[1075] Wrapped In Plastic

If I’m going to find a place of remote peace, I need to get a better definition of “the problem” and ways to go about “fixing” it.

Every day is a bombardment. The problem is as big as the fate of the country, surviving climate change, or the next pandemic. At every scale, there’s an opportunity to get sucked up into the exciting and thriving drama. I often speak of people as each unto their own black hole that is hungry and waiting to pull you down. The abstraction that is thought, made slightly less abstract through writing, is my ongoing exercise to look for something more tangible, with direction, or conceptualized in a way that it provokes action.

I’ve been done with my last job for 3 weeks, over a week of that time I was in Vegas, and 6 more days of that time I had a show to attend. Part of this last 3 weeks has felt like an eternity. Even after I learned how to sit and watch TV, there’s a large part of me that’s nagging me to “go.” I’ve very slightly boxed it in with a piddling expectation of myself to do at least 5 squats, read a chapter, read an article, and practice an instrument for 30 minutes each day. I’ve not managed to do that every day, slacking in the practice in particular.

I thought I’d have so much more to do. I even wrote about it while in Vegas because I was ready to get home and start. I don’t know if I hyped it up or expected people and time to start magically responding in quicker and more comprehensive ways than they ever have, but I found myself prioritizing my TV shows and doing little collecting/OCD-adjacent organizing of files. I sent a few emails, called a law firm, and then proceed to “chill” without feeling chill.

I also have tabs open with grants to explore. I’ve budgeted for creating a non-profit arm of the wanna-be counseling operation to perhaps help facilitate getting money. I’ve barely toyed with exploring how to modify the website, and the first place I asked pretty much confirmed I, of course and again, was looking to do something no one knows how or ever conceived of doing. Again I get, (and maybe it’s always just an ignorant feeling) stuck, and proceed down my moving pictures path.

I could also be looking more aggressively for a job. I’ve been reticent to begin. What’s the goal? I know what it isn’t. I don’t just want/need “more money.” I was making plenty of money at the last job and, somehow, I could only be persuaded to keep buying concert tickets. I certainly intend to slow down that habit, but the first 2 months of 2024 have about a show every week.

I kind of want to just fuck about. I don’t see, “realistically,” much of anything beyond pain, loneliness, or utter destruction on the horizon. Realistically is in quotes because I can’t see the future and know I’m but one incredibly small distorted window into the world. Very few are ever coming with me to a show. Even fewer are remotely interested in contributing towards anything I’d regard as a larger ambition with the land or in business. I’m not “doing it for the troops” or trying to “save the children.” I talk often enough about being an engine of spite, but even that is starting to sour.

In the most important sense, as I currently exist and carry on, I am alone.

Is that a problem? I’m certainly as capable of being by myself as I am running the party, so it’s a problem insofar as I still desire to joke and talk or be basically human towards anyone. In theory, I can always continue to invite people out even though they won’t come, or go extra hard in celebrating days like yesterday when I went out to eat, bowl, and then watched a movie with my friend. I don’t want to get weird though. I’d like to stay grounded and have a perspective about time spent with people. It’d be cool to consider myself worth hanging out with or as someone more people would seek out and utilize.

But that begs a different kind and set of questions. That phrasing made me think of being a counselor. Experience has taught me that, no, in fact, people do not seek out and utilize. Actually, they make an entire production out of pretending to do just that.

Perhaps it’s that I don’t really want much of anything anymore. Maybe I’ve been informed enough through experience, conversation, and attempts at doing things “better” or “differently” that something about my wants died. It’s entirely possible I’ve been in some kind of zombie state trudging forward with this semblance of ambition or greed that just betrays my day-to-day or sense of what’s actually possible anymore.

I don’t want to be a social worker, so why start a counseling business? It’s an opportunistic and kind of cynical attempt to cash grab. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if I’m actually good or not. My “oversight” doesn’t have the time or interest in reviewing my notes provided I’m not actively hurting someone or threatening her license. I have no one intelligent, accountable, or interested enough to require anything of me than to pass tests and pay fees. Just because I can structure an environment, ask probing questions, and be non-judgmental (read: not hateful and shaming) when I listen does not mean that anyone I’m speaking to is, at their core, interested in that project at all.

I’ve had well over 300 clients in the course of counseling. I’ve had dozens of those clients, and at least 2 or 3 every week, tell me how they wanted to keep in touch. Not a single one has scheduled an appointment 3 weeks later. Not a single one has texted regarding a base touch or to make a referral. Not a single one has asked if I’ve found a way to coordinate getting their Suboxone in conjunction with counseling. Why? Are they all liars? Well, yes. But also, no. They live in the normal world where words don’t really mean anything. For us autistic-types, you can choose to feel heartbreak, disoriented, or to boringly relay the predictable observable pattern and change your expectations or approach. Or, don’t, and disingenuously suffer as though you don’t know what’s going on.

If I frame my sense of “problem” in what might otherwise be reducible to “the human condition,” I will fail indefinitely. People being full of shit is not my problem. At the level of civilization, it may mean the end of us all, but locally, practically, I’m not cursing the heavens that people lie, don’t even know to what extent, and it means I have to temper and humble myself. I’m willing to attempt to capitalize on this propensity, and the seriousness with which I take my role is me combating my cynicism about just how far you can take it.

My problem is attempting to get back my time. I haven’t forgotten that. I want my time. Whether I’m seeing a comedian I’m mildly into, reading all day, or pretending I have a clue how to build something on the land, I want to feel the extent of the possible freedom to do so. In this moment, my computer is begging me to job search, read dozens of pages of grants, or click about government pages for more excuses to spend money for certifications and numbers.

My head isn’t in the game of seeing Ari Shaffir tomorrow. I’m not “excited” by the prospect of getting return calls or emails from those I’ve reached out to. I haven’t felt a genuine sense of growth or progress in almost…2 years? The things or people I’ve attempted to invest in have done nothing but punish me. The things I create register as decorative towels in the bathroom. Sure, it looks a little better, but what’s the real utility there? Is the light above the mirror sitting in a gaping hole? Is the black water flowing to an open pit? Are you sure you’re focused on the right part of this bathroom improvement? Or are you grasping at the only thing you feel you can really do, and now it registers as some kind of meaningful “fuck you” to your otherwise hopeless circumstances?

Given that I want my time, there is a certain comfort in sleeping all day, waking up whenever, staying up all night, reading through books that have otherwise been glaring at me for years, and continuing to marathon the never-ending list of shows. I think a lot about “retirement” when I’m organizing and making lists of TV. One I just combined a bunch of other lists into has 4,325 days worth on it. It includes things like old talk shows (1100 days are just 3 talk shows and 3 soap operas). At my 2x pace, for archaeological purposes of course, in my infirm years, I could be done with all that in about 6 years. 5 I bet if you cut out commercials and intros/credits.

I’ll probably have 5 years behind the wheel or on planes if I get my way. Isn’t it weird to think there’s a way to see every Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Days of our Lives etc. in your “spare” time? Even one of those shows laid on normal sensibilities feels impossible. What does that say about us? What does that say of our perception of what we’re worth if we’re unable to even conceive of ourselves properly within the time that exists?

All this talk of TV, but it’s helping me frame whether or not I have a problem. I, again theoretically, have a decent amount of time left to live. I don’t want to spend it in a rage at an abstract machine. I don’t want to spend it feeling beholden to forces that don’t recognize me or do anything for me. (I’m not making a Libertarian argument against taxes.) I don’t want to spend my time as a Cassandra imploring people to recognize we are, in fact, going to die, and the things we profess to care about need work in their creation, cultivation, and defense. I don’t want to spend my life pretending I have anything people need or find myself attempting to persuade them I’m worth anything.

Very, very rarely, someone genuinely listens to me or follows my advice. I’ve yet to get the feedback, “That was some fucked up shit you told me to do.” Hatsam listened and has turned into a more confident communicator and leader. There's my one client who was emboldened to self-taper after embodying my sincere praise for her demonstrable effort in service to being accountable. Clients who stopped killing themselves working to death I saw their faces loosen and language mellow. Clients who established even one boundary with their family or job reported nothing but smiles and a sense of liberation.

But they had to do the work. I’m just passing along my “common sense” and observation of reality. That is, you’re not listening to me when you’re taking my advice. You’re listening to the part of yourself that sounds like me. You’re finding a way to feel deeper about that blunt “do it” person you have in you that people like me feel plagued and stuck on. I still believe I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I just don’t know if I care to anymore. I don’t trust that I won’t go into darker places out of spite to get what I claim to desire.

Who would stop me? I had a whole blog on that notion not too long ago. Who would even recognize what I was doing? We live in a paradigm where naked criminal pride was not only elected president, but threatens to do so again, perhaps while in jail for unlocking the, in my view, plainly evil, inclinations in us all and celebrating them. We’re getting louder than any other noisy message that literally nothing matters but what you repeat to yourself and the world most often. Whether or not that’s “true” doesn’t even enter into the equation. The consequences and the power of doing so are felt at the cellular level. It’s religious fervor for a Cheeto messiah.

Is my problem that people are born sheep? Certainly not if they’re lining up to pay me, right? Certainly not if they could keep their sheep shit and sheep wool from wafting over into what I’m doing. But that’s the rub of living in a society. I’m never truly by myself or can be left alone. Someone is coming for me. Whether it’s the fallout of explicitly terrorizing forces or the consequences of paralysis and ignorance, the time I presume to have left is under immediate threat. I don’t need something abstract to scare me into a desire to amass wealth and explore options. I live in a society that got hateful and violent over masks and vaccines. The next bug I suspect will be more deadly and we’ll be even less equipped psychologically to deal with it.

I could choose, right now, to abandon larger entrepreneurial goals, Door-dash just enough to cover credit card payments, spend the vast majority of my time alone, eating hot dogs and ramen, and returning to a familiar place for decent chunks of my life. Recall, I spent most of my 20s functionally retired just sitting on drug study money. When my dad was hurt, it was movies, video games, and then more movies and video games for years. I deliberately tried to save money and conserve in college, not spending too much on food, splitting rent half a dozen ways. You think I was going to shows, buying game systems or tools, or investing in a truck and living space? I was practicing my guitar for 10 hours a day every day or going to the pool.

