[375] I Can't Hear Myself Think

I'm shooting for long and something of a ramble. Save yourself the time.

I hope to layer cliché upon cliché until I can balance the word meta on a turtle. Also, to make obscure references/metaphors to answers about what holds the Earth in place that don't quite work.

It's wrong to say “I don't care.” It's very wrong to say “I'm depressed.” I suppose it's good to get those out of the way quickly as I anticipate this sounding like both.

As I get better at framing my position in ways that keep people older than me from being condescending, the nature of the excuses they offer to help their fellow traveler become clearer. You'll always find a habit. For example, they always have a “secret.”

Some of those secrets include that your views and ideas will change more than you can appreciate until you're older. Things that used to matter “just don't” anymore. You'll realize that all there is to do is focus on things like friends, family, and caring about other people. Sometimes, if not most of the time, you have to suspend your disbelief because it will help make life “bearable.” They used to hate hate hate as much as you. Time will fly by! There's always something new to learn.

Wild and crazy stuff right? It's almost like the veil has been lifted. You mean I used to crave the latest video game, and then one day, almost like a switch was flicked, all I'll be able to care about is the next country we go to war with? Or, how about that lesson plan that tells you to appreciate and care about people. Brilliant! If only we told that to our children before they reached existential crisis mode in college. At least we caught them before that looming mid-life crisis.

To me, it's no secret that simply because you are old, that does not grant you Wise Old Janitor status. In fact, the majority of the stupidest shit I've ever heard my entire life has come from people older than me. That's likely an obvious statistical point, but one I hope still serves to shit on the idea that if your tools for “consoling” someone about what they don't feel are “give it time” you're making a very obscure appeal to authority. That you've experienced more, even if it's strikingly similar, does not mean you grasp the particulars of anyone else's head.

It's worth noting, that this is why I offer habits and contingencies, not necessarily “how to think” advice. You love your abusive boyfriend? All I can really say is that eyes get black when you keep your face within his arm's length. If you don't like black eyes, step back, maybe even several hundred feet. If the pain from black eyes = less than your desire, maybe stop complaining and focus on how happy he makes you.

But look at that example. Isn't spousal abuse pretty terrible? Why don't I give a shit that I could make it sound like the person being abused is so impossibly stupid that I basically want her to keep getting hit?

There's a certain kind of “thing” I don't care about. A kind of reaction. The idea that I could provoke you. I don't respect an inability to read the example and miss the point. I don't respect allowing your feelings or history with the problem instantly making you think I'm the worst kind of human being. And I think all I ever see out of people is their reactions. Not all the time of course; I'd go insane. But overwhelmingly I get their conditioned responses. They're no better than battered wives.

Take this Comedy Attic situation. A rude person would talk and text during the show. A rude person would order the beer, dump it on the floor, and then refuse to pay. A rude person would have called the waitress a cunt, irrationally dammed comedy and all it's followers, and gotten off on making a scene.

I just didn't want to spend more money or drink anything. I calmly explained that if I wasn't Comedy Attic suitable, I could just leave. It wasn't a weird stab at a threat. The house was packed. I literally asked them if I was so in the wrong that I should just not partake in the show at hand. But there is no calm way of expressing to someone that their set up is as bad for you as they think you are for them. Not because I didn't explain it calmly, but because people don't react to you acting differently than they expect you to terribly well.

And part of it harks back to an idea of boredom. I know what happens when I pay for something I don't want and capitulate to a pushy waitress. I don't know what happens when I get a chance, so to speak, to explain what I don't like about the situation, and to the head honcho no less.

At that point, it's an adrenaline rush. It's not anxiety. My heart races more often than I care to think about. Races like when you get called to the principal's office. It's like I always feel guilty of doing something before I've done it. I'm living the consequence of calling the waitress a cunt or throwing a bottle at the door. I'm convinced I'm that big of an asshole and I'm very intrigued to see why I'm going to move one way or the other.

That's the kind of disbelief I can't suspend. The one about our worst demons. I don't take any special prize home for realizing my capacity. I just get to shoulder it when my body defaults to “ultra pissed off man mode” about exceedingly innocuous situations.

But I can't allow them not to matter. I'm rather obsessed with the idea of strings. Everything being tied to everything else. We're as much “star stuff” as we are the bonds we form between people. The rules we put in place. The ideas we cultivate and defend. I can't pretend that I don't have something to say.

Whether it's the guy “stepping up” and buying a beer to “not hear me talk anymore.” Or thinking about the owner's motivation in his ticket prices or how he structures his payouts and rents. Maybe he's been given an unfair shake on something like property taxes so he has to do “marginally shady” things in how he runs business. But how do we ever get to a conversation about poorly structured Bloomington tax law if we're squabbling over the merit of squeezing people as part of the “policy.”

I want to shoot to what matters. There are immediately ten ways that situation could have been handled that would have been just as “effective” without ruffling a ton of feathers. The waitress could have ignored me. They could have taken me up on my offer to leave. They could have snickered to each other about “that asshole with the pony tail who never wants to buy anything” from the corner. But none of those happened. And even if they did, we still wouldn't have started on a path to discussing why it became the policy in the first place. In truth, I'm more interested in how much these comedians are getting paid and what it takes to get them on stage anyway.

In that situation, I'm more concerned about ruining my friends' time, or the time of the people around us, more than what the waitress or manager think of me. Now I get to run through that line of speculative thinking. Are they pissed at me? Are they going to bother inviting me out to places? Do they see any merit in anything I've offered as my reasons? If they don't, why am I calling them friends? If they do, are they feeling as hopeless as I am right now? Doubtful. Am I going to get a “time and a place” or “pick your battles” speech? Is this more likely going to get swept under a rug like most things and tomorrow's another day? Cool.

It's something of a traffic jam, but the cars are coming from all directions. Like, out of the sky. Until a big enough truck comes in to pave the way to how I find myself proceeding throughout the situation. Often, it's like I'm watching. Waiting for my mind to give me the signal that of these many balls of potential, it wants to play with the pink one right now. Did you know our brains invent the color...SHUT UP NICK THROW THE BALL!

I think in this...tunneling...this quick shooting down many holes (you hear it too?) speaks to the ambivalence. Like I've watched every possible future but the one I'm experiencing “now.” And so rarely is it ever one of the good ones. But this might be over-stating it.

I think about what makes me happy. I'm not, old condescending people, thinking that it's this “thing” I'll one day achieve after enough gamer points and sexual conquests. I've argued that it's a choice. Like right now, I'm exceedingly happy to dig into the depths of my head. Figure out my motivation. Dissect disagreements. I was happy to piss off that waitress. I would have been happy if I had to leave the room. What makes me happy is actually doing and behaving like I want. I like to see myself speaking to the things I have a very hard time explaining. I can tell you the waitress was a cunt. That doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is when someone hears me call them a cunt when that's the loudest and most honest thought I have in that moment. I don't want to tell you I hate you. I want to make sure you can never un-feel it.

That's sort of how we conduct ourselves though, right? If we go back to abuse. Your most compelling horrible feelings seem to dictate how you behave. You were abused, so you abuse, whether it's yourself or others. You take your insecurities and, if you can't act in spite, you try to live in denial. Or, you “accept” that you're only going to feel like shit no matter what and that becomes your new baseline. Whatever you're afraid of, whatever you've felt the most, that writes the rules. That gives you direction. In a way, I'm only trying to speak your language.

Whether those fears are real or imaginary, they're real. But, not as real as when you experience someone else at critical mass. A genuine threat to your being. An explicit personal affront to the very fact you exist. That's what I like. That brings me joy. You wonder if your boyfriend still loves you as much as the day he met you? Surely that's an unpleasant thought, but you're unsure. But I can make you sure about something; there's someone that hates you as much as you could hate anything, at least for this fleeting moment. Even if it fails to haunt you, you'll remember it.

And talking like that brings me joy. It's motivating. Not because it's powerful, but because it's as honest as I could be to a person. I can take all my gobble-d-gook about tunnels and flying cars and boil it down to, first one thing is true, YOU'RE A DEPLORABLE CUNT! And we've started down the road to rebuilding.

But this idea of “being in on the joke” like everybody knows the world is like this or this. NO. Fuck no. I don't believe you. I think everybody knows how to make that empty statement and everybody knows how to respond to it like we're all on the same page. I believe we have similar emotional states. I believe we abuse old adages and cliches. I believe we've all had moments of “super real realness where shit got so real you never wanna see me so real again.” But that doesn’t mean anyone knows shit. How do I know this? They never talk about all the shit they don't know. And they don't care to go about figuring it out.

Everyone's got answers. That's how I know they're full of shit. The biggest answer I ever come to about most things in life is “well, we can talk about it” or “well, if you do this, this is seemingly likely to happen.” REDDIT, HOW DO I STOP LOVING THE PERSON I LOVE! Well son, when I was your age, I realized the meat bag who's more bacteria than human was going to die one day and get saggy tits I'd no longer find attractive. I decided to just picture what that would look like now and took off down old road 37. At the behest of my dick, I found someone within my proximity to lay my emotional baggage on. You'll see, it's all gonna come up roses for ya if you can just find yourself so exhausted that things you once cared about you no longer do! Exciting! Upvote my wise! ALL THE WISE!

