[1055] Long With The Wind

The way my head is going, it's a struggle to believe this will ever get posted somewhere. I need to force write. I need to keep repeating myself until I get over the skipping part of the record. I'm not getting where I need to be. I'm stuck. I'm feeling lazy and ridiculous and like I've fallen way too far down some hole of humility or being humbled. I need to find the fire and get back to breaking shit.

I'm old. I don't give a fuck that there are older people. To me, I'm old. 35 was the quintessential "fucking old dude" in my head for most of my growing up. You don't just shake that concept away. If I was shocked as a child if you said 30-anything at how old you were, that's where I'm anchored, and I'm dead ass in the center of my 30s. Double my age, I'm 70.

All it means for me practically is that I'm less inclined to want to accidentally hurt myself. I don't want to lift dozens of concrete bags by myself. I don't want to swing nail-ridden oddly shaped pieces of large wood around. I don't want to catch myself tired or unfocused and have a mishap with a power tool. I still don't have health insurance, as if it would matter, but for all of my talk about debt, I'd much prefer to stay in the category of "for fun" than "fucked by medical bills."

That's some of that underlying psychological baggage that comes with moving out here and trying to do things differently or better. Instinctively, you don't want to do a hundredth of the work I've invited into my life to make this remotely tenable. I can't tell you how many fucking times I've been told, "But you live sooooo far" as the primary reason someone wouldn't set up shop next door. They'll then proceed to drive an hour or more to work throughout the week. They'll ignore the posts on my budget and spending as though a "normal" household with children or car payments wouldn't benefit from an "extra" $10 to $15 thousand I've spent on "stuff" and "fun" in a single year.

I've been resisting the urge to be shameless. Once I decide I want it, I'm not the same kind of person. The goal must be achieved. I change in perhaps not primarily healthy ways. I've been slacking on getting the counseling going after the major insurance ass pain. It's not that I'm not creative, persuasive, or capable of thinking of any other way to get the word out, but I will change. I will be a perfect manipulative psychopath. There's no other way to do it. I promise. The legitimate way doesn't exist. The patient by-the-rules behave as though anyone gives a fuck about anyone manner is a downright fucking lie. I just don't know if I'm prepared to devolve back into that.

For one thing, it's a drug. I will compulsively wear that skin like it's the only hug I will ever need the rest of my life. I'll spend hours and days on the phone or driving around. I'll schedule every waking minute of my life with someone or something that feels adjacent to moving me where I want to go. I will turn months of pussyfooting and questions and excuses about distractions or strength of will or desire into absolute results. And I'll be left alone to deal with the costs by myself.

Do you have any idea what that's like? It's one of the few things I'm legitimately scared of. I need limits. I need rules. I need feedback, ever fleetingly, that I'm not hopping on some megalomaniacal "fuck everything around me" train like your favorite billionaires. I don't want to be them. I don't want exacting fear-based playing on people's idiocy and sympathy and desperation power. And I can get it, immediately, whenever I want. I'm a pretty girl surrounded by an infinite sea of dicks with a violently screaming slut deep inside her who's been fairly well contented by shows and house duties. The screams are haunting me.

A lot of my decrease in drive comes out of my distance with people. I used to give a fuck what people thought. I used to give way too many fucks. But, thankfully, I'm old. It's now impossible to respect poor insecure judgement from a deliberate lack of awareness or effort. It's impossible for me to give a fuck. I know how ridiculous people are. I know how dumb and poorly run the world is. I know the games and low or non-existent expectations. I know how to so deliberately place my words I can make you feel better on the anniversary of your child's death mere moments after shutting down your unfunny race-based joke that wasn't appropriate for a group setting. The tragedy isn't any one death. It's that we subscribe to death in so much of what we do.

Being inundated with so much death makes you wonder why you're bothering. The amount of people talking through concerts feels like so many deadly layers. The people who have half a dozen others they could reach out to for help, but use meth anyway, are compulsively killing themselves. Why not? Stay alive to keep going to your job that doesn't pay you enough? To surround yourself with dumb or afraid coworkers who, if they do their job, won't stand for anything because they're as trapped and miserable as you? To be around family who are often incredibly terrible for you? To keep trying to connect with friends who take advantage or don't bother to include you? To open your bloodshot eyes at the end of day 10 of chronic pain?

There are few things I feel I understand as deeply as why people commit suicide. It's everywhere. We kill our language. We make abject mockeries of hope. We punish those who achieve and try hardest and then learn how to punish ourselves for thinking as though we should ever gain more than what's in front of us. We got fucking germs wrong. We have like 30 real reporters left. You can't even begin to get a handle on pockets of the world, and the second you start to believe you have, some algorithmically personalized bait will come in to bankrupt you morally and financially.

It's been a struggle to give a fuck. I thought the land would represent something. It's just a giant expensive perpetual hobby. It was a thing that when I worked hard and spent and tried to enable was thrown in my face. It's the thing a friend will mention is their 7th or 8th plan to fuck with one day when all of their other bad plans fall through. Who cares how much I work? Who cares if the fence is up or pool is swimmable or wood shop is up and running? You post a video with your face as a cat filter you'll sometimes get thousands of likes. I post a years-in-the-making work in progress or hours of sweat and effort or experimentation and I'm pretty sure my dad notices, but no one gives a fuck. No one's asking questions about what's next or what I'm thinking. No one's offering to help. No one's got their own thing they want to try and work out.

In addiction, you have to constantly remind people to put themselves first. If you're overwhelmed, I promise you you're being a shit parent to your kid, a shit partner to your spouse, and probably a shitty coworker. You have to stay sober and balanced for you so that when you volunteer to engage with others or their stress, you can remain confident you'll not set yourself up with the tired excuse to use that "they made me feel" whatever it was.

 
The land and everything about it is for me. I may be less inclined to get outside when I've simultaneously put every fucking show on the planet on my calendar, but I do enjoy getting the heartrate up, playing with tools, and building/organizing things. It's not dead, but pretty stagnant for probably more forgivable than not reasons both related to weather and being genuinely otherwise occupied. I've watched Hussain do at least 3 insane, expensive, nearly-killed-him projects in the time since we first began trying to do the business. I don't want to operate like him about house stuff. It's sheer anxiety and desperate feelings driving that.

I'm still pissed about being left out to dry with the kid gun waving scenario. It really felt like a last-straw kind of thing. There's not really an appropriate level of apology that doesn't manifest in some very deliberate and long term behavior and conversation change I don't think Byron is prepared to do.
I left the house today, quasi-intending to see a comedy show when I got the email free tickets were being offered. They run out, so if you don't secure them pretty quickly after the initial email, back to full price. I invited two people. One never responded. The other said it would depend on when she left work. By the time she confirmed, they were gone. She kicked herself for not just saying yes. She said she did not even have a particular reason for not saying yes beyond a vague impression or question about whether or not she wished to make the drive.

 
It's never a question for me. I'm like a fucking puppy.

Fuck the comedy show, it's about being around someone you, hopefully, enjoy. I get we're all old adults with responsibilities, except, I also kind of don't. Somehow, I find the time, money, intention, will, and decent hopeful spirit to pretty much always be the first to reach out, try to fly out, invite, buy the extra ticket, respond in a timely manner, or just generally be "friendly." You think the friend I sent $100 bucks to even remembers and thinks to grab lunch? You think Byron remotely gives a fuck the anxiety and annoyance I experience waiting for the money I lend him for smoking or nice meals and tickets for his dipshit kid?

I left my house just to drive to town and eat, peruse a pawn shop and drive right back home. There's nothing out there for me without dipping into the grander design and project schema. All I'm going to find myself doing is spending money and feeling empty and confused or bored. I have 160 people on my caseload, some of which I've talked to individually at length who I'm professionally obligated not to become friends with, who I'd probably enjoy doing an array of things with that no one in my life, distance-wise, gives a fuck about engaging in.

 
One of the belligerent psychopath things I would do is corral those people into my business's programs either in a self-care vein or "elite" class of people who should probably be more focused on tapering than anything else. I'd convert them into word-of-mouth advertising and discount their sessions for each person they referred who sticks with it. Build a financial and social feedback loop. From the amount of compliments I regularly get you wanna believe that kind of thing would just happen if you keep your head down and do the work or right thing and you'd be a fucking moron and wrong.

I can already feel that tomorrow is going to be when I want to do more yard-work house stuff. I have a Matchbox 20 concert in Noblesville to get to, so naturally when I had all day free today, tomorrow I'll feel pressed for time and do quick haphazard shit right until It's time to hurry up and leave.

I find it incredible how much I seem to want the exact opposite of what anyone else does. I want accountability, they want excuses. I want exchange, they want to take. I want financial freedom, they want wage slavery. I want creativity, they want prescriptions. Prescribed narratives, paths, and drugs. I want to be in orbits, they want little to nothing to do with me until I might be useful. I want as many words as it takes, they want silence. I want options, they want to tell me "it is what it is." I want to breathe, and they've got so many different flavors of smoke to blow in my fucking face.

I'm right there. I can take all of it, swallow it, and switch. I can cut through every noisy decibel. The dozens of goals for each day are crystal clear. I can do what I know is the absolute wrong thing and I can do it in an invigorating way that puts to shame the versions you put on display for me. It's too bad I don't believe in a god, right? I could just wash my hands of all responsibility and call my behavior part of his plan. I'm fucking up not diving into that bullshit.

Whatever it says about me, I need recognition and solidarity. I need to see the smiles in group when I'm making jokes. I need to hear the tone of voice change when ideas are sinking in and the example has been set. I need to know I'm not literally insane and that all of the things I do are tantamount to magic in the minds of the otherwise exploited and exhausted piddling middle. I need to believe it's not my obligation or destiny to tear through the infinite points of vulnerability until I've cut out more than I could ever digest. I don't feel seen. I don't feel appreciated. I don't think people recognize a single fucking word I say. I'm a bit player in a thousand self-destructive dramas that are preferable to the too much energy I must demand.

I've always got the counter-narrative ready. There's always someone or something that turns all of the drama on its head. It's not enough. I can't, yet, fly to fucking Florida or Seattle every time I need to hang out. My dad in his already busy as fuck life is making it to shows. They're the exceptions to the rules. The rules are what's fucked up. We fail to establish them altogether and then violently defend the dumbest ones possible.

This might be the first time I've typed myself into a headache.

[1054] Thumb Drive

Let's see if I can set my week/end up for success. I've been up since 5. I made some of my specialty coffee I got from Wisconsin. I finished all of my work notes. I've watched a few episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation's third season. Earlier, I envisioned myself going outside to cut up pallets for the burn barrel. I kind of want to reorganize the bathroom, do house-supplies shopping, and maybe bowl before it gets too late and packed.

