[531] Lie Not?

I’m working too hard. I spend way too much time at the office worrying about things that aren’t my problem and that I can’t fix. What good does it do me to read about Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen and the weapons we supply in order for them to do so? It’s not so much “who cares,” because certainly the millions facing food and medical shortages have an opinion, but what good does it do me? It’s not my place.

I have so many close friends. We see each other all the time and make plans for the future. It’s reassuring to be so deeply understood by people who understand me. Even when things go wrong I know I can rely on some tough conversations that will see us through to the end. It’s no secret that such good people had good influences, and it’s why I’m so blessed to know so many of their family members who have been nothing but a lot of fun.

I have too many dreams to count. From a lot of my hard work and dedication, I’ve learned so many details that have allowed me to reevaluate, but open my mind to new and exciting ways of doing business or attempting to learn things. I wanted to build a sustainable house, for example, but the funding was going to take longer than I’d like, so I pivoted to a more cost effective goal that will only open more doors to potential.

I’m commissioning tools for organizing information too. Although it’s slow going, I know the end product will be something to astound. I may not have a huge amount of money, but I do have time. It’s the most fulfilling feeling in the world to be able to dedicate it to understanding and translating life as it happens. I stopped making projections for when it might happen, but I’m sure it will be soon. I never let my spirit get burdened by “life happens” things I know are built into the costs of doing business.

Even if I don’t have a ton of money, it’s still provides such a security blanket when I think about what I’ve heard from other people. I know that no one would try to exploit or lean on that fact given that they know, as much as we all do, how hard it can be to come across. I’ve learned to mostly keep the specifics of it to myself as I’ve absent-mindedly created some invitations to some uncomfortable conversations. What invaluable opportunities to learn though ;).

I know people are basically good. They just have a lot on their plates and not a lot of time to deal with it all. I made the mistake when I was younger of thinking I had control and could learn and apply different habits that would help steer us. Now, I relax and trust that things will take their course if you let the underlying good-spirited wave of humanity take over. It’s nice to think you might be the change, but the change is happening anyway, and I want to be whatever it is I want to be that day. Lo, the burden of us creatives!

The other day, I took time out to just stop and literally smell and enjoy the flowers. The world is filled with so much hidden beauty we take for granted “just happens” because it’s part of some landscaping at the mall or design on a store front. It was such a colorful and intricate arrangement, I saved a picture of it on my phone.

One of my favorite things to do is people watch. I like to imagine everyone walking by has lived some exciting life or is working hard to achieve their dreams. This life stuff is so complicated in the most fun ways. I find it helpful to put myself in their shoes and styles and play along as their character. The thousands of places that has taken me could fill a book.

Oh! I’ve been thinking of writing a book. Someone told me once that with a little organization and a few citations they thought my perspective could be very intriguing on the question of how to fix things. While there have been haters, mostly people have given me praise for my philosophical insights. It’s slightly embarrassing lol, but hey, I’m so glad to help. Finding the words has never come easy to me, so it’s encouraging that others may follow in my example.

Eating is one of my favorite things to do. I don’t worry too much about things like factory farming or pesticides. I’ve gone vegan. The bad guys can’t survive as long as I’m not giving them my dollar. But honestly, I know they’re not all bad guys and capitalism is the driving force of why I’m able to have so much. I mean there’s so many options once you choose to be healthy! I don’t understand why people think it’s that hard to switch. I even started walking to the store so I could budget gas money for more tasty treats. 2 birds, 1 stone.

It’s hard to imagine me asking for a better life. I’m not religious, but I still find myself praying, but I’m not sure why. It just feels good to know something spiritual is looking out for me. I’m engaged, I give back. And with the karmic flow of the universe, I know I’m getting everything I deserve, even on the few and far between bad days. (I know, I get lazy sometimes and binge TV, oops!)

I think most people just need someone to listen to them. Just getting things off your chest can motivate you to some real changes. Once someone in dire straights learns of all the resources we’ve created to help each other, it’s hard to imagine anyone not being able to live like me. I know it’s not perfect, but there’s hardly any reason not to look on the bright side.

I got a world-class education at a solid school. My car is a little clunky, but it gets me around without costing too much. I got this awesome gift that makes my hair sit and feel absolutely brilliant. It’s hard to not just post random sporadic boasts about the amount of good going on in my life. My instagram rivals my soon-to-be famous favorite Youtube rising star. My god, that place is just too funny!

I wish more people would take the time to just sit in how perfect it all really is. How all you have to do is shift your perspective and the world brightens up. It’s easy if you lie.

[530] I'm A Fake I'm A Fake I'm A Fake

I’m in a particularly cynical mood tonight. I can feel the irrational levels of hatred forming the front lines of an outburst. I loathe these moments for how informative they feel. My deepest sense of reality pressed at every pressure point. And it’s brought on by a stupid board game.

I see the rest of my life. I’ve met people like me, or more often read about them. The “go-getter” with an unassailable spirit to keep trying. The one who’s interested in everything and never backs away from a fight, especially ones he doesn’t need to have. I’ve been comfortable for some time with referring to myself as much a cliché as I may label someone else. It’s the healthy mix of naivety and wisdom that let’s you keep moving in spite of yourself.

The psychology I’m molded from has just enough drops of abuse and despair intermingled with selfless sentiment. Each moment I choose to make an opponent of myself, or “humanity,” or “your stupid stupid self who has no capacity to properly use words.” There’s no surprises. There’s nothing engaging. Whether I get on an old-man ramble how I’m going to be having the same conversation about the Middle East 25 years from now as my parents did 25 years ago, or if I get drunk and talk for 3 hours to a group of people on their porch in the middle of the night, to me, it speaks to nothing.

Because this is my voice, I don’t have a voice. Because those examples are when I’m loudest, when I pick up a megaphone, you’ll never hear me. The pen is only mightier than the sword in a battle of wits. It takes almost negative thought to exist as we do. I phrase it as such because I offer people the chance to read or recognize and they literally tell me they feel sorry for me. I don’t deserve to be as sure of myself as they are themselves. I’m not worthy of the game they’re playing.

I feel my grip loosen as each finger is plucked by the macabre man who oversees existence. How does one not dance about in the depravity? What’s worth it really mean anymore?

Depravity, for me, looks like taking the money and running. It says, rather insistently, fuck you, I got mine. No, you didn’t hear me, FUCK YOU, I GOT MINE, LIFE’S HARD ENOUGH NIGGA GET THE FUCK BACK. And then when the guilt or pity kicks in from time to time you donate to the dying children. Depravity looks like sleep. So much sleep I up my capacity for indulgence to induce it artificially. Why not? Although, lately, even my dreams haven’t been safe.

What’s left for me to believe in? That I’ll get my cool house or compound? That I’ll give more privileged travelers opportunities to mask the depravity of the “gig economy” and spectacle of dipping your toes into the homogenized commodities that are becoming the rest of the world? That I’ll “find someone” who so amazingly and wonderfully thinks like me! And it will all be okay again because we’ve been hurt before and learned so much!

The tragedy is belief. I believed in school. I believed in love. I believed in family. I believed in my work ethic. I believed in my intelligence. I believed in my interested and engaged perspective. I believed in conversation. I believed in sincerity. I believed in, practically unconditional, acceptance. I believed in selfishness. I believed in manipulation. And apparently I believe in an endless stream of disgusting words that speak to my snarled lip and furled brow.

I’m always lying. What to make of all the time I’m lying and I never even meant to. When I’ve bitched too much it wasn’t enough. When I stopped hitting the wall after the first hole or first few drops of blood I let myself off easy. When I set my computer aside and roll over thinking I was done writing and might be able to sleep it will be complete and utter bullshit.

I already told you, total cliché.

I’m being dragged around by life. It’s blowing me in every which direction and I’ve found nothing to ground myself in but wandering around, saving money, and complaining. I pick goals for their ability to retain my attention for longer than a few days. I form opinions on thousands of movies and shows so I can say, “you know, I forget that scene in particular, but overall I thought it was good.” Because what else is there? Start smugly goose honking like Chris Hedges? Seek academic sainthood like Noam Chomsky? Get ripped and fuck bitches because I am all that is man!? Act like I feel brotherly love and know how to translate that message like brother Cornel West? Buy it all like the rich kids of Instagram? Drink it all? Catch em all?

I’m nothing. I’m nowhere. In 2 days, I’ll be the QT/QTC microsecond data point from the ECG measuring what some pill has or hasn’t done to delay my heart. That’s why I went to college. That’s why I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That’s why the 180 degree reorientation of my life feels invigorating and definitely not manic because I no longer get to think someone else is the most important thing in my world. As if I wasn’t clued in to that self-inflicted drama years ago. Just keep swimming!

I’m a constant roll of the dice. Maybe I’ll wake up and you’ll all be gone. Maybe I won’t make it back off the highway. Maybe I’ll go bankrupt. Maybe I’ll get sick. Maybe the psychopath I pissed off online will find me. I’ll roll and roll and roll and only see two lifeless eyes fixed straight up affirming the only thing they’re good for.

