[1109] I've Got A Secret

I think I cleared some of the cobwebs in my earlier attempt to write. We might drill down on a few more specifics here.

Trust feels like a word to land on. My anxiety gets aggravated when I feel as though I can't trust "anything." I know this traces back to childhood under my mom's reign. The floor could never be trusted not to turn into lava in an instant. I compare how I feel, to this day, when I go to my dad's house versus how I feel dealing with people at large. I can just eat. I can simply sleep. I can talk or ask questions and not have to anticipate the backlash of doing so "wrong." I think there's so little we can actually trust, and the taken-for-granted aspects of our environment proved wholly untrustworthy in increasing ways over time.

I could count on one hand the amount of people I've tried to be friends with or would claim to be my family that haven't betrayed my trust. I genuinely wouldn't believe it was a thing to have were it not for my dad and grandma. There's a character from Blue Exorcist that comes to mind who is viciously self-reliant after being left helpless when her family abandoned her. For me, trust implies you have my best interests at heart in the same way I have yours. We're gonna buy each other drinks and meals and bowling games. In a car breakdown scenario, I'll brave the drive, the night, and weather to get you back home.

That feels like a level that should be almost throwaway obvious. What about deeper things? What about long-term commitments and investments? What about emotional well-being? What about when called to sacrifice or choose, they pick you? This is where I feel my longing to "really connect" with people has served to get me betrayed over and over. If I pull you into my camp, I'm spending money on you, I'm giving you all of my time, I'm using my tools, my energy, and my ideas to see what I can do for you. You have a particular priority? Let's put it first. It's not "you pick where to eat" or "whatever movie you like." It's, "Shit is as real as it gets and long-term stability is on the line."

I've wanted to feel "safe" my entire life. I'm always chasing or running no matter how much time I take between accomplishments to see a performance or marathon TV. I want to feel like my friends aren't going to ignore me when I'm afraid of dying via negligence. I want to know the bills can get paid with a fair amount of time and effort and I won't have to degrade or hollow out myself in service to "practicality." I want to know that when I defend going about the work I do in the way I do, I'm not going to have to look like a desperate hypocrite because something foundational has to be sacrificed in order to merely survive.

A couple months ago I wrote a little thing to an ex telling her I appreciated the work she had done and that I didn't want to haplessly fall into a pattern where everyone I'm close to becomes someone who never wants to talk to me again. She never responded to it. I asked her today whether she received it at all. She said, "I got it. What's the question?" All I wanted to know was whether or not she had gotten it, so it got left there. Immediately though, I feel the same pattern and same lesson is beating me over the head. An effort to contextualize or offer friendship is met with silence. I'm likely a thing she'll spend a considerable amount of her time trying not to think about, like most people I know.

Brandy follows through. My dad follows through. Hussain, when he isn't a ball of stress, follows through. When I say "follows through," I mean does the work of being accountable to our shared dynamic. It's not just that we're incidentally familiar or "friendly" with each other. It's that we exchange real shit that we mean and can trust and rely upon. For a time I would have said the same things about Byron and Allie, hence my larger time and financial investments. Most of my connections can't be bothered to answer a text within a week, let alone plan a trip or entertain the practical work of overhauling a living or work situation.

I'm not looking for anyone to blame. I'm just struck. I'm flabbergasted. I get exhausted thinking about it. I don't know if I'm missing some more insightful conclusion to draw. My friend recently told me she's trying to let go of the worry around making a mistake or the "wrong" decision. I can't tell you how long I've made seeking the next mistake and learning the wrong shit to do my mission. Nearly everything I pursue most earnestly or with the most history to back up what it's worth, the overwhelming feedback is that it's still wrong. From strangers, from "experts," from frequently opinionated onlookers. Fuck, from people I pay to do the wrong parts right. I'm just fucking up one thing after another until I get a 10 minute reprieve every few months.

I got home not too long ago from a…it was certainly a rendition…of Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus predicts his betrayal. The people killing him aren't even sure why he must die, but figure out how to get there, washing their hands of any responsibility. I wonder how many people see themselves in Judas or the Pharisees. I wonder how many consider themselves background dancers and vocals, not stirring the pot, but not willing or able to step into their own spotlight. Does Jesus trust his apostles to do anything beyond betray him and prove him obviously correct? My phrasing for years has been that I "trust" people to do exactly as they show themselves to be. That's held true for everyone that's fucked me the hardest.

I trust your insecurity to win. I trust you'll get defensive. I trust you'll rely on cliches and extremely vague ironically-named pleasantries when you're unable to explain your behavior, decision making, or provide a personally responsible answer to a question. I trust your resentment and ambivalence. I trust you'll stay quiet more than anything. I trust you'll gossip. I trust you'll find ways to undermine things I'm trying to do, and you won't even be consciously aware of why, but you'll pick a turn of phrase or let some derogatory detail or comment inform the next person's view of what I'm doing. If you're the DCS regional management cunts you'll literally prevent us from getting paid at all to meet a gaping hole in service provision.

I can't stress how much I do not believe in our "better natures." I do not think we are fundamentally good. I'm certainly not. It takes me an incredible amount of effort not to act like what is offered to me. Do you think for a second I couldn't be rich preying on people? Do you think my concept of "fuck it" isn't capable of the kind of destruction you read about? I work to behave otherwise. I talk to myself. I share the struggle. I ground who I wish to be in examples, like this, because I only get to brush against them occasionally when I'm spending time with the small handful of people who remind me I'm not actually alone.

In a world that is fundamentally untrustworthy, how could I even believe, "The work will speak for itself?" That's been a consistent line I try to fall back on when I'm floundering. I certainly get the "You're so amazing!" feedback often enough, but I've said plenty on why you can't trust that. I'm thinking about the people with the money, or how the people who receive the work interpret what's happened. If all you practically are is worth the amount you can market yourself or convince and lie that your "mission" is the same, what then? I don't think our mission is the same. I think mine is to work. I think yours is to tell people you support those who "help."

The work certainly feels a different way. I don't care how poor I get, when I'm actually doing the right things, I feel better. I can allude to all of the terrible horrible places I can entertain as thought experiments, but not feel like I'm taking some chance that I'll make them come true. I know how crazy-making and rage-inducing it is to sit and seethe over greed, lies, and injustice. If there's 5 people left on the planet who see and feel the same shit I do, I want to find and work with them or die trying. I absolutely refuse to play along and let you win.

[1108] Oh Yeah

I "extra" don't know what I want to say with this. After a week or so of writing nearly every day 3 weeks ago, I've found enough to do or stay engaged with to find that ever-elusive "peace" or "balance." But, I'm home, and the obligations are calling again. The questions are popping up, and I'm left waiting and negotiating how far down I wish to travel in familiar rabbit holes.

One of the hardest things I navigate constantly is people telling me one thing, and then proceeding to do nothing. That is, if they don't do exactly the opposite of what they said they would do. Much as I try to make a certain kind of peace with the ambivalence "the world" treats its words and intentions, it's genuinely hard to understand how I, let alone anything, "work" in what appears to be a wholly unshared reality or sense of obligation.

I'm very careful about promising anything or saying I'll do something I don't want or know how to do. I qualify things with, "It'd be nice if I could," or "If these conditions are met," kind of sentiments. I don't tell you I have open availability if I'm overflowing with clients and can't take yours. I don't understand if you tell me, "I have over 100 every month and we're constantly looking for availability," and my phone isn't ringing every day. I don't understand how many people swear and promise and "will definitely do that" who don't even try.

I like that I can go back and read my perspective from 5 or 10 years ago. I strike so many of the same notes. It's the same feeling when I catch an episode of something from perhaps 60 years ago. There's just one conversation happening at all times. There's accessing a certain awareness and truth, or operating otherwise. I don't know how to describe my circumstances. I speculate that the "one conversation" used to be more intuitive when there weren't engines for isolating ourselves psychologically. Life and death were more viscerally felt. Consequences happened quicker. Now? It's like the fundamental environment is a caricature. Nothing is real. Every chance you might take to do something meaningful or impactful is undermined by default.

I'm deliberately trying to avoid catastrophizing with this exploration. I don't feel "hopeless" right now, but I do feel incredibly confused and paralyzed by the thoughts on what to do next. There's always options to spend more money. There's always options to be a squeaky, until you're regarded as annoying, wheel. There's always options to spin and complain and write the same blog a dozen times. What's the "best" or "more wise" thing to do next? It constantly feels like "wait." That'd be good enough were bills not still incoming or the overt cultural psychological distress that's relayed to me was being basically dealt with or alleviated.

I don't think we understand that silence is as much or more "the lie" at the heart of our behavior than anything else. When you don't or can't respond to something you're allegedly responsible and credentialled for, you're living a kind of lie that poisons us at our core. I can't feel good about too much time sitting around or watching TV. It is a lie that that is my obligation or "free choice" to make. If I want to feel good or like I deserve to live, I need to be contributing what I can where I can. This doesn't mean I have to exhaust myself or forgo indulgences. It does mean i could be spending considerably more time helping someone with their mess than I currently am.

How many times do you knock on doors and remind people? How much more available could I make myself? It feels like setting up the land. What's a more appealing circumstance than, "I have the time, tools, back, and knowledge to help you live for almost free." That's still almost universally rejected as a thought to even entertain, but lemme tell you how many posts I catch of people waxing about wanting to escape their current living situation. Now I've got addiction counseling as ODs and fentanyl flood the news landscape. Ok, let's talk. Hey, overwhelmed probation and addiction programs! Send me some of your people. Crickets?

I read a story of someone who had some extremely high level technical degree going door-to-door looking for a job. For as many times as I've talked about doing the same, this person was met with silence and a, "Oh, how sad" story about them. It feels like there's such an extreme disconnect between those with the money and resources and their professed intentions and the actual work it takes to improve things. Whether an A.I. takes over, or your "hot" job only needed people 10 years ago to enrich its current shareholders, or the new monopolies are content with their insurance schemes, there doesn't feel like any genuinely reliable roads to "normal."