For the last few months, it's felt like it wasn't worth writing because there's been "too much" on my mind. So much that I've wanted to make music. I'm frequently all-too aware of how often I'm singing the same tune, so why not externalize it as a melody or sound? I have tabs open to try and learn proper recording and production. But the prospect of doing so conjured the stomach-drop anxiety feeling. Today is a free weekday. I could be marketing, or researching, or grant writing. I could be doing something…you know…important.

 
This is the rub I'm persistently privy to over the course of my counseling week. People work, constantly. They get off work to go to work. When they're not at work, they're worrying about work, how little money they're making, or what their work will do to hurt or punish them if they speak about how little they enjoy their work. They come home to work to keep their kids or house in order. They're, hopefully, working on their sobriety and emotional regulation while situated in as selfish and self-destructive an era and area as you could ask for.

So, what? What's asked of you in any given moment that life's circumstances may be brought into your awareness? The industrious, superstitious problem solvers came up with religious ideas. The modern solipsist worships through happy-branding and memes. I don't believe most are actually willing or capable of diagnosing or methodically and deliberately addressing "the problems," as such. So, again, what? What does that mean for you? Where should your anxiety rest or obligation manifest?

I'm an expert indulger. I doggedly pursue what I want and like, for me, because me, and the because "fuck you." Whether I write an indulgent blog, song, or defiant piece of rebel propaganda, I'm scratching an "I'd like to feel better" itch. Not necessarily long-term better either. In the moment my stomach is dropping and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going, that's what I want fixed, redirected, or obliterated. If I never felt that feeling again, it's hard to say if I'd ever write again.

The religious "fixer" or anxious miserable fuck tries to establish universal order in their creative expression. God wills it! Dominion over death, ain't it grand? The world isn't fair, ever, especially when we keep it abstract and blame-worthily denoted as "the world." Whether it kills your kids, gives you cancer, or bakes your brain until you babble and froth for fascism, the color of the tragedy doesn't matter and the consequences are predictable.

A secular or "spiritual" cunt might start, incredibly poorly, describing their understanding of energy or physics, dip into ideas about karma or personal responsibility, and ultimately scream their relative hedonism through literally everything they buy, share, or speak highly of. Weird, Bo Burnham's "White Woman's Instagram" comes to mind.

I tell my people constantly to engage in self-care and decompression. I know where the vast majority of them are at. It was misery-inducing enough to get me to move out here. For a minute though, I've had the exact opposite problem. I'm not compressed enough. I don't have an antagonist that isn't the disembodied general dissatisfaction I have with "my crowd" or lack thereof. I have battles with insurance I can't effectively fight. I have an endless list of chores or projects or hobbies. It's not the kind of drive either of desperation or that terrible word "passion."

I stayed up all night on Wednesday trying to do a 750 piece puzzle in one sitting. I haven't put a puzzle together since I was a kid (besides another simpler puzzle a few days prior). I wasn't desperately trying to finish it. I wasn't feeling particularly defiant. I just allowed myself to keep going. In my perfect world, I'm up all night doing whatever it is I wish to do, falling asleep at 5 or 6, and getting up at 11. I very nearly did that exactly on a work night, got up still did my job, and less than an hour after my last group finished the puzzle. Maybe I needed some light proof that I can still go into that "autonomous" or "robot" mode?

The world hasn't felt like it's closing in on me in a serious way for quite some time. It's still shit. I still hate everything. But I have a (wise?) calm about it I suppose. I think the weather's nice enough that working outside would be prudent. I have clean clothes. I haven't eaten yet. I don't suspect I'm going to hear back from anyone I've texted until it's much too late. I really do just need a crowd or cooler people to hang with. Before I think of anything else I might do fun or creatively, I need to plug into something that's at least passable. I just kinda want to exist around decent-enough people. I'm not trying to chore, fight, work, or spend in and of themselves.

[1053] A Little Stroll

Let’s meander a bit. It’s 12:33 PM. I’ve been awake since 9, up around 10, and beyond coffee and scrolling, haven’t locked into a precise drive or motivation. I’m headed to The Comedy Attic tonight for Ron Funches. I don’t even really want to write this, as I immediately clicked away and began searching through the club’s website.

I think there’s few thoughts that are more reoccurring than how often I’m by myself. I think I antagonize this by being extroverted and going out. When I have creative energy it’s the absolute worst. I get to tell myself the jokes, which still makes me laugh, but isn’t the same. I really need to up my game in finding new connections or spots. It’s not a problem to let compound.

At the same time, I know people are shit. I have to get a ahead of what will be an increase in the other pool of thoughts that accompany doing things alone. I'll never be the one getting invited. I’ll hear about how busy and poor people are. Inevitably the particularly off-color joke won’t land and the chasm that opens up will mean I’ll want to ensure there’s several pots cooking at once.

If I had any sense, I’d focus more on cleaning up the yard and getting trash thrown out. It’s quite hot. I’ve gotten more of my inside environment organized and rearranged. All that’s left is maybe 20 minutes of making dish storage more coherent. I’m staring dead into the heart of my guitars, sax, and piano. I have approximately 7 hours to kill before I need to be in line to not get a shit table.

There’s so much time. I always have the time. Why do I always have time and so many never have any? Why take on debt for things that only bring you stress instead of fun or growth? Why am I able to answer my phone or text you that I saw the call? I’m flatly irrationally conceiving of myself in this wholly unintentional bubble where my sense of what’s possible or worthwhile appears completely detached from the people…are they even in my orbit?

What if you never bothered to take these little strolls? What if you were so desperate for companionship or solidarity it never occurred to you what aspects were worth setting a boundary to protect? I haven’t lost my ability to make insta-friends. I’m not shy. The existential barrier to getting what I want is that so many people conduct themselves like so many interchangeable bodies. The ones that don’t get subsumed by their solipsism. Is there not a spectrum with decently aware, fun, individuated personalities worthy of exchange?

I tried calling Hussain. He didn’t pick up. I got two tickets originally for this show as, in my mind Ron Funches isn’t a run-of-the-mill comedian so whatever extra effort might be made to trap someone for a couple hours should occur. I haven’t really spent any time talking to the friend who I bought it for after the kid gun waving incident, yet he’s supposed to go. I don’t have a strong instinct as to whether we’ll even sit together. We’ve not-gotten drinks together the last 3 times he’s suggested, and then bailed or ignored. He’ll call when I might be of service to him and his professional obligations.

I’m looking forward to Seattle. I’m thankful I get messages from Brandy where we can continue intellectually stimulating conversations. My dad continues his cooler-than-you reliability in surprising me for my birthday and being down to see people like Dave Chappelle in Chicago without needing an insulting explanation. I’m wearing a Sick Sad World T-shirt, and I kind of don’t ever want to take it off.

[1052] Dually Noted

I hate it. I hate it so much. I genuinely believe one of the most dangerous and destructive behaviors you can engage in is false praise. I think playing nice onto absolutely catastrophic ends is how you get the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” You, in your impossibly naive and idealistic fantasy intend to do something “nice” or “good.” You don’t know what those things are. You literally can’t define what’s good nor often care what someone would consider nice. Nonetheless, you’ll keep on paving.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a reply-all email chain. Someone you’ve never met got promoted, married, had a birthday or a baby. For the next week, until someone like me comes in to sour the mood, you will get dozens of emails at random times on and off work hours with, “CONGRATULATIONS!” and “I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!!!” It’s mentally fucking exhausting. You don’t know when your computer or phone dings that it’s another piece of the well-wishing bullshit train. If you’re me, you get to microdose stressful reactivity.

I can be pretty flagrant and ambivalent about rules and social niceties. I’ve walked a long road from leading emails with, “With all due respect.” I still can’t bring myself to swallow completely the idea that I’m always and forever meant to carry on with the crazy-making behavior as though it’s polite or professional. It’s lying. It’s cruel. It’s wasteful and distracting. It’s training yourself to form insincere expressions, feel nothing in doing so, and walk away insanely self-righteous and entitled when someone points it out. The only times I’ve ever been invited to talk to my supervisor’s boss are when I didn’t complain through the chain of command or violated the façade of how much care is truly there.

Groups doesn’t give a fuck about me. Most capitalist institutions under nearly all circumstances don’t give a fuck about you. They’ve automated your birthday card in the mail, if they recall it at all. They don’t pay you enough. They don’t offer benefits that cover anything. They are trying to retain and placate. A huge part of that is swallowing the propaganda. It’s occurring to me now as I have the overt compulsion to write this instead of the notes I’ve been procrastinating on, I’m ever more incensed by attempts to hijack my language or the desire to correct my behavior. My message “wasn’t well received,” after all. Obviously, it’s not their job to help, understand, or respond to critical feedback. Obviously, it’s mine to ensure they feel comfortable and protected and correct.

It literally will make you crazy. You will not be able to utilize your words, find your agency, or feel as though you even own the thoughts, infinitely bizarre and random as they may be, flowing through your head. You are in the wrong if you think it’s wrong of me to want to protect my attention and sanity from your baseless and insincere praise. You want to know how I know it’s baseless and insincere? WE’RE A REMOTE FUCKING ORGANIZATION. I haven’t met 10 people I work with, nor 15 of my 160+ caseload for more than seconds at a time, and when you give a fuck, you do more than project to a thousand people one line or one word of praise.

Unless, of course, that’s the new normal. That’s how you're going to practice and conceive of sincerity. That’s fucking miserable, a joke, and a mockery of bothering to say anything at all. You have to click TWICE to get to reply-all. You’re not even quickly rushing to tell that person, and that person alone, how excited and happy you are for them. No, you’re ensuring everyone sees you. You’re doing so days later, because you didn’t know or care what they were doing on the actual wedding day. You didn’t set an alert so information about them would make it to you no matter what. You lazily and emptily piled on with performative pizazz.

I haven’t been this reticent to get my notes in in a long time. I haven’t felt that “getting called to the principal’s office” dread in longer. I’m counting the days until my next vacation. I was imagining packing up my shit and quitting yesterday over what I had yet to learn our meeting was going to be about. Why? What changed between a few days ago when I was driven and energetic and thinking I could power through work, house stuff, and larger projects? A visceral and painful reminder of the edge I’m always walking and trying not to cut myself on. Combine that with putting Hussain up for the job and him managing to get fired in 3 weeks, who knows how to best conceive of the consequences there for my clout or sense of his general competence.

Part of me feels like today is going to be one of the longest days I’ve had in a minute. I’ve already started to do more house organizing (in lieu of sitting down and focusing on notes.) The pit in my gut is wide open. The tingles are shooting up from my balls. I can’t tell if I have to shit or am just so full of theirs it feels like mine.

