[550] One Bite

There’s a feeling I’ve spoken about before that I often get as I’m driving in and around cities or meandering through neighborhoods. I’ve taken stabs at trying to better define it with language that already exists and obscure German words that may or may not exist given how hard they are to rediscover through googling. It follows me when I think about Hitler 2 supporters. It strikes me when I read and hear condescending comments on the feasibility of an idea. I’m awash in it every time I see footage of a refugee talking about not being able to see their family or describing their poor living conditions.

Part of it has to do with the imposition of shame. When I go do a drug study I become a textbook example of “white coat syndrome” in that my heart rate and blood pressure will increase as I think about the implications of both getting into the study as well as failing. I’m not scared of doctors. I’m extremely anxious that several thousand dollars relies on 20 seconds of a cuff that displays misleading activity regarding my resting heart rate. The shame comes in when I wonder how I manage to get myself so worked-up at the pivotal time when people live lives of perpetual woe that face actual problems.

Here’s always the rub though, as people don’t find it particularly wise or helpful to compare yourself to others and their circumstances. “Your anxieties and worries are real and valid!” They’ll profess from friend to therapist alike. “Fix what you can, don’t stress about what you can’t!” They don’t know any more than I do about how to fix something and their lives are often filled with considerably more stressful and time consuming concerns than I try to adopt. So often “life” is to be blamed or “history” or many people are frankly “unlucky.” Working in cahoots with those sentiments is the idea that “change doesn’t happen overnight.”

We’re a species of hypocrites and contradiction. This is taken as short-hand gospel for the dispelling of shame. We can talk about “human rights” till we’re blue in the face and be aware of maybe 2 places where we consider them under threat and would struggle to name a dozen that we’re supposed to be exercising as “free citizens.” We endlessly consume stories about the strength and importance of friends and family as we hunker down in lonely corners of the world and check-in from time to time. We can organize a team of nerds to thread the needle of placing a car-sized rover on Mars, and in the celebration, go in for the high five and miss theatrically.

When it’s our responsibility we want to believe it can’t happen now. When “society” gets invoked, we point to the immediacy of terrorist threats, environmental disaster, and economic woes. We begrudge a lack of budget, will, responsibility, or clarity on what to do moving forward. A story that illustrates this is a group at IU recently delivered a petition to make the campus a “sanctuary zone” for undocumented immigrants going to school. The comments under the article were terrible. Why should THE TAXPAYER be responsible for THESE ILLEGALS! WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY! YOU’D BE CRAZY TO DEFY THE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP!

This method of viewing the world as it is right outside the tip of your nose I simply hate. I’m not just unable to understand it. I think it defies being human. You carry yourself like a deer sipping from crocodile infested waters, opting for precariousness and being a reactionary because you disavow the other tools you have to dig a fucking well.

I’ve read any number of explanations about people like this. They prefer “order” and strictly defined roles. They have brains that are less plastic than their liberal counterparts. They’re “justified” in their fears, because the fear is real after all, so the things they do in service to those fears need to be swallowed. There are class distinctions. There’s artless apologetics and punditry. Most, if not all of these professions, only serve self-satisfied smugness. As long as you think you have the answer, the waves you send out into the world must be dealt with on their own merits and your responsibility to them dies.

The question on my mind is how do you shame a nation? We elected Hitler 2. We have no capacity for shame. The protests aren’t shame. The myriad explanations aren’t shame. The naïve nostalgia and nose thumbing certainly aren’t shame. How do you force a perspective that isn’t bred out of increasingly horrific circumstances? It’s not just the U.S. It’s the rising right-wing in other nations as well. It’s the stronghold money has on government in general. Our human cultural anti-bodies are in full attack mode against ourselves, and worse, they seem to be growing.

It’s such a stupid giant pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next. WE’RE AFRAID KILL THEM ALL! EVERYONE CAN BE TAKEN CARE OF WE JUST REFUSE TO DO THE MATH! I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE 1950’s! I WANT TO LIVE ON MARS RIGHT NOW! I BUILT EVERYTHING I OWN! NOT THE ROADS, TRUCKS, BUILDINGS, TAX LAWS, AND CULTURAL ATTITUDES, FUCKO!

You don’t speak about protecting a few hundred “illegal” students in terms of the budget when your campus erects new buildings almost every year. You shouldn’t shit your pants about finding the money when you disregard the rise in tuition and student debt. You don’t talk about what’s “illogical” about your defiance of your DEMOCRATIC leadership, if you don’t agree their position qualifies as being a leader worth respecting.  You always have to chase back the problem in order to remain internally and externally consistent. People don’t start from a point of coherence, so the things that come out of their mouths are every ounce of doublespeak they feel deserving of respect and consideration.

Do we even have a “pure” democracy so we can actually attempt to gauge what should be “legal” and “illegal” regarding students and their immigration status? No. Are we insulated from the “tyranny of the masses” that might help explain the electoral college? Absolutely not. Do we spend massive amounts of taxpayer money subsidizing projects that die slow painful deaths and inflate big business coffers? Way more than anyone should ever feel comfortable with. The irony being, if we paid attention, we could not only cut back on waste and government oversight/lobbying, but we could conveniently pay to protect human rights *shrug* and provide an environment where we could raise people to be more informed and coherent at a fraction of the cost.

We don’t for deliberate reasons that you exercise every time you refuse to chase “your opinion” back to something fundamental. I tie us to together with my knowledge about how our brains fail us. I tie us together by your clichéd habits and ideas. I tie us together by mentally putting myself in a refugee camp and thinking “I don’t like this, what do I need?” It’s not even hard to imagine. It’s not some grandiose and complicated math equation. It’s basic shit for basic bitches.

I’m all the more emboldened to learn how to self-sustain. I can do the most good in the world when I create the means for which I can live and translate that to someone else. I think this is the grand underlying failure of modernity. We don’t care to teach so we forgot how to learn. You learn with an open mind and it’s spurred on by a deep curiosity for what you don’t know. It’s the alternative way to seeing positive change when you’re devoid of shame. What a nuclear option looks like to invigorate and encourage, I have no idea, and my chest tightens with the idea it may involve actual nukes.

When I think about my contradictory nature, I have no clue how I could be moved to become as intractably ignorant as the rest of the species. I often talk about being “on the level.” It’s not the highest pillar. It’s a balancing act. I know the worst demons of my nature and I know the best of me that I rarely ever get to live up to. If we’re just mathematical simulations, then I watch my life as it travels and sometimes diverges from the mean. It’s being open enough to not let your mind fall out and conservative in a way that isn’t hoarding. It’s thinking all lives matter and respecting why a minority group’s interest doesn’t lie in agreeing with you. It’s not demonizing people for the actions of a radical few. It’s not getting lost in poorly defined parameters of alleged social acceptability. It’s pursing your personal goals through the window of the rest of the world. It’s respecting what about you has been shaped and when you’re doing the shaping.

You don’t get there without paying attention. You can’t pretend you’re the only car on the road as you complain about traffic. If your favorite movie made 100 million dollars, maybe your interests aren’t that complicated or novel. Maybe everyone is just a different version of you that isn’t having some need met because you remain unwilling to take the time to figure out what those needs really consist of.

You’re never just killing yourself. You’re never just wasting your own potential. And I feel it. I’ve heard plenty of times where I can stick my dreams and ideas. My personal concerns are every ounce of privileged. And yet, all I can do is talk about how broken my community is. It takes my breath away trying to account for the dripping hatred and ignorance we protect. I’m not merely suggesting every single one of you should be writing and imploring each other. It’s necessary for our survival. You have to try harder. You have to fumble over the words. You have to identify what matters and how you’re going about it. It can‘t be private. You can’t be embarrassed. We are ending ourselves because we’re not sharing what matters.

[549] The little Things

A lot of time is spent extolling the virtue and utility of “the little things.” It could be a returned wallet. It could be a smile and wave to the person looking sad. Every few months there’s a video of someone handing out gifts to the homeless or a tale of someone in a tight spot goes viral because people rallied together to help them. The story goes that as long as we are able to identify and draw inspiration from these things we can’t be all bad. In fact, things are “basically good” despite the excuses that try to explain away those who don’t return the wallet, are homeless, or why they ended up needing attention and crowd sourcing. It’s a celebration of personal hardship or charity that society glombs onto to carry on classic conceptions of virtue.

I’ve shaken off my regard for the little things. Particularly in the age of the internet, it’s easy to get lost in saintly videos as often as you choose to run from any guilt about not appearing in your own. With donate buttons we think of ourselves as trickling in streams of goodness that contribute to an overall whole we can be proud of. We think we’re setting an example. We think we’re making a difference. The hallmark statement of this idea is, “If I can only reach just one person then I’ll know my work made a difference.” Of course, the business of protecting and promoting the idea makes sure to indeed find that one person to keep testifying to all the difference you made.

We’re running right up against the problem with it now though. We elected Hitler 2. We chose fascism. Our moral center is orange and racist and, if only ignorant, were it not a pathological liar. Ten seconds on your facebook and you’ll see sad faces, smug memes, typically ridiculous arguments, more fingers pointed than hands to house them, consoling music videos, somber poetry, and everything that comes along with being in shock. People express how much they love you if you’re being targeted. They’re rallying in the streets. They’re hashtag campaigning. They’re searching for every inch of hope and even conspiracy to assuage the fear that it’s not as bad as it looks.

What you don’t see is people identifying the hard moral failings that amount to any kind of proactive accountability or truth. They can’t disavow love; the myth will carry them through. They can’t voice the word fascism because, how would we get WWII if the Germans had Netflix!? Things are different, you reactionary! They know nothing of how charity works or how the money is spent or why the government got so disengaged that it’s charity’s burden to pick up the slack. They don their own empty professions of the real revolution because it takes something as bad as mortal fear to provoke action at all, let alone hints at action that matters.

