[502] Hate By Any Other Name

Is there a single, more motivating, more prevalent, and more accurate assessment of why humans do anything than out of hatred? Know that I ask this sincerely, and am not just trying to stick with some theme for the sake of it. When the tides feel like they're turning and the world you knew starts to become unrecognizable, I feel I must argue that it started with hate. While the only truth may be change, the more significant facts seem related to what accelerated or provoked that change. I'll argue two-fold; I'll describe why I think it's hatred, and I'll speak against those who would claim it's about love.

I want to add an initial caveat. For the sake of this argument, I'm forgoing any presumptions about “balance.” I think it's an artful word often employed to swallow bullshit. Anyone who wants to point to the grayness of life and decision making, needlessly leaning on “how complicated it all is” or the amount of give and take involved I'm not going to find persuasive if merely asserting that is the extent of your argument.

So, as I often do, I want to give examples big and small and hopefully throughout history. For a small example, consider weight, both loss and gain. For me, when it comes to loss, I'm never more motivated than when I think about how much I hate and constantly make fun of ridiculously out of shape or gargantuan people. Claims about my immaturity or civility aside, all I have to do is think of each successive pound gained and the amount of things I'm ignoring, forgoing, or hating about myself to get that large in order to zap away my sympathies. I don't mean to unfairly clump moms, people with conditions, or the otherwise basically healthy person who finds themselves gaining as they get old.

For the above, I consider culture. Why is it when an area adopts a “western diet” do they start to die earlier, find all forms of disease they never had, and help contribute to the destruction of the environment? Is it because “they absolutely love shitty food?” It's an easy way to state the problem, absolutely. It's a way to overburden our sensory reward systems and make it sound like a good thing. But what's really happened? I would argue, some executive and dialogue concerning profits and the free market are held in greater esteem than a concern for humanity or the planet. Someone hates you. Someone with significantly more power and influence than you can appreciate has shaped us into translating their hatred into lovable language regarding your preferences and presumed decision making.

Now, you get to love being fat while pretending and ignoring just how much you probably really hate it. You hate knowing that people like me can tell non-stop fat jokes for hours. You hate breathing hard. You hate worrying about your health or taking it for granted that you'll be dead a little sooner anyway and won't have to worry for as long. You rely on the language concerning sabotaged “choices” to both reinforce your sense of ownership of your circumstances and distancing yourself from notions of anyone behind the curtain.

This bridges neatly into a discussion about capitalism and the free-market. It's a religion by any other name. Companies hate losing money more than they like to put on some shiny veneer about some “revolutionary” and “necessary” new gadget or food. They hate competition. They hate notions of equality and sharing. They'll, to their dying breath, espouse the “morals” and “freedoms” that you lose by not having big corporate brother to dictate what belongs in your home or body. The Hayek or Friedman ideologues who, even when given the chance to run their neoliberal experiments, ignore the human suffering caused because they can't own and be honest about the amount of hatred they have about losing their station.

“Nation building” is all about subverting wills and keeping people dead or ignorant. “Energy independence” couldn't take foot until the profit margin could be realized. The New Deal was people reacting to the hatred they felt towards starving and a predictable, arguably planned, market crash. When new presidents are ushered in, it's because the population is often too stupid and forgetful to understand that what they hate started 30, 100, or 1000 years ago, and the president isn't outside of gas stations manipulating the price. It's an elite hatred that condenses and protects power with psychopathic efficiency.

Why do we genuinely have to fear a Trump presidency? It's not because people tap into the energy of love or the stream of youth consciousness fighting to keep his name relevant. It's because hatred, blind ignorant hatred for you, for themselves, for the history and facts they'll never understand, is the most powerful force. I've asked how so many Tea-baggers got into congress. Racism is more powerful than any liberal idealism. Bernie or bust? They hate Hilary, not love Teddy and FDR. Let it all burn if you can't get your way. Because it's easy. Because it's normal. Because until we started inventing notions of high-society and worldly-inclusive mindsets, it's been a couple hundred thousand years of instilled habitual hatred towards the other. It's been ignorant fearful animals lashing out in order to stay alive or revel in the glory of conquest.

You will never and not fix anything until you appreciate the depth of our cultural hatred. You will never escape the negative feedback wheel of adopting that hatred, protecting that hatred, and spreading that hatred. You “choose” between Target and Wal-mart, with an ignorant smug smile while you say “Tar-gjaaay,” you know, because you're fancy, with the thought that every indebted food-stamp using worker doesn't deserve to be freely educated or have access to healthcare because they're not you who's really had it rough and deserves a lifestyle and attitude befitting.

One of the best tricks that's ever been played is getting you to adopt the attitude and hateful extravagance of the rich without getting any of the benefits. You think being able to afford a gym membership or to be able to vacation once in a while is something to be proud of. Spending and acquiring to put distance between you and your hard-fought modern sensibilities and “the rest” who don't or can't access your resources. It's not your love of poor people that provokes the charitable donation. It's the hate and resentment you hold for what you have, that you know, in some important way, you don't really deserve.

Ask yourself what happens to people that do love. Where do the advocates end up if it's not in jail or to obscurity? Dead? Often enough. Immortalized in a facebook quote, statue, or documentary? Whoo-hoo. Manipulated and re-interpreted or reimangined to promote the exact opposite of what they intended? If a slurry of religious myths doesn't come to mind, take away how easy it is to ignore how much God hated what he had done and the award-winning re-branding there. The language of love used to ignore the sheer depravity and depth of the hatred. You love your country that would rather pay middle men than keep you alive? That sends your poor to unnecessary war? That bilks you for tax dollars while daily reports show the rich stocking and hoarding? That literally has a paper trail describing how they plan to keep you down? (I encourage you to read as much as you can about the Powell memo.)

It's the anecdote of immigrant parents who, escaping more visible and dramatic hatred, sought a place where they could comfortably instill the mythological powers of achievement born out of a specific time and place. That part itself wasn't done maliciously, but when given the opportunity to expand and become aware of larger forces that helped shape their “self-made” image, they recoiled like the rich and said, “No! Fuck you, fuck them, it was all about me!”

[501] Tales To Astonish

I’m struck by my lack of identity.

As I study more history or learn about the traits and ideas different countries hold, it becomes ever-apparent how much of “you” has been shaped in the motions of our histories. The rarely forgotten war or trade dynamics are often cited in joking or criticizing one another. The taglines in tourism brochures hope to intrigue you about a point of pride regarding a nation’s identity or self-determination. It just leaves me feeling like, with so much at play, how does one ever really define and come to accept things about their personality?

This feels like it wants to start-off sounding very high school. This is also something I often brush against in hoping to get people to unpack their language and look harder at the source of their feelings. But I want it pressed on harder and to explore the source of my own frustrations when it feels like “my identity” is being ignored or disrespected.

I sit here writing. Pull back and I’m 1 of 3 roommates, in 1 of 4 townhouses, in 1 of dozens of townhouse clusters, in 1 of hundreds of apartment complexes. Perhaps in a Nordic country this gives a sense of calm as I likely know or am related to nearly everyone in every one of those complexes. Here, I don’t know my neighbor’s names. Immediately there’s going to be a huge cultural influence regarding trust and how it can or can’t be employed.

To trust is to be able to look forward to something. It’s rarely framed in a way like you trusting your car to start. You trust your kids are going to grow up. These are things, provided there’s not some extenuating circumstance, we sort of take for granted. If we break them down in the language of trust though, it seems to provoke, quicker than anything, the question of “why?” The most straightforward answer I can think of is “because it’s generally done so.” 

If you take that answer far enough back, it tends to betray everything. Surely, you can always invent a layer of bullshit justification for the things you do, but if you’re working with an incomplete puzzle, fundamentally, you have little reason to trust anything, let alone your capacity to assess and evaluate an ingrained yet fluid personality. Ingrained in that you didn’t have to teach your eyes to see or brain to fire upon doing so. Fluid in that your tastes change, your attitude wanes, and if you’re lucky there’s always room to surprise yourself.

It’s extremely disorienting, and I’d argue probably unhealthy, to carry on like you can’t trust anything. Pragmatically, you’re not going to have a panic attack questioning the probability each time you start your car, but what if, as I fear has happened to me, a fundamental shift happens and arrests your perspective? What if you become stuck, unable to see yourself as freely obligating yourself to anything, now merely at the whims of change? It’s almost something of an argument against free will, but that’s not the direction I’m going.

I feel myself compelled. Whether it’s to write, or read, or watch, or just generally try to be learning at all times. I can speculate it came from being incentivized as a child. I can grasp at the strings of random potential conversational connections. (As it turns out, I hardly ever haven’t read at least something about what you’re into.) I can get all hippie-speak and claim some internal philosophical wisdom I’m drawing from my connection to the hive-mind. I can play faux-physicist and borrow explanations that describe me as a single neuron or experimental synapse of a higher intelligence’s simulation. But do you call your compulsions “you?”

