[1246] Bear Minimum

I don’t even want to proofread this. That should tell you whether you should bother with this one. No, I didn't mean "bare."

Everything I’m going to attempt to talk about is complicated by the cold and snow. I need discipline. I can feel too many things competing for my attention. It’s been preventing me from finding the peace I can usually get a sip of from writing. I think I’m going to avoid spending any time contextualizing something for “the random reader.”

I find myself returning to an idea that anymore, I want the bare minimum. My life has swung back and forth between austerity and indulgence. One was a project in service to a sense of long-term stability or growth. The other a reaction to the creeping understanding that I no longer believed I was going to achieve either.

I owe money. Not really, but according to criminal institutions, thieving family and friends, and the capricious greed of former employers and my state. The processes afforded to me in order to discharge debts have lied, wasted time, and are now salivating to squeeze me for every single penny I already don’t have.

You can only exempt $450 in Indiana of money in your bank account. Doesn’t matter if you have a $316 electric bill, $520 due to a credit card, $1800 in legal fees you borrowed, and $650 more you needed thinking you’d get your water running. if your account says more than $450, “It’s complicated,” according to my lawyer as to why actually filing still hasn’t taken place. Gotta make sure those transactions aren’t pending if you’ve moved to pay the bills too. Kentucky? You can have $8,000 in cash. But, I live in Indiana, one of the shittiest states in the country.

But it gets dumber. I’ve been telling my lawyer for weeks how much my “business” is worth. You know, the LLC with no assets that’s renting a house on the back of good graces from one of its partners. Super stable. My 25% stake gets me, anymore, a couple hundred bucks a month, maybe. Less now with a couple relapses and disappearances. This, another hiccup for the attorneys who can’t seem to understand I’m not trying to hide from them a house my business does not own, I certainly don’t own, and I can’t even expect a consistent meaningful profit from.

What are the fixes? Sell things? Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Also, the whole country is aggressively bleeding people dry, so it’s not like there’s too many itchy buyers for your old broken vehicles. I’m trying to get into a drug study. I’m poised to check in Monday. There’s a chance I flame out because my anxiety gets the best of me and my heart rate is too high during the final screen. That’s why I stopped doing studies for 10 years the last time. All I need to do is get to Cincinnati, not be one of the unlucky who isn’t chosen to dose, and then there’s a consistent income for 6 months with each trip back.

I haven’t been able to leave my house for 5 days. My car can’t get out of my driveway. My truck, with its precarious battery, was dead. Why haven’t I fixed the battery by now? It’s one of 20 things I could spend money on that need fixed, and until I absolutely needed to drive the truck, why spend it back then? Did we get more snow in 2 days than has snowed in 8 years? Oops. Now I’m underprepared, again.

The truck is currently, hopefully, being charged, and will retain that charge long enough to drive into town and get a battery that will eat up approximately 25% of my current capital. Then I’ll get some food; sandwich stuff, potatoes, and sausage are the usuasl. This is provided I can navigate the tundra road that is my rural neighborhood. I’ll try not to think about how my truck costs 3 times what it does to drive my car. I’ll almost certainly have to drive the truck to both Chicago and Cincinnati.

My best case scenario is that I’m filed this week, granted access to the study next week, taken to be as poor as I am by the treasurer's office, and in 3 months I’ve paid back my dad, fixed my water, and caught up on other bills related to my credentialing, insurance, and remaining credit card.

In the story my life seems hellbent on trapping me within, I continue to get “Weeeelll, we were talking” hiccups to getting my paperwork filed. I psych myself out of the study, or am not picked at all, making a mockery at that point of whatever I managed to do to reign in my anxiety and heart rate. I’m unable to get my car out for weeks leaving me to be potentially door dashing in a truck. When it’s time for the hearing, I get picked apart or delayed because they want to exercise every "fuck you" move they can. In the meantime I’m trying not to make “too much” money that makes them more powerful. I’m arguing with myself if I can or should try to go to the next show. And that plays out for months until I’m forced into Chapter 13.

I have to refrain from sliding out on what I’m hearing is large amounts of black ice and overturned semis, from what I’ve experienced, as generally negligent road clearing efforts. I have to spend most of my time in between the drives and decision-making from on high in my very cold poorly insulated home that hasn’t had running water for over a month. I get to smell bad for longer because I was showering at Planet Fitness before dashing. Those are 45 minutes away not in snow and ice, mind you.

Moving out here altogether used to be my bare minimum. I’ve been able to go to shows because “the basics” were well enough in place. Now? It feels like my home is not living up to what I need. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older and less resilient. I don’t know if I’m just opening up to more liabilities as I struggle to keep things maintained when they all want to break at once. I don’t know if I’m just tired of fighting the backdrop of constant attack. I can’t get left alone. I’m never “good enough” to just ride my little corner of the world.

I want the decisions already. I want to know what it is I have to navigate. I work quickly because I hate ambiguity for its own sake. I hate feeling dependent on forces and people I can’t respect nor would ever carry myself like.

It’s hard to play your instruments when you can’t feel your fingers. It’s hard to wood work when you’re hotboxing dust. It’s hard to yoga, or sew, or whore bathe. So I sit, write, make tiktoks now, and wait until I get little bursts to get up and pee, eat, or fuck with the 10-steps between me and starting the real also-complicated, also-annoying process. I still have to go check on the battery. What happens if I can’t get it to start? Which of my neighbors do you think wants to cart my stank ass into town? My friend that lives in town is in Florida for 3 months dealing with problems that make mine laughable. My next closest friend lives an hour away.