It’s a swirling steaming pile of the little things. It’s scattered and scraggly Occupy camps running ritual snapping and yelling games to help appease their nerves. I would argue it’s not even in good faith. These people flock from their conservative origins, for good reason, not because they wanted to engage and transform the landscape, but because they wanted to pursue their story in a place where they’d mostly be left alone to do so. They retreated to a cutthroat world of selfishness and celebrity and donned the pretentious and condescending armor needed to survive. They adopted the words “struggle” and “hustle” like the road to Youtube or tech start-up stardom amounts to more than waste and privilege. They thought they could escape to the beauty of the mountains or the sea and put away all complicated communal concerns.

There’s a frequented theme in arguments online regarding condescension. It’s an attitude I’m certainly sensitive to. It’s often the first line of defense if someone fashions themselves as old and wise or part of the “real society” that sees their contribution and raises you their finger. Ultimately though, when one opts to dive behind the walls of condescension they predicate it on a presumed knowledge. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is the tool they use to smash your pathetic attempt to use your voice in a way they don’t agree with or understand. We must be careful here not to assume it is de facto correct knowledge. We must make pains to distinguish “personal truths” when trying to ascertain knowledge. Knowledge in this instance acts like a smokescreen for power. It’s a swing for the fences that, in its mind, knocks you out the park the moment it’s employed.

We can make the analogy a little easier though; it tries to be the gun in the knife fight. The thing about guns is that they don’t usually come preloaded. If we react to the gun’s very presence and shut up or run away, you win. If we call your bluff with our own gun, we lay the foundation of a situation that plays out in a complicated way. That is, if you actually have knowledge and things pop off, it’s maybe a spray of bullets they aren’t going to come up from. It’s maybe a standoff where you trade smack talk and both leave alive and unsatisfied. Or maybe you both get shots in and limp away to address your wounds because, damn, that shit was loaded.

Of course you never have to shoot someone. You don’t have to raise the stakes by leading with often deliberate misunderstanding and overreaction, but how often does it go differently? How often are you allowed to make your point, have it acknowledged, and be offered a counter or subverting idea and given the time to consider it? I know I’m often accused of being the first one to pull my gun. I don’t just start shooting though. I ask why you don’t recognize it’s a water gun. We’re talking patience and etiquette dynamics. Why does it seem so easy to analogize interpersonal relationships and conversation with weaponry in the first place?

And then those questions become the most disarming thing. Because with one turn of phrase you realize the other person is speaking your language. The problems even finding that first page together, I guesstimate erases 90%+ of the positive potential for conversation. It’s much easier to unfriend. It’s much easier to block and down vote. There’s an emotional reward for curtailing your view of the world into a box of likes and frequent searches. You’re willing to indulge and positively remember your own virtue than believe in someone else’s.

They say the little things add up, but no one is doing the math. Maybe you’re marching for civil rights so you dress nice so they can’t call you thugs. You stay peaceful so your aggressors get painted as such. And then what? You get a bill that’s politically expedient. You didn’t change their minds about you. You’re still in danger. You get to watch parts of that bill get rescinded. You get to watch white people invent all sorts of new ways to keep you out of the process. They got to keep doing big things. They determined the long term consequences. The story gets rosier or blood red depending on what type of scale you’d like to measure.

Let’s state it another way. You may no longer be slaves, but humanity has not disavowed slavery. You may not use the word slave to describe your station in life, but if you didn’t maintain it, for most “working class” Americans, there’d be nothing but pain or death. Your simple pleasures and escapes, your faith, your fandom, your indulgences, your retreats, your inscrutable love, none speak towards changing your status. Enough little things certainly do add up, but it’s only to placate your little mind in your little world. It’s the ethics of the slave. You can’t escape so you turn servitude into virtue. You make sacrifice your God. It makes sense; it is survival, if nothing else.

You don’t know the language or the form of Big Things. You don’t know Big Brother peaking over your shoulder. You don’t know Big Business and what it’s interested in. You hand over complicated questions about your direction or morals to Big Religion (although increasingly less so) because you’re learning how to incorporate its big ignorance and assurances onto your little list of self-satisfaction. Big History cares not about Martin Luther King Jr.’s arc. Big Academia will retain the paper from which you should assert your knowledge and worth. Big Paper Money will tell YOU what it’s worth, not the other way around.

You buy in. You make celebrities not just lucky and talented bars to clear, but larger than life Gods to emulate. You transfer the power of your intention and intrigue into what they eat and wear. You follow follow follow follow, like like like like like until what’s left of you is a brief reflection from a screen before your device powers on. You can’t slow down because it’s always updating. You can’t stop to think or you’ll be out of the loop. You can’t learn to engage with it another way because you can’t recognize invitations to and someone in Silicon Valley is designing an app to make sure if you don’t like to read and even Spark Notes is too much for you, the gist of Pride and Prejudice will one day enhance your life in the time it takes to drink your morning cup of fair trade coffee.

You think it will go on and on indefinitely like your online world goes on and on indefinitely. That’s the saga of “infinite growth” when we discuss unfettered capitalist economies. It’s the short-term memory that celebrates greed and mocks the memory and pain of pursing forgiveness. It’s the insecure lashing out at the idea of being challenged or wrong because your bubble is equal to my bubble, let’s put the pins away. It’s superficiality now so normalized the institutional memory of moral truths and deep relationships lay amidst the barren bones of dating profiles. Lost little selves playing in the sprinkler of our abductor’s lawn.

As long as you’re willing to acknowledge your place and go down dancing, I have less of a problem with you. When you start to pretend your little mind with its little ideas and little selfish pursuits speak towards genuine change and care, I’m happy to argue until my head pops. When you think you’re doing a Big Boy job that rests the weight of his fellow man on his shoulders and it’s them, those disgusting others who don’t get it to the point you’re unable to see your shared language and circumstances, I’ll drive a car right through that dispositional living room.

The first step to potential progress is self-imposed guilt. It’s sadness about all you do not yet know. It’s feeling every second of time you’re not speaking to something larger than yourself. It’s blaming yourself for your fascist nature, your lazy complicit lives, and your fearful emboldened ignorance. Then you get to start seeing how it’s affecting others. Then you get the silver bullets in your gun. The alternative is to remain as small and selfish as your martyred idols. They died for a truth you felt and you think you heard, but never found out how to discover yourself. They rose to the level of a Big Deal as far as your little mind could conceive of it.

Power is fluid. If you’re not paying attention you won’t notice until you’re drowning. Your idols are not powerful. Your love is not powerful. Your God is not powerful. Your words without defense and understanding are not powerful. Your protests are not powerful. Your personal truth is not powerful. Power cares not about your opinion. Power cares nothing for your intentions. Power has no morality. Power is something to be recognized. Power is something to be shaped. The exercise of the mind attempting to do so has to come before. The honesty and humility it takes to house and transfer power need to be found in their own right. The ways we’re choosing to go about this election reminds me time and again that you have none.

[548] Heil Hitler 2!

Does anyone else just feel stuck? I mean, there's a reason so many of us graduated and went on to do random ass things after years of searching and moving. There's a reason your job doesn't pay you a living wage and you're still shacked up with roommates or parents. There's a reason you're either holding an ephemeral job or 4. There's a reason I ever persuaded myself to do drug studies.

There is no magic pill that brings back manufacturing as long as China remains a country. There is no trust you can hold about the numbers they use to judge the economy when they leave out the details and the world of betting and fake money is 3 times larger than anything tangible. There's no reason to suggest things aren't going to be as bad if not significantly worse putting an abject lying racist failure on the throne, because that's what we've turned it into.

I don't take kindly to victim status. I'm not any of the classic minorities that got white dick slapped, and I still feel scared and stuck. Not because I walked outside and everything wasn't burning, but because I saw the true colors of sheer depravity and ignorance that "holds it all together." I don't believe there's opportunity. I don't believe we'll be anything but dressed up indentured servants indefinitely. Nothing in my reading of history or human psychology gives me fuck all for hope. Perpetual coping and excuses, sure.

I've never accepted the complacent and complicit slave mentality. I've never taken horrible atrocities and ignorant feelings for granted. I've never hidden behind my ignorance and asked for you to respect it as a "difference of opinion." This is what's going to be fed to you. Politicians are going to try to make you feel good and tell you to believe and look to the small things you can do. It won't help.

We've failed or are currently failing "popular" uprisings. We've flirted with criminalizing journalism. We have a fascist who admires the methods Putin puts in place to garner 90%+ approval ratings. Don't you dare trick yourself into thinking this is normal. This is literally how dictatorships happen. They persuade persuade persuade berate berate berate and then start to punish. It's slow. It appears holding hands with the faces you recognize and admire. They don't know any better than previous societies.

I don't think I've ever felt this bad about our position in life and all I do with my time is read about how bad things really get. I don't know what my next 2 months looks like. I don't know that I want to risk getting saddled with a terrible job that eats my time and makes me miserable. I don't know if I want land in the heart of redneck country. I'm not prepared to cope with the first day pundits are sitting around looking scared after Hitler 2 proposes some restriction on the media or throws out a name of some country to exploit. What are you gonna do?

Of all the plodding and excuses and rationalizations you're going to hear over the next several...forever, make sure you're particularly keen on the false equivalence. False equivalence is your God now. It will tell you we all have opinions. It will tell you to respect. It will tell you to obey laws. It will make you believe that's an inch you can gain in the mind of your oppressor. False equivalency is the moral slave holder. He doesn't beat you, feeds you real nice, and keeps the rape to a minimum, so don't you see? There's hope the white people will come around! Don't lead with the idea that you're a slave first though, that's just going to confuse things.