But we don't talk. Not until we're drunk. Hint why I like to get you drunk. Or not till we're “in a bad place.” What if you're always in a bad place? What if that bad place isn't a fix like, stop putting yourself in front of a fist? What I've learned is you write and write and write, and then you read it back over hundreds of times so that you can at least pretend to be having a conversation. Because that's all that ever makes you feel better.

Next Entry: Artsy Fartsy

[374] Jk Jk

I want to talk about dignity and pride, kinda.

Dignity: The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect. A composed or serious manner or style.

Pride: A feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

I think in order for these two things to exist, we need to keep a very big secret. With dignity, what stands out to me is the idea of being composed. When you're calm, cool, and collected you adopt an unspoken respect regardless of what you're doing or saying. With pride, all you need to be able to do is persuade yourself that what you're doing, or what you're crowd is doing, is worthwhile and great, and you get to reap the glory.

What strikes me, is that when I find myself talking about pride with people, they're very quick to explain how “not full of pride” they are. We'll let the irony sink in. If nothing else is known about our conversation, it's vitally important that they don't think I believe their ego hasn't been severely reigned in and shot in the head out back. Pride comes before the fall, after all. Any idiot knows the humble pie you taste after talking too big a game is simply a risk not worth taking. Not if you're to maintain a level of respect from your peers or society that is.

I don't go into a lot of detail, somehow, about where it is I derive pride or under what conditions I can feel dignified. It's very murky waters that become very clear when I'm in the middle of them. We can take a real world example that has prompted this writing. I went to the Comedy Attic. I was told there is a two drink minimum. I did not want anything to drink.

There are two distinct roads you can take. You can feel dignified in “paying to keep the lights on,” as it was explained to me, and spend the money you don't want to spend on drinks you don't want to drink. Or, you can do what I did, lie and cause a minor fuss about not having money nor wanting their drinks. Do I feel dignified? In a sense, but I didn't go to the comedy club to find a waitress to fight with.

What's interesting to me is the pride the comedy club owner has. I'm also in the game of starting and running businesses. I understand there are costs associated. I think there's a deliberate way you can go about accounting for those costs that don't set your patrons, even one of them, up to be an asshole for a pithy grievance. “We need the money to get comedians on the stage.” I've bought CDs directly from said comedians. I do the same thing with bands. I offered to pay a higher ticket price. I just don't want a bottled water nor a beer.

In the moment though, this was not a conversation the players involved were willing to have. This is ONE OF THE TOP TEN COMEDY CLUBS IN THE COUNTRY after all. Who am I to suggest the conditions under which I would feel more comfortable in giving them money? And to achieve such heights and have such a problem keeping the lights on. Comedy, significantly more rough a business than I could imagine. The “gentleman” who said he'd buy two beers to “make me feel better” only to clarify on the way out the door that “I didn't want to hear you keep talking” was a nice cherry. Now, it's not even about how I didn't want a drink, it's that I expected someone else to pick up the tab, as well as have a conversation in the middle of a set. It's easy to see how quickly these things spiral, no?

I offered to leave. I offered to just not come back. The owner insisted several times as we were walking towards the door “that's not what I want, I want you to come back.” Well, this seems like we should either talk in better terms, or I'm going to make the simple decision to not put you in this awkward place. Awkward as you've described, because unfortunately for me, as much dignity as I'd like to see in comedy, it's currently another overly commercialized pit of thousands of people trying to be funny, and if I need my guts chuckled, I don't need to pay for things I don't want to do so.

But it can always be reduced to shitty words and pissing matches. Especially in that setting. I could call the waitress's head a misshaped vegetable I've never heard of that's gone bad. Her hair and head shape...I guess you had to see it. I could have told the owner that he should st-st-st-stick his head up his ass. (He had a stutter.) But that's not what I want, it's not probably what they deserve, and it doesn't speak to the point nor accomplish anything.

I'm sure this is all my fault. I'm sure it's because I'm obsessed with the details. I'm sure it's because, ideally, we'd all understand that my intransigence has nothing to do with genuinely enjoying getting into “heated” discussions with people utterly perplexed by why I'm not convinced by “well everyone else has to do it!” Actual quote. And what an insolent little bastard I'd look like handing out a dollar to every comedian I enjoyed. I'm sure they'd be dying to hear how much my system would save them on lost pencils and printed ballots.

Independent of it all though, that waitress was a total cunt.

[373] Middle Ground Zero

I want to talk about the idea of “the middle way.” I also want to criticize ideas and statements that masquerade as the reasonable adult way of understanding the world.

Initially, I think about the ideal political situation. The idea of negotiating a center that keeps extreme positions at either end, and the reasonable people basically being able to agree on a common premise. In a democracy, it's theorized that rational actors with the perfect information would make decisions in service to their best interests. Clearly, that works every time. I think there are places, like our political realm, where that idea, that there is indeed a middle ground, does a lot of work in misleading our cultural conversation.

Another easy one is health. Would you rather be healthy or have cancer? Why not shoot for the middle ground and we just give you diabetes and a broken leg. It's manageable and not immediately life threatening, right? But no, you'll insist that you want to be healthy. Most sane people would because when it comes to the stark reality of “I feel like shit” it's so very clear what an ideal situation would look like.

I was reading over a reddit thread, specifically this one “hate the liberals” guy's comments to people expressing frustration over Obama's new bill to lower student debt interest rates. Examples of his comments amount to “you were an adult, you shouldn't have signed the loan,” “You're a fucking retard thinking the government owes you anything,” “Education is not free (n)or a right,” “I made better decisions than you, studied something better than you, I don't want to pay for you,” and “you entitled parasites don't seem to understand life isn't fair and that not everyone succeeds.” There are severely worse comments, but this will do for now.

Let's respond line by line. This idea that “you were an adult” seems to say that “now that you're a reasonable and wise individual with no unfair barriers and perfect information, you picked the objectively worst thing to do to yourself in this situation.” I, at least, had about as much choice to go to college as I have to currently work at McDonalds. It's amazing how many parents bought the idea that college meant job and opportunities well before their kids did. It amazes me to think that we'd admonish someone for, what's been touted as the “adult” thing to do, go to college, for incurring the costs that became normalized at all levels of society, in order to do so.

It's not being “reasonable” to lean on the idea that “well, people are adults!” Adults in a context. Or children who are as old as adults who've never been taught or engaged with by a reasonably better interpretation of the word “adult.”

The idea that the government doesn't owe you anything is particularly interesting. In a representative democracy, the government owes you everything. The government owes you its very jobs. If the majority of people with unreasonable crippling debt call on the government to do something about it, the government should respond. This accounting and thought experiment has been done hundreds of times. Things like relocating agribusiness and oil subsidies. Why begrudge the guy who tried to get educated and be responsible instead of writing angry letters to the banks? What did the government owe them? Whatever it was, it's still being paid.

Education not being free nor a right is a statement of fact. But, more to the point, nothing is a right besides the right to die. And then, only if you don't drag that phrasing into the political arena! Rights are bread from understanding and struggle. When you have access, ability, and intention, a “right” starts to manifest in louder and louder fashion. How many blacks and women have been explained to them the rights they don't have in our democracies over the years?

There are things you state because they are true. There are things you state, while incidentally true, only serve to promote the status quo or deliberately ignore other avenues. To say something like “don't touch that pot, it's hot” is not the same kind of factual claim as “don't complain because the government doesn't owe you anything.” The second statement is the kind of folded argument “logic” you get from religious types. “Well, you can't prove there's not a god!” Okay...true, but that usually has absolutely nothing to do with why you think that god doesn't want me to have an abortion. If you don't want to get burned, you don't touch the pot. If you want a different financial obligation, allegedly you appeal to your representatives.

The next lines are about personal responsibility. I don't know how you can talk of responsibility without speaking to what society considers responsible. It goes back to simply going to college in the first place. That's what higher paying jobs expect. That's what they did, that's their standard, and for a great many things, college isn't simply a giant waste of money. But, not only are kids in schools screwed going in, but when they're out, a lot of the jobs they were shooting for, say in medicine, are proving less than useful in paying back their loans anymore than the art student can. There's an underlying societal/governmental problem that makes a truly “responsible” decision, at best difficult, and at worst practically arbitrary.

Finally, the idea that not everyone succeeds and that life isn't fair. Maybe you come across someone who's been in a serious car accident. Do you pull up next to them and yell “life's not fair fucko!” and speed off in celebration of your ability to better avoid being in accidents? Probably not. It's a statement of “fact” that doesn't really speak to whether or not the accident happened on a bridge that wasn't reinforced or a road that wasn't properly paved. It ignores the poor car quality standards that could have reduced it to a fender bender instead of someone bleeding out on the pavement.

There are levels of responsibility and “fair” that we install. Also, we install them for reasons. If you want to speed, you don't argue with the cop that it's not fair he pulled you over. Why make the care able to go so fast if I can't use it! It's fair to assume that most people most of the time should try to drive in ways that don't make it more likely for you to die arbitrarily. We'll leave aside Montana's odd speed experiment, imposing speed limits and seeing an increase in death, with that analogy.

There is a, I don't know what else to call it but “religious zealotry” that people, at some level or another subscribe to that they coat in unhelpful and unnecessary “facts” to try and sound reasonable or advocating for “something in the middle.” These are idealists not because they understand what's actually ideal, but because they are allowed to create and defend to the death what they personally define as ideal. They subscribe to axioms about age or habits of “good leaders” instead of describing the context under which different ideas are formed. They appeal to reputation and common ethics above cause and effect evidence.