What the fuck am I doing? My job clearly isn’t to keep close connections with like-minded individuals I met in school. It’s not to become some famous insightful writer, so full of RAGE and passion, Brava! It’s not to teach you fucking anything you’re not happy to dive headfirst into anyway. Or it’s not something I haven’t poorly reiterated from those on the ground or with photographic memories and a penchant for elegance. If I’m not here for anyone, I can only be here for me, and that’s the most depressing, horrifying, and life-ending thought I can come up with.

How to frequently resolve that without being suicidal? Or maybe I’m just incidentally suicidal, like in eating shitty food and breathing hours of basement air. Or in speeding on the highway and leaving my contacts in too long. Fuck my eyes, right? I’ve seen enough. Let’s not forget picking scabs. Nothing so on the nose than literally digging at yourself to pieces. It’s not that I’m just watching people “get by” and “make the best of it.” It’s not that they just leave this ooze I can’t wash off. It must just be me. They’re not killing themselves with my mirror neurons going apeshit. I’m just the only one that doesn’t get it.

So singular minded. So closed-off and resentful. I should broaden my horizons. Find the good in everything. Use my resources and thoughtfulness to turn this window into the world onto all that is good instead of icky knowledge of a nuclear holocaust, climate apocalypse, or rape porn. Which of those made you most uncomfortable to think about? It doesn’t matter! The world is filled with beautiful mountains and love and opportunities to be surprised every day! We’re all in this together!

[529] 6 Deadly Sins

I saw a model for social mobility in a sociology class once. It explained that, relative to where you were born in life, maybe 10-15% of people were predicted to move up in their class. If my memory is lacking, I know it wasn’t 5% and I know it wasn’t 20%. It referred to the U.S. specifically, and I’m fairly certain it was speaking to how that number goes down depending on race and how those numbers have been affected as we moved into the future. (This was 6 years ago I was in this class.)

A word employed, I think too often today, is “privilege.” One must check their privilege. They must apologize and kowtow to the unconscious hurt it causes everyone around them. There is no hard and fast rules for believing someone has acted with enough contrition. The standard for what constitutes privilege is constantly shifting. It’s less a cautionary vehicle for awareness as it is an opportunity for someone to pounce on what they perceive is any edge they were not provided.

Here we can find ourselves in another conversation about “raising consciousness” or claim some capacity to be “woke.” In my view, to do either is as much a sham as it is to foist someone’s life circumstances on their unconscious biases alone. Let’s elaborate with some stories.

I recently took a trip to the ghetto. A friend of mine organizes his uncle’s pills, runs him to the store, and just generally checks in to make sure the aging former Gangster Disciple diabetic is still kicking. The man’s grass was a jungle, he smelled like unwiped ass. He told, more like barely coherently mumbled, stories about how crackheads (or, rock stars as he hilariously called them) sneak into his house to do crack while he’s asleep. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has a few mental health issues as well.

We can draw a contrast from that man’s experience of life to that of his nephew’s and mine. Me and my friend live within 5 minutes of each other and both grew up solidly middle class. The quiet, quasi-dead, banality of the neighborhood in which I’m writing this was something we were both born into. We’re both “woke” to the realities of poverty, him in his own family, and if only me because I’ve known him for so long, or watched what’s happened to my area as ghetto-like conditions started creeping in.

The dialogue about his uncle goes a few ways. Screaming accusations and appeals to personal responsibility happens often enough. “He should mow his lawn!” “Lock the door!” “Seek help!” Because the man “shopping,” at a store that doesn’t mop its floors, for pop to accompany the bread and leftover cake on his table, probably has a world-class health clinic up the street, right? You remember it was us that drove him to the store as well as sort out the 8 different pills he needed a day.

You can also go completely oblivious the other way. “He should be totally taken care of!” “We should create all the resources possible to make sure he’s living like a human being!” “If we only had access to better healthcare!” While my sympathies certainly lie more in this camp, it’s wholly oblivious to the realities of an impoverished culture. There is no plug and play fix to an institutional disposition. There is no amount of “education.” There’s not enough health clinics you can open. There’s not enough empathy bombs you can set off in someone’s mind to provoke a march and overhaul. In an extremely important wording and sense, “he” cannot be fixed because “he” is not really the problem. Many things went wrong before he got here.

It’s this reality that makes me, not want to blame and berate people of my or higher standing about their lives, but encourage them to talk. It’s why I wish they’d get over themselves. Without even realizing it, we’re quick to cry, kick, and scream about things that happen to us. (My future was tied to the girl!) More importantly to me, we’re quick to brag and boast about how picturesque our lives are, when of course they’re not, while we spend everyday pretending the realities of the ghetto don’t matter or impact us. We act like the institutions we middle-manage or wage-slave at don’t create conditions of a chronic illness. We think working hard, or more insidiously, “harder,” means we’re being smart or justified. We’re not.

This is what kills me whenever I’m told, “well we already know this!” about something I’m writing. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe the vast majority of people who grew up like me know the feeling, look, and smell of poverty. I don’t think they’re regaled with stories from their Uncle Tom grandpa getting soooo excited to be treated like white people. I think this because I’ve had people tell me, “I’ve had many racial interactions throughout my life!” trying to defend their not-racist street cred, as they doubted the legitimacy of Black Lives Matter or that the amount of people getting shot was accurate.

Do you know? Do you feel things in your bones and change your voice and actions?

Recently, I was watching a former NFL star talk on Chelsea about what a major payday looks like to you, as opposed to Uncle Sam, as opposed to your agent or your family. Managing that money and having those difficult conversations about why you’re not going to let someone invest in a barber shop in Tokyo are skills you don’t often acquire on your road through the sports world. It’s a kind of clash of civilizations in your own mind, as you often come up from less than ideal circumstances. For many of these guys, it takes losing millions before a stabilizing and wiser perspective sets in.

In other words, you can’t just throw money at it. If you’re going to my friend’s uncle’s house, you shouldn’t even bother keeping ten bucks in your pocket, or you’re gonna be compelled to lie to him when he asks if you have any extra cash. The kinds of changes that I would argue for aren’t simple shifts in monetary policy. They’re shifts in what we’re willing to put up with conversationally. They’re shifts in what constitutes “work” or a well-written or reported perspective on some area of life. I want humility and struggle against the system, not braggadocio and tired confessionals mirroring every other complacent or self-indulgent soul.

But how do you know I mean it? What makes me “special?” Why listen to my voice, sounding eerily like those bleeding hearts with pie-in-the-sky ideas that could never work!?

Well, I’m the one writing about my brush with actual poverty, you’re not. I’m currently looking for a spot to build an eco-friendly straw-bale house, because I didn’t get the “middle-class” lifestyle promised to me either. That’s currently, not “one day” after I’ve exhausted myself at some bullshit job, I very-well know is bullshit, but refuse to say so out loud because it’s so drab and depressing, blaaaahhh. “Not everyone can do drug studies, asshole!” No, but you can pull resources. You can shack up next or near each other and put away resentful naiveties about the capacity of your bootstraps. My living room and extra bedroom have opened up for at least 4 friends to help find their footing. You can try figuring out something new together instead of playing out the well-worn excuses and traversing the poorly-paved roads before you.

A sonder is the realization that everyone has a life as rich and complex as your own. I often think about this as I’m passing what feels like a hundred thousand cars on my way to take pills for more than most will make this month. Rich and complex? We’re all on the same road. In my area, we’re all wandering the same mall and eating the same food. We went to, about, the same schools. If we truly had any capacity for appreciating complexities, you’d think we’d introduce “simple” ethics regarding shared experience into the compounding equation before anything else.

Still, I’m provoked by the language of sin. We’re greedy. I want my toys and house and cash as much as the next person, but I won’t do it hiding behind my small donations here and there or even pretending blogs like this count for more than they do. We’re sloths. We’ll struggle to the ends of the earth to defend our “love” and our “rights” as long as we don’t really have to tackle what that means for our neighbor. We take undue pride in what I AND I ALONE, or at least, what my family nodded in support of, have accomplished. We envy those who can pull off the best Instagram picture or magazine depiction of a modern living room. We gorge ourselves on unsustainable food. We get insanely defensive and angry at people like me who perpetually point out the emperor is naked. When it comes to lust, I think people should be fucking considerably more often, so let’s say I think religion gets that one pretty wrong at least.

Everything in my life is a first-world problem and complaint. I barely discussed what happens in the ghettos of America. Tell that story to the perpetually bombed teenage Palestinians. You mean their house ISN’T reduced to rubble? Bling Bling! I don’t want to live like the poor and I don’t think I need to flog myself for aspiring to more. I do think I have an obligation to encourage, as often as the mood strikes me, a conversation that I think begets real change. I want the kind of conversations that drove me to drug studies and straw-bale houses, and investing in software that hopefully helps me respect the time I’ve spent reading about the details.

The conversation doesn’t get better when it doesn’t happen. Our “consciousness” remains stunted at whatever snippets we can remember from the half-read article before or after work. Our jovial polite impressions of one another, or stark raving lunatic screaming professions about one another, remain different extremes to the same end. Maybe not your end, in your little world, concerned with your little self. But an end that might terrify, or dejectedly relieve you, were the circumstances switched. The “government,” our “educations,” the “fix,” whatever you’re mad at or supports you are all what you’re choosing to do right now. Or, they’re all subjected to the unconscious whimsy of business as usual.