We no longer have the capacity to judge truth. Well, I do. The most terrified and unable to sleep or shut up people in your life probably do. But if you trust your reasoning, you're not paying close enough attention. The moment I say something that hasn't actually happened, Hitler 2 hasn't actually said, or reference some point in history that isn't well documented and has parallels both today and in other societies, call me batshit. Tell me to be reasonable. Tell me you can't take my exhaustive insistence that we're all insanely fucked. But you're gonna have to wait until I'm out of FUCKING EVIDENCE.

I remember way back when getting pissed the fuck off while getting pissed the fuck drunk with Brett while we were sitting around his backyard discussing who was running. He said he was thinking Hitler 2 because of some of the things his stepdad I believe was showing him. The first thing I said was "Brett, you're not a fucking moron, right?" Because Brett's not a fucking moron. Brett's one of the nicest and hardest working people I know. But Brett is human. Brett wants to believe in and trust his family members' opinions. Brett's subjected to the time restraints of his chosen field and might not be able to spend months and months on research and documentaries about specific problems.

You are not immune. You aren't better than whatever your brain can trick you into. If you're naturally happy, this is a shitty time to be alive because you're going to compel a lot of your friends to not be afraid. If you're comfortable as long as you have your videogames and pizza, every dumbass thing you say is going to confuse or obscure what's happening and whether there's a way out.

You still have that hope though, right? You still feel it like I did in thinking to buy this land. You thought that even if your job sucked or you've grown resolved to your depressed consumer existence, that 30 would be the new 20 and we'd figure out a Renaissance. You still think because your nice friends have yet to be targeted in an attack and your beautiful scenery isn't off limits for environmental reasons that things will pan out. I know you do. I know you want it to carry you.

Every time you lean on it, listen close to what its making you ignore. Pay attention to what it's stopping you from reading or saying. Hear the voice that keeps you up at night because it's there and it's real and you're only as wrong and bad as you allow yourself to be.

[547] All Or Nothing

I think I’ve stumbled into a new way to describe my kind of person.

When I was a child, I knew specifically what I did or didn’t like. I ate the same foods over and over. I watched specific kinds of movies and shows. My toys had to be arranged in a certain way. The videogames I played had to pan out a specific way or risk being reset. It’s a kind of confidence and certainty. It may have sprung up from an offshoot of obsessive-compulsiveness.

I’ve also been very slow to change. The personality traits that had me locked into thinking there was a “just and proper” way to go about my affairs didn’t start unraveling for a very long time. While you were underage drinking, I took pride in being the adult and moderating the music noise level. While the whole group wants to get Chinese food, I’d break off and pick up a burger and meet you a few minutes late.

I applied it to my interactions with people, and certainly to a large extent still do. Either you’re someone I get along with (or perhaps was trying to hook up with) or you’re a stupid pawn to be played with, annoyed, or set to some other dehumanizing endeavor. When I decided to have “friends” the slurry of blogs trying to account for the totality of what the word would mean sprung forth.

If you didn’t know, one thing I used to do as a kid was write down animal names. I got it in my head that I liked animals so I wanted to know what all of them were. I’d go through all my school books, magazines, calendars (What? Oh right, pre-internet), and eventually encyclopedias because more people than you think had a collection of them. I can’t count how many notebooks I filled with every inch of each page inked. If I wasn’t positive I had already written a name down I figured better safe to have it twice than not at all.

Then one day, in the middle of an encyclopedia, I abruptly stopped. It hit me that I was never going to collect them all. I’d never bothered to ask the stupid question “why” was I collecting these names. I wanted them. It wouldn’t have even been proper to call it “an interest in animals.” I was hooked on owning and experiencing all the names. It’s the same compulsion that made me turn in a report on Texas with a list of every city in Texas, despite my teacher telling me not to, because I couldn’t wrap my head around how you understand or want to hear about a state if you don’t even include the cities!

It was all or nothing. My teacher was either going to take everything I had to offer or I wasn’t going to accept her irrational lower grade for not following her instructions. I had to pursue every animal or why should I think you’re going to believe me when I have something to say about them? (One smart-ass friend of my parents doubted I had every bird in some book they showed me so I spent the rest of the night there copying them just to spite her.)

Do I have any idea where it came from? Not really. Does it likely mirror someone else’s odd psychological condition as a child? Almost certainly. What sticks out to me though is how much of it I still feel today and how it characterizes what I choose to do or work on. I’ve spent 2 thousand dollars so far on a tool to account for ALL of the articles and books I might read to make compelling arguments and stories. I read every Guardians of the Galaxy comic before I saw the movie. (Which I don’t suggest you do.) I completed every IMDB top 250 movie and have set my sights on 1001 movies to see before you die. Even with shitty TV shows I find myself compelled to see every episode if I started it so I can get the full, rounded, and proper perspective on it.

It characterizes my relationships. We’re either equitable intelligent and confident friends or you’re livestock. We’re either honest with each other, or I’d rather be alone. It has me thinking considerably harder about what levels it is or isn’t healthy to have, what some might refer to as, “standards” for interaction. I hate small talk, so I don’t do many if any small gatherings with new people if we’re not getting drunk. Hell, with alcohol! If you’re at a party not getting drunk, what the hell are you doing at the party!? Ride or die or stay the hell home. Mom can have a night out at the Lucky’s food court if she doesn’t want to run around naked and puke in the hedges.

If you tell me you’re into human rights and journalism 2 days after Nelson Mandela dies and you can’t opine on apartheid or how you want to approach your stories (true story) I don’t believe anything about you. If you tell me you’re into videogames and are “pretty good” at Halo and you’ve spent 15 hours a day on it for the last 10 years, why aren’t you trying to be the best in the world!?  You cook? BE THE BEST COOK, KNOW ALL THE RECIPES. You’re a fan of some actor or director and have only seen 2 of their movies? You love to read and everything you list comes off a high school required reading list? (I read every book on my 7^th grade reading list at least.) Where’s the push to do more, do it all, or be the best? Where’s your soul clambering to get through and connect with something that sparked your interest?

You don’t see many people whole-assing it. Or they do it in spurts for something like a Halloween costume or DIY project they know will make it to the top of reddit for a day. Or maybe they’re king of the office or queen of the novelty and niche forum. My step-mom crafts, for example. But that’s cheapening it. She sees something someone else has done and makes money off of and she wants to figure out how. You make flowers out of melted down records? Who cares if she can make perfect crocheted dolls that fetch a nice price, awesome jewelry, tapestries, scrapbooking things and so on, she wants that skill too, and then the next thing. An aside, my excitement at an opportunity to invest in and help cultivate that proclivity was recently thrown in my face (not by her).

There’s a plain of existence you can inhabit that just expects more. The dialogue should take weeks or strive to be so explicit people get confused by the accuracy. The reading might take months. The perspective should be yours and contain more than, “It was good, I thought the characters were cool and funny,” “It was just a suggestion; I don’t  konw where it came from, but I guess there it is.” What you’re doing in life can be so broadly comprehensive you can make a case for the moral realignment of society. Your effort and dedication can be a source of inspiration to create and reflect and stand for something real. Or, you can tread water. You can make the excuse, and call where you are “comfortable.” When you allow yourself the responsibility to oversee exponentially increasing implications, I can take a day off from thinking everything’s my fault!

For me, it genuinely helps in getting through problems and deciding who or what I want in my life. Relationship a lie? No use pining the illusion. 1 in 5 of your friends always or merely talking about living sustainably? Better pay what it costs to actually secure the land. Concerned about communication and whether people can even recognize what’s worth respecting and talking about? Opine, share, and reply precisely when provoked and pursue diatribes like these as a form of dress-rehearsal. I’m either giving you all of what I feel or think or I haven’t given you a damn thing. I’ve just shuffled information along like a brain dead zombie because it was incidentally infectious.

Don’t be zombies, people. When I get my house in order and send out the invites 6 months in advance to party and offer to pay for your gas or plane ticket to rob you of any and all excuses, I’m gonna know when you’re too old or bland or dead for me. I won’t be rude and keep inviting you, essentially shoving my energy and expectations down your throat. But I will have a little memorial for what you once were and what was so great about it. I don’t want to learn how to interact with college kids again to find anyone with hope or time. I don’t want people dragging their feet through my life like they do theirs.

So, my kind of person is one that recognizes when and why they’re uncompromising so they can spend the rest of the time pursuing an avenue genuinely and exhaustively. They’ve searched and thought long and hard for examples of what celebrates and extends who they are. They respect all that they can mean to someone else and all the different sources of inspiration and creativity that helped comprise them. Otherwise, you’re the arbitrary compulsion or an insatiable hole. Nothing that will speak to anything I care to hear.

[546] Equal This

I know I'll have to be careful because I'm angry and want to vent. I'm mostly confused and I think "offended." To maintain a basic level of respect or decency, to me, a certain standard of will and expectation has to be achieved. I don't mean that every person must rise to the same level as every other. I do mean, when the allocation of resources presumes fairness or the same access and opportunity are given, pains should be made to distinguish how each actor responded to what was given.

The equitable footing in this instance is my dad's good will and money. I responded by doing well in school, working several jobs on top of one another, getting my degree under protest, attempting to start a business, and now currently pushing to live efficiently, sustainably, and off-grid. On more than one occasion I've offered to pay back any money offered to me in service to my goals. I still feel burdened to pay friends for things they've helped me with or lent me. I've spent money in service to helping my step-mom and her business endeavors. I don't try to squander good will, leave favors unrepaid, nor unduly burden people with ridiculous asks I can't account for or that would leave them worse off.

