[xx-16] Forensic Interloper

This is DCS wanting me to condense a 220 page book into ~1500 words of a reflection piece. This is part of my homework in order to become a forensic interviewer.

Section 1:

In reading the history of child welfare in “Child Welfare Values,” it is not immediately obvious how this would impact my approach to forensic interviewing. The sins or ignorance of the past is either repeated, or an attempt is made to correct practice after more is learned about developmental needs and the horror stories have amassed.

It is mildly interesting to know that it was back in the thirteenth century we saw the evolving of case law to start the intervention of overlords, or perhaps stated today as “Big Government,” the authority to intervene on behalf of children. In the course of my work as an assessor, I am often scolded by parents about “their rights” as it pertains to their children. They, seemingly, are unaware of the precedents established that distinguish “contingent” verses “absolute” rights.

What gives me pause most often is the presumption on behalf of the authors of the social worker's inherent understanding and acceptance of the premise that they can always act within the best interest of the child. This presumption so jarring after citing the inability of humanity to center on a perpetually true or agreed upon set of moral values. In perhaps a fit of blind irony, it goes on to attempt to prescribe normative practice, and continues to rely on the safe vagaries of broad language. For example, the system “must protect children,” “must be culturally competent,” and children should be placed in the “least restrictive, most home-like environment.”

Practically, protecting children is as varied as each child and their social or physical environment. It is a problem that cannot be nailed down, and infinitely begs to be refuted. We can and should try to protect children, but I suspect the insisted imperative emboldens a kind of naivety to regard one's own opinion or directive offered in service to the presumption as paramount. In establishing rapport and goals, it would help to define what that protection looks like for them, so they can understand what it is they are a part of.

To be “culturally competent” is nearly impossible as well. We acknowledge we have not grown up in someone else's home. The culture we are born into changes quickly, and we may no longer feel like we have a grasp of it. We have incredibly misunderstood and ineffective means by which to address biases and internalized fears regarding the out-group. For every one person to acknowledge their ignorance and display a willingness to change, you have the vast majority working with people in ways that make sense to them, and if that results in disproportionate statistical aberrations, none the wiser are the families being impacted until the discrepancy makes the news. At least when it comes to interviewing, one might be able to probe the child's perspective of what is normal for them.

Finally, the “least restrictive” environment that is “most home like” is an explicitly practical question that almost never gets achieved. We certify, or allow other agencies to certify, wholly inadequate foster homes. That “foster care drift” was as bad a problem 30 or more years ago as it is today is an abdication of duty. Maybe we need an entirely different take on where kids should be going when they get removed, and maybe if we are not prepared to address the larger holistic poverty and mental health needs, we need to act more as managers than broadly caricatured social workers. As such, managing expectations might illicit better responses from kids not being led to believe the picture is nicer than it is.

Section 2:

A comprehensive list of physical and behavioral indicators can aid in identifying injuries and shaping questions for children. In interviewing, I would take pains to include informed, not motivated, questions related to the suspected trauma. The hardest part it seems in being an interviewer will be to not take the generalized knowledge or observed tendencies, and read them into every interaction or overplay the explanatory power. The further I read into the section of the behaviors of children who are neglected, I recognize from my own childhood behavior, and can still feel the impact of in my adult life. To the degree it is related to “neglect,” per se, or personality traits that accompany many other facets of my behavior is not precisely clear even to me. Finding ways to allow the conversation to be enabling the child to explain and understand the situation for themselves seems key, as we literally already have the story written for them on how we suspect or would like to believe their situation is operating.

Despite tools such as the risk assessment, people are dynamic. The operative word in any explanation or scenario presented is “may.” Even with the presence of several indicators of abuse or neglect, the child may not view their experience as such. Children might not remember or be able to define what has happened to them, and use it to protect themselves from tarnishing the image they have of their parents. It becomes incumbent upon the interviewer to not just listen carefully to how the child describes their experience, but to probe the parents. Keeping in mind that trauma can go back through generations, it can lend itself to a better case plan and setting of goals to know if the current situation was brought on by an acutely stressful event, or a series of negligent learned behaviors.

It will always be important to keep in mind that just because a child may have experienced neglect or abuse, it does not mean it was with the deliberate maliciousness of the parent. Whether it be developmental disabilities or the consequences of poor information or stress, the goal is to figure out the underlying truth to the situation, not impede or unduly malign the process that could lead to rehabilitation. The working assumption is that families are best together and need to be supported with more or less intensive services. Identifying supports and character traits of different family members during an interview could lend itself to preservation or the formulation of a healthier environment.