Can the cats go, perhaps a whole week, unattended? I think the most I’ve done is 5 days. If the power goes out and their water freezes? I can’t even sit here and think about what to say next without my foot freezing over. The cold shows me how poor my circulation is and what areas of my body are poised for arthritis like my dad and grandpa.

What do I even want to do? Nothing. The bare minimum. I want to feel, again, like there is absolutely nowhere I have to be, no one knocking, no disaster needing cleaned up, no hand reaching its way into my pocket. I want to do that for so long that the next thing I do after that registers as the best thing I’ve ever done.

But I need to get back to being broke. I need to get the bills paid a year or two in advance. I need to be the friend who’s able to buy the tickets, dinner, drinks, parking, and tickets to the next thing between sets or intermission without blinking. I need to be able to decide I have the energy to do a little bit with a hole and concrete, so let’s capitalize on the moment and not weigh the $40 in materials against the gas prices. My life needs to more consistently feel as good as it actually is. I can’t feel better or good until I’m meaningfully distanced from all of the forces I clock as wanting me under heal or dead.

I’ll then scroll through reddit and read stories, maybe true, of people pissing away, winning, or making more money in an hour than I’ve ever been in debt, ever made a year, or would even be worth if I sold everything I owned. I’ll compare my laments to the people with health struggles, ICE’s fascism, considerably more invested-in and more respectable roles and lives than I’ve managed and I’ll self-impose a “go fuck yourself” sensibility. I’ll type in circles. I’ll go back to TV. I’ll click between windows. I think it’s about time to get disappointed by the battery again.

[1244] Lord And Savor

There is an infinite list of things I do not understand. If we’re to narrow that down at all, they often have to do with “the human condition.” I want to avoid too many empty and sweeping cliches. It simply doesn’t matter to me to say what we “could” be or belabor the depth of our atrocities. I might be trying to invent a concept for myself on the fly, so for now let’s call it “the loop.”

When people yearn for revolution, I don’t think they necessarily believe themselves to be going in a circle. Overthrow the powers that be! The problem, it’s assumed, could never be that now you’re in power and there’s something intrinsically worth being suspicious about its nature.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

As an, alleged, individual, I think about the power of my feelings. I think about how for years I rode the energy of resentment and revenge. I delighted in the idea of who or what I could destroy, either materially or intellectually. It was a regular occurrence that I might make someone cry, and no part of me felt bad. What? I was just talking. All I did was use my capacity to see through the bullshit, locate your pain, and bring it into view for all to see.

You do things like that when your conscience is clear. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t hateful. I was right. Moreover, I was making things better because I was wielding the weapon of truth. When you were either forced to do the same, or suffer the consequences of not doing so, I remained absolved of responsibility because the higher-order thing we all need was just doing its thing. That’s the nature of truth; it hurts.

I made no distinction between my subjective experience and “the truth.” I had no appreciation nor awareness of how my feelings might be coloring that truth. I was either basically dead inside, suppressed by years of emotional trauma, or confident in my activated capacity for anger over perceived injustice or silliness. My unarticulated assumptions gave me license to bull my way through many a china shop.

I’m still that person, but old. I’m more curious. I’m tired. I’m not the kind of tired that you hear from normal people who can’t be bothered to do “more” or “extra” than they do on any given day. I’m tired of seeing the same story. I’m tired of my own words. I’m tired of perceiving the loops. I’m tired of waiting for the revolution to arrive at a place where anyone acts like they’re capable of making decisions.

That was a key underlying insight about the nature of my power. It’s one that people pick up on and use to beat me over the head with how much is my fault. The parties in college, for the hundreds of people in and out of our house over years, fell to me. Was it “our” house? I organized it. I built things for it. I bought the booze. Greenlit the friend groups. Assigned roles. It was crazy how quickly people fell in line. If you got too drunk? I got you too drunk. If you had a questionable sexual encounter, surely we all know I raped you.

I’m used to being the excuse. It’s an outgrowth of me realizing my ability to choose in a more deliberate and conscious way than other people adopt for themselves. Their choices show up when…well, that’s the question, isn’t it? When do they choose? I don’t really know. I don’t, honestly, conceive of most people making real choices most of the time. I see people as animals first. When the automatic food dispenser drops, they run over. Were they even hungry? Have they ever known real hunger?

If you were starving, you might choose to kill for it, and, circumstances providing, anyone looking from afar might have a hard time blaming you. You might have the perfect excuse. Maybe the food is going to your young child. Maybe you just earnestly worked for days to get your hands on a previous morsel, and it was stolen before you could bite. Maybe you’re the last person alive with the blood that’s going to save the world if you can only get to the secret mountain bunker.

How fantastical of a tale do we need to rest within our excuses? I don’t think most people need more than an empty sentiment like, “I’m a Christian.” I don’t think most people need to do anything beyond point to objects they own of status or only need to tell you about ways they’ve suffered. The loop, the ritual, of invoking your excuse and then carrying on with business as usual is baked in. You deserve it. They deserve it. If you weren’t so dishonest, you could see the truth too. You could share in the dignity and pride of my perspective. You could atone for your sin.