These are the people who say one of the dumbest and most popular statements right now, “there are some scientists that don't believe in global warming.” If you watch the episode of “Years of Living Dangerously,” try not to throw something through your TV when the pastor of one of the country's biggest churches argues that “because you haven't addressed my points!” He's neither convinced nor impressed. It's a guy you can't persuade ice melts, but you'll try, until you don't know whether you hate him or yourself more.

The “middle way,” to me, is not making these empty aphorisms about “life” or “how it works.” Nor is it taking a bath in shit, then in honey, and showing off how beautiful you look and awesome you smell. Put the shit in the garden and the honey on the toast. Understand that every time you say “Democrats suck” you're not really saying anything. The middle is about perspective, not leveraging bad or empty ideas against each other. It means you can advocate for equal opportunity without bankrupting potentially vital pieces of infrastructure. It means you're influenced by history and examples that aren't feeling laden anecdotes. It means you can respect when the responsibility is truly yours, you know, like for going to school, and when you should expect the burden for certain things, like how it's paid for, to be on everyone. Every old person on Medicaid who complains about entitled millennials should unironically drop dead on the spot.

“Objective” is not a negotiation. You don't want just a little bit of cancer. In the same way you don't track increasing tuition for 30 years, for no other reasons beyond corruption, and blame kids for “being adults who made the poor decision to pay for an education.”

[372] Bang On The Drum All Day (Don't Wanna Work)

I can't tell if my headache is from too much on my mind or from eye strain, so if you see this, it means I didn't write several pages only to immediately delete it.

I keep thinking about the nature and utility of work. As the articles I've recently been reading keep reminding me, work has meant a great many things to many people depending on how it was marketed. The 8 hour work day was considered a step up. As early as the 10's to 20's one economist notes a shirt that campaigned for the 4 hour work day. Work is said to create "value" in that it contributes to the motor of society. It allows you to buy things and keep up with the Jones's. It allows you to provide for your family.

As the same piece pointed out, work is also about caring for people. Nurturing children or taking care of the sick aren't necessarily backbreaking, but arguably, no less mentally intense or laborious. We consider academic work pivotal to protecting and growing our databases of knowledge and to further technology. We respect artists and musicians who perform at levels so high if they were making mistakes the entire time, they'd be lucky to be in the same room with someone who could point it out.

But work is changing. Gone are the industrial jobs thanks to globalization. If you can get a car made by a machine, or modern day slave, you're not going to pay union worker. This article I read about lawyers losing out to new technology that can sort through and refer legal precedent in seconds as opposed to taking weeks with a team of associates. Soon our phones will be predicting when we're at risk for diabetes or blood diseases. While it will be a "slow" transition, so to speak, in the midst of an outcry about "jobs jobs jobs, we need to create more jobs!" It seems we don't really have a plan for what those jobs may look like, if they're worthwhile, or whether people will be capable of doing them.

What happens when McDonald's goes fully automated? There's one guy in charge to maybe restock the buns assuming there isn't some great technical leap that allows delivery trucks to automatically unload and stock. What happens when big box stores realize that aisles and aisles of clothes no one is wearing aren't worth the price of rent and the number of "service jobs" starts to plummet?

I'm more concerned with what we think of ourselves. I'm of the view that certain things should be considered "rights." Things like eating, having a place to stay, an education, or maybe the right to a fucking planet... etc. This especially because we have an overabundance that's poorly allocated. What happens when you don't need to work to eat? What happens when you can choose to interface with any subject, or perhaps physically plug into a computer with nano brain bots? Given how many people hate their jobs, I don't think it will be all that bad of a thing. It's the transition that's a problem. It's the poorly understood road to getting there that will make the future bleak regardless of what we've made available.

I think about this in the context of what I'm doing with my time. I don't give two shits about coffee, but rich people buy it. I've worked hard. I've played by the rules. I maintain my propensity to read things until I go cross-eyed despite my many attempts to shut off from the world. I'm one of the few "entitled" millennials who really does think he's done enough and should be seeing some form of dividends paying out for his effort. This in no way is an attempt to diminish the help I've had or to try and mock up my effort or work against someone else's. My dad's an iron worker after all. I haven't nearly died to take care of anyone. But, he didn't want me or my brother to have to be iron workers.

For as long-term as a lot of the problems we face as a country or, as I tend to go with, species, I think none more lasting than the impact of how we discuss and understand our circumstances. I've done such a good job with my language I get away with acting in seemingly sheer contradiction, at least for a time, with less angst ridden emotional scenes than I may let on. Also, I'm not even positive how much of it is "stuck" as a conversation amongst the masses while the general business as usual remains just that. I can be sure, it'll be a dumb conversation regardless, where I'll play the cynic messing with everyone's good vibes.

It's just that, I find myself sounding defeated about everything I do. "Was dinner fun?" Eh, we ate. "How was the pool?" The water was wet, cold, and we got kicked out of the first warmer wet bowl of water. "How's the van?" Paid for. The work I could do, can do, or contribute towards kind of means nothing outside of a lofty dream way down the line. And circumstances that I fully appreciate are well-beyond my control could dictate whether or not I'm ever able to even get realistically started on that goal. It's almost too sobering. For all my enthusiasm, effort, budgeting, and lack of sleep, I still feel the long dick of Simon Property Management and that lying bitch Terry fucking my will to keep trying. It's not even that it's hard, it's that it's stupid, petty, and you feel like you're shitting on yourself daily by playing along.

From my profile, way back when I read The Fountainhead:

"If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted---I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting, and we're pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them---just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept."

The "adult" professional world certainly doesn't give a shit about you. Whether you learn that by trying to pay back debt with your degree in hand and minimum wage job, or in your future and health being squandered. What is the work for? What is the struggle about? You know you're not creating value. There's nothing valuable by rushing people's hot drinks to their desk. Not with the backdrop of what's going on at least. If the 1% employs us all to dust their furniture, will we be happier? Will it feel like we're existing for any sort of point or helping anything?

This is part of the reason the haunting silence is so hard to deal with. I don't want you to get unduly excited about something stupid because it's the only thing you've "really" done in months. I don't want you to have a positive outlook about something that's...even...at best. Every time it happens it just reinforces that status quo. It gives the green light for someone next to you to accept their circumstances or meekly justify their existence. Arguably, I don't want you to get as bad as me, but I digress... It's just sad that we can collectively get behind wiping out other nations, but not empowering people to be caregivers of each other.

It's just weird to think that people envy the idea of living at the beach and maybe being stoned all day. I've been on a proverbial beach for a really long time, and maybe I just fuck it up by reading all the time, but it really just leaves you with too much time to reflect. My "work" reduced to finding distractions until people get off work or the weekend hits. But who's going to blame me? I'm going to limp into getting the van going, because, even with everything paid for, nothing is ever fully paid for. (ooo cryptic) All the while dipping into money that could reliably pay my bills for the next 7 months. If you had your rent paid for the next 7 months, where are you spending that money so that's no longer true? For me, it's paying kids to advertise.

I guess I'm as decompressed as I'm going to get right now. What a shitty ending lol.

[371] We Don't Care

“We don't care” seems to cover the hundreds of different “bad things” I could point to that undermine any hope I have for the future. Professor X believes we need to believe in and ignite the hope that can forever invigorate the human spirit. Of course, when that hope leads to the end of most life on the planet, he gets to go back in time and try something else.

VICE is always a huge impact on my thoughts. It's just the worst examples we as a species set in life and how explicitly bad we are at even admitting to them, let alone pretending to fix them. “Mini” disasters all over the globe that span across every level of humanity. In some regard, to even report on these issues, and to feel an empathetic sickness in watching it, we're stuck “caring.” But, what it seems to do for me more is justify a very George Carlin-esc fuck it all it doesn't matter kind of sense.

We pretend radiation isn't a thing. We pretend we have more than one planet. We pretend that cultures are equal morally. We pretend to care about sacrifice or health. We pretend to care about war. We pretend to care about kids getting educated or honesty in reporting. We pretend to be outraged by scandals and racism.

Of course, when I say “we,” I mean progressive moral elites, and from my small window of the U.S. Bill Maher recently stated that you can't really be upset that someone didn't evolve on the same moral time line in the way you have. If they want to be racist or homophobic, that's just their opinion you have to choke down if you believe in free speech. We slut-shame people like that by every once in a while fining them or giving them a bad name in the press. We write about their toxic influence on modernity in books they'll never read. We mock them on shows they don't watch. We pretend that it's a worthwhile opinion nonetheless because we refuse the factual fuck-ups they're allowed to make in service to that opinion.

And it's because we don't care. We have our own lives. We need to take care of our kids. We need to stimulate our expansive and impressive knowledge banks. I'm not on the shores of where the next super storm hits because of course, I already knew that when you fuck with the planet it fucks back. They kind of got what they deserved. The VA can't get through records? Haven't you heard how abysmally wrong war is? What do I care if you blew your legs off and now struggle to get help for PTSD? What are you, an idiot? Shit blows up over there! Or did you hear the ocean is running out of fish? Ahh, I never liked sushi anyway and I have big plans for my porch garden.

I can't imagine what other kind of internal dialogue these people could be having. If it was “I need to learn more about this to enact change” you might see all of their hard work and reporting translating into something changing. You can literally find any kind of “just as correct” article arguing on behalf of compelling and creating leaders as you can find “everyone do something small.” No one knows. They can't know, so they can't care. And what they can know, only serves to justify how much more “reasonable” they'd be in not caring.