You could as easily describe my examples in cold bio-socio-political terms. There will be a map one day of every synapse in my brain and when it fired depending on what I engaged with. Rarely do people let it sink in just how much of their approach to the world has been shaped by pop culture. I encourage you to read as much as you can about the little engine that could churning in your subconscious the next time you think you’re really making the decision. What does learning about these things really afford me? Why do “I” invite the stress of knowledge when I even know the science that says homogeneous and stupid breeds the most contentment?

The idea that I have ever arrived at a goal, for any reason beyond survival, becomes an endless speculative road. It harks, in my mind, to fundamental questions regarding existence in and of itself. Why not be some simulation meant to live out my selfish conception of the world? I’m perhaps just the latest in things the universe doesn’t know yet. Simple enough.

Why should I be frustrated that my time is being wasted when I know time isn’t really a thing? Why am I concerned about achieving some grand level of wealth or intellectual accomplishment when, the farther we pull back, the universe, let alone the world, let alone my country, let alone my town or even apartment complex is really going to blink once I’m gone? And then once all your friends die, you’ll be lucky to be properly quoted as anything that ever accurately described you or what you contributed. And you won’t care.

I don’t know that there’s some fundamental truth about the value of American elitism verses Nordic conformity that unites us all besides ignorance. It’s the ego-ridden who feel suffocated when transplanted north, and the reserved who feel embarrassed for you for sticking your neck out. People concerned with the long-term feasibility of humanity lament that content people aren’t terribly innovative or motivated. The content watch the mania of being the smartest and richest tear people apart, and often the world along with them. There’s always some opposite, diminishing, word to describe what doesn’t feel embedded in your genes or heritage.

It’s like I’m always looking for permission. I don’t know what to be really upset about. Unless I’m fabulously drunk I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do things like cry. Without a semi-constant reciprocity I have no way to describe how I value friendships. I can’t point to the precise moment I found myself capable of saying yes to initially fear and panic inducing things. Like I’m waiting for my programmer to input the coordinates of where I’m to end up next. I can claim I’m the one typing, feel each key, sound out each word, but there was no plan for this. Nor do I have a goal but to feel comfortable stopping. I could even invent a goal, like persuading you of adopting socially responsible pride. But it’d be a lie. I don’t give a shit.

I latch onto an idea of a kind of tornado. Billions of potentials swirling in the back of my head, condensed to a joke, blog, or decision to approach some topic. That “I” am the swirling, and everything I kick up and spit out the experimental results. Perhaps often if not fundamentally results I can’t read correctly or even access. I’m necessarily evolutionarily programmed to seek out cause and effect, and I operate under a grand illusion those effects are much to do with my perception or will. No matter the degree of scrutiny and doubt I interject, no matter the scientific insights I use to infer, and well independent of mystical hippie language, I’m no less compelled, and feel I have no control. I find it equally liberating and absolutely terrifying.

[500] Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself

This is my 500^th blog over 12 years. I'll wait here while you sound the trumpets. If I'm evidence of even one thing before I die, it's that a lot can go through your mind, and probably most of it you shouldn't put online.

I wanted to write this because, in this moment, I'm not particularly moved by anything. I've also tied my blogger account to a ton of other social media outlets and want to come across even fleetingly normal, if you're a new reader, before you catch something that makes me look like a raving lunatic. I was building the idea of this blog up in my head, and decided to remove the stress by just writing so as to put it behind me. I wanted to provide something of a course overview of what you'd be studying in sifting through my blogs. I also wanted to talk about hate.

I wonder why we create. Lately, I've been thinking it comes from hatred. I think the harder you hate yourself, the more creative you can be. I phrase it as “hating yourself” because of a line I caught on a random blog that said “All hate is self-hate.” This, incidentally, is an idea I can agree with, and have written about in the past. Undoubtedly, the things I hate about life or other people are things I'm guilty of as well.

I find hate inspiring. In fact, most of what I write is a reflection on something I hate. “I” as a collection of hateful thoughts projected about the world, presumably because I think I would do it better or have some evidence in my own life as to the value of progressively differing. Once we move past the word itself you start to unpack the dozen tiny things about a conversation or excuse that bolsters the feeling. You dig up the history and cultural tide that has framed your discussion. With any luck, you start to engage with people who aren't going to blame you for the hatred you're feeling, and then will try to understand where you're coming from.

I started writing because I hated how a boy was treating a girl I liked. I continued writing because I hated what I was learning about religion and how people spoke to each other. I found mountains of hatred exploring how “loving” family and friends treated the offerings and people in their lives. As I get older I get to hate what I used to have and changes I can swear are making us worse off. I don't know if I'll ever stop hating silence and excuses, be it for hangouts and texts or how you treat something of greater consequence. I once described myself as always feeling “on.” It may be stated another way, that I'm always aware of what I hate.

That awareness begets need. I need to write. Whether I pat myself on the back for 216 followers on one profile, from hearing admissions that you like to get drunk and read my stuff at night, or from some other form of emotion or connection you've found in me, I'd still have to write. It's why I've always struggled to consider this “content” like I sat down and formulated some plan to keep you engaged. Like I wanted to perversely promote as much as genuinely share how fucked I was feeling. The utility I've found in putting it all “out there” to be scrutinized line by line verses being a ball of stress and confusion is incalculable. Detailing where you're coming from and hope to go, even when you can see how it can fail, isn't mindlessly stumbling through the dark needing to fear the unknown.

Any line can ring a bell. That's something I consistently overlook in my criticism of the amount of “content” coming in from self-promotion junkies. In a significant way, you are what you're beholden to. If you're controlled by deadlines and desperation, before I care about some product you're hocking, I see you selling the value of deadlines and desperation. I feel like I'd have to stop writing if that were me. Lying, if it's not to save my ass from something terrible, is torture to me. This is where the blowhard ironic bad boy goes, “Yeah fuck these shoes, but they're paying me, so buy them. It's part of my shtick to shit on things before I sell myself out, so they're cool with it.”

I'm after the right kind of attention. I don't want to Kim Kardashian my way through Twitter “impressions” and delicately staged Instagram photos for likes. Popularity is a dangerous tool we seem to lunge after without a second thought. Why achieve “celebrity” status when you actively attempt to reduce yourself to something wildly unworthy of being celebrated? How attached do we become to our “brand?” How hard are we fighting to keep the pleasantries up by tailoring ourselves to what we think people will like?

I'm different. I don't throw up my middle-finger and scream I don't give a fuck in a socially irresponsible way. I just know how I feel when I feel it and talk. And that, I wouldn't mind getting more popular. There's reality television and professions of “realness” abound. I stand in contrast. I invoke only the small lens from which I can see the world. My persistent ask is for other people to do the same.

Within this reintroduction, I hope to promote the idea of change. I hope to always change in significant, but not arbitrary, ways. I was a fairly picky eater, and loosened up. I've made countless statements with regard to my shallow nature, but am fairly acquainted with alcohol. I ridiculed Candy Crush and Miley Cyrus and eventually had to admit they were not the enemy. I used to believe in what I grew up with, be it about family or love, and I can honestly say I'm better for having reasoned through many terrible assumptions that I think we are still culturally strangled by. I think the human mind needs the idea of progress even when the universe suggests indifferent balance or eventual obliteration.

So hello to new people I'll be courting through a more active sharing, and hello again to old readers who never or rarely do or speak to anything I ask, and wonder why I've found a new rigor for self-promotion. I hate much about the world, therefore I must hate much about myself, and I need it to be talked about like I talk about it.

[499] Color Me Blue

I feel like I’ve been something of a tragic little headcase lately.

Waaah! I’m angry at my friends. Waaaah! Fake and broke social scenes have broken down. Boo-hoo it’s one problem and satirical comment after the next. Of course I’m writing this in the wake of the depressed and foreboding feelings that follow a hangover. Of the various powers of alcohol, it really is the drug that grants me the capacity to feel.

I used to blackout and be told that all I could do was foist lovey-dovey heartfelt sentiments about everyone in the room. Anymore I seem driven by a desire to bring up terrible shit to say that apparently seeks to degrade and remove me from any obligations I might feel towards friendship. What a tired cliche…

I think maybe I have a growing fear for the speculation and skepticism I’ve built in my life. I don’t allow myself the “naivety” to think the new people in the bar cared about our conversation. I don’t expect the majority of people I know to come through for anything I didn’t like actively prime and coax out of them. I’ve had to stifle a solid amount of the pretense that fueled much of my behavior. My identity has been in limbo.

I know once this feeling wears off I’ll go back to normal. I know that while ideas can always haunt me, I’m never a slave to a particular regret or drunk text. I just don’t know what to think about my normal anymore. If I was an impassioned dramatic free-spirit, I might barrel into some kind of expressive medium. I’d put aside all my criticism for there being too many competing and lackluster voices and try something new.

And at least in the moment of feelings like this, it would feel worthwhile. It’s why I write. The need to speak or connect. Blogging is coping more than something I’ve sought anything more than incidental attention for. I’m beholden to throw all my sad sack of shit feelings in a place like this so the damage control aspects of my life can actually be controlled.

It’s that I feel like I’m constantly lying. I’m better at being the friend who picks up where we left off after not talking to you for years than I am the check in and see how you’re doing type. I feel like I stopped paying attention to a lot of potential social cues and qualifiers because they get in the way of me steamrolling through some desperate stab towards more and deeper connections. Or, if I get them right, I’m not convinced on the regular days I’ll find it in me to keep caring.