I can feel myself when I’m begging for an excuse. Whether it’s to flip out or pick the naughtiest words. I know when I want to ride the righteous lightening of condemnation. I know when I want attention. I know when I want to get something for less than I hope to put into it. The superficial engagement of social media highlights it. The woe-is-me spirals of anxiety over what I consistently and explicitly call “not real problems.” I know how quickly the wheel turns. I know I’m hurrying up to slow down. I know it’s because I don’t fundamentally trust the impact and results of my choices anymore.

My old superpower was genuine belief. I was a level of naive that has probably had hundreds of people going out of their way to ensure I wouldn’t die prematurely. I’m not, “Sure, let’s hop in your van” kind of naive (true story), but I believed things made sense. I believed families love each other. I believed businesses hired and rewarded the best workers. I believed school challenged and emboldened. I thought friendships, when based on a kind of psychopathic approach to truth and accounting, could last forever. I thought I could think or argue my way in or out of anything. I thought I wouldn’t get “a version” of the things I was aiming for, but precisely what I was after. I had previously only ever been after extremely simple and superficial things.

Now I realize I’ve potentially been in something of a years-long crisis. I lost the plot. It was a story that might’ve only been a rough draft of what you’d need as a, hopefully unironically, “higher” functioning adult. I didn’t pick new or better goals. I didn’t search for what an evolved well of infinite motivation may look like when it’s not fueled by “fuck you” energy. Me, allegedly, so capable of responsibility and actually making choices, lost at sea?

I’m bored, but not because I don’t have things to do or because there isn’t a perpetual five-alarm fascist fire to put out. I’m bored of spirit. I’m bored waiting for something to happen as a result of choices instead of reactions. I can’t choose for you. I can’t invest of myself what you can’t realize. We weren’t partying together, I guess. We weren’t dreaming about the future we could create. We aren’t even able to talk about “the world” with the same level of awareness.

I feel like I choose to mock myself and my feelings by looking for things that challenge my perspective. I don’t care how I feel. It’s wrong. It’s incomplete and ill-informed. It’s automatic and antagonistic. I don’t “need” to feel “good” or “happy.” I don’t describe myself in terms of “needs” too often that don’t rest in things like eating or shitting. What “I need” is “us choosing.” I think implicit in that is me getting chosen in return.

I don’t feel chosen by anyone but my dad. I feel supported by friends, but certainly not chosen. I feel like their support often stems from places where they feel broken. It’s where I then have to be extremely careful that I’m not taking advantage and holding myself personally responsible for trying to square when it feels imbalanced. When I can’t simplify things in monetary ways, I get disoriented. Traditionally, I’m the free therapist-friend providing years of open-ended feedback, looping in and out of what they may “need” from me.

Do they know what they need anymore than I do? One thinks they need mushrooms. Another thinks they need less sex. Another thinks softball matters more than voting. I’ve watched from afar as friends choose their vocation, their equivocations, and their artfully crafted stories and reels celebrating their families. Just like I’m choosing to do TikToks and garner hatred from reddit.

To be sure, I’m meandering through the debased means of connection in a bid for the wrong kind of attention. I’m maintaining my status as a curiosity or piece of safe drama to watch, like a TV show you don’t care for but can’t look away. If the show gets out of line and asks you to really pay attention or start choosing your own adventure, can you imagine a greater betrayal? I’m yours to watch. None of this fourth-wall breaking bullshit.

I’m tired of waiting for you. I’m tired of hoping I’ll feel better or less anxious in the wake of something you finally figure out. I work myself up because I feel like, ultimately, it really does all depend on me. You won’t join me, but you’ll do what I say. You won’t shoulder the risk, but you’ll dump the resources. You won’t access the vulnerable disorienting nature of your power, but you’ll bask in mine. I don’t want that. I don’t know that it’s possible to get what I want instead.

No one sincerely doubts me. That’s part of the mythology. No one who has watched how I work or interact with the world thinks that, if I set my mind to it, I won’t get it. What they’re clocking is the exact thing about me that made so many people cry. I, like any other boring pathological megalomaniac, see your weakness. It’s the same as my weakness. It’s what we’re telegraphing when we’re not making choices. It’s our insecurities. It’s our cliches. It’s our desire to downplay and dismiss the catastrophic nature of our environment.

I live in a fucking shed. I love my shed, but I live in a fucking shed because I was born into a context that was cooking modern fascism. My shed used to represent freedom and possibility. It increasingly represents things to repair and clean up. It grows in its identity as a lonely white-trash island with each passing year. It has all my stuff that I haphazardly engage with. It has my cats which, I don’t exactly want eaten by coyotes, but I don’t want to have to think about if I leave for a week or what they cost me in vet visits.

It took 8 years, a divorce, and a friend moving back to this miserable state to find a consistent concert buddy. At least 10 people I used to party with several times a week for years live like an hour or 2 away. Who in their right mind would choose to shoot the shit over dinner or a beer even once a year? What former coworker would choose to share their new job stories or scuttlebutt after I left? It’s unthinkable.

The irony is such that “my power” isn’t mine at all. I can only tap into what feels like “choice space” to “break loops” in weird little pockets of acute awareness or frustration. I can reign in the feelings and chart a course of action when I seemingly align two oppositely charged magnetic tips and push back against the forces that are otherwise sending me for a loop. I can line them up whenever I want. I can disregard the waves. My mind need not shake. But I’ll still be the only one pointing and pushing towards…whatever it is I’m bothering.