To do absolutely anything in life takes an immeasurable confluence of forces, and most of them you can't control. You don't pick your parents or their income level. You don't pick how smart you are or if you can access tools for increasing your knowledge. You don't pick the job market you're thrust into once you get out of school. Despite the forces that may hold you back and the frankly ridiculous nature of your screwed up circumstances, you do control how and whether you approach them to try and do something better.

This means, while one minimum wage job is exploitative and unfair, you can acknowledge this and take up another one, or two, as many parents are forced to do when they put their child's needs above their own. This means that if you're living under someone else's good will and graces, you can mow their lawn, do their dishes, shampoo their carpet, and take the dogs outside. If it never occurs to you to do these things until the years of stress of watching you waste away playing Halo finally catches up, your keepers may be disingenuous, I consider you an asshole.

I managed to find that guilty spark. I never asked for anything that wasn't in service to what I genuinely believed would be opportunities to spread the wealth and opportunity. I didn't just want a business, I wanted enough money and time to help my friends not be middle-management wage slaves as well. I wanted to invest in tools that help condense and disseminate knowledge. I still want these things! And I want them before I'm too old to appreciate them, so I pick means of acquiring money that allows me to work on them the quickest.

I didn't go back home and expect dinner every night. I didn't think daddy and step-mommy should do my laundry and have a room prepared with video games at the ready. I didn't throw tantrums about what is or isn't fair in a setting where I didn't pay rent or for my phone or decide to go back to school. That's what the step family did. When I needed cash to complete the coffee kiosk, when I had the money to pay it back, I offered to. I didn't ask for a loan to help me pay my utility bills and then buy a fish tank, that's what the step family did. I wouldn't lie about some life emergency so I could dump my kids off at grandma's house because that's what the step family does.

When I had a marginal amount of extra cash I put it towards securing my stepmom a website for her crafting business. Good will I had thrown in my face when it was put to me that I was someone raised better than to shit on the kind of people my step family have shown themselves to be. Should you take a handful of terrible behaviors and use it to paint over anyone's being? Of course not. Would I pick these things were they not reminiscent of a series or speaking to a perpetual tradition of disrespectful and undeserving behavior? Not if I'm going to remain feeling justified in typing this out.

I hate the faux-equality game. It erases the identity of behaviors that are hard enough to discern, particularly in our modern political climate, let alone in a collective story of civility. It's poor "separate but equal" reasoning that leaves the person advocating for the general layabout piece of shit in terms reserved for the people who genuinely need a specific kind of help or deserve due consideration for their strained circumstances. I've worked hard, demeaning and exploitative jobs for years and never expected anything from anyone but respect for that and what I use my money in service to. The idea that I owe any kind of debt to someone offering less of themselves is sickening.

Here, you should make pains to separate genuine hard work and self-sacrifice from entitled bitching. I don't presume to deserve anything but acknowledgment. I saw through the lie of hard-work = success a long time ago. I hold no water for old white supremacists with no grasp on their lucky historical circumstances that inflate their ego and send them into a rage. I mean there are people out there really trying. I mean there are people out there who make genuine sacrifices and have worked really hard for their perspective and what they'd like in life. I mean there are people who don't even respect this fact about themselves, endlessly and tragically sacrificial, to the point where they welcome the bites from the beasts who feed off them.

I don't kill myself everyday pretending I'm God's gift to the betterment of humanity. I don't act like I've achieved any more or less than I have. But I will not forget those achievements or what it took to accomplish them. When I see that in the people you reward as though they've acted like me, then they might get respect. And perhaps I'll take a few more beats in considering what to make of garnering yours if I'm nothing more than the shit under shoes you invite to be traipsed through your living room.

[545] 3 Strikes You're Out

With the election drawing near, I’ve been thinking a lot about my immune system. Its contradicting name notwithstanding, the perpetual battles it engages to keep me alive is a marvel to behold. Whether processing the air filled with cancerous particles, navigating what accompanies my food, or keeping my spots clotted from picking and popping, it never gets a day off.

It also needs help. I had my shots as a kid so I wouldn’t develop old world diseases. When I shock the shit out of it by drinking too much or otherwise injuring myself, I’m desperate for a pill. My self-imposed guilt of eating poorly has me trying to boost my insides by massive increases in salad and exercising and dialing it back on the crap. 

This wondrous tool which has overcome countless illnesses and trained our human selves in the art of survival will still get overwhelmed. It’ll take on too much crap it can’t get rid of. It’ll miss connections or suffer catastrophic damage or some other competing cell system will find a way to corrupt it. As of yet, we’ve no way to escape this despite the futurists professing otherwise.

Scale it up, and I think of herd immunity. This is my concern for map making. I don’t know if the United States is a breed of animal that knows how to catch fascism and then find the proper medication. I then have to make the global herd appeal. Hitler didn’t take down the world. I wouldn’t expect Hitler 2 to be able to either. But would that kind of presidency act as a booster shot or form of cancer? Both can get you sick, but one in service to training you how to do better. The other taking over and corrupting until nothing we’ve devised can help.

My attitude towards my immune system is a lot like my political perspective. I do things to undermine it. I trust that the general system is still in fair working order. Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m still in my 20s because a minor ache or lesser ability to deal with hangovers can make you think you’re nearing the end by comparison. When I’m sick, I’m not the sickest. But I still have to take care of myself. I have to be mindful of what I allow into my body and into my head which translates into what comes out of my mouth and into my behaviors. You can drink too much, plenty of times. You can’t catch just a little bit of cancer.

I don’t know that we respect the difference. When you truly negotiate it has to do with taking manageable blows. When you’re fueled by ignorance and anger, you delight in destruction. You no longer get to borrow from the well of civilized words to discuss your grievances. People should treat you like dangerous children first, “politically opposed” far away in second, often if at all. Unfortunately and of course, they don’t. It’s because they’re “tolerant” and “polite” and “mature” etcetera. The effect on their health is too slow. Give them a pounding headache and they’ll rush for the pills. Couch an opposing grievance in rhetoric, showmanship, group identity politics, and genuine sympathy for relationships in their own life, they let the headache pound until they can’t see or think straight.

This is pretty old political and psychological news, by the way. A confused and angry population is easy to control. The myriad ways in which the mind is befuddled and tricked is literally built into our tools for survival and representations of the world. Our senses certainly don’t tell the whole story, nor are you capable of being aware of the millions of things that have to continue going right for you to keep acting in the world.

I suppose what bugs me so much is our lack of discernment. Destruction and death and sickness will happen. But why do we choose them so often? And I do mean to distinguish “often” from “at all.” Any glimpse into my inane fights online puts me in the same realms of “idiotic” things to do.

If you want to learn about the world, why pick the name-calling blowhard racist? Why do you trust his opinion more than the people out trying to do the work? Why pick your feelings instead of what actually helps? Anymore, I genuinely don’t understand it. I know we’re moving fast through history. I know we’ve resources our evolutionary history is ill-equipped to deal with. But the hallmark of our place in existence is our ability to adapt. It’s to learn and morph and change our DNA to tackle problems. How long should it really take the herd to learn from 2 different wars that we consider involving the entire world? Even if they didn’t we still figured that’s what was at stake. Just existing at all.

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The Cubs won the World Series yesterday. They did it after doing everything in their power to try and lose it. After the game, people said what an amazing series it was, how it’s one for history, and how people will be talking about it forever. They didn’t talk about whether it was nerves that made the Cubs forget how to infield. They didn’t talk about being down 3-1 and having smaller odds of winning than Hitler 2 becoming President. They emotioned all over the place. They celebrated in the streets. After 108 years, the out-pour, the release and celebration is all that was being offered. Sure, I’m a Cubs fan, and good for them.

I still find sports one of the loudest examples of our terrible discernment. We put so much effort into, even now inventing arbitrary stats and comparisons so long as we can follow them with “and that’s a new world record.” It’s an open secret that the “best” teams are often the ones who fronted the most money to buy up all the best players. It forces us to combine completely unrelated things into a shortcut identity that absolves us of any greater responsibility than to buy a ticket or jersey. I think when it comes to things to think about or spend time on, we genuinely would pick sports over functioning democracy. I find this unacceptable.

And perhaps as an aside, in some utopian vision of the future, I’d love for the worst thing we ever do to each other to be shitting all over a different areas’ team. If we had a hundred thousand more games a year and no war, consider me working to become the best sports fan ever. I’ve watched 3 Cubs games this year and still want to clap at strikeouts and yell at the TV per my culturally ingrained conditioning. It feels good. I get it.

We can’t keep picking sports. We can’t flirt so hard with getting cancer. We can’t keep “respecting” feelings. We can’t play pretend and with false equivalences that think like a child where evil is evil and that’s that so Hilary sucks and Hitler 2 is icky, but I like the slogan! Instead, understand what’s happening for what it is. Don’t be shy. Don’t be polite. You don’t have to be a rabid dog like the examples they are setting, but you are allowed to bite when someone literally threatens your survival. We toy around with the idea of who has the nuclear codes or whether it’s wise to refer to climate change in terms of “beliefs.” It means world war. This shit will kill you. It will kill your kids. It’s already killing others and their kids.

And let me clear, I’m only talking to the regular actual nice liberal intelligent people. This blog isn’t for the person who breaks their TV when their team loses. These words aren’t for people who talk to newscasters in clichés and through their incendiary signs and clothing. It’s for the adults in the room who, even if they’ve been waiting 108 years for their team to win, they still wouldn’t poison the other teams to get there.

