[1064] High On Believing

It's getting late and I have to be up early. I'm curious if there's anything on my mind.

I think a lot about spending money. It's more or less unconscious, but my mind will flow between things I've imbued with an impression for their potential. I think it'll be "fun" stuff, or things that will help me avoid getting "bored." I feel a certain obligation to play my instruments the more expensive they were. I like the idea of myself being free of mind enough to reengage practicing like I used to. I don't want to be someone who only had potential instead of tried to make it look and sound like something cool.

I've had a couple instances of buying a large amount of things at once that I was sick of talking myself away from. My new computer was $2500, when I bought a bunch of tools it hit $4500 and I included some household things and Beats. Another tools, house stuff, books, games, and piano hit $2300. I just spent $1700 a few days ago on a series of electronics. These aren't numbers that going to account for a single shimmering stone on a rapper's ring, but for your small-time "professional" who's spent many years of his life getting by on $5000-$10,000 a year, it makes you feel a certain way.

That feeling grows more nagging yet ambiguous when you look around at all of your toys that you don't feel like you're really allowed to play with. That is, the things I buy I also consider a certain kind of work. Yes, it is fun to know how to play a song or use different instruments, but that comes after a great deal of time and work and very very slowly practicing things your fingers can't do yet. It takes focus. It takes dipping into that "forever" compulsive well that sees one destination, learning whatever's in front of me, and blocks out everything else.

I find it very hard to "switch gears." I want to do whatever the thing is all the way. If I have work for 4 days, I want to get as much of the work done and out of the way in 4 days, and then switch into "get to the show" mode. If I pick up my guitar, I want to play it pretty much until I can't anymore, which doesn't lend itself to utilizing a nice day for yard work or running errands or beating myself up for not figuring out how to attract more counseling clients.

I think most people manifest the series of competing impulses as a kind of paralysis. I certainly feel that most days, but I can usually coax myself into a lower-investment activity that still meets my lowest order goals. That's consuming shows or spending hours organizing files. That's picking up and rearranging the house or slowly piecing together something new I've bought. It might be me doing pre/notes or replaying a song that I've learned, mostly, on one of my instruments.

But there's still a hunger. I clicked through 700 videos I've taken since last year of different bands. It sinks in with each one what an amazing opportunity and gift it is to be able to focus and write and perform. There's certainly going to be of-the-era things that make certain songs or styles click more than others, but at bottom, every single person on those stages have done the same thing. They sat, and practiced, and trudged around to perform, and connected in an imprecise way with dozens to millions of fans. Many performers are still perfectly internally tortured and all exactly human.

My head returned recently to a few ideas I think have gotten me into trouble. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and "If you build it, they will come." One is wholly misrepresenting, "We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” The other is from Field of Dreams.

I'm one to blaze ahead forward. Right or wrong, before I developed a decent way of checking my impulsivity, I'm down. Let's go fuck up your enemy, build something, or wander aimlessly in any direction that may call to us. When I started to drink and party, I became the "best" at it. When I cared about school, a bad grade was devastating. When George said I'd never play guitar as good as him, I learned how to play riffs I never imagined myself remotely capable of. I'm sitting inside that disposition, typing from my shed, projects and toys lingering and calling. I'm dreaming of things I may yet do in business. I've been to 100 entertaining events this year with 29 still on the way.

I read one of the most insightful articles by what I'm gathering is soon to be one of my new most favorite philosophers Byung Chul-Han. It speaks to what feels like a culturally inexorable detail regarding how we behave towards one another that I've bitched about, but never articulated as clearly for myself. I still don't really have a community. I consistently find the people I'm closest to, or try to be closest to, fuck me in ever deceitful and neglectful ways. All of my effort, all of my "stuff," and all of my fancy ideas have been, in one form or another, uniformly dismissed, ignored, deliberately confused, ridiculed, thrown in my face, or resented.

I feel like I register as a "risk." The nature of that risk, of course, is that I will turn you, us, and everything we're alleged to be to one another into a blog. I will never unhear, even if I forget who said or typed it, "No one wants to be a blog." No one wants the scrutiny, the accountability, or the work. No one wants to be pitted against their best or worst versions of themselves. No one wants to be seen for all they're capable of. No one wants to be summarized in so many words when they'd otherwise entertain an infinitely grand illusion about their place and behavior.

When we fit, the risk is mitigated. When we plug into a family-track or career-track or a Colorado-culture story or Insta-appropriate series of filters, there's almost no risk. You're speaking everyone's language. You're not challenging what's intuitively understood. You're certainly not taking shrooms and deconstructing the nature of "intuition" altogether. You fit. It's snug.

For you to do something like move out to the country, navigate all there is to learn, and throw yourself into the ongoing unknown is unthinkable, unless you're drunkenly talking to me in college and I'm incredibly naive. For you to accept the terms of living with or near me is to, by necessity, dive into yourself and extract the hundreds of pages that you're comprised of, and in the meantime, keep running into the abyss. That's a "spiritual" or "character" thing. You, - maybe - I'm learning, know how to budget. You'd get used to driving a bit more, or a bit less as your opportunities change. If you moved here today, you'd bypass living without water, electricity, the internet, or a place to park.

But what would it really mean for you to do so? I suspect the most likely candidate is someone at the end of their rope. They've tried the "normal" life thing, and can't afford to pay New York loft rent for a trailer each month. They hate their job. They're "lightly" addicted to something, and perhaps a particularly painful interpersonal tragedy occurs. Ring ring, "Hey maaan, you still got that land?" Poor candidate. While this is my refuge, and I'd surely love to facilitate a safe environment for someone else, they don't really want to be here, they want to be away from wherever they are.

Maybe someone has fallen down a Tik-Tok rabbit hole about sustainable living or the collapse of all the used-to-be-cool places due to climate change. Do they really care about the planet? Probably not anymore or less than I do, and I use enough electricity to mirror a 4 bedroom household. What do they wish to bring? Ideas! and maybe a little nest egg. They're full of inspiration, not necessarily perseverance or practicality.

Allie was a romantic dreamer. She literally screamed at me about how she never would have moved out here were it not for the romantic story of it all.

There's plenty of hard workers. I talk to nearly 200 a week. There's plenty of people who have compelling stories for conducting their lives along certain familiar and easily anticipated lanes. Everyone, "could use the extra cash" though. Everyone has been "too busy, with everything going on" to regularly have fun or spend the time to learn something new. Everyone, "just thought or is just sayin" some worn sentiment about the inevitability of their lot in life or the conclusions they've drawn without ever stating the premise.

I don't have kids. I don't have student loans. I don't have a major, or minor, health condition. I'm not trying to build rockets or monopolize markets. My business goals aren't of exploiting and hoarding. I very rarely raise my voice let alone break things. I've thrown thousands of dollars and thousands of hours at my friends. I continue to manifest my dreams in one form or another each day. I speak it. I work it. I offer myself to each next thing poised to exploit me. I invite in spite of my worst feelings and betrayed instincts. I write as something of an infinite regress asking the silence what I should set my sights on and if anyone would share my description of it.

I'm the risk? You don't know what I'm going to say if you need something from me? You don't know if I'll show up or foot the bill? You don't know the nature of the incoming joke? You think I'm going to flare out and give up and leave you stranded? You think I'm keeping some big secret about my feelings or desires that's going to leave you hollowed out and desperate? I'm unreasonable, somehow, because I've parlayed whatever you wish to make of my energy or capacity to articulate it into more money, more time, more…everything besides friends, with each passing year? Is it even about me? Has it ever been?

I wanted the opportunity to support and be apart of what my friends used to discuss they wanted to do so fucking much. I wanted to feel like I belonged amongst people who cared and tried and created the world in spite of their circumstances. All of my wildest dreams included Playboy Mansion-esc numbers of people just around "doing the things they do." You wanted to write a book? Good thing you don't have to spend 40-80 hours a week at your job, right!? You want to travel? For all the jokes I make about living in the middle of nowhere, the airport is 45 minutes away. You've got some strong opinions about encroaching fascism? Study, organize, and grow grass roots from your toes, because you're free to. You think I live far away? Have you ever actually timed how long it takes you to get to Wal-Mart with traffic and stop lights?

My imagination could go on forever. My practical autism doesn't need to be persuaded I could be living there right the fuck now with 2 or 3 analogues of my disposition. Instead, we've isolated and set ourselves up to compete as commodities with every antagonistic call for our attention and bodily resources. We're more trapped by our internalized narratives than any slave has ever been. We're more afraid, and confused, and distrustful because we've lost all notions of "evidence" or what constitutes a value worth preserving and fighting for. We're fluid. We're goo. We're not "we."