I chose shed because at least the nature of its constraints felt closer to a place of true and actual choices than I otherwise tend to observe from people. I have very little external pressure to do anything out here. It’s all manifest evidence of my hairbrained ideas, effort, and in-processing. It’s a sanctuary where I’m not expected to perform. I’m not failing to live up to your needs out here. I can’t reasonably expect you to visit.

I don’t know what kind of example I want to set anymore. Demonstrating a degree of financial “freedom” has meant nothing. Efforts to salvage, create, or sustain garner 2 or 3 likes occasionally. Every job I ever get aggressively chases me away literally moments away from positive feedback and accolades. I’m funny, but never wanted to be “the funny guy.” I’m angry, but in this era every outburst is performative by default. I've been too big a whore to fall in with incels and worked too long in social work to self-pity.

I have this sickening sense that, somehow, everyone is watching what I choose, but not in an effort to actually see.

[1241] Cut It Out

My brain has been packed. I’ll be lucky to put a paragraph together for what feels like a dozen different subjects. My head no less compiling and looking for the patterns.

They killed an average, normal, sparkling white woman. Just now. Just NOW people are arriving at, “It could be me!” Not people who pay attention. Not people who read history. The people who can’t be bothered or can’t handle what it takes to be enmeshed in the political landscape. And who can blame them? It’s one impossible, unprecedented, and seemingly intractable problem after the next every single day. They’ve already killed innocent Americans. They’ve been Nazis all along.

We fought world wars over this shit. It wasn’t that long ago. My grandpa killed Nazis. We established a world order to try and avoid ending up like 100 million people who had to die because hatred and a desire for power ran amok. I’ve been asking for years, how bad does it need to get? How many people have to die for the worst reasons imaginable before we’re back at some iteration of a world war footing? How many lies are we not going to call lies? How often are we gonna play the “both sides” game? How many criminals are we going to pardon and reward?

At a certain point, you have to stop blaming “the algorithm” and recognize the nature of the manipulation. There’s not a single sentence on my feed that isn’t highlighted if not for its capacity to sound like the craziest thing anyone has ever said about what would otherwise be shared reality. If it’s a picture of a red square, the first comment with 1,500 “likes” says something like, “You’re ignoring Green squares because you know Jews deserve what they get.” What? Doesn’t matter, must be “refuted” and batted around indefinitely for engagement.

Increasingly, it feels like “the culture war” is literally addiction. It’s one of the reasons I struggle with the idea of calling addiction a “disease.” I get the argument in the broadest stretch of the word and what you can measure between some addictive brains versus not. But all things being equal, if I was sitting here with cancer, I can’t choose to recognize that cancer in any other way than as the thing that’s going to eventually kill me if I don’t correctly identify and eradicate it. The angry and hateful/irrational/bot-driven words can’t eat you if you don’t let them.

Nor do any series of “crazy,” “gaslighting,” or “powerfully framed rhetoric.” I’m so utterly confused by people who can’t see through words that are expressly meant to radicalize. I can’t tell you how many parrots I hear pretending to “argue” things they explicitly learn nothing about in service to their mouthpiece act. I don’t care how many times the lie is told, it’s not persuasive to someone like me. It’s not compelling. It’s not something I’m eager to repeat. But that’s only because I care about the distinction between the truth and a lie.

Why? Why do I care about that distinction? Lying makes you money. Lying gives you so much power you can kill by the thousands and face no real consequences. Lying makes you famous. Lying helps you fit in. It’s a one-stop shop of solutions to the biggest problems we face as lonely desperate animals. So, again, why? Why not play along? What’s it matter to you?

It’s a selfish impulse I have. If I felt as good lying as I do living truthfully, maybe I’d be able to lie like them. I like being able to see through lies. I like being able to accurately predict what’s going to happen. I like the result of consistent work and building upon a foundation I don’t have to worry when everything around it is burning down. Most of the most stressful and ridiculous things I have to navigate personally and professionally boil down to lying. Whatever the person, or organization thinks is being protected by doing so is the same naive pretense that puts the smug condescending tone behind the vitriol of those in power now.

I don’t think anyone is genuinely afraid of, “What goes around, comes around.” Plenty of Nazis didn’t get tried at The Hague. Plenty of people spend a large portion of their day carrying out physical and verbal abuses towards vulnerable people and animals they’ll also claim to love. Occasionally, someone bites back, but most cower, defeated, praying the person will get theirs in Hell. Or, and I think this is key, they don’t want them to end up in Hell; they’re so nice and so forgiving it becomes a kind of noble self-delusion to suffer indefinitely and perhaps even think you deserve it.

Is that where we are as a species? We deserve this? I’ve certainly felt that. We’ve neglected so much for so long. We’ve stopped caring, at all, about the big picture or about the obvious consequences. We stopped insisting on the rules that literally a hundred million people had to die to get established.

I’ve started TikToking. It’s a desperate act. It’s not a performance. I’m not a “content creator,” nor “influencer.” I’m not trying to make “reaction” videos. I’m not trying to speak from some kind of righteous indignant authority beyond the place of common sense and experiences I genuinely feel. I’m not a comedian. I’m not a philosopher. I’m trying to scream more into the world in the way that the 60% of Americans who can’t read at a 6th grade level might understand. I know they aren’t reading blog posts.