I’ve had many, many “peak leisure” points in my life as I dramatically swing from working myself to death to doing nothing and then back again. What if I just stopped doing that? What if I prioritized doing the minimally viable thing like a store trying to get a single cookie recipe perfect before they even whisper the word “milk.” “One demands milk!” You decry. But perhaps I’ve been fucking up the initial recipe for so long and hocking this mockery of a cookie, I’ve lost the thread as to why I got into cookie sales to begin with. Maybe I’ve wasted so much effort and money for a store, marketing, napkins, and a little bell on the door, but it’s never tasted right. Incidentally, the quality control team lost their ability to smell during covid and have been lying that it’s returned.

I don’t even know if I “need” to feel part of something bigger or more meaningful more than I “want” to. The spell of having a group of friends was incredibly powerful, naive as I was about what they were to constitute. Before I appreciated the extent of religious capture, I genuinely thought people were reasonable and persuadable. Before I literally worked for and as “The Man,” I thought they were filled with intelligent, intimidating adults who knew something “special” or “complicated” others didn’t. Not. Even. Fucking. Close. We’re all just idiots playing out emotional baggage in spiteful leveraged ways and pretending we feel, do, or care more about whatever-the-next-thing is than we do.

Some of us get scared and endlessly whine like Trump. Most of us reflexively find who to blame and go into lawyer mode for our own righteousness. Plenty play the narcissism of condescension and pageantry like my brother. It’s all a show. For who? For you. You’re front row center for every dismal thought, poorly set expectation, or failure of will. You’re here to distract, “entertain,” and pacify you. That’s how you clap for our troops (because they’re for US) while you let them suffer in the street. That’s how you tell me, straight faced, you care about children you target for unnecessary removal. That’s how you detach from any call to action as a summary and uniform dismissal of all things. It feels not only appropriate, but downright required.

I’ve never thought I could help or save anyone. I wasn’t saving children. I wasn't lapping up the praise from clients. I look at every compliment about my looks from the blind with the same elevated suspicion. My concern then becomes whether or not I can save myself. I’m not a “prepper” by disposition. The things I’d like to save myself from aren’t really things I personally struggle with. You know, you invite me to dinner, I’m there pretty much every time. You, always, too busy, broke, or not seeing my texts I’d love to never experience again lol, and it’s nothing I can fix that doesn’t beg for detachment.

Do I even want to share my experience? Writing is, and always has been, for me. I need to feel better, alone, forming a narrative that when I go back and read dozens of times, I better articulate what’s otherwise an agonizing and antagonizing fog of angst and consternation. You can “like” my posts. Do you share in what they say? If I explicitly ask someone to comment, just like a client in group, they’ll have loads to say. If I wait around looking for someone to speak or share something back, I’m as alone as I ever get. I don’t know if there’s two more contradictory words than “social media.”

We’re content hubs for consumption. I’m consuming shows. They’re not inspiring me to create or join their ranks.We consume our families, never giving them what they need, even if it’s just honesty, because it would impede our ability to feast on them in the future. It’s a feast to fuel the narrative of our relationship to them, their pathology we’re *immensely grateful* we don’t share, and the lesson we can all learn by caricaturing their example. We let our work consume us, because we don’t really want to be here. We don’t want to feel like *this is the choice I made? We don’t want to acknowledge how much we destroy in ourselves and others by being gluttons for punishment.

Slow. Be slow. Be simple. Flow. I have $2000 in cash, $11,000 in debt and minimum payments for bills and card payments reaching about $500 a month in total. I haven’t looked that deeply for any kind of job, let alone one that would pull in $500 a month. I don’t have to do much of anything. I’m not obligated to keep beating my head against the wall of (my most-forgiving framing) the human condition. I’m not necessary. I don’t matter. They can’t see me. Do whatever you want to do, even if it’s next to “nothing.” No one gives a fuck or is keeping score except you.

[1074] None Of Your Business

For as much as I feel like I'm writing a lot lately, I'm still not hitting it.

Let me tell you about a weird feeling I get. I started using this app, Habits. It, very simply, let's you create a habit you wish to practice each day, record how or whether you did it, and that's it. I've set it up to track doing 5 squats, reading 1 chapter, 1 article, and practicing music for 30 minutes a day. I have not been able to pull off those 4 things each day. More to the point, I haven't because of this sinking panicking feeling that just hit me, and does at different points in the day when I'm asked by the app if I've done one of the things.

Why would I have a flash of panic? Why would my stomach drop at the prospect of building on and forming new or better habits? Why do I feel as though I've sacrificed a sense of autonomy or ownership by…capitulating…instead of feeling empowered and in control by working my professed goals? I think there's something at the root of all misery and hell in the world related to the answers to these questions.

I don't think, deep down, we want a choice. I think we're instinctually anti-choice beings. I think that's why we attribute a certain dignity to notions of "conservatism" that practically and persistently just destroy or seek to control in the face of someone else's freedom. I think religious myths are so powerful because you are, by default, at the mercy or lack thereof in a cosmic game. When you do wrong, seek forgiveness. After all, it's sin's fault, not yours.

Rich or poor, you can subscribe to an environmental and cultural narrative that absolves you. You're the victim or the oppressed, demonize the other, justify your course, full stop every day all day. There's no obligation to really feel whatever someone else might be going through. You're not expected to learn or cross pollinate with ideas that challenge you. Even the pseudo-fight for the cultural landscape serves the same purpose for dipshit kids who think dirty looks or naughty words are "violence." You don't have to use words right when you're following the script.

I listened, very painfully, to Bill Maher talk with Candace Owens. I hate her. She's as dumb as a Dinesh D'Souza, Ann Coulter (who Bill also likes), or pick your favorite shit-smearing moron in any realm that draws press, like our newest House speaker. He challenged her to say, quite simply, that the moon landing was real. After some back and forth and chiding and pish-poshing, at bottom she said, "That doesn't even interest me." She didn't say it was real. She said he was asking her about something she's not concerned with, so it's functionally unfair or just rude to ask her for a head nod to what one might consider old-world "common sense."

She's not real, and people like Bill aren't wise to how someone like a Candance Owens thrives and navigates the world. It's not through deep intellectual analysis and differing opinion. It's through cultivating complicated-sounding bubbles of self-serving ignorance. You dress it up by being polite to people who tolerate you and then if you carry on long enough you start to get a veneer of legitimacy. Put out 10,000 podcasts, it doesn't really matter what each one says. There's 10,000 of them, so that counts for something, right? There must be a deep point to a personal truth in there somewhere?

I don't just want to practice, or read, or do a paltry amount of exercise. I want to live as though I have a real sense of freedom to engage in fun activities not at the end of a desperation gun. I think about school. School was fucking annoying. There are a million fun things to learn and do in school that don't feel fun or like you're learning shit. Why? Your teenage brain doesn't turn on until noon. Your teacher is an asshole. You're surrounded by other idiot kids. It's presented at a pace and in a way that may or may not jive with how you best learn. The background condition is a set of societal expectations that have nothing to do with how fun or cool science might be, or useful math might be, or how you could have better gotten into a gym routine before your bloodwork read "pre-diabetes."

My mind shoots reflexively through all of this. I don't necessarily have particularly bad habits. I don't tend to make excuses verses push myself to do the harder things. But I feel desperate. I feel like I'm mocking myself and the life I'm desiring. It also feels like I'm ceding something regarding my autonomy. I really want to just sit here, watch my shows, and go to bed. I want it more, in this moment, than to practice rudiments on the drums or Sum 41 songs on my guitar. I want it more because of that hopelessness and exhaustion that kicks in, because the more I talk about it, the more I want to practice. The more I unpack the feeling, the real sense of identity, motivation, and satisfaction starts to creep in. There's no dread or hesitation, but I have to dig.

I can't help but to tie this to thinking about addiction. You're not addicted to the drug. You're just not. I know your body has sometimes life-threatening physical attachments to it, particularly with alcohol, but you, as a person, as an individual, have an instinctive conservative reflexive narrative that keeps you locked on what is familiar, comfortable, and naively self-affirming. It's only validating that single sliver of your desires or potential. The sliver that wants to maintain a sense of control. So you feel "no" regarding any change, not just the kind that might make you better or push you towards a professed desire.

I've been thinking a lot about how to approach the next few weeks. The shows are winding down. I don't have a job. I still need to make about $12K. I have business goals and expenses looming. The weather is probably going to get shittier. I can feel a certain kind of lifestyle speaking louder to me. It's working considerably less. It's working from different areas of the country or world. It's making something more akin to the bare minimum than it is stressing on how to maximize profit. In the rush of all I feel I need to do, I'm consciously trying to be slow and deliberate so I don't desperately say yes to any new obligation that seems like it will satiate the familiar momentary panic.

I need to get out of social work completely, I know this. I need to stop juggling hundreds of pieces of disparate drama and repeating myself with regard to better practices. It doesn't matter if I'm good at it. I, personally, have nothing to back up how good I am other than the "fluffy" comments I get from people. I have had ZERO come to me after groups beyond a couple texts that have not been followed up. I knew that would happen. People don't want to get "better," they just want to find a new "familiar" or sense of "safety" with whatever it is they're presented with. The Suboxone or the routine and dance of "harm-reduction" does the heavy lifting. I plugged into the Groups routine and toyed with people's levels of comfortable. They didn't plug into me seeking the discomfort of what it takes to change and own and account for the things I'm attempting to.

You hear people profess to "thrive in chaos." That's shorthand for, "I've figured out who and how to exploit in my circumstances to feel stable again." Someone, or several someones, perhaps needy co-dependents, "love" to "help" and account for your chaos. Mutually assured stagnation, self-justification, and personally riotous [hear: "righteous"] truth.

So often my thoughts turn towards how I'm getting fucked, or how something could be a little bit better, or what it would take to convince a "reasonable" person to shut the fuck up during a movie or concert. It's a trap. We're not on the same planet. We don't have the same words. My priorities or goals or questions or jokes do not make sense in the context of the vast majority of people's worlds. They have their personal newsfeed now. They have their information silo. They have the culture of whatever excruciatingly small pocket of their world to draw from. Superficially, you can entertain them or sell them things, but they aren't there. Whatever you're practicing or attempting to show off or relate to can't be done in return. It's just not there.

I think about how the dynamic between me and Byron broke down. I used to be able to rely on what he said. Then, he started drifting into how "normal" people talk. "Hey! I've got this opportunity!" In reality, he's got this liability he wishes to foist the responsibility of onto everyone but himself. He doesn't want to man the food kitchen? Hire Nick under the guise of creating an on-site services coordinator. "You're my best friend, I'm looking out for you." He adopted the language of "best friend" to obscure the series of selfish acts and slights. Every single thing or connection or chance for growth or betterment presented by Byron turned into something that cost me money, a lot of time, or energy spent spinning my wheels and planning or learning for nothing. I occupied this "chess piece" thing in his head that he could wind up and move around, but never be viewed as a king in his own right with his own board. So goes everyone that heedlessly takes advantage and makes excuses and loses sight.