I’m not trying to scare you or working to be convincing about the world. I’m relaying and reporting the unyieldingly obvious set of circumstances like a headache you’d take a pill for. And it really does give me a headache! It’s not pain I looked for. It’s not a choice I made like going out to drink. It’s the first stage of someone trying to kill me. Hitler 2 tried to take my thoughts by endlessly reciting his name, so I made sure he’d always be Hitler 2 to me. Greedy children poison water and mono-crop food, so I plan to learn how to garden and filter. We’ve been handed a very complicated and fast-moving economic and social system bolstered by infantile historical perspectives. So I try to share the absolute best materials I’ve read or watched to help cut through the noise and adopt goals that reshape our social and monetary responsibilities to each other.

You need a better grasp on who you really are as a part of the system. I’m a Cubs fan who feels compelled to find out how many of the players are even from Chicago and how much winning really costs. In an ideal world I could find deep connection and respect for my noises and gestures heaved at my symbolic brethren. Maybe the future will allow me to drink every day and remain in peak health! In the meantime, these mean times, I have to moderate. I have to be humble about my limitations. I have to take on even more responsibility for the example I’m setting, because unlike any other point in our history, I can go viral like cancer.

Are we only going to allow ourselves to see the celebration and feel the relief as we bask in the beauty of our collective achievement and identity!?  Or can we point out some peoples’ idea of winning is to scream while they destroy things and set cars on fire. Don’t let them get away with it just because you’re wearing the same human jersey. Your responsibility to the tribe needs to be more than you’ve given them to dictate your emotions and behavior. The stakes are the same every day and every year no matter what story someone tells you about some cursed goat they believe in.

[544] Earth Wars & Tie-Fighting

Other than being dramatically angry or drunk, a prevailing motivation to write is the attempt to tie together absolutely random ideas that pulse away and refuse to dissipate. I consider it my subconscious trying to breakthrough, but it's only learned to use the language of complete words very recently. Much as a mother might be able to know her child wants to eat from a “bah” or “umm” that signifies its favorite food, the relationship I've developed with the back of my head is always attempting to understand and care for the baby poised to scream or cry at any time.

Let's lay out the random thoughts. I'm struck by how many people want to dress as stormtroopers. I'm bothered by the idea that someone would think I believe I'm a “secret misunderstood genius.” A further sentiment from that douchebag was that “everyone in my life views me as toxic.” I saw a tattoo that said “forever” that was 1/3 on its way to fading out. My precisely sharpened and longer nails make me think my right hand is a girl. I caught an article headline that said “80% of millenials think of themselves as leaders.” I'm at the front door of being genuinely concerned that I don't believe in anything.

Challenge accepted. The tattoo seems the easiest. Of course it was written on a white trash hand attached to a white trash dude standing in a McDonalds line. If there's any group more in need of the idea of consistent belief in something, it's the bad-tattooed financially insecure ya'll crowd. The fair amount of low income apartment complexes I've lived in or next to somehow have the theme of yelling at each other all night with kids who don't have school in the morning. The crowd with several hundred pictures of their babies or dozens of status updates about how their boyfriend is the most special in the world. General lack of class and tact. Not even managing the high-brow nature of this paragraph.

What to make of “forever?” It's a cause for insanity, provided it's coupled with consciousness. I'm managing to drive myself crazy just reading into peoples' motivations or lack thereof; trying to conceptualize my place among the herd. Is it because I wasn't raised to be a stormtrooper? Mind you, these people don't even dress up as the special red or black ones. They just want to be the light-saber fodder with a few lines. I go into movies reflexively comparing myself to the main characters. In the human storyline, will there be more references and deference paid to the stormtrooper than Luke Skywalker? If conventions and Halloween have anything to say about it.

I recall going on a quest to find a Rey action figure because I thought she was pretty badass. I think it's only a positive thing to move depictions of heroes into the realms of the underrepresented. But again, what if every stormtrooper was a woman? People would be upset that the girl wasn't the hero nonetheless. We have an inclination to root for and popularize heroes, who even all together across all Star Wars tales and games would never be able to build or maintain the collective power behind the Death Star. I suppose it's fitting for me to see myself in Rey given my slow transition into a girl that's started with my right hand.

You might be unaware, I've grown out my nails to play classical guitar. Even being on my own hand I can't help but think of femininity when I look down or see how I have to adjust in using my phone. When I hear the tap on the screen or how long it took me to get used to typing. I then started to think about other ways in which I might be turning into a girl. I started insidiously, considering games of emotional manipulation. I can recognize when someone likes me, but could I turn it into gifts and attention? Even if I tend to believe in myself, it's not really my game to do that. The gifts part at least, because I think I'm extremely girl-ish, as it's depicted classically, in trying to gain attention.

The problem is that I go about that attention in conflicting ways. I talk loud. I write introverted thoughts in explicitly extroverted ways. My hair is a little too on the nose. I'll stay exceedingly quiet during studies and garner the kind of attention that has people feeling insecure about me thinking I'm better than them. One wonders if they'd feel worse knowing I don't really think of them at all, let alone feel the urge to make a comparison. I'm catty like a fierce bitch. I seem to only ever really get along with older women as well. They're the ones who like my comments on political articles. They're the ones I can sit around the table at a wedding with. They're the ones flagrant about their opinions and flirtations as I am a few too many shots in. I just get to act out with this big dumb boy body and they get the freedom of being society's “invisibles” because they're no longer considered a sex object. I'm not saying our stations in life are fair, just worth considering in making comparisons.

Do people regard the old wise-ass lady laughing too hard as “toxic?” Hardly. She's a gas! She's a loveable Golden Girl who we want to see get away with a certain kind of verbal murder so we can aspire to that level of honesty and laughter when we're on the verge of dying. Maybe I've skipped the line? Is the wisdom from grandma “misunderstood” or a particular kind of sage “genius?” It seems to me it's usually bred from simple experience. Trying a hundred things, watch 99 fail, figure out you're still alive and remember what kept you that way. You get too tired of being stressed out so you make the jokes. You see what keeping up the facade did to your happiness and relationships, so you stop pulling punches. You feel yourself pulling up to the hard eternal stop sign, better lay on the gas.

I try to be unscientifically scientific about it though. If I had 1 text to go out and do something for every 100 I sent out, I'd be surprised. We can include facebook messages and things like “checking in” and whatnot. As a person who doesn't believe his own bullshit made up stories about what people do or don't think of him if he hasn't asked, I consider it more a story of our era's psychosis regarding what we're burdened by than some personal statement about me. As always, I wish it were about me because I'm an egomaniac, I know I barely register, so I seek an explanation for the external forces. And just to cover my ass, if it is about me, well, you only have yourselves to blame for not saying anything.

I adopt that burden of conceiving and re-conceiving of “friendship.” If I consider us close, it gets to me if I see the last date on our facebook chat was 2 months ago. 2 months is a considerable amount of time. Yet, it definitely doesn't feel that way if you're not really doing anything new nor expecting your experience to deviate from your current norm. Mind you, even with 59 friends, I still only manage to talk to a handful on any sort of quasi-regular basis, and those mostly include roommates, my dad, or people who comment on things. I didn't even opt to invite myself to hang out with a few this evening let alone drive out to a party a few hours away.

Those decisions weren't an accident though. Because merely claiming “friend” status via facebook or feeling “burdened” by lack of conversation or contact isn't really a root distinction. These are friends who instead of watching movies and crawling around their bowels, play a lot of video games. If I don't care about those games or know anything about their shared job life, we're not friends on the kind of page where we'd both get something out of me being there. The party is with people I work with and semi-regularly accost drunkenly via email when I think about all the work that has to be done to get my map in order. I don't know that I'd settle in nicely and “blow off steam” or carry on in polite conversation with strangers. The heart's gotta be in it.

Mine's just not. It's not that I don't believe in what I'm doing or don't see paths forward or anything resembling sad pathetic people who go broke between studies for ridiculous reasons. I just don't feel. The things I want or think I can achieve are still too far away. I can have little manic spurts. When I first got wind of the land I had a few solid hours of heart racing and excited talking, but even that could have closely resembled anxiety worried something would go wrong and I wouldn't be able to get it. This map, having something tangible to play with, and seeing the thoughts that arise as I put in different kinds of articles, has me seeing a price tag more than revolution. I see my vanity in wanting to be extremely capable of forming arguments and knowing details in a way generally reserved for geniuses and the autistic.

Because, who am I kidding? If you don't have the time to read, what good is me organizing for you all that you never could access anyway? If you're like my friend I argued with the other day and think “entitlements” is an adequate catch-all phrase for a lazy argument regarding how we reduce the federal government, when have you ever given a shit about the historical shifts in party platforms that fed your parents ignorant dialogue they've passed down to you that serves no function but to obscure and impede progress? People talk about the partisan divide. It's a language divide. It's a priorities divide. It's the obnoxious and lazy against the obnoxious and motivated. Because they can cultivate self-satisfied ever-confirming windows into the world via the internet, your tool can't get through. It's the impartial flow of power's realm now, egged on at all levels of violence.

Do I think I'm a genius? Not even remotely. Misunderstood? Basically every minute of my life. Because when I get the chance to explain myself, people seem to be on board. When I give them the tools to act like me, or give them the positive and reassuring attitude, they eagerly adopt it. Were I not so keen to make debasing comments on my situation and the nature of my relationships, I could see a lot of people discovering the wisdom in devoting a large amount of time to the consumption and contemplation of media and the arts. But as it stands, it's me, and now Byron essentially, who are implicated in running the contrary game. It's great to have a partner finally, but 2 people does not a village make, yet.