Anyone and anything has the potential to break through like a bullet through a suburban mom’s windshield. “We” have an infinitely better chance of breaking things through by exercising our voices. You have to be real. You have to state the obvious so many times that we work it back into our collective memory and behavior. I don’t need another world war to have learned many lessons from it. Masked private police with SS tattoos is a non-starter. 85-ish years ago my grandfather would have, literally, slit that person’s throat. My job might be to find the non-violent means of rendering the same result, but it’s also to keep saying, proudly, what my grandpa accomplished.

These big problems make small problems feel so… misplaced? Misaligned? Whether it’s my difficulty doing menial jobs, broken water, itchy toes, debt, or concerns about my car or house, it’s like, didn’t the Vice President just say they’re gonna go door-to-door? So they’re gonna shoot people in their own homes because there will be more stuffed animals to spray blood on? Because this keeps us safe? I’m, it must be “impressed,” that the collective hasn’t started shooting back. It’s an incredible amount of strength and resilience. The Nazis never gave up, and the Japanese only broke when the most dangerous thing ever invented was dropped on them twice.

Resolve goes both ways. It just feels like we need to speed things along. We need consequences faster than fascism operates. We need people who are criminally exercising their power punished here and now, not, “When we get power, hopefully, one day.” We should be stripping Supreme Court judges of their positions. We should be investigating people who slow-walked insurrection activity. We should be imprisoning people who have destroyed our institutions in service to their greed and conspiracies. And we should be doing it today, tomorrow, and every single day until we can breathe again.

Every single time you’re drawn into a “debate” over things we figured out as pre-humans, they win. Just don’t. Just don’t respond. Don’t bother. Don’t feed the trolls and bots. Identify an action move, like with Stacey Abrams’ podcast, and do something suggested there. Write. Do this. Explain, in detail, how you’re not crazy and things you observe are wrong or right for thoughtful reasons. Identify the people who are playing the wrong game. The liars. The gamesmen. The ones who shift and play to the rabble in their bid for the kind of power other fascists believe is worthwhile and sustainable. That’s the “only” way out. Literally every one of us doing the smallest bit, every day, in service to each other, not the errant barking of the puppy killers, convicted rapists, and proud.

[1240] Make Myself Believe

I want to state for the record, and for future me, I’m perfectly aware that I’m in some form of a “panic hole.” I’ve never used that term before, and I suspect my version of “panic” looks many degrees more muted and boring than average. I’m invoking the concept because of what I’ve observed in my behavior over the last two weeks.

I think it started when I got surprised by what was a miscommunication in what my sober-living house business partner expected to be paid. We’d previously split everything equally. She needed to pay back some family that got the house into the condition it was for move-in ready. I eagerly agreed to the amount she asked for. I thought, incorrectly, it was an amount that included the bills. I learned from a text requesting the money otherwise a couple weeks later. Now, instead of having enough money to basically cover my bills each month, I’m underwater in what’s left to split.

Moreover, I’ve been the primary force for ensuring the house is even remotely coherent, legal, and stable. I’ve evicted the people who couldn’t hack it, in the middle of the night, twice. I’ve packed and moved their shit. I’ve drawn up and gotten the contracts signed. I’ve done outreach looking for more referrals. I’ve picked up furniture, installed cameras, and otherwise navigated house logistics. We would not have a house had I not put together the spreadsheet and made the argument to the house owner partner. I’m still working on what it would take to get our next house.

Selfishly, spiritually, I understand wanting to make as much money as you can off of your assets. I understand, deeply, viciously, the desire to pay back what you owe and not being beholden to what someone has done for you. I would have more sympathy for this position were she keen to show up to group meetings, explain the responsibilities she’s willing to take over with her increased wealth, and acknowledge that there would be no “business” part of this arrangement, or any money to take from, were it not for me.

As with everything, I just have to sit around and wait. I can put together the numbers, ask the questions, and earnestly try to build something profitable and sustainable, and yet always be at the mercy of someone else. My effort won’t be appreciated or recognized, and I have to be careful I don’t threaten what I’m allowed to keep. Yes, there’s paperwork, but who wants to pay lawyers when you’re trying to make money or like and respect the people you’re working with? This frustrating and disorienting stage gets set.

Then, a few days later, I get something of a demand letter from Chase. Dutifully, I sent it to my debt consolidation company, as I’ve sent them every piece of outreach from the three companies involved in my debt consolidation plan for the last fifteen months. I learn that my monthly payment could more than double in order to appease and “resolve” my account. For the first year, all I ever needed to do was come up with $416 a month. That paid all my house bills, plus the consolidation. I was assured the accounts would all find their resolution in 3–6 months. That did not happen.

Now, I’ve started to make it my mission to get out of debt. When I’m not in debt, I need to make about $300 a month to stay afloat. I’ve made $150, gross, from Door Dashing the last 2 days. That snapshot is the picture of my life I’m trying to return to. The journey is through, let’s just say, $20,000 of debt. So much of that is predatory interest and fees, not what I racked up, and that’s not counting what I think is $7,000 in payments made already.

I’m constantly trying to land on math that doesn’t make my head explode. I have an old work van that should be worth at least $5,000 I’m trying to sell. I have a car trailer worth at least $1,000. I’ve got a friend doing her budget to see how she might buy a chunk of my land. I have a box truck I don’t know what it’s worth, but I’m told there’s a certain kind of person who likes those boxes or frames on which they can put their own. There’s a drug study in Cincinnati that’s only 4 days with 11 outpatient visits that would net $8,800. I was, stupidly, anticipating getting a new job that would gross about $2,200 a month. I was going to continue dashing after work, and pursuing whatever I could sell.