I can't "just work on helping people" for any appreciable wage. "Let's network and build something!" Is just this fantasy and fake smile. "We're so overwhelmed," doesn't mean anything? "I'll definitely!" "Good luck!" "Our mission!" "That's so cool!" "That's exciting!" "I'm so looking forward to!" "I'll be in touch!" "This is a great opportunity!" I hear this shit a dozen times a week and I get NOTHING I don't personally grab myself. What the fuck am I supposed to do or think about that? I struggle to think I'm just impatient if I wait a week or more before I even send a one sentence follow up email or text. I struggle to think I'm unreasonable when I quote what you say to justify my severely-checked enthusiasm. What am I fucking missing?

I don't know how to capture the "I always feel wrong" feeling when I'm reaching out or talking to someone. It's like they can smell there's going to be some level of work, questions, or sacrifice that precludes a naive "easy" thing they imagined they wanted. No matter how quickly I could fix something, pay for something, or learn from something, there's zero interest in playing along. No amount of certifications, clarifications, polite reminders, or demonstrated examples and testimony breaks through. It suggests you have to Kool-Aid Man yourself into anything you profess to want to be a part of.

I also know it takes one piece of good news to wholly change how I might talk about my circumstances. I need one decently-sized grant. I need one or two more rich-enough individual donors. I still have 3-6 months I can tread water and look. It's tough because even with my business partner, I'm alone. I don't think he's seeing clients. I don't think he has the mental capacity to see clients right now, but I don't think he's going to just say that. That's what bugs me more than anything. I need people to not be lying to me. I need people with a remote grasp of their bandwidth, competence, and expectations. The next-level absurdity is when you think about how I'm attempting to talk to and work with literal therapists or counselors, "professional" writers, and otherwise leaders or supervisors in their particular realms.

I know when a stranger reads me they walk away with this impression that I'm disingenuously like screaming at people every day and wondering why no one wants to work with me. I've developed what feels like a superhuman level of patience and ability to stomach the empty pleasantries or professional communication. I have no one to talk to and nowhere to go to get anyone that empathizes with the nature of my issue. Why? They're swimming in it. They don't recognize it, or even care if they do or could. We've normalized nothing meaning anything to such an extent there's literally no constant authority a large plurality of people takes its cues from in how they too shall navigate the world.

You might get large corporations brainwashing people to accept their particular "family" values. You might get overwhelmed at an educational institution by youthful ignorance dictating policy. You might be an ardent follower of some podcaster or personality's world-spanning legion. Mostly, you'll just carry on like what I'm speaking to doesn't exist, or if it does, it's not as bad as I'm saying. You'll site the perks of your box and window into the world. And you'll do all of this in a moment of dismissive silent ego as you half-read what you think I'm saying. That's how I get, somehow, a little more isolated and the problem remains ever insurmountable.

I'm not attempting to work within a landscape that existed 5 years ago. I'm talking 2 months ago. I'm talking caseloads I've already juggled. I'm talking problems that were getting worse as I left each environment that was not interested in rising to the challenges. At some level it's dumb to expect a place that's seemingly proud of it's failing posture to reach out and do better. They didn't recognize or utilize you when you were plugged into them. Why would they go outside? Hey, Kool-Aid Man! That wall right there.

Increasingly it's looking like simple flyers and hitting the streets. I can't rely on people anymore than my clients can. It's not about sitting around and waiting for anyone to fix your problems. They can't even articulate or recognize the problems let alone fix them. They think it's a problem that I would even suggest there is one! Gotta just meet people one on one and one at a time.

[1107] White Whale

An idea I brush against every so often is being "afraid of success." It's not a fear of responsibility or doing more work. It's not as if things will be unearned. But there's moments where I'm on the verge of doing "the next right thing" in service to my goals, and a flourish of panic will creep in. Some of it is just being forlorn and annoyed that I'm finally capitulating on something that's going to cost money, or be boring and time consuming. Some of it is anticipating getting the effort or the next series of incoming consequences thrown in my face. But, some of it definitely is concerned that it will simply work as intended, I'll be right, and then I'm left alone, correct, and then either waiting for something shitty to happen or dumbfounded it took so long.

Each individual piece of the complex puzzles I try to put together are never that hard. It's spending money. It's taking a giant breath so I don't berate someone for their insanity-making response to something I've said. It's asking the next question, or waiting around indefinitely for a response. Every piece of my house, every pallet and brick and tool it took to get them here, was just a series of "next best things" to do in service to the goal. I know what I should be practicing on the guitar to push me into the next level, just like I know what I need to do with the business.

It's the goal or goals that have become…looser? Foggier? Less insisted upon? A lot of what I initially drove myself to believe I could achieve came from an idolized concept of my intelligence, focus, and obsessiveness. I did, sincerely, in a manner of speaking, want to "take over the world," if only for a moment. I don't want the world anymore. I didn't have a great idea of what I meant by that when I said it at the time. I wanted more power and control. I wanted money. I wanted things I wasn't feeling I had and not claiming to want things I took for granted I already did.

Some of the more dramatic shifts have been in the underlying assumptions betrayed by lived experience. I won't necessarily succeed because I'm smart, obsessed, or focused. There's a fuck ton of luck. There's opportunities that exist at certain times in your life that are harder to cultivate or find at others, at least if you're not rich. No one, and I mean no one, can be "saved" from "the human condition" that gets addicted, self-sabotages, and exists in perfect metaphor as a refutation or contradiction of personal accountability. That's a person who can't accept that "the world" isn't a "thing" to "have" so much as a nugget of their personal narrative that maybe isn't serving them anymore. I never concerned myself that it's always the villain who has the same goal in the cartoons, The Brain didn't seem so bad.

I took my first real better step in denoting time as the thing I valued more than money. When it comes to owning a business, I was initially driven by the idea of making as much money as possible. Turns out, I can be incredibly busy with fun things I like to do, eat a ton of good food, buy expensive (to me) toys, and see people I actually want to for like $30K, $10K of that for bills. Huh. Math strikes again. If I had millions, I'm not convinced I'd be surrounded with friends or that the overall psychological morass would subside. Until I felt the financial and physical implications of even trying to manage a shed or 3, the giant dream home idea never registered in practical terms. I hadn't had a particularly long stint of feeling "safe" or "comfortable" in what I was doing or living in, so I kept looking for the next thing.

I like my house. I'd improve dozens of things, but this is my safe space. This is where I embody ownership and growth. This is where I feel free to fuck about. When I leave, I want it to be when I want and headed towards things of my choosing. That's been fairly true in an increasing way over the last 3 years. If I get a robust referral system and or yearly grant writer who nets the cash to keep the bills paid, I've won one of the hardest challenges I've set out for myself since I began. What then? I suspect the next series of problems and goals will call out to me, but I'm kind of staring over a cliff. Putting together a case load isn't rocket science.

Part of me doesn't feel allowed to be "okay." I feel often isolated in my effort and opposition to the circumstances that seem to keep us all quiet and oppressed. If I shuffle myself into some contented corner of the world, does it follow that the things I'm concerned about will burn that much faster? Should I care? Is there any way to actually measure what alleged impact I might be having? I don't suspect so. I do believe the more you account for locally you get the most positively impactful ripples macroly. I don't mean by your personal effort to recycle you'll save the planet. What's more local than being okay in your own brain?

Something I was less aware of in the past as well was needing to have my back against the wall or an adversary to fight against. Most often it was because, "Fuck you, watch this" and my so-named spite engine driving things. I didn't suspect I'd lose pretty much all of my respect for any given person as I got older. You have to understand what a naive true believer I was. I thought the world was full of adults. I thought people who did well and did things well were in charge. I thought you got out what you put in and that there were genuine forces you could put on one side or another as far as a morality or action tale.

I've remarked before how doing well in school was rewarded. I was safer when my mom wasn't pissed or finding excuses to beat me. I got recognition and handed more to do when I completed reading lists or bonus assignments. Obviously, no one gives a shit how much you do or accomplish as you get older as they bemoan trying to keep their heads above water. Don't you dare offer to help or you'll interfere with the same pride that was irrationally driving you. Little boosts like being better than average at something in high school pale in comparison to what you witness every day online so you, hopefully, figure out the joy in the work and nature of the process before you go mad trying to relive former glory.

Now? I kinda wanna watch my shows, go to music camp, go bowling, make money talking to people or helping them with things that I find easier, and mostly sit back and watch. For a minute there I wanted to get politically involved until it really sank in it's our broken cultural environment and psychology that's at bottom. I've wanted to influence "culture" since I've started writing, and I think I have and retain the capacity to do so. It just looks a lot like social work and blood feuds with irresponsible agencies more than house parties.

I've mostly always had more of an eye to the future more than the moment. Writing is a practice, not a disposition. Thinking constantly and fighting back a propensity to spiral out of anxious control is the disposition. If I'd finally done enough in cultivating my outside environment to allow me to occupy more of the present moment? Is that not just forming another excuse or metaphorical adversary? Excuse to do what? Stay salty and dream? I think I'm okay with that. I don't know that I want to be liberated from a certain kind of suffering or discomfort. I need obstacles and friction to exercise creativity and feel like I've accomplished something. Matter-of-factly stepping from one soulless series of movements to the next is like invincibility cheat codes. Why are you even playing the game?

I want a compelling story. I want things to be interesting, and I want the main characters to matter enough to be worthy of mourning. I want to see a unique expression of how genuine personalities relate to each other and their circumstances. The stories that get passed down are about the people who do things. The ones who travel to hell and back. The ones who fight monsters. The ones who look for that which is yet discovered. It's people who are trying and disappearing into the mysticism of existence itself. I wanna do magic shit.