Who do the stormtroopers follow, though? The one who can use the force. I'd bet the most reenacted scene that every stormtrooper engages in is being choked out by Darth Vader. He's there even when he's not. You stand at attention when he shows up, and it's his voice in your head about where to point your weapons. I've proclaimed my willingness to be the villain before, and in the real world where the lines about the dark and light aren't handed to you, I know I serve a greater purpose than to develop lightning fingers and blow up planets.

I don't even have to believe in my cause. I just have to embody the consequences of my dramatic betrayal filled life. I have to take my talents or understanding of the force and make them my own. Oh to be infamous, or an icon, and leave it at that. To finally be appropriated seems the highest form of flattery. If anyone seems to empathize or deeply understand then, well, good for them I guess. But the story of how I get anywhere or anything in life will have nothing to do with how I sell it, how you interpret it, or whether or not some lame qualifier applies to my position in the echelon. It'll be because that's what I picked, and I waited around for something that seemed appropriate to happen. The rest is a story of “uhhh” and “mmbrm” bubbling in the back of my head keeping me from looking respectable or productive. As if I've anything to live up to or could provide what isn't already available.

[543] Meandering Brain

I'm very “blah” and it's in between other “blahs” so I'm just doing that stroll through the blah of my existence and thoughts to hopefully discover something a little bit more than “blah.” I doubt it will be much worth reading.

I was once told that I was a self-actualized person. This was supposed to distinguish me from the people who harbor every downtrodden excuse to explain away their existence and lack of achievement. One of my go-to cliches is to say, if only eventually, I tend to get everything I've ever really wanted. I don't think this plays too closely to some idea of beging, borrowing, and stealing to do so, but I've been willing to to do 2 of those when desperation or boredom took hold.

Is it such a good thing to get everything you want? It's certainly not that I've never been denied. It seems like a question with at least 2 layers though. Say you want to “survive” so you'll figure out how to manage a paycheck and feed yourself. In that same spirit, say you're willing to work endless hours at any job to save and live cheap so you can afford some toy or vacation. It's the noble sacrificial level. Then there's the psychopathic sense. So cunning and premeditated, you'll negate all consequences in service to your acquisition. You leave people crippled and retain no excessive memory of them.

Try as I might, I still never manage to convince myself of “pure” socio or psychopathy. In fact, I pretty-well hate the words as I find them clunky, all-encompassing, and dismissive of the ever-evolving emotional capacity (or lack thereof) that works out in real-time how to account of personal, psychological, and social reasons for how to respond. What used to be “survival” looks “psychopathic” in a modern civilized society. Shutting off an emotional response to maintain sanity will register as plainly “sociopathic” as anything you couple with some harm it has done you.

In any event, I don't take my lack of “emotional cues” as necessarily insidious or problematic. I think about this when I hear someone's, generally bat shit, interpretation of my being. We all retain the capacity to be unrelenting monsters. It's simple decisions. In the name of decency, we choose what superficial lines we'd like to walk to maintain a particular aura. If yours wants to be a little whiter or shinier than mine, it doesn't grant you special powers nor a brilliant perspective that makes you correct in attempting to assess me. I can barely assess me, but I'm probably not a simple-minded asshole who just loves to cuss real loud.

“Self-actualizing,” if I am indeed such a person, seems to be always in process. I wanted land, so I acquired it. Every study I did was in service to the longer goal and game. I don't want to do studies. I don't want a normal job. I don't even necessarily want to spend most of my time in cousin-fuck Indiana regardless of the comforts and freedoms it will afford me. I always preface it with “unfortunately,” but my goal still resolves to a communal identity. One way or another I'll need to figure out how to keep myself surround by friends. It remains a very selfish goal for those who think I'm being sentimental.

It seems a very loud idea to me that people like to be told what to do. They like it especially when what they're told to do doesn't interfere with what they think they want to be doing. You won't get the stone-cold sober person to drink who's still reeling from the emotional trauma of their alcoholic parent. You will get the shy person absolutely obliterated and making out with the cute person they saw across the room. I apply this metric to more important things. It's very Field of Dreams; if I build it, they will come. If I create an oasis in cousin-fuck Indiana even I want to live in, your excuses will diminish. If I reduce my bills to a few hundred dollars a year while I dick around experimenting with business ideas, the door will remain open for you to work along side me.

I feel I have to consider these things in a more concrete fashion now that I've found this land. I'm a restless person. I have to even accomplish stupid things like watching movies and TV shows because cheering for hours over the Cubs I find mind-numbingly boring. But soon, I'll be digging and building. I've already watched a movie on laying concrete foundations and have started compiling numbers for farmers who have equipment I've never heard of that helps them maintain that much space. By July I hope to be out of here, alternate work days with study stays until I can discover something to profit from that doesn't rely on confinement.

What if this time next year I not only have a solidly lived in place, a budding green real estate venture, a workshop, a brewery, and enviable vertical hydroponic garden/greenhouse? What if I start sowing the seeds for several potential income streams? I imagine my days will still look a lot like they do now, I'll just be dicking around with those things with a movie in the background. Less we forget about the map. How long do you think it really takes to compile the information I'm after? Even Adam Ruins Everything spoke to how hard it is to learn anything about local politics just by simply going to Google. I'd put money on the idea someone is out there creating a quasi-parallel system as to the one I want. It speaks to something I read about once in undermining the “revolutionary idea” idea. Things arise around the same times in different spots and then forces take over that turns one popular and kills the rest.

Switching gears a bit. I feel myself growing resolved to superficiality. I haven't been moved to really contact or talk to anyone. Each time I start reflecting on parts of my life I considered pretty good or what I'd want, I'm reminded they were built on lies. I figure it's my responsibility to keep carrying the torch for meager and over-burdened truth, even if it's the one that keeps putting distance between me and you. I'm not particularly convinced you much care either way.

Part of me has flirted hard enough with the idea of just sitting pretty. I don't have to sign myself up for the work it'll take to develop the land. I could just forfeit the earnest-money and barely feel a pinch. I could not just massively overpay to see Green Day, but do so in Italy. I could buy a new car or develop a sense of style. There's just that nagging fact that those things aren't the goal. I'd have them already if it was, as that shit is easy. It's just stuff. Tickets and bills. I've spent the last couple years washing myself of any former go-getter creative glory so I could cope with study life and basement dwelling. I need to learn, create, and build. I need to force a ridiculous heart-racing smile to my face as people cock their head and think, “Wait, what are you doing?” I'm way more obnoxious and motivated than anything I've done in recent memory can attest to. I miss me.

Just the idea that so much of it is still predicated on staying healthy and getting into well-timed studies is annoying. That's my paycheck to paycheck. My life still isn't belayed by collective ingenuity and resources, it's capitulating to for-profit medicine motives. I'm still a cog, one way or another. The one upside is, even if I never get into another study, now, worst case scenario in life, I have to learn how to camp, because even a McJob would still afford me my time, which is always in need of protecting.

Guess we'll just have to see how it all goes. I'll know what it feels like when the real goal has been achieved. It's this weird about-to-break-ground feeling that leaves me feeling “hopeful,” but I'm too old not to feel sober about the process. And even when I find the people to start playing along, they're going to find a way to fuck it all up anyway lol. Oh well.

[542] Accountability

Every second writing this will be a waste of time and effort. This exists because we can't escape our pasts. If you choose to read it, it will be because you sought it out, as it's not getting shared with anyone who didn't ask for it. I have so many words it leaves me struggling to breathe normally, thus, a measured pedantic screed will suffice as a kind of metaphor.

I don't believe you're the worst thing you've ever said or done. I'm very much of the mindset of the Norwegian countries where, even their worst offenders, the warden will tell them, "One day, you'll be my neighbor, I want to make sure I can create the conditions where we'll be able to exist together." As such, I've never put too much stock in dramatic situations. People get angry. People fight. People are bored. I've borrowed quotes from philosophers discussing man's propensity to be a general asshole for myriad reasons.

This provokes me to play a little fast and loose with what I often refer to as "pissing matches" online. Every once in a while you'll get some big gaming identity or subculture icon to post their 10 minutes discussing some complicated feud and claim to be the realest and most truthful in their accounting of who's getting fucked by who. Then, presumably, it disappears into the ashes of the internet and identities get to move on. If you're a public figure, you get to crafting, if you're some random handle, your comments and fights buried.

Well, that's what dogg724 is for me. The random handle in which I can say my first name, but keep from bringing other people's identities into things. (Note, there may be unlinked names next to comments from the old days of discussions on Myspace, but nothing that was private back then nor is less than what facebook allegedly requires of you today.) Now, when saying stupid things and getting into fights about who has better spelling, you just get to be idiot dogg724.

Things changed. A friend and I were googling ourselves to gauge our online presence. By chance, I come across a person I got into it with on reddit. They post a (not selectively edited, they swear!) description of their perspective regarding our interaction. Fair enough, I've got the copy/pasted conversation posted on reddit as well, you'll never guess, but they contrast. Well, more specifically, mine's copy and pasted from our reddit inboxes, his is skimming through 12 years of my public journaling to string together why I'm a nutcase.

Again, all well and good, except he decides that to protest actions he believes I took against him, he'd tie my name and location to it. Now I'm not dogg724, for better or worse, I'm a stupid pissing match and a handful of paragraphs where I use explicit or racist language. Wonderful.

I don't know how to escape. He's already prompted me to erase most of what I've posted to reddit because the messages and drama was getting too stupid. Now, he brags about keeping tabs on me, apparently worried I'm going to share his information? It's worth noting, I don't know who he is! A user who liked my shit, I suppose thinking they were coming to my defense, took his publicly shared picture and posted it. The ensuing shit-storm was comments on legality and suing and character defaming.