[1051] Share & Like

It’s 12:33 PM the day after my birthday. Those who did not wish me a happy birthday yesterday will be summarily executed. It is what it is. I’m in Bedford with 2.5 hours left until my first of two groups, the second at 6:30 PM. In the meantime, I could do notes, which might take 20 minutes. I could watch TV. I brought books to read. Instead, my mind is a flutter, and writing feels like the thing to do.

I’m here, now 13 months into my “hybrid” role, of wasting time and gas hanging out in an otherwise empty office with the office managers. Our building is next door to a historically and comically destitute meth hotel. I’ve got fancy steakhouse leftovers waiting for me in the mini fridge. A regional supervisor is on site, prompting my attendance. She’s not my supervisor, but she’d talk. I’m hoping to not make it an entirely wasted trip by obtaining my still-missing cords for the game systems I’ve been trying to assemble for at least a month.

I usually try to spot-check my birthdays. I’ve been fascinated with time for a long time. I thought I’d be fairly rich and living easy at 30. I’m not exactly roughing it at 35, and it’s hard to argue that attending 79, so far, shows all over the country (65 last year), is anything but “rich.” My job is mostly remote. I talk to people about “coping skills” and organizing their lives around sustaining sober practices. It’s a little on the nose, no? I’ve been desperate for sober thinking from my cohort my entire life. That these people have literal physical addictions to potentially quicker life-ending means isn’t as far removed from what I’ve been complaining about since I started.

Whether you latch onto your comfortable narrative, the path laid out for you in advance, or weaponize feelings, it’s part of an addictive self-protective instinct. If nothing else holds true, it feels right. The consequences are reduced to a form of archeology and academics that bypass the heart. We’re circularly “logical” in order to survive, just as we are, in any given moment. It’s not growth. It’s not incorporating or contextualizing. It’s sustaining whatever words or behaviors that exist in any given moment. That’s “survival.” You’re here, full stop. You don’t have to know what “here” means. You don’t have to have anyone accept you. You don’t have to believe anyone exists, let alone with a complicated context of exactly the same feelings generated from the same mechanisms that have justified the existence of every remotely conscious “here” creature.

This can’t be “fixed,” the longer I think about it. It can only be danced with. There is no “example” for those to follow, only partner “heres” you can match with the infinite void of chaos and destruction. The world is disorded? You defy it with a simple list. The universe is ambivalent and purposeless? You defy it with a single goal, choice, or sustained effort to show yourself what else is here at the same time. I can’t persuade any of my clients, my management pretending to be “leadership,” you, myself, or the family dog. I can just be here, as whatever I am, and create new words here and there. It doesn’t subvert agency. It doesn’t opine on “free will.” It just is or isn’t.

I find myself closer the more I detach. When I write about the intensity of my feelings, I get so close to them they persistently move me to actually work and change my circumstances over short and long periods of time. That’s my case for being as or more feeling-laden than anyone else. I feel it so deeply I have the energy to work, drive, show up, speak, fight, and the “hope” invested in putting myself out there to try and connect in abject defiance of contrasting or conflicting assertions about what’s really here. I know what’s here, and it’s at least everything contained within me.

I make statements about my sense of “freedom” or the importance of how I’m utilizing my time. My overall trend is still to ever-increasing levels of both. That’s incredibly hard to see when I’m literally here at the office, for no reason. There’s a new world in the books I brought. There’s new music on the songs I haven’t heard shuffling through my playlists. But I’m embodying someone else’s concept of where I “should” physically be. It’s at perfect odds or conflict with my approximate ideal. There’s no less potential in this moment to subvert their here and protect the positive trend. This blog is doing it. Do they pay me to reflect? They are now.

I have considerably more and less than I thought I would at this age. I never envisioned my “adult version party house” as filled with anything less than people mostly enjoying themselves. Instead, there’s two cats in my combo-shed. I have the capacity to build more. I have a decent amount of “job security” either built into my history or by virtue of my credentials. I have a living history of positive experiences I draw on to pair with the absurdities of my fascist here, my ignorant here, my ambivalent here, and my alone here. I can’t pretend something isn’t missing, but I won’t deny my capacity and responsibility to keep speaking to it, looking for it, or throwing myself into new heres where I suspect it might exist.

I’m the counselor because of circumstance, and I do the work. I maintain the boundary when “things” have “gone too far.” I show up and dare the rain to cancel the concert. I book the flight. I buy the tools. I save the bookmarks. I take a chance every moment I lean into the idea that it could be more of what I want than less. The more I speak to and define what I want, the easier it is to prove it. I wanted the last hour or so to be writing and made it so. Very soon I’ll want my here filled with food and a TV show. Then I’ll do notes, maybe, or crack open the graphic novel. I have everything, but in sharing it so infrequently, it can feel like there’s very little. That’s a tragedy with important components I need to consistently remind myself I can’t control.

[1050] If We're Keeping Score

Oh dear.

I’ve been attempting to hold onto this thought for over an hour driving home. I hope I can do it justice.
It’s curious, funny, amazing, and pretty ridiculous that I’m not given (at least in my mind) the credit for the depth of my feelings. So much of my behavior is fundamentally rooted into an overwhelming feeling, I don’t really know what to take from those who pretend I’m Spock-ing my way through life (irony free at least.)

I feel so much. I’m like the biggest fucking feeler of anyone. I tried at one point to downplay how much I felt about my crush in high school and Byron’s whole disposition shifted to make sure I didn’t allow a lessening of what I was on about. I’m extremely hateful. I’d kill in a heartbeat. Every intellectual and existential posture I could argue for the lack of wisdom in certain kinds of violence would fly so freely out the window in the right circumstances. I live under a constant tension. On my best days I’m actively resisting tightening up or clenching my jaw.

I believed so fucking hard in the friendships from college. I was absolutely sold. I think every person who entertains me for longer than a week is practically miraculous. My feelings are overwhelming by default. I am nothing but a wave of “whatever feeling” when it strikes if I’m not paying attention.

Thankfully, I’m smart enough to write. I have 1050 attempts of paying closer attention. I don’t just kill things. I don’t try to wife up every cute-enough girl who can’t help but play with her hair as we talk.
I’ve spent 20 years now trying to conceptualize my feelings. I don’t want them to have more power than they’re due. I don’t want to be at the mercy, of which there is little to none, of them. I want to be sincere and deep and earnest in my expression of desire, interest, or indignity. I know how to sincerely *sell* that, but I want it recognized and reflected in earnest. I want fucking friends. I want interested invested payers of attention spending interest points on things that matter.

You want to really pretend you can get a grasp of how lonely I am? I’ve written 1,050 blogs over 20 years. I’ve given you every remote depth of my psyche I could access. I’ve discussed every horrifying ridiculous thing about my thoughts, what people think of me, how I’m oriented, or what I’m shooting for. Literally every single person in my life, I’ve read maybe 5 thought digressions from people combined. And almost all of those are from the same person, my RA 16 years ago.

I don’t know what anyone’s really thinking. They don’t own it. They don’t look at it and wrestle with it and utilize it to direct their next action. You fuckers realize I live in a fucking shed in cousin-fuck Indiana, right? How the fuck do you think I get here without an entire world-shifting conversation about the pros and cons? My deluded dumbass hopeful self thought I wasn’t the only one having it. Fuck me I’m fucking retarded.

 
I’m so angry and hopeless it doesn’t register in words. I’m so sad that no matter what I do, what I say, what example I try to set, I can’t be anything more than “where people are.“ People are in a miserable ridiculous guilt-ridden irrational hopeless and ignorant space playing nice so what they do have isn’t ripped away any sooner than it’s destined to.

I had fun again. I saw bands I liked. I acquired T-shirts. I chatted with an old friend and her friends. I got some walking in. I defied notions of debt. It’s just my world. Other people were there, but it’s mine to be immortalized in lines like this. What could really be shared? We don’t listen to the same music. We don’t have the same money. Our priorities don’t align.

Fuck your feelings. That’s the message. No one has ever really given a shit about mine, so I learned how to respectfully dismiss yours. It’s not the way to run a healthy or respectful relationship. I have an overwhelming amount of feelings about myriad topics all the fucking time. Who cares? Does it help me understand or consider where you’re coming from? Does it speak to how I might practice and live a practical ideal?

I don’t know anything about you. You have nearly every word I’ve ever thought about me, and you don’t know anything about me. Isn’t that a tragedy? Am I not allowed to feel not great about it? I don’t belong, not really. I know how to fit somewhat, but it’s contrived and manipulative. I know how to play the game.

I know how to play the game.

[1049] Loose Bolt, Complete Machine

I already have a penchant for writing incredibly random crap, but my head keeps returning to a few things I need to try to synthesize.

I listen to a handful of podcasts. If Books Could Kill discusses books that have gotten popular over the years, and the basic absurdity, lies, and lack of reasoning we tend to digest without question. It wasn’t anything about any particular book that struck me though. A comment about J.K. Rowling from one of the hosts did. He, in as pious and pithy a manner as one is capable, dismissed a podcast series by Megan Phelps-Roper trying to explore communication barriers associated with all that drama.

It’s stuck with me because, dude, you’re literally hosting a podcast attempting to critically think, but when your token issue is addressed methodically, purposefully, and masterfully, you default to the same dismissive arrogance and snap judgment that fuels the popularity of ridiculous books for ridiculous people.

No matter how confident we get in our intellectual posture, we’re a fucking joke. No one, literally no one, should be trusted, ever to speak beyond the bounds of what they specialize in, and then, other experts in that specialty need to be actively criticizing and humbling and rounding out the picture. You can’t be “generally intelligent” if you’re going to eschew the wisdom of asking questions and working with the specific claims of the material you otherwise deign worthy of instant dismissal.

Shuffle.

For as much as I worry about manipulating, I’m a professional manipulator. I get a handle on your behavioral pattern, apply the right tone and words, and you walk away, more often than not, at least thoughtful, if not inspired, provided you’re not fundamentally hostile to me or the task at hand. It’s so deep an instinct that I used to black out and have people tell me all of the wonderful and caring things I would say that I had absolutely no memory of.

As such, I have developed a partner instinct to instantly recoil at too much praise or if I see that you are “too into” whatever I’ve done or said. This most highlighted last year when, for the first time in my life, I wished my step-mom a happy mother’s day. It meant something to her. I care about my step-mom. I like her. I want her to succeed. I wish I could do more to contribute to the incredibly cool things she’s doing with reselling and crafting. I didn’t wish her a happy mother’s day this year because I pulled so far away from her reaction last year, I felt I’d be getting into that dangerous space of “too much” endearment.