It really is no wonder I was willing to dare the consequences of relationships or friendships that never really locked in. I wanna be in a band of cartoon pirates as much I do the fields of Letterkenny as much as I do the bridge of Serenity. I have supports, don't get me wrong. I do not have a team with a mission or spirit of adventure. I'm not part of a federation, squad, or a community thrown together by wacky circumstances, but staying together because they feel the same heartbeat.

That's another piece of my imagination that was severely lacking. I never really envisioned a future where I was alone. I took the empty sentimentality and pipe-dreaming of the friends I had much further than they ever intended. I assumed with a degree of money, energy, planning, and invitations people would be lining up for nights out and to keep the conversation going. I might be captain of the party boat, or 5th grade tag group, or CFTM, or recovery meetings, or now this nonprofit, but ain't no one following me nowhere. I do the work and tend to get what I want, but I think I'm hunting bigger monsters while many are wondering why I'm hunting at all.

[1106] Mercedes Baby

I think the most powerful reason you would ever state you are concerned about someone "poisoning minds" is that you know, whether you wish to state it explicitly or not, that people are dumb as fuck and your own mind has been poisoned.

Joe Rogan is a moron. Joe Rogan has always been a moron. If you're worried that the moron is telling other morons to take advice and find commonalities with Alex Jones, Aaron Rogers, or other morons, you gotta move on through to accepting the depth of the moron pool we're swimming in.

Then what? What's your responsibility if this is the environment? Upvote the reddit post? Complain? Hashtag campaign? Traditionally, it seems you forget to vote, fail to organize, refuse to create systems or long-term accountable intelligent competitive environments. We've taken our institutions, history, and barely-true story of ourselves for granted. Trump, the nationalism around the globe, idiots like Rogan: these are the natural consequences of y/our bullshit.

You want "things" to be better and trust that the conversational or intellectual pollutants don't reach deadly toxic levels? Stop enabling them. Don't listen, first. Don't ignore the reasons they take hold and get popular. Don't stop asking yourself how you're complicit or in what area of your life you sound just like them.

You're not better than the craziest dumbest worst influence you can point to. You're not even good at hiding it. That's what we're fucking up. You don't have to be Alex Jones-level crazy to live in denial, lie, feel morally and righteously entitled to your small window on the world, or artfully construct narratives of who's to blame. I've seen museum curators on 60-minutes sound like meth addicts. The real drug is the story you're telling about yourself.

My "liberal," "educated," "not crazy" "friends" over the years have proven as lazy, judgmental, disingenuous, full of shit, and unhelpful as any genuine cunt I've ever met. I bet their private self-sacrifices or donations or rainbow flag sticker serves as a healthy pat on the 'ol back about how stalwart they are in their defense of a deliberately vague sense and hope for a brighter future. So much fucking complaining, in the same style over the same shit as we just repeat the same fuck ups that got us here.

It will take commitment, work, accountability, sacrifice, truth, networking, painful bravery, and decades of time in the face of incredible odds to claw back any remote sense of order or safety or sense. You think our zeitgeist of exhaustion, anger, distraction, excuses, ascendant authoritarianism, and reinforced motivated denial are up to the task? "My" people aren't mine, talking in whispers or cliches. My environment is primarily one of isolation, day-by-day, and desperate pleas for genuine engagement. You think I give a fuck about Joe Rogan in any real way?

I care about the "good natured" people in my professional orbits who lie to my face about how happy they are for me or how concerned they are about their clients. I care about the "friends" who bemoan "society" but can't be bothered to preserve or build one that cares to have me in it. I care about opportunities I've pursued or attempted to provide people only for them to have been resented, destroyed, or ignored. I care about how hard it is to find leaders. I care about how daily stories of success or accountability, the only building blocks that will work, get washed away by complacency.

1 in 10. I still maintain that 1 in 10 is the rule you can apply up and down levels of focus or hierarchy as to why anything works or doesn't anywhere. There's 1 person, doing 1 thing right, along 1 domain, and 9 intersecting with their effort to fuck it up. Within that 1 person, they have 1 thing, the story they tell about themselves, they'll overburden to account for the 9 other things they're fucking up.

You might be a people person and a terrible manager, so you and everyone you know will get roped into the story of how nice you are as your 1 not-dipshit employee keeps the business alive.

You might be a smart person with zero insight as to how people speak leading you to be naive and missing a crucial piece of what informs your ability to self-evaluate. The story of your smartness will do the heavy lifting unconcerned with wisdom or unknown unknowns.

You might be a "normal" or "boring" person, self-described. The connotative boost to your held-harmless posture let's you "just" say things as though your words and behavior are devoid of consequences.

Why am I confident I could listen to Joe Rogan for 10,000 hours and never find myself shaking Alex Jones's hand and excited to explore "mere questions" about Sandy Hook, vaccines, or whatever latest conspiracy comes spewing out of their asses? What's my brain doing that yours isn't? What's my brain doing that you don't trust someone else's to do? What's my brain doing that you can't recognize or define for yourself? I'm asking questions of myself. I'm asking questions of you that 9 out of 10 are going to ignore and pretend never got asked.

Why?

You're exhausted. You're angry. You're isolated. You're confused. You're distracted. You're lazy. You're a liar. You're scared. You're cunty and condescending. You're not wise. You're not smart. You're working on the reactionary justification impulse to downplay and dismiss my accusations, if you're reading this at all, before you even get to the end of the paragraph let alone piece.

I'm exhausted. I'm angry. I'm isolated. I'm confused. I'm distracted. I'm lazy. I'm a liar. I'm scared. I'm a cunt and condescending. I'm not smart. I'm not wise. I felt and suppressed a reactionary impulse because I'm both reading and writing as an accountable process of contextualizing and sanding off the sharpest edges of those true statements. It's not "whether" they're true, it's "how" they're true and what your process is to account for them.

When I'm exhausted, I pause. I don't stop entirely. When I'm angry, I say so, then write, then contextualize and search for a better definition of what I think I'm angry at. When I'm isolated, I make plans so I have things to look forward to that put me out in the world. When I'm confused I read more about the topic and ask questions. When I'm lazy, I apologize for not taking the time or putting in the effort. When I lie it's to protect myself from entities or people I don't respect or who maintain power over me. I'm scared that I'm more psychologically motivated by retribution and demonstrating how I'm right than almost anything else. Is being a condescending cunt not self-evident? I'm incidentally informed about a handful of things in any given moment that are constantly evolving. My awareness of that is about the extent of my wisdom.

Whatever peace I might maintain gets threatened by an email, shitty driver, being hungry, or sometimes even the weather. By disposition I'm not less reactionary. I'm no less informed by early trauma. I'm no less piecing together messy and incomplete pieces of a story about myself and alleged desires and perspective on how to achieve them. No matter how much I achieve or how quickly, I'm impatient. I'm demanding. I'm suffering my seemingly unfair and unreasonable expectations constantly. Accepting and building that awareness into how I navigate the world is my salvation. It doesn't take magic. It's just personal responsibility. I think, on the whole, we are practically and "spiritually" devoid of the concept. Whatever amount of it we have, it's in service to the 1 in 10 dimension that makes us feel the best.

As as average non or skim-readers reflexively like to point out to me, I don't "seem" to look, sound, or feel the best. Yeah. Thanks for nothing.

[1105] WTF Was I Thinking?

I'm not crazy. I'm not. I'm not incoherent. Saying a lot of words does mean they are stupid words. Being detailed does not mean the details are irrelevant or in conflict. I'm not crazy. I'm not a fucking moron. I'm not deliberately or lazily going about what I'm trying to create. I'm not unreasonable. I'm not intractably argumentative or defensive. I'm not at the mercy of some insecurity or reasonable doubt I've been fighting to ignore. I'm not crazy. What I do and try to work on matters. I'm not alone. I'm never out of options. Money can be made back. Fortunes can change in an instant. I'm not crazy. My words have meaning.

I can breathe. I can breathe even if I can't believe. I can take the time to feel my breath. I can stop squinting. I don't have to tense up my temple or forehead. I don't have to wait in eager anticipation for the next dumb thing someone I've tried to hire says. I've wasted more money in the past and made it back. I've had more frustrating conversations. I have more room for the actual work, doing it for free or otherwise. I have several months of leeway to get in front of people.

You can't accuse me of not trying. If you can say nothing else about me, I'm working incredibly hard to, not just manage my own sometimes rollercoastering experience of stress and communication difficulties, but I put my money where my mouth is. I, in a bid to consistently demonstrate my values, risk and try and fight. I'm in pain right now in service to it. I wish that writing was doing what it's supposed to do and bringing the temperature down in my face and letting my ache subside in my head. But there's just so much left unsaid and so many things that are implicated with each new horrifying discovery.

Part of my pain comes from a desire to move "too fast." I feel a small sense of momentum. If I was the only one implicated in that momentum, I wouldn't have a problem. Because I have to wait to hear from people, or reach out after they haven't done so themselves in what feels like a timely and accountable way, my momentum has to turn around and drag or chase people. That hurts. Why can't you keep up? I'm not asking you to do what I do. I'm asking you, I'm paying you, to do what you say you do. Here, we get acquainted with the next painful reality.

You lie. You aren't a professional. You aren't good or quick or intuitive or practiced in what you do. You aren't even using the words associated with what someone who does do what you claim to do would use. I'm not even sure if you know you're lying. Regardless, I experience pain and stress each time you say or do something that costs me time, money, and effort trying to decode or untangle what you've lied about.

We're at 2 points of pain. Positive momentum gets turned into punishing break checks. Invested money and energy to specify timely goals gets functionally mocked and burned.

Then I have my own self-evaluation that constantly speculates about whether or not I'm going about things "good enough." I have a decent history of doing a lot of really cool, demonstrated proficiency, or unique and "new skill required" things. The same sensibility and reasoning I try to apply to new domains and things I wish to accomplish. Each betrayal of my sensibility makes me feel like the universe I've otherwise occupied up until that point is completely backwards. I'm stuck feeling perpetually gaslit. Surely my tools can't be irreparably broken? My life makes sense outside of these specific interactions.

