[358] Effective Text Message

If I can communicate the 20 different angles I’ve considered approaching this blog from in a meaningful way, hopefully it will serve to amplify the theme, which is in fact, communication.

Information is always being conveyed. No matter how much you’d maybe like to hit pause or hide away, your very status as a person is telling something to somebody. It’s not just that you talk, it’s how you talk, who to, and what about. No one cares that you have hair until it looks like you spent time making look nice or are relaying a message about just waking up. The trick seems to be creating your own message verses allowing people to hear only whatever it is they’re telling themselves about you.

I, rather frequently, state my goals. Whether it’s monetary achievement, personal gratification in different kinds of friendships, or forcefully asserting ideas about conversation and awareness of various things I consider problems, my agenda is rooted in more than leaving you with an impression that I may be a hippie because of my hair. And, while I don’t always act like it, this leaves me with a concern over how, if, and when I try to communicate something. The why is obvious, because in theory, if I’m effective, “things” will get “better.”

So I’m immediately drawn to people who I can talk to. People who don’t flinch at how I say something and actively pursue the reasons I said it. People who can step back and help prepare the word soup without threatening to drown me in it. People who aren’t afraid to put any and every idea they may hold dear on the table to be scrutinized. This fundamental principal, this habit, I think is a prerequisite to anything even resembling “progress.” Some might say it’s to be scientifically minded.

Well before you start to bother talking to other people, you need to be aware of what you’re telling yourself. How that dialogue gets started and the reasons you develop to preserve it can be vastly complicated. Even as someone who puts out what he thinks, generally sober minded and after much forethought, I can still find myself burdened by previous ideas, habits, or ruts that I dug myself in the past. I have to go back and read my own reasonable position to refute the craziness I’ve allowed my head to go in the moment. To change an automatic overtly compelling response like that is incredibly, if not impossibly hard.

So then my dialogue about that response has to change. I have to better identify which feelings or thoughts are worth reading into. I’m starting to play in that stupid emotional realm again now, so when I get jealous, am I really changing my ideas about sex overnight and looking to protect some societal notion of integrity about relationships? No, even if it seems like it would feel really good to fix the shitty feeling in the moment. It’s acknowledging, not irrationally capitulating. You don’t fix a car spinning out by frantically turning the wheel the opposite direction. It’s prompting me to think about where the butterflies are really hiding.

And it takes practice. A lot of all the time daily awareness to when you’re overselling yourself on a story. Doubt is an uncomfortable place until you realize the things you’re basically sure of came out of a healthy skepticism about them. Your reasons get stronger and can stand up to deeper scrutiny. Your goals get a little more polished. Your analogies become leaves on the wind; watch how they soar.

I understand that if it can go wrong in me, it can do the same in others. I will forever be embarrassed by my first violent blood bath stabs at writing or conveying a message. Naturally, if I conceive of most people as the incorrigible dramatic miscreants that I so glaringly resembled at sixteen, I understand why they might take my words, meticulously etched upon my family’s finest parchment, and want to light them on fire. Change is hard, but sometimes it’s only as hard as you’re willing to make it. Incorporating a new idea doesn’t always have to feel like life or death...of your personality, character, or credibility.

There is the context of your mind. The one ingrained in you by virtue of being human, the one bombarding you with advertising and social cues, and the one you cultivate with your inner dialogue. And they’re all competing. We’re still fight or flight mammals but with little reason to generally fear for our lives. We’re tapped into an infinitely growing list of “everything” with a point and click and are prompted to decide something about it all. This very independently of whether or not our opinion is needed or necessary. It can be more than a little distracting and destructive to try and build a mental or social framework to fall into while getting swallowed up by this hole. It’s like an animal that keeps growing more and more hair until you can’t cut enough to identify it’s a dog. Find your inner dog.

There is a social context. There are still plenty of terrified atheists and gay kids who don’t want to get the shit kicked out of them for swimming too hard against their family or society’s current. You wouldn’t consider it a good thing for them to, upon escaping that climate, retain ideas about their deserving of hell or them being evil and disgusting. But that happens, in less extreme, but just as compromising ways. I constantly poke at and speak against religiosity for this reason. The hair’s a knotted mess. Those tangled webs of arguments and empty definitions are where my concern for effective communication came from. And no, it’s never private or personal, you’re always saying something.

The fact this is a blog changes how I write. The fact that it’s geared towards people who (should) know a ton about me and might have been privy to a conversation or ten that provokes blogs slants the message. I think it’s important to know how to write cited detailed analyses rooted in history and evidence. I think it’s just as important to power through lines of reasoning, however potentially absurd, and find the true heart of how and why a message will resonate with you or how and why you’re going about explaining yours. If you’re not appreciative about the prospect of being wrong, when it’s the prerequisite for learning anything worth knowing, how do you respect yourself? How could I take pride in what I do, or call what I write work?

It’s lucky for me that the loudest messages are, not coincidentally, the easiest to hear. We all tend to react in predictably angry or fear based ways if our foundations are rocked. I know when you’re going to fuck the girl you shouldn’t to spite your ex. I know how you’re going to deflect or blame me for picking at your faith. I’d bet there’s an arsenal, conscious or unconscious, that you’d be dying to enlighten me about my ideas or behavior if I pursued something about you too aggressively. This, the glorious fight/flight entanglement both to fend off the present threat and then to flee, perhaps in breaking the relationship, so as to never have to deal with such an unpleasant line of thought again.

I say let them run. It simply communicates to me your hapless and likely hopeless, circumstantial existence. The mountains of ideas you move and impact you hope to have on the world will be helped by those left behind. All 5 of them.

[357] Balancing Act

This should be brief, I mean, I wrote the title before the blog.

I just finished an article about the "used-to-haves." The people who had a basic job and could pay the bills on time. This woman took vacations and got pedicures. Now she's living paycheck to paycheck and feeling the desperation of not knowing what the future holds. She says there are many like her and they won't forget. They'll use their education and ensure their kids understand that they're not meant to live like the poor. She calls what's happening not a recession, but a theft.

I wear a yin-yang symbol every day to beat into my head the idea of balance. Every time I want to cause a scene or go on some shitty rant about the things I hate, it helps to keep in mind that I'm doing it from a pimp ass computer. Likewise, when things look rosy and amazing, there's probably someone shitting in your cereal. As a result, when I hear her message, part of me thinks her and her kind had it coming.

There are any number of things you choose to be persistently willfully ignorant about under the guise of keeping it together. How many times did she ask herself what it meant, beyond making her bosses look good, for her to work at that company? Whether she rode the slow burn to poverty or it happened “all of a sudden” would depend on how thoughtful she was about the idea that getting fired happens. An unpaid mortgage is firstly unpaid and your middle schooler hasn't graduated college.

One of the first pieces of advice from SCORE, the old guys who've owned businesses in town and now disperse their wisdom for free, was to get a loan. They said “leverage” was the way to get open and start doing business. Until you're open, after all, you don't have much of a business. I decided to stop going to them for help. I want to be in control, balance my ability and effort against what I stand to make. You can't do that from a hole.

But that's something easy like finances. What happens when you dig yourself a psychological hole? What happens when you're stuck on a loop about “the American dream” or “the importance of a degree” and you fail to see the reality? I think that plays to why we don't see a huge revolution. I think people are trapped, concerned with how it should be with no attention or capacity to understand their role in it. I was told “get a degree” and heard instead “waste money,” “pursue a job structure you don't agree with,” “impress people who don't deserve it,” “consign yourself to the idea that this is the best way to learn.” Lucky for me, I appreciated what I was getting into and balanced it against what I got out of the house.

The reality as it seems to me is that much of what we engage in is done for arguably “no reason.” It's what was already there. It's something to presently focus on. You're actually trapped, or feel trapped, and what you're doing distracts you from that realization. It's killing time. It's framing a “respectable story” to tell your parents and friends. It quiets you with a false sense of predictability. Desperation claiming noble sacrifice. Complacence struggling daily to look like allegiance.

As a result, the consequences are taken for granted. We don't see people standing for much anymore so, holy shit! That's why no one is standing! Your cog self in the wheel of the machine didn't care what the machine was making. You simply had your place. And your place afforded you comforts and entitled you with an opinion on what to expect. How you spin or why you spin don't matter as long as you're spinning.

No one bothers to expect exactly the answer on the other end of the equation.

[356-3] Ding, Going Up

As with most things I write, there's ample opportunity to get more specific. This will likely make more sense as a third part to a trilogy in line with the last two things I've written.