It looks like so much potential, no? It feels like I can say something like, “By the numbers, this makes sense, and it shouldn’t take that long or be that hard.” Then, the emails. Your car insurance is due. Your credential renewal fees are coming. I haven’t washed dishes or been able to flush my toilet for over a month as my well pump died. I can’t afford the pump or labor, so in comes my dad to rescue me. Let’s owe $650 there now. Let’s think about the money your friend donated to allow you to counsel clients for free and try to jumpstart your business. You certainly will feel forever on the hook there until you turn yourself into an investment that starts paying her back. Are any of these people nagging you, begging you, resenting you, etc. about the money? Absolutely not. They don’t have to.

I tend to meet the immediacy of panic with action. That’s good when it can ground you. It’s dangerous when your brain is on fire and you’re driving the latest messy or frustrating order, cursing yourself severely about getting a college degree so you could be driving a salvaged car from Chick-fil-A to a rich person’s house who doesn’t tip.

I tell people all the time how angry I am. The most persistent feedback I get is, “I don’t believe you.” They aren’t around for screaming myself hoarse at the cunt riding my ass. They aren’t watching me flirt with death as I take metal rods to the face, fumbling around in the dark on my land, looking for a special tool I need to service my well under the delusion that I can do it myself with enough YouTube and AI. I can get to a point, then I need the $100 tool, then the $400 tool, then the patience to yell at AI to focus back up.

I’m so disoriented I tried to post to TikTok. In the furthest reaches of my arbitrary dreams-of-a-fix mind I think, “Why can’t I go viral?” I’m still pretty cute. I make people laugh regularly. All that superficial shit like hard nips will get people to click and then my quippy sentiments or deadpan or whatever it is can get some attention, and then like BetterHelp or Quintz or some shit will want to put a logo in the corner and I’ll be back in shape in no time! Maybe a Band-Aid company will want to sponsor covering up what the pole did to my nose!

I upload my first video. It’s a, and this is crucial, genuinely sincere statement about being tired of being poor. I’m driving. I qualify it, “Not poor poor, but poor enough.” I avoid the annoying things I don’t like seeing in videos. It’s a perfect throwaway micro-attention piece of bullshit that could get passed around or remixed and applied elsewhere. It was almost a little sing-songy. I open it up a few minutes later to check on any views.

Removed for “original sound.”

Hello? God? Is that You? Do I have to believe now? Your boy is too dumb and old to even TikTok right. I can’t even dip into the mindless hopeless waves of look-at-me opinion posting, and I still haven’t bothered to read or learn why. Whether it’s some stupid thing I didn’t catch in the post settings, or, as my mind naturally assessed, indicative of the arbitrary tyranny and control of a platform to silence any potential for solidarity around class struggle, I don’t know. I uninstalled the app. (The second video I posted worked, I just checked right now. 34 views!)

That panic allows me to kill the part of me that feels too stupid for finding myself Door Dashing. I’m the guy who cheerleads his clients to work to get their lives together. We’re both doing the same kind of job because I dropped the ball. Yes, yes, “the system,” yada yada, I’m totally on board with how damning and impossible it is. But also, I tend to hack the system and have clearly been getting lazy. At least, that’s easiest to believe. If I can centralize the problem on me and what I’m fucking up, there’s a certain ironic hope that it can actually be fixed. If I’m truly caked in as much shit across settings as I fear, now we’re flirting with some properly life-ending darkness narratives. I’m not keen to die, so what’s the takeaway?

I didn’t really want the job I didn’t get. It didn’t feel like something that was going to be stimulating, worth the drive and time, and wouldn’t meet my actual desire to find something fully remote. It’s the inconsistency of the income combined with car costs that fuel my catastrophic thinking.

Anyway, I must have reached the end of my breakdown for the moment as I’ve reinstalled TikTok and started posting inflammatory content. Pray for me! I’m told it just takes one sponsor or viral moment.

[1215] Awesome God

I tend to watch movies on Sundays. I don’t know if that’s by accident, or because as a child we used to go over to my grandparents for lunch/dinner on Sundays and watch a movie afterwards. I’ve been more or less baked into my home for the last 4 days, leaving last night under the impression I was to spend time with a friend I haven’t seen in a while. Instead, I did some grocery shopping and returned to my nest.

I’ve been anchoring to an idea lately. I watched a random short or TikTok where a man described how much conservatives care about your life and body. They care who you marry. They care who you fuck. They care where your immortal soul is going and how to get it there. If you just want to be left alone, you can’t do so in a world where a conservative will make it their mission to introduce you to Jesus or otherwise condemn you to their hell.

I listen to pushing 100 podcasts. The Pod Save America guys dutifully list the atrocious consequences of the continued spiral into the fascist abyss. Why are we cancelling research to save kids with brain cancer? Because. Because, fuck you, that’s why. Because it doesn’t serve the financial interest of those in power, and because hundreds of millions of people can’t be bothered to register their neglectful impact on others.

I’m tempted to say I’m like the man in the TikTok video. I don’t care about what you do “personally.” I don’t think it takes a high I.Q. to understand that if you walk around as a disease vector, that can affect me. If you’re keen to kill people I’m not sure are the enemy, that will blow back on me too. If you’re incapable of defining and carrying out laws and justice, I can’t expect to maintain a certain coherence to my own thoughts, household, and family. You’re not leaving me alone in the same way I’d grant to you.