I want to get incredibly good at my instruments, but if I didn't want to do so for me, I'd be playing to an audience who talks the entire time through my set. If I wasn't clear on what I was after, and what I continue to get, in moving out here, saving, creating, and investing in my potential, I'd feel like a failure before I ever began. I'd be wholly consumed by what you thought or what "society" deemed abnormal. That's my only window into speculating on what's going on in your body when you contort yourself away from the idea of what you could do with an "extra" $20,000 besides buy toys, tools, and shows.

It's not "one day" I'll see about doing what I like, or need, or value more than how tired I may be or scared and unprepared for the unknown unknowns. It's today, mother fucker. It's tonight, right the fuck now. And it's always right now. It's always my desire and privilege to speak and own and try and dream. Every damning thing my be true AND whatever I have to say about it or am currently working to do about it.

If you don't want space, and time, and money, and as much help doing literally anything you wish to do as I could possibly give, can you wrap your head around how fucked up that is any better than me?

It's too much. This is too many words. I'm too much angst or enthusiasm depending on how tired or unforgiving a mood you are in when you catch this. This is one slice of 1,063 for me, and for you perhaps an entire world-begrudging condescending desperate plea for companionship and solidarity I get once every month or three.

I had a wonderful conversation with Brandy over the weekend. The subject of client feedback came up, and I spoke to all of the good will and positive sentiments and thanks I get. I move to distance myself from it. I can't trust your perception of me when we're not equals. I'm not saying I'm better than my clients as people. I'm saying I'm hyper aware of how they're vulnerable and what I'm versed in. They need that same awareness, or it's like a dog just being happy you're home. It may have evolved to respond to us in a unique and meaningful way, but it doesn't love you for your mind and the house you've built for it.

I think we know we carry ourselves like so many pets. We're creepily happy to regard ours as children. We wag our thumbs with empty "enthusiasm" as so many likes, almost never shares. Fake smiles, muted barks, and endless clawing and scratching at our internal and external perceptions of chaos. We want to be on a leash, pawing for the outside, but without the restraint bound to get lost or kidnapped or hit by a car. Our favorite toys, meme-i-fied caricatures who try to remind us we're not dogs, we routinely rip to shreds, dig holes for burying, and piss on. We need someone else to feed us and decide when it is time to be put down.

I guess there was something on my mind.

[1063] Best Friend

I'm so fucking tired. I've been up since 4 and was falling asleep on the way home. I just got another call from the Anderson Police Department. They've tried to reach out to Byron 4 times, left 2 messages, and he's not responded. Byron is married to his phone. I've watched him pick up a dozen calls an hour for as long as I've known him. He's deliberately avoiding giving his story to the police.

It's looking like I no longer will have one of my oldest friends. I've watched him spiral away from the person I thought him to be for years, and it appears to have culminated in his approach and defense for this kid. If I reflect on the series of disconcerting things regarding our dynamic, I'm probably better off. Easy to say, miserably tired but feeling as though now it is absolutely necessary to explore, I'll lay it out.

When I lived in the 3-story town home, there was a fair amount of roommate shuffling. The most notable aspect of that shuffling was, I was always the last to know, expecting to have said roommates another year, and finding out within weeks of needing to re-sign that this wasn't the case. Every single person besides Hatsam, including Byron, left me scrambling to find a replacement, clean, move things out, or otherwise navigate finding a new place to live altogether.

Byron lived there initially in the living room. It was always a cluttered and chaotic disaster. He brought wild-animal asshole bunny into the mix for a few days. I didn't say anything. He needed a place to stay, so of course, I roll with the fallout of supporting my friend. Did that living arrangement foment the resentment of whomever was living there at the time? Probably. But I was also still under this impression I actually had friends who cared to support each other.

That eventually ended in a last-minute messy move out where I was left functionally homeless. I was doing drug studies, pivoted the cash, and managed to get a broke-ass moving van towed to the place and eventually towed to the land. It was early in the stages of attempting to transition to the land. I didn't have power, water, or anything remotely set up as a "living" quarter as the garage served mostly as a storage space. I didn't have it paid off. I didn't even have a coherent walkable path from the garage to the road, so any trip was bound to catch a dozen ticks and scratches from weeds.

I resolved myself to trying to make the best of it. I wanted to get used to the drive. I wanted to get a feel for the space. You do have to adjust to sleeping in a shed when all you've known is houses and apartments. I start working for Clustertruck, several other delivery companies, and other odd jobs like Kroger. I'm trying to avoid the exorbitant interest payments on the shed, so I'm working non-stop. I'm sleeping in my car in the Clustertruck parking lot so I can be guaranteed to sign on and stay on all day.

This goes on for a few weeks. It starts getting colder. Byron says he can't have his best friend sleeping in his car, and says I can stay with him and Rob. I end up sleeping on the couch and living there before starting working for Lifeline doing visit supervision. A few months later he persuades me to start working for DCS. Things aren't ideal, but they seem stable enough. I tried to keep the thought at bay that the only reason I was on his couch in the first place is him and Colin keeping me in the dark and fucking me, and I'm trying to be appreciative that I have a better paying job that's proving interesting and easier to adjust to than I imagined.

When I was making plans to leave the apartment, Byron put together a plan that, to this day, I still don't understand what went so egregiously wrong with it, but I knew I was leaving and I wasn't signing up for nor paying for anything related to wherever they planned to move next. That caused a major days-long piece of drama that got resolved when I believe it sunk in that I was getting out. I paid both Byron and Trent who had moved in by then all of the back rent for my time on the couch.

Me on the couch until moving was also the period Byron was doing is political stuff. He was campaigning and holding meetings. We were walking Ike and talking about the players and party direction. When it first began, I was working 16-20 hour days doing visit supervision, making almost nothing, and wearing down my car that I was driving without air conditioning. I had nothing left at the end of the day, no free time, no money, was doing nothing for myself for fun or to relax. It was pretty fucking miserable. Transitioning to DCS meant weeks away training in Indianapolis, all the while, I'm trying to coordinate getting the house set up by people who are scamming me, destroying things, or stealing from me.

At one point after Byron's failed bid, he said something to the effect that he couldn't succeed like he planned because I wasn't embedded in it like I should have been. With what time? With what energy? That's anyone's guess, but it was an extremely curious thing to say. I, too, had a series of difficult things to do and needed help with in getting my house in order. I had to functionally beg for months to get 3 hours from him to help me carry TVs into the place. I brainstormed and talked political bullshit almost every day. I showed up to events when I could. I offered the best advice I had. I didn't have anything else I could give.

I get out to the house. I start piecing things together. I keep getting fucked in finding anyone reliable. I don't have all the tools I do now. I certainly didn't have the time to make dedicated pushes. Things progress with Allie, Covid happens. I've got someone to help me and it's someone I'm happy to help back, and a little more time and funds to do more. Is Byron offering to help? Never. His plan is to flip a house. We can both get in on it, turn a nice profit, parlay that into more. Am I brimming with excitement knowing how successful his family has been doing exactly that our entire lives? Absolutely.

Water is treaded as 2020 plays out, I throw Allie out, I burnout of DCS, and I'm completely free, with just enough money, and all the energy and ability I will ever have to just focus in on this house. What happens? I ask to do a project, like pull up the old floor. "I don't want to live in a house without a floor." The big empty living room with all the space in the world to work gets packed with shit over the next few months. I make what feels like an endless series of garbage runs in my truck. I bring my tools over to landscape. I'm told, when I've stayed late, again, expecting to work and am stuck instead sleeping on a smelly sleeping bag, "You know, I'm not looking for a roommate." When "we," I, eventually get to work on something, it's around a ton of crap moved in the way, alongside the freshly moved in kid who's still at peak terrorizing, and being met each day with some move to put things off.

We didn't know Byron's dad was suffering from something growing on his brain making things more difficult. But that aside, we wasted so much time. We made the project harder for no reason other than Byron's discomfort, and in the middle of it, Byron decides the kid is his new mission. Ultimately, I spend 10 months or so not working and making money, not finding myself getting invested in what was to be a $12,500 payout. Instead, I lose money, lost that time, and have invested in tools for future house flipping that, while useful, are just more credit card debt when you're not making the money back.

Dozens of things then become part of the blame. His dad's health, a series of miscommunications and poorly set expectations, the kid, the market shifting, his political ally falling through and not buying the property. Pick your favorite or a healthy mix of all of it. I spent 4 days over Christmas single-handedly tearing down, cleaning, painting, and flooring the kitchen. Why? It needed to be done, I figured what's one Christmas away from family members that only make me think of getting fucked over with my grandma's house?