I was recently told to “let it go” when relating my experience with wasting time and money in school to a friend who'd asked. This came from a drunk older woman kind of under her breath as we were at a wedding table. This sentiment always seems to be the champion idea of people I find most hopeless. If I was broken down crying and pounding the table because of what transpired during school, I could see for a second what she might be speaking to. But even recalling and explaining something that happened, to someone that asked, was regarded as the opportune moment to be old-titty-slapped-with-wisdom about what I should no longer consider a problem.

But her's seems like the popular sentiment. It doesn't really matter what it is, eventually people find it “wise” to say and behave like it doesn't matter. Now, I'm all for existential crisis discussions, but I'm not for this kind of hopeless and dismissive sort of “fuck you” to a legitimate concern that, regardless of your opinion of it, had and continues to have consequences. She has a kid ushering the wedding after all, who I'm sure she wants to waste money on and hear about how his degree and time meant nothing.

Surely we learn to alleviate systemic problems and develop better ways to talk about things we choose to be collective amnesiacs about...right? What were we even talking about? Meh, it doesn't matter.

We're saved and condemned by how stupid we are. We can write off genuine potentially life-ending problems as mere accounting errors. Then, we're dumb enough to convince ourselves that things will be okay. Then, we develop entire philosophies and institutions to sometimes even physically condition us to never think differently! We'll sing and dance as we circle the drain, and no one will be the wiser, if we have anything to say about it.

You can justify putting out a shitty product because of “market forces and profit.” You can justify killing people, for any reason, because of “sand niggers,” or wait, I think we still keep it polite and roll to “Islamist extremists” and threats to “freedom.” You can justify throwing endless amounts of money at something you want to change if only to come to the lucid realization that “it's all about PR after all!” For good measure, why not justify a habit of denial and contradiction because “those beliefs bring them comfort!”

Did you know I read a book once on the difference between Sunni and Shia? Don't ask me to define it this precise moment, but dammit, I was so much smarter than the simple war mongers in the White House. At least for a day or two. Oh the attitude that the intellectuals or technology can save us anymore than the screaming lunatics. What undermines them all is a bad theory of human possibilities. Well, bad in that it probably doesn't genuinely assume most of us will have to die off before we see any “major leaps forward.”

“There are only 2 things you can do wrong on the path to truth, not starting, and not following it until the end.”

The truth, as far as it seems to me right now, is that little points of triumph and pride don't outweigh the amount of horrible things happening every second of every day. “We the people” aren't that. We're a bunch of animals running wild. Often, it seems, we have to be extremely lucky to even get people in our own goddamn families that care about us in any real, let alone constructive, way. We don't do things until we're forced. Until we feel threatened right to our faces. We talk about the brink, we calculate the destruction, we'll always plunge right over the cliff.

I need to find a way to brace for impact, or, you know, “just let it go.”

[370] Let's Shit On Me For A Minute

You'd think, for as hopelessly introspective as I'd like to be, maybe, from time to time, I'd figure something out every now and then.

I'm fucking hopeless. Let's take business. I bought my van in like, September? I got the work done. I was terribly insistent on my mechanic people to get tables installed and the generator attached. I had all the dialogue of a budding entrepreneur. I was angst ridden about not getting approved for the right permit at the right time.

And what do I have now? I have a van, paid for, permit ready, equipment checked and ready. And what have I been doing for the last week or so? Sleeping.

You see, not only do I have the motor by which I could run my little egotistical empire, I also have money in the bank. In an exceedingly loud sense, I'm accountable to no one. Sure, there are still people I want to pay back for their willingness and belief in me when it came to starting the mall kiosk. But, this is a problem I could solve in 2 weeks. Notwithstanding, they don't actually expect the money back, I'm just not that big a dick.

I'm in an increasingly confusing and fucking horrible way paralyzed. I belabor the phrase “I always get what I want.” This isn't as awesome as it may sound. What clued me into having that big of an “ego” and ability to make such a crass statement, were things that anyone would be proud to inform themselves as capable of being. I suppose, I just took them too far?

In the world I perceive, people aren't acting like me. For all my effort and understanding and intention or will-power, I'm still amongst the ranks of those I would still count as hopelessly naïve and circumstantial. That is, I don't look to entrepreneurs and and rich folk like “oh boy! You're my crowing example!” Mark Cuban has, after all, referred to “the issues Apple had in China” whilst not talking about modern slavery. Meager and empty head nod mode, engage...

I'm so jaded I want to shit on myself before I begin! What does that mean? I not only opened a coffee shop, found the money, made the calls, navigated and negotiated the terms, paid the rent, and showed up every fucking day, I did it while working other jobs and to the point where, sitting, my body was shutting down from lack of sleep. I have nothing else to prove to myself in “work” regard. Nothing you ever fucking tell me about what you do or how hard you work will match “ yeah, I spent so much time making sure the rent got paid, I sat on a chair and felt like dying/falling asleep because 'hours = money' was as far as I could conceive, for all pragmatic purposes.”

I've talked about working in spite. I don't even hold a grudge at this point. There's nothing new I feel is being taught in me succeeding. My life is succeeding. I'm living for, strong enough, but not business affirmative, ideas I hold from my dad or what I give a fuck about Kristen.

What a weird road you have to travel to think to yourself as “I have no problems.” I've never genuinely worried about my well-being. I've never thought I didn't have a plan. When I'm broke, before I'm broke, I chose to be broke. When I want to do something bigger, it was just as easy and circumstantial. Just ruminating on the idea that it's as simple as “it's up to me,” I guess I find rather terrifying.

I suppose I'm currently spiting myself. I'm spiting what I know to be true. What I've already proven. I'm “lazy” because I can, because your opinion of it means nothing, and when we die broken and alone, whether I made ten or a million dollars hocking coffee, the very idea brought me jaded laughter already. Jesus fucking Christ I think sometimes I'm a sick individual...

[369] No I Love You More

How many times have I said “I don't believe in love?” I want to explain further why, and what it would look and sound like if I did.

I like stories. It helps if the characters are compelling or there is an honesty to the infinite nuance that's spoken to. I love stories. They allow you to live as many lives as you have the time to empathize with. Maybe you can't be a superhero. Maybe we're not quite to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Maybe you'll never face the impossible circumstances of characters you hold most dear. But you get a chance to explore. You get to ask yourself questions and test your ideas. You get to reflect and grow right along with something that's sharing your head space.

I first stopped believing in love when it seemed unfairly difficult to maintain. Maybe too many relationships where one person loves, the other person likes, but dammed if they don't share the language. It becomes a balancing act. One leveraging their version of love against the other's. If you could either keep up your end of the “bargain” or keep your other in the dark long enough, you got to hold onto it until something worth the dramatic episode to follow was introduced to the situation. I would ask, why does love seem so much like a hostage crisis?

I, also first, stopped believing in love because of the infinite amount of things that were justified in its name. Do you know why you're willing to play the game depicted above? Because you love them. Maybe it's your god doing all sorts of contradictory and crazy shit because of love. Maybe insecure is simply too long of a word, so you simply love the idea that the person you hold most dear can't talk to or spend time with people under which you feel threatened. And dammit! You love them so much back that you're willing to sever ties and redefine your life indefinitely.

The further you investigate the word, the further you spiral into the abyss. For some people it means “absolute faith” in that you don't even eye fuck the girl you walk past on the street without some severe consequences. For some, it's this playful notion of togetherness. As long as they mostly inhabit your space most of the time, why, you couldn't think of a more loving gesture. It's like calling every color green. The most intense and painful experience or the lightest self-assured expression between any two things all become some expression of love.

And in its convoluted all-encompassing descriptions is where people find their deepest clarity! Of course it's all the pain you feel. Of course it's moments of doubt. Of course it's weathering the storm of two personalities trying to resolve around a common center. Of course it's the rush of emotions that keep you paralyzed yet invigorated. Of course it's the quiet contentedness and constant hug even when you're trying to feel your loneliest. Of course it's wanting more for another person than you could want for yourself. Of course it's impossible to put into mere words.

If only you could be made to realize just how Of Course! It's all of these things; the moment you allow yourself the truth of that fact, oh how your life gains a new and worthwhile purpose!

Call me autistic, but I don't get it. It's painful to think about. Not because it's some hard problem with an answer. Because it's a million roads to nowhere. It's self-congratulations. It's as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Therefore, I think it holds no dignity, and only the most insidious kind of circumstantial descriptive honesty.

I make pains to depict it like I do above and not focus on “the brain chemicals.” I don't out of hand discount feelings or rushes of endorphins or general good feelings from being around good people and influences. I think if you boil love down to the very fact that your body reacts to the outside world, you're missing all the screwy things people actively choose to do with it.

But what if I were to believe in love? Maybe I don't want to say it. Or if I say it, feel hopeless and like a liar. Am I to put “cold hard [robot]-type facts and numbers” to it? Is it love after 2 years, 55 dinners, and 3 or more talks about children? Hardly.

As with the heart of most things, to me, it's in the details. If I was going to believe in love, it would look like a promise. No, not to someone about how you're going to feel in the future you have no grasp of. It would be to yourself. It would be a standard that only you could choose and only you could hold yourself accountable to. Tell me a million times you love me, I'll never get the message. If I promise myself I'll try to recognize when I think you mean it, now we've something to work with.