Am I trying to guilt trip you? Is asking for informed empathic conversation too much? Is working together not just unreasonable given proximity, but who has the time? I won’t pretend I know what your path or method consists of, but it shouldn’t be silence. It shouldn’t be judgment or anger. You should do like me. Be weird. Insist. Encourage. Try to do it differently and experiment. Talk for as long as it takes. Dive into what makes you afraid and uncomfortable. That’s where my friends lie and what I want to see the future consist of. Anything less seems pointless.

[528] Copy Cat

This may go a couple of “random” directions, but I at least know where I want to start. I often say I’m lucky. I’m lucky to be healthy. I’m lucky for the circumstances I was born into. I’m lucky I’ve figured out a way to grasp my decision making that allows me to carry on with a “mostly even” disposition. When I decide to write, I’m lucky that I realized I don’t really give much a fuck whether it’s received as I intended as much as it got to get the hell out of me. Thus, my focus turns to answering the charge, “you’re not original.”

Stepping back, one wonders what a true “original thing” could ever look like. Plato’s forms? Realistically, we’re all the mash-ups and remixes of our experiences, parents’ experiences, genetics, and pop culture shoved down our throats. The reason you can laugh at some joke I make about Pokemon Go is because you grew up with it too, not because, in my infinite wisdom, I created this new and awesome thing I thought it pertinent for us to work into our memories.

I don’t need to labor on about this level of criticism. It’s just so...well, unoriginal. Like every lazy person who thought they would step up and “criticize” me, it’s this limp wristed slap like “oh you! I think you suck!” where the word “criticism” doesn’t really apply. I literally had someone tell me, “the existentialists already exist and phrased things more deliberately and clearly than you. People can just read them!”

I implore you, point me in the direction of people who not only read, but colloquially reflect on the existentialists, and I’ll take my drivel to their front door. Yeah, he denied me an answer as to where those cool kids rock out as well. More to the point, since when is something done being thought about simply because someone got to it first? Philosophers are full of terrible ideas. If you don’t find a way to expound or contradict them, you’re not really putting this thinking thing to task.


Lazy. People are so lazy. Once more we need a reference from Waking Life about whether fear or laziness is the most prevalent human characteristic. I think it’s a trick question and they work in tandem.
When you’re not lazy you even bother to quote a line. You ask someone a question. You offer your opposing thought. Merely degrading someone doesn’t count. Lobbying adjectives and empty nods to your opinion about what is or isn’t worthwhile to read won’t cut it either.

It’s from here that it occurred to me that I like to argue. Some of you may be screaming, “DUH, MOTHER FUCKER!” The problem is that I separate argue from fight. I like to test my brain. I like having my positions challenged. In polite adult society, that never happens. So I go and pick at people once in awhile. I’m willing to “over” analyze some interaction or conversation because the odds are in my favor we’re doing a disservice to our potential for communication.

Just think. What could we discover when, as habit and history seems to speak to, we decide I’m not the enemy? What if we accepted that I’m “just” talking or probably making a joke, so when I question something or recall an idea, it has nothing to do with you personally? Oh, what a dream! Where could we go if I heard you sound as despotic as me as I’ve described the living nightmare of minimum wage work to nowhere? What could we learn about “love” and togetherness if you sent me drafts of your thoughts regarding the words or the “time and place” they should be considered paramount?

Every day there’s a dozen conversations I don’t get to have. I don’t get to learn about what you do, what you’re struggling with or have given up on. I don’t know how you’ve changed since college. I don’t know what you’re catching yourself saying or doing more or less as you get older. Random facebook chats won’t cut it. A few phone calls about the “nothing much” either of us is doing won’t suffice either. Whatever you pick to show the world through facebook can just go on ahead and lick a pair of hairy balls.

What’s sad is that I’m not even angry about it anymore. I’m going as dead to my conception of togetherness and friendship as our inundated existences taught us we should be. But, mine’s worse because it’s feeling like a self-preservation choice and not a taken for granted “truth” of existence. I came, I saw, I shit the bed and found myself complaining with an inability to clean it up.

So what, need a tl/dr right? If you’re going to shit on me, please do, but like, actually try. I certainly don’t hate you, but don’t ask me to define “friend.” And the proverbial “people” do as they’ve always done and here I sit pretending I’m justified or surprised. What else is new?

[527] Should Have Known Better

What a long strange trip it’s been. I feel I’m on the precipice of relief. Like the nail that’s been pounding away at my head needs one last good slug and I’ll go down. Maybe I can meander through a retrospective and piece the story together of how I got here.

I never knew any better. I think that’s a fairly broad yet understanding position you can attribute to someone, especially when they’re growing up. You just don’t know any better. You follow rules because they are there, or you’ll get hit, or you’ll get grounded. If your authority figure is particularly malicious, perhaps you’ll start to learn all sorts of bonus painful cause and effect lessons that serve to confuse you later in life. Instilled in you is some level of structure. If you’re lucky it’s healthy and informed. If you’re not, it’s a simple permutation of “try it, get fucked.”

As a child I didn’t know to what degree anything was a problem. I heard stories of my aunt getting beaten by her husband, but no one beat him up, and he still went to shake my hand at Thanksgiving without people making a fuss. You can form any number of childish conceptions about how badly you hate your parents for one reason or another, but 20 years later when your dad says, “Some people just should not have children, and your mom is one of them,” you begin to think you had pretty good instincts.

Your relationship to your parents can change or evolve over time. The entirety of that time, you can have no real understanding or basis for why you’re feeling or thinking one way over another. The extreme anger I held for my mom is now waterfalls of pity. Whatever I was made to believe about love for your parents or family broke into many different pieces informed by many different and contradictory stories of love. You’re just supposed to love them right? It’s that simple. Or it can be. Or it should be. Or what’s happening if you can’t? I don’t know any better.

Get into any relationship it’s the same thing. You don’t know how the other person or people will feel later. You were doing the best you could with your hopes and prayers. You believe because what else is there? You’re not trying to lie. You don’t mean to hurt anyone. But you didn’t know any better. You didn’t know how to cope or accept. You didn’t know how to phrase things or cultivate the patience. You didn’t know that a 3 minute walk around the block slows your heart and helps center you. You didn’t know what you even wanted out of it to begin with.

When you’re immersed in life it’s an obliteration event. You absolve yourself of otherwise intrusive thoughts with the day’s dealings or the routine. You bounce between impressions from hundreds of friends or acquaintances. You’re excited to show off what you’ve accomplished or is happening to you. You swoon over the perfect sunset that just seems to frame itself with your camera in mind. It’s the celebration at the top of an academic or professional mountain. It’s freedom. It’s boundless expression and garnering of attention.

And perhaps for a child, that’s precisely what we want. They’ve got time to know better. It’ll sink in soon enough. Let them play.

How do you start to know better? When do the decisions start feeling like yours and not incidental ones to stay afloat through crashing waves? For me, it was simply starting to write. I didn’t only have to be a ball of stress and questions. I could reach out and hunt for perspectives. I got random encouragement. I got people talking. When I said something particularly stupid, I had to try and defend it or modify or qualify it. It took a lot of work and time. It never got perfect.

In those periods of conversation and engagement, I thought I was learning something better. I thought I was picking up that many peoples’ minds are going as often as mine is. They share the same concerns. They have a hard time explaining them. Resolutions can be met when two or more people with honest perspectives pursue the dirt of whatever is being discussed. It wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t slinging baseless accusations. No one was going to get hurt.

Then you introduce silence. People “grow up” and get “conservative.” They don’t want to make the same mistakes of their youth from talking too quick or especially making it public. As okay as it is for an impassioned teenage idiot to carry on about their first philosopher is how okay it becomes to basically never say anything regarding life as you get older. I’d consider both problematic, but the older person should know better. Or so I hope to discover.

At each layer where information is trying to be transferred there’s something of a battleground. You can refer to it superficially, “liberal verses conservative,” or egotistically, “rednecks verses academics,” or insecurely, “I actually think verses I want them to think.” And it’s not like we insist on only discussing things in one proper way. I’m sure I routinely switch tenses when I write because I’m trying to write as I think or speak, neither of which solidly reside in a strict relationship to a point in time. I start to ask myself, is there a “better?”

Am I better writer than when I started? I break things into paragraphs, which at least makes it easier for me to read. I say “fuck” considerably less often, but that could speak to personal preference. How would I know? It was only ever supposed to help me get rid of headaches. As long as it keeps doing that, it’s as good as it can ever get. It’s supposed to give me something to consider when I can’t pin down what I’m trying to consider. It is still doing that, so it’s still as good as it ever was.

“It’s just insecurity,” as internet doctors proclaim. I need to be loved! But only managed to pick the most grating and encumbered way and can’t appreciate my folly! “You just want attention,” those egging on the encouragement charge. Yes, please face this block of words, tell me to die, and then I win! They looked! They looked! “You’re not a secret genius,” as little do they know the whole point was to coax that sentiment out of them the whole time! 12 years and finally someone fell for my trap!