The distance protects you as much as it does me. If, and I still consider it a strong if, I’m more autistic than not, I’m literally incapable of matching the depth of the feelings I can illicit, at least for prolonged healthy “normal” ways, if that’s the goal. You have to understand, I’m outside. My feelings are either compulsive, or working to be controlled. There is no “simple” version of liking or “loving” anyone that doesn’t have a whole world of context and trust built around it. My dad’s known me my whole life. He’s not going to find himself “under my spell” that I didn’t intentionally cast in the first place, nor do I have to explain and walk back when things have gotten out of hand.

The closest memory I have that pairs with pulling back on happy mother’s day sentiments is when I told my friend Brett that he must have caught me on a good day when I said something encouraging about him going to bed early on a night we were partying in college. He felt a certain kind of way that I respected his decision and drew on that memory years later when I was at his wedding. I discouraged the positive association. To me, I’m just as likely to call you a bitch (in good spirit, but still, especially back then) as find myself in the mood to be like, “You know, that’s respectable, good for you!” My “real” friends would maintain that kind of disquieting skepticism or qualify any positive emotion they’ve drawn from me, THEN take away the fact that, I was sincere. You don't just get the feel-goods by themselves.

It sounds like a weird mind-reading immature game based on my inability to trust myself, right? But I do trust myself. I don’t trust your perception of me. So I try to train your perception with good and bad examples of my behavior to hopefully provide insight as to how it works. I’ve slowed down on doing this as it’s become easier to keep a more informal notion of “friend” in my head, but if I actually like you and wish we were cool or want to invite you to the next party even if we haven’t spoken in a few years, it’s a whole thing.

A simpler version of stating this is, I have an easier time trusting assholes. Feelers and empthas are raw meat in a sea of sharks. Assholes don’t let their resentments linger and sneak up on you. “Assholes” is also a misnomer as it basically just delineates people who are prepared and confident in their boundaries.

I see, literally every day, how viciously weaponized people’s feelings are. Whether it’s against me, against themselves, or against just basic sense and decency, well in spite of our best selves. I don’t want to practice that, enable that, or act blind to it in some bid to be “more normal” in my well-wishing or cordiality.

I’ve managed to bite myself in deliberately ignoring the feedback from the faces and body language and gossip of so-called “friends” I wanted in the past. I’m too familiar with psychologically abusive patterns relayed to me in dozens of versions of the same story. I get consistent positive feedback on the impact I have on people’s lives, and “You help more than you know!” as though I’m not actively telling you/the void how much I do know and don’t take it as a default good thing about me more than a statement about you.

When you can inspire, intrigue, or demonstrate your understanding of me, I get out of that mode. I think my dad gets me in a way Tammi never has or will. I look up to people who are, not just “smart” or “articulate,” but humble and comprehensive in their analysis. They’re showing me a way to work or speak that I haven’t found that is useful and perhaps marketable or scalable. Otherwise, it’s anyone’s guess which mood I might confidently assert in your direction. You may think absolutely nothing of that and consider it an awkward vague wanna-be threat of “something.” It’s my obsession. I’m wholly subsumed by the idea that I am either working you or working with you. Outside of that, it’s simply to avoid altogether.

Clear goals for our dynamic helps me too. Informal chatting? Sure, I can lay off. Did I invest hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars attempting to enable you? Well, fuck. Guess I can never really get that alignment of goals locked in. It’s an extension of the sensibility I use with regard to myself. When the goal is work, I work until I can’t anymore. When it’s indulge, I spend as much on shows, flying, parking, 2-item minimums, and gas as I ever have per year on home projects or car repairs. When I decide I want peace of mind, I’ll retreat indefinitely until the urge to nonsense fight resurfaces.

I don’t want to jinx my flow. I’ve been really feeling it the last week or so. I’m getting my house in order. Very annoying projects are registering as doable. I’m practicing music. I’m looking forward to maybe making my own. My notes aren’t feeling like they’re taking hours when, at their worst, it might take 2. I’m still beasting through shows, performances and TV. I’m rooted in an enjoyable now and looking forward to, perhaps an outwardly dismal future with regard to politics and the weather, but I think I can carve out an ironically decadent place.

Shuffle.

Bert Kreischer has been on the rise for a minute now, and is bringing along a band of like-minded comedians he admires. He said recently how he knows there are people who are way more brilliant and better stand-ups than him, but he puts in the work and utilizes the business minds/advice of people like Tom Segura and Joe Rogan. There is, of course, a model you can follow. There are posting guidelines and cross pollination strategies. While seemingly "anyone" (with money) can "go viral" (game the system) and the barriers to entry are lower, there are still structures akin to what might be understood as major labels of the past if they're nonetheless more diffuse and abstract than a particular studio, king-maker, or locale. Crazies like RFK Jr. know the series of podcasts to hit to make it onto Sam Harris' lips questioning the wisdom of allowing him to do so. Propogandist "news" is still working as intended.

I still fundamentally believe in work. I do think it's the thing that tends to win regardless. Whether it looks like what others consider work is where it gets complicated. It's work to keep Hussain sane enough to deal with the functionally impossible barriers to opening our own practice. It's work to maintain my own patience and positive orientation indulging in building fun memories verses stoking anger and resentment towards "the system" designed to ignore and kill us. It's work to continuously humble ideals while maintaining them anyway. It's work to stay skeptical and creative and preach better behavior than the environment is begging from you. This is work. This is also self-care. This is evidence I wish to keep on keeping on without just emptily saying that and pretending we both know what I mean.

I think I'm going to invite a headache related to tearing down the shed into my day. When that gets to be too much, I'll come in and shower, see if Hussain is free, when he's inevitably enmeshed in his chaos, I'll see about either seeing IMAX Oppenheimer, hitting The Comedy Attic, and certainly grabbing food. I have a few errands to run I suspect will wait until Sunday. If you catch this early, you're welcome to join, but I know it's pretty silly of me to continue inviting. Didn't you just see what I said about practicing the ideal in spite of the environment? Pay attention.

[1048] Vroom

Poised to be an extra-all-over-the-place one.

I’m back at my dad’s house after a weekend in Milwaukee. We saw Green Day, Foo Fighters, and most of the rest of the bands for Harley Davidson’s 120th anniversary festival. We ate great food. We drank beer. We navigated a mildly frustrating AirBnB situation, we got specialty coffee, and he picked up beer you can only get in Wisconsin. The day before, we saw David Cross and Sean Patton in Chicago during David’s latest special taping at The Metro. They were both tear-inducing and face pain funny. 

I do cool shit, but you already knew that.

I do cool shit like I’m someone who recognizes how quickly the entire world can be brought to its knees with the right bug. I do cool shit like I actually more believe than not I won’t have the opportunity to do so, at least in this country, when the fascist trends continue. I do cool shit like the artists actually mean something to me and like I think it important to generate positive feedback loops and new associations in an otherwise overwhelmingly stressful and stagnant existence. I do cool shit like it’s my job, because it is.

My dad has come with me to more music shows, comedy shows, or even movies than all of my friends combined over the last few years. My dad who iron works, takes care of graves in cemeteries hours away on the weekends, takes care of things around my aunt’s house, and keeps his own in order. My dad who’s turning 62 this year. My dad who lives 3 hours away from me. He has the time, energy, and attention to hang out and do cool shit in a way none of the other people I know, vaguely or otherwise, even flirt with having.

They don’t say, “Hey Nick, I’m not really into your genres of music, but so-and-so is playing, would you want to go to that?” They don’t say, “I’m so busy! But I’m budgeting to get a babysitter, and I’m definitely gonna hit, well, at the moment Fall Out Boy seems to be uniting people in a unique way." They don’t say, ”You sure do go to a lot, I’m legitimately too busy, but you’ve inspired me to take a little time and splurge or indulge or treat myself, because you know what? I do work a lot and I haven’t been attending to the necessary fun of a worthwhile life."

I inspire nothing! Today marks the 75th show for the year, 77th “fun thing,” with 34 left, Fall Out Boy on deck for tomorrow.

Is it debt? Yes. Is it long drives? Totally. Is it all of the risks associated with crappy vehicles, increasingly ugly and un-shared cultural landscape, and don’t my feet and back kind of ache? You might be arriving at the point and wisdom incumbent upon the whole endeavor. It’s work. It’s deliberate chosen effortful balance I’m interjecting against the void.

I’m incredibly frustrated by the lies, delays, and overall greedy empty nonsense trying to do good work and get paid for it. I don’t feel it in the same way as Hussain. It’s one, incredibly disappointing thing about how fucked we all are, let alone what I think to try to create. I have a dozen positive memories to choose from to pair that dissatisfaction with from the last few hours, let alone days. The “worst” thing about my life is “debt” which has come to symbolize considerably more about "potential" than "burdens" or "obligations." I don’t have a mortgage or car payment. I suspect you’d kill to be 3 months away, pretty much at all times, from being debt free, no?

But we’re broken. We don’t do the math budget-wise anymore than we do it with mental resources and allocated time towards worthwhile or otherwise thoughts. Concert crowds are certainly broken. All sense appears to have flown away. You’re around thousands of people, you’re going to get touched, you need to drink water, and setting down a blanket or chair anywhere near or around where a pit might open up is just a cunty dumb thing to do. When I’m walking back with two fresh beers to the spot I’ve been occupying for the last 7 hours, it’s the exact wrong time to strong arm block me and get into a debate about what, “We’re all trying to do” in getting in closer. No, bitch, you’re trying to be an incensed righteous lawyer cunt for no reason. I’m trying to politely edge past without spilling my waiting dad’s beer.

The whole concert scene has obviously been on my mind. It’s a unique expression of our selfishness and irony. I’m not there to love everyone in the crowd. The only thing we might have in common is barely knowing a few lyrics to some of your most popular songs. I suspect most people in the crowd haven’t read the latest Dave Grohl interviews or biographies of Green Day. A spattering of the crowd might be budding or capable musicians. Green Day in particular are great at appealing across generations. The old-school punk and the little girls all gather to belt out hits from 10 or 20 years ago despite 5 albums of music afterward you kind of pretend don’t exist.

I’m tired of hearing, “Welcome to the family!” from the singer of your band. I thought Pierce The Veil was incredibly awkward in their Green Day rip-off give-a-fan-a-guitar segment. Yes, Vic, sing into the weird gay kid’s eyes as he swoons on a stool before handing - an instrument he’s clearly never held in his life - a guitar he can keep and certainly cherish forever and not pawn. That’s crowd work.