I asked in my IOP group the other day what made people so confident in their judgment. No surprise, no one had a good answer, but they wield it reflexively all day. They don’t want to be judged by the worst things they’ve done as addicts, but give them a second of unstructured/unfocused time and most sentences start with something like, “That motherfucker,” or “He knows what he did,” or “I’m just being real.” We’ll label, other, mind-read, and circularly “logic” ourselves into compulsive coping cycles.

The religious person is analogous to an addict. All answers resolve to an infinite unearned confidence in how you compulsively cope with the world. What makes it an addiction is your proclivity to do it in spite of the self-destruction. When your god sees fit to burn the latest witch, your hair also being on fire is a feature, not a bug. It’s just god’s warmth lighting your way.

We talk about “extremes” on the Right and Left and how they end up mirroring each other. Despite a whole period of The New Atheists, I don’t think culturally we walked away with a deep enough understanding of ideological capture. I listened to Dan Carlin and Sam Harris talk about how ruminating on modern times and the absolute craziness people are willing to go along with makes the past easier to understand. That we’ve supercharged it with technology is all the more confounding. “We” are captured. I don’t feel like “we,” because I still use my voice, and look for every opportunity to fight the march over the cliff.

I don’t think people wrestle with how much they do, in fact, want to die. They grow up in ridiculously ignorant and abusive households. They consume media that makes it nearly impossible to think clearly or coherently. They’re fat. They’re weird looking. The nice things they try to do for themselves, say a concert, come with huge price tags, people masturbating in the crowd, and some asshole with a sign blocking your view. Paid $20 for popcorn lately, or a single shot?

It’s not like they’re born wanting to die. It’s that they get messages fed to them their entire life that dying’s where it’s at. You’ll get to Heaven. You’ll get to enjoy your enemies in Hell. All that you can’t understand or cope with will be revealed and made perfect. It’s a linguistic drug you feed yourself in every moment you stare a little too long over the cliff’s edge, too curious.

Doubling-down is the name of the game most people are playing. Whatever they say, say it again. So often the words contain less useful information than a baby crying or bird cawing. Never stop. If you stop, you’ll interrupt the road to the true goal of dying. If you stop, you’d have to start working to account for your infinite ignorance. Why do that when you can celebrate and be empowered by it with your claim to your god and its powers? Why can’t you just be left alone to condemn and destroy as you see fit?

Addicts share an immaturity and entitlement. Their development has often been arrested. Who are you, counselor, to tell me anything about how to live my life if you haven’t walked in my shoes? Unless you’ve walked the fine line between “normal” and “meth-induced psychosis,” you certainly can’t be trusted. It’s not their fault, necessarily, but you have to approach subjects as though you’re talking to a child. We pretend like we’re not all fundamentally children in the same way. In addiction, it’s just exacerbated. Why would a third to half of the population in any given moment or era want a “strong man” or “angry daddy?”

I think about this any time someone “intellectual” claims to be a specific religion or believe in a god. I think it’s why we’re doomed regardless. The exercise of self-justification, the double-down, can be dressed up in thousand dollar words, books, and surgically precise sutures to moral postures. The concepts of “good” or “fair” or “justice” or “individuality” or “rights” or anything we’ve trudged up from The Enlightenment will never feel as salient as “my god.” We can’t share in my god. You have to navigate my god. My god is awesome. My god fills in the gaps. My god is all-powerful. My god can do literally anything ever I need him to, except give me genuine peace about how you are living your life.

This is the utility, the joy, the comfort, in self-destruction. Every piece of me that dies is one less I need to suffer. If I break my brain, I can’t think about how you make me feel. If I break my legs, I can’t be expected to stand on my ability to argue. If I break my back, it won’t be expected to be in the fields. If I break my tongue then it’s your fault! for not recognizing the drooling ramblings of the confused and infirm. If I break my eyes and ears I’ll never know how many die, needlessly. If I break my heart, I won’t feel how violently I’m beating my chest.

[1097] This Is Only A Test

I want to dig a little deeper into an old theme that's snapped into focus a bit recently.

Framing. How you frame your circumstances feels like it's taken heightened importance to me. You're never "right" or especially "perfect" in your perspective. It's the first fundamental mistake people make - believing your own bullshit too deeply. What makes it "too" deeply? Your words don't match your actions, your phrasing manifests as broad cliches, and you let the consequences of feeling stunted, handicapped, and terrible play out more than not.

I was listening to Sam Harris and Chris Anderson, of TED talks, recently. They seemed overly concerned with how to enlighten the rich techno-dorks to invest and do good after the Sam Bankman-Fried chaos around effective altruism. It felt detached yet familiar to me. They want to embolden the wealthiest to try to make large impacts. I try to get the hapless catastrophizing souls in my orbit to do literally anything practical and consistent to change how they talk about their circumstances. I haven't needed a billionaire to inspire me to get the land, try to be in business for myself, or defend my perspective on the nature of exploitative capitalism.