I'm currently the asshole who threw away a holiday, or at least the good food that would have come with it, to completely finish a kitchen, in a house that, once it was sold, made his parents and him even, and cost me money. I'm supposed to just shake it off.

Not too long later, Byron's uncle dies. He's supposed to get a good chunk of change, free and clear. The kind of money that let's you buy a car you can't really afford to maintain, pay off all your debts, and be comfortable for quite some time. I ask if he'll help me pay off my credit card. The credit card with a balance consisting mostly of less than I expected to make off the house sale and things bought in service to it. He declines. Later, it's discovered his other uncle finds a way to undermine his right to the money. Had he agreed, it'd be that much less he'd have owed back because it would have been spent. I, free of interest and with lessened resentment for getting fucked, would have paid him back in approximately 3 months.

He, since the night his kid pulled a gun on me, still owes me $350, 4 months later. You see, because I've also lent him several hundred dollars at at time that have stayed out indefinitely several times in the past. I run everything on credit cards. I use my entire paycheck to pay them down, accrue points, and avoid interest. When I take from my cash reserves to lend to him, it's costing me interest. I can ask or politely remind a dozen times. No installments. No, "I'll get it back next month." I have to functionally beg for my money back and create a detailed explanation of what it's costing me in real dollars if not psychologically.

Why is it such a pain in the ass? Aren't I going into debt for shows and toys? He'll ask me for money so he and the kid can non-stop smoke. He'll ask me for money for gas in his vehicles that the kid drives around and contributes nothing towards. The kid will show up with new clothes, a PS5, and other shit like the gun he was holding, but they need to borrow money from me? Then the smoke gets habitually blown in my face, in my car with a thousand empty "sorry" sentiments that aren't. The designer dog they bought was $700.

I'm now here, 3 months later, after the June 5th gun-pulling-kicked-out-of-the-car incident, and I'm still trying to get Byron or the kid to testify to their behavior to the police, or, do as they're continuing to prove to do. Ignore, downplay, and leave me with a "he said she said" scenario that can't on its face draw charges.

Like most things that catastrophically fail, it's not ever enough in any given moment. Things build and degrade slow enough that when you do a retrospective, it snaps into focus all along. I've never been less than vocal about each step of my dissatisfaction or feeling taken advantage of or getting burned. This is the last straw in almost a poetic way. If he'd prefer the life coddling and protecting and enabling the kid who would threaten, not only his life with the insane driving, but his "best friend's," lie to or ignore the police about it, ignore every time I insisted one of us drive instead and carry on like a perfect psychopath that we've openly discussed either of our capacity to be, more power to him. I hope he continues to get all he deserves from the way he treats his broken white boys.

I wish I really felt anything about it. There's no more consistent truth than every remotely stable relationship in my life is actually destined for some kind of ridiculous "totally could have seen this coming" scenario when you add up all the worst parts. My currently most stable friendships, while nowhere near resembling this level of chaos, could be described in their own damming and "fate-ridden" language. Ultimately, this is going to cost me more in tow trucks and rental cars, but I've spent enough of my earnest belief and energy. Everything gets to die.

[1062] Anxious

It's in precise moments like these that I reach "peak anxiety." On a scale of 1 - 10 on what people have described as their levels of anxiety, what I've been personally witness to, and what I've felt over a lifetime, it's a 2. It will subside throughout the day and as my mind wanders. I'm not forgetting to breathe, unclench my jaw, or stretch. The only real reason I'm calling it anxiety is because I don't know if there's a better word, and it has consequences when it arrives.

I get "stuck." My stomach feels butterfly-y. I get one thought after another of the different things calling for my attention that all "feel" just a step or two removed from what I think I can address. This morning it was notes, practicing my new electronic drums, addressing a flat tire I noticed on my truck (that I haven't driven in a couple weeks making it all the more frustrating), addressing my out headlight on the Scion, the hopeless thoughts about running $5 groups when in my heart of hearts I know in spite of endless positive feedback, people want their fix, not to actually fix things, so without a provider on board or threat of prison I doubt we attract what we need, and then I have a few more toys and game systems around I haven't unpacked or set up yet.

Instantly, each catastrophizing/paralyzing thought washes over in a round, and the feedback is "can't" or "not now" or "exhausting" or "frustrating" or "expensive" or "time intensive" or "you could eat instead" or some move to try and side-step from engaging the process that actually relieves the anxiety. Incidentally, I got into a chat with Pat Patterson who's debilitatingly ill at the same time. We wish each other Happy Friday every week, and forgot to yesterday. He's knocked out on drugs, I just forgot. He couldn't move like I can if he wanted to. I took a second to let that sink in, and found myself beginning to address notes, which are now done.

I'm not unduly "entitled" in discussing my 2-level anxiety or paralysis. I'm not willing to downplay how it manifests and plays out in my head and the impact it has on my behavior. I don't need medication for it. I'm not coping with it by compulsively eating or spending, even if that can be sometimes hard to distinguish no matter how long I wait to buy something or resolve myself to keep working to keep debt within 6 months of paying off. The paragraph above this one is the work I'm attempting to get my clients to get into when they're stuck. When they're sad, angry, hopeless, exhausted, or triggered emotionally in any way, you acknowledge the feelings, identify the thoughts, describe your behavior, and look for a very small and specific thing you can do to redirect your energy pattern. I got into a small discussion that prompted reflection, this time. I normally just start writing until I feel I can get up, another kind of discussion, but there's rarely anyone there to talk to.

Getting the notes done makes me want to take the tire off the truck. I have a solid amount of time before I need to head back to Indianapolis for my final show of the weekend, and there's nothing stopping me from taking little bites out of a few more chore things today. The weather is nice. I'm awake and healthy. It is simply the case that, even if we're given all the time, tools, and ability there is, we will still be struck by the irrational ambivalent and conditional forces of being a conscious animal. I can do something about that any moment I choose to. You can too.

[1061] Superstar

I feel like I'm not sure how "anything" works. The ways in which my life semi-does all boil down to being alone, spending money, or having a conversation almost entirely by myself. This line makes sense to me. So did the ones before it. I can follow the sense they made onto more thoughts and sentences I hope describe an antagonizing feeling. I don't, precisely, know what I feel. I just know it's "off." I know the handful of thoughts about specific individuals or scenarios sounds "angry" or "shitty" or "judgmental" in my head. I'm frustrated, in a sense, with what I perceive to be so many people castrating themselves and acting like they don't have a choice.

I had one gentleman substitute his opioid addiction for a gambling one. The moment you reach the point in the discussion about what he can do, literally that second, delete the apps, he's arguing that he's done that before and just downloaded them again in the past. You know how you lift a weight once and then you can enter the body building competition?

I have one lady who is emerging as the queen of thinking herself in circles and refusing to follow any conclusion through, even after she notices a change in how she feels when she half-ass does so. Each week a version of the same conversation that's not, in reality, a conversation at all. It's a merry-go-round.

I have my "healthiest" people get their boundaries or ideals tested in the lightest of ways, and newer, more nuanced, but still addictive coping mechanisms come in to pile layers of what feels like needless complexity on enough problems already. And often enough, that complexity manifesting as a new man in their life. That is, when it's not an old man professing to be a new man.

I have friends, literal counselors, who get themselves on the verge of heart attacks and abject depressive chaos, endlessly doubling down on the exact wrong behaviors they're literally supposed to be capable of counseling others away from.

I have a lingering absurd scenario I'm growing more desperately desirous of bringing some resolution that seems to threaten my last bastion of what I thought could be the basis of at least one stable friendship in my life.

It makes the idea of "helping" or "trying" feel so shallow if not altogether hallow if it doesn't speak primarily to how you wish to help and try in service to yourself. Perhaps I'm just "lucky" I've done the work in that regard.

Another week, and especially now that I'm leaving some of these groups, the adulation is pouring in. How? How am I helping? I'm making you think? I'm calling you on your shit? I'm friendly and non-judgmental enough to keep you talking? I want to believe I'm helping, but in a major way, the problem isn't something I can fix. Life fucking sucks. It's a miserable place with death around every corner and most everyone and everything gives no fucks about you. You're prey to those in power. You're on the wrong end of the bell curve. You're sick, you're broke, and you're a blip on the ambivalent ass of existence. No shit you're an addict, what else could you possibly be? Surely a great many things, but addict first, right?

Even with "things" going "mostly" right or appreciably along a sense of stability, they're still shit. There's still plenty of suffering and absurdity and "stupid people" to be had. Oh, how my clients this week wished to complain about the stupid people! And then they get frustrated and want to smoke, or take it out on their kids, or flirt with their favorite path to self-destruction.