I have to qualify that further. It makes sense in my extremely small context. If I apply my words, effort, money, or reasoning to something that's just involving me, I can get it to work. If I involve one other person I've got a history with who I can trust makes sense, we can make that work. I can say something, they understand it, we can both execute our individual moves, and it feels like magic. Those are the ones who I can travel to see. Those are the ones where we can shuffle larger sums of money or effort back and forth in service to each other.

My head takes the pain a step beyond. I have this incredibly disquieting and terrible interaction, and then I jump into wondering and feeling the pain of deep skepticism about anything working, working as it "should," or the prospects of breaking through without adopting a litany of amoral behaviors. I say amoral and not immoral because, under the dictates of capitalism or the fluffy self-servicing image-management and politics language of the nonprofit space, the rules don't consider practical human reality. You can lie there because lies aren't defined. You can call yourself a genius disruptor manager, and no one's following you recording the consequences of your behavior.

I'm terrified of ever being persuaded to be that kind of person. I don't have a lot of legitimate fears, but being the equivalent of a walking dead Alzheimer's patient who forgets or forgoes the distinctions between a morally culpable and rational actor and "following orders" is one of them. The temptation is there because, who wants to look, feel, or sound as stressed as I do when I talk about this stuff? What am I getting from fighting about this or explaining it again?

If me and 5-ish people are the only ones I can trust in this life, I'm going to die defending this reality I know exists and know is better than my experience of the alternatives. The irony of not doing so and also claiming to be a good addiction counselor should be allowed to kill me. I listen to self-serving delusional narratives and excuse-providing cliches for a living. Your god help me if I'm not a firehose of distinctions.

I ask people to define their goals and purpose all the time. Why are you letting (x) stress you out? What is your goal or relationship to that detail? For me? I'm worried about debt. I'm worried that I can't even pay people to do the things they profess to be able to do. That's a crazy-making circumstance. That suggests it's 100% luck and who you know that gets anyone any sizeable amount of money, and the work you do is completely irrelevant to the story you concoct about it. I can't live like that. That makes me want to give entirely up and just focus on indulgence and isolation.

I have clients who feel like that all the time. They don't explain why they feel that way. They don't know how. They don't practice. They don't have anyone in their life that can show them how or encourage them to keep trying. If I've personally experienced hundreds of people experiencing that analogously hellish place, and I know I have a demonstrated ability to pull out of it, work through it, and accomplish things in spite of it…what's my job? It's not to pretend like I can't, shouldn't, or don't want to help in spite of the clear and present pain it's taking me to do so.

In that goal and mission discussion, I want my time. I want the freedom to think and focus on the things I enjoy. Every moment my brain isn't hijacked by the next dumbest thing I can't believe or understand, I'm reaching one of my most foundational goals. My goal is to reach a place in life that I can comfortably and confidently field every insane, ridiculous, arbitrary, hate-inducing, "fucking what the fuck dude" comment I receive without breaking a sweat. I want to have such a robust and powerful floor or working operation that I can take it all in stride. I want the power to shake off the nonsense because I don't have to worry it's going to unduly reshape the entire game I'm trying to play.

I had that at DCS. Neither of us had any choice but to do things my way. I want that again, but without the threat. Every crazy-making idea someone tried to interject into their situation had to conform to our safety plan, series of questions, pictures, and accountable look at an investigation of the allegations. Each time I wish to create something, or hire for a position, you're an alleged grant writer or fundraiser. What's the evidence? Your title and hourly rate mean nothing to me. Your confidence means nothing to me. Your empty way-too-many words describing your beliefs and character mean nothing to me. I've heard motormouth pedophiles and child or wife beaters. WHY DO YOU SOUND LIKE THEM!?

Let's add another point of pain. I want and need standards. My instinct about that standard is likely to cut off my nose to spite my face. But, when I don't maintain that standard, I drag myself through the hell depicted above. I'm skeptical that my standard is correct because I know how fiercely and quickly I wish to judge people. So, just as a matter of deliberate refutation of my instinct, I allow for things that, had I any power, I never would. Saying it like that sounds like I'm dictating the beating heart of my failure. Let's take a look at some of the standard's I'd like to hold.

1. In your explanation of your history or competence, you never use the words "help" or "passion."

My reasoning? You're not helping me, I'm paying you. When you say "help" you're too comfortable with the fake "professional speak" that obscures what your responsibility is. When you say "passionate," you're a fucking crazy person.

2. You communicate via email or text at least every 2 days with updates about what you've done, are planning to do, or barriers that have arisen.

It takes 10 seconds. You're either doing something, or not. You're either accounting for your time and situating things appropriately, or you're not. I don't want to be up your ass every minute of every day. I don't want to be ignored for a fucking week because you had some life thing come up and I was your last priority. I informed my boss hour to hour sometimes what I was doing if I had multiple families in various levels of evolving crisis happening at once.

3. Read and answer questions or explanations I give you.

I'm not asking because I don't want to know. I'm not explaining because no one's asked in the past or because it's not more complicated than could fit on a popsicle stick. How dare you not even read or answer questions.

These things feel deceptively simple. They involve having trained your attention to properly prioritize. They implicate honesty. They require you to be accountable to information or answers you may not have yet or have an answer that makes you feel good about yourself, because I don't give a fuck if you feel good about yourself when you're wasting my time and money but are convinced otherwise.

But what can I do right now if these are my standards? Every stranger I contact is going to speak in polite pleasantries. Every time. That's the rule. I do it when I try to work for normal environments. I've never interviewed as even 10% of how I talk or think. I wouldn't get the job, because the job isn't the job.

Saying things like "help" and "passion" are as reflexive as saying "like" or "just" or "ya know" or "um" for a certain kind of person who feels drawn to the nonprofit space. What kind of tyrant is going to write off plucky "motivated' people just for speaking like a golden retriever?

As far as time management is concerned, isn't one of the perks of being "professional" that you can functionally fuck off and settle into the pace of "business as usual?" I took extended lunch breaks at DCS. I maybe spent a little extra time with the nice families in the nice homes to eat up the day's clock. I never turned my shit in late. I never did less than was required for any family. What I expected out of myself met a standard before I took anything you're tempted to call a liberty. I earned leeway. If I was just starting out working for you? You're gonna hear from me, in detail, until we establish our rhythm.

My expectations are the ones I hold for myself. The CEO can't expect the stock boy to act like he does. I'm looking for people who, and perhaps I'm just now seeing this blindspot, profess to be their own CEO but carry themselves like stock boys. I've met an exceptional stock boy and been an exceptional usher. I communicated regularly, talked bluntly about the work that needed to be done, and followed instructions or asked questions if something was unclear. So did he. The people around us didn't carry on that way, not even me when I was his subordinate stock boy.

It's possible that I've, again, carried too high expectations into a situation that requires dog treats, speech at half speed, and testing to prove you can handle it. Unfortunately, the people who could pass the test? They're the CEO of their domain, not applying for the jobs I'm posting. Maybe that's the most important insight I can take away from this investment. The people on Upwork aren't in the networks I want to be in. The people desperately looking for an escape on Linkedin aren't under-utilizing their skills. They're all looking to bolster that self-conception story and make "easy" money doing the bare minimum.

It really is my hope and desire to believe in people that I punish myself with. I can't stress that enough. I want to trust more people. I can't. I want to believe you deserve more money or will respect my time and effort. I don't and I can't. I want to believe you're not lying through your teeth, driven by insecurity and naivety that you can "help" something you don't understand, but every time I do I allow myself to get an incredible headache and fall into a disoriented panic. I can't stomach or believe or empathize with you, let alone dozens and dozens of you, who carry on that way and think they want to work like/with me.

So how do you not isolate, and punish yourself, and continually rediscover the will to keep trying? You're looking at it. I ate a Reese's. I complained to my friend, my coherent accountable practically helpful and consistent friend who responded with 7 names of people who might be relevant to grant-writing or community engagement enabling efforts. Of course she did. That's what people who work like we do, do. What the fuck was I thinking reaching out in the soup of random internet fucks?

[1104] Listen To The Wind Blow

Fire's still burning. This is becoming a mini habit waking up and writing to start my day.

I had a session with one of my clients from Groups who rejoined me. Obviously not speaking to specifics, but they launched into the pattern I've been seeing with regard to the "professionals" I've been attempting to hire. In recovery, there's any point along the way you might think you've done "enough" or "deserve" to indulge here and there. It's all relapsing. It's all excuse-making. It's all distancing yourself from taking responsibility and building that larger context of consequences.

I just fielded an email from one of the potential hires who claimed to have sent me an email (you know, that thing we can immediately search our inboxes for) that she didn't. She put the idea out there that it's not "best practices" to be submitting for grants or asking for donations. She said we're at "the very beginning" and didn't have "enough on paper." Now, she's one person of 8 or so that I've got writing grants, fundraising, or who've had a look under the hood. None of them have said what she's said, and if they had questions regarding what stage we're in, they asked them, I sent along the info, or they told us how to procure and dress it up.

Financial statements, for example, given that I haven't paid myself or anyone else anything, exist, as a series of zeroes. I can find and .pdf that form if you need. "Data" on who we've helped when it's a handful of people over the last few years as we've worked full-time jobs is not going to be a robust sales tool. Do you want me to convert and tell you my caseload numbers at those jobs? That then sounds like we're cross-pollinating inappropriate things. If both the federal and state government say we're a nonprofit and have all the rights and responsibilities associated with that status, I'm hard pressed to entertain your distance-excuse-making email on its face.

