist,” “best friend” or “loving family member” are going to spend the time, ask the questions, or arrive at the best course of action for me in a way I’m unwilling to discover or speak to. Nor do I think prioritizing courses of action or abstention is tantamount to excuse-making.

When my new acquaintance asked if I’d ever do therapy, I said sure, but I’d want a goal in mind. She said, “Most guys do.” You know how much I like being lumped as just a measure of “most guys,” right? She went to therapy and was asked what to work on and said, “I don’t know.” After a series of EMDR sessions and other interventions was able to unlock and process a whole host of trauma from her past for which she no longer carries an emotional response. Hey, good for her. If you’ve got the money and a therapist’s office is your playground for self-discovery, more power to you. I, as far as I’m aware, and very unlike “most guys,” don’t have anything on my soul or conscious that isn’t contained within over 1000 publicly available blogs. Is that what people who avoid…anything, do?

My ongoing conversation is frequently about my cynicism for engaging with people who prefer their anxious and insecure narratives to doing anything palpably real, hard, or accountable to their existence that isn’t prescribed, familiar, and socially accepted along vague expectations and traditions. I don’t care how smart or dumb you are, your brain needs a narrative. You need to fit. You have biases that keep you alive and away from malignant psychosis. I don’t know that I’ll ever fit outside of these pages. I’ll keep rolling the dice and testing the boundaries in areas of trust or putting myself out there to try and connect in spite of my extreme prejudice. Just like I’ll vote as the fascists march, and build targets for destruction and judgment, and sacrifice ease and familiar for personal meaning, power, and control.