And it's not even "simply dumb."

It's dumb because two grown adults would spend so much time behaving that way. That part is simple. I have all the time in the world to dig my embarrassing regrettable holes. But then it's dumb for the reasons you hate to hear children fight. Who hit who first? Tommy did it! No it was Ashton! Either they have terrible memories, or self-interested liars behave predictably. For my part, given my propensity to share the potentially horrible and ridiculous things I've said from time to time, at the very least, I don't find uppity weirdos online something I'm moved to suppress.

The brunt of his contention seems to be that I was harassing him. In him trying to police my advice to someone about torrenting, and him not liking my rejection of his plea, he immediately went after my writing, maturity, etc. and at one point told me to delete my hard drives because he played golf with someone he was going to persuade to sue me...? He described a dinner party with his friends where they printed and acted out my blogs because they were so ridiculous! It's a terrible read, though regrettably I didn't save that part, but we go back and forth for some time about who should hang up the phone first. All the while, the word irony guts itself and desperately looks around for someone to understand it one last time.

When I try, I adopt something of a stoic philosophy. I assume he's as bad as my worst caricature of him. I assume one day I'll be in front of a judge reading back some terrible thing I've said and making the case that I'm more embarrassed and ashamed of the waste of time than words will ever express. Then I'll meet my bogyman and I'll finally know who to get the fuck away from if I ever have the displeasure of bumping into them in our small town.

This is such an old issue. It's that I just popped up on this page about me a few minutes ago and I might liken it to a form of exceedingly mild PTSD. A flash of the stupid contradictions and assumptions he used to justify trying to intimidate me. The messages from other redditors warning me about what he's done to them before I wandered in. The idea that he boasts about "checking in" meaning I have to assume this will provoke him to create another fake reddit name and pull from his go-to cache of cliches to try and berate me.

I won't let him take writing away from me. I won't pretend context doesn't exist. I won't stutter from reciting whatever bullshit is presented to a court while we parse who's personal information is where and whether an admitted idiot with too much time on his hands should so eerily resemble a "legal professional" who "just keeps tabs" on those he diagnoses as dangerous. Me, I put our stupidity on police radar. I called the game over, and yet, my name, like some ugly torn flag is firmly planted into his fantasy about who we are to each other, and all I can do is what?

I want to call and let them know that the post exists. If you want to record information, there's no reason to make me easy to find and hide behind the guise it's "just for the record." I've been searching for something to write about for some time now, and I did not expect this to be it.(paused) Again, I've contacted the police and asked for guidance, as I don't know how to stay quasi-anonymous with my name and general location blasted against his selective reading and memory.

People, please, learn from my mistakes. Make sure you have the thick skin to ignore the self-righteous trolls. Some peoples' bladders are never empty, and you'll find yourself facing real-world absurdity.

[541] Emergency Break

When and why do we think we’re in control?

As with many things, my thoughts initially shoot towards religion and the phrase, “Give it up to God.” Being a confused and afraid mammal who has habituated the experience of random violent death for centuries, it’s easy to see the psychological necessity in couching your disposition in something grander than you. Feeling responsible is a stressful burden that has little to do with keeping alive and getting on.

I’ve done some reading on the randomness. By virtue of your birth year or place you can fall reliably into all sorts of categories you might insist were yours to choose. I very much think control is mostly an illusion. The issues being, why is it such a powerful illusion, why do we seem to prefer it, and what would it look like were it true that we actually did control anything?

Sickness seems the first and obvious culprit in seeking out control. You can draw a causal line from feeling sick and a treatment that makes you better. Fear can accompany being sick especially depending on the degree. So exhibiting control can reduce anxiety. Finding control can help you feel empowered. It’s not hard to imagine why someone enjoys feeling powerful.

Zeroing in on that sick person though, are they in control? They couldn’t stop themselves from getting sick. (No secret, they won’t stop themselves from dying either.) They didn’t invent the life-saving drugs or surgery. In the U.S. they might not even be able to pick their doctor or whether they have insurance. They didn’t design their immune system or generally structure the environment in which they live and work that might beget specific illnesses.

As well, despite myriad meditative claims to the contrary, they don’t usually control their predisposition. Some people are prone to freaking out, breaking out, or hyperventilating. Some will get grossly depressed. If they try to distract themselves, the annoyance only feels louder. The more words of encouragement, the harder the pain throbs. You feel the anger grow, the sadness wears on you. Given the opportunity to speak you can give an itemized account of how this universe is designed to fuck you. Over enough time you genuinely opine on the relief you’d feel if you died.

They call it “practicing medicine.” Just as you practice and interpret law. The wiser professions know there is no uniformity, reliability, or control. Sometimes the medicine doesn’t take, sometimes you can’t find a judge on a sympathetic day, so learn how to accept. And perhaps there’s the bridge into the more important attempt at behavior. Are we “accepting” anything?

Once more into the religious breach! Because what happens when you don’t accept the Word of God? Eternal hellfire. Setting yourself to the task of rationalizing incoherent contradictions and myths is of eternal importance. You’re so infinitely not in control, that if you refuse to accept and repent your sins, the punishment will never end. It’s an amazing analogy.

So you’re not in control and desperate to accept. How might you reach acceptance? You might be familiar with the stages of grief. You might dip into the philosophy of the stoics. You might just get so bored and exhausted exposing yourself to an idea that you couldn’t be bothered to care anymore if your very life depended on it. Is one method to be prefered over the other? Are they overlapping habits all to do with the business of accepting? These questions aren’t really my concern though.

Certainly it seems we are very wrong-headed in thinking we control the world “outside.” I don’t know what diseases are waiting for me left behind from the unwashed masses. But we seem to get a fair amount of positive feedback in controlling each other. The battered-wife of my blogs deserves a raise for how often I employ her. We shift entire generations into specific fields and habits through school or the military. There seems to be something funky about consciousness that suggests malleability through intention. Yell “stop!” to someone running at you, they often might, while the boulder rolling down the hill flips you off as you get squashed.

As a point of frustration then, the times when they don’t stop charging at you are when we employ the cliches and pay the deferences. “Well, he plum knocked me over! I’m so small in comparison. Nothing I did was going to change this outcome.” The phrase, “I can understand the reasons, I don’t accept the actions” might be relayed. It’s only when you attempt to provide an absolute answer that you slant towards “rationalization” over deeper appreciation for the forces at play. When you need something concrete, it seems acceptance, let alone control, is forever off the table.

We seem to talk a lot about being accepted. As a social animal, not having a place where people engage with or celebrate things about you leads to anything from developmental issues to entire breakdowns of government. We want to be accepted for our “faults” and “differences.” We want someone to fall deeply in love with us at our worst, so when we bestow our best, we’ll know they deserve it. Acceptance is the gateway to an imagined perpetual bliss. Or, maybe not imagined, depending on how hard and fast you’re willing to accept things, per a stoic prescription.

It’s muddy when we, again need, to be accepted by someone who isn’t having it. In some way or another I’m sure the next 100 blogs will tie into my experience with a long-term relationship. I very much knew why I wasn’t a relationship person and had to have this one sort of creep up on me. People seem incapable of treating me beyond a certain way. I’m a novelty. I’m very fun until I’m very annoying. I’m very smart until I’m extremely exhausting. Now, I don’t find this a problem, the vast majority of people do. I’ve accepted that. I feel I have very little control over my disposition that I don’t pair with phrases like “killing my soul.”

And I had the naive thought that I would resolve myself to returning to a place of safe hedonism. At base, I am an idealist. I look up to a world I would prefer and relationships that feel empowered and flourishing. I’d rather have an honest superficial relationship than a grotesque obscure scar to pick at and redefine to suit poor judgmental ends. This often results in people “ghosting” me or dropping out of my life. They’re still “normal” and think if we don’t “progress” into some kind of long term emotional commitment, we’re just irresponsible abusive whores with nothing to gain.

It seems like if this is to be expected, I’d rather the people I eventually piss off or scare away to be “friends” instead of people I invest years of my life with. For me, the calculation is pretty clear. I need to invite less people into my life, for less amounts of time, to keep me on a path for how I can come to accept them. It’s in your favor for me to treat you like a liar. It’s with due consideration for our relationship that I upset you in the way that I upset you. I’m not going to be accepted by anyone who isn’t an annoyingly thoughtful quasi-sociopath, and that’s okay.

Mind you, the only reason it’s okay is because for over 12 years now I’ve talked out my relationship to life to in general. I know how to counter or engage different styles to the point of boredom. It’s a better story when there’s “drama” from a misstep. There’s potential from emotional fodder to provoke angles on blogs. I may not be able to control when the other person decides I’m no longer novel or worth the “effort,” but I’ve already written the story of our time together. At that point, where I tend to see a difference, is whether or not we accept a totality, not inevitability, of outcomes.

Less abstractly, if I delete you on facebook, I’m good to pick up where we left off if you text me. If the last time we talked it was some kind of blow out, most often 20 minutes later I’m over it and just wanting to grab lunch. If you find me an emotionless manipulative bastard who doesn’t listen and is completely inaccurate in my assessment of you, that’s okay, I just wish you’d accept that you can’t control me or how I relate that information anymore than I can control you. The only path is of mutual acceptance. The only road to acceptance is through active work to, actually, verses feeling like, understanding.