To me, love would resemble “the ease by which you hold a standard.” Take Kristen. Find 1 thing horribly objectionable and “unloveable” about Kristen. If you don't know or care who she is, pick your favorite kind of anything. Now tell me why it sucks. Can't? Won't? Don't want to think about it? Well, now you're getting an idea of the kind of people I want in my circle. Now you know how I can find myself with an inflated ego. It's never been hard to consider her, talk to her, think about or care about her. She's there whether I want her to be or not. Who she is isn't what I think about her, it's just what I can recognize. What I think she tells herself, about herself, or why she likes me, I believe.

To me, love looks like recognition. You hear things like “you can't choose who you love” which just seems like you should get your eyes checked. You can only see what you allow yourself to. You can only appreciate that which you have a capacity and willingness to open yourself up for. Why do I see so many people “falling in love” or it depicted in 99% of anything media related? There's a lot of kids recognizing kids. A lot of guilt recognizing guilt. A lot of insecurity and fear and willful ignorance that feels right at home in its partners arms. You carry the characters' plight.

I feel like when you choose, no not simply “a person,” but choose to hold dear, values and ideas and hard fought conceptions of yourself, your place, and who gets to share your podium, you start flirting with the ground floor of what my idea of love would look like. Love is allowed to act in spite of your worst demons. Love gets to always stand up as something you may not be doing right, but insists on reminding you of how you could be doing it better. More true to yourself. More respectful of what you see from the people around you.

The process, the “work,” comes before you step out into the world. Before you're capable of carrying out your version of The Notebook. Time is not a test, it's a testament. You don't get to one day “shut off” and “forget” why you loved something or someone. You never really buy the story of “moving on.” You may be able to calm your body or distract your mind. You didn't change the person. What you saw or what you felt can't be undone.

Now, love looks like coping. Or if you're dedicated and not just special, accepting or learning from. It's knowing that using the ever-fleeting word to speak to what you believe is so concrete inevitably bites you. It means carrying the weight of recognition. Taking what you thought you knew and watching it move in ways you couldn't anticipate, can't deal with, don't want, won't hear of. It's a faint pulse that accompanies your heart.

Love is the idea, that were you to believe in love, you always know what you should do, what you want to say, or where you want to go. You don't use it. You live it. You prove it. You just hope someone gets what you're doing.

[368] Talk The Walk

Suppose we assume that people start out with an amoral sense. I stress not immoral. But try and conceive of people who are, absolutely ingrained and prompted to behave certain ways over others given their genes, yet still as much or more so compelled by their surroundings. Limbo bimbos.

Now, simply suppose we're all human. Before you add the layer of what you think about human, certain things reign supreme independent of your perception. Easy stuff, right? Like, if I cut you, you'll bleed. Nothing about how you think will stop the blood from flowing. Maybe you can tell, I'm trying to get really complicated.

Say we're to impose a sense of “morality” on the human creature. If you bleed too much, you die. So in a world where we want to respect the human creature, people who cut people too deep so that they die, we can safely assume we don't want part of our culture.

I say this not to pretend like it's hard to understand. I simply think that “everything” needs to be broken down into its “duh, you stupid fuck” language.

Insofar as you experience feelings, you can generally assume most other people do as well. I'm fascinated by the idea of someone “respecting feelings.” I honestly have no concept of it. First, how you tell me you feel, I generally find suspect. Second, in that you relate your feelings as “the most” or “the hardest” or “the worst” I'm immediately turned off to your plight given your selfish naivety. Third, there's this grand assumption that I've never been, nor will ever be, able to experience your feelings or something tantamount.

I think when we play this game, we act like fools. I think it's often understood that the way I engage with life or with friends is with this sweep of the hand disregard for where you're coming from. It's more accurate to say I disrespect it. It's saying, I don't respect enabling my ability to do the same as you're doing with yourself. The more you conceive of yourself as “special” or “different” or a brilliant little butterfly, the farther away we'll ever be from being “real friends.”

My conception of “problem” is broad. If I were to play the rank and file game, how you feel doesn't break the top 20. At the top, would just be the various stupid ways in which people die. 1. Dying out of sheer, but actually known, ignorance. We didn't feed the people healthy food so they died from the things we very much understand about too much sugar. We understand lead to be a poison, so we kept poisoning people because big oil paid one scientist to vehemently disagree for 20 or so years. 2. Perhaps people dying “indirectly” from ignorant “fuck you” type behaviors. We're chasing terrorists. Keep the child body count coming. Not to discount men and women, but doesn't there seem to be something particularly special about blowing up children? We can't even get that in our video games.

My “problems” have everything to do with perception. Perception amongst friends. Perception of definitions. Perception of responsibilities. Perception of the capacity and nature of humanity. Perception of the future. Perception of my self and the degree in which I'm responsible of culpable. Perception of the nature of the conversation about you, me, or “it' in general. Perception and awareness dominate the reasons I do or don't do absolutely anything. This is why I ask you to speak the fuck up. I know too many “cool enough” people. You know what I'd rather have? Friends. I'd love to stop hesitating using the word.

When you don't speak, you don't stand for anything. You're not counted. You're not starting on the road to uncovering what you and your kind may be able to do about it. When you don't bitch, you're defaulting to complicit. You're the status quo, the problem, the reason it never gets better. Crazy people have a voice. It's fucking loud. It's fucking deadly. Unwise despots of spirit are ushered into puppet pulpits of power. Ask yourself why we can't fix things today. Ask yourself why you think your voice doesn't matter. Ask yourself why you just need to “get by” while you hold as many or more thoughts than I've ever shit out onto a page.

Every day we don't talk about things that matter I feel is wasted. Every day it weighs on my mind. Every day I'm fighting back a headache. Every day I find a reason to beat myself up or find a reason to stop trying. You can't even work your fingers under an inspiring or thought provoking article? You can't call me out on something you think I got wrong? You “prefer in face” to “on facebook” digressions as if there's a real difference or that I'm supposed to “just get” the difference and respect it? The only message I'm every taking away is that you don't give a fuck. Whatever you think you're saying, I'm going to tell you what I'm hearing. You. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

And that's why I struggle with conceiving of friends. I can't keep taking for granted that we're the “smart elite” that not only see past my disposition, but “get it in all the same ways I do.” It's not that the problems of the world feel all that big or all that complicated. It's that I feel like I'm the only one who gives a fuck. I feel like I'm only one talking about them save the arbitrary number of reporters or celebrities I follow. We're a terrible example of the ground floor, the grassroots, or the “public awareness” of anything. I've hated this for as long as I've been able to talk about it, and I hate it even more in this moment.

And I know it's unfair, unwise, and ridiculous to feel this way! This is the sick sick irony that will follow me to my grave. But I don't know how else to speak to it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it until I play with coffee long enough to make money to start employing people to start behaving as I see fit. My capacity to feel lazy, jaded, disenfranchised and helpless don't mean I enjoy them or want to carry on as if I can't think of a fix. Fucking help me.

[367] Fatty Fatty Mo Matty

I keep reading about fat women.

Overwhelmingly, it seems like there is this push in the media or in the “independent blogger sphere” to start advocating for this kind of utopia. It's a magical place where people aren't made fun of. It's where you can be comfortable in your own skin. It's this loud drum beat of “respect” for people who are “different” from you. Apparently, being part of the moral aware elite is a place where we all just carry on like there isn't this giant insidious part of our natures that isn't an all-inclusive loving hippie.

I kinda hate everything. It's why I joke endlessly. If I can't laugh, I'm just going to be angry. I don't really care what the atrocity is, what the taboo's about, or how you feel about it. If I was making a joke, hopefully you got it, hopefully it won't be held over my head for as long as you're capable of holding a grudge. I think it insanely more wise to “write off” what I say as insensitive or maybe naive and go about your day, instead of trying to cut out this place for “the other” as if we don't conceive of it as the other.

Fat is easy. I have “fat” friends. Whatever it's supposed to mean. As if bodies don't have different shapes and sizes and as if I've cataloged everyone and decided upon a mean unto which I'm to judge them abnormally far away from. You know what's the least interesting thing about them? HOW FUCKING FAT THEY ARE! It means nothing to me. We're not trying to outrun a predator. If they're fat, if they feel bad about it, if they think I have something to say about it. IT MEANS DICK.

I'm semi-obsessed with the idea that I don't get “too fat.” This provokes me to play frisbee with people who will outrun me the rest of my life. This makes me spend half my food money on green leafy things that websites tell me will help me live longer. This makes me spend money on a gym membership that I fairly consistently try to go to. If and when you are doing less than those things, maybe you just don't give a fuck that you're fat. Maybe if/when someone is making a joke or “marginalizing your being,” you kind of asked for it.

Regardless of what you think about the people experiencing fatness, it's universally understood as not the ideal health wise. Whether it's the amount of stress on your body is caused, the kinds of diseases it disposes you to, or the general perception of the public being “not interested,” it's in the same vein of “stereotypes exist for a reason.” It's not out and out because you hate fat people or what they represent that provokes jokes or a “lesser” stature as far as what society is to perceive. Even fucking kid cartoons like Wall-E make an example of how “fat is bad” in the midst of a robot love story!

But I think this speaks to something bigger. The idea that we shouldn't point out or ridicule or be able to talk about what's “different.” Yes, different to you. No one is taking on the whole of humanity's perspective.