We need to wise up. I think the wisdom is bred from literal work on specific things we claim to believe. Our language is dog shit. It gives us glancing blows without landing the emotional umph that prompts behavior change. We're not working to talk better. We're not pairing our words with anything meaningfully manifested. We're not working to create a place that reflects effort, growth, and sanity. We're fucking around with memes. We're silent. We're complaining into the abyss on an ironic ride to hell.

I get so discouraged when I think about what it is I do to try and remain okay, and how long it took, and how many aspects still go miserably wrong all the time, and I'm supposed to translate that into digestible chunks for people maybe less equipped? It's not about being intelligent. It's that you have to functionally turn your lived experience into something people can have faith in. Then you have to, in turn, have faith it'll translate and stick? That's fucking gross. I'm not operating on faith. I'm doing fucking work. I'm trying to be accountable by literally counting words and time and money spent to achieve things. You have to reduce all the work you're doing into sentiments that can land on ears that don't speak your language. You're talking about exercising muscles they don't realize they have and which tremble against the wind.

 
With our infinite capacity to reimagine and interpret, what am I even saying to people? Sometimes they'll start a sentence with, "Like you said…" and proceed to say none of anything I've ever said, but damn are they enthusiastic about what it meant to them! What on Earth am I supposed to make of that? What could they possibly be hearing if they're willing, enthusiastically so, to continue "coping" in the easiest and most familiar ways after YEARS of being shown, and testifying to how they've been shown, how it's harmful, unproductive, and not in line with their values? It's ways that keep them sad, unmotivated, defensive, and yet proud to…play along?

"We're all addicted to something."

No. This is one of a thousand pithy sayings used as an excuse to feel better about what you're addicted to. The lack of control, therefore responsibility, is the point, not the deep desire to repeat something. I'm not addicted to writing, or eating, or picking scabs. I'm not addicted to TV or my go-it-alone "fuck you" attitude, or any food I thoroughly enjoy. Pretty much every single time I find myself getting lost or getting tempted to absolve myself of an awareness of my complicity or responsibility, it pops up here, at least to the extent anyone can pull themselves back.

Our cultural psychosis isn't an addiction. It's a mental health crisis to be sure. There's an infinite array of negative self-destructive feedback cycles we dip in and out of. But we're in severe denial about how many times we're capable of doing or saying "more" or something "better." I don't allow you to be held-harmless like you're at the peak violent throes of an addiction. You know damn well what's your fault, what's in your control, and what you're attempting to excuse and distance yourself from. You're not calculating a brilliant strategic approach, you're a pussy and a liar and you refuse to allow yourself to hate that about you as viscerally as it needs to be felt in order to change.

I'm no more willing to invite the vast majority of fights offered to me than I am willing to get sucked into the black hole at the center of anyone's individual universe. That doesn't stop me from recognizing my fight, my playing field, or my goals. Here's another 1,244 reps.

[1060] Copying Mechanism

If I had to bet, I would put money on the vast majority of people falling into a camp described as, "I can't trust myself." It doesn't mean they haven't opted for a form of living that looks functional, feels stable-ish, or would pass as "adult" to a random onlooker. It doesn't mean they are racked with medical-grade doubts about every little thing they may choose to do. It doesn't mean that any given moment may be an opportunity to "lose it" or "break down," as the basic throughline or coherence one needs to exist gets erased.

It does mean most people aren't inviting the counter narrative into their personal story of experience. Only the morbid, or "mean," or socially disingenuous and disabled do things like that. You're not even going to let your subconscious whisper "divorce" on your wedding day. Your baby isn't going die before you. Every statistically likely consequence of your eating and driving habits aren't going to kill you like you're really part of that majority.

The horror. The horror. When we're introduced to this horror in the infinitely creative ways from early drug use, abuse, medical trauma, general neglect, or by virtue of our miserably encoded genes, we cope or die. What we've discovered as we iterate on the DSM is that pretty much everyone is getting their ass kicked in measurable and consistent ways. It's from things we can more or less approach methodically, therapeutically, and with an eye towards consistent accountability. Can approach. We don't really, but the option is there.

I have the precise opposite problem of the vast majority of people. I trust the fuck out of myself. I trust I can engage in unspeakable terror. I trust I can accomplish things people routinely regard as "dreams" or "exhausting" with a persistent "matter of fact" attitude and growing mountain of evidence. The shocks to myself are derived from compounded ignorances or unlucky and ill-timed grievances stacking too close together. Maybe I wake up sore with a headache, step in cat shit on the way to the bathroom, go to flush and water's not flowing, try to get it working and break a nob. My phone goes off with the dumbest of dumb work emails dragging a corpse of a conversation from a week ago…Stuff like that.

I can certainly imagine that, but it's a lot harder to cope with it in real time, especially if it's that slow creep that doesn't tip you off that you need to stop and breathe or redirect. That isn't so much horror though. That's not imagining people close to you dying. That's not watching your body tumble down the highway after a semi-truck oopsie.

The thought doesn't actually kill you or them. But we treat it like it does. We fluidly dip into language like "karma" and the power of "intention." As if we routinely watch those who we chant "burst into flames" towards spontaneously combust. Challenging, painful, or difficult thoughts are met with reflexively coping. Whether you find a chemical to grow physically and psychologically dependent on, or another person, or a hobby, the reflex to survive gets to work.

I want to make next week in my groups about "commitment." What are you committed to? How? Why? I have a good number, about a quarter, of my people with terrible attendance. You can chalk some of that up to "life" and kids, but the vast majority is people who, instead of being honest with themselves about what it takes to be of sober mind, still prefer to defer to their feelings. They wish to employ the usual methods, the familiar, the rehearsed, ways of feeling better.

You see, maybe they're "too tired" today, so they'll make up for it at a later group. "With everything gong on," it just slipped their mind. Maybe they have a particular grievance with me they're less than bold or honest in relaying. Either way, the story of their sobriety or sober thinking needs to conform to the coping patterns already in play. They're still going to get their medication. They don't even really connect with those people in group anyway. What's the big deal?

I've been doing this job for 1 year and 3 months now. I've never missed a day that wasn't allotted to me. I've never missed a group that wasn't an obligation I planned for that coincided with extra work on my plate outside of work hours. Incidentally, I'm not "committed" to Groups. I'm looking for any route away from it that I can find. Importantly, I'm committed to myself. My needs, my desires, and my narrative is what is under threat through my obligation to Groups. (Or, capitalism when you want to get large and abstract.)

What is it, do you think, that separates me who can make it to 12-18 groups every week for 15 months and the person who can't make it to 1 every week for a month? Bear in mind, these are virtual groups. You don't need a car. You could be on any wifi. You can use anyone's phone, computer, or tablet. We offer a program that gets you a free phone.

Do you think I enjoy every single person and every single group every time? Do you think I'm wide awake and motivated every day? Do you think I don't have a dozen other things on my mind or things I'd like to accomplish? Why, it's a serious question, am I able to pull off this obligation in a way that garners consistent positive feedback from both client and leadership alike, but you might not ever meet me sometimes your attendance is so bad and you've hopped from make-up to make-up until I discharge you?

I'm there for me, not you. I'm there for money. I'm there because the schedule allows me to maintain my behavior towards attending shows, getting work done around my house, and facilitates me meeting and building rapport with what I hope is a huge number of clients I eventually steal. My sober mind is fundamentally rooted in a picture of what I need to maintain what I have, grow, challenge, indulge, and hopefully continue to honestly share. You not showing up isn't saying anything about me, it's the attitude you have to yourself. It's why you don't trust yourself. You can't even be trusted to run a program for an hour from your phone and keep it together long enough to hear ideas that are different from the ones you already have about yourself.

That defensive posture kicks in. You'd rather just not hear it at all, because to you, it's not an open exchange of new ideas. It's a damning indictment. It's an unfair judgment. It's an attack. It's a challenge when you're already too busy and too exhausted and never asked for it. It's work, and you're busy justifying working yourself to death at whatever it is you're already doing. Where do I get off telling you you shouldn't work 14 days in a row? Don't I understand you have bills and a family!? How dare you say I should put distance between me and my abusive mother! I love her!

The stories we tell ourselves matter immensely. I suspect it's the heart of why no matter what someone has accomplished or people they touch they still get suicidal. David Draiman, with his incredibly sad eyes, explained he almost killed himself in February were it not for his son and the Disturbed fans. I don't know all that he can or can't imagine about his life and place he holds in others', but I do know that level of sadness and isolation is available to us all. We drink from that poisoned well without acknowledging it as a series of suicidal acts.