Hussain bemoans all of the "promises" he gets when he applies for a job, and every single one falls through. His clients blow the same bullshit smoke up his ass that mine do, and when he goes to follow up, gets frustrated when they don't answer or follow through. It's the ubiquity of the human condition. I don't know what percentage of "things I say" you'd need to match to "things I do" for it to be at a level that feels individually responsible or trustworthy, but my gut tells me most people are at less than 10%. Why? There's no expectation to be consistent. Your job is a psychological place-filler for that much less personal responsibility. You just have to follow orders. Be they to pollute, take-advantage, lie, stay silent, or kill. You play a certain role in your family. You structured the expectations of yourself around various perceived authorities or professed wisdom.

What are you to do, as an individual with a claim of awareness or meager attempt at diagnosing layers of our innate condition and ongoing conditioning? What am I supposed to listen to when it's not your god, your thought leaders, your pop culture icons, your politicians, educators, or pretty much anyone in too much authority acting in their capacity as an expert at maintaining their power and their narrative relative to all others? I certainly can't always trust myself. Myself wants to panic-pause me away from drum practice.

I have to listen to the flourishes and fleeting moments where someone seems to sound like me and explore why. I have to listen to the violent grading of gears operating against each other when your actions betray your words as they pertain to our friendship, your perception of my work, or professions of our allegedly shared values. I have to listen to the random lines I might hear from a TV show, song, performer, or overheard-at-lunch that give me pause and make for some bizarre inspired connection or insight. If I can't get that to congeal into practicing the goddamn drums, reading the book, or making the next miserable phone call to find an angle on the business I want to start, you shouldn't trust me. You have to be able to recognize and find the willingness to do the same work, or you'll never see mine.

I'm skeptical without getting conspiratorial. I try to use reason without pretending it has every answer to every question. I prefer to say "I don't know" instead of fill in the blank with magic answers. I demonstrate respect, often, through silence. I'm direct, and rude if necessary. I'm willing to entertain counter-narratives to my worst ideas about you if we spend too much time together and you talk too much. I'm open to being wrong, but I don't meet people willing to speak the language of humility and doubt. They'll perform it, but they don't work and feel it. I'm not wrong because you say so, or feel so, or are "just not interested in that" like a Candice Owens struggling to acknowledge the moon landing. I'm wrong when you can state my position, develop your own, and contextualize us both.

If I'm tempted to make sweeping declarations about "culture" or "humanity" it's after taking in the examples people set under many different and seemingly disparate conditions. Every single job I've worked has betrayed it's "mission statement." Almost every single "friend" I've had has needed to be reduced to superficial acquaintance or straight hateful bad influence. I watch people constantly torture themselves with their "dream self" and no, literally none, means of achieving it. Whether they're comfortable with the familiarity of their misery or luxury, I think it's the same mechanism. The Offspring line, "That's okay because I like the abuse," just came to mind. That song goes on to celebrate eventually getting to take advantage of the girl who was doing it first. Low self-esteem serving it's function on both ends.

I have so little power and am constantly getting taken advantage of. I get fucked financially. I get fucked professionally. I feel like I've pissed off the exact wrong people in the past and that's found a way to follow me for years. I can step into environments or conversations perfectly neutral and in good spirits, and in 2 minutes find myself getting yelled at over someone's perspective of my behavior or commentary. It will absolutely never matter who or what is "right" in those scenarios, just that I triggered someone to emote and my unwillingness to reflexively capitulate and share their pain will register as me doubling-down. Again, I'm the other, the monster in their narrative, the thing they can be justified in feeling anything about.

Now say you're a normal person who hasn't articulated all this out so far. You have the same sense about you. "The world" is out to get you. You're incensed and averse to their "judging." How do you cope? You actually double-down. You actually get more selfish. You look to control and constrain your perspective in a desperate race to the bottom. I am and do get routinely taken advantage of, so do you. How bad do you need to make yourself feel about that to justify maybe controlling your partner or child or lashing out at your parent or friend? I've gotten accused of heinous shit and looked at like I'm masterminding manipulative games. How about you? What assumptions do people build into your character that fuels the ways you rebel or bite back? Literally every word, body movement, or detail of your misery-inducing environment becomes a piece of the personal apologetics handbook if you want it to.

I'm going to continue to fumble forward and fuck up every possible angle there is to fuck up. I'm going to look over the sea of cars and lights and millions of narratives I can imagine from my plane seat and try to continue to identify the ones that don't get us all killed or leading hateful and spiteful lives regardless of how "real" their capacity to stoke our sense of dignity or pride in their expression. There's literally an infinite amount of ways to organize these words, let alone the hundreds of thousands that have came before just from me. Are you reading and hearing what you already know? Is that why you skipped this one?

[1073] Unabashed

I have so much work to do. I want to use this time to try to get a handle on it all and maybe weave in reflections on my time in Vegas.

I might have found a Suboxone provider. This means I’ve talked for 40 minutes with a doctor who seems to already have several hands on several pots and established harm-reduction arms, and he’ll let us snuggle up under one. This means I need to get my website updated to refer directly to his intake process and ensure I know what to incorporate so people smoothly still do their counseling with us. I’ll need to update/print/spread around flyers. I need to perhaps plan to get updated technology and a spot to host for when clients need to remotely check in with the provider.

I need to attend a meeting Friday to discuss just how much Atlantis fucked us and either did not correctly submit or tell us at all how we weren’t getting empanelled. I also need to figure out how to cost-effectively sue that company.

It sounds like less writing it down. I am very sore and otherwise ready to get home, so maybe it’s just registering as a lot when I’m stuck in Vegas and still a plane ride and couple hours drive away from home.
Vegas has a lot to do. Like, a lot a lot. There’s really no reason to look for other shit until you’ve dug into and planned a week or more’s worth of activities in Vegas. Next time I come back, I’ll make sure to have a lot more money, stay somewhere that doesn’t require taking the bus or ride-sharing, and better plan food/drink locations. I spent so much just to eat and it felt so unnecessary for decent, but not mind-blowing, meals.

Vegas is dirty. I’ll never, I mean never, understand how billions can be concentrated in such a small space, but there’s little intention to send any of it to pretty up the streets or surrounding neighborhoods. Seattle was like a garbage monster, Vegas is its cousin. Feels like there’s enough distinction, but certainly the same family.

People suck everywhere. Maybe it’s more drunk people suck everywhere. It’s the land of excess and waste. They don’t care how much you paid to check out The Sphere, they’re going to talk and giggle and be drunk cunts no matter the amount of shushing or dirty looks. The guy basketball-shooting his trash to the floor at the bus stop, while standing next to an empty trash can, is going to be a palpable metaphor for what I take to be the underlying psychology of the area. The right thing for you to do is available to, but you’ll make an extra effort to not.

I genuinely never felt a real pull to gamble. It just feels like such a convoluted way to burn money for nothing. I don’t get a dopamine rush. The lights and colors mean nothing to me. I’m not feeling competitive. Just dumb.

There’s not enough ways to navigate the city that are efficient and don’t require walking. I’ve been in some form of pain in an ongoing way for about 4 days and have probably walked at least 30 miles as I add up what my maps have been telling me. You have to walk to get away from congested areas. You have to walk to the bus stops. You have to walk 3/4 of a mile just to leave the Sphere parking lot/building. There’s almost nowhere to sit that isn’t in front of a slot machine, perhaps an errant bench here and there, or at a restaurant.

I don’t know how many people I actually observed having “fun.” It’s like the ultimate way to occupy time at this non-stop level of “doing something,” but I don’t get the impression anyone is invested in their experience or the space. As soon as a show is over, it’s on to the next one or immediately double down on drinking. The people watching I suspect is second only to New York. All around you hear different accents and languages every few steps. For all of the noise and lights it just feels very…simple. It doesn’t even feel “busy.” It’s just nakedly whatever it is on that day. Hot, congested, filled with people at various levels of inebriation, and flagrant about what it thinks you should pay to soak it all in.

I’m ready to go home. I’m really not, in my heart of hearts, a traveler precisely because I’ve been in this moment enough to know what I do and don’t want/need regarding “experiences.” If everyone I saw in Vegas came to Indianapolis, I’d never come to Vegas. It’s not something “new” or piece of insight regarding “culture” I’m getting here. I got a mildly better working knowledge of where some things are. Cool. It’ll help me conversationally “relate” to other upper-middle-class people who’ve blown through here like they do everywhere else. Swell.

Whether I was criticizing the trash of Vegas or Malaysia, I’d still feel like I wanted to go home 3 days in, especially if I had to walk everywhere and encountered the same surprising number of whiffs of shit. We’re all, fundamentally, the same, and not that interesting or interested in each other, so we create places like Vegas to put our trash souls on parade.

[1072] Kid Gloves

I’m just over halfway through my Vegas adventure. The first 3 days were spent somewhat in the company of my brother, at his place, and just under his general him-ness. As I reflect on the explicit and hateful text I sent him as I Ubered away from his apartment, it struck me how “empty” the whole thing felt. I’ve gotten by for so long in just not having to consider him, navigate him, or give a fuck, there’s no real energy or animus there until it’s been dragged out by what my instincts and experience have already taught me.

I sent him the following:

“I apologize for even flirting with the idea that we should have tried spending time in the same space. I don't like or trust you and I know literally everything you do or offer is in bad faith or looking for leverage or you feel put upon. I never wished to rely on you for anything, and were dad not part of this equation you never would have heard from me. I won't fuck that up again. Next time, just tell me to go fuck myself. It's some bitch shit to say ‘that's north and we're going south’ lol.”

I was not “lol”-ing. I also sent him $100 for the inconvenience of having to exist around me for 3 days, detailing what I ate or drank, and any gas he burned carting my dad and me to our activities. I’ve discussed my brother a handful of times in the past, mostly after he’s been considerably more explicit in the show of his true nature. I started initially thinking he had a “piddling sincerity” that kept him more honest to our upbringing. I’m no longer entertaining that idea. He’s now working to solidify and protect his judgmental and pretentious posture. It’s the identity he thinks best hides his inner shivering child at the prospect of addressing his deeper issues.