I’m jealous of when it was easy. Of course it was gross and superficial, but it was easy. You just got together and all got drunk. You just started some random project or group activity. You just did a little flirting and body language cues before disappearing somewhere. And then maybe it wasn’t even that superficial; at least for a little while.

I’ve been grasping in the dark at lines that would hopefully unlock the sentiment behind how I’ve been feeling. My brother the other day said “I never thought I’d be 25 with a master’s degree living at home with my parents.” I had that concern my freshman year with all I’d been reading about kids doing that exact same thing. And so what? What did it get me? What does my knowledge and foresight ever really amount to? You still have to get fucked. You still have to keep falling uphill. I still have to cross my fingers that I’ll finagle a way to build the kind of future I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid.

I’m too hard on everything. I don’t know the happy middle ground. I packed so many expectations into myself I’m choking. Every year that goes by with me being a discontented basement dweller railing about the system and bolstering his capacity for media trivia suggests the larger reality is even heavier and even more fucked than I could possibly have the capacity to ridicule. It makes me feel dead before, during, and after I’ve tried. It makes the anxiety of hope unbearable.

I’ve never wanted to be the cynic. I’ve never considered myself as such. I don’t want to believe it, but it feels like it, that the honor is foisted upon me. Like I could cope with feeling downtrodden and guilty anymore than you can. Like I get some kind of enjoyment when things are actually that bad. Yes, once the hangover subsides, I’ll stop sounding so pathetic and I’ll genuinely be more implacable husk uncontrollably scoffing. But until then, hopefully I’ve been able to peek into what’s been contorting my guts. I’m rather lost.

[498] Feet Back On The Ground

Does anyone else experience the problem of desperately needing to hear things they don’t already know?

As I often do, I’ll ask you to consider what I think I know about the opening line. A gut instinct likely exists about being presumptuous and dickishly naïve. A wayward overtone sets in as you resolve yourself to the seemingly arbitrary directions I’ll attempt to explain myself. A quaint, yet scant, curiosity because every time I write there may be a nice line or two, or I may be drunk, or I’ll submit myself to some level of embarrassment or encumbered analogy.

Besides, it’s not terribly interesting to talk about what you know, right? No one would listen to an hour-long lecture detailing every moment of how to approach, start, drive, and park a car. Maybe it’s interesting to you, somehow, but the degrees of interest lie in doubt. People love to see over-confidence ridiculed and put back in its place. There remains a deep irony in taking endless pride in the exercise of doing so.

It’s important to follow broad and presumptuous statements with qualifiers and restrictions. People often pretend they’re giving you the benefit of the doubt, but if you tune in to about 30 seconds of their response to things you’ll say, it becomes snap judgments and many confused points refuting things you never meant to bring up. That idea feels very “obvious” to me. I know how, when, and why communication breaks down. I know there’s always a more direct, or more often less direct, and “idiot proof” way of explaining something once we give each other enough time or appreciate differences.

So as a qualifier, you shouldn’t take my sentiment as a testament to intellect. To know things is not necessarily to brag about knowing things, but any deference to this fact is fleeting. A mother with several young kids doesn’t appreciate the babysitter explaining to her “what Mikey really likes.” It becomes distracting and incomplete to describe the mother as “proud” of the lack of sleep and endless hours spent being a caretaker to Mikey. She’s painfully familiar. She’s exhausted and could stand to never hear about Mikey’s preferences again.

Interpersonal relationships I think are the most familiar. Everyone gets a little indignant being told how to handle or understand someone in their family. People feel, often violently so, that you can’t be a good judge. I won’t pretend to know when that’s the case, but presumably there’s social workers and psychologists who could take your justifications and strategies from a book of clichés they’ve collected over the years.

I like to consider myself an “expert” in myself. Is that a weird thing to state? I have well over 10,000 hours thinking about me and my place in the world. I know the vast array of “personal” quirks and habits that fit neatly into psychological profiles. I know every instant I should probably be asleep instead of anxiously anticipating. I know how I’m going to react or think to approach different conversations with different people on different topics. I know why I write, or read, or hop on a treadmill, or get spinal taps. I never come as a surprise to myself. I’m never swirling in doubt as to my motivations or lack thereof. Some consider this confidence. Some consider it arrogance. Some think I’m probably just outright lying.

I noticed, what I might call the “unchanging me” when I stopped wondering what tomorrow would bring. As a child, I used to wake up and it felt like hopping on a roller coaster. My emotional state was utterly hijacked by what happened around me. I reacted to my mom being angry. I got so invested in video games I’d fly off the handle and throw the controller. I was at the mercy of what the neighborhood kids cared to do that day. Did I like basketball and riding my bike? I can’t say, but I couldn’t look pathetic popping wheelies and air balling, so I kept at them.

We instinctively grant ourselves an identity. We plant our egos in the center of our hobbies, ethnicities, families, symbols, language, etc. It’s practical. It’s hard to imagine a world in which you would be considered a healthy individual where you didn’t feel a sense of connectedness or belonging.

Less intuitively, we’re always changing. We live in a magical era where we can discuss the very fabric of existence. I can casually stroll into the library and pick up a book “Why Does E=mc2?” and in a few hours take a dive into the work and brilliance of one of humanities greatest intellectual achievements. What then would you say about me if I tried to explain the book as if I wrote it?

Hopefully we can see an analogy taking foot. I certainly don’t intimately know nor have personally worked with nor developed theories regarding physics. I’d be a disrespectful fool to pretend otherwise. In the same way, I feel people are disrespectful fools of their own nature who then attempt to explain the happenings of the world around them. The world stopped being so exciting when I learned to appreciate the foolishness I was strangled by as a child. My persistent experience with people is those who never bothered to examine their own.

In reconsidering the clinical psychologist, you can choose to take their 30 years of collecting stories and habits of fighting couples as a guiding principle in how you conduct your life, or, you can think you and your spouse are special butterflies and your friend Dave gave you massive insight into what “bitches really like.” We’re rarely presented with opportunities to make, what I regard, a simple choice between options like these. We then proceed to carry on in the wisdom of denouncing curiosity and humility, as those might provoke us to consider the amount of information we’re ignoring that’s right at our fingertips.

I’m literally desperate to be in a setting where people ask questions instead of make assertions. This is not a criticism of the necessary conversational style that doesn’t need to be prefaced with dozens of “now I may be wrongs.” I’m desperate to see a behavior and watch a habit of openness play out. When I slow down and examine how I might phrase my problems with myself or my friends, it’s feeling that something was once open has now closed. Our dialogue has been swallowed by ignorant ego-ridden children who’ve dictated what our lives have to mold into.

I know you’re busy. I need to hear that you care about finding ways around it. I know you’re tired. I need to hear why we’re going to the gym anyway. I know I was mean or confusing. I need to hear you ask me why or I need to hear why you’re no longer willing to listen. I can’t count how many times I’ve said I need to hear advocacy instead of complacence. I need to hear hope because I don’t really have any. I need to hear doubt, because there’s too much bullshit I think we’re convinced of. I need you to hear me asking for help, because when I approach the world with my cold ignorant ego, it tends to spell disaster for anything resembling genuine human relationships.

[497] Brain Dump Deux Pour Toi

This is a brain dump. There is no promise of continuity between paragraphs, no over-arching theme I'm trying to approach. I feel stuck with fragments of thoughts that I want to paste together like a psychotic note of magazine cut-outs. Read to the degree you want to punish yourself.

You can always find what you want to hear. Every moment I complain about not hearing what I want out of my friend group or social circles, there's wave after wave of what I'm concerned about in a hoity-toity magazine or website. There's people who get paid to think and tie together voices of history into insights for today. As a result, when I say I hate my friends, another way to look at it is that I hate myself for being unwilling to make the kinds of friends who read and write like me.

That's an oversimplification. I want diversification and experience. That isn't to say there aren't philosophers that climb mountains, but I did think to call these people friends for a reason. It's a reason that has apparently diminished as my language espousing their very being no longer matches the feelings they allegedly aroused in me. I think it was another extension of my selfishness. A large part of me exists because of the boisterous joker at parties. These people helped facilitate that. They disappeared. I blamed them.

Harking back to being constantly immersed in media. I've claimed I'm searching for inspiration. I like finding old characters or basking in unknown comedic cultural styles. But it goes further. They're a surrogate family. They put each other first and by the end of the episode onto the end of the series, you think of “them” as a unit and what they went through. Why do so many cliché big happy white family shows still do well as the language is about diversification and minority voices? The old white people with Nielsen boxes feel a sense of loss that immersed-in-their-phones teens never knew. Part of our psyche's crave that stability while we cling for dear life on the towering rocket of technological advancement.

I've also claimed identity qualifiers in different characters. Daria is my go-to first “I'm going to stop and pay closer attention” character that informed how I might be approaching or feeling about the world. But in any piece of work you can see a twinkle of what you like or hate about yourself and how it plays out against a different personality. That's the endlessly interesting thing, that when it's done well, it's genuinely informative and captivating. You don't just play up the “theme” of each character representing, for example, the 7 deadly sins. Each one gets to be a whole person and then the aspect of them that is drawn out to be the loudest is experimented with.