Dipping in and out of this book on masochism (Thanks Brandy) has detailed for me what I've spoken to in the past, but this has elaborated it further. There's sheer joy and positive emotion we can generate from pain and self-destruction. I watched a video of suicide bombers picking which hand had a rock in it so they could get the honor of blowing themselves up. The, donkey-looking dude, was beaming. He was getting hugs and cheers from his brothers. He is (was) utterly convinced of where he is going, the righteousness of his action, and how to solve his problem with whomever the bomb was slated for.

Suicide is a commitment to a narrative about how you feel. There is no "disease" that pulls triggers. There is no infection that makes you crave too many pills. There is no pathogen that drags razors down your wrist, ties knots, or turns exhaust fumes into your favorite scented candle. You should be very careful about how and whether you subscribe to any narrative. You need to be actively participating in writing one. You should be deeply suspicious of the ones that make your sense of personal responsibility abstract. You know, like how "sin" is bad, and in the mind of the faithful, at least one on my caseload, that means equal parts butt-fucking children or being gay. Jesus doesn't obligate you to think critically or make distinctions.

If your sense of commitment looks like "extra" energy to get things done that matter to you, I can vibe with you. If your commitment makes you kinder and more patient, it makes a certain sense to me. If your commitment isn't pie-in-the-sky about what you can do or how you may feel, then I may start to trust you're grounded and genuine. If your commitment is time-bound, specific, open to being criticized, and accountable, then maybe we can agree it's real and worthwhile.

Conversely, if your commitment is exhausting your capacity for truth, we might say you've been committed to the mental asylum of your situation. If your commitment has you offering dozens of excuses and attempts to make it sound better than it is, you're just at its mercy, of which I promise you it has none. If your commitment prompts you to be reflexively arguing for why you're continuing to persist, a good part of you knows you shouldn't stay, but the broader narrative you've concocted gives you ample, if not infinite, opportunities to keep the justification game running.

My narrative is constantly evolving. I want it to. I need it to. I've had incredibly small-minded ideas about what should constitute my commitments and why. I have incredibly damming suggestions regarding what the narrative of my behavior or perspective should mean about me. At bottom, because I show myself the ongoing story and work to develop an individual window and nurtured nature, I can continue to land on points I trust. Sorry not sorry, it's not all of you, my hoards of fans, nor would it ever be my theoretical children. If and when you all die, including my phantom offspring, what's left? If and when you all leave me or stop talking to me or stop giving any remote fuck about spending time together or sharing anything (Oh shit, 99% of everyone I've ever thought to call friend?) where do you think I'm gonna go? Hang out with Chester?

I'm committed to whomever I may be right now. What I do or don't know gets to show up here. I'm committing my time to this exploration. I'm entertaining the horror of being ignored and abandoned. I'm letting the depth of the isolation give me pause to find how to capture the void. I've murdered my non-existent children. I've parsed and separated what I'm doing for money or as a series of obligations, from what I feel needs said and done.

 
Every single concert I go to almost everyone is there with their partner, family member, friend, or half a dozen other people. I'm there for the music. After watching and overhearing, now 93 shows this year, I think they're after a story about what fun or healthy people do. I think they need eyes or someone's hand to hold or someone to be in a picture with. I don't trust that it has anything to do with whatever individual they're with. I think there's a reason the most populated non-festival shows I've gone to this year are "themed" drug use (Dead & Company) and depression/suicide (Disturbed).

It's a bother to know "too much" regarding yourself. It doesn't always make a "reason" and an "excuse" or "self-justification" perfectly clear. But this is why you work to keep talking. This is why you look for people who trust themselves enough to offer you fair observations of yourself. Because we're still all made of the same shit and plugged into the same environment. Getting some clarity on that I'm working to make it only cost $5 instead of $60 or $110.

If I'm not suicidal and I feel like one of the loneliest people on the planet in a way I'm tempted to call distinct, but wise enough to know is cliché, how? If I'm angrier than anyone you've ever met and keep nearly all of my conversations clam and civil, what's going on? If I think life is mysterious, but mostly a goddamn ridiculous joke, game, and you're perfectly reasonable to kill yourself in dozens of tiny joy-inducing ways a day, why do I opt for yard goals, business goals, show goals, and wish to refocus my attention on the 1% yet to flee?

I have a really good ongoing story. I'm not suffering that much in any accumulation of pointy parts of my day and I allow myself to slow down and taste the subtleties in my expensive coffee. I'm listening to the music, not turned towards the crowd drunkenly trying to get the attention of my party or passers-by. I'm open to hearing something new from a band I'm not that familiar with instead of screaming my dogma and treating what they're attempting to communicate as so much background noise. If I were a character in something I was reading, I'd be curious what I was going to say or do next. I'm committed to the character development. Are you?

[1059] Incomplete Data

Something I like considerably more than any one "thing" is the realized expression of getting into whatever it is I wish to do in any given moment. It's exceedingly rare any one show is going to connect with me in some deep or individualized way, but I like knowing that if one is going to, all I have to do is click and it starts up. I only seem to find the intention to practice an instrument in starts and spurts, but when I do, it's on a high-end machine training my fingers the right way. I've got a t-shirt maker, sticker maker, sewing machine, and some wood working tools I've barely if ever touched. But the day I feel I have the time and focus to learn and set them up will make up for any thoughts of their "wasted" potential in the meantime.

I'm not a "passion" person. I have a severe distaste for the word. I can't say that when I was irrationally driven to be some concept of "best" that I was doing myself any favors. Now, in contrast, I have my attempts to be balanced and deliberate or day-to-day in how I conceive of myself. If I dropped everything to drill down on some instrument for the next 6 months, I'd get really good, or return to some mastery I had with my guitar, and then what? I cross my fingers I maintain the humility of elite players who are always looking to the people they stole from or they think do it better? I audition for a band? I produce my own stuff and claim a vaunted identity as an artist?

I don't want to be an artist, I am one. I don't want to be a big business guy, I am one. I don't want to be a country-folk coming up with redneck fixes to things, I am one. All that I may wish to occupy in the future, I currently am, just at varying degrees of resolution. What dials in any layer is both time invested, but catching when the thoughts swirl around what I believe are impediments. If I don't have the tools ready, I can't work on whatever feels like the most pressing thing to work on. There's a series of inspirations flowing through, and I want them captured on the right instruments.

It doesn't give me an irrational compulsive rush to spend money. I've been thinking about this when I spend months agonizing over whether or not to click to confirm an order. Am I just feeling listless and trying to fill the hole with junk? I'm still missing components of my otherwise "perfectly fulfilling" or "best flowing" kind of days. When I buy things, it's not that I don't want them or I don't enjoy using them, it's that I'm trying to talk myself out of having what I think, in a world that made sense, I'd already have without this lower-income negotiation.

I also, and this has been the prevailing energy for quite some time, just don't give a fuck about much higher degrees of debt than I ever thought I'd get comfortable with. I'm considerably more concerned about my day-to-day experience of life more than I am the infinite series of atrocities on their way that will be "impossible" to "pay back" as though I really owe anyone anything. I don't honestly believe I'm trying to justify being irresponsible. It's not without many calculations and spreadsheets and months of "Do I really need…?" No. I don't "need" anything past whatever keeps the poorest of the poor alive. Do I want? Yes. Is it speaking to something more intangible, yet necessary? Yes.

 
For most of the people in my life I'm either an ornament, novelty, or antagonist. The time in between is filled with me and my stuff and how I can justify each moment or activity. Any given hobby or skill can be parlayed into connecting with a broader ecosystem of people, but I'm not people. So I need stuff to connect with more stuff and parts of myself I'm not going to see reflected back or ever acknowledged by people. That's okay, it's just a bit expensive.

Anyway, I'm thinking of ordering/building the stuff it would take to get all my outside projects engaged. That and some missing electronics and instruments and lessons would put me at about $15,000 in debt. I'm still pulling about $2,000 a paycheck for the next couple months. I'm going to focus a bit more on meal prepping and still wouldn't hate to find something part-time on Fridays and weekend mornings. The last 4 times I've been told something would fit that have just disappeared into the ether.

I'm not tired, not looking forward to work tomorrow, and it's probably going to feel like a busier day. I just started the last season of Star Trek TNG. I have no events until Bastille and Duran Duran in Chicago Friday, Disturbed in Noblesville the day after, and Wargasm in Indy Sunday. Monday is a holiday. I think I'm occupying a similar disheartening space after hanging out that happens after working out. You get a taste of how it "should" or could feel all the time, but it's the exception. The energy or enthusiasm can't sustain and iterate, it just kind of sits there and nags you until it dissipates. All the more prescient one must be in capturing what manages to manifest I suppose.