That would be some pretty crazy and baseless speculation if I knew nothing about him. If I didn’t know the years he spent playing the battered-wife in service to our abusive mom. If I didn’t know how he reacted to the last things I wrote about him calling out his proud expression of pathological bravado. If I didn’t just live through 3 days of the fakest high-strung performance to piece together “respectable adult” verses “running screaming blind through the darkness.”

My brother is starting to remind me of my uncle George. If something is just a little off or inconvenient or not in their wheelhouse, a switch flips and “fuck it” is engaged, and everyone around them is to blame. My uncle used to snap at my grandmother about it while she was serving him food or otherwise taking care of him or the house she allowed him to live in indefinitely. My brother, say, when he can’t figure out how to use his GPS in order to pick us up after a concert, will spend an hour attempting to make it sound reasonable that we should walk 5 miles to meet him wherever he’s decided to stop and tantrum or burn out. He’s 33.

I feel like we need to say a few things about hospitality. In theory, when someone let’s you stay with them, cooks for you, let’s you drink a beer or otherwise plug into their space, they’re being hospitable. Unfortunately, for people like my brother, he’s so in his own world, you can feel every ounce of his resentment that you’re there. He’ll carry on in that extra way like “we’re all friends here” or you can “help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen,” but it’s also daring you ignore the looks, commentary, and subtext.

I feel a little bit like the tortured protagonist in a horror scenario who has like a dozen real things happen to her, but she can’t explain it, and given her own stress or situation she sounds crazier and crazier when all she wants is to be seen and believed by her loved ones. I promise you, it’s not just because I’m so full of hate or really wish for you to feel one way or another about him. I was extremely unwise in allowing myself to be around him and have walked away lesser from it.

It feels like such an own-goal. This trip has been in the works for a literal year. What happens? We get to the main event late and miss the first band. Am I able to maintain perspective and appreciate all the other bands I saw that day and the awesome time I had with my dad? Absolutely. Did we get Joshed like the Bears got Grosssmaned? Absolutely. It was preventable. I knew I wanted nothing to do with his perception of time or severe inability to prioritize or consider anything beyond himself. I was in the car anyway.

I almost feel like with my text it’s punching down. It was in retaliation for his incredibly disingenuous statement to be sure. You’re about to hop on the road for 5 hours for a mini California vacation. You just have to get there and eat. You have the extra 20 minutes to save me $25. I was clearly open to paying you for being so put out. God knows the entire fucking year we’ve had to prepare for this time together we couldn’t have planned this any better.

My Uber driver was from Nicaragua. I asked him if he got along with his siblings. He just got back from an extended vacation with one of his brothers and regaled me with all of the excellent times he’s had with his gigantic family that all travel and spend time together. He and his wife lost a child 15 years ago, and it sparked in him a desire to refute the joke that is life and dive into as many experiences as he could get with the rest of his kids and wife.

In a world that made sense, I’d still be at my brother’s right now, perhaps watching his cats, instead of him paying to have them boarded up while they’re gone. But, you know, because I’m “lesser” or “not to be trusted” or whatever boogeyman I’ve morphed into for him over the years, it’s ridiculous and laughable that the idea would even be entertained. I’m fundamentally not worthy of whatever he feels he’s created for himself with his codependent extremely high anxiety wife, “ridiculous number” paying job, and future world travel plans.

He has the picture of what he thinks everyone should want or need, but he has no perspective and he’s not real. I didn’t need the “better couple’s communication” book left out on the coffee table to start predicting the nature of their impending cracks when they can’t nerd their way through buried resentments that will build over time. I told my dad to not let Josh get away with downplaying things when he inevitably goes to him in confidence.

I don’t know what the best way to talk about that thick sticks-in-your-throat layer of things left unsaid that just carries into all of the interactions. If he asks you something, it’s because he’s already prepared to say whatever he wanted to on the topic. If, and this has gotten worse, I’m talking, he’ll just interject in a loud way whatever he wanted to say that doesn’t even acknowledge what I was talking about or was talking at all. He’s like attempting to erase me from his psyche in increasingly obvious and awkward ways.

I’ve been attempting to erase him too. I think the only way we managed to get along on the last layover in Vegas was because his wife was out of town, he literally had nothing to do, wished to drink, and I had already started drinking and was open to do more. We then proceeded to talk to other people the entire time at the bar and only had perhaps 10 minutes of fluff on the ride back to the airport. That’s about all we’re good for, and probably after this last round, even less than that.

It’s easier to believe that at least things are “kinda even” or “okay” when you’re not forced to engage with them. Everything that’s ever annoyed the fuck out of me about him or that I’ve alluded to, but hadn’t reached boiling points yet, came as a flood with each bump in the day. He’s literally still the instrument my mom engineered to torture me, and he’s completely unaware and disregarding of that fact. So much so that I can literally do and say nothing but “please” and “thank you” and he can’t hear me, or if I ask for a ride, I’m asking for a dam to break.

“You know Nicholas, I’ve been going out of my way for you this whole weekend!”

I’ll never unhear how he said that to me years ago. So much condescending vitriol like I was slime and he was deigning to carry me along. Like I asked him for anything. Like I needed a fucking thing from him. You know, as the “good son” for some empty semblance of “family” or in service to our father. This cunt. I’d bet money that the same tone and sentiment has been ringing in his head like a nagging bell the whole time I was around. Who does he think I am? He doesn’t think I’m anyone. I’m an incredibly cool, smart, and hardworking person. It’s not a secret how I learned to perceive how deep me being me can really cut someone. I can consciously be silent or polite and people like him will go out of their way to ensure I know I’m a burden and out of my place. Fucking Colorado trip comes to mind, “Nick must be miserable walking up this mountain…” yada yada. Great mind-read to set an unnecessary and incorrect tone. Thanks!

I don’t wish to get locked into some pathetic sibling squabble. I’ve been comfortable since as long as I’ve been cutting out shitty people from my life to continue doing so. I wanted to write about this today so I can digest the muck I’ve been swallowing and carry on the next few days focused on the things I planned to continue enjoying. The thing he’s severely lacking I dish to him like a sledge hammer to the head. What he could provide or trade on in more civil ways he doesn’t have the self-respect or awareness to mine. We’re on two different planets, and I look way too salty and spiteful, as though he’s not just another addict offering me an opportunity to over do it on rage-a-hol.

I feel like my family is cursed. We have intellectual assets, money, a certain degree of ambition and potential, but for the love of everything holy can’t figure out how to sit in the here and now and just fucking enjoy it. That’s my biggest sin in all of this. I’ve literally been enjoying myself nonstop for almost the entire year, and instead of just veering past the predictable unfixable problem, I stepped right in. Stupid, Nick. just like with Byron’s kid. You can’t fix these people, nor do you have a desire to. They don’t wish to get better, and you will always be the considerably bigger problem to them if they even conceive of a shared dynamic or responsibility. Cut them off harder, faster, and run as though you’re fleeing a cult.

I made myself small. I haven’t done that so aggressively before. With the Byron’s kid situation that was some overlap of many things breaking down over years. With this, I just don’t interact with Josh. I don’t visit him. I don’t call or text out of the blue. He wished me happy birthday 4 days late this last year. Like, fuck that guy. He’s a fucking asshole. I’m a fucking asshole too, but I won’t pretend to play nice and at least I’ll tell you why I hate you or that I think you’re a bitch.

[1071] You're Gonna Die, Gonna Die, Gonna Die

Oh dear.

It's not that I can't handle silence. It's not that I'm afraid of what's in my head. It's not feeling overwhelmed by loneliness. It's not anxiety for what's to come.

It's dread. It's a hopeless void that somehow infinitely recurs. It's hearing and seeing all the same things under the sun, and facing the impossibility of escape.

There's an unbridgeable void between the world of logic and the world of what we feel. When I say unbridgeable, I mean that any time one is built, it collapses moments after. You can read every contrary book, live well into your elderly years, and listen to thousands of embattled pleas to be understood, and you will die smiling and assured in your personal truth.

I got 14 minutes into this mini news documentary on Indiana passing a near-total abortion ban. I watched an old white dumb cunt representative skip on by a question about the benefits there are for the 10-year old girl who was raped. I can't help but think of the potential for escalation with regard to this country's fascism almost every day, what the ongoing wars will bring, or what ecological or economical cliff the "elite" will have us barrel towards next.

We want to die.

I don't know how to arrive at any clearer a sentiment. Of all the patterns I profess to notice, this one just keeps popping up in new and tired forms. We simply want to die.

We want to die through our work. We will do so functionally 24 hours a day. We build our entire lives around the dictates of work. We've, barely, scraped back almost laughable dignities when compared to others or our ideals. We think about work when we're not working. We anticipate the work we must do when we get off work. We dream about new and marginally better, if not at least different, work when we're not at it. We don't wish to exist. We wish to work so long and hard that we cease to exist.

We want to die through our entertainment. We want to die so bad, we don't even recognize it as entertainment. We're squawking through the whole performance. We don't see the stories they are telling because we aren't heroes or even background characters. We're watchers. It's meant to be on, streaming, endlessly, racking up views and playing ads. You're not supposed to take up your own sword like some hero of your own existence. You're not supposed to see yourself as the funny one, poised for a romantic tryst, or scheming to enact your hidden agenda. You're a 1 or a 0, selecting from interchangeable squares calculating in real time which ones to show you next.

We want to die through our politics. This almost doesn't feel worth elaborating. The cultural psychosis that is Trump worship is tantamount to a religious inquisition. We celebrate, not just ignorance, but determined and proud denial of facts, science, or the language and possibility of a shared existence. Conviction and repetition sweep us under like an ocean current. I predict hundreds of thousands will die before you get half a generation attempting to undue the damage of the last 50 years.

We want to die through our relationships. We let our abusive and dismissive family members tear through our self-conception. We let our partners control us. We let our kids run amok. We let our relatives take advantage and get demanding and we pray away the self-respect and responsibility it would take to cut them off or tell them the truth. We enable self-pitying and compulsive excuses to stay lazy, silent, and distant. We seek people who "compliment" our pathological self-destructive narratives and coddle our unhealthy coping mechanisms.

We want to die through our memes. Who needs an "original" thought? Why sit with yourself long enough to conceive of a means of describing your life or circumstances after asking and wrestling with questions that arose in you? Do questions even arise in you? The answers are in limitless supply, so why question? Some errant "thought leader" said it first, and certainly meant it exactly as you feel they must have. Just as well. Who has the time to write, or read, or embody a series of difficult contradictions when the right voices, color patterns, and approved activities can be added to the conveyor for all to notice and not be threatened by?