The idea of having “no rules” in a relationship sounds retarded, at first. It comes from a point of shared selfishness. If you want the other person to do as they do and that's what you like about them, what's the point of undermining that by dictating what they should do? It seems unfair and petty. You can do a lot to suppress the feelings you have about their behavior, because after all, it's your problem as a result of your mutually agreed upon no-rules understanding. But, at that point, it's likely not healthy and not really what you had in mind when you said “no rules” in the first place.

At the intellectual level, everyone just “is.” There is no intrinsic specialness other than what you choose to feel about yourself and your happenstance existence. This isn't a very constructive or human place to come from if you seek to form social bonds or convey “real human messages.” And, arguably for most of my life, that's been perfectly fine for me. The handful of times I allowed “emotionality” to guide my rationale or actions, they went remarkably bad. And lest you think I only reference my small window, the reports from others are consistent, to one degree or another, with my experience. It's significantly easier to “trust” people to simply be their degree of cluster-fuckery, and navigate those waters as they rise and fall.

So you develop a language to accompany your behavior. I adopt a lot of terms revolving around coldness, distance, detachment, being mean, playing games, sociopathy, and brazen disregard for the emotional states of other people. It's a well-rehearsed, and constructive for my purposes, set of conditions you'd do well to understand what I mean when referencing them, if we're attempting to get along.

At the heart of it is a reflection of superficiality. It's the overt impression I've gotten from overwhelming examples of asking about and getting more than I bargained for. There's not been an experience where it's been worth “trusting” people or looking vulnerable. So why would I pretend I'm concerned with opportunities to engage in those behaviors? Why would I consider your emotional appeal? I can't argue from a position where things have gone well when these things were at play, so I'm intellectually locked out of the kind of conversation you might be trying to have. I, in times of emotionality, have been met with recurring themes of dismissive, taken for granted, or abusive responses; you eventually learn to find a way to “shut it off.”

Now, I still don't necessarily regard this as a bad thing. Lucky for me, I really like being “mean.” It's fun and fulfilling to explain things in terms or have an understanding of the world that either delights people in how dreadful it sounds, or turns them off so completely I learn quickly they aren't worth bothering with. Yes, while selfishness can evolve and mean many things, the bad kind doesn't go away completely. I'll take those opportunities to be personally gratified.

Here's where things get tricky. What happens when you're not super keen on being crazy selfish all the time? What happens when it's not about you it's about us? Emotions in and of themselves are not bad things, but I've thought for a considerable amount of time they should inform, not dictate, how you behave. So what happens when I don't want to play the cold manipulative game, and am being informed from the guy everyone forgot worked here, that something needs to change?

I certainly have a construct, a set of ideals or relative rule structure in which I conduct my affairs. It stands to reason that if they've served me well, rules in and of themselves are not a bad thing. Appreciating the rules is different than seeking to use them for control. And self-imposed rules hopefully come from a place of deep appreciation for why you conduct yourself a certain way. It's why I'd rather detach when I have too long periods of “fuck everything” verses continuing being around and making it people I like's problem.

Certainly the underpinning philosophy behind open relationship things is a sense that you have more to give, or recognize what others offer, on top of, or in conjunction with, what you have. It's greedy for the right reasons. Some people are just sluts, I truly empathize, and make it more about sex and “spreading the love” that way, but to me, that seems fundamentally hollow. Others have a deep pull towards different people or personalities and want to play those feelings out wherever they take them. And there's any number of degrees in between. Regardless of the motivation, you've missed the boat if you're not communicating what you feel and what you want. Hopefully, having that backed with an underlying trust. Expressing, not excusing.

And I think there's a shaky ground in that “between” realm that doesn't get enough acknowledgment. I think having built a pretty big network of “people I get along with to one degree or another” when something happens that seems to undermine what I thought that relationship looked like, it helps justify the lack of feeling or investment even further. Everyone seems to be out for “the idea of The One” and anything you had gets swept under the table because they found a proper title. It's humbling (is that how you spell humiliating?) how people you've spent nearly every day with for months can express how lonely they feel.

It should be clear by now that it's not “trust them to fuck up how you expect” or “communicate what you want them to hear.” I've, until relatively recently, found little to no inclination to do anything but those. I didn't know how to appreciate the kinds of places “emotional” people were in, in the same way. Or if I had, I didn't give it the weight required for a change in the decision making process.

It goes back to previous themes I've mentioned. What matters is your being intentioned. What's on your mind and why. What example you want to set and what kind of behavior you want to reward. Can you see, do you feel, the utility and perhaps meaning in actually trusting or actually communicating where you're coming from with someone else. Is there something about together that better informs you about being alone. I'm not using question marks because they feel more like directives.

I think having experienced a hint of how it can work has at least made me a tad more sympathetic. Ultimately, what gets you to the other side is being able to struggle through the words and feelings, hopefully with someone who doesn't betray your process. Who are you shoveling shit with when it inevitably hits the fan? When the pains of jealousy, doubt, or existential nihilism subside, did your mind go back to “I wish they were here lying next to me watching this movie.”

And it's not fair. That's almost exactly the point. Picking someone or adhering to new rules for someone else's sake is to prop up and celebrate that us example. Presumably, at least for me, because you advocate for what it means and feels like, and not so you can look down your nose or garner false pride in clinging to something that staves off crippling anxiety and loneliness. It should perhaps also not allow you to forget or ignore what else you have or want and why those still mean something to you.

If you're brave enough to talk yourself over a cliff, you'll be able to appreciate what survived after the landing.

This is part 3 of a series: Part 1 & Part 2

[355-2] Totes Jelly

I don't think I've devoted an entire blog to jealousy. I should get on that now.

With the foundation thoughts for ownership in place, jealousy seems to follow rather naturally. What is jealousy then? I can tell you the most recurring theme in talking with people about their relationships is some form of jealousy standing vigilant looking for any and all excuse to leap forth and take action. Whether it's your creepy boyfriend looking from across the room or your list of rules about who to text or hang out with, everyone seems to have some form of rules they want their partners to play by to help dignify the specialness of their relationship. No, they don't all have to take some creepy or overbearing form and there are plenty of people who find jealousy endearing, but I think there's a deeper story.

Now, turns out, I tend to think you have a hard time reaching a kind of “ground floor” of a personality or individual nature when you're adhering to rules. A Christian who is virtuous for fear of hell holds no more water for me than a faithful spouse who simply doesn't believe they know how to get away clean with cheating. You need to develop your own reasons. You need to actually feel the depths of your “soul” (icky word) and then start trying to honestly recount your experience. I think you should find the most ground in the idea of things changing, and then put yourself to task figuring out why.

So, as a rule in relationships, I don't deal with rules. No matter what my potential feelings on a matter may be, I let them happen, yet what makes the most sense to do is my decision. This allows jealousy to be kicked in the balls, in a sense. I think unlike sadness or anger, jealousy has a terribly “personal” character. You can externalize the others. I'm mad at you, I'm sad they died. Whatever you may be jealous of harps back inevitably to something about you. Given that I've lost practically all capacity to be insecure, let's see if I can describe what feels abstract.

I have a hard time describing how and why I feel jealous or when it kicks in. I've been jealous about damn near every person I've “hooked up with” as it's crassly understood when they get a boyfriend, for example. Why? Is it like an intrinsic man thing to fundamentally feel some kind of claim on women you fool around with? And, even if I make it “go away,” it usually has everything to do with the distance or the distractions of the present moment. In a sense, it's like there's always a lit candle. It may just have something to do with taboos and struggles people tend to have when it comes to that realm, and the idea that they decided to get with you, it's like, awesome no way!

The romantic in me, (right? It's struggling to work it's way back from the grave) likes to tell the story of the endless amounts of people I hate and find ugly as sin. The idea that there are even a handful of opportunities to find people who are mutually attractive and versed in interesting things to talk about is like a godsend. It would be quite a shame to think they would get with someone “lesser” or who would not sort of feel the same things about them if and when their situation changes. Like, I do a lot of work trying to figure out where I'm coming from, some lost boy pining for the pussy I find it hard to be compared to even figuratively.

I think there's a huge part of me that doesn't want to respect or acknowledge other peoples' feelings. Let me explain. For as emotionally retarded, quick to insecurity, anxious and fear laden declarations of “love” I've come across, I've all but lost my capacity to believe damn near anything people say about their relationships or where they're coming from. When someone “woos” one of my friends, I'm immediately defaulted into thinking “the worst.” And it's not just because I'm mean, it's because people are normal. People are polite. People want to believe. Even when they know they shouldn't.

And when I say the worst, I mean shitting on ideas I had about my friend. In that, “how the fuck could they not see this this and this” and I have to sort of choke down new little negotiations of how they're going to register in my life. I've seen friends go after other friends out of spite, and “win”. God could that be unpacked for days but this is no time for pointing fingers. I've seen a sense of pride across faces in recalling their “number.” And I've seen so many girls after years of finding typical guys start to develop a lot of demoralizing habits and ideas about what they want from their next partner. Certainly not in every realm, but in very important ways, whomever you're with, I shouldn't be able to say that I would be (am?) a better friend to you than they are a boyfriend.