I'm happy to report that I'm less discouraged, reactive, and defensive about that stuff with each instance, but it's so telling and often just exhausting enough to need pointing out. To my client's credit, as they decided to go into more detail regarding complaints at previous methadone clinics they utilized and the clientele they were interacting with, they were receptive when I pointed out the complaints were a 1 to 1 parallel. If someone comes to you and behaves poorly and then blithely says, "Well, you know, I'm an addict!" and it's like a cheeky sitcom throwaway excuse, we can all see pretty clearly why that doesn't hold water. If you say, "Well, you know, I was never as bad as xyz…and have been clean for 5 years!" You're doing the same thing.

So it goes if we're not talking addiction or crisis situations. If your impulse is, "Well, YOU did that and didn't do that" and not, "My perception is this or that and here's my contribution to resolve or fix it" you're not talking about anything. You're not helping. You're not being honest about where you're coming from. You're doing a dance. Don't lay my ignorance or start-up struggles at the feet of "best practices." If you presume to be the holder of those keys, unlock a piece of knowledge for me or I don't trust you actually know what you're talking about. It's a subtle and feeble-minded attempt to retain or grasp power you don't otherwise feel you have.

Again I can only contrast this behavior with my own life. When I have resources, power, options, or knowledge, I try to share it and make it freely available. I commit to the work it's going to take to do so. Even something as silly and easy as sharing music. I told my dad I'd populate his old phone with all of his music so he could break the bonds of shitty radio. It took me over a week, hours a day, to get it all downloaded and organized. I didn't say, "You know, just buy Spotify Premium. I anticipated you having shittier music tastes with less prolific bands, and this is taking sooooo loooong." The project doubled my overall music inventory, which I've been building for 20 years.

It's occurring to me that this is a pretty precise means of accounting for how burnout exists in this field. How emotionally and "spiritually" exhausting it can be to field an endless waterfall of people's excuses. It's almost worse when it's people who occupy a higher financial or credential class because you think to yourself that person must be cynically indulging. If you grew up dumb, broke, or just generally inculcated in a culture of "ratchet" shit, okay, that's less on you. If you have the time, money, or access to be carrying on like you're above the hoi polloi with regard to your field or experience and then you're anything less than gracious and patient and eager to contribute? Yeah, I can't entertain that level of selfish insecurity.

If we're ever to understand "class warfare," we have to grasp that Warren Buffet's son sent $500 million directly to Ukraine, and in contrast, Warren Buffett signed a pledge that he'd donate his money when he dies. I'm not going to pretend I have an intimate understanding of either man and their or efforts/reasoning or financial games. What I will suggest is that Warren Buffet has $500 million dollars, and the headline addressing intervention in a potentially world-destabilizing conflict wasn't about him or the European countries who contributed less.

There's people who are looking for the things they can best do to help. There will always be a fire, conflict, missing piece or reasonable and compelling situation that you might be drawn to influence. Then, there's the rest of people who are playing along, looking for every reason to escape any responsibility, and who wish to build bubbles and blame. Rich or poor. Ph.D. or GED. Young or old.

To the idea that anyone who proves themselves willing to engage in that behavior wishes to suggest to me what "best practices" are is laughable if it didn't hurt so much to think about and experience sometimes. Do they even know what they're doing? I can't believe so if I'm going to be bothered to "forgive" or confidently continue to navigate their input. I have to check my impulse to bargain with the universe in questions like, "Why can't they just tell me they don't want to work with me without all the extra judgment, condescension, and inevitable "good luck" sentiment?" The fact that they defaulted to that tells me everything I need to know. They weren't the one speaking. They don't have accountability built in. I don't want to work with them regardless of what they'd pretend to be contributing.

I've learned that all you need is specifics. You ask someone for specifics, their whole world blows up. Detailed understandings, accounting, or effort is the kryptonite for the excuses, defensiveness, and empty judgment. Ask a politician to define anything, you get the broad feel-good catch-all qualified language. Your average person is a shitty politician. They use the cliches afforded to them. They're not used to being punished or pressed. They will demand you go away, leave them alone, stop talking or engage in, "I know you are, but what am I." You'd think with my knowledge of this I'd be able to better weaponize or utilize it. I'm not blindly stepping into it when I double-down on the shitty email and illicit the obvious response, but I'm not helping myself by doubling-down ever. That's something to move on from and improve on.

I can't keep your ego fluffed about the work you haven't shown me. I can't play the pleasantry game when I've invested money and you're mostly committed to your feelings. I have to prevent my "desperation" at the idea of not finding anyone worthwhile translate into retaliatory or antagonistic pissing matches with those people. The more vigilant and less hopeful I can be that anyone I'm working with is actually worth a damn is how I'll get through these interactions. But that just sucks lol, right? It sucks that people suck, and are liars, and children, and might spend their whole life crashing into and throwing mud at the things you're building.

[1103] Good Dog

Something I have a very strong reactionary sensibility towards is "injustice." Before I might ever say it like that, I've written plenty of times about how much I hated, and still do, to be condescended towards. I was made to be very aware and very sensitive to power imbalances with my unstable and abusive mother growing up. She would make a game out of demonstrating what she could do to me if she thought I was deviating from what she expected. To speak of her "reasoning" behind that behavior is to totally misunderstand how people work. My job feels like it then becomes resolving my understanding with people with my overwhelming desire for justice or retribution.

To be sure, we're all getting fucked in big and small ways constantly. We're at the mercy of policy decisions a fleetingly small group of often greedy or ignorant actors make on our behalf. We're at the mercy of people's general negligence and motivated blindness. We're expected to work our lives away. We're expected to conform to norms around what's "appropriate," or "usual" in spite and mockery of what makes sense. Whether you're talking daylight savings time or the rules of the parent who will beat you because you forgot something, there's a set of things, and a way to frame things, that make the best course of action "obvious." Yet, so little feels that way, and you're often punished for even speaking to what's fucked up.

One of the more recent indefinite blood-feuds I've developed is with DCS. There is a right and wrong way to treat people involved with the system or when you need to investigate them. I don't care where the order comes from, if you're directed to lie, threaten, or harrass, you're not "just doing your job" or "doing as you're told," you're threatening the fabric of trust as it pertains to civil society. Somewhere, you're acting like a crazy cop who feels like they can speed everywhere with their lights on and point their gun at anything that looks at them sideways. You need to be watched, called out, and corrected or fired, every single time.

I don't know if I see enough or can reflexively think about a series of demonstrated responsible decisions and accountability. Now, any decent suburb might refute that sensibility on its face. Everyone there is paying the bills, keeping the lawn mowed, raising their family, or stacking and maintaining middle-to-upper income toys over time. If you zero in on the household in the neighborhood I grew up in, I'm getting terrorized. My smart "professional" mother deeply influenced my desire for an equally robust vocabulary as she did to flinch any time someone's arm moved around me; a habit I wouldn't break until college. Certainly, she had a story of her responsible decision making and accountability.

There's something deeper one must tap into or aspire towards. It's mostly discussed as a form of religious or spiritual sensibility. If everything about your environment is training, informing, or molding you to essentially "be a good Nazi," what is it, in your heart of hearts or conscience, that recoils when it's time to tell your superior there are Jews hiding in the attic? We've made this way more complicated than it needs to be, utilizing culture-specific or religious-indoctrination excuses. We eagerly defend our "reasoning." The justifications have famous names and extremely convoluted technical philosophical concepts. I would argue, simply asking yourself, "Would I want to be sent to my death over how and where I was born?" cleans up decades of motivated denial and pageantry.

I ask myself questions like that as it pertains to my behavior. Would I want to be forgiven, understood, or talked to? Almost always. Can I see how that thing or that behavior is something I might do? Often, but honestly less so the more I wrote and attempted to bring my blind spots into the light. I still have certain catastrophic impulses and sensibilities, but persisting in them for "too long" or to the point where I've lost all sense as to why I'm bothering I'm lucky to not really suffer. There are a fuck ton of things I don't do, haven't done, or can't see myself sincerely doing over a long period of time to anyone I regard as a friend or family member. So when one of them does that shit, or does a series of those shits, it's like, okay, I need to redefine my boundaries and not get lost in some abusive story that justifies and excuses the bad behavior.

I've been watching Ms. Pat Settles It. So many extremely dumb people and "characters" enter her fake courtroom to lay their family issues on the table. An idea that comes up in several episodes is that people will only treat you as you let them. In what feels like direct contrast to that idea, Ms. Pat and her panel will also say things like, "That's your mother," or "You only get one sibling, family, etc." Occasionally, she'll award money to the entitled mother who's not-precisely stealing, but certainly misappropriating given funds. The reasoning she offers is rarely consistent with why she'll deny someone else's claim who shows up with the same attitude and reasoning as the momma about what a friend or family member owes them. It's a fake reality show cheaply put together for some laughs. It's also a snapshot of how we go about pretending to reason and hold ourselves accountable, made more compelling by turning it into a fun and laugh-worthy game. Like, I laughed, and I love Ms. Pat.

I hope the side-step tendency is starting to come about. My mom could "play the game" like anyone who shows up to a televised "reality" show. Anyone who puts on a uniform and adopts a certain attitude and expectation to do the heavy lifting of their reasoning dances past the real questions and real work. You might pass the test, but you're not accountable. It's doctors that prescribed our modern drug-addicted environment. It's major, perfectly informed, companies that have steered us towards environmental catastrophe. It's corrupted political figures who stick to party lines and financial allegiances as you develop a coping complex that internalizes and teaches the values of maintaining an oppressed state.

This is why free speech is so important. That's, most often, all you have. So, if what you're saying is just an iteration of what "they" want you to be saying, you know you're not free. You're not free to even begin the project and work of responsibility and accountability. If you can't even access the words or the feelings that speak to what you're actually mad or sad about, you are playing someone else's game. If you're unable or unwilling to speak, there's your first clue about the true nature of your problem. If upon speaking you find yourself just repeating the same mantras, hatreds, or prejudices, there's your next clue. If you're incapable of pairing those hate and ignorance-based words with counter-narratives, fixes, or creative and comprehensive contextualizing, the third clue pops into view.