I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do in trying to understand things. I don’t know what understanding looks like without a ton of words. Without being exhausted of my questions or lines of reasoning, where am I going? What else would my words or feelings be in service to? Maybe it’s right here, when you ask yourself why the fuck you’re even bothering are you allowed to discover “better.”

I want the same peace for you that I either seek or find in my mind. I know I feel better without a slurry of headache inducing questions and anger. I don’t like to feel small. I don’t like being called “crazy” or “in need of a therapist” or “rambling” as if my brain has 50 different words I’d rather use in place of this sentence, and I’m just choosing to pick ones you think are totally shit. The peace of mind I achieve from attempting to explain myself is real. It’s as real as the boundless hatred I experience for bothering.

And it’s better. It’s better to give yourself time to not only take in information, but mash it up and see if you can spit it out in a way that helps you build. It’s better to have my struggles with free time than it is to adopt the ones handed down from systems of greed, consumption, and exploitation. Of course no one remains perfectly clean or perfectly free, but that’s not the point. I choose TV, reading, sporadic exercise, entrepreneurship, and wandering about the world and my mind every day because it’s better.

I can only speculate what you think is better. I can only draw from conversations we used to have. I can only cross my fingers that whatever sacrifices you make in service to your lives feel as “duh” as mine do for me. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t expect you to know what else to do. It’s not like you read these or we talk. It’s not like I ever set out for them to mean anything to anyone but me in the first place.

What I do know, is that I’m sick of the fucking hatred. I’m sick of the judgment. I’m sick of the imagination that can only be used to conjure the worst ideas you’ve ever had about someone. I know I’m better because my approach to fear and anger will consistently be this. I could “lose it” all day here and all you’ll get is more words. I can talk myself through the infinite insecurities that are projected onto me. I don’t ignore what you say and retort with empty things hoping to make you feel bad. I don’t tell you to die. I don’t reimagine and literally make things up to make you sound worse than I promise you already do.

Be the change you want to see. Every hurt feeling I want a trail of pages until it’s mended. Every flirtation with jumping over the edge I want a cushion of crumpled paper to catch you. Every baseless accusation I want met with analogy after analogy that ridicules and undermines. I want evidence of thought. I want patience. I want “tl:dr” to stick its head up its ass.

People that don’t know how to get better can’t see me. These words aren’t here. There is no guiding ethic or purpose to what I’m doing that isn’t a manifestation of their worst nightmares about me. I get that, and certainly don’t enjoy that. I hope to one day make peace with it.

[526] The Point

I think this is going to come across as very “judge-y,” but I don't want it to. The aim is to describe the working model of discussion that describes how we spend our time. Also, I need to attempt to banish any guilt I have for the amount of privilege I exhibit in my day to day existence.

How many jobs might we describe as “pointless?” I don't think there's a hard and fast ranking system, but if we attempt to make a number of comparisons, one might start to manifest. A comedian or doctor? If you had to choose, every comedian would be pointless. A lawyer or garbageman? Trick question, as both are about to be outsourced by machines here shortly. Does it sound weird to call a lawyer pointless? In a world that can produce a computer that can cite precedents and make better arguments than a human could ever manage, maybe not.

It's also important to distinguish the difference between the profession itself and the human desire or need of what it's providing. Comedy certainly isn't pointless and in fact is essential to well being and cohesiveness. Have we immediately contradicted the line of reasoning that would throw a comedian under a doctor's bus? Perhaps marginally. At the same time, it's hopefully becoming apparent how “loose” it is to talk about the merit of any one thing without a context.

A world without comedians would need one or many. A world entirely consisting of comedians would be doomed to fail. Is there a balance? Is there a compelling case for the amount of comedians we have verses doctors? Sounding like impossible questions to me. Questions that have to be approached very personally and from a kind of holistic impression. I've stated, at least, that the world doesn't need me as a comedian. I can cite dozens who are saying almost word for word the things I'd want to say. I've no desire to surpass or crowd them and will gladly share with you the joy they bring me. I'm happy to crack my own shit up or try to get friends to laugh.

The question of “pointless” activities is one that we're going to have to deal with in greater measure than I think we're even basically aware of. Of the jobs that are left not being done via modern slavery, the ones that employ the most people are rapidly changing for reasons well independent of anyone's concern for your place or title.

Anecdotally, I can describe how pointless I felt at basically every job I've been in. It's a hard illusion to see through that just because there's a structure of some sort, doesn't mean it stands for worthwhile or valuable reasons. I excelled at my jobs, either evidenced through raises, promotions, or a heaping of responsibilities. But I excelled at being pointless. School is a close analogy. I got the As and Bs. Nothing about those As and Bs meant anything to the places I ended up working for. And the tasks required of me certainly didn't lean on my capacity to “intensively write” about obscure legal questions or describe the paths of neurotransmitters.

My mind always shoots to jobs of leisure. Critics still blow my mind. Paid to love or shit on things. Have an opinion? Here's money! Sports follows in my thoughts mostly because nobody needs you to be the best (even if it means doping) more than they probably need to leave the couch more often. I think you're less often an example, more being abused as a scapegoat. Think of the amount of pride fat America is going to take from any gold medals it wins.

The more you really dig into any particular task, it feels more and more predicated on “because I can” or “because it kills time.” It becomes dignified because people tie it to the amount of money they're making or they describe it as taking care of their families or of course their amount of effort or struggle or knowledge holds some particular weight over yours. This of course is different from demeaning the amount of work or time it does in fact take to learn things or what you've personally overcome in order to do so.

I've been practicing instruments. I have so much time on my hands I can start to surprise myself with the progress I make in a relatively short amount of time. I still seem to reflexively shit on what I'm doing. I like music. I marvel at people who can do it professionally. But it still feels “pointless.” That is, I'm doing it almost like a show. When I can pick up an instrument at random and pull it off, that moment will validate the months of metronome beats in my head or canker soars. I care about music, but I can't make it “the point.” At least, not yet.

I've been watching TV. What I find I seem to insist on in any conversation about TV, is that I do it often sped up and via torrents. A 60 minute show is actually often 45 without commercials, and a 45 minute show meant to “empty-headedly entertain” is 22 minutes at twice the speed and more like 19 or less when you skip introductions, segment transitions, or musical acts you don't care about or already like. I can also practice on the drum pad, do squats, or hit the treadmill while Stephen Colbert is shitting on Hitler 2.

Mind you, I literally have nothing else to do. I don't have anywhere to be. I don't have anything that needs paid for. I'm not aware of anyone that needs my help. What the hell am I doing saving all this time, so I can have more time, to apparently complain about having too much time? It's less confusing than I've managed to phrase it there, but on its face, it seems kind of ridiculous, no?

Well, I also like to read. I also like to create software and want to build businesses. I'm also pricing land and have projects I've contacted literally every person in the state tangentially related to what I'm after. That is, I know what I wish could be “the point” at all times, happen to do everything I can in service to the point, and then am left to my own devices. I have money I know how to spend, but only have 3 or so ways I'd prefer it done so. I have time that I hope I can remain respectful of, even when I seemingly have too much of it. A sentiment I think no one over the age of 35 would ever dream of thinking was their problem.

I know what I want. My perception shows me that a lot of people, at least claim, to know what they're doing. It's anyone's guess if what they're doing matches what they want. I know what I want in conversation. I know what I want an argument to consist of. I know what I want in a partner or friend. I know what tools I want to use. I know what I want my house to be capable of. I know what I'll want to find the time to watch or play when I've finally created something that allows me to exercise “the point” instead of whatever else it is I find to do.

I also think I only ever discovered what I wanted because I gave myself all the time in the world to fall into it. I exhaustively explore what's on my mind and then consist of what's left. Hopefully, it's an informative and “wise” position. Hopefully, it allows me more opportunities to offer help instead of noise. Hopefully, it allows me to keep personal guilt levels at an appropriate place when the contrast laid bare of my life seems so strikingly different from yours.

My relative freedom is temptation. It's asking for trouble while you're waiting for things around you to catch up. Will you cope like me? Do you have a point besides waking up to take your prescription? Will the societal lid stay on the pot when huge swaths of humanity are trying to persuade themselves an “arts and leisure” existence is as worthy as the coal mine ethics they were born into? I doubt it.

Simply, I think it's important for people to face the true depths of their pointless behaviors. The hours spent in traffic listening to the same 30 songs. The hundreds of one line emails because neither of you wanted to take the elevator. The scrolling and scrolling and scrolling for any cue to smirk or like or become “outraged.” The minute to minute existence not burdened by the point because you don't have time.

In a primarily superficial sense is my life an easy place to be. I have the same luxuries as you, just the added time on top of it. A day doesn't go by where I'm not annoyed I can't “just do” the plans I have. Each comment I catch about thrown away money makes me sick; the fact that I'm reduced to my bank account. The fact that my purposeful and thoughtful self garners less attention or value from society than 30 failed presidential campaigns. The fact that there's millions of people who desperately need more attention and care than I'll ever deserve piles it on further.

We're a society of “unknown unknowns” who revel and take pride in it. For me, never will a personal story overshadow speaking and paying attention to our general health and awareness. Part of that health is taking back our time to re-learn what it is we should be focused on. It's to work it into our bones how to detect distracted from impassioned. I need to hear it in my every day speeches and interactions. I need to sense it from the average Joe. I need people to denounce, instead of actively encourage, behavior that attacks being thoughtful.