I think it's partly a pretentious thing. I think that I hold myself and our relationship in such a high regard, that if I can't stomach the other peoples' personalities who you like, it's like an affront to what I thought existed between us. It's like, I'd rather be treated like a whore-ish dog than be persuaded that there's something more between the people I fool around with or call friends. And there's a world of confusion as to how I understand how you understand your relationship with someone else. Yes, I'm pretending it's even my business because I had some naïve thoughts about the level of involvement friends might offer their perspectives.

What's interesting, is that jealous feeling goes completely out the window when I like the guy. Or, perhaps better said, basically know where he's coming from. Granted, this is damn near impossible to understand about most people most of the time, so I'm always gonna be stuck making shitty comments from time to time. And it's not enough to simply say something like “well, he makes me happy.” Happy is a fickle and cruel joke played on relationships. Happiness is a trick. It's the easiest set of causes and effects. Identify things you like, do said things in varying intervals that provoke happiness. I want people in your lives that make you work, think, and you both come out disfigured with the battle wounds of being human, not “happy.” For my sake, if I may beg, please be specific.

I've always considered jealousy important for the amount of information it can prompt you to think about. It's why, while I'll always lament it, I won't let it dictate rules. I won't pretend I own anything, I won't pretend it's going to stop me from treating or caring to the degree I do. What I need to do is either figure out how to better respect where people are coming from when they engage with what I would consider, let's put it politely, hopeless-where-it-matters types. I know that it isn't fair to friends or even the ideas I have about them. It's my cut-and-dry attitude of how I engage with said hopeless types that bleeds over into undue expectations of friends.

I suppose I find others' sincerity shallow. If they manage to be sincere at all and aren't outright lying to get by or get what they want. I'm sure there is no intrinsic difference between me and anyone, hopeless or otherwise, that people are choosing to relate to. I think I just find more value and meaning in calling out all the ways it can be bullshit. I see a lot of emotional thieves looking for the language and the payout without the work. I hope to cast a giant shadow of doubt. It lets the people with real things shine.

This is part two of a series: Part 1 & Part 3

[354-1] By The Ones We Think We Love

I'd like to talk about the idea of ownership. It's embedded in our language and culture. Certainly one of the first things children learn how to say is “mine!” You have your family and I have mine. You have your things and your clothes and any number of ideas that are yours. You own them outright. Right?

A recurring theme in my childhood was hearing my crazy cunt of a mother say things like “you're my boys, I brought you in, I can take you out.” Now we also got read to us that book with the kid playing in front of a toilet that said “I'll love you forever, my baby you'll be,” so it was a mixed bag. But the ownership theme still carries. All this really did was confuse me growing up. I didn't really focus on what my identity was, I was just whatever emotional state I was put into. I'd argue I was, not with her intention as she's not that smart, conditioned to continually focus on me in relation to her. This opposed to what it meant to be the obnoxious little kid I was.

I think her sense of ownership over us made her feel a sense of power, as little else in her life she could control. My mom's fat. The handful of times she tried dieting, all I remember was the week it was a bad idea to steal a chip because she was actively counting them. When she gave up trying to control that, it was back to stealing chips without a slap or pissy mood the rest of the day. She worked for one of Chicago's top attorneys as a legal secretary for like 10 years and was dumped the second that attorney got appointed as a judge. She also grew up with a shitty abusive background if you're looking to sympathize because god is it easy for me to continue a shit stream and start losing the point.

She loved stuff. She had a closet the length of a wall too packed for the clothes to move and shoes along the bottom to match. If you didn't get her a diamond or Swarofsky crystal for Christmas or her birthday, she would find a way to be angry for weeks. To me, she built a little empire of things that she could reflect on and try to find value in. She had no control. She didn't even know how to begin defining or practicing control. So she added to her external environment and developed overbearing and borderline (ha) abusive relationships at home and with her friends.

Did not expect to run with that for so long, but it's so explicitly easy and spot on.

So think about what you think you own and why. All of your things, all of your friendships. Are they yours to even have? There's the idea that we allow ourselves things to the level at which we think we deserve. I think this can be illuminating when you reflect on your life. The types of personalities you contend with. The amount of stuff you've accumulated and why. What does it mean to you? What does it feel like to take on all that you've projected into something, or someone?

For an ego maniac, I've a hard time considering myself special. My cold analytic mind breaks myself down into the sum of it's part just as I do other people. My thoughts are an amalgam of the books and shows and music and interactions that I've had. All as particular as they are to any person, but cultivated within a set of boundaries. Often, my “novel take” is your ignorance of a previous influence. The only thing I have is my deliberate intention. Even if something accidental happens because of me or to me, I can't call it mine because I didn't even know it existed until it screwed something up.

So how much of what we own did we deliberately set out to? When did we want to feel that sense of power or pride and not just happen upon how good it can be when it falls in your lap? How hollow our achievements that fall like dominoes.

I love my stuff. I take as much joy out of using it and flaunting it as the next person. But it's stuff. It's stuff I can't make, barely understand, and if not for the utility, it'd be relegated to wherever pogs went. My ownership of said stuff is weak. It doesn't matter. It's a terrible measure by which to judge someone or metric by which to judge yourself. It's not that you own a guitar, it's how you play it.

But what about people? If someone tells you “I'm yours” what do you do? ” Is it the same thing as pursuing the person of your dreams and capturing their love? Is it a sense of pride, power or listless exhaustion that makes you throw yourself into someone else's arms and claim game over, you're theirs?

I wonder if the other person is even capable of taking “it.” Your love, your devotion and promises. I don't think it's their opportunity; it's not theirs to take. In a real sense, it doesn't exist for them. They feel what they believe about your love, not “your love.” It's not a thing. You have to be doing it for you, even if, if not especially because, they're the one in mind.

It's not that fateful moment you decided to declare your intention that sums up and rounds out the rest of your life. It's the moments every time you keep a promise. It's the ones you make every time you say that stupid word love. I don't know how to give myself or own someone else. All I know how to do is decide and spend my time. If I said marriage, if I said “I'm yours,” (as I've described it), or made a promise forever, it'd feel not just like I'm lying, but lying without purpose, for the sake of it.

You're not my friends. We share perspectives and ideas and I'm lucky to have found you. Kristen isn't my girl, she's simply who I'm going to pick over you. It isn't my family (not everyone, obviously) that I'm ashamed to look at, it's a crowd of people I spend next to no time around, circumstantially sharing some genes.

Of course it could be argued I'm flatly ignorant of the emotional heights and interpersonal achievements of you “normals” and it's all a very simple equation involving birds and bees.

This is part one of a series: Part 2 & Part 3

[353] Not An Optimist

What's your impression of our [US] country? I ask in earnest because I'm about to offer mine. This will be heavily characterized by my thoughts after watching “Inequality For All” by Robert Reich.

If you want a history lesson of inequality, this is a movie for you. You will learn how and when wages stagnate. You will see parallels from the 1930s to what's happening now. You will get every number your heart could ever want regarding GDP or value. What you won't get is really anything to do about it. This is unfortunate because Reich knows his shit, is data backed, but most importantly, he's in the minority of anyone who seems capable of fixing things.

This doesn't mean he doesn't know how. Many people know how and I'd argue that he's one of them. But his method isn't rooted in what appears to be the actual state. His version for fixing things is to rise up and realize that we make the laws. We create the government that structures how free enterprise works. If we would only take it upon ourselves and remain optimistic, because history is on our side, things will eventually play out for the better.

For my part, I'm in no way an optimist. I don't acknowledge that we have a real government. I don't know how you can have a Supreme Court with justices that rub elbows with the Koch brothers. I don't know how money or corporations are people or can speak. Gerrymandering exists. Lobbying exists to the tune of investing 150 million to make 1.2 trillion the next year. We can't change the laws because we literally don't have people who speak for us. The best we are is an angry mob in the streets.

I really want to drive home how unhappy I am that the “optimist” attitude seemed to be a selling point from the film. Reich travels the country listening to peoples' stories of hardship. Working 2 and 3 jobs to pay the rent and barely feed the kids. People shacking up with friends or back home. He knows that technology and cheap labor over seas means that there is no new jobs just waiting over the horizon. These people have ideas about starting families or one day finding a better job to maybe afford a house or better car. These people should be rioting in the streets. Optimism in this context only serves to slow things down.