There’s the weird thing about consciousness. We do control our “effort.” We can make pains to swallow thorny fruit, or we can learn how to remove the barbs and keep the rewarding meal in tact. Much as I devoted like 7 or so blogs exploring the word “negative” when I thought I was unfairly labeled as such, it’s not that I disagreed that what I often have to say has little to do with all the beauty and magic I read about or experience in the world, it’s that if you regard my essence as a negative one, it’s a sign to me that you’re projecting. As a friend, I find a moral obligation in exploring where that judgment comes from. I’m one of the most hopeful and motivated idiots on the planet. Nothing I did would make sense were that not true.

Even when they grow to hate me, I send the drunk apologetic text. Even when I don’t believe in love, I stay with someone for years and write the sappy love letter. While I consider much of my family a mockery of the word, I’ll drag myself to “traditions” and hold my tongue about stepfamily exploits (at least to their faces). I don’t want 5 acres and a big house so I can sit and rot alone in cousin-fuck Indiana by myself. I don’t read about damn near everything in life unless I think I can discover ways to tie it together to actually help something. I don’t buy instruments I don’t want to learn, and I don’t unsettle friends I don’t wish everyday could figure out what it is they need to accept for us to better get along.

Ultimately, if you’re in doubt as to what or how to accept, draw from what you can’t. I can’t accept that “playing along” with conservative cliches and pleasantries helps anything or anyone. I can’t accept demonstrably destructive ideas, like ignorant blind faith, and either/or “reasoning.” I can’t accept that I’m as (fill in your judgment) as you think I am, and that means we can’t be friends. It’s a recipe for world peace if you go the opposite direction and allow yourself to understand someone. It doesn’t even have to be shared feeling and empathy. It doesn’t have to be on or with their terms. But there’s no truer indication you’ve learned to accept them than your own disposition. It’s your actual openness decreasingly described as a struggle. Your hopeful melancholy provoking jokes and laughter.

Until then, we’re all just beating each other up for things we’re angry we can’t control about ourselves. We’re unwilling to accept what we know or can learn, sacrificing for empty wishes and handed down ideals. At least for me, the decision to keep working towards that acceptance is always worth it. The random piles of shit that will be dropped on your head are inevitable. The constant misunderstanding and reimagining of conversations can be improved upon. You will die. Why waste your time degrading your self worth in pissing matches with people who are worth more? Why work so hard opposing yourself, foregoing the infinitely small, yet infinitely full of potential thing you can actually control?

What a waste.

[540] Things We Never Had

I have an increasing problem with language. The more I hear it, the more I just get frustrated or downright angry. For much of my life, I never really thought words mattered. I had a very simple view that a word won’t punch you in the face or shoot you. Needless to say, I was unfamiliar with neuroscience at the time. Your body can respond as if it’s experiencing physical pain. Words can scar you. Words can swallow you up in depression or make you burst with rage.

But at least when that happens you have something clear to work with. A pissed off person is to be restrained or ran from, or perhaps politely engaged with. A depressed person needs pills or to attempt therapy. What we don’t pay attention to is when words make us sick, but we don’t really feel sick. We don’t feel different at all. In fact, the more you try to point to the words that are responsible for the sickness, people think you’re the sick one.

We take talking and language for granted. Whether a word is male or female or “rooted” in another language. We don’t struggle with every syllable like it didn’t start as a bark or a scream trying to convey something from more primordial times. We assume the meaning is built in. We act like when I say “car,” the mental picture is the same across the board. It’s innocent enough, as in, who cares if you pictured a Hot Wheels toy or a Nascar racer, we can clarify with a few more questions or specific words.

Humans have more unidentifiable experiences and feelings though. They have complex relationships and institutions. Words that once had meaning float away or become something entirely different, and new ones pop into existence seemingly daily. And we don’t even notice. I’d put money on the idea that someone’s said something akin to “I took this selfie in 1995 before smart phones.”

It’s how we arrived at the all-encompassing nature of the word “love.” It’s why people have an impossible time finding the “truth.” It’s the struggle behind your relationship with “friends” and “family.” Most, in service to trying to feel “normal,” see no point in searching for a kind of excruciating exactness. “My mom’s my mom and I love her! That’s the truth!” And you’re hard-pressed to disagree, even if the person making the claim doesn’t know why or care to learn why they’re wrong.

I think a lot about this when I consider my relationships. I don’t believe my ex feels any real guilt that isn’t masked in a language of relief. The stakes weren’t as high for her. I don’t think she even grasped the nature of the problem. In the handful of things she was willing to type out and explain to me, you can see the contradictions written sometimes in the next sentence claiming something different. It’s not that her explanation doesn’t make a certain kind of sense in “normal” or “everyday” terms, but I would describe it as missing a soul. I think there’s more to be said about the lines, “I don’t believe we started off as friends. At least not honest friends,” and “I think the lying stemmed from a true desire to see you happy” than there’s time for here.

Consider planting a tree you don’t want. You hate this tree. You hate the idea of trees. Yet every day you water it. You watch it get taller and taller. Its roots start to crack your foundation. Its leaves clog your gutters. It attracts animals and bugs you’re constantly swiping at. You buy expensive equipment trying to blow them away and make repairs. Then your neighbor comes over and proclaims how hard you work and praises you for your dedication to taking care of your property. You look up, angry and exhausted and scream, “I wish that damn thing had never been planted to begin with!”

The “logic” of property maintenance requires the expensive tools and hours in the sun. You need trash bags and allergy medication. You need new gutters and a new foundation. But you hate trees, and you planted one anyway? But wait, you may think to yourself, trees are good! Trees help ecosystems. Trees suck up carbon. I like apples! Perfectly fair and valid points, just in an entirely different discussion. The root of your problem remains unaddressed.

This is why I write and ask people to pay attention. This is why I find it so weird that people are threatened by my mere descriptions of aesthetic things that are causing them a mindgasm. It’s why I urge you to run from judgmental language because it’s a hearty signifier that you probably have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Our judgments are fundamentally corrupted, and if we attempt to base our feelings on them, we’re throwing food at a wall trying to assemble an emotional meal from whatever sticks.

Why am I so “defensive” or “difficult” to talk to? Why is it so “exhausting” to answer my questions? I don’t feel responsible for the lies you’ve told me. I don’t accept the idea that my perspective is “less magical” or “normal” or “worthwhile” just because I call a mountain a mountain and you’ll cry or cum if you stare at it too long. That doesn’t make me angry at you or resent you. I climbed the stupid thing because I wanted to be around the people doing what they enjoy. It seems practically inhumane to ignore that motivation for the sake of a mound of dirt.

It speaks to why I don’t regret getting into a relationship as well. What if I had sacrificed myself, like I was prepared to in high school? What if I stopped partying and said “I believe!” when it only felt like torture? What if I hadn’t done all the work to really discover who I was and what was important or what I was willing to do? Because that’s all you really have at the end of the day. Trying to be true to yourself.

If I may borrow a phrase from a movie I just watched (even if I don’t believe in love), “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” You can of course get half of the lesson right if others find themselves incapable or unwilling to acknowledge what’s worth loving about you. Your tokens can still represent true feelings. (I find it curious they’ve all been left behind.) You don’t have to adopt the same complacent exhaustion or judgment that denigrates the other person.

To be honest, I thought I’d feel more dramatic lol. But once I heard the foundation was a lie, I went out like a light. I was relieved. I could stop believing. I know how to treat liars, or, basically every person and “friend” I’ve ever met. Keep them at arm's distance. Maybe get something out of them. Play along and lie back as earnestly as they’re asking you to do so. Finally! Some direction.

Now I’m hung up on the “trying to be true to yourself” line. Because it’s the default language that people employ when trying to justify their behavior. I need to be more specific. Be true to what you’ve worked to discover. Be true to things you place higher on the shelf than the pit in your stomach. I felt nothing but excited and proud when she hooked up with girls. I felt absolutely terrible the first time my ex slept with a dude that wasn’t me. As compared to the 15 or so girls I’d been with since we were together. That means I’m a culturally programmed romantic sexist who literally embodied a painful hypocritical double-standard, not that there’s something wrong with sex and attraction or paying attention to history, human psychology, and animal behavior.

Important reminder, I didn’t blame her for my feelings. I didn’t think she was trying to hurt me. I believe she would have stayed home if I asked her to. She didn’t punch me in the gut. I put my trust in our life together and a spirit of sharing and honesty. Oops. And even still, if I may borrow a line from a song that I find spectacular, “Indiscretion is a blessing if you know how the truth is told.” Truth is told one line at a time. It’s every moment, and every word that captures where you’re at in time and spirit. That moment competes for the truth as it is against the truth that you’re desperate to justify. And while it’s extremely hard, if not sometimes impossible, to tell the degree and nature of how we’re lying to ourselves, I’ll catch you every time when you try to lie about me.

I’ll never blame anyone for feeling confused, angry, or hurt. It happens, it sucks, and it betrays our best conception of ourselves. But don’t blame me for you not recognizing what I find beautiful. Don’t tell me what I do and don’t see. Don’t allow yourself a second of pretending to know what I think if you’re unwilling to ask, and don’t tell me to respect your feelings when your misused words insulate you from experiencing mine. I chose trust when I wasn’t trusted. I chose ideals over butterflies. I choose friends even when I don’t believe they can see me. I choose writing to fighting, be it with myself, or you...mostly.

I think the only thing that brings people together or makes someone “right” for someone else is the decision to say so. Make no mistake, when you’re lying to someone, you haven’t chosen them. You’re not concerned with their happiness. You’re not in love. You shouldn’t trust what you’re finding beautiful. You’re not sacrificing anything anymore than Jesus did. The reality of your hard-sold godly standards will rise again until you can recognize them for the empty fairy tales of self-indulgence they are. And you’ll hurt a lot of people along the way. And at least if you’ve caught this and paid attention, we’ll both know it’s no longer innocent.