Take something like abuse. I imagine there's a solid group of women who've been beaten up. When they watch a piece of media that sees a “strong family” go through “an incident” where the wife was hit, where does their mind go? What if it really is just a one-off? Are we willing to entertain instances in our culture where we use the language of “her deserving it,” even when we know overwhelmingly it's totally abhorrent? These are conversations I've been in with people, both men and women, who've said there are times where she does deserve it! But how often do we get to engage with those ideas head on?

It's the silence that kills me. Not because I can't be quiet or don't like to reflect. It's just in silence that I don't feel like we're in it together. I don't feel a shared human identity with my friends or especially the culture at large. I don't know if they agree that talking helps. I don't know if they would put their money where there mouth is for a shared project. I don't know how they feel when I tell them I hate them. I get absolutely nothing and it drives me insane. Oh, maybe I take that slightly back. I have them asking if I'm okay. Let's just listen to “Flagpole sitta” on repeat and stop asking me that question. I don't know what to root myself in but my endless reading and watching because nothing else is there besides random trips to visit, maybe once a year.

I fucked up using “boredom” as my qualifier for shit that I do. I'm constantly engaged. If you think reading is boring, I'm boring. If you think setting up event after event and sending out text after text to do literally anything is boring, again, I'm boring. People forget the amount of effort I've put in to trying to keep some face of “together” alive before I resigned myself to whatever you want to call my “leisure” regarding books, media, and drug studies. I don't know how many times you have to be blown off or ignored before you feel like someone isn't your friend, but I apparently can't stop inviting. It's always seemed, rather counter-productive, to then despise and disavow everyone while I carry on about how “awesome it is to have real people in my life.”

I'm still, however many weeks later, hung up on ideas about me being negative or someone unable to take in information that doesn't come in “how I want it.” That's so unbelievably stuck in my fucking head. Me, who so believes in his capacity to break from the drama and stress of a “regular work day” to pursue the ideas that fall out after a ton of reading and writing. Me, who has group after group of invitations to do things and make jokes and pay for drinks to be met with 2 or 3 of the same people (who of course I'm not complaining about), while the rest go silent or show up and act like the lounging around on their couch instead of mine is to be preferred.

How do you think I want to hear it? Coherently? Patiently? Thoughtfully? I know it's at least honest as far as you feel or are relating it, but how can I be anything but concerned with “how I want it” if I have no fucking clue how to understand it and you refuse to explain it to me!? How the fuck is it my fault to be ready and willing and trying and only told I can't and you won't? Fuck you! That, I hate about you. I feel like a dyslexic dying to read with an abusive parent inventing endless ways to humiliate me. Good job, I'm painted as the intractable asshole again and you escape protecting your precious feelings.

The human connection is gone. The hearing about your day is “painful” and “hard.” Because new people are “icky” and only the sum of the things you want to criticize about them. It's fucking shallow. It's a disgrace. It hurts. It's exhausting. It's seemingly hopeless until a massive shift in our priorities or access changes how we anticipate seeing each other. What is the expectation? That inviting you out to lunch or to watch a movie is supposed to be as entertaining as a circus? What is the fear? That sharing your story or thoughts is going to have me pounding through the table in anger?

And if you don't have time, think about how fucked that is. Are you really stuck? Are you more afraid of “the long term effects” of something like a drug study than you are having no perspective, no life, and no time with mounting stress as to any long-term plan? What I'm doing is sketchy? At least I have blood work and blood pressure measurements done routinely. I'm not just healthy, I'm as ideally healthy as anyone they could ask to do these things. Are you? Tired and stressed? Have something lurking you can't afford to have checked out? The amount of time pissed away struggling alone as opposed to pulling together resources blows my mind.

Think about something like an investment account. I didn't ask you to invest in my “wacky awesome business plan!” I said, pull money, that's yours and will still be there, together, so interest can add up quicker and do the work for us. Nope, too sketchy. Let's all have a few grand as a nest egg tucked away, to be obliterated at random, that doesn't grow, and wait. Sound reasoning. Any of you got loans out? How much nicer would it be looking for a job after your grad program if you didn't have bills to pay in the meantime? I feel like a fucking spokesperson for drug study companies, but the heart is about pragmatism and easing stress. It's a cheat. A life hack. A safer than you give it credit for freeing up of your time, and hopefully by extension, your mind.

I think about getting a stupid job for even the semblance of community again. I liked the Sunday dinners and then hitting the video store to watch movies as a family at my grandma's house. I had the gamut of immature fuck-ups work with me at Showplace over 2 ½ years. It still felt like family. It's what kept me there during the dark days of shittier management. I hated electronic music and wasn't into partying and drugs before we banded together on a dorm floor. Before everyone got sad and resentful, there was a solid community of ridiculous people who could all basically pick up on what made coming to the house special. And all of it is just gone. And every attempt to create something new is met with feigned enthusiasm or silence.

And so you do what? You bitch. You say you hate people. You retreat and think it's all about you. What else are you working with?

I've already said so many things before. I feel stuck not because I'm not trying or unwilling to explore, but because I'm alone. I feel stuck because my problems aren't about “my” headache, “my” depression, “my” loneliness, “my” boredom, “my” negativity, or anything else really to do with me. I can't even help but to like myself, probably because when I'm desperate for change, I just do so. I've called myself a reflection. I complain because you're silent, because you blow me off, because you were something different in the past and you've changed and you won't say anything with regards to it. You won't tell me you don't care, so I stop blaming you. You won't tell me you agree, probably because you're afraid I'm then going to ask something of you. You don't answer questions. You don't pick a single question and try to say anything towards it.

This big impersonal “you,” because there's like 5. There's definitely 5 people who I think try and continue to try. And I appreciate it, and I thank you. And when I go back and read comments and discussions from years ago you pop up and remind me why I don't chop you off my ever-decreasing friends list. I'm no-less insatiable.

You just get into this habit of inventing peoples' positions. You have to try and infer from the silence, as stupid as that sounds, even though depending on what you read, it can tell you all you need to know. It's never indicated that everyone's doing well and we're all happy-go-lucky and I'm literally the only person you know who can carry on like there's always a problem. Which, again, I don't think is negative. I think it's wise. I think it shows perspective. I think you carry your demons with you and don't ignore them. I think you work as hard as you can now with them, so your life gets easier on the whole later. For every stressed out brain dump, I'm going to get a couple weeks of peace, or at the very least, an opportunity to move on to something different and more manageable.

I think you're stuck, because every time I try to relate to you, I feel stuck. I feel alone. I feel judged, and angry, and angst ridden. I hate that I feel guilty over what I presume to know, and you get a familiar dialogue. You ride the culture and the excuses. The secret “hush” to not disturb the status quo is part of it. The tired jokes and tempered expectations. The pleasantries. The unrelenting hurt feelings that prompt you to keep things broken and forgo believing in paths forward together. Silence has never helped me. Faking it feels tantamount to death. When I feel like I hate you, you'll hear it. But I promise it will never be as loud and palpable as the hatred I feel from your silence.

[496] Stark Raving Contrition

In keeping with the pattern of saying horrible things and then getting texts or questions with regard to my well-being, let’s offer a pointless explanation of terms and ideas to help me keep stirring in hypocritical stew.

Right off, you might find yourself uncomfortable with my “pro-suicide” sentiment. That’s reasonable. The idea remains the same. If you are unduly and perpetually suffering, I get it. Granted, overwhelmingly are people petty and naive and blow things up beyond all reason. As well they rarely appreciate just how quickly time can move when you’re standing still and it’ll be over soon enough.

This also doesn’t mean I’d tell you to kill yourself. I did that all through high school because it seemed to work 100% of the time in a reverse psychology way to keep friends alive. No record maintains without a blemish though, and I learned the hard way that some people are more committed and ballsy than others. That methodology went right out the window, and it’s wildly clear why I’m not a psychologist.

How many of you thought “Naturally, I’ll encourage someone to slit their wrists because they’ll see the error of their ways upon contemplating how cool we are with each other!” I’ll venture none. But this is what happens when your metric for what’s “too much” is broken and you adhere to lazy cartoonish conceptions of power and consequence. In a sense, I feel like I’m watching people encourage the same thing, every day, it just takes longer. 

It should always be clear, if we’re going to remain friends, that rarely is it about “you” or “me.” We’re products of a larger culture I happen to mostly despise. Some days it is harder to think and cope with fallout after fallout and be met with silence, indifference, or mostly hopeless shots in the dark meant more to take my temperature than actually say something. 

My mind, when left to its own devises, can concoct convincing stories about the relative space I inhabit with regard to the people in my life. This happens because I have nothing but vague impressions, old memories, and scant conversations. I’ve been criticized that I need to be comfortable hearing and discussing things in ways other than “how I want it.” How do you think that is? What do you think I require before I respect what you say? Do I believe my friends want to be told I hate them? Are you comfortable granting me the same license?