To be sure, someone stuck in this place can't really hear or see what I just said. That's more for those who wish to do better or wish to save themselves time when they recognize what someone they're engaging with is doing. I take it a step further and claim 9 out of 10 people, in every realm, at every income level, is doing more by way of staying stuck and game playing than otherwise. I look at my own family and see the anchors that were my grandparents and became my dad and stepmom holding the remote family coherence idea together. I look at elected officials who, perhaps moreso at the local level, cut through the noise and speak to the practical for-all-to-see details that get things done or not. Sure, we're all implicated and all to blame, but someone's holding the keys, money, or the bill hostage.

Ms. Pat's show made me think about what my case would look like or what I think she'd tell me. "You been friends for 25 years? Why now throw away a relationship? There's something deeper here isn't there?" Like, yeah. I'm not going to entangle myself with one more person who will consistently demonstrate to me just how far I'll let someone take advantage of me. I don't need to feel rage or an obsessive-compulsive itch for retribution like I might for the players at DCS or like I did as a kid when I got fucked. I do need to protect what it means to be accountable and responsible so I don't let the story and performance do the work he's proven unwilling or unable to do for years. I'm not going to bless that and play along.

My good faith effort to get the house flipped and trust in the payday worked out against me. My tempered advice and caution regarding enabling and rewarding the kid resulted in my life getting put in danger. My naive assumption that I would have any real amount of help or time spent in service to the things I've tried to create or do was refuted time and time again. Even now, he sends me a link to a grant to fill out, pretending that's the same thing as doing something for me or getting money donated. He's got a powerful delusion and story about his rich friends and political circles. Where's the actual money? I don't need Ms. Pat to order him to pay it, I need people in my life who understand what they've gotten and I'm always prepared to give to my real friends and family is invaluable. If you forget how to figure that out, start with $20K, and I'll reopen the discussion after I direct you to my 3 clues stated above.

I hate, very deeply, when people who don't have the power or the tools, or when it's an animal, and it's getting taken advantage of, beaten, starved, or bankrupted. I've met hundreds of incredibly hard-working, sincere, and worthwhile people at the mercy of this terrible-stories playground. I get particularly incensed when those who can more consistently do better, give up. I get particularly pissed when you arrive, or we do so together, at the "obvious" place your decision should land, and you side-step.

I think "the world" looks the way it does because 1 in 10 people aren't reflexively side-stepping. I think we fluidly find some familiar story of our value, self-worth, or obligation and want to pick-and-choose moments of "realness" that validate the version of ourselves we prefer. That's how people like my mom can throw their decision to have children in those children's faces and Ms. Pat can feel no contradiction in justifying a mother's entitlement while repudiating someone else's. "You're fed and the bills are paid!" Okay, but you're fat, sad, angry, causing us and everyone you profess to care about emotional and financial pain, indefinitely, and even speaking about that violates your perverted sense of power and justice and makes you feel entitled to retribution.

I don't want to punish. I want to help enable people to better self-correct. It's taken me years to get to whatever level you wish to call this in "refined" of my ideas and process. I don't have to spend any more of my life yelling to know I don't want to and can choose not to. I don't have secret guilt or unaired doubts that keep be quietly milking a relationship or excusing my behavior. My friend just donated $10,000 to my nonprofit. You know what I'm going to do if I, for some fantastical series of reasons, can't build the case loads, find other sources of funding, or explain how the money can be responsibly used? Give it back.

I think she understands the work I've done and am trying to do. I think she's one of the most personally accountable and responsible people I know. I think she knows everything I've done or offered to do for her was based on our friendship over 20 years and not me hand-wringing and plotting and waiting for a chance to play on her sympathies. My other 20+-year friend? That's pretty much the basis of our dynamic, remarking on our capacity to psychopathically manipulate or him manage his stable of white boys. Or we're looking for opportunities to gain power or capitalize on the political and bureaucratic environments he prefers. The story of either his desire to maintain or capacity to achieve along either metric trumped what I thought was understood and shared between us. Like I don't have enough things on my plate, I'm not re-explaining the game to him like he doesn't know.

A big reason this blog felt necessary was how I felt after seeing a reddit post of puppies abandoned and tossed in the back of someone's truck. I initially felt my stomach drop a bit, seeing two of them with either eye infections or what my imagination jumped to as their abusive overseer being right handed. As I read the predictable comments, a few remarked how lucky the puppies were to not have been tossed in the trash or river. I've been a social worker long enough that I can have both the catastrophized reflexive thought and almost immediately imagine a more or less positive series of things you could say about the person who didn't drown or trash the puppies.

The person acted as an analogy for the side-step in search of the 1 in 10. Even the reddit posts acts as a point of side-stepping validation bolstering the story that helps the poster pretend they're not one of the 9 or like whomever left the puppies. "I DIDN'T KILL PUPPIES! LOOK AT ME DOING THE BETTER THING! GIVE ME INTERNET POINTS! DON'T THEY LOOK SAD AND STARVING?" I'm not even trying necessarily to shit on the poster, but this habit is subtle and fluid and everywhere. There's something existentially important staring you in the face right now akin to "take the starving puppies to the shelter" that you are not doing, and not even speaking to first. I'm not going to celebrate you or upvote you or validate you for wiping-your-ass level of obvious shit to do. That's not interesting, or what I mean by accountability or responsibility. Do it for children, and then expect more from yourself and the adults.

[1102] Once And For All

I really need to talk and think "big picture" right now because this day in isolation is proving several orders of frustrating.

I'm about to hit about half as much as I typically make a year in debt. The largest portion of that is the investments I'm making in grant writers, fundraisers, and the infrastructure to keep my website, insurance, and credentials up to date/alive. Thinking about my needs in isolation, there's hardly a grant that could be granted that wouldn't cover my expenses for a year easy. Whether I invested $500, or $5,000 in landing a decent grant, in theory, I have little to worry about with enough exposure and submissions. It's the same story for an individual who might donate or securing funds from a corporation. I hit 30K, I'm not just out of debt, but the rest of the bills are paid all year.

Well, you ever hear about how hard it is to find good help? Even, it turns out, when you're paying $40/hr or, considerably more than $40/hr. For reasons I'm sure I'll contemplate the rest of my life, I can neither be too specific nor too communicative about what I need. If I use one word, they'll hear another. If I use 3 pages of words, they'll arc their head like a dog and ask for "more." I don't know what part of my insane younger self thought he wanted to be at the center of dozens of people's terrible interpretations of words, but some days it gets to such an overwhelming degree, you want to flush it all and just go fuck off at a factory or something.

Not a day goes by that I don't hear some horrifying mental health statistic. We're, broadly, getting dumber, less equipped, less accountable, and we somehow pair this with "positive jobs report" numbers while our psychological well-being is mercilessly dragged through raging gaslit fires. I have a company now poised to live or die on the back of our perception and goodwill as it pertains to what is, literally every day, described in numbers of tortured lonely souls, and I feel at constant battle to be allowed to address or work to make things the tiniest bit better for those in my orbit.

My state doesn't want anyone to get better. Insurance doesn't want anyone to get paid. "Competitors" want the same clients dependent and afraid and ignorant. Other do-gooders and "passionate" people passive-aggressively lay claim to the dignity and insight of their particular bubbles and ways of conforming to suspiciously blind norms. Everyone I talk to, even when they're not trying to, uses a tone that says something like, "You're new, or not enough, or not credentialed or organized or equipped in the way that suits me." I feel like I'm fighting for acceptance in a field that I've got years of demonstrated exceptional competence in. It creates a very cognitively dissonant place.

Am I a punchy little naive start-up looking for a big-brother sponsor and to have my hand held? Like, no. I'm a social work professional who's materially influenced and changed people's lives routinely for years who just wants the bare minimum "keeping the lights on" in return, even for the first few fucking years! This despite the personally-experienced level of need observed and engaged that should allow for more than subsistence living. Your extra year and a half in a Master's program or social work school specific degree isn't decades of experience and competence creating an obscene gulf between us in how we might relate or help each other.

It's a multi-layered "attack" on what I'm trying to do. There's the practical with taxes, start-up fees, online infrastructure and credentialing costs. There's the personal, with my business partner an almost perfect stress machine dealing with his severely injured wife, or battles with his school and the licensing board. There's whatever you want to make of my own head and things that make me want to pop. There's the language and communication barrier where everyone I speak to has to be online or mostly via text and email, and no matter what gets said, they find a way to capitalize on it in a way that has me spending more and getting less, or nothing at all. And then even the good-natured genuinely capable can't help but occupy overt and increased skepticism that tends to cripple the path towards a problem getting solved verses a path that doesn't wish to be bothered.

In any given moment where the weight and racing thoughts about all of that rush in, freeze me, or feel way more persuasive and compelling than waiting or looking for the next opportunity, it's about as bad as I can ever feel without being sick. Even looking at the next thing that might cause any level of stress feels unbearable. So, you can pull back and watch TV or fuck around on a guitar. Good luck in that moment not shitting on yourself for not powering through the discomfort. That's, of course, unfair and unrealistic and unnecessary. Tell that to how you feel anyway. Also, be by yourself pretty much all the time. Then, all of the disconcerting words and feedback exist as a kind of fogginess and extra steps removed from ever getting resolved.

I could pack what I do or what I've done into 4 sentences appropriate for an elevator. I'll have to write a fucking book or ten about the infinitely infuriating process, barriers, and human condition that makes remotely achieving anything feel like a fucking miracle. It's not one step forward and two steps back. The paradigm isn't backwards or forwards. The paradigm is now and whether now is aware of how to make now actualized into one moment over another. Every moment I'm trying not to sound disorganized, incomplete, exhausted, or like a cunt because I think you've just taken advantage of me or wasted my time, suggests I have no fucking idea how to make now better than it feels.