Anyway, I’m gonna be 35 in 8 days. I suspect it will be uneventful. There won’t be a surprise party. No one’s taking me to dinner. I’ve already gotten the card from my parents with the $100 in it. On each day of the festival, tragedy struck someone in the circles of people I know. A friend’s mother’s best friend was murdered Friday. One of the step-kids’ husband had a stroke today. I’m just over hear chugging ice tea, listing my favorite bands, and bemoaning Sugarcult not getting as big as they should on the drive home.

I won’t be going this hard at this endeavor next year. I set the pace last year, kinda felt like I created a personal challenge to beat - beat severely - this year, and I’m chasing the feeling of a certain kind of magic going away. I used to find it incredibly hard to entertain the idea of ever leaving a show early, even a little bit, because I had to get my money’s worth. I didn’t go out that much. I’d never seen the band. What if something happens right at the end? I don’t leave early that often, but when I do, it’s because Tool is headlining, or the day before it took an hour just to walk out at an oversold My Chemical Romance Riot Fest performance, or Dave Grohl can make any one of his songs last 15 minutes, and that’s not always the best.

It’s an insane amount of privilege to perform, to attend, to afford the food, and to have the time to get there early, leave late, and be confident you’ve got the cash for the parking. It didn't use to be like that. It used to be music could bring any and all together. Now it brings those who can afford it, and those people are incredibly entitled, naive and out-of-touch cunts. It’s not all their fault, but they’re certainly not my friends, real or imagined versions of them, taking up room instead.

Finding common cause seems markedly different and opposite to finding common reaction. In a crowd, you react. That’s your job. Wave your hands. Jump. Scream. Unfortunately increasingly, hi-five, hug, introduce yourself, or dance with your neighbor. What are we all there for? To hear none of the women the day of or after The Supreme Court repeals Roe v Wade speak, sing, or scream into the mic about it? Hello, Lilith Czar, The Warning, and Halestorm, where the fuck were you?

If you’re not persuaded by the parts of the world on continuous fire, pick a metaphor you find agreeable. Minority stake holders in culture and environmental wars are plunging us into this absurd parody. How “festive” do you find festivals that have more bars than merchandise, art, or anything fun to do while you wait for your band to play? There’s music on. Some of them sound pretty angry. Anyone catch what it was? No protest song has stopped a war and no soundtrack makes the pills you swallow being born to your time and place any easier to digest.

The crowds aren’t diverse. The narratives around why are worn from being overplayed. The message isn’t clear and there’s no solidarity to be found. Rich whites like noise that helps them ignore all the screams they engender from their decision making. Let’s go, Brandon! No better time to be and loud and proud ignorant asshole than at the “Don’t wanna be an American Idiot” gig!

I want to say more or refine what’s here. I’ll try again later.

[1047] Curses

It’s late at the tale end of July 4th. I have no real sentimentality or ideas to offer around patriotism or the status of this country beyond thinking we’re still on the decline and on the way out.

I wanted to write about how I think it’s been getting harder to write.

I’ve been contemplating writing music. I listened to Ethan Hawk riff on poetry. I’ve written 1,046 things, not counting what I’ve deleted or designated “blog adjacent” with an “xx” in the title. Where I’m at is less in the analysis and trying to parse the players and response or responsibility. I want a riff. I want a phrase. I want a wall of sound that reverberates as good as any that I’ve put onto my playlists.

I went to a party tonight. I stopped being the person to invite and get to know everyone, but I’m still friends with Pat Patterson who has his eclectic group of creatives and weirdos. I belonged. It’s people who will look you in the eye. It’s people doing as unique a thing anyone could be doing that they’ll pass off as any ‘ole thing. I was told I could join the invite-only group to know about the semi-regular events.

Part of me has eschewed looking for fitting into a crowd like that. Sort of like with getting a girlfriend. There’s an inevitability that my weirdness or perspective is eventually going to turn someone off or against me. It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy them or don’t with to maintain a dynamic, but whatever it is that I perceive I’m getting from the relationship is heaps different from the artifice the other players were attuned to that I wasn’t.

We’re not in a play. We don’t have a set of lines and cues and lighting configurations to tell approximately the same story for however many weeks we’re popular. Each time you have your individuated stress or trauma or hopes and dream overlaying why you do or don’t engage the gathering one way or another. If you’re always “on” and looking to have your kind of fun or conversation, if you’re me, your confidence and comfort is going to navigate considerably less tactfully the conversation about whether or not Dave Chappelle is transphobic.

I think a big reason I don’t think too much about “expanding my network” is that I know I still have those connected people. I’m one text away from 25 people I haven’t met who are as close to “my people” as I’m going to get. But that’s not what I want to explore.

I feel like I’m running out of words. I need sounds and rhythms and noises modified to analogize a tight neck and wretched gut. My anger isn’t as honestly relayed in a thousand blogs as it might be channeled through Chester Bennington on stadium speakers. My previously-conceived-of angst or anxiety is deeper than that. Quieter. More encapsulating. I didn’t feel right trying to occupy “annoyed” or “angry” or “ungrateful” space walking a couple miles to return my umbrella to a car or staying extra late to a terrible baseball game. I still need to express and create though.

I texted my ex that the garden shed blew over. She sent back, “Ok.” I don’t want to assume she’s functionally abandoned the space, but I don’t really know what else to think. It’s like, of course she did though, right? Nothing I try to enable or support is actually felt or appreciated, so if I saw anything but overgrown bullshit with a blown over shed for all of the time and investment, joke’s on me.

I stopped myself from buying $500 worth of T-shirts last night. I had all the carts at check out. I did the math on time I’d need to spend at work with the extra groups I’ve taken on. I stopped when I considered all the the shirts I’ve already bought. I can go two weeks without doing laundry. I’m still going to shows this year with some of the bands I want merch from. I found it incredibly tempting to buy because of how many were sold out. There are thousands of small shirts many bands I enjoy can’t sell to their fat fans.

Spending money isn’t going to fill the hole. Pretending I need some kind of empathetic or affirmative response from my ex isn’t either. Getting enmeshed with the creatives has points of potential and light, but there’s often a reason those types find their collectives and version of the pageantry that I find reason to violate as quickly as any other.

It’s fucking Tuesday, man. I still have to work tomorrow. My concert schedule slows down considerably this back half of the year, so I have more time to either fight with projects on the land, or drink with creatives. The writer’s strike has helped me catch up on so much TV. I’ve tinkered on my piano and guitars. I even read a chapter in The Boys which I’ve been delaying until I felt I had the proper focus for the better part of a year. 

What do I really want? The insurance to impanel us. The ability to take off. To be out of debt because the debt is laughable, not inevitable, or a several months slog. I want to be able to host my own parties for parties of 1 or 2. I still want to go to bed when I please and wake up the same way.

Every day it feels closer, irrationally so or not. The sum total of my effort and perspective continues to compound and accumulate. I just need these last few pieces to fit.

[1046] Tee'd Off

I keep missing something when I write. I always used to write in order to feel better. I needed it to get my stomach settled or to get my head to stop hurting. When it became clear I was just always going to be an “on” person, a kind of regulating mechanism. I used to find useful bits of insight. I hadn’t really landed on as many pieces as I needed to shape and grow confident in my identity. If anything, today, I’m hard-pressed to tell you what I haven’t asked and answered about myself. The only thing “new” is my propensity to hyper-focus on doing a handful of new things every few months or years.

Take something simple, like band shirts. I’ve been buying a lot of them. I bought a heat press and 10 blank black t-shirts. I’ve spent what I easily consider “obscene” amounts of money on them so far. Until this shift into, basically collecting, band shirts was kicked off during Riot Fest last year, I reflexively balked at the $30-$40 price tags and completely ignored every table. Now? The shirts have come to mean something more. They stand for a “style” choice I almost never make for myself. They signify I’m supporting an artist directly who I’ve almost certainly been stealing their music their entire career. People have been noticing the shirts and complimenting me or saying they like a band. They’re more comfortable and fit correctly unlike the random shit I’ve bought from American Eagle or Goodwill. A mostly black wardrobe means you don’t have to think about visible sweat stains.

But I’m also feeling “fuck you” every time I buy one. Fuck you universe who says this should constitute more debt or something seemingly unreasonable. Fuck you teenage me who didn’t have the presence of mind to budget for shirts that would be vintage and extra cool today. Fuck you overpriced monopoly Ticketmaster which makes the whole spectacle of even seeing an artist expensive as fuck, so why not double it and at least take home more than a memory? I want all the shirts in the same way I wanted to obsessively write down animal names, collect Pokemon cards, or approach 50 different tasks at once in developing the land. I’m manufacturing meaning in a sea of otherwise ambivalence.

You know what shirt I absolutely don’t want? Your stupid brand, fest, or infinite lineup. I don’t support Rockville or Wonderoad or Bonnaroo or any of the way-too-many festival names as though they haven’t almost become parodies. If anything, going to so many shows has made me deeply appreciate the 400 person venue and the different palpable energy of a room verses the expanse of “festival types.” I’ve never had a concert touch what Steaksauce Mustache did at The Hi-Fi, but Anxious, and Knuckle Puck both earned t-shirt buys with their energy in the same room. Legacy bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire don’t need me buying shirts, but I’d slap a sticker on my speaker and testify to their unique power and energy across a stadium forever. I also bought a sticker printer.

I need shows and shirts and time-consuming activities like reading or watching everything because the alternative is darkness. The alternative is thinking, endlessly, about how often things get fucked, how hopeless they feel, how alone I generally am, or some narrative about how I still might not be doing “enough” in spite of any benchmark achieved. I need a story of indulgence and largess not because I’m blind and greedy, but because it’s what I’ve been working towards. I’ve arguably jumped the gun in overburdening the credit cards, but also, to this day, I’m in no more debt that I could have comfortably paid off had I not gotten fucked on the house flip. I can’t take the double whammy of not having anything to show for the time, effort, and investment. So I’m going to carry on like I invested in “the universe” and now that fucker needs to pay dividends.

It’s hard to get a handle on how angry I really am. I don’t do a lot of angry things. I don’t yell. I’ve even managed to dial back being particularly cunty in the road-rage vein. I’ve never just gotten used to or okay about the shit storm that is our politics or capitalist environment. If I ruminate on that stuff, “little’ things start to nag deeper; perhaps a proudly ignorant and defiant client or an entitled cunt baffled by the dynamics of a rock concert pit. I get angry that people praise and compliment me. I get angry at the idea of paying for glasses as my over-used contacts scratch my eyes. I get anxious about what I’m wholly prepared to say to the person who, for reasons I cannot grasp, thinks to treat me like I don’t exist or won’t react to them touching me or dictating something they have no business speaking to. I never know if it’s really appropriate to crack. I don’t have to. I don’t want to discover how much I needed to by surprise.