How often I talk about the difference between “real” and “fake” when it seems I find a problem with a new word every day. The idea that reality is what you make of it, and this is what we have to show for it, is the most frustration I can find. That we’re slaves to a boring and soul-sucking game and desperately cling to a facade. 

I realize, it’s because I’m desperate for something I thought I had. I remember family dinners and thinking there was something powerful and familiar and reliable by having those people in my life. I remember constant conversations and challenges to what I said. I remember when people were enthusiastic and took chances and found the time. It’s not me having watched a happy-go-lucky movie or enthralled by some teen fantasy novel that gave me ideas about how much better it could be. You idiots did it to me. 

That’s why I can feel alone. Fuck if you never find the patience to actually have a “boring” conversation attempting to line up perspectives. It’s that I had a “family” idea that bore its teeth when shit got real. I sit either in silence or with Hatsam as we discuss the different reasons we’ve been blown off. I watched over years people become quiet, swallow stress, and adopt the act. And I think for all the years talking about it, watching the ducks fall in line, and then stewing in it is worthy of hate.

And so maybe, in an important life preserving sort of way, more parts of me need to die. I need to stop bringing up the past and deal with whatever you are right now. I need to stop pretending what I thought or felt was made of anything more than what tricked me with regard to family growing up. I need to tune out the romanticized understandings of past eras and choke down the sloppy mess as I conceive of it now.

I’ve watched my catalyst nature play out in real time a lot lately. If you’re a little crazy, I can provoke you to go over the edge. If the energy needs to be sucked out of the room, I can bring it to a dead stop. It’s this I consider when I talk about the regulating influence of friends. I’ve accelerated the implications, as far as I can discern them, of our current dynamic. The goal posts and in-bounds lines that seem to be constantly moving. I’ve unduly burdened you with granting me a reason to be patient or softer spoken. I found utility in it and sought to take it for granted. It’s my mistake.

This has been the struggle to fight for that “more” which seems like it slipped through my fingers. I’m now putting that fight out of its misery. You might call it the friendly adult thing to do.

[495] Tries Too Hard

From the onset, it should be clear; I am writing this because I have a few “one-liners” that are dancing about my head that I want to barely tie together with the thoughts that are sure to follow.
I don’t know how to start. I’m not ridiculously drunk or anxious. I don’t have a headache. I haven’t been met with some situation that wildly affronts my being. I’m absolutely persuaded I need to talk. I don’t know why.

I want to talk about communication. Or maybe, I want to talk about connection. I have a vague idea of how I think it happens. I think you reach the end of your rope. I think you give up. I think you cry all the tears and exhaust all your muscles.

Have you asked yourself what I am to you?

I’m unendingly concerned with the idea that you “tune into Nick P.” with this expectation that I’m supposed to be the shit sandwich you decided was necessary for you to feel “real” today. I don’t want to be your excuse. I don’t want to be your cliché. I’m not an arbitrary dose of medicine that validates your existence because “thank god I have an asshole in my life.”

If I’m that to you, I fucking hate you and we’re not friends. I’m not willing to pretend you understand me. I get to die with you being a hopeless hapless soul desperately grasping to the idea that at least one person in your life marginally grazed against your heartfelt conceptions. I certainly don’t wish that for us, but I’m pretty well convinced that’s the case.

I guess that…I’m sorry if I ever gave you hope. I’m sorry if you’ve ever believed in me. My contrived complicated being needed an outlet and I’ve given you license. I’ve let you let me be the insensitive asshole. But truly, I hate you for it.

I’m not your keeper. I’m not your guide. I’m not your outlet or excuse. The largest liberty I take to pull some of the most ridiculous shit you can imagine is not a substitute for you being a real person.
I do. I fucking hate my friends. I hate saying it, I hate thinking it. I fucking hate you. I hate that we don’t talk every day. I hate that we don’t fix things. I hate that I rely on you for sanctified moments of cordiality and degraded credibility.

It’s probably not fair to you, but I expect the world. I expect you to be everything I could ever want in a human being. That’s what friendship means to me. You’ll probably never live up to it. It’s not your fault or burden or cause. It’s what I believe about myself in service to people I’m going to keep avoiding manipulating despite every inclination. When you fail, because it’s your destiny to fail, it will be my fault. When we die with a laundry list of regrets, I’ll politely redirect you back to this blog.

It’s cool. I’m not worried about it. I’ve harped for years about “genuine understanding” and the supposed consequences. I don’t really care. Professionally, I do, but existentially let’s just die one day and stop trying so hard…no?

I think it plays into so much. Open relationships? What are we really saying? I’m attracted, you’re attracted, and it’d be cool to fuck. Deep. All this blah blah blah about love and where your mind is at is naïve fluff, in my opinion. I’d certainly never try to turn you against someone. God forbid a probably drunk night sends you my direction, right?

But we can’t be real about it. We can’t be nuanced. We can’t act like what would make everyone happy because the dialogue and expectations are of an all or nothing mantra. It’s always dramatic. It’s always life or death. Politics to personal a load of high stakes nonsense.

Guys, seriously, in the least suicidal way to describe it that is possible, I’m pro suicide. I’m fucking tired of useless struggle. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of blogging. I’m tired of talking. I’m tired of hating people who are only to be blamed by circumstance and small tepid perceptions. I think it’s often viewed as if I have some sort of pious and proud position judging everyone around me. It’s a sure sign that you’re a fucking idiot. I’m you, you’re me, and I’m putting a voice to what you refuse.

It’s true though. I fucking hate you. I hate that we don’t see each other every week, let alone every month or every year. I hate that you don’t have arguments with me after every blog. I hate your hobbies that have nothing to do with fixing our political background or general life circumstances. It’s why I don’t want friends. It’s why I feel alone. I’m supposed to respect you as thoughtful well-meaning motivated individuals with as many or more thoughts than I could ever shit out onto a page. And I don’t. And I hate that I don’t. But that’s my reality.

Fuck me I guess.

[494] Mother May I

“Get down on your knees, and tell me you love me.”

You don’t need orders. You don’t need permission. You don’t need a license or a green light. There is no rule book. Nothing’s stopping you.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about celebrity and wanting direction. Say we consider it with relation to the arts. Once musical rules are learned, you can play by them for the rest of your life. You’re constrained by 12 notes and the octaves of your instrument. At the same time now liberated to play as freely and as passionately as you desire; you’re free to interpret and remix and transpose at your creative insistence or leisure. Thus, the famous musician finds an opportunity to breakthrough via rigorous constraint to a language and methodology, then perhaps finds a worthwhile agent or gets noticed by the right people.

Then we might consider the stage. Every inch of your face and body language might be mapped out by a particularly anal playwright. You’re pursuing a deep detachment from yourself in order to get lost in a character, but necessarily so connecting to your depths in order to evoke the proper emotion. To cry on cue or to experience jubilation at the mere suggestions of the writers and directors, I imagine, is both exhausting and exhilarating.

I persistently wonder about the line between “want” and “need.” For every kid I’ve met who’s says “music is my life!” how many exist where that’s actually true? Surely most could give up playing and get by just fine, maybe have a realization or two about how quick they are to hollow statements. For every actor that can passionately describe what characters and stories mean to them and how important they feel with regard to shaping culture and narratives, is it too far-fetched to suggest that many “just want to be famous?”

I’m disappointed that so much about how I’ve been encountering life feels very “cheap.” It’s as if I’m begging for there to be more. I saw some student comedy groups over the last few days. Laughing and making people laugh is pretty important to me. The loudest impression I walked away with was that the whole affair was a kind of desperate self-help group therapy for goofy and insecure kids.

More importantly than my predictable rather “blah and melancholy” perception is how I arrived there. It’s the lack of organization and prestige. It’s the feeling of showing up to a party where everyone knows each other, and they’re mostly tolerating you. It’s the scant to scattered attendance. It’s the blank to matter-of-fact expressions from all the players once they get off stage. It’s the rude behavior of some of the audience. It’s the tables wallpapered with the same promotional flyer with no helpful information on it. The groups seemed to barely intermingle. There were too many points of too much enthusiasm for what seemed rather half-assed.

I think it’s a symptom of the culture more than a particular failure of the organizers, or budding students of comedy. What first made me so intrigued and envious of comedy was the culture. It was hearing stories from old comedians about when they met and what they struggled through. The jokes they told in the parking lot and the stories they won’t bring on stage so they can keep each other out of jail. The funny people who didn’t fit, not because they were “nerds” or “awkward,” but because they’re personality was stuck, like mine feels stuck, to relating to the world in hilariously depressing ways. Maybe they drink their whole life, but they don’t want to kill themselves. Maybe they’ve been through 4 ex-wives, but they know there’s solid bits floating around every fight. It felt real and raw. The structure has to be there, but so does the actual person behind whatever comedian persona.

But what we have today feels like people “acting like an improv group.” They’ve got the 15 top Amazon books on all the games and warm-ups and ways to garner attention or structure a show. They know body contortions and odd language is the nature of the game. The formula definitely spit out some version of “comedy show.”