We want to die through our language. It's just empty. It means nothing. It's the fakest most painful series of interactions I have every day. So much nothing, about nothing, for no one. You wanna hang out sometime? Maybe if I hound you for a month. You're upset about the state of the world? Bet we didn't read the same series of articles. You wish "things" were "different" or "better" than you have now? Whether you practice the naked ironic inability to appreciate all you currently have, or you dutifully abstain from pushing yourself to budget and coalition build, every path leads to pre-verbal sensations of cyclical inured guilt.

We want to die in our celebrations. Halloween is so many people's favorite holiday, right before they slump into a 3-5 month depression remembering everyone who isn't coming to Thanksgiving or how many Christmases have been nothing but stress. We carry dreadful narratives about what one must do with and for "family" no matter the cost. We pretend not to resent all the effort we might put into the facade, and the obliviousness and disregard from the other players leaves us not quite unaware of how suicides tick up this time of year.

We want to die in our addictions. It's not so straight-forward as to suggest we wish to go down in some hazy bliss of an overdose or poisoning. We want to die by being beholden to our comfort, our pattern, our overseer. Be it a persistent avoidance of the feelings and traumas and ignorance of how we're wired, or kneeling in prayer for getting "stable" on a "harm-reduction" medication, we wish to be absolved of ourselves through the rituals and the rulers. "As long as I have my x, I'll be okay." As long as I never determine what it means to be "I," any x'll do in making and following a rule.

We want to die as watchers. The more we watch how others are or aren't, we can implicitly compare and reassure ourselves that, wherever we are, at least we're not over there. When you watch, you get to trick yourself into thinking you only exist right behind your eyes. You're not your body, your words, your works, nor anything more abstract like your potential, your intention, or your awareness. Ephemeral bursts of agency or desperate claps-back serve to embarrass and train to self-correct. Don't change, fix, or challenge. Watch the story unfold, hit your mark, and play along.

We want to die as consumers. We'll bleed the planet dry for doodads. We'll burn ourselves alive to keep things "convenient" and "cheap." We'll bemoan soaring coasts and defer to inflation before we face our own greed that would obligate us to hold others to account for theirs. There will never be enough to buy, therefore never enough produced or commodified. When the robots learn how to do it for everything physical, you'll find even more ways to divide up and price out your soul.

We'd rather die than forgive. We'd rather die than admit. We'd rather die than acknowledge words like "humility" and "wisdom" even exist. We scream and cry when concerted efforts are successful in their explicitly stated aim to kill us, and we don't try to defend ourselves let alone kill back. We die in our silence and complicity and late-to-the-party complaints as though we weren't happy to celebrate our deaths as long as they were politely dressed and laughably convoluted and incoherent. They would never! Say the incredulous bloviators. Yet, they always do.

Unfortunately for you, you're not dead yet. Your merely meager and often feeble existence is still killing us all considerably more than it's keeping us alive. You know how I know? You're silent. You're alone. You're depressed. You're anxious. You're confused. You're exhausted. You're poor, but not poor poor. You're stuck. You're afraid. You're working incredibly hard to not feel how deeply all of these things you are, and you're scared of touching how close you exist to death, and how often you seek it.

Or, maybe, you occupy an entirely different world than I do. Maybe you're in some pocket of middle-class bliss and reverie that one such as me has never known. Maybe Jesus is keeping you so safe and snug that you can't wait to ride the next catastrophe into His Light. Maybe everyone else's mythical beings you don't believe in are really the ones looking out for you, but they aren't taking it personally. You're already in the club, right? Just gotta dance, drink, and hit on people. It's simple. Just gotta believe. Gotta have faith. There's always hope to be had in something.

Death will be a gift, but only if you've figured out how to live before it gets you. All this practicing and dress rehearsal is a mockery. Wake up. You're asleep. You are drifting between narratives that have nothing to do with you or what you need. Your voice works. Your work matters. You need to find the things to fight and push through instead of treading water. There is no prize at the end. All you have is right now.

[1070] Bad Boy

I'm doing nothing if not trying. I try so hard to do things the "right" way. I work against what I know and deliberately exercise good faith and good will where an infinite well of hatred and criticism otherwise exists. Why I bother to try to behave this way got tested and challenged today.

I think I need to just get the argument portion out of the way.

As I was explaining to one of my groups, who had yet to be informed that I was leaving, I talked about having my out-patient clinic. 99 times out of 100, if you find a therapist or counselor you actually trust and are willing to talk to, if they leave wherever you found them, that's it. It becomes a best of luck wish to find someone you might have invested years of your life with. I occupy a unique space where, if you were actually getting utility and feeling growth in talking with me, you just have to click a different link or call a different number.

I had 11 different counselors coming in to cover the 12 groups I was leaving. For the past 2 weeks I've made approximately the same statements regarding how to find me, how my company seeks to work, and how I hope to have structured it in a way that people can maintain their attendance and adherence to Groups' rules, and still afford me. I don't even trust Groups and have watched them do demonstrable harm in an ongoing way, but in that spirit of deliberately trying not to be hateful and spite-ridden literally structured my "competition" to accommodate the clients' needs first.

I've made those statements in front of providers, 7 other counselors, office managers from different regions, discussed it with my supervisor, and no one until this cunt, Richard Lembke, batted an eye. He calls it "wholly unethical" to be pitching my company to people who have expressly asked me how they can keep in contact. He reports me, takes control of the group, and kicks me out.

There's so much to account for, yet it's all very simple and can be done quickly. First, we regularly coordinate care or attempt to find other providers if Groups doesn't seem to be the best fit. We have an entire department dedicated to giving our people numbers to call and options to explore so they can keep a regular prescription or get resources Groups doesn't offer. If you're putting people first, and they've built a trusting therapeutic relationship with someone for as many as 15 months, where does the confidence come from to assert the "wholly unethical" charge? What does it say about every single other person who listened and didn't feel entitled and moved to hijack my group? What do you make of the 2 people who immediately reached out to me after that Group to either tell me they, and the rest of the group, defended me or wish to proceed individually?

Between the 4 people loosely associated with my company, that isn't offering medication assisted treatment, there's 1 person on the calendar bi-weekly. I'll maybe have 2 in a couple days. Groups can't handle that? I'm cutting into their profits too much? The subsidized multi-million dollar operation with 350 people in our office alone? K. The company that regularly admits people who are exceptionally mentally or physically unwell that we watch deteriorate or destroy groups each week? That's not "wholly unethical" when I have every supervisor and the regional medical director agreeing with me when I call it out in the meetings?

It is one of the hardest things to do to find someone you can actually trust to talk to. To get reasonable, thoughtful, critical feedback that let's you then put it to work is an exceptionally rare find. That is to say, what I do has taken a lot of practice, life experience, and adherence to being incredibly fucking ethical given how I know I could act in working for places that aren't ethical.

If I get to some level of "wild" success, I don't want it to be because I created a cult, dependents, or through intimidation. I don't want the people who work with me to feel like they are under constant threat to say the "right" things to sweep bad shit under the rug. I don't want people who, even jokingly, start to worship or glom onto me because I'm yada yada, "The only one who's ever cared…" And I don't want to be so self-assured and delusional that I'm willing to Elon Musk my way past any critical feedback or proper restraint.

Parts of the world are at war. The "in group out group" and unearned confident narratives are running amok. I initially thought about titling this "Religious Zeal" because that's what Richard made me think of in how confidently he asserted my lack of ethics. He is convinced of himself, and thus in my estimation, a dumb and dangerous cunt. His small, but righteous and mighty, perspective will speak with all the conviction of a terrorist or zealot, and smugly denote the hyperbole in the analogy. After all, he's never killed anyone, and it's right there in the rule book how we're all supposed to be.

He's the norm. Ignorant conviction following the strictest interpretation of some uncriticized norm or rule. Who wrote it down? Why? Does it make sense? Who benefits from it? Doesn't matter, daddy said so, so begone unethical beast. I didn't get the job for two days as a spy from another giant Suboxone provider intent on snatching people. I was trying to respect and protect relationships I've been cultivating for 15 months. Neither he, nor Groups, gives a fuck though. They've never given a fuck about me, they don't care if you're mentally unwell or appropriate. They care about getting thousands of submissions sent to insurance every week.

It's hard not to regress into sociopathic and "pragmatic" thinking about that. There's a dozen shady things I could do to make money, seize power, and functionally arrest people under some horrifying notion of "care" or "help" or "harm reduction." I don't. I don't not just because it's wrong. I don't because I need to believe there's actually a right and just way to succeed. Every other fucking aspect of my life is the exact opposite lesson. The companies I work for exploit. The indifferent capitalist machine churns through all of our lives. Desperate and privileged elites demand exorbitant amounts for an hour of their time. It's bad. It's bad practice. It's being a bad human. It's bad for your soul. It's opportunistic and fatalistic and empty and filled with so much screaming denial I can't stomach it.

When I encounter the Richard's of the world, a switch flips in me. I get an adrenalin rush. I get scared. I like to cause pain, to fight, and create a scene. I like to show you, immediately, what's underneath all of the practiced professional posture. I like feeling ruthless and explicit about how I might choose to begin achieving my ends. It's as dark and scary as I ever feel, because it's compelling and feels incredibly reasonable, even after I come down.

Why not? That's what I have to keep asking myself. Why not "not kill" in the same way the zealots and dumb fucks hold themselves harmless in the suicidal environments they cultivate? I can construct a world in which you're feeding from what I serve you, especially if I entertain the all-consuming addictive part of me that would like to make an example of you. It takes a lot of energy, but perhaps it's energy well spent. I'm certain no one's going to speak up to tell me any differently.

You'd get off on watching too. People want the shit show. People are eating up the war videos and rolling baby heads. We kill ourselves in dozens of ways each day, knowing we don't deserve what we have and don't protect and create what we need. So when someone else is manifesting that impulse, slide over the popcorn. I know what you watchers want as much as I know what the worst parts of me wants. You want to be right about me. I want to believe I can be right about anything. We want the orgiastic jubilation of confirmation and conviction.

I never want to be a genuine Dick. I never want to be so convinced and pathetically clutching my pearls as something to bargain with in the next life. It might take me 4 hours to properly come down from an adrenalin rush, but that 4 hours is down from a veritable lifetime of feeling like I need to react disproportionately and "now" to the infinite sea of small petty people and their indignities fired like birdshot.