India and China are emerging markets. Both have a massive amount of people that want the same crap Americans want. Do you think companies care about getting you a job so you can afford their crap when several billion people are hitting the scene becoming engineers and doctors so they can live up to the example we set? Things will not get better here. Legislation is dead because it's bought and paid for. Unless you find a way to subvert the current paradigm, you're absolutely stuck suffering it.

His point about history being on our side strikes another kind of chord. My perspective of history shows that there's very human things that go wrong at any time well before we decide to be responsible about the free market. Not to mention, in a global economy, we're still contending and negotiating with plenty of areas of the world who don't think as “progressively” as we pretend we do. If anything, history is teaching us that no matter how angry a group of people gets and does something to reform, with enough time, money, and influence, the rich will get their way eventually anyway, as if they weren't all along.

To me, we ignore an overall philosophy. We don't appreciate that greed, is in fact, bad. People are fundamentally selfish. Even if it's private and they don't try to justify it with bastardized interpretations of social Darwinism and Ayn Rand. When you stop talking about human capital and consider yourself to be wealthy because of your manipulation of law and percentages of pensions, things go to shit. I don't know why we pretend that this is not what's happening. I don't know how people forgot to be human. I know the internet is distracting and poverty in this country looks different than in others. But why did we volunteer to be so stupid about it?

Reich's movie isn't going to do anything more or less than a Michael Moore one. A few people will learn a little more about how we're getting royally fucked, but it's not prescriptive. It doesn't identify bad guys because it doesn't believe there really are any. It's just “capitalism's” fault. It's our fault because we haven't crafted the correct amount of laws. We're talking about the Secretary of Labor under Clinton with all his information and influence and practically zero ability after 30 years of the same mantra able to shift the underlying tide. So what, we put one person like him in Congress and cross our fingers?

I look at all of my broke friends and their debt. I look at the ones who even with jobs are making what a teenager at a shit job would make even if they got “specialized” training. How many of you are just around the corner from a white picket fence and a kid? I look at the laws that have track records of keeping the country perpetually screwed over many years. I look at the smart people who aren't doing it any better than the next smart person.

This is why I think we're fucked. Just because your county or town does something a little different or manages to find a small piece of pie does not mean anything about the overall system. It doesn't mean people are smart enough nor inclined to figure out how to call out the real people making real decisions that take real food out of their mouths and really cause a lot of harm.

I live in the now generation. I don't even want to talk about things like gay rights or abortion because it's tantamount to discussing the merits of slavery. We shouldn't have let them go. I don't need pundits telling me tired, broke, and word for word arguments from 30 years ago that don't work. I think fuck them, stop giving them a voice, fix it and move on. Just “be happy” and wait for history to take over doesn't work for me.

And fuck pretending that everyone's an innocent bystander. You can listen to Jaime Diamond explain that Wall Street is STILL doing the same things that crashed the economy in 2008 today, in front of Congress, and nothing gets done. He gets to stay rich and his bank lives and we'll be the ones living the consequences of it for, if we're lucky, just under the majority of our lives.

Finally, economists have this habit of talking about growth. We need growth. We need people to buy buy buy. If we don't the economy slows down, people don't buy, we don't have taxes, we don't invest in infrastructure, everything starts to go to shit because it's broken and people are dumber. Granted, this is how it's worked since the 70s, but I think it's because people haven't figured out how to subvert power. When I hear growth, I hear pollution. When I hear buy, I think back to when I learned that the idea of an identity being wrapped up in what you buy being crafted by companies back in the 50s. I think of mental health and priorities when you attempt to “Americanize” billions of new people to repeat the process.

Maybe we look at what it could be like if we pulled out. Maybe we create things independent of shitty decision making from rich assholes who deny you the right to be educated, healthy, or even basically functioning. They only win that game if you allow yourself to play it.

I'm not happy nor optimistic because I don't know anyone who really experiences what we have in this country who is. Maybe I should just get more rich friends?

[352] Two By Two, Hands Of Blue

You know, I like the idea of picking someone. I hate marriage, and I barely grasp what it is most people try to sell me is their relationship. But to me, picking someone has little to do with either of you, and everything to do with intention. Intention is what matters. When you give a shit is when you see shit manifest.

Like, even if she's not happy about it or ditches my ass down the line, I've picked Kristen (okay she picked me first). Like, you either do or don't know our dynamic and it really doesn't concern me to detail it, but if she decides to kick my ass down the curb later, I'll have been ever goddamn lucky to have even known her. She needs lunch dropped off, duh, I'm your man type shit. Date to the prom? Don't look to the stars because I'm already there.

I think that when it comes to having good parents, in an obviously non romantic kind of way, this is how you “should” feel towards your kids. Yes, even if you don't. You fucked, they're yours, grow the fuck up. I know what it is to have someone at my back, I think you're insanely lucky to have one, let alone more than one person there for you. I never understand parents who find it in themselves to burden their kids with issues they clearly don't even want to resolve. Adjust your fucking focus and be amazed at what falls in line.

I think this is how we should all kind of feel, kind of desperately, about all the people in our lives. I think initially this sounds a tad dramatic. I also think you don't begin to understand the word “appreciate” until you give people special status.

I wish I understood the heart of it, but I don't think I deserve my friends. Part of being “Nick P.” is having learned long ago what it is to feel by yourself and figuring things out that, at the very least, make sense to you. My friends are nice. My friends care. My friends, when they're sarcastic or dicks are still not “mother fucked the fuck up” when it comes to relating to life or other people. I understand there are plenty of solipsistic depressed people who feel the world will never understand them. This is not what I'm after.

My problem comes from understanding. Maybe you've been around when the guys in our group beat our chests and talk about what would happen in a fight scenario. We list our weights and heights and what we may have encountered in the past. To me, none of it really has ever spoken to the point. I would love to beat the ever loving shit out of someone. I would love to scare the people around me. I would bask in the glory of making a moment be one you never forgot about how you should never fuck with a person capable of doing such things. I'm not a tough guy. I'm not a brawler. I just get unduly excited about the opportunity to hurt someone in a way that sends a real message, albeit “justifiably.”

This is one of those aspects of my personality I contend with when I think about the nature of my friendships. I know I went to school with, and rolled with, the type people quite prepared to stab a mother fucker in a dire situation. I'm still not quite convinced it's the same thing.

But enough about my fantasies. Let's talk more about the people who consider me utterly retarded in regarding them in such high esteem.

It's a relative trend for my friends to experience any number of pretty fucked up conditions. I'd need more than one hand to count the number who've been raped or sexually abused. “Fill-in-the-blank” disorder spans across a few boards. Whether people need medication or therapy or are still in need of medication and therapy...I seemingly have a habit of finding people not like me.

And it's fucked because I wish they felt about themselves like I do about them. And they can't. Or if they do, it takes years and years of therapy. Like, I consider myself a particular kind of fucked up, that's fine. I don't want to kill myself. I haven't been fucked with by some adult when I was a kid. I don't want to puke or cut or really anything that would inhibit my general enjoyment of the generally shit circumstances we've been given. And how I may give a shit does nothing to override or contextualize where we're at now. It's stuck. It's stuck-ly selfish. I have no idea how to change it.

Or maybe I do.

When you pick. When you give yourself a chance to give a fuck about one other person, that's half the battle, just by sheer fact of population numbers. You only need half of all people to decide there's one person they're going to go out on a limb for. For arguments sake, everyone you could ever give a shit about, you'd theoretically go to the ends of the earth for. Let's forgo the idea we're buddy buddy Nazis in this thought experiment. Maybe you're huddled in a bunker or managed to be the last few people on the planet. But good people are good people, and circumstance provided you an opportunity and the path tends to look pretty clear.

And I think it's much about those “unsaid” rules. Like, no one has to sit me down and tell me to bring Kristen lunch. Even when she's pissed off at me or says not to come, she's wrong and I'm bringing her food. That's all you need, very regardless of a label. That's not marriage. That's not mutual fears of loneliness. That's wanting to feed someone you give a shit about.

Because all I have are my actions and time, I hold them in the highest regard. I may lead with “I'm bored” but it's way more “I want to be around you verses something else.” I hate to believe it about myself, but I know how to not know anybody. I'm not afraid of disappearing. I know to make “friends” if I need them. I know how to play along. My most meager friendship will speak more to the potential and future I see than any empty professions of “tell me how you've been” between the times we've seen each other. And this is only because I see you as quite independent and “legit as fuck” regardless of whether or not I check the fuck in on you.

So yeah, I don't deserve you and am always looking for the moment it all goes to shit and we stop being cool. It's not you, it's me. At least you got another glimmer of my perspective before we maybe never talk again.

[351] Free For All

In a world of extremes, I think I crave a middle ground. The problem is, I'm not certain there's a solid definition of that middle ground.