I think, if you can do it like a comedian, if you can do it like me, then you should be saying to yourself “who the fuck cares?” I don't actively discriminate or try to make people feel bad because of who they are. Do you think that's going to stop me from making the race, fat, or sexuality joke? Fuck no. I don't think it's more respectful or politically correct to pretend these differences don't exist or don't make you feel a certain way. How you come to the table relating the kind of feelings you have upon engaging with those differences makes all the difference in the world.

To me, it boils down to blaming people for how they actually feel. Instead of digging out what they think about their feelings, or what they can be made to uncover about the roots of those feelings, we take an instance and paint a picture. Like, who gives a fuck if Donald Sterling is racist? Especially if he's racist in his living room! I don't want an old guy who's easily assumed to be racist already have to kiss my ass because of how he thinks about black people. We don't get anywhere in our demonizing of him. We're, in a sense, trying to blame him for “all racism” as if it exists solely within the confines of old white men. It's disrespectful and ignorant of the real “problem.” I'd probably call it more “the nature of the human condition” before I offer it up as something that can be “fixed” or "punished."

My perspective is from the “top” of the food chain. No one is making fat jokes about me. No one is profiling me. I'm not ridiculed and kicked from my house because of who I like sexually. I'm not broke or from a group who's been historically oppressed. But you know what I did have? A bully. I had a totally fucking cunt of a mom who didn't just make fun of or give me shit because of something superficial. I got her every day carrying out her own insecurities on my childlike psyche in ways that continue today in how she influences my brother.

What's my excuse? Why can't I blame her and explain that I'm the victim and I should be able to explain how meaningful and loud I should be about my experiences growing up? I'm a fucking adult! I'm not a fucking bitch! I make decisions and have the capacity to recognize my feelings. You're picked on now? You think you have a better or worse idea of how to escape it or get over it than a child? And even if you manage to find enough gumption to figure your shit out, you think it's ever going away? Might it be wise to approach the problem from a way that respects the idea that there will always be bullies? You'll always be different. It doesn't matter whether you're a fat fuck or gay or whatever.

I hate “random” bitching and cries for help. Imagine we live in a world where most people don't give a fuck about you. And even the one's that do, can only do it to a fairly superficial extent. Stop pretending we're all going to one day hold hands and chant hymns of love. Stop thinking that someone's going to look out for you in a way that you're not capable of looking out for yourself. It wasn't so long ago that we had no objective means by which to judge anything. Do you think the evidence we have so far speaks in favor of being a sad whiny bitch about yourself or place in the world? As if we even need the numbers! Get the fuck over it.

[365] Swing Swing Swing

I suppose one way to say it is that I'm after “the drum beat” of culture. If we think of a university setting. Even with thousands of kids from all walks of life, whether you join a rally, run a naked mile, quietly do your homework, or network your way into a lucrative future, the underlying pulse, purpose, and utility of a university is to set kids up to “do better.” It's the place to learn academically and hopefully about your roles socially or in the realm of personal responsibility.

Now, arguably, what the modern university has become given the costs associated, the little reason to think you'll find work when you're done, and the corporatization of once essential public rights and goods, the needle has moved away from that underlying logic and expectation, but for the analogy, pretend we graduated before the mid/late 70s.

If you're constantly looking for culture, it feels natural to gravitate towards big institutions. “Corporate culture” is certainly a thing that ranges from open plan utopia-esc tech firms to Dilbert hellscapes. But you still manage to see hundreds or thousands of people plugged into a system where they start to act and think alike, to varying degrees, about the nature of their work and their role in it.

Religious institutions tend to have straight forward enough agendas. Those that want to quietly worship or believe in something garner their small flocks and maybe never step onto the world stage beyond a bake sale or charity event for a sick member. On the other hand, huge swaths of tea-baggers and evangelicals actively shut down women's health clinics in every spot but one city in the entire state of Texas...

But I only pick these to try an contrast the Bigger Conception of culture I'm after. I want the Human Drum Beat. I want, to as best as I can measure, the actual likelihood or possibility of getting the future I'm after. I know there are millions of people that I would describe as “bat shit.” But, I don't know for sure there aren't millions + 1 who could stand in opposition and “win.” More importantly, win in a way that sustains objectively positive and life-affirming changes beyond the whims of the bat-shitters.

Eventually, most retreat to the realm of anecdotes. I have as much a “Bloomington friend group culture” as much as I have a conception of “most people my age I've engaged with culture.” They both provoke me to say something about what I think the world would look like maybe 30 years from now if this is the level of circumstance and discourse I'm generally presented with. If my disposition is any clue, it's not simply less than reassuring, it's almost explicitly the opposite of what I think needs to happen in order for things to change for the better.

I've stated previously things to the effect of “I don't have hope” or “If I have hope, it's in the endless void of information and potential I have no real way to quantify yet.” What's notable about these statements is that they aren't deliberately trying to avoid snippets of positivity and potential I see every day. They come from staring into the void. They come from the struggle of trying to rip out of people something more resembling what I want.

Immediately I want to say, “It's not about what you want.” But if it's not about what I want, then who's it up to? I can draw a pretty clear line from many things I didn't want that I nonetheless have to live out the consequences of. I think my reflexive response is a symptom of the sickness of our current invisible culture. So then, it seems more appropriate, if not obvious once it's pointed out, of course it's about what I want. Perhaps, in a very important sense, that's all it's about.

So then I become intrigued by what other people want. Surely, I can't hope to achieve what I want without assessing their variables and seeing if there is a mutually beneficial plan or path of least resistance to getting there.

And here is where I run into the difficult music of the current drum beat. All I think I'm hearing is “main-tain, main-tain, main-tain.” You need to keep doing what you're doing to keep the bills paid. You need to buckle down and power through school. You need to keep certain discussions off the table because the sliver of happiness or expectation you've cut out of life is paramount. On the surface, this seems so taken-for-granted as not a problem, it's almost flatly ridiculous to even point out. So why do I think it's exactly the reason we're going to lose the game?

People want to “be happy,” no? I'm to call their happiness wrong? It's my place to pretend I know what's best for someone else? My advice, my perch, my street cred in the realm of thinking and bitching truly accounts of the nuance of all human behavior?

I'm going to skip over unpacking all that. It's simply the typical gut-reaction or classic kinds of responses when you talk of overhauling a system. For those who can't see through the superficiality in asking such questions, run along and play.

While I don't try to go out of my way to be an emotional bitch, when I do feel things they tend to swing rather dramatically. I'm still really confused about nights where I'm having an amazing time only to, in the last ten minutes, feel like I need to hit things and write something angry. My initial speculation is about how I tend to think of “the game.” Part of the reason I tend/ed to run so selfishly is that things become extremely simple. But what happens when you invite complications?

Say I wanted kids. What planet am I leaving them? What lesson about “politics” do I hope they get to fall asleep with at night? How soon do I want them to learn that “things just are this way” as if they would “just be” had I not made a decision to bring them into the world? The advice can't be, “hunker down and ride it out. I brought you here so you could feel desperate and cut off from your fellow man. I thought, when the world starts to burn, you'd get a kick out of how high the flames really got.”

Look at “climate skeptics” aka ignorant deadly cancers to society, if you want to see what happens when you Maintain at the expense of everything else. These are people that can't be persuaded to read a thermometer, or that ice melts. As you'll learn over and over again, they're “happy” to believe in their god, their “facts,” and carry on promoting their ideas because, after all, in their not-so-humble opinion, “it just doesn't seem right to them.”

Less dramatically, I think about the level and nature of conversation or discourse. When you maintain what you like to talk about, and nothing else. There are as many consequences of that waiting for you psychologically, financially, or otherwise as well. It's not the planet running out of oxygen, but I always, somehow, can find people who eventually notice it's getting harder and harder to breath about something.

I think it's increasingly unreasonable to assume, unsustainable, unacceptable to pursue, and unlikely to be achieved “what it is you want to do” at the expense of something larger. I recently heard something to the effect of, “show a man that he's part of something more, and he'll realize he's capable of anything.” I don't get the sense that people do things in service to the larger picture. Or if they're trying, it's not sufficient. I think there's great utility in even burdening yourself with things you don't yet know how to fix as opposed to “not caring” or “moving on.” It's like stepping in shit and then leisurely strolling through your house pretending not to notice the smell.

And here's the next point of “hope from ignorance.” In one on one conversations, sure, you get people who have read a lot. You get people with a cause. They use their anecdotes or their classes and have this motivation to step out there and change something for the better. It's where the most insidious facts about their effort lie. A burning building isn't quelled one bucket of water at a time. You need a fire hose, or ten. Sometimes, you have to let it burn out and build a new structure. The fire cares not about your good intentions, your personal resolve, moral certitude, or stress-reducing novel philosophical take on fires. It's just going to burn.

[366] Trying Too Hard

If there was a symbol for irony, I'd probably get it tattooed. (I googled it, there is...)

I'm lucky to have a personality and thought pattern that is bred from trying. Because not only are habits learned, but you can learn from your habits. Writing is a fairly significant pattern I adopted when I realized “sitting and thinking” alone wasn't doing me any good. What's interesting, even when it's in small doses, is the range of responses to it.

It's important, for this blog anyway, to lead with “I first write to help me think.” This means sometimes I say things in ridiculously abstract ways. Sometimes I have some theme on my mind that closely resembles a talk I just had or after I've contemplated some friends' life. It's generally not appropriate to air everyone's dirty laundry or to arrest my focus with arbitrary judgments I may have about the situation at hand. Even and especially if it would “help” me sound clearer.