When I write, I try very hard to mean what I say. It's important for me to have a fairly prolonged defense for any lazy jabs. It means something to me, if not to you. I want to mean something to you, but won't be the whipping boy. This isn't a ramble. Your anger is unjustified. I'm not the enemy. If I were a betting man, I'd say you hate yourself for the same reasons I do. You're actively missing the point and resent the person calling you out. Learn to do it to yourself, and maybe we'll flirt with getting somewhere better together.

[525] No Future, No Cry

There's an idea that's been making me feel oddly reassured for the last few weeks now. And while I'm sure in one form or another I've come across the idea, the matter-of-fact way I happened to state it out loud had a particularly resonating feeling.

“Everything that has or will exist is happening now, we're just rearranging the pieces.”

I very much just click with the phrasing. Maybe you've caught blurbs of quantum mechanics experiments that show future events alter the past. Maybe you're someone who likes to remain present in a Buddhist tradition. Maybe an unbound hedonism and A.D.D. makes it hard for you to even pronounce “future” or “past.” The idea certainly isn't new.

I suppose it gives me a sense of calm when I'm baffled and hurt by how hard it seems to understand someone else. No doubt I can reach into my bag of psychology explanations. I can describe the environment. I can employ philosophy. But an endless string of potentially plausible, if not often correct, components isn't someone else's actual explanation. Just reading words or speculating isn't enough. You won't know if they're hurt or angry or merely confused. You won't know if they mean it.

I suppose as well that the phrasing helps me cope with loss. What did I lose when nothing is created nor destroyed? Sounds awkward and cold. What did I lose when the positives and negatives that created the situation were there before, during, and after? Perhaps just the willingness to focus on the positive.

For me, it's not so much about “getting somewhere” as it is expressing what I think I already know. When I played with blocks, I didn't want to build the “perfect” building, I just wanted to create something I hadn't seen before. When I collected Pokemon cards or Marvel Legends, I didn't set out to one day own them all, I just knew there was value in retention of what's popular. I think it speaks to the ideal in relationships. You both know the best and worst things about yourselves, is it possible the other will just let you be? Will you translate what you know about your feelings or otherwise in a way that works for both sides?

One of the reasons I consider myself such a bad translator is that I offer an insane amount of information. I do this because I think people are lazy. I do it to defy short-cutting. I think when it matters, you write until you're forced to stop. I don't think being thoughtful can be reduced to a meme, quote, or catch-all demonizing sentiment stated with folded arms. Information is deceptive. A number isn't just a number whether you're talking about climate change, your age, or the amount of people you've had sex with.

The only way to get underneath is to try and face yourself. It's to constantly struggle with the words. It's to take the thought you had in the shower and let it bother you all day at work, then keep you up at night, then remind you next week you haven't done it justice. Sometimes I look back on the sheer amount of words I've written and wonder where the hell it all came from. I wonder if everyone is going through the same thing and what's happening to them by not figuring out better ways of organizing it.

Again, I can always provide myself answers. They're voting for Hitler 2. They're getting married. (Interesting I thought of those next to each other.) Their facebook posts aren't just beautiful but fun and encouraging. They're living the dream! They're working that much harder. They're getting by. They're one generalized sentiment about life after another until they're drunk in private or something unexpected happens to them.

But you won't know a specific person's fear. You won't learn they're angry at themselves. You won't grasp the weight of their ties and responsibilities. Not through a couple pages like this or comments in a forum. You especially won't know those things the longer you wait to figure out what's plaguing your own depths. Without the right tools you won't even be able to recognize what's written in their tone, their face, or their body language.

It occurs to me that I never want to begrudge someone their happiness. At the same time, I'm so extremely wary of what they say makes them happy that I think it muddies the water about how I'm supposed to relate to them. I've noticed for all the encouraged Pokemon Go enthusiasts there apparently are, the hype has dimmed a lot and I see considerably less people wandering the neighborhood. Does the game make them happy? Are they content? I find the larger group psychology and popularity engine story more compelling and reliable.

Because when do you feel like a confident person with reliable opinions worthy of respect and contemplation? For me, it's in habitually couching myself in doubt. As well, I wait for it to be ripped out of me. My disposition isn't my worst days. My sense of self isn't dictated by my most incoherent or rambling blogs. My sense of friendship isn't bound by the number listed on facebook or the amount of ones that fail or degrade for reasons beyond my intentions and efforts. It's laughing when you're moved to laugh, staying up because the conversation deserves it, or politely declining because that's better than spitting it out.

How do you build your person? Certainly you can remain plagued by your starkest memories. You can be led by the nose from the charismatic. You can simply find yourself “still alive” and begin to believe you're not half bad at this “adulting” thing and therefore many of your opinions must be correct. My instinct tells me that's probably the most frequented, with the other two close in toe.

Even if I only ever feel like I'm building words, it's undeniable their capacity in helping me navigate the painful and, often fundamentally unreliable yet so damming words, that come my way. I so often want to blame you, but I so rarely know what you even consist of. I know your general earthly environment. I know snippets of our collective history. I know what it feels in the moment of elation and tragedy. But I'll always have a sinking feeling about how I never got to know you.

[524] Stabby Stab Stab

I don’t even want to write this. I feel left without a choice. It only takes a fleeting glance to provoke a rush of bullshit you’ve been trying to ignore. So here I’ll go trying to get rid of it.

I actually managed to trick myself. I believed. I thought one way or another I’d have a future with someone I could be perfectly honest with. I believed after I disavowed the word love. I believed despite a handful of dramatic fights. I believed because it seemed to be the thing happening in my life that I had little control over how it was stuck together despite so many things I’ve employed to keep it apart.

I can’t decide whether I feel worse having had that someone or when I only dreamed of being with someone. Over time it’s easier to distort the fantasy of a life not lived. What are you supposed to do with the actual good times? Where do you replace the trust you exhibited? What do you make of your new plans when they were all B, C, or D to your guiding ethic?

And then what to make of it when things were bad? The idea of saying something you can’t take back. What truth was being spoken to when lashing out didn’t just feel good, but necessary and appropriate. When the other person doesn’t even pretend to feel or care about what you’re experiencing. As if the reality of separating is as neat and professional as a “conscious uncoupling.”

I just want to be able to forget. I don’t want to feel anything from looking at her. I belittle people frequently who profess their heartfelt tales of woe as having little perspective and naïve hearts. I’m not going to endlessly profess how amazing, beautiful, or “special” she was to me. This needs to remain clear. I don’t let myself be dictated by the stomach I can’t control or the irrational whims of people I choose to be close to. My response is measured reflection for as long as it takes to die.

The tragedy is in the act of believing. The tragedy is in trust. The tragedy is going to be what turns every positive emotion, memory, or interaction we’ve had into something I actively work to forget or degrade so I can take back my nervous system. If trying to be human has taught me anything, it’s that I’m not a bitch. I may have to endlessly write. I may have to cut mutual friends. I may have to embody the worst myths from your perception of me, needlessly playing up their importance under the guise you’re even bothering to think that hard about me.

Nothing in my life has suggested you can rely on anyone that isn’t practically suicidal in their self-effacement or psychopathically transparent in their motivations. Everything in between is a liar’s game of rationalization and excuses. That’s the evidence. That’s why I know what you can rely on about me.

[523] The Body Politic

I need to readdress the idea of good, gooder, and best. When I first spoke about it, as time provides irony with a field day, it was with regard to relationships. I see, or at least pretend to see and sometimes argue for, a difference in relationships of convenience, abuse, or mutual encouragement as existing on a kind of sliding scale. You can be in a good relationship that “keeps the lid on” something about you or perhaps opens you up to new experiences, but remains couched in crippling insecurities about being alone. Depending on what level you want to look at or what you want to be steered by in life, the description can change fairly quickly.

This time around, it's about politics, as the conversation keeps swirling around Hilary or Hitler 2. As a habit, I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with often false dichotomies. Literally nothing exists that's “only” one or the other. Besides me begrudging people for introducing bad philosophy into their “pragmatic” conversations, I see a sort of “fundamental” concern that keeps getting ignored. I don't believe any reasonable person thinks it's hard to distinguish the nuclear fallout of a Hitler 2 presidency verses the, albeit very bad, neoliberal warmongering wall street jerking of Hilary. I get it, sorry poor children of the world, America doesn't really give a shit about you, Hitler 2 is right around the corner.

My concern is about where does the hard and fast line exist between “practical” and “idealist” show up? I contend that things change, almost randomly, for any number of unforeseen reasons. To maintain that the “only” way forward is to remain complicit in systems that are broken seems so ridiculously callous, lazy, and unwise but I hear it over and over again from politicians I admire or celebrities I enjoy, and I'm trying not to adopt a kind of doublethink about where they're coming from, and why I'm not voting for Hilary.

Say you never have to make a decision. Say your whole life is carried out for you by servants or a level of extravagance reserved for royalty. How would you make your decisions? What's most distracting? What's most pragmatic? Do these words even mean something to you at that point? Your attention is already whatever you want it to be. Your desires are met and there's nothing to “sit and deal with.”