I preoccupy my thoughts with ideas about evil. Whether I'm watching what we've done in the Middle East or reading a history on the Holocaust or in having just seen a documentary on old school gangsters bragging and re-enacting their methods, the same banality arises from the people talking about it. It's never a secret that what they've done or witnessed is “bad” or at least makes them feel bad. It's that no amount of witnessing or engaging really provokes the intention of doing anything differently.

Sure, after the fact, you might get a soldier or warlord to eek out a modest admission regarding some sliver of responsibility they hold to the situation. You might get a glimpse at the emotions they haven't dealt with etched into their face for a moment. But then you learn of the ones who claim to be proud of what they've done. The conveniently, in time and place, born psychopaths. You get to hear the infinite justifications and watch the grueling dance.

To pause and think seems to mean nothing. If anything it only fuels, what one gangster referred to as his “conscience.” It also seems like helplessness fueling helplessness. Whether you feel obligated to follow orders or are simply trapped under the violent regime. The banal, bored, and boring edicts from the top cause incalculable death and destruction for money and control. For nothing. Daily horrors don't really register with us. We're busy getting educated and watching TV. Is that a form of extreme indifference? Is it us patting ourselves on the back, assured that we could never and will always try to do better? Or are we just helplessly compelled to our own kind of cages as well?

There are violent protests all over as social safety nets and ideas regarding democracy erode. It's no longer possible to conceive of yourself on an “adult” path with a secure job where you'll be able to respectably enjoy the luxuries you've worked hard to earn. People are finally outraged about the exploitation of labor and the impacts of greed and inequality. It'd be at their front door if they could afford a house. They'd want to teach their kids about it, if there was an adequate school to send them to.

When it takes such a degree of mass suffering, and not even just that, mass personal suffering to evoke change you really have to step back and marvel at the world. Law? Oversight? Data? HA! LET'S TAKE IT TO THE FUCKING STREETS! God knows drum circles and Molotov cocktails worked just as well then as we need them to now. But what should we ask of protesters, of ourselves? Be aware? Just learn more? Step back and let my take on power do the heavy lifting? As far as they know, this is the worthy fight, this is where they need to be, not the jungle protesting machetes. You have your tragedy, I have mine.

If you can't put a mark on someone, it won't feel like their responsibility. They explicitly don't feel it. It doesn't become real. And people are rarely willing to mark themselves. I'd bet there are a number of mass deaths I've never heard of that are just as terrible and impact worthy as the ones I have. Plenty of personal tragedies have turned victims into heroes and voices. Are they better than you? Is there a difference in their will, their intention, that trumps whatever you've devoted your time to? Are they any happier or better-off than you would be snug as a bug behind any kind of Western tradition?

Calling Gweneth Paltrow "evil" for spending each day indulging in non-essential rich cliches equates to saying the same about a murder squad leader in only a singular way. It's someone behaving with reckless abandon to the consequences of their actions. We go to war under the auspices of spreading democracy and saving lives, but we do it in the human tradition that ignores what it means to our psyches and credibility when we murder civilians indiscriminately. We find it in us to “respect” some peoples' ridiculous cultures and barbaric behaviors because we instinctively know we've already cut off our own legs. Shoot up a school as a mental patient, your name may live in infamy. Blow up a school or wedding party with a drone, it's another day at the office.

How do you persuade that what they say and do really matters? It's not enough to be a millionaire and claim you've won. It's not enough to jump into a fight and say "well we thought it was the right thing" or "we were just following orders." The ones who try to argue a ton of historical and environmental context at this point only seem to obscure the real point. We've, maybe irreparably, scarred ourselves.

For the ones who care. For the ones who are stuck trying regardless. I want to believe they'll “win,” but I don't. I don't think the reasonable, empathetic, and desperate-to-change-our-paths people will ever be loud enough. And if they ever do, what of our human natures has shown we can do it without, if only eventually, a return to violence?

[350] Bad Title For A Bad Blog

I wish it didn't, but age matters. Not the mere fact of the number, but the total amount of experiences that have rounded out your character. As a lover of house parties, I'm still aware that a scene where the median age is 20 is not really where I'm trying to be. You just get people who are at different places. They want to force conversation or, much like a child, say “hi” even when they don't know or care who it's to. It's not the same thing as nodding to a person you walk past at the park, it's like a cry out for acknowledgment. It's...unsettling.

It's worse when you go into a setting where everyone is supposed to “fend for themselves.” Sure, I can strike up a few random conversations. But it's with 20 year olds. When you tell me that you're into reading about human rights and are going into journalism to report on said issues, when I reference Nelson Mandela and apartheid, particularly now, that shouldn't confuse you. It's not their fault, but it's hard not to hear the superficiality a million miles away.

My problem is having a sense of feeling “above it all” even before I got into it. When offered a shot of Kamchatka, I laugh at your paltry disposition. I remember the first time I drank that shit as a shot. Not coincidentally, it was the last time I drank that shit as a shot. Fitting in isn't worth a hard fought lesson like that. I just go back to, how can kids who are spending $800 a month to live in, frankly shit, apartments, not afford better than horribly cliched and terrible alcohols? Technically, I don't have a job, but I find that common decency does not allow for Hamms to even enter my house.

It's kind of fun to talk like a pretentious rich person. I think it has more to do with how you conceive of yourself than you do other people. Like, it's painful to drink shitty alcohol. I wake up in pain and regretting my life. It's not uppity to acknowledge that message. It'd be great to be like an ambassador, and when they rudely assume you'll go out and buy alcohol for them, maybe there's a moment where they sincerely look at you and hope they can trust you not to undermine their stomachs. But they never do and that's why they pay the "fuck you" tax.

I think my biggest problem is trying to relate. I can't think of a time when I was gung ho about fucking my night up and getting incredibly drunk before 11:30. I can't recall being a “dumb freshman” who pounded whatever was put in front of me and was desperately telling people how cool they were so they wouldn't overly judge my dance moves on the fledgling floor. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy to have missed that boat. It's just, I feel even more judgmental being even a couple years older and a few degrees removed from seeing people do it at any party I've thrown in the last few years.

The old cliché is that they're just kids. They'll get better. They'll learn. See, but they won't. That's what bugs me. I've known plenty of super seniors who are willing to shake your hand and pat you on the back because you brought Hamms to a party. That's just bad research which I can't respect. Maybe you have a stupid tongue who likes that shit, okay, hard to blame you for genetics, but it's truly hard to classify it as beer based on their own labeling of alcohol content.

Maybe I should stick to kind of dumb “kids and their stupid party”-esc blogs for while. I haven't done anything of merit in a minute, so this is what I get at the forefront of my mind. I'm sorry if you thought it as stupid as I kind of do.

[349] Giggity God Damn

Let's talk a little more about my god complex.

I act out of utility. This even more so that I gave up on letting people play their lives out like they saw fit. In order to behave as such, I need to see that things follow. Whether you're following a pattern of thought, or I'm carrying out a pattern of behavior that you behave in a certain way towards. Playing “god” is about evidence. Ego is weak. I don't merely believe anything about myself I can't bring to fruition. It's one of my favorite things about me.

It's why conversations need to be said, and re-said, and re-said again and again. I only make sense in the ongoing movement. The moment I lean towards a definition, I know I need to move past it and change something. This isn't a familiar ground for most people, as far as I can tell. This makes me sound at best petty, at worst, completely fucking insane.

I've stated before that I don't want praise for that which is simple. The “biggest most significant” things I think I'll achieve in life will speak to what I conceive of as simple. The world as it is let's the banal, meaningless, and empty look like triumphs of the human spirit and ingenuity. If no one else is willing to shit on these hopeless conceptions, I'm happy to shit upon myself. My world does not make sense from anything less than that which trumps a conceited plain.

At bottom, I wish it seemed as simple to most people as it does me. I've said that the more I talk to people, the more I give up. The harder it is to believe in anything. I, somehow, came out of this life thing with the ability to choose things people are unable to conceive of themselves as capable of. And all I'm left with is confusion. I'm left to roost on the idea that the whole of humanity could be crippled by the sheer inability to recognize the difference between two things. Sometimes it feels so absurd that to try and put words to it only seems to denigrate what one could conceive of injustice, but worse.

I think you reach a point past circumstance. As far as I can tell, being a tall white male who doesn't look like Shrek has it's advantages, but I know plenty of people with the same things that I would put down like rabid dogs. I thought that the whole “becoming an adult” thing was about handling business and making decisions that, theoretically, made sense for the continuation of this whole working world thing. I just don't believe it. I literally think everyone is shit. And now I just feel bad.

In a way, I love that talking, or bitching, here is selfish. I like to feel better shitting on everything and crossing my fingers that someone, somewhere, might change or enact some big thing based on my words, while realistically thinking I'm a screaming into the ether. I don't have faith. I don't hope. I just do. I know that as long as I'm doing, very little else seems to matter. Let's trust that what I choose to do actually matters, right?