I'm gonna try again tomorrow. I'm gonna fuck around with my shows and instruments tonight. I'm gonna keep waiting and seeing if I can meet or talk to people that don't complicate things more than they need to be. Thankfully, if I know nothing else, it's that I'm at least as wrong and full of shit in my despotism as "they" are in their ignorant optimism or pride in how they engage me. Their persistent, almost motivated failure it seems, is all the more evidence that I shouldn't act like them against myself. Don't I trust they're blind cunts? Don't I trust they'll be sly and calculated in their denial about trying to fuck? Of course I do. I'm inviting them in to do so. Why react when you get proven right with anything but joy and confidence? I mean, that's obviously an incredibly dangerous path to self-deluded hell, but you know what I mean. Of course, you don't.

Do you have any idea how much I don't want to be right? I think an obscene amount about the idea of, "You can be right, or you can be happy." It's one of those lines that has never left me and nags like an old crow. I want to be wrong about so much shit that keeps proving true in the most consistent and painful ways. I wish I could trust the things I feel I need to exist in a healthy mental place, but I need to doubt, aggressively so, or I can't function. I will literally lose too much money or people to work with in any capacity if I trust. That's fucking crazy to me.

If I treat the environment I'm working within as though it actually cares about people, you know what happens? I get targeted and taken advantage of. I behave as though problems are there to be solved, therefore, in violation of the reality, I become their problem. I get lectured and condescended towards. I get "good luck" sentiments. I get gossipped about. This shit isn't conspiratorial either, word makes it back to me. How could you not? I stick out. I fight. I'm angry. I don't give a fuck how you feel if you're doing dumb wrong shit that conflicts with the smart good shit I'm attempting. I illicit that look and pause and exasperated airy sentimentality that really does not wish to be bothered, but doesn't want to be blamed as more complicit or indicative barrier than support.

I have exactly 5 relationships in my entire life that have maintained a fairly equitable investment/output kind of dynamic that weren't otherwise mostly superficial acquaintances. Whether we're talking literally financially, or emotional work and time to maintain. 9 out of 10 people in my life cost me money, will gleefully draw from my time to their own ends, ignore the work of maintaining their own sense of balance or mental health, or will levy endless commentary or judgment about me that I don't, or at least didn't feel or return about them as it was raining in. This most often manifest as silence as I'm expected to deal with whatever the fallout becomes of their negligence.

And I aspire to counsel people in situations where 9.5 of the people in their lives are pulling the same shit, and the shivering half of their own self that they can still recognize and respect feels as dark, overwhelmed, and made to feel as crazy as I described feeling above. Sounds like a fucking party.

One of my clients called and texted several times, waking me up too early, to freak out about information I'm not inclined to share with her PO, and am also bound my confidentiality regardless. After calming down, she brought up speaking to her friend who she has implored to start speaking with me, especially after I said I'd hold sessions for free. Don't you know? Her friend said she "definitely" would, but it might take a few weeks because she has doctor's appointments and yada yada yada. My client doesn't understand her friend isn't going to call me. My client is my client because she genuinely wants to get better. Her friend is 9 out of 10 people who pretend they don't have an hour to sort themselves out, at least a little bit, one day, between the moment you find out about it, and the weeks or years you'll spend pretending it doesn't exist.

I let myself suffer unduly for about a half hour before I started writing. That's practice. I identified things about me that reflexively catastrophize and conceptualized my fledgling feeling effort. I broadened the scope. I denoted the indifferent or impartial patterns people follow and depersonalized the particular cunts who drew focus. I feel a little better than when I began. Shouldn't we all get really good at our own version of this? And is it not existentially right to pursue a way to sustainably help people to keep practicing if 1 in 4 have a substance use disorder?

[1101] Resistance Is Futile

I want to do something a little different and muse a bit about social media, and one comment I've received in response to my writing in particular. It follows:

"See that? Yep, those are your guts, spilled randomly on the internet. I see them too.

Have you gotten enough out?

I don't really understand why you involved me in the whole thing though, seems the kind of conversation you have with *you,* but I hope you got something out of the process.

Anyways, well... okay, that was interesting, but I'm off to my own life again.

For the record? Seems like you are probably harder on yourself than you need to be, and hopefully you also take as much effort giving yourself grace.

Wait, hold up, no, before you're tempted to summon up another 1000 words, I didn't say I wanted to hear about it...I'm just saying."

This feels like a masterpiece. It strikes me as convoluted. It feels embarrassed. It succinctly captured the energy I feel one must anticipate in trying to do anything creatively or self-constructively and put it online. He's trying to detach himself, but also seems to feel provoked. I have to go over it line by line.

"See that? Yep, those are your guts, spilled randomly on the internet. I see them too."

I hear Daniel Stern's voice in Wonder Years. Almost like he's trying to add a bit of whimsy to the idea of him bothering to speak at all. I imagine some version of him is either actively patting my head or desperately resisting the urge to. This is the initial distance creating sentiment. Eeewww, dude, look icky guts. Now we're all a party to your gross guts! But maybe you couldn't help yourself, so take a seat and listen up.

"Have you gotten enough out?"

This isn't a sincere question. This is whomever failed to guide this person mocking them, now channeled at me. The blog he's responding to I state several times over is the 1,100th I've written over 20 years. He's existentially exhausted by the idea of being this thoughtful regarding anything. Incidentally, if you scroll through his posts, he's offering old-guy wisdom after having seen it all himself. He's cooked, in his mind. It's time to dole out advice in the last place anyone's willing to listen, but then what else is probably new for him?

"I don't really understand why you involved me in the whole thing though…"

This part is the most telling, not about this guy, but what the internet does to you. Philosophize This does a good job of explaining Byung Chul-Han's description of our narcissism bred from our internet circumstances. Who can even flirt with saying a sentence like this if they're not compulsively self-involved? I don't know who anyone is that responds to anything I say. They're a disembodied voice from either the vague hate or vague mildly-encouraging camps that pop up. Charitably, this could just be a really poor phrasing of, "I don't understand what I was to take away from this." But, I put this to every reader of anything someone has written, figure out why you bothered in the first place. Don't throw that the writing exists in the writer's face and act like something's been done to you.

"seems the kind of conversation you have with *you,* but I hope you got something out of the process."

So, yes, obviously, and this is also stated in the blog. I'm literally, every time, showing what complicated introspection to keep my head straight and values expressed looks like. Maybe you don't need to do all that. I'm jealous. Sometimes, in fact only ever drunk and in years-apart fashion, I get told how much I help someone else think about their own circumstances. It's unnatural to spend as much time as we do up our own asses and not just be mindlessly pumping out TikTok videos or craving sad music in response.

"Anyways, well... okay, that was interesting, but I'm off to my own life again."

I hear versions of this a lot. I'm called "interesting" a lot. It's less pain-inducing than when someone wishes me luck, but they're in the same spirit. I'm some "thing" that the person engaging it shouldn't really be handling but for it's quaint novelty and clear struggle with itself. They don't know how to help me release my head from the proverbial fence or bucket, so they have to still say something right? So, interesting you had all those…*thoughts* ::shudder:: Why don't we put them in their own special place waaaaay far away from what all us normals are doing over here.

"For the record? Seems like you are probably harder on yourself than you need to be, and hopefully you also take as much effort giving yourself grace."

Here's where the crack in the ironic armor shows up. A person who was simply and merely in touch with their own perspective, struggles and incompleteness and all, would just say this. It wouldn't have to be qualified and buried in all of the other inanity. This is the decent person who connected with something in the writing he's too tired or down on himself about exploring any further. People read thinking things out in this way as some kind of outsized effort. And it is, for them. Most of us are thinking ourselves in circles, getting paralyzed, and then doubling down on our crippling depression and anxiety, addictions, or fucking meme speak. If he'd just said this, this blog wouldn't exist.

"Wait, hold up, no, before you're tempted to summon up another 1000 words, I didn't say I wanted to hear about it...I'm just saying."

Now here's the internal rejection and reaction to doing or saying something nice and even the remote idea that I would recognize, respond, and try to connect. Can you think of anything more distasteful in the modern environment than to say or discover something *real* being said and exchanged? Let's strangle that baby in the crib, allude once again to "just how many words there are, gosh." And pretend like we didn't enter the arena of a "social network" where the rules are to crash your siloed thinking into someone else's and pretend there's no consequences and no real person on the other side.

After all, he's "just saying." 

All of that said and explored, I posted my living arrangements online. I played by the internet rules and was handsomely rewarded in internet points. The overwhelming sentiments were, "This is why I come here." I, robustly and unambiguously a male, have created a living space unlike many others. The novelty was enjoyed and reviled. It was judged as both dangerous and about to burst into flames, and as paradise. Both a genius hacker and musical prodigy live here as likely as a serial killer basement dwelling end of the world prepping troll. The only things that really made it through were one or two genuinely sincere people willing to explain in more depth the hazards of extension cords, and the people who recognized how much my inner-child never died.

That post got some 1,500 upvotes, and 645 comments. None of those comments warranted their own blog. Those people weren't engaging with me in the same way someone who reads what I'm thinking about how and why I create the things I do. They weren't engaging with me at all. They were nicely surprised by their niche subreddit delivering at continued just-enough intervals. A few were worth some fun exchanges. It started to get redundant and lazy with people who weren't reading what others had said before.

And in a day and a half, it's on to the next thing. I can't even say "I" liked or didn't the attention because I wasn't the star of the show. All I did was get a little bit more inside my head about how soon and what it's going to cost me to get normal outlets. But, ultimately, it could be argued I "did the internet right." I let a superficial glance at my circumstances field superficial engagement to everyone's "delight." It didn't garner enough attention to make the news. It didn't prompt any of them to think, "What else has this guy posted?" If I'd taken slightly better pictures and added more with an ability to read the titles on my books, video games, or band stickers, I bet I would have driven just a touch more engagement lol.