Now you have to introduce some outside force. You get in a car accident. You decide to not just buy, but build the most amazingly safe car ever built and mandate the roads be cleared for your travels. You get sick. You build the most amazing hospital and import the world's doctors. You're reacting to your fears. You're making decisions in service to combat the dangerous reality that surrounds your extravagance. Consider what Hitler 2 promises and how his solutions, solutions for fear mind you, are as fanciful and hard to imagine as the person given all the resources in the world insulating themselves from danger or death.

To state the above explicitly, when nothing exists that concerns you beyond fundamental truths of existence, you can choose to live in fear.

Here, the hard work of discussion and philosophy needs to remind us that advocacy and sticking by what's best can remain worthwhile and viable in a world absolutely consumed by hatred and fear. Because make no mistake, the business as usual is complicated legalese that spells out someone in power's hatred for your being. Hatred for your rights, bodies, opinions, or even presumption that you have something they don't. And they have so much, and it's never enough, and it's because it's rooted in fear.

You're royalty. No bills to be paid. No wars to be fought (that you're not creating for amusement.) You're not hungry, you're not even bored. You can choose to live for other people or ideals that exist outside of your safe space.

In order to do that, you need to not just be aware of how good your life is going, you have to be able to explain, in due detail, all the forces that have to come together to make sure it remains a safe space. The millions of minds that lend credence to your royalty. The advances in science that will help keep you alive. The guards and caretakers and entertainers that you devour. You have to introduce guilt. You have to hold yourself accountable to something that nobody else can. What you've learned, what you've argued for, what you'd like to see in the future. It's when you've actually done the work to become something more than what you've been born into.

It's a tall order when all you have to do is react to remain complicit with the other side. How easy is it to fear Hitler 2? It's a cliché. You don't even have to think about it. In fact, I would argue, the ethos and purpose of modern society is to be able to label Hitler 2 as such without irony. Of course, I'm afraid of him. Of course I want to laugh more than cry when I see footage of his followers. But I'm not going to live my life in anymore fear than is necessary. I'm not going to pretend Hilary speaks for the same things Bernie does. What are synonymous vote percentages in lieu of a conscious or basic awareness of the problem?

That's what bugs me. I understand there's a political game always afoot. I get that there's sometimes inconvenient truths about the balance of power and influence. I do not understand approaching a system so dominated, by what used to be incidental quirks, as it now completely renders the desires of the population mute with your “vote” for what's going to keep it that way. Even if you're vote is symbolic. Even if it only has the fleeting impact of a set example. Are we going to get where this irrational, angry, and afraid animal needs to be by exercising it like the hateful planners at the top figured we would?

And honestly, I feel I'm not even explaining it as compellingly as it feels. If you want a child to do something, you can threaten them or you can encourage their best behaviors. I view humans as perpetual children. Hilary is threatening us with Hitler 2. Hitler 2 threatens everyone and encourages people to as well. If it's “my” vote, I choose die in the self-righteous flame of actual progress. I've been saying I don't believe in progress, which seems as of late to speak to the deficiency of language. There's things I want over other things. I want Bernie over Hilary, practically anything over Hitler 2, an informed and rational population over oligarchy and capitalism. And what I want is still out there, and it needs advocates. It's realities want a shot at being the new “practical reality” (you know, unless you're already there as a different civilized country.)

If Hitler 2 wins, it will be your fault. You don't know what you stand for and you deny your fear. You took it easy on your racist uncle. You adopted a catch-phrase about undocumented workers. You refused to read links I often provide offering context or numbers that soundly destroy some mythology shat out over pundit bickering or Hitler 2 himself. You allowed yourself to be swallowed, as we're all swallowed, by the system and then resolved yourself. You got tired and didn't ask why. You gave away all your time and then clung to the weekend that much harder. You threw personal pity parties and trumpeted your shallow conception of self-worth and righteousness as waves of ignorance and guilt washed out the notes.

My vote for Obama was because I hadn't figured out what I stood for. I was raised in a Democrat household. I believed minority opinions needed to be elevated and by that metric alone might help things. I thought the system was “basically good.” By all comparisons, my life is a breeze, the breeziest of breezes, and it's because of this country. But the foundation of my life is not because of the politics of today. It's because the people before me stood for something that we've lost all institutional memory of. How does it come back for my grandkids? Not with my vote for Hilary Clinton. How will I know I don't want grandkids? When you show we've accomplished so much only to elect Hitler 2.

[522] Nothing In Particular

I'm trying to figure out why I've just been staring at nothing for the last half hour. I can't seem to orient myself. I have shows to watch that I'm not. I have a pile of books I managed to half address for a couple hours when I woke up. There's inventory and cleaning I wanted to do around the house. But it's like I was stuck. Clicking aimlessly between tabs not really looking at anything in particular. Glancing at the clock as if I'm waiting for the cue to perhaps leave or I don't know what else.

Why? What am I facing when I'm not really looking? What's pressing down on my shoulders and directing my eyes to (finally) movement focused on a single point? Maybe too many thoughts at once? Maybe lingering regret about the last thing I wrote not quite reaching a satisfying conclusion? Some stark realization that my gut and subconscious are trying desperately to keep from my waking mind?

Sometimes I think I'm as angry as I can ever be, but all the time. Not “ready to explode,” but actively, perpetually exploding. I'm angry at my own effort to learn things. I'm angry that I can be made to feel self-conscious not in a way that would make me stop, but provoke me to double down. I'm angry that I pretend there's a thing called “progress” and that enough conversation can fix nearly anything. I don't like how I think, even though I've spent years trying to undermine how I got here.

The flow of it all just leaves me dizzy. Within 30 seconds I can be in a perfectly understood and receptive dialogue and slip into entrenched dislike or anger for my being. The internet of course making the transition all the smoother for when I'm not drunkenly table hopping for conversations. I don't understand why people are willing to harbor such resentment without any effort to explain themselves. Or worse, that explanation reduces to a bevy of insults and accusations with no patience for your position.

Old news though. Why do I care? Why did I ever choose to care? What's left in me that I'm referring to it as “caring” at all, at least as it functions to leave me confused and paralyzed? Again, old news. The whole song and dance about togetherness and empathy. “Respect” for “friends” so on and so forth.

I'm really fucking annoyed though. I want to know why I allow myself to get worked up about what you refuse to do. Is it that I don't want to face the inevitable consequences? Am I just really that bored with seeing things coming? Do I play the scale-up game where I see how your behavior lays the foundation for what we're seeing nationally concerning politics? That connectedness idea is a total bitch. Every one of my failed interactions is a statement about the whole and its capacity. Maybe just too many examples are clouding my view of the world from the negative camp.

I think for the first time I actually voiced how lonely it is to have all of your time on your hands. It gets worse though when you hear how the rest of the world is spending its time. When you really think and can't escape and can't discuss the larger systems of behavior and attitude we're plugged into. I'm just watching people rot. I'm watching my makeshift wood plank sailboat drift farther from the shore. I just turned 28, most people I know have been 40+ for as long as I can seem to remember anymore. I've worked so many jobs like theirs. I've spent so many hours playing the exact same games. How does it not drive them crazy?

It's almost a paradox. The less I pay attention and just focus on indulgences, I can genuinely feel my mood improve. I almost feel motivated to start taking selfies. (okay, that's a lie) I could budget random trips and show you how worldly and cool I am. I could have dozens of beautiful meals. That's how we're judging each others' happiness and stature still, right? It didn't switch on me and I should be making Vine videos about Pokemon Go?

What's next? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Your job still gonna be there? Are you truly afraid of Hitler 2 or just playing along with the copious offered cliches and dialogues? Are you mad? Are you feeling your sanity slip? Are you settled and comfortable riding out your life the way it's going now? Are you just tired enough to find yourself no longer concerned about my, disparagingly named, “ramblings?”

After my facebook account fiasco, my friends list went from 60 something to 48. It's diminishing fast. Who really cares to stay on for the ride? At this rate, by the time I'm 30 I'll be lucky keep my dad on the list. Am I bad? Can people pick on something about me that looms too large? Have I hurt you? It seems like I rarely have to look far for someone mad at me, but I have to wonder if I'm really the enemy. How much harm can one person do from their basement with blogs and statuses to such a small group of people? It seems like way too much.

Maybe I'm just in a weird mood because of the imposed silence for so long. Even reading a book on the future I'm sitting here going, “Don't I already know this, Kaku?” I don't know what I've left to learn or do that isn't wildly complicated, and even then, to some nondescript end. I have no place but to self-indulge. I have no design but to wait for everything I know to degrade or change dramatically. I don't expect growth or understanding. I barely conceive of teamwork or “shared” anything. The friends I engage with constitute that “barely.” Maybe I'm scared of unburdening myself with the responsibility of caring about when things go wrong.

What kind of shit show would that spell? Countless throwaway drunken escapes? Years of social depravity and exploitation? A stark look back down the line flooded with regret about all the wasted time and how “they won?” I don't know who I am but for what forces its way out of me. Lines of potential that keep my fingers moving and allow for projects to run in the background, but I can't force everyone's hand to work per my guide and deadlines. It's just, when am I going to discover something new? Be it to say or do. Is that the faulty destructive assumption I've been operating under? “Newness?”