Let’s move on. The idea is to talk about our mediums and how we abuse them for permission. You can be loud and “different” when you plug into a format. What you never said to your parents you can belt out of your horn or rake across your strings. The manic energy you feel to yell can shake the rafters in your muffin sketch that really took a left turn, oh boy! Your click can help you foster your secret desires to be mean, exclusionary, or manipulative.

It was recently related to me, that from a place of such deep hatred for the general population that exists at fast-food or entry-level jobs, the only thoughts this person was willing to entertain were about manipulating. I know, right!? It wasn’t me carrying on about hating everyone! Score! Hand in hand with that sentiment was the idea that it’s easier to fake it. It’s easier to sit and pretend to like someone as long as you know how to work them for the longer game.

Avid readers at this point might recall my shifts with regard to this behavior. I decided I was going to have friends, much to my chagrin. I didn’t want to play on the hearts and “proper” behavior for cultivating “friendly” interactions anymore. It mostly broke down after months and months of creating events and invitations and trying to start conversations and everyone basically going radio silent. The reality of my novelty and small place in the world became deafening and I retreated back to how I handled life growing up. A lot of moves in the dark that “somehow” end up with me getting everything I want.

It’s not easy to lie unless you’re quasi-damaged. It’s exhausting to act like you give a shit. It’s hard for me to “talk proper” in a way that will coax judgmental and scared rabbit people out of their holes long enough to barely utter how they actually think or feel about something. And practically never is it worth my effort. So I let the fucks fly. I actively engage in the catharsis I find necessary for being remotely functional. The only time I ever seem capable of “mellowing out” is when I can find someone else willing to be honest and brave enough within themselves to carry on in the same fashion. The recognition. The empathy! Yes, it is that fucked and they are that fucking stupid! Want to grab a burger?

I don’t wait for you to like it. This isn’t to be some jaded bad-ass proud little boy cutting himself to emo music, it’s because it’s honest. It’s because it helps. It’s because you have to acknowledge and work with your bottom before you begin to look like you’re making sense speaking towards or attempting to fix anything above it. I don’t need goofy-looking fat kids with “confidence” to express myself, or a script that requires me to touch emotional places in order to express them. I don’t need the suggestion that a dollar an hour more raise is somehow equitable to what I’m worth. I don’t need the engagement and friendship of people too tired and taxed to even send a text back.

And I think that very isolating place of our superficial culture is what people are desperately trying to escape via things like Youtube channels and more clubs and activity classes than they can handle. I think the wave of “attention for the sake of it” has corrupted how and why we do basically anything. Celebrity status has been elevated to a fast track of book deals, talk show appearances, and product lines that will do a damn good job of eating up your time and identity as New Millennial Marketing Group dig in their claws.

Occupy Wall Street seems the loudest example of the scatter-brained, leaderless, overcompensating that underlies the vibe I get from different events or people these days. You have to rely on those Amazon books because you don’t have a mentor. You have to stay distracted because taking the time to write about how lonely or betrayed you feel has never been related to you by someone who’s making it work for them. Selfish and desperate is the name of the game. Guarded, exhausted, and scared the favorite pieces.

The love of what you do or who you’re with doesn’t come from the eggshell walking and pleasantries. Culture is bred from struggle, not distraction. You go to hell and back. You take risks. Some of you don’t make it out alive. There isn’t a formula for being a funny person, an artist, or a human being. People seem to be doing for the sake of doing. Learning for the sake of learning. I think we’re living because we’re alive, and not because we’re constantly figuring out what it even means to say that.

[493] Me Be Me

What if I am but an instrument? What if every selfish pursuit is a necessary lesson in the continuum of existence? There’s a line that’s been haunting me. “Be the hero of your own story.” It’s that I don’t know what to think or feel about it.

At first pass, it sounds insanely naively selfish. Fuck your story. Who gives a shit about your story? It’s only been in the relatively recent history of humans that “you” was more than cannon fodder or something highly likely to die before the age of 2. It seems to bump into the very fact of existing at all. “Why” as a question always seems insufficient. “That” you are here and can decide it’s about you or whatever else is what’s massively intriguing. 

If you consider yourself an instrument, a product of incalculable forces, your life gets easier. You don’t feel guilty about your travels around the world peeking in on poverty and silently endorsing unfettered capitalism. You can spend as many hours as it takes behind your startup or hobby. You can freely exchange words and love like they’re of no consequence. Sure, you’re a cog, but a cog that flows. You’re a happy cog. I recently said we’re looking to be a part of almost anything. Finding your place in the machine can be immensely reassuring and life affirming. 

If you’re not an instrument, you don’t get your answers to “why.” You’re left making many assumptions. You’re left leaving things up to testing and chance. In other words, when you don’t know for sure that you fit, despite your inclinations and general sense about what should be done, you’re left in a fairly dangerous spot. You can devolve into nihilism. You can act arbitrarily absurd and seek out authoritarian regimes. You can pretend like nothing is ever wrong and be the intractable hippie type I hate. 

I think existence suggests orientation. That is, I think being is as much a conclusion as anything else. “Should” we exist becomes a non-starter bullshit question. Should I write this blog? Fuck you, an infinite number of forces came together consistently until I found the capacity to put words to the “page.” It’s a miracle you can read me. It’s a miracle I have the opportunity to try. 

I’ve stated before that entropy is the rule. It’s also only the rule as far as we know. It’s the rule to as best as our instruments can tell. We can’t figure out quantum mechanical structures or behavior. What is the word “entropy” subjected to the statistical underpinnings of every particle in existence? An absurd question we’ll never answer. 

In the meantime, we’re left doing what? Me? Writing. You? Working. Society? Denying and slowly (but not slow enough) dying. Questions require scale. They need conditions and parameters from which to understand things. I don’t reflexively call Trump a fascist. I waited till he literally parroted Hitler and Mussolini. But what else is there? What more are you to worry about than the body politick? Why shouldn’t you be overly concerned with interpersonal struggles? Why shouldn’t you campaign as ferociously for love as I try to denounce it? 

I’m scared of loving what I do. Stated differently, I’m scared that the farther I disappear into my own ass the more “good” we’ll see as far as changes in society goes. 

Hopefully, you’ll see immediately why. I’ve adopted a narrative about “it isn’t about me.” I’m enough for me. I believe in me. I don’t need your help or endorsement. But if I start doing well by “doing me” and in turn there’s some positive fall-out for the rest of the world, I’m provoked to endorse everyone being as selfish as I feel inclined. Is that not dangerous? 

There are immediately points of contention. I consider world-class musicians and athletes. These people can be heroes for spending years focusing on a single subject. They can “inspire” youth to transcend their circumstances or live in accordance with a regimented lifestyle. At the same time, no matter how beautifully you master a piece of music nor perfect your bounce and shot, we’ll happily die and cow-tow to political forces that transcend your ability to get good at something. Sure, this is fairly linear thinking, but is it ever referenced or used in any other fashion? 

I always wonder why I feel hopeless when I try to learn something like physics or a new instrument. Does the world need me to learn these things? What happens if I’m Yo-Yo Ma with all my ideas about how to help people get engaged and knowledgeable about their place on the planet? I feel like you have to hate me at that point. You have to be disgusted that I would turn on the thousands of words I’ve expressed about what seems to underlay my being. How can you give a fuck about my “passion” or “talent” when I scapegoated the larger issue to impress you with my muscle twitches? 

And then what do we do with the person who feels like me about something I think is a speck? What if you’re as passionate? What if you’re as “convinced?” And now you make Michael Jordan look like a bitch. Is the world better for it? Can we be compared? Is the exercise patently futile? 

It’s at the same time that I think we should all be able to find the time and inclination to learn something at the world-class level, but no-less engage in the forces that are larger. This is the problem. It’s not a comparison; it’s that we’re not comprehensive. We don’t add to a plate we pretend is too full already. We deny there’s a world beyond. 

The ego of “survival of the fittest” is small-minded. The moment we could say “I” and recognized it as a part of everything, we opened up an opportunity. We suggest transcendence. We provoke a level of understanding and behavior that doesn’t even recognize the modern myopic vernacular. This is my struggle. Am I learning a new instrument for me, or to fit into a group of people that understands what music means to us all? Am I creating a website and compiling information to stroke my ego? Or do I want to stop hating the stupid ass fucking responses I get from you for why you’re not as stoked about what I’m doing as I am? Is it bask and gloat or teach and engorge? 

I think when people have lofty dreams and forget it needs to be about us and not them is where you get stories of “my whole life was dedicated to this, and when it happened, I thought, fuck, that’s it?” Your life should be an example. You have to acknowledge, not concede, how integrated your being is to everything. Then you feel the rules for more than empty edicts handed down through an authority. Then you can act confidently in the face of nihilism and solipsism without fearing enduring ignorance. Take what you can be “sure enough” to be true to heart and to be true enough. 

If you understand every line or none, we’re still on the same page. I’m trying. You’re trying. We’re basking in opportunity. “Potential” is the mirage you allow yourself in service to inaction.

[492] Life on Mars?

By way of analogy, I feel addiction is powerful. You have to admit you're sick before you can get better.