[348] Whao Oh Ohho Mona Lisa

The difference between effort and effortless can't be overstated. What I find most intriguing is that I know when I'm trying too hard. I can hear every syllable being “too much.” I can immediately run to the questions of “was that appropriate? Did it make them laugh?” You're not immune to doing the shit you rally against just because you point out it's a clear failing of your personality.

Tonight was a vibe night. I danced harder than I should have. I talked to however many random people. I very much made it look like I'm verily the most interesting person you should be engaging with at the bar. Really, truly, I'm not fucking bragging. I'm ever and endlessly struck by how “easy” it is to do these things. It's like being called “nice” for paying for a meal. Like, seriously, fuck you, who the fuck else would I pay for? You won, stop trying to congratulate me because you're not a fucking asshole.

I wish I wasn't an anomaly. Don't get me wrong, as an egomaniac, it's really great to consider myself something special, if only from the feedback of people I'm surely to judge beyond what they're due. But damn. It doesn't feel like work. It's just sort of, upholding an ideal. It's living what I think everyone knows, but for reasons I legitimately don't understand, aren't behaving like. Can someone please explain this to me? Fear just feels like a cop-out.

I cringe sometimes when I look at old blogs. Like, I don't think I was terribly clear when I said my friends were “bitch nigga ass pussies.” All that really meant was that I don't get any sort of public feedback when what I'm saying should be considered full of shit. I assumed there was likely something to be said, and nobody said it, thus rendering said inability as “bitch nigga ass pussy” status. I know I follow things up with “don't take it personally” but I'm not terribly confident that it always gets through as I meant...so, there, I fixed it.

I think we're a weird generation. Everything is fast forwarded. Our parents maybe had to take 30 years before they learned something we get on Buzzfeed (what a horrible fucking website) and the irony only gets to sting that much more. You'll get to make stupid marriage decisions and job decisions that, even if you follow for 5 years will feel like a fucking eternity compared to our parents. I think that's why a lot of the shit I rail about is only a glancing blow. You're stuck in the mindset I am; things move quick, even if I'm wrong, I'll flip a switch and BAM it's different.

I still think there's something to be said for not fucking up what you don't need to. The more I look at my life and time goes by, I'm really doing exactly as I think I should. It'd be such a waste to be on whatever pedestal I consider myself and have to sacrifice what it could represent for the ideals of the norm. Seriously, how the fuck do you say “I'm smarter than you” without being a dick? I want to know. I want things to be constructive, not pretentious. I literally can't avoid it. I'm committed to not being a cliched idiot, that doesn't mean I'm not an idiot or won't do idiotic things, but god fucking damn I'm really trying to not be cliché, and I don't know how to convey the message. I'm stuck just doing me and waiting for people to follow along. It fucking sucks. This isn't fun.

It's not hard. That's what gets me. Did you pick milk over orange juice this morning? That's the extent of effort you need to not be a fucking idiot. I really hate when people will fight tooth and nail as if they were born without the capacity for choice that I somehow inherited. I just wonder, what the fuck is it you think you'll learn? Do you need to have some really stupid decision vibrate in your bones before you give the lessons of hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of people before you any respect? Yes, it's at this point I feel very comfortable as a loner pretending that people are worth connecting with beyond fleeting cursory needs.

I'd like it go to away. I wish feeling like a broken record wasn't the default but god forsaken endlessly correct analogy. I want to exist in a world where I have to work to be special. I don't want to have to persuade pretty girls they're pretty, or smart people they're smart, or anybody who should take some solace in whatever they were born with for semi-granted. But that's the playing field. And it's pathetic and it's gut dropping and the only truth is change so I'll shut the fuck up and wait, I guess.

Work, you fuckers.

[347] Brittle Bones And Base Tones

I’d like to talk about fragility.

We’re builders. Whether it’s looking up at a sky scraper and getting chills or crying upon looking at a beautiful piece of art, there’s almost something spiritual in creating and then reflecting. I can’t say if there’s much a difference if you’re looking at your own work verses someone else’s, because it’s not just about pride. There’s an innate itch towards doing something that once scratched seems to fulfill everything.

As easily as we build, we destroy. I had to stop and kill a perfectly innocent bug in the middle of the last paragraph because I’m conditioned to feel uncomfortable by the amount of legs it has. I can’t even kill bugs without imagining an alien super race swinging an oversized telephone book at me. That organism was just as complex and lucky, well not so much lucky, to be alive as I am. In an instant and in fact every instant, some form of existence disappears.

Clearly, I seek to immortalize this bug. I should make its death mean something. Maybe I can use what happened to better explain how my thoughts on aliens don’t so much humble me as they do paralyze. Maybe I’ll be able to explain that’s what happens when you try to instantly evaluate everything you’ve created, everything you’ve invested in for your continued existence, and then poof it out of existence. It could help to explain that you can’t help it but to run such thought experiments. It could help relate your propensity to overstep or move quickly.

When a tornado rips through a neighborhood and leaves more than one house intact, no one’s following up with the lucky few who won’t do battle with an insurance company. The story is about the lost pet that was found under the rubble and returned home. Even with everything you own gone, the bond created between an owner and his pet makes it go down easier. Part of you always knew moving to “tornado alley” would beget something like this, but looking at your house in matchstick form is a different kind of loss. Even if all your neighbors’ pets are dead, and maybe they are too, there’s something we want to hear about, we want to believe in, which defies a, certainly impartial, wind storm.

I’ve certainly experienced the shock of something unexpected or completely new jamming up the works. It’s a rather haunting paralysis. You’d like to believe even in the worst of situations, it should be possible to “keep it together” or whatever that’s supposed to mean. But I think there’s a power in identifying and owning how easily you can be blown away. I think you step more carefully and maybe care more deeply.

You hear stories of the slow burn. The scientist who thought the systematic killing of elephants would re-enrich desert land only to have that shocking moment 20 years later that everything he’d been doing was dead wrong. The bad relationship where something finally snaps and you find yourself saying or doing things best represented in what were previously considered overly dramatic movies. Rarely are you next to the roadside bomb or getting railed by the Mack truck, the next moments only confirming you still have light receptors and tinnitus.

The best you can do is try and form a solid foundation. It’s something of an oxymoron, but I’ll take troops who’ve been through boot camp before the overzealous neighborhood watch militia any day. You want the best kind of friendships? Try and be the best of what you expect out of your friends. When things go wrong, you’ll be able to recognize if/when they’re doing the work as well. You want to be an authority on something? Make sure you’ve incorporated the lessons of those who’ve earned the right to own that authority before you.

We’re a memory. You’re basically “kind of cool” or “kind of not cool” to everyone you meet. The amount of time and circumstance it can take before someone gets a real sense of what you’re about, generally, is exhausting and often not worth it. (amIrite!?) Once people start to see themselves in you or see themselves depending on you for something is when stupid words like love come into the equation. The memory converts from merely remembering things about you to now provoking how they’ve made you feel. Add this to the list of reasons feelings shouldn’t be overstated.

Think of the Christian pride of those who are excited to knock on your door. They think they have something to share! But generally awake and thinking people see it as annoying, hollow, naïve, and kind of take pity that you can’t be happy with real things. They telegraph their bad motivation. Ironically, they think they’re trying to save you from something they’re running from. I look for people who give off the impression they think. I invest when the message is about the struggle, not necessarily the answers. After all, the answers are generally obvious once you ask why or get details.

How do they keep the faith? Ignorance and denial. They are as solid a foundation as anything, in that you can build the exact same walls as high as you like regardless of the materials. How do you maintain confidence in your relationships, your likes and dislikes, your motivation? It’s really easy to confidently masquerade as if you have a plan when no one’s asking to see it and you’ve no intention of offering it up freely. Then the truth of how little it’s built on might come to light. Then you might get stuck, having never been forced to deal with what you’re doing and what it really means. You might have to wonder how it matters, HOW ANYTHING MATTERS!? And then carry on like your mind wasn’t blown by a category 5 tornado.

It’s in doing the work that you have any real kind of foundation. A completed building just sits there. All ideas either linger or get lost forever. But when you’re in the thick of it, things get clearer. When your feet move down the path you laid out, for better or worse, but you really did everything you could to make it your path and not “a path,” things start to border on making sense. It’s when you allow yourself to create exactly what you needed to see.

Whether this helps tackle problems or not, you at least start to see the role you’re suited for. That way, if you die before the play hits the stage, at least you’ll know it was yours.

[346] Chip Off The Old Block

I need to feel better about leaving for a week. I think I'll get there by the end.