The world is truly a miserable place and I absolutely hate more of it than I like. What I like happens to mean more to me in terms of what I need to see and try to create than the forgone conclusions of exercising my hated. How long do you think it took me to figure that out? Can you say the same thing?

[1069] Knock Knock

This may be one of my more weird and off-putting digressions. I'm feeling weird and off-put. As my time at Groups winds down, it's giving my mind more room to breathe into the next things to focus on. It's giving me time to sit in and reflect on well-worn spaces regarding how I've spent my time and who with.

I genuinely wonder how "dumb" I truly am. I don't mean in an intellectual sense. I mean in terms of what it is supposed to mean to exist as a friend, man, "leader," or "basic human being." I primarily feel like I'm watching. I still find things confusing that I was watching when I was a child. Every day I'm presented with some new confounding, "I could never…"-esc situation that feels like there's a driving absurdity. I refer to it most often as an "unyielding irony" or series of consequences bred from immutable spite.

I simply don't know what I am. I don't know if I'm a good friend, or an eager puppy looking for pets and validation. I don't know if I'm actually causing some immense amount of harm or stress to people in how I exist. I don't know how I'm perceived, and when someone offers to tell me, it's too familiar or predictable and functionally devoid of any real depth.

The number one thing I hear from my clients as feedback that glances with anything to do with my actual personality is, "When I first met you, I didn't like you and thought you were a dick. Then I realized you were pushing me or making me uncomfortable because you cared or were trying to help." I have heard that half a dozen times this week alone. They acknowledge a negative feeling, the utility of doing so, and working through what I was asking.

To explicate this further, say you tell me you want to be "mindful" about "not yelling at my son" or "spending more time with my kids." When, each week, I ask you how many times you recorded noticing that you yelled at your son or how many times you recorded making more time for your kids, if you say "zero," I'm not an asshole. I'm opening the door to exploring why you're yelling or wasting your time. This, predictably, makes people uncomfortable, but it's the first step to any form of progress along any dimension in your life you wish to improve. You can't fix what you're not even aware of.

This feels like my dilemma. I feel like I'm missing something very deep and fundamental about how, why, or whether I interact with people. I have friends who I've given a hundred or more dollars to who've never invited me to dinner. I have friends who I've answered the call or text for in the middle of the night who I'm almost certain were I to reach out in the same manner it would fundamentally alter how or whether they bothered with me again going forward.

I'm certainly not saying I have some giant list of friends and I'm just naive about the nature of hundreds of superficial connections. I'm saying when I reflect on what are supposed to constitute my "closest" or "longest" dynamics, not all, but the vast majority simply don't seem to have ever existed? What, then, am I even trying to capture or refer to?

My closest friends at present are H, who is pathologically helpful and industrious. It's great when you're trying to promote an empathetic hard-worker in service to your company. It's dangerous when he's seeing the heart doctor because he can't draw effective boundaries about how to use his energy. We're both "desperate" to make money, though I've enough lived experience "failing" at entrepreneurship, I'm just as active in trying to enjoy the ride as I am in achieving anything. He's helped me immensely with my vehicles, in having an exchange regarding business ideas and distributing work, and just demonstrating that there's genuine people who deserve to be enabled instead of taken advantage of.

I've spent the next most time with J. She's fun to be around and funny. She's more intuitive and potentially hard-working than she wishes to follow-through with, and this lends itself to a kind of chaos. She cozies up to people with major issues. Whether it's because she sees herself in them, or because she doesn't feel she deserves more than the places they're at is unclear. Either way, she wants to be told what to do and fit into a dynamic that lets her "play." Her blasé attitude towards her health contributes to aggravating old sports and substance abuse injuries, and it's not clear how long she could be relied upon in a role of too much responsibility, as I continue to talk about ways to do just that.

I role with B, and have off and on since high school. She's as smart or smarter than anyone I've ever met, makes and follows through with plans, and is getting a handle on her emotional patterns and drives. We live in very separate places. When we do get to hang out, it's for a few days at a time, or for dinner. I've never gotten the "game playing" vibe from her. She's in touch with her damage, and I think doing so pre-empts what defensive and insecure people do to obscure or blame. I've never felt I've had to censor myself or hesitate talking about anything with her.

My dude HS is in a similar position across the country, growing in the depth of his understanding of himself, and fitting neatly into more leadership roles. I didn't really feel a beat was skipped even not having seen him in person for several years. In my perfect world, he's my first and perpetual neighbor who I know can be relied upon to, you know, actually get drinks or go dancing or hit a show without it registering as an obligation or some extra effort.

To be sure, if I'm ever writing about you, it's either because you occupy a very special and privileged place in my head, or you're fucking up royally and in a very confusing way. Even when I'm attempting to be specific and discerning, it's never meant to beat you over the head or blame you. I just don't know enough. I'm not in regular conversation with nearly anyone. No one messages me out of the blue wondering what I've been up to. I don't get emails from old work connections who happened to incorrectly type something and my name popped up. I'm not invited. I'm not getting "just wishing you well" or getting Christmas cards. I'm not reached out to by my family, save my dad and step-mom, anymore than I am the hundreds or thousands of people I've gotten to know over the last 30 years.

That's like the first thing, right? The people mentioned above text or message me. They don't have anything approaching months of effort, thousands of dollars, or gun-pulled-on-me levels of betrayal. It's literally cheaper to cut dead weight and budget to fly around the country to spend time together than it is to waste away in an unhealthy and exploitative dynamic.

Conversely, I've reached out to damn near everyone I've ever remotely called friend. It's not as precisely unreasonable as it sounds on its head, but does mean I've sent at least one "test the waters" kind of message to the people who a short time later get defriended or deleted. When my idealism bumps against their, "Why is he messaging me?" it's time to go.

I'm drifting. I need to talk about how my experience contrasts. I've been accused of heinous shit. I've owned and written about actual things I've done, from hitting my cat in the eye with a Creepy Crawler snake as a kid, to being very-certainly too much at parties or in hitting on people and being handsy, to slapping Kristen. When I contextualize those things, I feel I understand them, it gives people a chance to compare instances from their own life and explore their own emotions, environments, ignorance, or motivations. In the minds of those who don't grown, learn, or own anything, it won't even take my actual behavior and ownership of such to put distance between us. They need to think of me as a rapist, Machiavellian, catastrophically ego-ridden, or phobic and angry in ways no genuinely moral person should have to entertain, let alone contend with.

I find this fascinating in an going way because I'm a literal counselor. I have hundreds of stories of people's absolutely terrible behavior to each other, and they turn it into a lovable routine! For the thousands of shows I've watched, there's nothing like the hellish dramadies of any given individual's life.

That is, if I panic-slap Kristen trying to bring her back to reality after a cartoonish reconstruction of what my mind jumps to after too much TV and watching her wrist bleed out, that's irredeemable. If you get beat, threatened, or controlled every day, and have so through a dozen partners for years of your life, I will never hear more "but I love them" sentiments. Sentiments protected and reinforced and defended by both sides and by onlookers. Sentiments echoing the pain, usual-ness, and shared expectations of that dynamic. We belabor a caricature of a "battered-wife" and completely ignore the context that smooths and justifies and condones.

If your friends and family have, with regularity, stolen from you, verbally demeaned you, or otherwise predictably and reliably taken advantage, you say nothing, except to maybe a therapist who's 50/50 not insane. I don't get invited to your wedding, but the abuser does. You don't do like me and say, "This is fucked up, Byron, and I'm not okay, and you haven't made it right," until the relationship passes reasonably salvageable. A crisis must ensue. An epic battle of crippled wills needs fantastic displays of hate-filled language, property destruction, self-destruction, and orgiastic guilt to cycle ad infinitum.

 
If I'm not yelling at you, stealing from you, beating on you, sexually exploiting you, or otherwise meticulously working a manipulative angle so that you're less and I'm more, how could I ever be trusted!? Why would you want to be "friendly" or "committed" to a monster that doesn't drink from the same sacrosanct smirkingly apologetic fountain?

 
Think back on my consistent feedback. "I thought you were a dick, then realized you were trying to help." What do you suppose gets someone there? Most seem to stop at the first half, then carry on into the sunset. I'll tell you, because they never actually started listening to me. They were never persuaded by how I spoke. They didn't "wise up." They had some experience with their own family or life they felt. Maybe they only caught themselves once refraining from yelling at their kid. Then they noticed the fear and dejected look on their offspring and it gave them pause and made them feel bad or for the first time connected to the causal nature of their behavior. I just invited them to even look at the door. Most will still take 6 months-to-forever to bother knocking or entertain taking a step through.

I'm "stuck" in this, "Sure, but look at this too," place. I need to see many many doors. I need options. I need creativity. I need license to explore and make hazy but demanding proclamations about what I want, who I am, or where I think I'm going. I need to trust myself to engage that process in a faithful, honest and consistent way when every friendship dies or evaporates. I don't wish to ever make it personal because we're not vulnerable in the same ways. If you hear me, or really anything, as gospel, our problems and perspectives occupy different universes. I consistently see what appears to register as an annihilation of your universe when it comes into contact with mine. You don't like that.

My universe is kind of cold. It can be pretty lonely, even if there are a lot of positives to being by yourself. My universe is work, patience, and significantly more questions than answers. My universe is critical, but not mean-spirited. My universe is being crafted with each line, and is hopefully setting some kind of example people are benefiting from or drawing on that, I'm trying to make peace with, I'm never going to hear about. Or I'll hear about it in "fluffy" ways, and no one will care to work together on more of a shared one.

Within 10 feet of me I have months of "entertainment" or "practice" or "study" or "meaningful work" insofar that it intrigues me or will color how I speak and whom to. I don't play in a band. I don't debate the books I'm reading. I'm not playing video games online. Any skill or business experiment will cost money I don't really have and time begging to be occupied by a new soul-consuming occupation. I'm literally alone with this "stuff" of existence almost all of the time. I'm functionally or practically in almost complete isolation in what I can only ignorantly describe as a kind of "spiritual" way. There are many jealous, pious, and righteous gods I observe people worshipping, and over here a decorated non-believer. Naturally, I deserve my exile.

The more poetic and ethereal you get, the more dramatic it sounds, right? I'll be happy if I can get the bills paid in advance, war stays off my lawn, and I can regularly bowl with my dad or find a decent club to join. My arguments and perspective is fundamentally rooted in a place of exceptional privilege. I want more I can't obtain by myself. I want more from you. I want more conversation. I want shared universes. I want creative fixes and chances taken to achieve things previously not even considered. Some of us might "kinda" get there with perpetual therapeutic structured and light suggestions that a fucking door exists altogether. Most of us don't have a prayer for anything more than we're already getting. Shame.