The amount of people who have asked me, ”Well, then, is he really your friend?“ when I’ve described the circumstances around the kid being in my friend’s care and the speeding and gun pull is getting high enough to mention in a blog. I’ve never made excuses for that series of circumstances and wouldn’t play along with the logic I couldn’t see. It’s also an undeniable crisis I still wish we could be rid of. I don’t know what to make of getting blown off. I can’t tell you the next time I won’t get angry at the words, ”I’m sorry.“ It feels as though my safety net is under attack. I’ve literally auditioned another friend for being the one to call in an emergency. I don’t think I have much of any real responsibility towards the situation but to keep speaking to it as honestly as I see it.

I’m not ungrateful, but I’ll stray. - not quite Tegan and Sara

There’s a version or mode of me that has every book I own read, an instrument practiced at least 30 minutes a day, and every video game beaten in the next 6 months. And then what? When I’m feeling lost for what to do, I start to vibe and feel gratified at the prospect of hunkering down like the world’s most accomplished introvert/nerd. I get home, dick around online, put on the next show, and retreat to the meandering middling task-handling for work or chores or needing to eat. Can’t retreat when you’re in Chicago next week. Can’t pretend you’ll know your focus or energy on your next in-office day. You’ll totally forget Secret Invasion came out or get a surprise perfect day for working outside. Best play things in stride, no?

When I played guitar 10 hours a day for months, I was becoming what I felt was a decent musician. When I read every single thing I could find, watched every lecture, and wrote extensively on a topic, I was confident I could earn my PhD or obliterate the ”lazy“ and ”ignorant“ person who couldn’t be bothered to learn anything before they spoke on it. When I decided the land was the place to live, I sacrificed fucking everything by way of comfort and self-respect, sleeping in my car, on a couch, and working non-stop at as many as 3 jobs at a time. I’m not meant for whatever it is you want to call what I’m doing. The average person sees 3.2 live shows a year. If that’s true for you from 15 to 55, you’ll get to 128. I beat that by 1 tonight between now and last year.

I’m growing increasingly fond of having a handler and being pointed in a direction. James Bond is an employee. I don’t need a mythical daddy, but I do need a sponsor or benefactor or nominally malicious overlord. I can function better when I’m housed within something. I keep working my job. I got through school. I’ve never been fired. I can memorize the rulebook. I can learn the language of your field. I could be something if you’d just give me a chance.

[1045] Out Of My Mind

Let’s do an “all over the place” one.

Things are considerably less mysterious. That is, I see what it takes over time. I start to see how the dynamic is shaped and what compounds. I’ve reached a milestone, so to speak, in surpassing my “fun things” number from last year this weekend. I’ve been to 66. It is day 169 of the year. That’s 39%. What have I noticed? There’s no shortage of openers saying something like, “I can’t believe I’m on tour with so-and-so.” A good portion of artists are still psychologically arrested by 2020, and 3 years later, are so grateful to be touring again. Labels matter in getting exposure. Pockets of “different” companies profit from the entire chain they put bands on.

I’ve gotten, regrettably, considerably more jaded about the fame or money any given band may achieve. There’s an incredible amount of talented people who take the time to learn how to do just about anything with their instrument. Can they conform to a model that has them filling an arena? Can they box their creativity into something uniquely them, yet familiar, spontaneous, but in time for tour, rebellious, but safe for the radio? You know music is a business, but recently, the veneer of the work ethic or star power has worn off when fat little marketing trolls take the stage after Weezer to remind you the bars are still open! Can’t you help a humble promoter out and share your pictures with the right hashtags a little sooner too? Did you check out our meet-n-greet tent!? The only charismatic member of the band whose name you know won’t be there.

Shift.

When I hang out with one of my friends, the sentiments, “I just don’t give a fuck,” or, “People don’t give a fuck” are a common refrain. Why try too hard at work? The state doesn’t care. Your coworkers don’t care. You’re not getting a raise. You won’t get in trouble. No one notices half the shit you do or don’t do on any given day. It’s just reality, you, them, the fucks aren’t there, and you’re not wrong for not then insisting we infuse the space with fucks indeed. This will only serve to alienate, draw the wrong kind of attention, and highlight the overall no-fucks-given environment that your naivety wishes to lay at everyone’s feet.

At scale, you get essentially failed fascist states and wholly ambivalent corporate identities subbing in for any given right or obligation a mere mortal might’ve conceived in the way-back times. If you’re me, you make persistent flailing attempts to subvert the entire paradigm with quickly diminishing gains. I won’t stop trying, but I won’t pretend I think I’m going to ”win“ save plugging into a kind of network or thread of enthusiasm I’ve never personally encountered in life. I’ll be 35 in just over a month. The odds feel stacked against me.

I think of it like all of the creative types moving to creative cities. You know where you need to go if you have a certain drive to act or sing. Hell, you know where to go if you’re a solid engineer. If you’re just kinda smart or motivated or can pretty much learn to fit in anywhere, I guess you just drift. If your business is people, and not necessarily ones with money or connections, it’s your job to keep picking up the cigarette butts and old gum marring someone else’s picturesque landscape. I’m pretty much just a tumbleweed custodian in my field.

Rev.

We get hundreds, if not thousands, on the same page though. It takes crews to get these festivals set up and organized. It takes all those names on every one of your favorite movies. The drives to my different shows across the Midwest have hundreds of small-but-large-and-profitable companies across the landscape none of us have ever heard of. On my best day, I can get me and 2 other people in the same room. When I do so, are we talking hopes and dreams? In a sense, if the dream is to resolve the current frozen hellscape of our arrested lives and prospects.

The shows I attend so rarely ever have a ”that person is definitely here alone“ person. When they do, it’s the weird dancer, or bizarre hat wearer, or odd configuration of ill-shaved hair. So many people have friends. Don’t catch yourself listening to what they talk about all through any given performance though, or painful reminders will blast why you often prefer to be alone. My friends are busy. My friends are tired. My friends have obligations. I don’t know what’s going on with all of these people and their friends or family, but they must not be from around here.

This feels like the time to point out the disconcerting number of tattoos I noticed of state outlines, presumably where they are from, that people must identify with to a degree I feel as though were I so afflicted by Indiana, I’d likely kill myself.

One performance today stood out for how goddamn insufferably hokey it was. I was so uncomfortable. First, and I’ve said this a lot, I fucking hate ”hippie“ types. Every stunted thought experiment they never run gets answered by a pathological implementation of ”love“ or ”togetherness“ or some feel-good sentiment backed by nothing but the most inane pageantry available to the devout of any faith.

Michael Franti not only asked you to turn and hi-five or say hi to your neighbor, but to form giant circles together and have someone dance in the middle. He insists you hug the friends you came with, a lot. He knows that no matter how confused he gets or divided we are, love wins! Include strangers in your general jubilation! Doh-see-doh the entire park! Then, everyone gets a turn on stage, the main one or the mini ones set up in the crowd and visited every other song. Let’s hold a small child and encourage it to sing, through 9 increasingly excruciating false endings to 1 of a dozen songs that felt like the dog from Blue’s Clues or a Teletubby were poised to step on stage. It was gross and insincere, and I was happy to deny and annoy the drunk mom who poked me in the stomach to say, ”You have to do it“ in beckoning me for the dance circle portion. I’m only here to get a better spot for Jason Isbell 2 hours from now…the fuck I do.

A good faith steel-manning of that behavior would be entertaining the idea the he actually believed what he as saying, there’s nothing wrong in democratizing the space and inviting people who were clearly eating it up to stuff as much as they could fit. It’s fine for that to not be my vibe, kind of people, and there’s no harm, right? I’m not so sure, but I don’t wish to keep revisiting my trauma.

Hussain asked me what I was doing yesterday. I sent him a picture of a stage. His response: ”Fuck“

Shift.

I’m thinking of going approximately 20K in debt. It would be for the supplies to finish my fence, garage/wood shop, solar panel pergola, driveway, wood-burner set up, and above ground pool. That’s estimating another 7k. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I’ve grown so ambivalent to debt, or because I actually want to shift into doing a ton of big fun expensive things at once, and am sick of hearing the excuse that I don’t have the money, time, or help.

Ultimately, I have “the” job to lose in the broadest context. This begs an entirely different question of that “comfort” one shouldn’t get comfortable with when you’re plugged into a space where no one gives a fuck, but I’ve found myself willing to suspend getting so antagonized by that thought with new performances pounding through my head every few days. Make no mistake. My job is easy. My job is placating. My job is not what I want to do with my life, does not bring me fulfillment enough to ignore what’s wrong with it, and does not pay me anywhere near what it nets them. Fuck my job and the harm they cause in the name of “harm reduction.”

Shift.

I have so many tools. Music tools. Tool tools. technological tools. Crafting tools. Massage tools. I can only use one at a time and in service to the most haphazard ideas or projects. I have as many books as I have tools. By now, I’ve forgotten why I was so interested in getting half of them. My book shelf, slowly bending forward like an arthritic spine under the weight of so much wasted potential and initial enthusiasm. I used to be so smart. I still am, but I used to be in a way cooler way.

I want a “thing.” I want to turn down the dial on the “mutli-potentiate” bullshit and just have a thing. I know so many families are miserable thinking that was going to be there thing before it sunk in families are made of fucking people. You’ll hear that sentence differently if you’ve worked in child welfare or had a slutty step sibling. Turns out, just like you can’t actually dance or sing the pain away, you can’t “love” your manipulative immature ignorant and petty family into a place of mutually prosperous mental health states. Go figure.

You get a tool to fix a problem. This presumes you’ve accurately diagnosed the problem, know how to use the tool, and care to fix the problem in the first place. I think I have a lot of tools for an incredibly hard problem to diagnose. I think it’s a multi-faceted problem to do with my relationships, or lack thereof, my willingness and capacity to focus, learn, and do in spite of any meaningful spirit animating the behavior, and my existential concerns regarding time, will, and ego. When I say something like, “I’m not ready to die,” I think my behavior overtly suggests as much over highs and lows and long periods of time. I try to exude less desperation and more indulgence. I try to ask more questions and run new experiments. I recognize the next level and continue to explore. Thankfully, I know I’m in charge of my sobriety and need to put myself first or I might have a tattoo of a state that sends 10 years to Indiana for abortions. I suspect that person can’t diagnose their problem anymore than I can mine.

[1044] Reason Seasoning

I haven't talked religion in a long time. I just watched this "Skinny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets" series though. My brain is kicking off down some heavily compacted trails, but I'd still like to see if there's anything new.