When your frame is actively cultivated for you through the media and algorithms, it's a wonder more people don't feel obligated and incensed to push back more aggressively. One of the reasons I write is to look for how often, and if it's too much, I'm blaming some broad conception of the world or sliver of history for why I have or haven't acted in some way. All things being true about "capitalism," "fascism," "greed," "laziness," "the world," "stupid people," etc. where's my time, money, and effort going? Am I 35 dreaming about owning land one day, or am I 8 years into the project? Am I letting my jaded anxiety prevent me from investing in ongoing creative ways to sustain an effort to do good social work? Or have I spent $2000 to become a nonprofit and hire people to fundraise and write grants?

I've been as "lazy" and "directionless" and "bored" and "lonely" and "wanton in my spending" and "disorganized" as I've ever felt or been the last couple months. And yet, somehow, I've reignited my capacity to be an exceptional guitar player, achieved nonprofit status, hired people to submit grants, done more squats and completed more books than I have in years, won a court case, and have continued to build, at least 35 so far, more shows into my future to look forward to. A majority of my focused actions speak to my values and what I continue to want for my future, even if there's an infinite void of space between what feels like "progress" or "hope."

From the moment I uttered my plans or dreams for the land, I've fielded dozens of what I consider "empty" sentiments of, "Oh my God! Me too! I want to do…."whatever it is that inevitably calls for a garden, raising animals, focusing on artistic pursuits, and fundamentally eschewing the grind or rat race or money for its own sake. I hear it constantly. They follow so-and-so on Tik Tok. They have a Pintrest dream wall. They know of some land in the best location and their friend is totally going to help them once their job… Like, I have to stop myself from getting judgey and condescending when I think about it. But it's the cliche. You dream and do nothing, because the story is meant to placate taking responsibility and sacrificing.

I don't even think that's a particularly blunt or cunty way to state it. The habit is to begin listing current or other responsibilities. This is done as though every remotely functional adult doesn't have similar conditions they're working under. It's also the time to dip into an infinite list of "what ifs." This is done to obscure more fundamental obligations that get ignored or dismissed because the metaphorical equivalent of a screaming child needs to be attended to indefinitely, so all of your questions about whether or not it's vaccinated or well-fed are kind of, "Inappropriate, don't you think?"

I think the more I developed a habit of describing every moment as "both and" all at once, the more I discovered what it even meant to take responsibility for my actions, words, or ideas about how or whether to achieve something. It's always complete shit, and always amazing and as good as it can ever get, all the time at once. "You" then consist of your choice to frame that reality. Every moment you drop the frame, you're at probabilistic whims. Every moment you defensively assert the privilege and power of your infinitely compelling snapshot frame, you'll undermine your capacity to escape the hollow space it carves for your existence.

I know I'm going to spend the rest of my life hearing people's empty professions and appreciation for what I'm attempting to do or am doing. I know it has nothing to do with me. I know that what I hope to achieve has nothing to do with them either. For the sake of my project, I have to return to the 3 things I listed initially. Do my actions align with my words and values? Am I more shitty than contented? Can I offer an informed and comprehensive view of what I'm doing, or can I sweep it all under a cliche that's wildly too positive or negative?

I don't want to be miserable. I don't want to act happier or better off than I am. The lesson is to be flexible, comprehensive, and consistent. Bitch and moan, but then go do something about it. Grieve, and then throw a party. Cite all the reasons not to, and match and exceed them with what it takes to do the thing. I've never been more convinced at how aggressively we get in our own way than as I've achieved more and more of what I want, and can't even give it away. Because it's not up to me how and whether you allow your perception to receive, accept, and work with what it takes to get the same things. No one gave me land. I've offered it for free since the moment I've had it, and one person has chanced creating something on it in 8 years. I got my fucking spine tapped twice to afford it in the first place.

Everything I get or pursue is in service to something larger. I didn't want land, per se, I wanted affordable stability. I wanted to play and experiment and make big fires. I wanted to pursue entrepreneurial ideas and own the tools and learn the ways to be more sustainable. Do you really want your little cabin and a garden? I bet the dream stops there. Do you want to exercise? Because that's gardening. Do you want to sell the food or get better at making healthy meals? Do you want to genuinely practice some craft or hobby? Do you want to use your extra funds to come to more shows with me or travel? You don't actually know what you want, so you stick with whatever you have. I want a constantly growing list of things, experiences, chances, and options. I know my effort isn't wasted, and I know how I feel before, during, and after I fit another piece of what I want into my perspective.

I've said it before, but I'd argue most of my clients don't struggle with "addiction," broadly conceived, but with their self-conception. Once you get the cravings at bay, you are presented with the obligation to form the story of your self worth. You have to own your past decision making, figure out your true motivations, navigate complicated emotional ties with people who might, in the long run, get you killed if you don't break away. You're not hopelessly at the mercy of your drug/s of choice. You're at the mercy of yourself. Do you accept the contradictions and work to prove them as compliments to iterating states of being? Most people most of the time, implicitly or otherwise, say definitively, "No." Cue the excuses and apologists.

Your problem, when less explicit than heroin, is the same as everyone's. It's existential. Why are you here? Is there a moment you decided to live for something, yourself, your values, your truth, or are you flailing at the end of dozens of stories about how you "should" be? You need to get married and settle down. You must work (x) amount of hours at a respectable job and play nice with every emotionally abusive and soul-draining relationship you've ever been offered. Take on school, home and car debt. Have kids, say the right things, but stay silent most often. Heed the advice of the most willful or talkative and who you, incorrectly, perceive as most powerful. Give it up to a god. Grind. Love or hate this or that. Buy now.