Understandably, the facebook crowd has had more occasions to hear me write, bitch, explore, and ramble more than most. You already have something of a context for maybe a religion blog or thoughts on how friend groups and dynamics change. I'm not sure what to conceive of the weight that may play into how “understood” any one piece is.

I've lately been posting to reddit as well. Here, you get to be “scrutinized” by every teenager, internet troll, and wise old janitor...if you submitted your post at the right time and don't get down-voted to oblivion immediately. Of the different responses I've gotten, the one that confuses me the most is “you sure seem to use a lot of words to say an awful lot of nothing...what is your point?”

I hesitate to immediately believe I was writing for “no point” if only to qualify what I said above. I also think it fairly impossible to not take even a single sentence and maybe put it in quotes and say something like “what does this mean, or why did you phrase something this way” before you present the idea that I basically had nothing to say. I suppose I'm sensitive to this kind of criticism because it's not really criticism. It's simply how we out of hand throw away what someone else has said.

I choke on irony not only because I say things like “I'm looking for feedback” and get the oddest, dullest, least helpful kind you can imagine. I also say things like “I'm looking for a conversation” and get the oddest, dullest, and least helpful people as the most eager to come to the table. Now, I'd be easily convinced that maybe I just speak in arbitrary and unhelpful ways were in not for, essentially my small facebook friend crowd. Not in how you respond to blogs, because that's not so much people's style, but when we manage that in person digression thing.

The problem is in knowing how to fix some of the problems. I talk context. I can't get the old vibe I had at parties without the kinds of things I could only fit into a house. Also, I need a house. I talk about changing the nature and purpose of conversation. I don't yet have the data to make it look and sound like what I want it to. I understand there's a marketing problem in how I relate my “relative solutions” to things. So I explore how I would potentially talk about those things to the average Joe who literally doesn't give a fuck about me or care to understand where I'm coming from.

It's not always an argument. It's not like writing chapters in a book. And it's definitely not for people who aren't adept at sussing things out or willing to pursue clarification. I understand what I'm asking for and how I've chosen potentially less than wise avenues to get there, but if it weren't for the array of feedback I've gotten over the years, I wouldn't know that there's room to get meaningful reactions and conversations regardless. Or in keeping with another theme, in spite of the ignorant assholes.

[364] Crusading For Crust

This may go a little bit of everywhere, but there's a lot on my mind.

Working backwards. Kristen and I were reflecting on the last episode of Vice. It makes me think a lot about the conversations I don't have but with a few specific people, at least semi-consistently. What bugs me about this is that I know other people are thinking, or trying to think, about the massive world of issues, but they don't speak up. I know that even if I have some voice or corner of media I basically respect, they're not saying things like I think they need to be said. Not completely. They're not having the conversations I feel are needed within my crowd.

Things that wish to be taken seriously are often presented “flatly.” It's a line, and the author or reporter, I suppose, crosses their fingers that what was just depicted speaks for itself. It's a general habit of good reporting to try and not be biased. You want to reflect what it is that's actually happening, not necessarily the sheer amount of emotion you feel towards the subject matter. I think by and large this is helpful when you have an underlying presumption of credibility and truth in reporting. I think the world is currently polluted the idea of how and when to rely on something as credible. Moreover, I'm not really hearing how they reflect on the information presented.

It then becomes really hard to digest the fuck ton of information. What if I told you I cared about failing schools, gun violence, a fundamental right towards health care, financial regulation, space exploration, healthy and accessible food, addressing an outdated prejudicial justice system, corruption and oversight, and most importantly environmental degradation? You'd probably simply say, “okay.”

Where would we start? What impact could I really have on any one of those things? To me, this is why I want to be in the data business. There's a million things to be said about all of these issues. The picture I want to paint first is the one that ties them all together. The one that defines and promotes the language underpinning when they go right, but understands the amount of hands involved in how they go wrong. There's a psychology, a humanity, the underwrites them all. It's why I say I'm after culture. My “worldly” culture is failing me. It's failing you.

The things I feel myself thinking time and again are how astonishingly simple problems are. It often becomes hard for me to respect or label them problems. Once you identify what's wrong, and the causes and effects that perpetuate the wrong, you address them in a line. You make a list and check off the things that need to happen for it to look differently. The thing is, you have to make people feel like they have a place at the table. I think if you are really concerned about reforming the financial sector, and you've read a million books and joined every local facebook page, you're doing just as little to actually do something about the problem with a megaphone outside of a building as the “angry hippie” who's standing next to you out of solidarity. After all, where did Occupy go?

But why does that happen? The dialogue for how to fix these things puts the idea that civil protest like that works. The dialogue is about how personally pissed off you are or how self-aggrandizing you can look in all the information you've become a basement expert on. The people in power have cultivated an environment that made sure when you got pissed off, you'd do it with a megaphone and not from the board room or shop floor. Not in your understanding or arguing of law, but with your shaking fist. And it's not like you had much of an opportunity to reflect on just how much you were or weren't doing. School certainly didn't teach you any differently. Ever wonder why?

I'm frequently astounded by testaments from service members. Ones who did exceedingly well or were promoted to some level of “we kill things” standard. In my mind, I wonder why it took personally killing whatever number of people before it “clicked” that if it were your family, or you were written off as collateral damage, you'd probably want revenge too. I wonder how many people had friends or heard reports of PTSD or losing more soldiers to suicide than war engagements before they thought “maybe I don't want that for myself.”

But this frames the issue wrong. Why do people join the military in general? As far as I can tell, they tend to have nothing else. It's a cost-benefit analysis. The psychological toll not yet realized is not the benefits of having school paid for, a reason to get up in the morning, or a structure in which to feel like you're accomplishing something. People who claim they're "defending freedom" or some offshoot, I'd ask to reflect a little deeper on what that really means. The military is a compelling culture, and that's what people are arguing on behalf when they advocate for it. It's not a bunch of roided up blood-lust killers who believe in wanton destruction of different nations. This isn't to absolve the military of indoctrination or lying about what they do or what real damage they cause. It's to distinguish the individual head space from the fall out of joining a specific kind of culture.

And that isn't a conversation we have. We don't talk about what's happening in our minds. We complain. We sensationalize. We add drama and make a scene. This to only speak to the dramatic underlying irony of what damage is caused. Damage from juggling the various problems in life, and the consequences of discussing them poorly or never becoming aware of them altogether. We also double down into one of our “passions” or interests. The deeper we can steep ourselves in a microcosm of our choosing, the less we need to concern ourselves with the big bad world out there, right? So damned if this isn't the coolest video game I've ever played or you wouldn't believe how much I love my "whatever" more than anyone else.

There is a problem that comes with knowing how simple things can be. It's simple to understand why someone would train to blow themselves up and think “death to America.” I get revenge. I get indoctrination. Think about growing up poor. If you don't know, poor people can be persuaded to think they're only as good as what's available. To me, our culture indoctrinates us with this idea. They didn't work enough, they're not smart enough, they don't deserve what the rich folk have. If every day your environment reinforces specific ideas about yourself or place in the world, it's unbearably obvious that you're going to hear the same things from people in the same kinds of situations. How they attribute their losses or gains. How they do or don't fit.

We're “lucky” we get to demonize the culture we cultivate around the world because of how “different” it is. We get to umbrella all kinds of people under a nice target for a drone. We get to obscure a real conversation about religious ideas and principals by demonizing a monolithic idea of Islam. It makes it really easy to buy a lot of bullshit. It's like riders to a bill. You have to take all the small points of corruption to make sure the overall bigger issue gets handled. Instead of asking why or micromanaging the details, we're complacent about "how things work." We don't insist on a culture that doesn't employ back doors infinitely accessible to corruption.

I see perhaps the biggest problem in the selling of this complicated message. To some degree, I'm not humble in my capacity to read and reflect on information. It's partly how I conceive of my identity. I like to be good at it. I want to know that if and when I'm saying something, people feel obligated to listen. So what and how am I selling? What does it look like when I try?

I'm selling a conversation. I'm selling a new, but really old, oral tradition. Before you get bogged down in insisting on labels to make sweeping generalizations and monsters out of some opposing force, bother with the details. Take as much time as it takes. Go to bed worried about the things you haven't fixed and role you might play in helping yourself sleep. I'm selling this by talking. I'm selling this by trying to set an example of what I want talked about by, no way, talking about it. It's not about looking dumb or waiting to find the right words. It's, at this point, just opening your damn mouth.

But the feedback is less than reassuring. I don't want to see a spark of a conversation. I want the conversation. I'm glad you know about the topic or read something on it too. Now follow that up with how or why it hit you. I understand that trying to talk about “everything” seems like a great way to be actually talking about “nothing” so start with just what's on your mind right now. Because that's all I'm doing, and it inevitably puts me in a place where I think I know how to better manage how and why I do and think about things. Things get simple when you recognize the degree of cause and effect upon doing them.

I suppose the worst thought I have is thinking that even with my best effort, it could still all be for nothing. The best and brightest are where I think I get my information from. When they say the planet is fucked in x,y, and z ways, for the next 500-1000 years no less, how do I translate the idea that “I heard you, now what can we do about it.” People reeeeallllly seem to not give a fuck at that point. And this is assuming that they're willing to take on “whatever cause you're into” (their perception) on top of what feels like is their dramatic life. How could I want you to reevaluate or engage with your ideas regarding the military industrial complex and what it does to fuel religious zealotry when you've got depression, are finishing school, have an alcoholic parent, and can barely pay for food and rent each month?