This is perhaps the ground floor statement for attempting to help an addict. There's no hope and nothing changes without the admission of a problem. That problem is under layers. It's now a habit or incorporated into your personality or social group. It's got a book’s length worth of excuses. It makes you feel good, or at least, nothing at all. It seems to be people who also don't have a solid handle on their own lives calling you out and what you are as the problem. You still have to admit it.

An addiction or disorder can sneak up on you. You start innocently or you ignore little signs until you find yourself in a dramatic scene wondering how you got there. We tend to think of addiction as something on a different level. You can be addicted to drugs or alcohol maybe, but if someone said you were a “workaholic” or addicted to drama and heartache, while the latter still meant to be damming, they don't think of it as requiring a 12-step program.

I tend to think the mind is an addict by nature. The mad scramble for collecting resources, learning things, abusing pleasures, and seeking out novel experiences. It's an addict for validation. Whether you get it from your peers or the story you tell yourself about your place in the world. You want to feel like you belong somewhere, nearly anywhere.

Of course, it acts on a gradient. According to everything I've ever read about alcohol, nearly every time I've gone out with friends, we're alcoholics. Then there's “a few too many every night” crowd, and then there's waking up the gutter and destroying your life. Realistically, there's as many kinds of addicts as there are people, but there's no way to talk about everyone. Bottom is different for each person.

I suppose I want to think about what happens next. When you put a voice to something you might be addicted to. Say I said I was addicted to reading. The next step would involve planned time off. It might be scheduling better sleep or more outdoor activities. But for something like that, it's not tied terribly close to my emotional well-being let alone physical health. It matters towards my sense of self-respect, but in reality, that's probably evaporated years ago. You might think of the news as at least putting a voice to things we consider problems, from general misconduct to terrorism. But it’s never enough to just talk about it either.

What if we consider the family of an addict? How do you live with someone in recovery? A lot of tentative trust, patience, checks and balances, and communication. Inevitably some claims about love keeping you together. You're my family or like a brother to me and so forth. But it can get too much. People can get cut off. One of the highest predictors for recidivism of any kind is the environment you plug into in order to recover. The Biggest Loser people almost always put the weight back on. Do the producers feel guilty or take the blame for the profitable, and ridiculously false, narrative? Of course not.

What if we’re perhaps generally blind and ignorant of what a proper definition of addiction would look like? Maybe it’s more of a philosophical constant to incorporate into our storytelling and cultural lore. Maybe it’s naive to think there’s a strong science for “generally curing” what keeps people hooked.

I’m tired of professions of “adulting.” Look at me, I’m stressed out, have no time, am taking my few days off to veg out or buy a lawn mower. So adult. I think we’re addicted to a narrative. I think the narrative repeats and exaggerates the mistakes we’ve been bred from. It’s an idealistic upper-middle class conception of what’s valuable and worth spending your time on. Stuff. Perfectly framed pictures. Countless hours at the office. The most loveable pet you’ve ever seen.

When every day I think about how hollowed-out my relationships have become, because of how “busy” people are, and then see home appliances and backlogged emails forwarded as the tortured point of empathy we’re supposed to “like” or “cry” about, I feel the hole in my chest grow ever larger. I think of the career bulimic looking for a pat on the back for keeping down a whole banana. Are they really healthy? In that moment, are you going to make some stupid comment about how good fruit is for you?

In truth, the more I admit to myself, sometimes the more problems it imposes. I do feel like that old and/or obese person who’s borderline without shame at the thought of dying soon enough. Once that sinks in, you have to structure new rules for governing the kind of hyena-esc sensibility as it gets louder. It took a while to feel comfortable doing studies semi-consistently because the realities of middle-management, minimum wage, academia, and the military are even less what I’m about than being a guinea pig. I’ve written about the precarious nature of entrepreneurship and how inflated and rare that title applies in hoping to avoid faux-pride.

I’ve been overusing the term “cliche.” I feel it’s because while I’m constantly searching for new inspiration for “fixes” or ways to approach a cultural conversation, most people are addicted to the narrative. They have the same habits and excuses. They have the same hopelessness or debt. They’re simply rolling along “their” particular path because without the time or spirit to contemplate change, it doesn’t feel possible. It doesn’t feel real.

It seems like a “hate the sin, not the sinner” situation in my head. I don’t hate you for taking pride or deriving happiness from something I might personally think is kinda stupid. I hate that I don’t believe you have more than that. I think it’s a sin that social media defines us. I think it crept in and amplified an already toxic narrative of self-worth. I don’t want you kicking pebbles, pretending you moved mountains, when you hoped to conquer the moon. Suicide can take much longer than you think.

[491] Fear and Loathing

When do we get to stop being afraid?

I almost just want this to act like something of an exhaustive list. Why shouldn’t we be afraid? If you’re financially insecure, something as small as a flat tire can cripple you for months. Live in that place long enough and try not to think about getting hurt or sick. What if your life is at the apex of decisions you made long ago you didn’t realize were terrible? What if you never find the job? What if you never find the partner? What if the partner leaves? Isn’t it great that if things go well you’ll get to watch your family members die before you? 

What if you’re afraid of yourself? How are you going to get the depression and anxiety under control? You know how you are when you drink, what if you hurt someone? What if you think too long about why you drink? What if your friends or boss finds out you’re a fake? What if you can’t face how much your heart isn’t in it anymore? How can you deal with what people will think and say about you if you pursued what you wanted? How do you expect them to forgive you when you can’t forgive yourself? And what are you going to do about all this debt? 

Make the misstep of being a well-read person. Heard about our crumbling nuclear infrastructure? Read up lately on the long term fall-out of Fukushima or the Deep Horizon oil spill? Can you keep up with the number of going extinct species or what comparable state’s size describes the last chunk of ice that broke into the ocean? Think the government is spying on you? They are. Think we’re cultivating unrest and perpetuating terrorism? We are. Think your food and water is poison? It is. Are you afraid of Russia or ISIS and yet ignorant of how much more likely you are to die in a car crash? But at least the car isn’t actually trying to kill you, right? Unless you ask the quality control department at GM. 

Did you know that advocating for fascism from a national pulpit to an enraged and ignorant populace can literally have us replay instances from various Holocaust-adjacent scenarios? Did you know a Trump presidency is 6th on the highest rated threats to global economic security? How funny was his comment now? You were only laughing because you’re afraid though too, right? He can’t be serious...that’d be as insane as your support for him! And you’re not insane. Things aren’t your fault. You’re just scared and getting by. You could be randomly shot at like in Paris and Turkey! You could be on the next plane headed for a national icon! 

Let alone you just meditate on how quickly time seems to be going on and how you’re significantly more afraid of being alive and being full of shit than you are death. Gotta meet the celebrities, travel everywhere, compile the Instagram photos, put your heart and soul into a lost but meaningful cause. Why think about neglect, abuse, greed, and social security when you’re so fit and capable now? When your knee starts shaking another reason to be afraid. When your arm can’t raise as high you keep it securely wrapped around your stomach in an insecure hug. 

Infuse your being with your minority or sexual status. You have crazy people constantly targeting you as randomly as terrorists seem to. You have institutions who threaten to punish you more severely than one of the “normals.” You have an entire sex that can single-handedly kill you any time they get angry. You’re demonized daily for just being alive and then told things about how “great” the country once was when every “ism” was (still is) in state-sanctioned overdrive. You’re told a “just” god is inspiring language and legislation that will see your grandchildren eventually oppressed. 

And what do we do in response? 

As much as I reflexively feel like I don’t want to blame people, I feel forced to. We take pride in distracting ourselves. We chalk the real work and responsibility up to a few donations or volunteer hours here and there. Our job title more important than what it’s purported to do. We adopt every possible cliche about how life operates and how little our role in fixing it means. Or that role has to be “humble” and give you a quiet smile that let’s you carry on like you really care, don’t you, you do-gooder you. We point and blame and celebrate fringe details and ignore the all-encompassing smog suffocating reasonable paths forward. We pick and peck, looking for grains of food in a quicksand pit.

We distance ourselves. We smile too hard. We drink too much. We spend all day in front of our TVs or phones or desks as we project our lives “one day” against the office backdrop. We smugly shake our heads like “I could never” or we naively play with fire like all’s fair in this hopeless headless chicken race to the end. Could I possibly do or say anything as negative as the person who can’t figure out the difference between Trump and Sanders? I’m negative? How much do you have to hate your own sense of reasoning and how burdened by intrusive thoughts must you be to be suffering like that? How broken of a soul is willing to innocently inflict such impropriety upon their friends and family? How broken and negative do you have to be to entertain them in return? 

We campaign! We say “it gets better.” We say wait till you’re older and the bullies start to respect your affinity for science. Hell, they’re gonna be the one’s paying for your skills to be rolled into the next war machine. We proselytize for different gods and Eastern mysticism. Come into the moment and self-actualize. Find your direction and better digestion when your mind is at ease knowing it’s all about you and your ability to physically kiss your own ass. Know that god is love and this ephemeral ineffable thing is perfectly reasonable the more you stoke your sense of loss and helplessness. It’s not enough to have a scrapbook with personal photographs and cherished memories. You’re in marketing now. You have to be a cheerleader for your definitely happy life and pay deference to the struggle by lip service to how real it can feel but assure us it’s definitely still your bitch. 