I'm very much in the "religion poison's everything" camp. Whatever you may wish to claim is right or wrong about human behavior, there's a familiar, comforting, and easily digested religious anecdote, adage, or idiom to summarize and excuse away any remote lesson or inclination towards accountability. At bottom, every book, every tradition, every gathering of thousands boils down to "Because God!" The unprovable, ineffable essence of what us boring nerdy types recognize as self-satisfied circular-reasoning and infinite regress. Every single religious tradition terminates the same way.

As such, you take whatever fiendish inclination between thought crime to child molesting to child torture then molesting then murdering, as long as you punctuate it with "God's will," or spin-doctor it into your next trial and lesson, it never actually has to get dealt with. And why should it? It's the same people perpetrating that get attention, power, money, and literally thousands of people crafting their day-to-day excuses to not think for themselves or find their agency. Arguably, beyond the wholesale corruption of critical thinking, the thing I hate most about religious types is the unearned pride and piety bestowed by thirsty empty sheep looking for a strong daddy.

This isn't shaping up to be a blog where I feel moved to qualify anything positive about religious experience, so don't expect this to look "balanced" or "fair" or giving much a shit about your personal story as it pertains to your Jesus. You've been warned.

Anyway, now that I deal with addiction, I get to see new, but precisely the old, patterns manifest in ways I haven't written about yet. It could be notions of "purity" and "submission" that plague the minds of those who literally can't see a paradigm that would allow them to be independent. You're at the mercy of the eldest man who I don't think it would be unfair to say you're addicted to. We're addictive creatures, trying to indulge the positive feelings at all costs. Literally, we will die to feel good, and I don't think this is framed as dangerous as it's registering to me in this moment.

I've heard a lot of, "I just don't want to deal..." from my friends as much as any client. No one wants to deal. They don't want the headache. They don't have the time. Whether they're addicted to their vape or to some desperate conception of their duty or destiny, they don't fundamentally feel situated to deal with the heart of whatever their own issues may be. It becomes very easy to get enmeshed in family issues, client issues, indulgences for their own sake, or a feverish "busy-ness" pointed in no real direction in particular. They want to feel good. Maybe not even "better" than "good" or "good enough."

That's part of the religious impulse, no? You want to feel better about the infinite. You want to matter. You want to think you've created a kind of noble and lasting example in your attempt to start a family or in how hard you've worked to get letters after your name and higher paychecks. You want to pay your respects and keep the traditions of your elders alive. You want to think someone's paying attention and keeping score. It doesn't matter if in your heart of hearts you "don't believe in anything," as one woefully incomplete phrasing tries to caricature it, it matters that it feels better to "believe in something" than your insignificance and lack of connection. Jesus is a thousand times easier to understand emotionally than "quantum" anything.

It just feels so fucking boring and disingenuous after, well I spent years reading/arguing this stuff, but with an adult brain and 15 minutes, some deeply consequential layers of this shit needs to crack. You can be a perfectly good person without anything religious making its way into the conversation or your identity. Your car takes gas, not God's will, and for whatever scientific description you want to use about the combustion engine, the same scientific principles and rules apply to what's going to make you "go" as a healthy connected individual verses an incidentally alive node in a narcissist's cult.

I genuinely wish for the shedding of religious indoctrination to happen as quick as possible. I wish the people who hold it harmless would spend more time in good faith analyzing what they think it's been teaching them. Every form of abuse is justified "because God." Every opportunity to hold someone to account is a move to kick the can all the way to Hell. You reduce yourself to the dog who got in the trash. It's never going to walk up to you, apologize, and begin picking up and putting it back in the can. It's going to live in fear, or oblivious pride, and wait for daddy to decide what comes next.

It's always and of course the religious household where you get the most abuse and allegations. If you build church bells to sound "duh" on the hour every hour, we would still carry ourselves as if noticing a cross on the wall is tantamount to a Safe Space sticker for runaway teens. Where else are you going to find the worst kind of predictable tragedies of human behavior than where there's billions of dollars and adherents fundamentally situated to pretending? They pretend they weren't abused. They pretend to know what it is to be accountable. They pretend to have an identity. They pretend with every single word meant to obscure. It's easier to say "sin" than, "He made an 8 year old suck his dick."

There's so many parallels in my thought right now, it's hard to put it together. People defend the wrong things in the exact same ways with the exact same language. Your abusive partner, Trump, religious pedophile, terrible drug use influence..."He didn't mean...." and you're off to the races of excuses and reinterpretation of words and actions that have about as definitive a meaning as you could ever ask for. Every second you experience a moment of hesitation or confusion about something you haven't studied or don't have the mental faculties to entertain..."It's part of a larger plan." Yes, someone's always Ocean's 11ing things in the background.

People will escape! Then they will still say, "You can still trust God!" As though I should be surprised that an entire lifetime spent being punished for having your own identity could lend itself to any other conclusion. No no, dear traveler, what all of these rich sex and violence addicts were doing with all of their influence and time, never being held to account, that's the "fake God" stuff. The "real God" stuff is do literally everything they've ever said and done that doesn't rise to the level of pedophilia or violence that leaves marks. Nailed it!

I get annoyed when Hussain will say something about sex or relationships that is as purely distilled "purity culture" cult shit as you could stomach. Even if none of his actions reflect that of a controlling husband/ownership dynamic, he can't shake that it just feels "right" that you have your one woman, and anything else is grounds for divorce or disassociating. This, with I guess his tongue sticking straight through his cheek, as he tells me the permissibility of having 4 wives in his culture. You see, you can't "cheat" or be "open," but you can corral four bagged women to be at your beck and call if the money's right. You don't get that stupid convoluted headspace without religion.

Let's get back to "deal with it" as a phrase. We just don't want to deal. We don't want to deal with climate change. We don't want to deal with the fallout of our toxic friends or habits. We don't want to deal with our oppressor be it at work or in abstract attacks from the government. Why deal? It doesn't feel good. No one in our various religious contexts is showing us what effectively dealing means. It's not even really an option because it can't be conceived of. What are you not "dealing with" in your "addiction?"  After a few weeks/months you can pretty much be physically fine if not in dire need to recalibrate your dopamine and serotonin over the next 2 years.

I'm interested in what moves us past this whole "religious debate" that doesn't get to the heart of making excuses and fantasy worlds verses working within our actual power. We talk about "raising consciousness" which I think looks a lot like people showing people things, but without an appreciation for how or why they learn so it doesn't really matter how often it comes up, it never sinks in. You could very easily discuss the assumptions and illusions we're situated in as conscious beings altogether to persistently derail what that next conversation space could look like. I don't need another cult-leader, rich god-guys-is-an-asshole story. Do you? Are you ripe and ready to fall for NXIVM or Scientology if your Jesus or Mohamed wears off?

These crazies, these cultists, these monetarily powerful playing on human weakness fucks think in generational terms. We can't be persuaded to get half a dozen people into an intentional community, but you have millions on the same smug team regularly donating, indoctrinating, infiltrating, and humbly requesting through speakers outside the baseball stadium that you meet them halfway in a discussion about who's more likely to burn for all eternity as though we're not literally on fire already. Blame Canada!

You don't want to deal? You don't want to accept? You don't want to try? You don't want to touch an ounce of the anger you hear from me when I type? You're the piddling middle-ground that doesn't protest when the Nazi sits at your table. You're the $10 donation affirming private air fare for your spew-daddy while your neighbor starves. You're the held-harmless "individual" "who's just trying..." every overtaxed phrase about caring for them and theirs or what it means to be "good." They're not trying. They're not just. "They" aren't real or a person. They're a water molecule without the language of "flood."

We're all part of more waves than we can conceive. You can disappear into it, or you can adopt the buoy's perspective. You can learn how to be weather and impact resistant, bob and weave, act as a warning and help others navigate. It's dangerous to give your checking capacity to anything else. You need to be able to recognize the impulse, what ignorance looks and sounds like, and feel, as deeply and radically as the ideologues do, a sense of purpose and direction. Religious thinking is arsenic sprinkled on food and you say, "Oh! Almonds! Want a bite?" It's where you go to feel good about not taking responsibility. It's where you go to celebrate addictive thinking patterns. It's how you get to Hell. "You," of course, not me, because I don't need your daddy. I don't need him molesting the kids I try to place. I don't need his money. I don't need his excuses or story for my behavior or sense of agency. 

Why the fuck do you?

[1043] One Step

The ten second version of my Saturday night/Sunday morning is that, on a trip back from Fort Wayne, I pissed off the kid, he pulled over and kicked me out of my friend's car while waving his airsoft gun around and ranting about how he does whatever he wants and what it is to be a man. The several pages that come next are going to build the months, if not almost two years-long context around that moment.

Most of you know my friend adopted a kid. It was a kid from his caseload when we were at DCS. He's known him since he was 7 or 8, and he's going to be 18 in July. He's, by the numbers, the highest you can score across categories recording trauma. He's had, or continues to have, every "behavior" dumbass eager Christian foster homes blithely discuss before they figure out they can't handle it. He's adopted the hood gangster affect, changes how he talks, walks, and is always, always, "on" in some form of aggressive tip, be it in name-calling or slamming cabinets in pouring himself milk. That is, to hear my friend tell it, if there's anyone else around and it's not just the two of them.

This is the same kid who found his dead brother, cousin, and cousin's fiancé after, in the months before the murder double homicide, my friend warned the kid if he kept antagonizing his brother, something like that tragedy would be the result. My friend had made a certain kind of pact with himself, that if he was ever going to foster or adopt, it would be this kid or this other little girl with her own sordid story of abuse and behaviors that he could navigate in a way others couldn't.

To my friend's credit, while it is an extremely weird habit and pattern, his "adoption" of disaffected white boys and seeing them all grow up, not precisely in the best place mental-health wise, but not having committed suicide, all with professional jobs, homes, or a connection that sees them reaching out for decompression or hang-out and come-to-Jesus sessions that don't spiral more than they need to. That this kid, with his extra-special aberrant status would kind of fall into his lap feels like so many mile markers on a highway we've been driving down for 20+ years.

The last few times I've written, I've wondered why so many "simple" things about what I desire are so hard or expensive to achieve. I've asked how much agency or control we really have under the spell of our pimps or cultural paradigms. Rarely anymore am I looking for the lesson, more than underlining or reiterating things it can be hard to build into new normative behaviors. Regardless of your trauma, level of emotionality, discomfort, or specific story of woe, you either discover and practice the littlest pieces of control and accountability, or you don't. It takes one moment to eschew your better demons and best ideas, and so practice, and honesty, and articulation deeply matter.