[1068] Give Me Therapy

I just got this flourish of inspiration to write.

I think about this date I went on a fair amount. I'm not a dater, so that was my first mistake. It was with this tiny therapist, a little older than me. She was partnered, had a kid, and was every ounce of a "theater kid" type energy. It wasn't a "bad" time, but she said something about being in therapy in a way that struck me. She said she believes everyone needs to be in therapy. She said it with an air of self-assuredness if not pretention.

What I imagined was a battle between her ego and insecurity playing out in the conversation we were having. There's this thing about being in a "counselor" or "therapist" role where you might struggle to "turn off" being in observer mode. By occupying so much time in an advisory capacity, you may start to get the impression that pretty much everything you say is "good" or "better" or "helpful" when you're situated against people who have meaningful differences or deficits in their processing or organizing.

Had she merely "just said" it, I could agree with the general sentiment. I don't think that by dawning a therapist or engaging in talking or writing will fix anything by themselves. If you have a genuinely helpful, intuitive, accountable and informed exchange, you might arrive at insight, but the impetus to put that insight to work or the ability to raise your wisdom quotient are entirely different animals. I say this because of how reactively hostile she was to my challenge that, by default, no one is "objective."

Her narrative about how she operates or what she's achieved through therapy was threatened. This appeared to cause her to hear my challenge as something like, "Truth is relative." She maybe thought I was criticizing the very idea of seeking a broad view trying to as objectively-as-possible contextualize your life and how you describe it. She might have felt that I was dismissing the difference between those who engage in some form of therapeutic feedback process, and those who ignorantly and confidently espouse entitled animalistic fascism. And she might have felt all of this in an instant when her taken-for-granted authority was checked.

I, obviously, also talk to people for a living, believe I not only gain from the exchange, but have seen people grow and improve themselves through a structured examination and accounting for their experience. I think we all need, as individuals, a strong sense of what that even means. I think you can get there through many ways. I prefer self-reflective writing. Even my closest relationships don't really understand how I operate, so if I don't find the words, argument, or reason to de-clench my jaw, your - perhaps not even as well-read as me - PH.D. or laughable lesser degree isn't going to save me.

Does that impact my ability to counsel effectively? Does that mean I can't maintain a sense of stability or order in my life? Does that provoke you to look for what my diagnosis *should be* were it not for my denial-ridden intransigence? We should always return to the fundamentals. What is the goal? Is it reasonable? Are you building an evidence bank of your effort and accomplishments? Are you finding yourself maintaining or gaining more control over the areas of your life that you want to?

We have to remember, there is no "normal." You could throw literally every single person under some label if you so chose. Most of us unconsciously strive for a semblance of "normal" regardless. We get media feedback, cultural pressure, biological clock knocks, and colloquial lore that passes itself off as timeless wisdom and step-by-step instructions to a Good Life. It's as much a cliche the story of the wine-drinking desperate housewife, the single-mom doing the best she can, and the overworked and underpaid provider whose story of the pride they take in doing so struggles against depression and anxiety.

We're all processes. Everything is in flux, and you plug into the ride, or you disingenuously anchor too long. You react and lash out when the faux-confidence in your status gets threatened. You remain dejected and hopeless when you pretend there isn't another call to make, email to send, step to walk, or question to ask. You look for things to confirm what you already know or stay "comfortable" instead of challenged to push, learn, or evolve.

Several times in my life I've had exceptionally comfortable financial circumstances. I've disrupted them every time. Not through self-destruction and waste, but through exploration and a deep persistent nagging that I am never allowed to remain on some perch. I want the wisdom and work to drive how I structure business, my day-to-day life, and approach to engaging or inviting others into a therapeutic process. I think I have a really good understanding of what "healthy" verses "pathological" looks like because I've been observing in myself what works or doesn't in an ongoing way.

This speaks to my general grievance about feeling fairly alone in getting or pursuing things others profess to want. It's always me that has to get "lucky" or make the extra effort or provide the clarifying and specifying note. It's a responsibility I voluntarily accept, but it's shocking when it feels like I'm the only one aware of how to do so. It's upsetting really. If I wasn't on the call yesterday to get username and password stuff sorted out for the 6th time, what took 50 minutes likely wouldn't have been fixed at all. It's easy to see how leader-types can get caught trying to do everything for everyone all the time.

That's, also, not leadership. Leadership is recognizing the gaps in someone else's knowledge and providing a way that they can plug them in. You don't let your insecurity, frustration, or incomplete judgment of them prevent you from allowing them to fail forward and learn like you have. I had to translate what I thought a philosopher meant and apply it to my life. No one just told me "the right way" and I snapped into focus and followed. I live and feel the reality and difference in being skeptical and open to change verses the miserable gripe-ridden excessive boundary imposing child who thought he knew everything.

I need questions. I need speculation and experimentation. I need to feel growth and potential and reasonable exchange. These aren't optional. These aren't things that just naturally follow once your paycheck hits a certain point. These aren't things that even your "best friend" is interested in recognizing, protecting, or cultivating with you. I would rather be broke with a strong impression of the routes I can explore than loaded and dead inside after beating the drum of company propaganda and saying the same thing to closed minds a thousand times.

There is always something new to explore. There is always a challenge to rise to. Whether or not you or I can articulate it perfectly, I have a nose for sniffing out when your professions betray your posture. It's trained on my own disposition, achievements, and accountability of the moment. Whether I'm inspired, dispirited, or superficially contradictory and confused. Mine is not a naive and empty hope. I just have my awareness of how I feel in behaving and speaking in one way verses another. Then I do the work. Then I look for the wisdom to be reflected back in your words and your examples. That's also why I think we're fucked lol.

[1067] Can't Be Satisfied

Angry doesn't begin to describe it. Familiar notes of hopelessness and exhaustion flare. Being made into a feckless beggar for dignity and respect is no way to live.

I'm quitting my job. My 4-day a week 2 days remote job where day in and day out I have a version of the same conversation. I've made my appeals to be fully remote. I've done the math. I drew a line. I'm immediately tempted to devolve into cliches, but I know better. This was inevitable. I called it before I ever hired on.

Groups fired an incredible office manager within weeks of me starting. They allowed a lie from a bitch-ass counselor to bolster their already-decided-upon desire to remove her. This was without warning or appeal and over an infraction that, even if it were true, her violating HIPPA, would have warranted a slap on the wrist. But, because they don't care about who you are or how good you are, she was out.

I sat in for a couple groups for training. One counselor is as messy as you get from any client. She involves herself in their lives like it's personal entertainment. She allows chaos and laziness to suffice as "counseling." She throws office managers under the bus. She's just someone who has it together enough to get a credential, but has no business telling anyone how to operate. She's been at Groups for years.

I've watched the seductive power of Groups work. The 4-day week is a trap. You need to be comfortable and comparing it to the often over-worked and ridiculous social-work job you came from. Will they mission-creep you for more responsibilities? Absolutely. If you're an office manager, they won't even pay you for the lauded "help" that keeps you staying late and covering different areas.

Groups encourages you to think of your Suboxone as diabetes medication. Say nothing of the long-term effects on your liver or teeth, isn't "harm-reduction" preferable to running these streets? The whole ethos is "keep paying us to keep you stable, no, to save your life actually." It doesn't matter if you actually get a better grasp on your automatic responses, addictive tendencies, self-talk, or sense of agency. It matters that you can get complacent and dependent on their drug verses yours.

If I don't matter, I turn into an incredibly dangerous person. You don't get the sense that you matter when you take the time to explain yourself and be very deliberate in how you conduct yourself, and it's met with silence or dismissal. If there's a more pungent scent in the air than that of resentment, I don't know what it is. I don't want to huff it and have it churn me out from the inside.

I'm not precisely annoyed at the amount of work or searching I'm going to have to return to, but I am utterly dismayed and dejected that I must do so at all. I hate constantly learning in subtle to explicit ways how little I matter and how meaningless the examples I try to set are in the face of the people I find myself working for. They matter to me in literal life and death terms. I'm not propagandizing myself, I literally need to feel like I'm growing and changing in positive ways, or I'll crack. Only I can save me.

I have a client I spoke to after my last group today. We've done this a few times. We're about the same age, she's got two kids, and she's more keen to describe her life experience in terms of energy or quasi-mystical terms, but I get the gist. She's lonely. She's gaining all of this new awareness about herself and how people operate, and it's, especially for an emotional person, extremely depressing and isolating. Yep. The more you learn, and the more responsibility you take, the more alone you get. You're no longer part of the herd in an important way. What you do with that is anyone's guess.

I have a friend who seems stuck in a contradiction. She got fired from her job, technically resigned, because they found an illegal substance in her car. She's a drug counselor. She was the director of programming in a prison, was falsely accused of trafficking, and consented to her car being searched, knowing Kratom was in there. I don't know how to square her professed love for the job and any willingness whatsoever to have illegal anything on a prison ground. My friend "coincidentally" keeps the kind of company that are all either in active addiction, doing not-great in recovery, or otherwise doing things like killing themselves or accidentally overdosing on CBD in which I'm called over because she's not good at handling panic-inducing situations.

Why talk about my friend and my client? What does thinking about them evoke when I'm writing another meaningless digression of corporate ambivalence and greed? I think we're all manifesting this self-destructive impulse. We know what we have and how we're going about it is fucked up. Whether it makes us just want to break down and cry, ignorantly claim to "thrive in chaos," or starts seeping into your shoulders the weight of your captured state, either you, or the faceless infinite series of "the way it is" sentiments will break. You're considerably less robust.

I'm continuing to make a bet that the search is worth more than the suffering. I'm claiming that working to create and sacrifice in service to that creation is more life-affirming, true, and necessary than a consistent paycheck. I initially wrote "comfortable" paycheck, as though it's comfort that moves me to leave. It's incredibly uncomfortable to feel erased and taken advantage of. I understand why you'd prefer drugs or chaos or literally any narrative that otherwise fills in the blanks for how that makes you feel.

 
I don't think we'll ever transcend it. I think I'm going to have to be ruthless, and I really don't want to. But I'm alone, like my client, like my friend, and anyone who can't see through the consequences of dependent "stability" upon self-absolution. It's like parallel play that sends us over personal cliffs. What even is "together" or doing "better" in this context?