I don't even know what I sound like anymore. Is that weird? I feel like all semblance of a “tone” that's supposed to accompany questions or ideas is losing its grip on me. I sort of take it for granted that people feel by virtue of me asking a question they immediately feel I'm accusing them of something. In a sense they'd be right, but it's only that they probably don't know what they're talking about. That clear path to winning friends and influencing people Socrates mastered. But why make it about me? Just because I asked. Just because you don't know anymore than I do, why does the anger and blame have to be directed at me and be mine? Why can't you just be as angry and explosive as you'll ever be, in general, and use it to address your approach to yourself?

I just know I'm not going to stop. I'm going to pick and pick and pick until you make yourself unpickable. And usually, that has nothing to do with me needing to quench an insatiable desire to destroy. I need people capable of talking back, keeping me in check. I need real friends. I need real conversations. I need something to rely on. I wish it was you, but we seem to learn so quickly sometimes how it isn't. You don't care, right? You don't care and want me to go away. Say so, or I promise I'll bring it to your door eventually.

[xx-18] Marriage Blurb

Of course do you and I've been to some fun weddings, but the more I read this, the more I'm proud of its concise yet encompassing nature. I also may have lied about being married because reddit is where I go to lie :). The question was "What does marriage mean to you?"

Marriage is sobriety. I've personally never been capable of prolonged "deep feeling" regarding anyone, so when I was married, it was more transactional and for her. It's impossible for me to deny the attraction I have for...well everyone I find attractive, and I don't make strict line in the sand comparisons about the fun or conversations I can have with who I was to my wife. The sober reminder, that while you care about this person, they are a person, one of many potential "the ones." Something *beyond* you and them belays ideas of *us.*

Marriage is putting someone first. That was sort of the guiding light that many people call "commitment." I allowed certain things I wanted to do or say be subsumed by her desires. Unfortunately, it's hardly a perfect system when your spouse decides to stop talking to you or the stress from sacrificing yourself works its way into your bones. It was nice while it lasted, but hardly something I consider reliable.

Marriage is convention. Regardless of what I discovered over time, be it in someone's struggles they shared online or in a book, or just what I figured out through dating, the all-purpose fixer-upper glory day remains when you get married. If you're lucky you get to revel in the honeymoon phase. You start to adopt a way of speaking that you've heard from your parents or on television. I inched out a lot of the quirk or spontaneity I considered myself, at one point, full of.

Marriage is an investment. Like all investments, it's subject to inbuilt risk. I made big romantic professions. I put money down. I opened up to moving mountains of my personality so the packed earth could house something we would build together. I found the market to be rigged. A fantasy stoked as often as someone opens their mouth to profess the love and beauty. When it fails, instead of blaming obvious culprits, a game of finger-pointing and hot potato ensue. Neither of us deserved it.

Marriage means an illusion. It's the illusion against divorce. It's the illusion that your life can mimic a Disney movie or your favorite romantic holiday. It's forcing yourself to focus on the special date or great sex scene while ignoring years of dirty clothes, passive aggressive comments, and morning breath. It's the song and dance of togetherness and renaming "forcing it" with "better together." Marriage means politics. This is your cage so come to the table or be nuked and sanctioned. But make sure your facebook only displays the best smiles from the convention.

Marriage means denial. Denial for its roots in property negotiations. Denial of systems that do it in an arranged way with equal or greater "success" when you consider social power dynamics. It's denial of human psychology and sexuality. It's denial that the "sanctity" is not bestowed by some timeless all-loving being in the sky.

Marriage is hope. The childlike hope instilled in you since you can remember that it's about you and your feelings and your story and nothing else. The hope that while you pursue the heights of selfish indulgent and extravagant thinking, you'll remain capable and worthy to opine on selflessness and "love." The hope that people will believe your photo montage and forget what they know about you from school. The hope that even one thing can remain stable against the tide of truth that is enduring change.

Marriage means nothing to me, and it's why I understand it as something that can mean absolutely anything to someone else.

[521] Salt To Taste

If you're willing to pay attention, you can catch your own attention. It's also hard to imagine if you're habitually taking your awareness and perspective for granted. One method that I seem to have recently discovered is to just shut up. When you shut up, and focus on shutting up, then you can retreat and wait for what provokes you to want to speak. At that point, you may get more “heartfelt” professions from your inner core than mindless ramblings.

Pulling away from too much political dialogue has certainly helped me. Every headlines, every interview, every “debate” is reinforcement. You are forced, your perspective locked in, to how those people frame the issue. I wouldn't be able to justify my vote for Jill Stein listening to the mainstream media. It's essentially a vote for Hitler 2! They don't recognize what I'm trying to affirm. They don't see it as the cart being put before the horse. I'm lumped in with indignant “Bernie or bust” types who don't understand math and should be as afraid.

Here we can perform the layers and splitting game. Of course I'm afraid. I was afraid of the millions of people who showed up to vote for Sarah Palin in any capacity. Now that they're back out and stirred up more, I'm even more afraid of their new glorified posturing ignorance. A vote for Hilary Clinton denies those people exist. It's to shove them under the rug. I want to channel their fear and make it fight against what I actually believe. Hell, not even “believe.” What I've gone to great lengths to write about, read about, and argue for that is actually rooted in history or science. I don't “believe” we should care about each other or that there are ways to afford what we want. I didn't pray about it.

I'm generally looking for the surprise outside. I like to think I'm a redundant open book. It's why it's kind of relief to feel motivated to write. There's potential for new analogies or discoveries. I can piece together the handful of lines I thought might have kicked off a new blog a few days or weeks ago that couldn't hold up. It was my birthday 2 days ago, and I had about half the desire to be a selfish rod of destruction as I normally do. It clicked, I don't want anything for my birthday that I didn't want the day before or will want the day after. I don't need distractions or even strictly money. I need a place in society lol. I need to feel invested in more than my future.

To me, at least, “things” just feel like they're going to get worse. Hitler 2 is the new normal. Jobs being consumed by technology will leave people who've wrapped their whole identities into catch-phrases surrounding the nuclear family adrift. We'll keep being angry at each other. We'll still be isolated. Our conversations stunted and afraid. Our prospects appearing at random and still draped by a cloak of exploitation...Uber. But, I'm not sitting here shivering. I don't even have a pain in my stomach. I just look at it and go, “duh.”

I can't stress it enough, I can't repeat it enough. I don't know if you should take anything away from this more than the following idea. I almost never, in fact practically never, hear people express how wrong they are. We are culturally isolated from our capacity to be wrong. Line after line flows in service to arguments and rebuttals and never not once does someone go “you know, I may be wrong.” When it does happen, it's half-assed like, “Oh, I agree Hilary isn't literally the devil” and still not even phrased with the operative word “wrong.” If you've no capacity to respect how wrong you are, let alone how compoundingly wrong those wrongs pile up, the potential truth of your words can't begin.

If you sat in a room next to someone with completely “opposite” views and neither of you said a word, how would you feel? Murderous intent? Suspicious of their motives? Terrified of their color? The words fuck everything up. Blame them first. Blame yourself for using them irresponsibly. Blame a system that teaches you that yelling is better than reading. Figure out who you're mad at, learn that it's yourself and often forces you've yet to properly identify and then stop being mad and start trying.

[520] Ode to My Basement

Here no one can hurt me
Here I can lie and lie
Here it is warm and cozy
Here could be a nice place to die

I shouldn't stay nor should I go
There's nothing to and nothing fro
Burn it down, it's all a show
Never are sure of what you know

Here I can read and write it too
Here I can sleep and dream
Here I can bang or blow a tune
Here I reign supreme

I am trapped in my own mind
It's the only one of its kind
Nowhere to run, I cannot hide
Too much of the world provides

Here I drive myself insane
Here we mask each inch of pain
Here the crooked point holds weight
Here lies buried a life of hate

I stare blankly at the wall
Curl up tight into a ball
Every instant ever so small
With each step you mind the fall

Here I stand in stark contrast
Here I have noise and shapes
Here things move too fast
Here I start to waste

There but for the grace of God
To other worlds I give a nod
Need to feel or else so odd
Point me to nearest escape pod

Here I fight the silence
Here I am fighting the noise
Here I can play with the violence
Here I'm not one of your toys

I wait around for nothing new
Listen close it could be true
Probably not, left black and blue
Dramatic save not meant for you

Here I run on empty
Here I can see the end
Here I given you entry
Here where reality bends

Trickled out speck by speck
I never know what's coming next
No relief in 'nother breath
Not soon enough my impending death

[519] Mortal Criti-sin

I'm trying to recall the last time I heard someone criticize something in colloquial conversation that didn't reduce to a cliché. It strikes me that the backlash I receive for not describing things in generally positive ways might be comprised of several screwed up forces in tandem. Like threads on a rope that snap together to whip me into submission.