I think the internet has made my experience of people even worse. That is, the ironic detachment craving the next thing, fake performative relationships protecting informal "rules" to conform to, and the airs people take on in trying to politely belittle you for "not getting it" were exhausting before we built that brand of nihilism into how we understand the zeitgeist. We're not serious thinkers or actors on the world. It's always a qualified and calculated performance.

If you can talk real fast and make influential people feel validated, they'll platform your Ben Shapiro stick-up-my-ass charade and you'll be celebrated and rewarded with money. If you can tie yourself in knots justifying every nakedly stupid fascist comment and move your Nazi wanna-be dictator or insurrectionist "representative" makes, you'll get to feel like you're a part of history and doing something religion-level righteous enabling them. And then somehow again in defying them every time the bare minimum leaks out of you! This is how you can listen to people genuinely be flabbergasted that their actions resulted in pain or death. They were just performing. None of this was meant to be taken seriously.

For better or worse, in the fairyland you might occupy that suggests you should interpret me with some kind of flattering filter or wisened birdseye distance, I aspire to be a serious person. Not self conscious, but to act like what I do and say has consequences. I want to be consistent. I want to have reasons. I want to really connect and really create and really change the things that piss me off, confuse me, or seem to feel as perfectly avoidable catastrophes if we pay closer attention and talk and think better. Welcome to the process. Resist the urge to blame me for stapling your eyes open and forcing you to recite it.

[1100] Highway To Hell

This is the third time I've tried to write in the last week. The first time, I deleted everything, maybe 8 paragraphs of bitching. The second time, I restarted my computer without saving (turns out it autosaved, but if I was that forgetful of it, was it really worth saving?). Now, I'm going to use some new echoing sentiments and see if they can bring the feeling home.

A first-class mage, out of mana, all-but totally defeated in battle, would continue to fight until the end.

I also saw Tony Robbins tell Theo Von to look around the room for every brown object, and then asked him to report on how many red things he saw. He then challenged Theo on how many things he instinctively tried to make fit into the "red" category that might have been close, but not quite right. It was a quick illustration to demonstrate how we filter in and out information based on what we want to see and reflexively justify or make excuses to help "win" in our perception of how much we noticed.

Writing helped teach me at more of an instinct level that my perception was infinitely incomplete. I write to express the "drama" or pain and negativity and catastrophic consequences of inattention and inaction. And then after each sentence, I'm presented with the choice to double down or refute. I draw relative conclusions based on how I'm choosing to express myself on the topic. I'm not convinced. I'm never all bad or all good. My motivations are often equally greedy and selfish as they are kind and patient. I think to be a wise or real human you have to be aware of that duality in as many moments as you can.

My life, or at least the narrative that feels most appropriate to try and capture it, changed in a fundamental way a few days ago. For the first time, I'm able to "simply" do my job without qualification. There's still messy bits that I'm working to stabilize, but I'm not at the mercy of the forces I've been complaining about for years. I have breathing room to see if people I've hired raise even more funds or successfully net me grant money. I have enough to keep the credit card companies at bay. I just have to do what I do best, talk, and get in front of as many people as I can.

I've had big portions of my life where I've felt relatively "free." Drug study money time where I was functionally retired for my 20s I wasn't anchored by anything but my "friends'" ambivalence and too much reading about the world. I woke up and slept when I pleased. I had thousands in the bank. It obviously wasn't what I aspired to be or have or I wouldn't have taken on the thousand headaches related to building a more permanent living situation. This isn't the first time I've ever been able to breathe, but it's a new kind of air.

One of the things I mentioned in those previous writing attempts was my aptitude for games like StarCraft. You start with the resources on the map. At different points in my life, I've made manifest what I wanted/needed when the resources were in place. Bills covered while in school? I built the next-level party environment. Cash upon graduating? Oh look, a coffee shop. Money saved from drug studies and/or working several jobs at once? I genuinely forget "the struggle" it's been to get here typing this from my fort staring down the barrel of an endless list of projects or upgrades to make. You give me the instrument, or tool, or video game and I learn how to play it, if not better than you, better than most.

I'm a first-class mage. I keep fighting, even when I feel, acutely and constantly, at some proverbial end of my rope, existentially dreadful, and full of hatred for this, that, and the other thing. A condescending conversation can set me on something of a roller coaster, and then a surprise, like the donated money to get back to work, quickens the process to shuffle that one asshole into the gigantic pile of assholes making the same predictable mistakes that have set me off my whole life. My emotional response is routinely violated and proven wrong, so, I learn not to trust it. It goes both ways though, and you have to adjust your sense of "happiness," which I think is miscalibrated in a lot of people.

I'm not unhappy. I'm also not particularly enthused or engaged by most things. I can watch most TV sped up because they aren't saying anything interesting or new. I'm not "shocked" by the horrors reported in the news. I'm not so sheltered or impoverished to be brought to tears in some Dobby-esc way over what anyone treated appropriately could be initially excused for taking for granted. I know, just as an animal, I'm predisposed to sense the bad and danger. I know we're negatively biased. Being aware of and incorporating that feels like the project of any conversation about addiction, mental health, or whether or not we find a place for ourselves in the world.

Part of the miscalibration in our sense of "happiness" or "belonging" I think stems from bad incentives, bad expectations, and inexhaustible wells of denial and excuse making. I can identify literally dozens of "failure" points that would have prevented me from breathing this new air regarding my company. Some of them still currently exist and are being worked out. But what is "failure" to me? It's a state that can change. It's a point of learning. It's the chance to ask new questions. It's growth if you incorporate it. I need failure. I want to know what's going to fail early and often, so I can fix it or work around it.

I look for failure points. I look for the pain and drama and inexcusable injustice. Then I see if there's something I can personally do in how I orient myself towards that thing. I can't "fix" every problem in the world, and am thousands of degrees away from practically influencing almost anything. I can always control how or whether I talk about it. I can't fix inflation or "the economy," but I can occupy a space that softens the blow of prices rising and greedy landlords. There's gonna be one Dan Price for every 10,000 "normal" capitalist monsters, so I can pursue working conditions that attempt to bypass the machine, even while I'm working for it.

It's hard. But it's no harder than the stories I hear, by the hundreds, related to what people are struggling with as it pertains to their health, families, or finances. I'm in debt too. Not relative to my total assets or even half of what I tend to make every year, but my debt is servicing fun and growth. My debt is investing in crating a means to sustain my life and grow in my otherwise capacities if purely financial is off the table. I get more time. I get more chances to share with people ready to receive. I get to find the "happy" balance between what I'm working on, when I'm having fun, and when I'm navigating a fresh horror. It's hard no matter what you're doing in life. It feels orders of magnitude harder when you don't know why you're suffering whatever it is you are or can't find a matching fulfilling sense of order and meaning to press right up against the chaos.

It means something to me to be my brand of mouthy cunt. It means something to me to reflect on everything I've built, chaotically and constantly incomplete as they may be. It means something to me to go down swinging and find the "neutral" or "happy" blog after I've bitched and moaned for hours. I'm a loser and a failure and then whatever comes next, all at once, every day, all the time. I don't want to wildly swing in any direction and register the feeling as "true" in some too-compelling way.

This, and the spirit of those two unpublished blogs, is my 1,100th attempt to square my thoughts. What's the last thing you've done 1,100 times? That's how many times I've checked in on my worst impulses. It's thousands of hours of breathing and patience in spite of a headache, racing heart, or impulse to self-destruct. It's cheerleading for myself to maintain or succeed when I can't find anyone to share my perspective enough to offer anything I find practically useful. In the 20 years I've been practicing, I've met a literal handful of people practically implicated and interested in the potential consequences of that practice. No matter the examples that get set. No matter the explanations offered. Most of us, most of the time, find our rut, and look for anything to keep us there.

I know how far and exotic my thoughts get with regard to what I wish to create. I know no incomplete fantasy snapshot is going to capture the work and pain and sacrifices. So, I always bring myself back here. How do I feel right now? Do I recognize the potential? Am I cautiously optimistic? Am I doing other things to celebrate my interests and values while "the main thing(s)" still sit in a more hazy or indeterminate state?

I haven't slowed down going to shows. I'm still practicing my instruments, reading, playing video games, and planning or spending time with friends. I've got lines in the water for grants and fundraising. I just got off the phone with one of three potential someones to fix our licensed therapist hole. I've reached out and told my personal contacts we're in business. I'm forging ahead, in literally every moment I can, to continue to craft an environment that doesn't piss me off or confuse the fuck out of me in how negligently unaware it can manage to operate.

You can call it good or bad, but I realize it as working. Working for its own sake because the values contained can't be better expressed or felt any other way. I literally feel better as I work to figure out what's going on in my head. I cannot deny what I've created as I sit within my series of achieved goals. When I reflect on what I've written or overcome, that's the new imprint on my mind. It transforms a story of venting or failure into a processing guidestone on the way to the next thing. My brain does not have that habit "naturally." I am incomplete and begging to begin spiraling into hell if I made a determined effort to stop writing to just "see how things go."

I already know that story. It happens in every moment I need to write, but haven't yet. It's how I felt before I engaged the tool and did the work. It's what I hear from others who are, to be sure, no more or less confused about life or their place in it than I am, but refuse to even attempt to organize it. Or they'll try once or twice, "Doing what I told them," when what I told them is that I've done it 1,100 times for 20 years. They heard what they wanted to hear to keep them exactly where they are.

I don't want to be right here, and I want to be exactly here at the same time. I want a slightly warmer house with dedicated cord-managed rooms and high-end equipment. I want a sustainable nonprofit or business expressing my values that requires less of my presence over time. I want to be doing fun things, with friends, in any moment either of us choose, not thinking about the costs. I want to be telling other people's stories of success and values through the work they've done that shame and humble the empty "help" and "passion" blind cunts profess from their entitled perches and insecure bubbles. I want so many things, in unashamed ways, and I know what must die in order to get them.

Until then, the ever-precarious story of inflaming and infusing incidents remains a work in progress.