Fear is a mental handicap to honesty, and honesty is the only way to learn how to not be afraid. Fear hijacks and makes excuses for your perspective. It literally lowers your capacity for intelligence. Fear beats your chest in the dark trying to chase away apparitions created by blood vessels racing across your eyes. Fear cripples humility and fairness. Fear taps into the life affirming response for why you’re here and another animal is not. In doing so, fear always feels justified. It always feels righteous. It’s maniacally invigorating because it seems to belay existence itself. 

Perhaps most disconcerting is the thought I have about someone reading this. An extremely loud and condescending “WE ALL KNOW THIS! WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER!?” 

I think we’re lying. I don’t think we know in the same way someone who experiences an epiphany and changes their behavior in an instant might. I think we pretend to know like we pretend to be friends and pretend to love our families. Because it’s a common narrative that brings order to the chaos. Because generations of people who were quicker to die with infinitely more accessible reasons to be afraid gave us stories and habits to pretend otherwise. As we currently exist on the precipice between human and whatever human plus Pentium chip will be called, we still refuse to do anything but play into the legacy of fearful thinking. We don’t demonize the universal roots of atrocity because they retain their utility in giving us every excuse to play our own selfish games with the mythical demons. 

Here though, I’m not going to tell you to stop being afraid. I’m not going to offer a fix. I’m just gonna say watch. It’s the thing we’re absolutely stuck doing no matter the amount of effort we put into fighting it. You can’t shut off your eyes. Watch Trump become president. Watch a bomb go off in a major U.S. city. Watch cities get swallowed. Watch your fellow ignorant monkeys adopt cartoonish faces as they bask in the glory of their demagogues. Watch every day as your reality and morality morph to excuse and accept the ethics of ignorance and fear. 

I’m negative? In trying to incorporate and work with the danger and fear, in mocking, in joking, in reminding, in building it into my proposed solutions and resources, in owning and tattooing the idea of it on my very being, I’m the negative one? We’ve been sold this mythology that evil is to be overcome like by becoming a champion of implicit quasi-religious morality. Like Jedi don’t turn to the dark side. Like angels don’t fall from heaven. 

Do you think my approach to fear is one of excuses, hand-holding, or avoidance? Because all I seem to ever see is people putting distance between me and their idolized version of what they consider constitutes life and their obligation to it. My biggest sins are what? Getting nit-picky in conversations? Getting a little too drunk and obscene sometimes? Trying to play the games offered to me despite a feeling of constant personal sacrifice to your own fears of starting a fight I wasn’t offering? 

The lack of perspective is our cultural sin. It’s our collective denial that turns non-issues into declarations about dramatic life-altering consequences, and genuine problems into cat toys we bat around the floor without irony. Kick up your feet and watch.

[490] The Secret

One of the loudest memories I have from growing up is how my mom expressed her anger about being lied to. It didn’t really matter if it was about who broke something or what our grades were like. I can’t think of a bigger switch that would set her off than her being lied to.

I can immediately speculate and say she was particularly sensitive to feelings of betrayal. I know her parents were kinda crazy and pathological in their own ways. I feel like I’ve taken her expression and morphed it into my own. I’m less concerned about people lying to me as I am them to themselves.

Each time I sit down to write I’m thinking about the various illusions I might be operating under. What pulled the wool over my eyes, and for how long? How long before I’m prompted to just stare into the mirror until I can’t recognize myself? Are my ideas about how to organize information better viable? A belief in them just a reassuring ounce of self-esteem and reason to get up. Am I getting too old or ugly or fat? My foray into eating better and treadmilling hopes to keep my ass far from having to dwell in that realm too sincerely.

Just take the idea of lying. I’ve gotten into semantic arguments about what does and doesn’t constitute a lie. Can you lie unknowingly? I think so. A colorblind person describing something as grey when it’s green is an innocent liar. The lie always has to remain relative to something. Back to my last blog, you’ll swear up and down you’re telling the truth of your perspective even if none of the facts are on your side.
I think we play a game with those facts. We remove them or hide them when they don’t fit our narrative. This speaks to one of the best reasons to write. When you haven’t gone far enough, someone can point it out. When you read it back later, you can feel where holes needed to be plugged.

I think about being smug. Try to fight it as I might, reading comment sections always leaves me feeling like I’m trapped in the world’s worst TV show bound by every cliche. Matter-of-fact language and style. “Deep” pronouncements of wisdom. In my day, as far as I know, anybody could see, if only they’d done this instead, mark my words…

They don’t even know they’re lying. They don’t think in terms of “this is the language I’m giving other people license to use.” When we adopt those sayings and habits, we’re stuck perpetually lying and living out the consequences.

And so how do you get better? To me, this. You keep the conversation going. You keep examining.You stop pretending. When I hated school, I have blogs that laid out explicitly why I hated school. Just because some academic or reporter cleans up their language and adds a few more citations didn’t mean I wasn’t speaking to important truths about pissing away time, energy, and money. When I thought I was in love, thank persistence I managed to write and read for as long as it took to stop looking like a tired teenage cliche.

If I had to think of some of the biggest lies I think people operate under, potentially, if they’re talked about at length, it would drain your will to live. This is how it’s related to me at least. I have friends who climb mountains. One slipped foot can mean any number of fairly disastrous situations. I have friends who work 80 hours a week. I know I’d want to kill myself if I spent that much of my 20s devoted to shit I cared nothing about. I know people who thought they were being smart staying in school, and the shadow of debt or the itchy reality of their program keeps them up at night.

I think I’ve managed to lie to myself about the power and impact of friends. I think I like distractions. I think I like conversations. I think when I don’t have people to lean on, I do an exceedingly good job of self-preserving and acting.

The thing is, I don’t need the extra flack. I don’t need your insecurities. I don’t need your judgments. I don’t need your words of encouragement. I don’t need your love, your couch, or your food. I like the positive things, but I don’t need them. I don’t need to feel anxious that I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t need to feel anxious that 9/10 times it’s me sending a message or text to usually be blown off. I don’t need to keep making excuses about how busy you are or how you get a pass because you’re “cool” and we have “history.” I don’t need entire diatribes trying to separate out different kinds of selfishness and pragmatism. I don’t need to resist the urge to play in the mud of baseless accusations and hurt feelings.

It occurs to me that I only ever really get along with the people who are willing to talk. And I don’t mean politely over drinks a few times a year. I mean all the time. I get along with people who are actively working through their thoughts and willing to take the time to consider or respond to all of yours. Everything else feels like cheap pleasantries. In reality, I could easily write a few pages a day, but even this feels quasi-lacking. I have a sense. I have a weak feeling and distaste I wanted to get across.

I think I should have been more realistic with myself about what the exercise of trying to maintain friends was going to entail. I should have considered blowback. As currently, I’m feeling cynically dead inside about the prospect of staying pleasant. I was told I was negative. I think what’s seeping into this blog is me wanting to express what I consider an actually true feeling and concept of negative. I’m pressed to prove you wrong by showing the reality of me negative. It’s in that moment of course you give your accuser the evidence they didn’t have and all the self-righteous indignation they can swallow.

Consider the following my perspective, and if you ever feel like playing my game of asking and searching until things line up, let me know.

I’ll live. Maybe like a wounded animal that narrowly escapes getting eaten, I’ll live, none the wiser to the brewing infection or coursing poison. If my facebook goes down to 0 friends and it’s just a swirl of terrible news and Onion titles, I’ll live. I’ll live if I lose all my money and all my shit. Hell, to a certain degree, that’ll feel like a fucking relief.

I think I’ve adopted a position of watching everyone constantly struggle. How often is it thrown out that life is a struggle? Doesn’t matter, I know why it’s a cliche, people do it to themselves. Yet, I watch people who don’t blame themselves for the right things. I watch them fake it, really hard. They fake enthusiasm, be it for a job or for their spouse, or for themselves and what they didn’t realize they don’t like anymore. And they fake it because they’re afraid of being “negative” like me.

But of course, they don’t know me. They don’t talk to me. They have memories of “Nick P!” at parties, or they caught a particular blog at a particular time. They’re polite when we hang out. They don’t trust me. Whether it’s to change or respond in some other way they’d consider acceptable. It’s like they’re trying to survive, while I know I will. Their struggle isn’t mine.

I think maybe this is why I get reactions I do about the capital T “Truth” pronouncements I make with regard to my life. My reality is something of a constant. Things happen around me. I mostly don’t have feelings about them or reactions to them. This makes people uncomfortable. How can I just delete people? What real world evidence besides a kind of secret unspoken pact was keeping us connected? They don’t struggle with defining friendship because it’s easier to both take it for granted and forget it when you can’t anymore.

It’s great offering your perspective right? Doesn’t matter if it’s correct, you can walk away from this thinking I care nothing about you. I’ll live. You can feel sympathy that I’m so lost, angry, and alone. I’ll roll my eyes and live. You can feel blank like “eh, hope the next one’s a little on the happier side.” But you’ll probably just continue to ignore what I talk about and why and we’ll keep “living the dream” because, you know, life, and shit.