So much of myself seems to exist in contradiction. I'm dead inside, then I'm overly elated with a trend or mood. I'm the nicest guy who even blacked out says sweet endearing things, then I'm the meanest person I know. The confusing part is that they all feel as “real” or as “me” equally. There never feels like an appropriate place to be one over the other, I just sort of take it in stride and come up with probably too many words to justify.

It's extremely hard to be vulnerable, for example. However you conceive of vulnerability, I guess. It's one thing to wear an aspect of your life on your sleeve, entirely another when you feel like someone you respect or care about is checking out your style. The tension of trying to figure out if your personalities are “compatible” can be palpable. It's been an investment in your sense of self, after all. To what degree should this person be allowed to tinker with it?

One of my biggest issues is that I genuinely don't like hope. I've been reminded that I've made such a sentiment in the past, but it feels louder at the moment. I don't want to believe people like me. I don't want to look too forward into hanging out or getting into a good conversation. And it's not like it's because “things won't live up to the dream” type of bullshit. It's just that it inevitably seems to change for spectacularly bad reasons.

That's where you learn detachment. That's how you forget best friends. It's why I feel myself ever compelled toward perfect moments or vibes and similar personalities, and have practically zero patience for those not on board. It almost feels like you've stolen something when it goes right. Like you're caught up in something so infinitely fleeting, trying to call it “special” feels cheap. And if/when you can create those moments, you've maybe done something that matters.

I find it damn near impossible to keep at it in the world as it stands. So I need to create my own and send out invitations. It'll presumably be easier to do that “losing” 6 days now.

[344] Fork Me Running

Sometimes I think people can only count to one. As if every moment exists in a vacuum. It's one thing to know nothing about history in general and stumble through to the future. It's entirely another to ignore the fingers on your own hands.

One thing I'm perpetually confused about is when someone tells me “I don't believe that” when I say something true. More so, when I qualify it and say “which has been my experience thus far” or “what I've consistently heard across any number of instances.” My thought is that they don't believe me because they think I'm trying to sell them something they think can be obtained for free. Surely, there are as many ways to happiness or contentment as there are people, but it doesn't make what seems to make sense, most of the time, any less true. Not what you remember most, not what “feels the most,” just what adds up to the most.

Like, the easiest example I could talk about would be my crazy ass mother. There's a distinctive way that I go about “handling” her that my brother doesn't. After years of not talking, actively degrading her, and finally provoking a restraining order, I no longer have the stress and drama of dealing with my mother. It's 100/1 easy negative to positive things I could say or reflect upon thinking about her. Please save cliches about “but it's your mother!” for someone who's planning to blame their children for existing.

My brother is different. He kept going back for Christmas. He kept calling her and letting her into his life. He tried to stay with her when he had an internship in Indy. Throughout it all, he's lost money, been actively degraded and judged, come back time and time again to what seems like the brink of disassociating. He's, in my view, arguably causing more harm than good because he can't count.

Now what if we counted all the bad feelings, of everyone everywhere, who've done something we're about to do? There might even be statistics on the matter! Exciting. The idea isn't that you should live your life according what seems likely, but perhaps better appreciate why the numbers look the way they do. I have nothing to gain in trying to persuade you of anything you hold so dear, but the chance to converse more eloquently. My argument centers on honesty, very little stress, and an arguably more positive thought pattern. Where's the kick to regard these as terribly wrong guidelines come from? Cliches should make you stop and think, not bust out the polish for a comfort zone bubble.

What if we counted and listed and categorized everyone we knew? Pro tip, I'd argue that we already do, facebook just doesn't have enough data for a pretty algorithm. But what if it was more concrete, like a scoring system on a big white board that everyone you interacted with could check in with daily to see how they rank in your life. How much of your dialogue would you have to change to accurately reflect what someone means to your life? How many pleasantries and excuses and abuses could you no longer pursue? What if the best people, with the best advice, netted you cash? What if your life depended on them?

It's the devilish details. It's not “3 years” it's 1 month of nothing but crying, 2 months of arguing. 3 weeks of “pleasant” talks,  400 hours of excuses and very reasonable doubts if you ran them end to end. Or maybe it's a handful of wonderful nights, many months of “well-enough,” and 3 years of pseudo safety because no one feels like risking their relationship with you over criticizing. Because at that point, you're “just being mean” right? Or jealous maybe. You certainly wouldn't understand, I can tell you that much.

1 time has a close friend violated trust against hundreds of act of utility over years. Potentially violent Nick P. came very close to throwing that away until I let the numbers speak. 99% of conversations I have with Kristen aren't louder than a TV show perhaps running in the background, and the other 1% she's probably at the other end of a Frisbee field. I could count on one hand how many times we “argue.” The number of times I make people laugh instead of cry helps dictate how often jokes get made. The number of shitty, or absences, of thoughts verses smiles helps filter facebook friends and me to forget to send out a text or invite.

People are good for you for different things at different times, in deeply personal ways, and for ever evolving reasons. Just let them be that person. Don't reduce to a label or something laboriously physical. If it's supposed to go there, why does it feel like you're forcing it?

I make pains to not point too sharp a finger so when I slip I don't cut myself and bleed out. But being passive aggressive here is different than the kind of screwball dream worlds we help maintain around people we claim to care about. That doesn't mean come in like a wrecking ball, but you shouldn't offer to cradle the balls of the dick forced into your mouth.

[345] YOU, You Got What I Neeed

I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to reading my utterly scattered thoughts is to think I'm coming from a place of finality.

If you choose, once I put it all together, to read where my mind has been from front to back up to this blog, you should readily believe that I don't know shit! That I've never known shit. That I will continue to strive to even believe I have a grasp on what shit even smells like. It's sort of the nature of the game.

I believe in the ongoing conversation. I think you are allowed to show your most belligerent ridiculous point and then move right along to refining how and why you got there. I think if you settle on one idea, you're really missing the point of putting yourself out there for new ideas. How many times have I said I seek to be challenged? I can't help it if my closest friends are still bitch nigga pussies. I suppose that's just part of the game as well, you bitch nigga pussies.

It really is mind blowing to read old thoughts. It's amazing to feel so on point with something that happened years ago and I may as well have written it yesterday. I love seeing something that I haven't worked out and realizing that I did it better the next time. I'd like to say it's humbling, but it's more like work that's paid off. It's more like looking like a fucking retard for long enough that you finally get to net something positive after endlessly spewing bullshit about where you previously came from.

I think it's interesting how dramatic I've sounded. To relegate what's seemingly the most intense feeling to words in the abyss of facebook has to be a practice in humility, right? I never expect people to get it most of the time. I don't expect fans. I smile for days when someone decides to reveal they're crazy about what I write. I secretly think the people who may follow my shit the most will never reveal themselves. Who wants to say “I was that fucking crazy too!” or “holy shit, you wouldn't believe the irrational lengths I went to justifying that stupid ass position as well!

I've run the gauntlet. It's amazing to me to think about the myriad topics I've hit. It's hard to believe that somehow I haven't considered “x” with relation to “y” at least when it comes to relationships or how we conduct ourselves in life. It's hard to believe there will be more to say, but I think it's pretty obvious there will be.

I just hope it does things for you as it has for me. Sometimes, what I put out or how I phrase something is so...embarrassing. Like, who in their right mind says shit like that? That I simply must believe in the capacity for empathy over my ability to start giving a fuck what you think. That sounds harsh, but I'd be doing a really bad job of explaining anything if I capitulated to your bastardized conceptions of where I was coming from. Never take it personally.

I guess I just want to help. I wouldn't mind people being “like me,” but more so I'd like them to really get where they're coming from. I think whatever ridiculous stupid shit I go through, the best thing I can do is relate it as honestly as it seems to cut. Why would I take any pride or purpose in “ranting” if not to hijack your brain for a second and make you realize that to one degree or another I'm likely right there with you?

I'll keep talking if you're listening. As it goes with everything else, I rely on you to explain when I've over-stayed my welcome. In one vein, who am I to offer even the remotest advice? I've certainly said before you likely have to live somethings for yourself and figure it out the hard way. In the other vein, please just don't be fucking retarded. It really makes the struggle and words feel futile. It wholly reduces intent and perspective to naïve speculation. It just becomes sad.

[343] Trust Me

You know what's kind of the worst thing ever? It's not just feeling alone, but preparing yourself for what's seemingly inevitable loneliness.

I go on and on about manipulation. You'd think that was the paramount achievement of my personality. I can't escape it even if I tried. So what prompts me to try?

My feelings are fleeting...at best. Whether I'm angry or sad or orgasmically elated, if you don't consider it fleeting, you've really missed the point. So I made the mistake of relating my “sadness” feeling to someone I care about, and it kinda went to shit. The take away is that I don't blame her. It really stands to reason where she's coming from. But it doesn't speak any less to the proverbial amount of shit I feel shat upon.