[1058] Watermelon Latte

I never see it coming. It's all the little things that add up throughout the day. When I was in Seattle, known for its "quirkiness" in the vein of a Portland or Austin, they hiccupped with my coffee order. Instead of saying, "Sure, hot or cold?" I got, "Ummmm, I wouldn't do watermelon for a latte, maybe a (iced drink I forget the name of)?" I told them I used to own a coffee shop and have had nearly every flavor and random combo of flavor, and just haven't yet watermelon. "Oh!" Then they snapped right to it. Then I'm asked hot or cold and I say hot. A man, who I took to be the woman making the coffee's partner, made a face and said to her, "Of course hot, it's watermelon," in an attempt to be comical. We all know the flavor you put in a drink isn't the actual fruit, right?

This is a very small example of how my experience of the world plays out pretty regularly. I can barely say anything, ever, that isn't given way to "Ummmm" or "Are you sure?" As though I don't know I like watermelon flavor, lattes, or can form really any independent opinion or view you maybe haven't heard before. If you own a coffee shop in Seattle where golden retrievers sprawl out on the floor, you're still not immune to reacting like a basic when I'm around.

I'm noticing more and new patterns with who I do or don't get along with. I get along with "simple" people. I had a really fun conversation with a bartender who reminded me of a puppy in Seattle. If you have maybe a dozen targets in life you've been trying to hit regarding your income, social prospects, or hobbies, and never care to venture beyond, I never register as a threat or intimidating because you've figured your shit out. I get along with super smart people. Like, ones qualified to tell you what to do on important things that maybe keep us all alive. Everything in between really simple and really smart just gets weird, for them, or I have to manage.

A persistent dilemma of mine is to receive just a ton of positive feedback. I started quoting and writing down whenever it happens. Or, mostly whenever it happens, because sometimes it's not really the time or in passing between subjects. It suggests that my management of people is on point. I was recently observed by a counselor I respected who was beaming and telling his people, who I'm taking over in group, that he's confident he's leaving them in good hands. I've managed to parlay years of introspection and reading and practical application crisis management into a hyper-active capacity to connect with huge numbers of people. Yes, yes, I did run the party house, and some would argue poorly. But this is "real life." We're talking all the stuff that makes you crazy sad and addicted.

My distance, the "weird" place that plainly states things feels like most of the…asset? I see almost immediately why you're crying, name it, suck the wind out of it, ten seconds later you're smiling and agreeing with me, and then…we eat cake? It's automatic. I'm not thinking very hard about most of the issues people bring to me because the answers all terminate to a question. Do you recognize your power or responsibility to this situation? If not, you go into automatic coping. If you do, you might still opt for a messier version of automatic coping. Or, occasionally, you start to recognize and feel powerful and responsible for "everything" related to your perception of whatever the horrific events.

That isn't to say it's always horrific. You also need to be aware of the positive and things to celebrate. I see that being a considerable handicap people have. They pretend to celebrate or feel good with sentiments like, "It could always be worse." Sure, but that doesn't mean anything. It certainly doesn't feel that way when you say it. It could also be better. Do either of those directions tell me anything about your awareness or agency? No.

I hit 90 "funs", technically yesterday. I continue to feel accomplished and lucky and like I want to keep gobbling these experiences up as though next year it'll be too hot to start a concert before 10:00 PM if you wish to be outside. In my mind, all I've done is spend money I don't have and plan. I feel like we all do this in service to our bills, debts, or ill-fashioned dreams, I just made it about shows for a couple years. I'm still never really more than 3-6 months in debt that also serves as part of my argument to not quit my job in moments of frustration. On days I'm not driving to the next show, I'm either restless, or begin to venture out to yard work. I've begun to say often, "There's infinite work." It frees me from thinking any given project can really be complete if I'm not doing it in a deliberate and measured way.

It's hard to figure out how I can "do what I want" across so many superficial metrics, but when it comes to getting "freer" or "capitalizing" on what, presumably is a skill and hot commodity, I can't find a way to not be in debt, maintain all the things like insurance, keep my pace for hobbies and indulgences, and live almost precisely as I do now, but with more "flow." Maybe at a quicker pace because I can hire help or live in several places at once while continuing to connect remotely. It truly is the heart of a giant agonizing puzzle I cannot grasp.

I can build a whole world of blame around our "sick care" system, capitalism, captured greedy interests all along the political landscape. I can point to system failures in pay, language, education, or morality. It still feels like it's my problem though. Like I'm doing something wrong. It also feels like even if I could garner the support, it would come with this awkwardness or set of informal conditions from those who wouldn't really know what they were supporting. I'd say something like, "I get all this positive feedback, people need this, and it's profitable." In return, when I wasn't stuck behind bureaucracy, I feel like there'd be an unconscious pull to undermine it. No one gets the dream, silly, why would you expect me to help you in any sort of meaningful way? What could I, a mere normal person you must manage, really contribute?

I'm asking for watermelon lattes. They taste good. They're not reinventing the wheel. They're not any more or less expensive than a vanilla latte. Watermelon isn't hard to pronounce. Lattes aren't a new concept. "The universe," for lack of a better conceptual term perpetually responds with, "Ummmm, I wouldn't do watermelon…" and then smirks and giggles that it could also be hot.

I'm a very rich person. I'm highly educated. I own a lot of cool shit. I spend exorbitantly on things like nice smells and making noise. I've experienced more pop culture than I'll ever have the time to talk about. I've had long-term meaningful relationships. I've been party animal and hermit. I can build things just as soon as spend all day reading about how to build them. I live this incredible life with an insane amount of confidence that, in one form or another, I can figure it out or I can continually prove what I'm worth and what I'm after. If you have even the most feeble of flame with regard to yourself, if you spend enough time around me, I turn it into a raging inferno.

So perhaps this helps me understand why I can't get the help I need. I'm only analyzing the one stuck variable. I'm neglecting to see the other things I'll antagonize or exchange. The more intimately you know me, the more those things that whisper to you start to burn. Every invitation becomes a risk of burning down whatever current conception or place you've carved out for yourself. It then becomes, again, not really about me or a reason to personalize, but about the effect I have on the areas of your thoughts or life that you haven't quite squared with yourself. This makes sense to me. I don't know that I'll ever get someone chiming in to agree or contradict it, but that's with nearly everything.

Every invitation has an in-built dare to be infinitely responsible. Can you deal with existentially crippling fallout? Can you pivot? Can you cut losses? Can you choke down more shit than you could imagine and still feel genuinely accomplished that there was a bit of corn in there? No. You're fragile. Vanilla lattes are delicious. Cold brews are orders of magnitude more profitable. "What the fuck are you asking for a hot watermelon latte for? Aren't you rich already? You could buy hundreds of vanilla lattes we could enjoy together. You did say they were delicious too."

I've been flirting with a new idea for kickstarting the counseling business. It would involve some "radical" moves that might undermine my, still feeling needed, consistently high paychecks. I don't want to jump the gun, and there's some practical website logistics to work out, but it would put me in the streets and in front of people doing what it is apparently only I can do. I envision myself as the front-man in my band. Do I have that energy? That style? That slightly off-putting commentary between songs that gives my zealots something to concoct apologetic narratives around? Across a few domains, it does appear so.

 
Maybe I build a 6 month or so timeline. Wind down the shows. Genuinely focus on paying things off instead of kicking the can. Make the website modifications. Ensure the state-certified floor is in place for the next few years. Hell, in a month I could start aspects of the "radical" transition. My back isn't really against a wall. That strategy is for doing shit I don't want to do. I think unconsciously I've been looking for a more suitable or spikey wall because it's been hard to see ways to approach my problem that weren't feeling fundamentally objectionable. I may have stumbled into a path forward that will require continued patience and some deliberately long days trying to learn a few new things. Of course I can do it, but fuck me is it hard to figure out what "it" is all the time by myself.

[1057] Distance

Today's feeling like it just might pass on by. I thought I might get up fairly early and do some work outside or more advance note prep. Instead I stayed in bed extra long. I got up and started reading some old blogs. I've made some coffee. I'm just in a kind of holding pattern until I hit the comedy club I hate tonight, Helium in Indianapolis.