With all that in mind, if your goal in taking on a child is to merely "keep them alive," my friend is doing very well. If it's to expand their horizons and attempt to plug them into the larger world, no one is more keen to travel with the kid, take him to art galleries, buy him things related to cars and video games, and invite him along to the shows or activities he might otherwise be doing. Most parents, at least the ones concerned about how "the world" is going to perceive their children, know the task is much harder than keeping them fed and culturally enriched. And don't get me wrong, my friend knows this as well.

Here's the big "but."

This kid is mean. He's mean-spirited. He's volatile. He's aggressive. He's as unaccountable a person as I've ever encountered in life. I've worked for DCS. I've worked in prison. This kid is meaner and more disingenuous than people barely older than him serving years of their life for things he glorifies. Anyone who's been or has a teenager knows they're irrational and a certain kind of frustrating or "crazy." But you also probably have a strong instinct of when you're feeling particularly hormonal or out of control, and just being mean for mean's sake. It's unclear if the kid can differentiate, but again, to hear my friend tell it, when no one else is around, he's otherwise pretty decent and "normal." So?

We're beginning to shape the "have it both ways" portion of the narrative surrounding this kid. The fact that he can turn off and on whether he wants to be decent is not points in his favor. It shows that he's being as deliberately malicious as I accuse him of being. If I thought he was just "stuck" in some form of extreme PTSD or disassociative acting out, I'm backing off. I'm not writing this, forming some damming opinion, nor expecting him to behave in any other way than someone who functionally doesn't have their brain in their possession is going to behave.

My friend is extremely indulgent and entitled. I don't mind those character traits in and of themselves as, obviously, so am I. This influences his approach to creating a "stable" or "therapeutic" environment for what I call his "charges" more than "disaffected white boys." You're depressed? He'll take you to the woods and do some shamanic acid session. He'll get food with you and smoke you out. He'll let you rant about your blind spots and the consequences they've wrought indefinitely. It feels bad to be broke, abused, neglected, and lonely, like so many of us are, so if you get around him or he decides to care for you, let's flood your experience with the opposite of the pain.

The strategy has kept many a potential school shooter or suicide statistic alive. The strategy is incomplete and is being taken advantage of by the exact kind of mean-spirited violence engine that thrives on chaos. My friend drives a Camaro. That is, he did, before he functionally gave it to this kid who doesn't work, barely does chores, can't refrain from getting suspended or expelled every few weeks, and uses it to drive a series of high school girls back to their apartment to fuck and dismiss with some regularity. When my friend's cars are busted and the Camaro still works, he's coming to borrow my, also old and broken vehicles, because he doesn't want to leave the kid without a car.

The kid's "therapeutic environment" consists of constant access to vapes, I think Delta-8, weed, all of the accompanying parts that enable smoking from torches or pieces or batteries and surely a dozen other things I couldn't name. There's a tightrope you're walking at any given moment regarding his stability, and that's not to be disrupted. If he doesn't have a car, he doesn't get to go to his usual spot to get the "lesser" drug from the reliable spot and people they've coordinated to facilitate. Drug use is literally built into this kids DCS safety plan, because for years every other form of intervention has proven to cause more harm, stress, and drama than anyone involved, including the judge, cared to keep returning to.

It feels like now is the time to tell you, as I was being kicked out of the car, the kid referred to it as ,"my whip," which it absolutely is not, and he's had a melt down upon the realization of such in the past. Yelling at my friend, "That's not my car, that's your car. I don't have anything around here, none of this shit is mine for real," not an exact quote.

Anyway, some of the consistent interests the kid has shown are in guns, violent Youtube videos, Grand Theft Auto, and cars. He and my friend will talk cars indefinitely. The kid will bring out and clean his guns, airsoft or otherwise, like he's a war veteran trying to stay vigilant. They'll spend hours flipping through different skins and modifications to their in-game characters and cars. I can forgive a kid for being boring and single minded or having shitty taste in music. But he uses his interests to help bolster and glorify his thug-life narrative and demons.

On the way to Fort Wayne, there are decent stretches of straight highway. The kid, smiling, seatbelt-less, gestures with his head back to my friend, "You know, we have to come back out here and see what we can hit (speed wise.) We gotta make a pact though, that if one of us dies, it's not on the other one. You don't gotta feel bad or there's no heaviness or bad blood." Also not a direct quote. As far as I can tell, the kid has a familiar suicidal impulse that I want nothing to do with. I certainly don't want to be in the car with him as he's racing past 120 miles per hour weaving through traffic and riding asses from old people to bikers.

The kid does not seem to retain the capacity to genuinely appreciate the chance he's been given. He was literally on his way to a mental facility or prison before my friend stepped in. On his super speeding racing stints he'd say something like, "I got this bitch all the way to 125 even with your fat asses in the whip." I'm as much for jovial shit-talking as the next person, but that's all he's ever on, and he's proud of the danger and, at least while I'm around, almost never corrected or redirected. It's precisely here you start to flirt with terms like "codependent" and "enabling."

My buddy has his own list of stressors and drama related to his family and a bank fucking him financially. DCS has always played games. His jobs require a lot of time and driving. If the kid was a saint, his life would be particularly stressful the last couple years. With the kid as an ungrateful, hateful engine of chaos, we've seen even periods of remote stability get shaken by a stiff breeze. For every little seeming win, he's just as eagerly prepared to regress and destroy and throw what's been accomplished out the window. I don't care if for the first time in memory the kid is waking up and regularly taking out and cleaning up after the $800 dog he got last week if he's prepared to wave a gun at me when I yell at him to slow the fuck down and stop driving like he wants to kill us all.

We're at the point now where I want the game called. I want to press charges. I want consequences to send the kid where he belongs, which is not in a struggling household with a single foster parent who does not have the time, energy, or intention of the mental facility the child needs. Would they do right by him? Probably not. We live in Indiana and a country that doesn't train or care or invest in dealing with kids nowhere near his level. Is that his, or especially my, cross to bear? I don't think I've for a second supported him getting this kid well before I had any instantiated opinion on the kid for a dozen reasons related to getting our own shit together first. There's many reasons I don't have kids, even if I went to zero concerts the last two years and had thousands to spend on them.

The problem has reached the point where I'm feeling very "me or him." I want nothing to do with the kid. I'm watching my best friend functionally abandon me to the whims and chance of his kid's behavior, and I'm so devoid of how to conceptualize that, that it doesn't even make me feel angry or like I want to move into a space of judgment and resentment. I think my friend cares. I think he tried. I think it's an abject failure. I think I accepted the nature of our dynamic being that of, "You know, I'm not really trying to take the bullet for you," when we were having those discussions as teenagers. I'm not taking a bullet, or high-velocity air rifle rounds, from this little shit.

I handle crisis or crisis-adjacent situations all the time. To even talk about my "anger" related to the situation might give you the wrong impression that I didn't make a calm deliberate call to the police as I heard the tires screeching as the kid peeled away. My adrenaline wasn't pumping. I wasn't yelling. But, much as when I handed my ex the knife to shit or get off the pot with the threat of her slitting her wrists, I don't deal well with living under the sword of Damocles. This kid has been too hot and too unstable from the jump, and the gifts and rewards and placations have done nothing but provide an environment for him to feel emboldened to continue and draw pride from his self-destruction. My friend smokes a lot, speeds, and plays the same games. I don't see the capacity to lead by example along the metrics the kid needs to change. I see an uncle the kid might be allowed to visit in small doses after he's actually shown something worth rewarding.

One of the topics I've been talking about in Groups this last week is forgiveness/grace. How much room do you give? In my view, we never had to get to dropped on the side of the highway at 3 AM after gun waiving, but we did. I was certainly speaking to the issue well before it got that far. How much should we belabor the story of the kid's trauma? Certainly to a serious and far degree, but are we willing to also accept that you can be a fucking dickhead psychopath on top of that? Our job isn't to save anyone. It's to exercise your perspective and try. I tried right up until the point I couldn't stop repeating to myself, "I'm not dying for the fucking kid," and thinking about Ryan Dunn or all the shows unseen and projects not attempted.

I'm not forgiving the kid anymore than I'm forgiving my mom. Like her, he's not equipped to build on and exercise an accountable perspective. His upbringing or genetics broke his brain. The Hail Mary that is my friend attempting to contain this kid is causing me to contemplate in a measured way how I need to consciously uncouple from anything to do with either of them. This isn't a game, for all of my analogies suggesting otherwise. An excellent DMT trip might have released my buddy from a fear of death, but I'm not so ambivalent.

We can return to fundamentals. What can I control, what can't I? I can't make my friend adopt my perspective. I can never be in contact with the kid again. I can deny my truck to be loaned out and say, "You invited his impending meltdown into your home, not me." I can clear my booze and video games out of their house and go back to paying to do my laundry. I can press charges. I don't know if there's an underlying cry for help to release my friend from some sunk-cost fallacy that's rooted itself into this dynamic because I don't know what I can trust in the "I'm sorrys" that change nothing and persist in bad behavior, and tales of appeasement held up as growth. That's not good for my friend, for the kid, and certainly not for me.

[1042] Wrecked

How about this. I'll write my current hell as it's happening. I'm currently in the backseat of the Camaro with the kid driving. We're cruising between 90-100 miles per hour. He's already swerved through traffic, hit the gas hard through a residential/construction area to run a red light. He's blasting rap music. He's in look-over-at-my-friend conversation. I've texted my friend saying, "I want you to take over driving."

The kid is volatile. He gets aggressive and would certainly be the cause of any accident the Camaro is involved in. He's hairs away from cars, and a biker, he flashed his lights at and sped around on the way up. I don't feel safe in the real way where one surprise or issue crushes this sports car and because....? We don't want to set an appropriate boundary and expectation for this kid who needs to be constantly appeased or danced around?

I'm over it in a way I wish I had arrived at before I ever agreed to buy a ticket for him. I get all the work my friend has done to get the kid to whatever point you want to describe him as. There's been and continues to be a huge missing piece in this whole endeavor. If you want to build all of that into your household, whatever. But I'm here. I'm not unfairly asking to be appeased across unreasonable metrics. You can't make the kid less of a dick or emotionally stable. You can say, "Hey bro, I wanna drive."

Oh yeah, the various cartridges of weed and vape shit is fogging the air and and adding to the headache of being a good 6 inches too tall for the roof.

We'll regularly discuss the circumstance in which the kid might end up dead or in jail. It's a kind of forgone conclusion that this whole thing could fail quickly and miserably. If the kid has a prayer, I don't wish to be along for the ride.

I'm fucking up by playing along. I don't like the kid, trust the kid, or want any kind of dynamic with him That's what it is. I'm not obligated to this psuedo-theurapudic dance. I have to survive 2 more hours with this Camaro potential projectile and then I'm never even flirting with this kind of shit again.