It's hard to explain exhaustion without anger. I don't blame. I don't want her to change. I just want to believe in communication. And, realistically, I'd be willing to capitulate to all sorts of shit I didn't find that true in order to keep her happy. Call that being a pussy ass bitch, but whatever. It's really less important than maintaining a dynamic I love and respect.

Of course you could argue that being able to discuss any and all issues is why I've been able to develop such a dynamic, then I have to go, “fuck you asshole, making me have to explain shit in detail and shit, fucker.”

I've overwhelmingly downplayed emotionality. I think you can feel something, and behave otherwise. It's the key component to combating people who would otherwise manipulate you. If you can assume someone's got an agenda, but yours is louder, it doesn't matter, therefore we get along. This does not mean I denigrate emotionality. It simply means there's an opportunity to make a choice.

I'm really good at making it bad. I'm perhaps too comfortable with being prepared for everything to go to shit. It's a bias. I can't really think it's terribly helpful, but it's a sort of professional nihilism.

See, I want it to be easy. I know how to make it easy. I'm really good at creating a world in which the decisions flow and your place makes sense. I just don't have it right now. And that's frustrating. If there's one area in which I'd like to take pride in social manipulation, it'd be this.

I can't win. The game I'm playing means that I will always end up with the short end of the stick. I'll try. I'll be a wordy mother fucker. I'll subtly tweek this or that for years on end and wake up practically where I starter. This I don't find disheartening. It's when I explain this to people I trust who in turn think I'm applying it to them that I get kicked in the balls. Shit. Really, fucking shit.

You can say “oh well” or you can persist and cross your fingers. I think it would be an unnecessary indictment of people I decide to care about to write them off and throw my hands up. So then you get to struggle with their skepticism and perpetual doubt whilst maintaining “hey nigga, you're a real friend” dialogue. It's ever so fun. (No the fuck it isn't)

I don't want you to believe in in a moment. I want you to look at my overall behavior. Moments lie even when you don't want them to. It's so easy to take a compelling reaction from someone and paint their personality. It's hard to remember everything they've been or purported to be for you. I'm lost if you take a snapshot.

I'm always going to get fucked by my propensity to take chances. You can't not give a fuck and also be afraid of letting it all lay out. I'd rather do that. I literally want you to feel how bottom my stomach goes. I want you as empty as I care about what you think. But fuck me if I don't want you to appreciate you as much as I do in all the things I don't think or do when I think about you. It's too easy for me to write people off. It's too easy for you not to matter for a fucking second. Like, fuck you if you make me play that game with our relationship.

[342] Part Deux

There's something I find very troublesome about being human. It's worse than troublesome, but I'm hoping to keep a more jovial tone. It's not something I think can be helped, nor is it necessarily malicious. It's opportunistic. And I'm hard-pressed to not avoid using the word naïve. I've gone with the word “selfish” in the past, which has had a double meaning depending on context. But I think this is more nuanced. This isn't a bratty child nor being objectively involved in your long term well-being, as I would ascribe selfish. This thing is a word I hope to find by the end.

Perhaps it's a form of self-indulgence. There's a certain amount of pleasure one gains from dictating their next move. Being arbiter of your own fate, so to speak, even if that fate is just leading you towards the refrigerator. Granting yourself a delicious reward for exercising your legs and putting your idea in motion. You understood yourself to be hungry, now revel in the ability to so quickly and effectively meet your need. Good show.

Perhaps it's a form of empathy. It can be awesome to be illuminated by the light of someone else. Follow sports? None of your players are even from the city you cheer for, sometimes neither are you, but dammed if you don't all feel good under the same banner if they win a championship. So far, you've indulged in an opportunistic chance to empathize with a sense of purpose or pride that, by all accounts, isn't really yours to have but for your ability to feel in spite of your circumstances. Lucky you.

Perhaps you couldn't possibly help yourself. Without these systems for reward and happiness, where would we find the strength to continue on? If I'm not after a fix, what's my guide? Surely I feel this way for a reason, no less! And why would you sound like you're trying to make my good feelings bad? What shame or guilt lies in my investment of sport or comfort food? Quite the chore trying to adequately surmise what either means particularly to you, I'd say.

Perhaps it's flatly ignorant. You get nowhere thinking about the people who can't eat while you're eating, so of course remain ignorant to the real extent of the plight. You don't want to worry about commercialism, waste, or exploitation when the next game comes on or all-star player's history is depicted in such a compelling way you're getting his name tattooed next to your heart. The world gets easier with a singular focus and many would argue you're quite happy and healthy “doing whatever it is the thing you do.”

Perhaps it's kind of embarrassing. You know how you said that thing, but you didn't really feel that thing, but you didn't quite have the words to clarify and your phone was off and you couldn't respond in time so you just figured that it would work itself out until you got that one text from so and so and you realize that shit, you probably should have paid more attention to your phone and told so and so that you were actually going to do that and actually meant that you were feeling like 20% this and 80% that, but it would have been totally cool were it not for if things went a different way. My bad.

Perhaps it's an excuse. Maybe you know full well, but can't admit it. Maybe you understand perfectly, but can't be bothered. Maybe it's so easy to form protracted prose in defense of oneself that the consequences of doing so have become so normalized as to become invisible.

I guess I'll just call it kinda sad.

There's something I find disturbingly reassuring in “bad” people. They have a purpose. They have a drive. You can rely on them, albeit to do that wrong thing, but dammit if you can't rely on them. Rely on their character. Rely on their motivation. Rely on their insubordination, immaturity, greed, treachery, or propensity to make your life a hassle in a few fairly predictable ways. You couldn't ask for more structure. What's the worst you have to look forward to? Them becoming good people? Well fuck, now you have to find another fuck-up and learn their ticks. Annoying, but manageable.

“Good people” are the problem. Good people take for granted. They're plagued by all the nuance and weirdness of the stuff above. Good people rely on their environment to keep a familiar structure in place that informs them that they are still, in fact, good...enough...people. You hear constantly that “most of the world is good.” Most people aren't killing each other or stealing or raping. Most people don't really give a shit these things are happening! Provided it's not to them. To me, it simply misses the point.

Statistics on murder rates or declines in violence don't speak to what it means to be human intrinsically. It's accounting for a kind of environment we're attempting to cultivate, half-assedly or accidentally, that tends to reflect in less murder, stealing, and rape as long as certain conditions are met. It's superficial. When shit hits the fan, everyone's a hoarder, potential murderer, or looking to get in one last score. The handful of angels that would rather die than adapt will surely be sitting at the right hand of the Father.

We're not guided by anything but a messy landscape of vague “morals” and behaviors that generally tend to not piss people off and generally satisfy our needs or at the very least keep us alive under whatever paradigm we're born into.

Breaking Bad anyone? How slowly can you blur the line until we're comfortable with being bad? This is why, for me, it's easier to just conceive that people “are.” I don't read into their motivation or speculate what they're getting out of what they're doing, so I'm not hats off and applause when things seem to go well nor terribly surprised or let down when they don't. At least not professionally.

This changes with a conception of friendship or family. You tend to believe these people have your well-being at heart. You don't think they're out to get you. You've been able to trust them with information or tasks that when left to their own devices still work in your benefit. And dammit! You would theirs as well. It's why you have to be careful about who you're letting into that family, as they may cause you to subtly change your perspective enough to blind you to what you've become or are justifying.

But I've had to carry on for so long as if we don't have a choice. When I believe we have a choice, my day is basically ruined. If everyone is actively doing and saying the things they do, in their most earnest, and this is the best we get, I don't think I can spend another night in this hotel. If we're meant to fly by the seat of our pants through this blob of ever-morphing concepts of self that seem to contradict and shit on everything around us...just ugh. It would be interesting, but that's provided you were actually trying to get somewhere.

I wear the badge of “bad person” as a kind of honor. I know when I can call upon the worst demons, of all of our nature, to get what I want, or at the very least, get done what seems necessary. I tend to do. I tend to mean what I say. I tend to feel it, and think it, and spend much time defending it. I choose. And I usually feel like I know why I'm choosing. It's why I feel like I know why I'm choosing to quit.

You may not even recognize a change, but for the discernible future, I'm done. I don't get depressed or anxious or suicidal, I detach. I can feel the pull of, whatever it is about other people that just seems “kinda sad.” It looks like selfish, it feels like dumb, IF ONLY it was explicitly either. I think I can see the end game. I think I understand that even when it's good, I just haven't finished reading the story. I can't take the headache of worrying about it. At least not right now. It's not an indictment, I'm not angry, it's just a choice.