It's more than a tall order. Add the idea that people already feel like they're contributing from their corner of the world. If you join the Peace Corps, surely it means you give a damn, right!? Right?! I mean that's a name and cause with a positive connotation and I read the hell out of their Wikipedia page. What else would you have me do, Nick? And then I see the dialogue confused. The message encumbered by what I never intended. You now have to walk the sensitive line regarding peoples' feelings in relation to their perceptions of their contributions. How many people privately donate to charity with zero idea how the money gets used, not how it's advertised to be used, actually used, and how many don't even need to know to still feel good about it?

We promote ourselves as personally satisfied or living this kind of idealized self that can be framed in every Instagram picture or witty facebook comment or tweet. What we cultivate is a mirage. We promote our insecurities and uncertainty right along with our dinner, we just do it to the full extent you could possibly appreciate the word “indirectly.” And because there are so many of us saying so many things we think we're saying, we'd like to be saying, and we hope others are understanding, as one really pissed off German eventually responded to a joke I made he considered in poor taste, “sometimes it can be hard to tell the bad guys.” The back and forth, unkind, messy, frustrating, “pointless,” disjointed pissing match that took thousands of words and a few days, that ultimately resulted in his apology and some common ground, is the kind of example I want people to set. I don't want another metaphor for 20-something cultural malaise.

Talk about what's helping or hurting. Talk about your role in it. Identify when you're complicit to every degree. I've said plenty of times. At least I'm talking. At least I'm reading. At least I'm recognizing when I get it wrong or when there is more work to be done. At least I know why I can persuade myself to keep up the fight even if it certainly feels like I just jump from one losing battle to the next. There's still an endless amount of opportunities to fill the uncertainty. There will always be time to exploit the lengths of your potential; it's in every idea and every step into the unknown. But are you exploiting it, or being exploited? Are you standing up, or quietly consoling yourself? How well do you own that the problems exist just as much “out there” as they do with you, with us. Take the reigns of your culture.

[363] The Hardest Part

They say patience is a virtue, but I'm very tired of waiting. It's occurring to me that as I sit and wait, the list of things I'm conceivably waiting for seems to be growing. Some of those things are as concrete as getting an email from one side of town to another. Some are simply semi-abstract opportunities that spring up as dividends from leading my envisioned life. So I'm asking you, what are you waiting for?

It's a common theme when you read about business. Entrepreneurs in particular. Inevitably, some 30 or 40 something decided that feeling terrible every day at their job and having no time for their family wasn't what they wanted anymore. They think, what an epiphany! What have I been waiting for!? Then long digressions of the many fears they had to overcome or times that they failed follows.

I kind of habitually don't wait. I'm the one driving through parking lots to get where I need to be 5 minutes faster. I'm quick to unload whatever is on my mind in a moment. I started the coffee stuff kinda while I was still in, but immediately after I got out of school. I'll marathon several tv shows. I'll read all the books available on the topic.

Waiting seems unnecessary and a waste of time. It's not the same thing as delaying gratification. I can plan for the future and not blow every penny on indulgences. But it's still really hard to be stuck by things I can't control. It's immensely frustrating to even try and account for little things I could control and then get no cooperation from the other party. I want the idea of buying an “I called it” button to keep feeling unnecessary, but damned if people don't keep letting me down in reliable and predictable ways.

Don't get me wrong, I'm mainly speaking to the utterly rude and dismissive and unappreciative of my time attitude from the paper-shuffling types. This isn't a blog about “you're making your parents' mistakes!” Even though you probably are.

I've had a van ready to go since about October and a combination of things that have nothing to do with my ability to start a truck and advertise has had me on my ass waiting out the processes of offices downtown. On top of this, I get, I'll call it lied to, about how much and when my funds are supposed to come in from the drug study. This makes it hard to budget and insure myself with a rainy-day fund, and potentially sets me back even longer.

Albeit via my grandma dying, combined with learning about studies, I got this opportunity to do more of the groundwork required to start accomplishing things. And it's sitting right there, neatly on the windowsill so I can keep admiring it's potential. No one in the Public Works office cares what I'm really trying to achieve, so ten minutes of paperwork taking 3 weeks can become business as usual. They're still getting paid.

I'm waiting to be able to do even the simple things like visit friends. I can afford plane tickets, but I need to see if this truck can get started. Most things I could do that aren't in service to that are kind of a waste of time at the moment. And it's not like I'm just trying to avert boredom. There's plenty of non-spending-money activities I can engage in. I'm just stuck. How bout you?

[362] Off World

Star Date: 2.343.2126

My journey hasn't been easy. Upon landing, not only did I have to become a quick study of the customs and language, my skin is not used to a planet with a sun so close. My on-stem chip worked fine and I managed “English” which is how I will proceed in my reporting and translating back upon return. I did not anticipate the strange times ahead.

They're everywhere. No one tells you in the academy the lengths they will go to inhabit the land. The ingenious methods devised to either pack as many into a small place as possible, or combat the elements that would surely kill them quickly. Why? One of thousands of times I'll ask the question.

It's not just their presence, it's their likeness. If it doesn't have a face they insist that it needs one. Their talking television device is an endless loop depicting conversations, I've quite honestly, still not been able to discern the purpose of. It's almost as if they're all in on some kind of secret. I think it may be beyond the scope of my task to figure out what it is.

My first month was the hardest. As you well know, back home, you plug into A-HEAD and you join in the oneness of our shared identity. Here, it's a higher stakes game. They're personalities reach to shape everything they touch. It was quite the task to gather enough data on a few of them to begin long term engagement. I felt, lonely? I think is their word. It didn't make sense, you can't escape them if you try.

I set to task crafting my personality. I didn't have to understand their television box to gather that it may be imparting clues. If they were all watching, so should I. The various ways in which these groups engaged is a subject onto itself, but I think I managed to obtain a handful of optimal metrics to move things forward.

Smile. Gesture your face in a way that makes them do it back. It mostly always works. I learned how to structure their jokes and tried to match the styles of clothes I saw. I attended their sporting events and joined in their pageantry.

It was a process to get started, but I had a moment where I thought this was going to be easier than I previously feared.

I did feel wise in my choice of location to land. Some of the images I saw depicted sprawling cities with a million noises and distractions. I feel I wouldn't find the time nor patience to try and recount even the, meager by that standard, amount I've endured.

As an explorer to a foreign land, I'm used to be an actor. But now I almost feel like a double agent by distrusting myself. There's been something changing in me, and I don't feel it's all good. I wish to submit this report in good faith that the directors will pull me out if it sounds too disconcerting.

Over time I developed an attachment to some of my subjects. For as utterly baffling as they can be, they still seemed capable of perceiving that I was “from somewhere different” and sought to make my time easier. It's an emotional intelligence of sorts, but very situationally specific. Given that we've perfected GLOVE, because it fits! Their version, love is both ironic and reminiscent of a weaker form. In practice, it seems to defy the idea that I would refer to them as emotionally intelligent.

I must confess, it was around this time I felt myself getting lazy. I had a mission, but the overwhelming sense about this planet is to, as one drug induced acquaintance said to, let it ride. Upon first hearing it I was shocked. It felt like anathema to everything I've ever know. For Christ's sake (I'm told he was important to their history and needs to be invoked in times of turmoil) I'm here simply to learn!

I was in crisis. Was this person telling me that things were simply pointless on their planet? Could I have spent years at this point watching and recording, only to have missed this important nugget of the underlying truth of my effort?

I took solace in a pack of humans that had taken up shelter near me and we migrated together over time. Surely it is the true brilliance of our technology that allows for such a direct mock up body to fit in without detection. The only drawback is that I appear to be subjected to a degree of emotion much higher than was first anticipated Even the idea that I would be here long after they had grown and died left me feeling hollow. These, for lack of a better word, perhaps interesting pets, if we were to ever bring a few back.

I feel the reporting in my 8^th year began to become compromised. Every new bit of information I took in pulled me into vastly interesting, but ultimately defunct worlds. The humans had this drive it seemed to corrupt or destroy information. Every time I thought I was learning, it turned out to be the same terrifying message. Of course we've known strife. I've no recollection of ever wanting to seek it out, until now.

I invited it in. It became impossible to sit and watch and report. One of their females took to liking me. I engaged. I let wave after wave rush over me and I thought little to nothing about what my small act of defiance would breed.

I provoked. I knew that the humans baseline seemed banal if not oblivious, but I quickly learned their preference for violence. While it was generally talked about in terms of strategy, I can't help but think they didn't know what they were playing for. I sought out fire with a few shots of my own.

Here, the social bonding became ever-more nebulous. My cohort maintained contact for significantly longer than I had anticipated. Most eventually fell out of contact. My human partner, I, regrettably, probably pushed too far, and will likely take solace in my departure.

In a sense, things did become clearer in the ashes of my wake. There was something intoxicating in giving up my control. I became part of their story without having to account for a word.

I hope this brief introduction goes far enough to endear you to the impossible situation I found myself in. As I scour the memory banks I will try to elaborate on the various Incidences I refer to throughout the report. If my language feels encumbered, it's because that's what it's become. I look forwarding to plugging back in after the debriefing.