My latest quasi-obsessive and frequently returned to thought is about getting an official autism diagnosis. In the blogs I was reading, I was searching for the key word "sociopath" and reading what I said about myself over time. I think the first time I ever mentioned it was in the 100s, 2007 or 2008, and pretty much every time I describe it as something learned or peg an example of how "not really" I could be described by it. Being "cold" or shutting down and methodically observing I've come to understand as forms of self-protection and coping. But, also, I suspect part of what felt so natural about doing so was me leaning into my natural pre-existing condition.

There's a universal theme in every piece of writing. Distance. I'm outside looking in and breaking down and try, desperately, to figure out the lesson or course of action or cause of events. I treat everything like there's some literal 1+1=2 going on, and it's an obligatory task and responsibility to input all of the variables. Where "people" or "the world" want to build a story about their relationship to math, I'm trying to do the math. They'll tell me, "Math is hard! I suck at math!" Then they'll stop. That's all they need. That's the important line in the narrative that explains why they will never attempt to do math again. It tells you they suck at math, and if you invite them to do it, you're telling them to feel like they suck or are helpless, confused, overwhelmed, or an infinite list of negative emotions associated with math.

I have a friend who is reflexively dismissive of getting a diagnosis. There's many reasons underlying her position I could extract just from my own observation of her relationship to her own health. She's half-heartedly argued about the greed and incoherence of the medical system which I'm sympathetic to, but I consider diminishingly ancillary points in lieu of my larger goal or the potential utility of the diagnosis. I don't want to be at the mercy of something I can't conceptualize more explicitly. I want to feel the potential and see the utility in ways I can't when I remain in the realm of speculation or strong suspicion. Circumstantial evidence has convicted many an innocent person.

You, apparently, don't know what it's like to be "stuck" in an observer state. Literally every single thing I may say or write is, seemingly by design, going to antagonize, threaten, question, or cause a level of psychological harm in a "normal" person. When you adopt similar attitude affects of trauma, it sends a false signal that we're more alike than we are or understand things in the same way. Being a general odd-ball who has learned how to play along invites hundreds of misreads and false hopes every week. You're hurt and feeling crass, so my jokes or demonstrative way of being register as a way to access your inchoate "realness" as you recover. Your insecurity gets betrayed when the cute-enough whore is effusively complimenting and appreciative of your presence, in all sincerity to be sure, but a robust long-term solidarity or bubbly attraction is incredibly unlikely to be maintained.

In my reading today, I read where I was feeling guilty when I noticed a girl was into me. I knew then, as I know even better today, people don't really recognize or see "me." What they like is what I've learned how to do, and that makes you feel all the more distant and like you have a responsibility to report more than be in the moment or appreciative someone's there with you. Because, are they? No, not really.

I can reliably and predictably do things in ways others can't even describe back to me. They just know they feel a certain way depending on what hat I'm wearing. I'm a really good professional counselor. I fuck up and say things in very messy ways rarely, and know how to account for them after I do. I see the face of "wheels turning" when I describe certain subjects certain ways. I see posture relax. I see smile cracks. I see head nods and notes getting taken. I recognize when the tone has shifted from combative defensiveness to acquiescing awareness. I suspect you won't find a single counselor at my company who would describe what they're doing as even 5% of what I put into a single paragraph. ::nods to Nietzsche::

Why would I say that? They tell me, and you, what they're doing as a form of professional narrative.

They're first and foremost "trying to help." "You don't get into this field unless you wish to help people." "You don't work here unless you're passionate about others or reducing harm." At DCS, "We all care about the children" very regardless of actual outcomes or behavior of our least qualified staff. They want to "provide services" and employ "therapeutic interventions." Every field has its propaganda because, at scale, the human condition requires the narrative, not the truth.

What am I doing as a counselor? I'm staying curious about what's true, or true-enough, for you to change in chosen ways. I'm looking to divorce you from as many cultural narratives as you can get your mind around, and hand back the notion of agency and accountability. That's an incredibly difficult and ridiculous task that takes a lifetime to get even a little good at. Every day, until you can train to occupy every moment, needs the affirmation. Every shade of gray or black in the latest attempt to bleach the scene needs acknowledged. Every poor choice of words that keeps us psychologically trapped needs challenged. A prolonged holistic impression of where and how each of us exists across time needs to be constructed, then deconstructed and reconstructed along metrics and choices that serve your values and needs. Practically, specifically, that looks like self-care, boundary discussions, self-reflective writing, and genuine expression of the depth of your feelings.

The last, maybe week or so, has started to make the nature of "the narrative of people at scale" clearer. I've attempted to analyze and compensate for aspects of my disillusion as well as what I perceive to be an emotional breakdown from my business partner. What's "more true" or "less wrong" about this point in time? Am I missing something important in how I describe people's reticence to actually, you know, do anything constructive about a problem? What forces are at play that make it hard for my partner to relax while I'm rocking out and hitting clubs? What should my approach be, professionally, personally, in this monolith of "basic" and consistent human tendencies if I'm not going to win, will never be in the club, and still desire some sense of accomplishment or belonging in an otherwise hostile or ambivalent space?

I could get a "perfect" team together, and as it grows or we increase caseloads, fundamental trends and truths of the human condition will take over. This is a blindness in people who rage against "systems" or belabor "isms" and "ists" in their human narrative "explanations" I'm tempted to conceive of as pure "placations." Our brains thrive on lazy short-hand in lieu of introspection. Pick any antagonist, you're always off the hook.

I want to spend a little more time on the idea of the space being "hostile." It is to me. Women describe hostile working conditions with unwanted sexual advances or threats to their professional prospects. Abusive households conform to implicit rules around the aggressors. The psychological boringness and pedantry of bureaucracy is intuitively designed to obscure the underlying violence of our under-examined behavior. I feel under attack, constantly. It doesn't seem like it, because your narrative, your culturally imposed and simplified "we all agreed to this" tells you I'm decently employed, own property, white, tall, powerful, straight, a man, etc. If I think I'm "smart" you have to hear "narcissist" or "manipulative." If I think I'm "right" you have to hear "defensive" or "complicit." If I think I'm wrong, you have to hear "guilty" or say to yourself, "I knew it!"

You have to.

That's the survival rule. You have to remain under the protective social and psychological shell or something akin to the whole of the universe starts to unravel.

Aren't I proof enough? Your "friends" will abandon you. You'll look combative. You'll seem angry and, most importantly, unjustifiably so. You'll seem restless and disorganized. You'll be a perpetual target for criticism for all of your "unrealistic" posturing. But mostly, you'll just make people feel uncomfortable, and they don't need anything fancy or more complicated than that to cut you off.

The real and proper psychopaths among us construct narratives more deliberately. They too have a narrative, but depending on just how aberrant an end it must conform to, the self-justified universe constructing just takes that much more reinforcing facts drawn from the depravity or misdirection of the culture writ-large. That's political propaganda. That's religious indoctrination. That's your favorite interview with a serial killer. The Unabomber got a lot of boring factoid prediction things right, and critical, relatively straight-forward, if not timeless, aspects of wisdom and accountability horrendously wrong. They all do.

When the goal is "try to help" or "provide resources" or "save" or make a habit of othering or blaming that "ist" or "ism" with psychopathic efficiency you arrive at the conclusion to an argument you weren't even aware you were making. Your fight or flight amygdala feels better, so, you win, always. You're correct, always. You're doing exactly what you say you're doing, always. Because "evidence" doesn't exist in the narrative. It's ideological possession. It's an existential exercise of bullshit.

As such my, or any, writing, in that it exists at all, is a threat. If you write about yourself, you'll start to discover things you weren't so good at noticing beforehand whether you wished to learn them or not. You'll be killing yourself. You'll be concurrently failing to mourn the parts that are dying. Who's doing that shit? You literally exist as a substate of the collective narrative. You have no conception of yourself or what exists beyond it. The acid trip went horribly or you were too scared to try it in the first place. The moments you tried to be brave and ask a question or stick your head out you were summarily dismissed or whipped. You don't know where to get the tools and those alleged to have them hurt you even more with their narratives. Someone, please, pass the heroin.

I was under a powerful narrative delusion about who my friends were or what they were supposed to mean to me. I'm certain I still am, but not in the way that's going to stay my hand anymore.

I'm lucky that, if I'm technically "disabled," I think that I'm literally unable to experience the addictive identity crisis which makes analysis like this functionally impossible. I'm lucky that if I'm going to be condemned to obsess about anything, at least it won't be trying to hide or accelerate my destruction. My order is your disorder. My literal ordering of my thoughts and deliberate conducting of myself in the world makes you "hate" "me" until something breaks you or you discover some "safe" way to break yourself.