[1066] Wobbles

I think I'm ready to claim feeling stressed out now. It only happens when a series of things build up over time that I feel little to no control over. I wasn't looking forward to going to Louder Than Life. 6 hours driving on a Sunday by itself set the poor mood. An inability to catch one of the main acts I wished to see soured it further. Spending 25 minutes in a fast food lane having not eaten all day before leaving for home just poured it on.

Over the weekend I'm already riding the annoyance train with a client who overstepped several times after being told explicitly to stop. He doubled down Monday. I drew the line in the sand with my job telling them they can fire me or simply allow me to be fully remote. I'm sick of wasting 3 hours in drive time, the goodwill left in my oil or gas guzzling vehicles, and general productivity sitting around the fucking office for no reason. I'm fairly certain the relief I'll feel in leaving will be greater than any meager satisfaction if they cave.

My head hurts. My stomach has been upset for an hour. I hit a fucking dear driving on the fucking highway I had no business being on leaving the fucking building I had no reason to be in. I've never felt "caught up" in my sleep after the late arrival home Monday morning. Now I'm home at 10 PM writing because I can't just be left alone to eat whatever shit I must to work this job without the added resentment of getting fucked on top of it.

On the plus side, I managed to steal a new sink head after trying to just buy one, being told it would be a "special order," so I unscrewed one from the display. The flow was immensely satisfying when I washed my hands. I popped a Tums for my stomach. I got all my shit and groceries inside. I need to lay down before a headache hits.

I'm 35 years old. I can't seem to find a friendship, relationship, or otherwise that isn't begging for a diagnosis. My clients, overwhelmingly, wish to tread water. I've NEVER worked for a dignified genuine leader. The people who I've popped in on or learned about are living the 30-something version of sadness, depression, or anxiety having tried to do the exact things their parents did to get us in the cultural mess we're in. For all of my work, interests, demonstrated capacity, and genuine enthusiasm and goodwill I exert on this miserable existence, I feel I'm owed considerably more. I'm some bizarre version of hermit-hipster-tech bro desperately trying not to espouse some ironic detached view of the world only to be pummeled to death the more he plugs into it.

I am not blind to my otherwise regal status, but it rests on a story of infinite precarity and spite. Does no one else crave something balanced, trustworthy, and well-reasoned with regard to how they work, what they're worth, and why?

[1065] Good Boy

I don't consider myself a "good" person. More to the point, I don't think the sentence or sentiment makes any sense. I liken it to saying, "You're a good dog." A dog is a dog. It has dog tendencies, and depending on the breed and kind of engagement, you can lessen or exacerbate those tendencies. The "goodness" of the dog depends on variables internal and external. Our concept of a good dog varies with each observer. My good dog responds to commands, doesn't errantly bark, and refrains from tearing my shit or other dogs to pieces. Your good dog may routinely lick you inside your mouth.

I don't consider myself particularly disciplined either. I'm a product of a fair amount of conditioning, and it's hard to think of myself as not constantly looking for ways to push boundaries. I'm like Byron's dog Ike. It knows not to lick me, yet you can see the compulsive lick wheels turning non-stop. He can respond to demands, but is just as likely to take off into traffic. He's incredibly afraid of the dumbest things, but will occasionally decide it's time to throw down and fight at the dog park.

If there is one metric I attempt to remain consistent in, it's in matching my words to my actions. I try to build in leeway for things I'm not entirely sure I can pull off. I might say something like, "If I practice 3-8 hours a day again, I bet I could come close to sounding like that," when I watch an incredible guitar performance. I'll qualify the amount of work I'd like to do with, "If I'm in the mood," or "weather providing" or "if something doesn't come up." In talking or writing like this, I don't ever really need to make promises. I don't need to sell myself or make some "extra" pseudo-commitment profession. Whether I'm looking to be praiseworthy or condemning and judgmental, you can frame it in a sincere and balanced way.

I think about this a lot when it comes to my approach to people who begin to annoy the fuck out of me or who seem to betray me in ways I couldn't find myself justifying. In my reflection on dropping Byron, I spoke to moving out, and the darkness I was kept in. That's been damn near every single year from every single person I've lived with. No one, it appears, cares how much it costs or how much work it takes to get a house you're renting back in order and packed up. No one knew or prepared to work out where they're going to live year to year? No one thought twice about paying the ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

I would never just abandon a living situation that wasn't otherwise threatening me. I would never expect someone to throw out my shit or clean up after me. I would never contemplate moving and just keep that from them. These are the kinds of things that create financial holes, to say nothing of the psychological ones, that can take years to get out of. If it's not deliberately malicious, what can we say about people who are routinely selfish and willing to inflict such drama via, if nothing else and very forgivingly, "absent-mindedness." They dash into the street, and you're on the hook for the medical bills.

I had a client text me, 2 days in a row, about not getting a 14-day script. He's a relatively long-term client. He knows how the system works, or doesn't. He knows I have nothing to do with writing, retrieving, or even looking at and accessing the systems to do with prescriptions. Yet, he felt compelled to interject his bullshit into my day, distraught that having to do jury duty appears to have registered in our software that he didn't have perfect attendance. This isn't a 2 minute conversation let alone a dozen texts over 2 days one. I, because he's a "good" or "nice-enough" client, unwisely, responded at all, very briefly blaming the software, holiday, and finally requesting we speak about it when I'm actually at work. Of course, he kept talking, so I stopped.

There's a "good person" narrative at this juncture that starts to nag you. Don't you wish to alleviate, to whatever degree you can, the confusion of your "good" clients? If it's not going to annoy the fuck out of me (qualifying statement) I don't mind sending a very quick 5 word-ish text. Another member messaged coincidentally about the same time for the box code to get screens. Should she, and anyone who's been doing this program for years and heard the box code dozens of times know it? Sure. She's also a good client, and the box code doesn't obligate me to drama, here you go, I can move on quick.

I can recognize the difference between how either attempts for my attention register. I consciously refrain from saying "makes me feel," because I know it's my underlying habits or desires that fuel just how annoyed or otherwise I'm going to be when you come at me with your bullshit. I didn't have to respond to my first client at all. In one sense, I violated my own boundary. In another, I made a bet that talking back would help more than hurt. In yet another, I was expressly espousing my values to treat my "good" clients with a little more leeway and privilege.

It's not black and white. Depending on how hard I lean into any of those sensibilities, I could nag myself with guilt for not holding strong. I could be conjuring a tale of my desire for taking risks and hedging with unstable and inappropriate means. I could simply pat myself on the back for consciously elevating an individual, even if he managed to disappoint me.

My goodness. It's all so convoluted and layered. It's all of the senses at once, and my unconscious and pre-verbal parts of my brain cycle through each layer until I can land them line-by-line here.

My sense of whether or not I'm "good" has been shaped by how I was raised. My dad being the unconditional love type, and my mom ensuring it was metric and fear-based. I was good if my grades were good. I was good if I responded to the threat of violence with compliance. To this day, I still feel what I'd describe as a "standing guilty conscience" as though I've done something wrong or punishment is inevitable. 

It's not "real" guilt. It's the irrational kind you can't take responsibility for. It's what forms when you've been made into a victim. Your abusive or neglectful caregiver can be as significant a contributor to that as your cultural environment. There's adults still thinking they're going to Hell for jerking off. The Protestant "work ethic" is a recipe for chronic unfulfilling self-imposed slavery. 

The real problem with this not-real guilt is less about the endless ways in which it may play out as selfish and entitled. It's significantly more about realizing how all-encompassing it can become. It's us needing to own how punishing our environments are, so we can form a responsible and accountable approach to what they've done to us. Very few of us appear to even entertain the conversation. It's more of a cultural parody at this point about the levels of anxiety and depression and everyone's need for therapy and simply more exposure and acceptance a-la shows like Sex Education.

We're foundationally irrationally guilty, we don't know of what, and if we don't already feel like we're being punished, we intuit that more punishment is coming. Our insincere parroting of words gives us zero capacity or insight on how to approach this. We reduce what accessing the real and meaningful guilt might provoke in behavior change to the pithy ether of melodrama and religiosity.

I don't wish to be "a person." I want to be me. I want to believe I'm making decisions to orient around things I care about, equitable relationships, and my potential. If my debt was compulsive hoarding to fill a black hole, like it is with my uncle, I'd expect to hear criticism about that from people concerned about me. If my aberrant or impulsive decision-making was courting interpersonal, financial, and legal trouble, a "good" friend or person talks about it. That's the implicit lesson of like almost all TV. There's bonds that can't be broken as they drive towards genuine resolution of the plot. It's another tool in service to rendering us blind when the lines and goals haven't been explicitly written for us.

I can't remember the last time I deliberately and consciously tried to hurt someone. This lack of recall stands against how frequently I've been accused of doing so. Just as it was in my mother's household, before I had the language of developmentally appropriate stages and the neurochemistry of the pre-frontal cortex, I was always in the wrong. Moreover, I couldn't even imagine that someone else had the agency or their role to play. I think about this in particular when it came to throwing parties in college. Hundreds of people's drunken behavior was routinely laid at my feet, and I was right there to pick it up. I didn't think twice. It was "my" party, after all. I wasn't 1 of 5 on the lease, 6 living there. I wasn't 1 of 100 places to drink or act out that IU has to offer. Through sheer force of will and charm you'd think I literally cast a spell on my attendees.

And in a way, by having any intention and direction at all, I did. And if and when that goes awry, the responsibility follows. I'm fine with that, considerably less so with the next step to act like you can party all by yourself. I don't have my hand up your ass mouthing your justifications or holding your jaw shut.

The road from distancing yourself from that irrationally guilty space that blames everything around you to responsible adulthood is a framing and self-talk problem. You may not see the 100 people around you at the party, but I promise you they see a scapegoat. You may not see the work, family, or political environment you're ever-molded by, but they have your number and know what you're good for when they can't be bothered.

I hardly recognize everything I've bought and built to try to find more contentedness and occasional "happiness." I'm not just out here alone playing music all day, deeply contemplating compelling media, and full of cheer for the examples I'm trying to set. I know most people can't even really see me. I know I'm going to be expected to clean up so much dog shit and the other animals are going look on ambivalently to bemused. It just hits really hard sometimes when the bubble you're cultivating gets aggressively barked at or slobbered on. I'm fucking tired of having to treat people like dogs, from my "best friend" to my "good clients," and I literally have to if I'm going to survive. 

I'm the only one who gets to kill me.