Consider Pokemon Go. It seems like it is on its way to taking over the world. Jokes about getting outside for the first time in whenever. Screen shots of who's got the most and where they found them abound. For every article that's abused the relentless capacity for “millenials” to feel “nostalgic,” this app seems to have screwed right into the heart of it. I certainly don't blame people for having fun or connecting with people. I'm unable to shake how this feels like a culmination of perpetual infantilism.

I liked Pokemon as much as the next guy. Then I started to grow up. I don't want this to be overstated as I don't draw stark lines in the sand about acceptable ways to kill time, have fun, or whatever. Collect Pokemon, stamps, jerk off all day, I don't give a shit. I care that we only seem to find enthusiasm for “stupid” things like apps or get arm-chair “outraged” by things like shootings and racism. Our emotional perspective seems trapped, stunted, and ignorant.

What if we put as much time and emotional energy into learning about the world as we did wandering the neighborhood to catch Pokemon? Let me put it to you like this. Time is the most valuable thing. I have watched more movies and television than anyone I've ever met, and am a couple hundred levels from beating the main story of Candy Crush. I know how to waste time. I don't call what I do any more or less worthy of my time but for it's capacity to distract me or keep me entertained. But I couldn't do any of those things unless I thought I could offer a salient opinion about my place in my country or our collective responsibility to the world. I get guilt stricken. I feel lazy and dishonest. I honestly don't know if other people do, and frankly doubt it.

I fear we abuse apps and “nostalgia” like we abuse alcohol or drugs. One is arguably better if you had to choose, but what provokes the abuse and, perhaps overstated enthusiasm, I think is the same mechanism. The mad dash away from coping and dealing with larger problems. These are late 20's people who can't afford shit, aren't fucking, and have been under the unrelenting heal of debt and corrupted social services, if the news is to be believed, so why not Pokemon? It rings like the modern peasant farmers who at least get to get wasted at the end of the day.

Your 20's seems to have become this new tender age. People react so poorly to my critical statements because subconsciously their whole life has been under review and doubt and problems. They're just now maybe glancing at an opportunity to look like an adult and achieve things they dreamed about as kids. And here I come shitting even more. The stark contrast between why I seem to get along with adults verses kids is simple. Kids just wanna have fun and I'm a meanie. Adults have grown resolved to hear it all and move with or work past without much fuss.

While I was working out the details of emotional struggles and the lack of wisdom in relationships, people were doubling down on those feelings and believing in the future 10 years later. While I was giving myself headaches learning every angle of choose-your-topic, school was stressful enough for them or, “what's the point?” of driving yourself insane about things you can't fix. Add the backdrop of financial insecurity onto the undeveloped disposition of a batch of children, it's not a secret why anything remotely not ironic or critical on a site like reddit gets shit on to oblivion. It doesn't matter if you have a point, no one has developed the capacity to see it.

This is also different from a pretentious thing. Like, you can make convoluted crazy “points” about anything, drawing from your disparate experiences that...well they certainly seem to make sense to you. I'm talking about a kind of ignorance that has old white people saying Black Lives Matter is overreacting and need to take more responsibility for themselves. Any black person, as well as any reasonable person, would not look at someone in police custody ending up in a coma and say, “He should have worn a seat belt” like the dude wasn't kicked the shit out of. You can see the rates of incarceration, read histories worth of racially targeted legislation, and just be generally awake and honest and land on the side of sympathy.

I look down on those people. The ones who have no reason to pretend about something simple, but choose to anyway. Impersonal hive-mind children on an internet forum? Not my target audience. The same mechanism of defensive fear for conceding that the world ain't roses? I think it stems from the same kind of insecurities. The world can be described accurately in a way that transcends your opinion. There's degrees and levels to consider if you're going to act like your approach is relatively wise. If we persist under a cultural lunge to suppress and escape, well, Hitler 2 is actually a presidential candidate.

So I'm willing to double down. I'm willing to write 10 blogs contemplating why you would think it's me who's “negative.” The negativity stems from your avoidance and reluctance. It stems from your inability or unwillingness to respect your time or capacity to change something. Me talking about it isn't the problem, and never will be. You making me the enemy instead of yourself will always be. By choosing to react to the suffering of institutional guilt instead of motivating yourself from a personal one, you ensure we'll drive right over the edge of a cliff while I insist it’s not worth trying to catch the Onyx at the bottom.

[518] Extra Extra

Provoked by the movie Mr. Nobody, reading The Drunkard’s Walk, my facebook profile being flagged and blocked, my birthday on the horizon, as well as that impending sense of doom that’s not anxiety always in play, here I go.

I know I’m not the center of the world. I don’t want to believe it, but I know it. When I watch a movie or ruminate on what it means to be a star, it sets in how perpetually reinforced the ideas of being “special” or “consequential” are. Some lament the “selfie” craze and point out it has reached ridiculous and deadly heights. Others I’ve read point out that we’ve been trying to copy and represent ourselves since cave drawings.

The Drunkard’s Walk helped lock my head into thoughts about how random things truly are. They’re so reliably random, we have mathematical constructs that can predict across topics the degree in which you’ll find those star outliers or abysmal loses. And no matter how detailed a picture we give, no matter how accurately we attempt to measure and account for the forces beyond our control, we retain the judgments about ourselves and others about what should or could have been done.

Mr. Nobody has the world’s last and oldest human recounting several different lives different versions of himself took. Each one meaningful, filled with love and loss. It’s frankly creepy that I managed to watch it randomly right after finishing the book. It explores each reality existing on top of each other and as Mr. Nobody recounts fragments of each tale, he never once refers to himself as his name. He’s merely a figment, an idea. Nobody in particular at the center of all possible worlds.

The movie makes me think I’ve already seen the last of the “fun” or “spontaneity” that are classically associated with youth and naivety. The big bad stressful life wrecking ball came in and smashed any temptation to throw caution to the wind. I’ve complained about seeing “the end” for years, and I feel steeped in it like a soggy tea bag. Like I can see the handful of conversations I’m going to have with a few specific friends. I’m only going to hang out perhaps less than 10 times with a few others. Like, then we die. I watch you update your profile picture a few times, we get coffee, then we die.

The book constantly reinforces how not to make the popular mistakes when attempting to reason through probabilities and statistics. If you think you have a 7/10 chance of being fired after sending an email and your boss doesn’t respond as quick as they normally do, you’re leaving out any number of circumstances that may be holding up your boss. Before I phrase it in a stupid or incorrect way, the idea is to not pretend you can accurately account for all variables, nor should you use confirming “evidence” that only exists in your mind to make you feel bad.

Anecdotally, I consider friend interactions. Whether it’s responses to texts, facebook messages, or willingness to join in some get-together. I can state over and over that I know I live a different kind of life filled with more time and more money than people usually have. I don’t have the same stressors. I treat social media platforms as trying to be social and actually have debates or share things that genuinely push the limits of my knowledge or interests. This in contrast to memes, Buzzfeed, or 70 similar pictures of my walk through the park. Even with cutting my list down to 68 ish friends I don’t see nearly anything they post anymore, let alone know what to think about what I post may not be getting through.

I think my habits are what make a place like facebook so depressing. When I can’t stare at 50 people who used to have a good time bowling or drinking or would love to go down a waterslide, I eventually have to cut them down to 30 who might if I badger them. When the badgering starts to feel rude or they’ve moved away, let’s lose 20 more and shoot for 10 that I’ll prepare well in advance and employ tactfully to coincide with something else.

The term coming to mind is “FOMO.” It’s not so much a fear of missing something as it is a general dismay felt for every day that’s lost to the noise and hustle. I just missed a 4th of July get-together, a house party, and a friend I haven’t seen in maybe a year. I find this tragic in so many senses. Not only because they happen so rarely, but even if I had made it, I’m scared of what being around all the adults does for my disposition. There’s a place in between alcoholism and nursing a beer all night.

With my profile being blocked and me sending angry expletive-laced commentary to facebook about how ridiculous it is to ask for someone’s license to confirm such a bullshit profile, I managed to finish the book start to finish. I was acutely aware of how many times I looked for the facebook emblem to be flashing. How much time I spend looking into the abyss waiting for a notification of something happening or interesting to take place. In fairness, It’s heightened given that my options are a bed and hallway at the moment, but then it also occurred to me that facebook is my only connection to many of these people. The hallowed few who haven’t met the drunk fatalistic unfriend axe. To collect them all back on another profile, I started asking if it was worth it.

There’s that saying about living simply and cleaning your house; if you pick it up and it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it. It get’s complicated for me because the joy comes so few and far between, at least as far as experiencing personalities in person. The joy is the thought that you exist and are being kickass you wherever you are, and I mostly just have a memory of it. One corrupted each time it’s accessed. I think it’s why friendships I thought I could rely on “randomly” blow up. The parts of you that liked or recognized what I’m about became subjected to something else. I find them primed to explode over a long decay that ends abruptly when something...real?...happens.

There’s just a general sense of receptiveness I feel has died. From economic forces all the way down into how old you feel locking it away. Friends too old for you. New people way too sad. (Turns out most townies don’t stay because they’re hyper enthused about the town and their place in it.) I don’t even know if I’m saying anything of value at this point. I had to say something, maybe you’ll figure out how to say it better than I can. This remaining my rather meager means of keeping you abreast of what is or isn’t changing about me.