The number one thing I hear feedback wise from my clients is, "You seem like you give a shit." Whatever else they say, it generally summarizes and condenses into that sentiment. In their-narrative-speak there's terms like "seem" and "give" as though what I'm doing is "only" an "impression" or that "shit" is something tangibly handed out. In my world, I ask them deliberate questions. I share the most explicit understanding of my perspective in analogous situations. I write. I go to shows. I build my house. I buy toys that make me happy. I practice skills that keep me from getting "stuck" in stories that make me want to kill myself or others.

I seem like I give a shit? I don't. I don't care what I "seem" like. I don't know what you mean by "shit." I'm not giving you anything but an opportunity to answer a question you haven't asked in your own muddy terms. I wish to live in an environment that isn't trying to kill me for being accountable or doing shit that makes the most sense. I wish to achieve my goals without wasting so much time trying to translate idiot-proof things (to other autistic-types), but act as insurmountable barriers when the cultural narrative can't conceive of what I'm talking about. I don't wish you harm. I'm rooting for you. "You seem" doesn't mean anything to me, just like all of my behavior, example setting, work, or blogs don't mean anything to you. You're not practicing like I'm practicing. I'm not talking like you're talking. In fact, you're not talking at all.

[1056] If I Could Turn Back Time

Maybe I can write a less whiny and more condensed version of what I'm thinking and feeling than I managed the first time around. The feeling is still there, and it's part of the "dread" or "hopelessness" picture when I'm trying to make living where I do suck less.

I'm not so stupid as to believe people aren't living their own lives doing things they enjoy or spending time with people they care about. I know how many jobs work us to death. I know what it is to always be playing catch-up on chores or projects. I know we have many things related to family we obligate ourselves to. All of this is a perfect recipe to just be "busy" and "adult" in perpetuity.

My problem goes as far back as college and the transition right after. Things switched in the minds of the people I was trying to go to the ice rink, dance, or hit a slip-n-slide with. It was either/or. Either you buckled down and focused on powering through the infinite stress of growing up, getting a job, moving across the country, or lining up your vision of the perfect future, or you were seemingly arrested in your development and devoid of an appreciation for the "normal" stressors and obligations.

At one level, it's kind of insulting that a reflexive perspective might take shape that way. It's as if my life hasn't been as many deliberate and conscious decisions to trend the way it has. It's as if I wasn't attempting to make specific efforts to maintain relationships, often with zero feedback on maybe more preferred methods of doing so. Of course, I couldn't fight the hate and gossip train I wasn't precisely plugged into.

At a less personal level, I see this tendency and self-justification dozens of times a week. No amount of work is enough. There's like an innate unwillingness to put a budget together to know what your floor or basic needs are. There really is no secret behind the ways you can help yourself literally in any moment you choose to. I needed $317 a month to live in the town house. I need SNAP or a food bank and about $7000 a year to pay my utilities, taxes, insurance, and to register my cars. How insane would I look going to all of these shows if I didn't know that?

It's really hard not to think people just hate me. I know it's more they don't really give a fuck, but that's not necessarily a better feeling lol. I know it's a case-by-case thing for any given person I might consider. But just feeling obligated to constantly make excuses why people only have time for you on their terms puts you in an incredibly poor place mentally. They're not merely establishing a boundary as though I'm like self-destructive and inviting them into a world of drug use or otherwise chaos. I'm just not…I'm just not. Not what they're about. Not what they're interested in talking to. Not worth the gas money. Just not.

I'm trying really hard to figure out how to responsibly grow a network and create a bullwork against resentment for maintaining what feels like incredibly loose and distant associations. It's something of a persistent antagonist to be left "desperate" to find someone who has 3 hours to occupy a free ticket to one of the best bands. It's fascinating to me that people go to shows 3 or 4 or more deep in color coordinated clothing. Do I overhear their conversations and know I don't necessarily want to be friends with them? Sure. But sometimes I feel like I get more goodwill from strangers at these shows whether I was looking for it or not.

It's an existential worry to think either I'm so abjectly miserable to be around or that huge swaths of my immediate circle seem fundamentally incapable and unwilling to manage their time or budgets. Neither is a great prospect, a healthy mix of the infinite worlds in between those options isn't good either. And, like, what am I going to do about it? Give up and never invite anyone to anything again? Start placating and feeling more comfortable with an idea akin to, "Nothing really matters, just go have fun and fuck 'em!" I don't actually desire being cold and closed-off or ambivalent about really anyone I was remotely friends with. I can't think of any perspective I've been invited to adopt more often.

I don't think I'm wrong for maintaining a desire to connect, but I'm growing suspicious that I've developed a wholly destructive metric on who to engage with and under what conditions. Overwhelmingly, I've had friendships based around partying, fucking around, some intellectual-enough conversations, and what I previously understood as more laid-back and non-judgmental dispositions deeply disguised. If those people were merely working on modern maskings of their inherent disillusion, okay, cool? Less my fault for falling for a group psychological coping mechanism?

What I understand the vast majority of relationships or friendships to be based around is a policy of "Don't ask, don't tell." Don't tell your girl her ass looks fat in those jeans. Don't dig into weeds of what constitutes the "love," just keep painting layer and layer of cliché lore over the struggles you've been through or "deep" conversations you've had and squeeze the fuck out of any positive emotion so as to drown out the screams of conflicting evidence or feelings of loneliness.

If you relay the harm or boredom or feelings of rejection and being misunderstood, you risk doing mostly everything alone. Even those of us who may prefer to be alone more often than not, after a while, it's really hard not to entertain the worst thoughts for too long. In the face of trying to remind myself that there's all of this great music and things to do, coupled tightly to that is the "What am I doing wrong?" feeling when, notably everyone else around me, seems to have figured something out I can't. The large pack of gentlemen show up as a large pack of gentlemen. The girls with cuts on their arms and thighs walk hand and hand. The "quirky" couple who met at a particularly rousing DnD game. The bands of white trash circle up and smoke and boast competing beer bellies.

I do notice a handful of single concert goers. It's mostly dudes like me, but awkward. They sometimes occupy the space next to me after intuitively recognizing no one's coming lol. A single girl at a concert is always fairly young and in "independent badass" mode in how she dresses or does her make-up.

I don't know that it's even possible to get an "honest" assessment of what feels like an overt cultural disposition. It feels inherently dishonest, predicated on maintaining a façade of connection or understanding with familiar binding truths appearing to exist solely in beleaguered subtext. Even the "most likely" assessment of a healthy mix of forces does not turn any one of those forces into a "good" excuse or "palatable" reason for carrying on with anything but a spiteful resolution if you're me.

I don't think I'm wrong. In fact, every day I do something cool on top of "productive" or "adult" it serves an argument that I'm doing as right or more right than anyone. Consider this blog and the nature of my stress. I might blow $20 on a ticket that doesn't get used? I spent $35 on sugar alcohol 2 days ago. I "don't have any friends" while simultaneously judging what I overhear, and the looks and bonds of the crowds I see? I'm headed to Seattle next week to hang with Hatsam, in an Instagram conversation with Julie as I type this, and am going to dinner with Byron and our old neighbor tomorrow after hopefully meeting with Hussain who I assume is days away from a stress-induced heart attack. Me and Brandy are trying to figure out what next excursion we should take. See, friends. Sometimes Smash even responds to texts.

There's an irony in it taking work to relax, but it's true. It's work to drive, to budget, to stand in the sun, and to deal with any of the associated stress of being around a lot of people in unfamiliar environments. But it's better stress. It's good memories. It's opportunities to bond over something besides trauma or taken-for-granted obligations. You think my life's going to get harder or easier as I get older? Certainly harder. Who knows about easier, but I can confidentially say I was trying to make the most of it today, tomorrow, over the weekend, and next week until the cancer or dementia or car accident hit. You can't take the 82 shows this year I've been to away from me. I've not stopped trying to develop the land. I'm no less a salaried professional preaching the skills I practice to not get addicted to my own brain's bullshit.

10-15 years ago I was predicting that about now I'd become more relevant in my "old" friend's lives again. After the divorces. After the failed plots romanticizing Colorado or some other dreamy locale. It's not happening yet, but also I don't know if I'm still cool with any of those people anyway. I don't think I need to be or that it would necessarily be wise to try. What I do know is that things have only gotten more expensive, more demanding, less empathetic, more selfish (as if either of the last two seem possible), and whatever I might make of my struggle, it's peanuts if I had anything to care for beyond these cats and myself. Wouldn't it be nice if I could pretend I don't talk to almost 200 people a week about how stressed out, disorganized, and terrible at self-care they are? You think you're not addicted to the same hamster wheels?

[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.