Section 3:

An ongoing, and telling, experience from reading this book is noticing when it explicitly states the error we continue to make as an organization. New workers are routinely assigned to sex abuse allegations, and it is not always clear they have the knowledge on how to approach the situation or interview appropriately. Even relatively seasoned case managers can find themselves at the mercy or whim of their supervisor on what or whether to speak to a child about, particularly when that child's parent will not allow them to be forensically interviewed. In my own work, I have immediately paused and probed for ways to address the allegations so as not to impede progress on the investigation later. That the process to become forensically interview certified, or even take the classes, is so diffuse seems to lend itself as to why these errors perpetuate.

The hallmark example of the ambiguity embedded in humanity is illustrated by the authors. They state that many children exhibit emotional and behavioral indicators from sexual abuse, and in the next line, state they also exhibit many of those indicators without sexual abuse, neither the absence or presence can be relied upon to determine definitively one way or another. What we do, and this is a daily occurrence, is allow our faulty inductive biases to dictate how far we are going to pursue a case. We have literally created case managers who create cases in service to their aggressive bias feeding. How would we address this more appropriately? Perhaps in bypassing the confirmation trap by being proactive and rehearsed in our skepticism we could allow the infinite sea of gray as it pertains to human behavior to coalesce around tendencies which beget safer environments. We pillory clients for their “thinking errors.”

A section on guilt makes me think of court. Judges want you to have remorse and can lighten sentences when they believe you. Here, we are told guilt is not enough to control or prevent re-offending. What comes after and how do you measure the potential? Surely society does not colloquially consider the child molester ever capable of rehabilitation, and then maybe this is why the section is so short.

The authors tell us about the factors that might help mitigate the fallout of sexual abuse. Being positive and supported by caregivers and receiving therapeutic or medical help at the time of the abuse or disclosure are direct tangible steps. Indiana seems in crisis to find therapists on it's best day, leave aside ones who can navigate sexual abuse. “CPS” or “DCS” have such dramatic and damming connotation in the minds of the population that the idea we might be supportive or positive is immediately squashed. That we react, often chaotically, all but assures we will never build the kind of supportive or therapeutic culture that intelligently deals with these issues. That we do not believe we should even try, or prepare those on the front line in a timely and deliberate manner, would be an unforgivable sin were it not so intimately human.

[834] Imperfect Indirect Impulses

I've been waiting weeks to try and write this blog. I've finally come across the inspiration to start.

The theme is about being “infinitely indirect.” After watching Dave Chappelle talk about who he watched to try and be like during his Mark Twain prize acceptance speech it hit me. Even my heroes.

We start and continue to exist explicitly indirectly. The vast majority of what constitutes the universe isn't any one individual. You had no say in the circumstances of your parents meeting. You didn't pick your genes. You didn't choose your adverse or love-infused experiences. You're bombarded with forces we're only beginning to barely understand, and you produce feelings and words you think you have some control over, for reasons you can't quite explain, but the second you contemplate too deeply the abstractness of it all, you might plummet to fatalistic or nihilistic depths.

But we have these instincts. We see people we want to be more like. Whether it's how they look or how they sound. We know when we're pulled towards someone or something. One of the reasons I offer as to why I don't earnestly pursue stand-up is that I'm not convinced I have anything to say that's any funnier or any better than the people I idolize already, Chappelle among them. I want to be like Chappelle in other realms. I want the authentic power of my words to be felt. I want to make my friends laugh. I want the people around me to know it was them who shaped what I can or can't become as much as it is my dogged effort in perpetual spite of the world.

If you accept the indirectness of life, you can behave more confidently in ways that perhaps create the environments that can indirectly lend themselves to more of what you'd like to see. I have a very deliberate manner. It has lent itself to certain kinds of drama and conversation that people don't even try with me. This is the kind of world I want to see. I genuinely believe people want a kind of freedom of play and expression and risk taking that modern existence provides zero room for. Occupying a rent-free space where you can create per your capacity to budget has significantly more potential to spin-off into worlds of like-minded individuals and their ideas than squirreling away in my modest rental, albeit for all of the convenient perks.

Parents I think understand this implicitly when they watch their kids grow up. I can't tell you how often I step into a household where they've got extended social networks, a nice place, maybe an independent business and some money, and one of the kids is seemingly born ratchet. Or maybe they were adopted and their genes didn't get the “it's okay not to get pregnant early and do meth” message. You can choose to introduce the chaotic indirect forces of someone else into your life, but you can't erase them. You'll contend with every second you negotiate reality away from the direction you're earnestly pulled. You'll wear it on your face and posture. You'll see it in the hapless faces that surround you. You'll feel the weight of the bleak settings under which you've trapped yourself.

The directness comes from that conversation and understanding of yourself. You have to get your voice and influence under control. You have to pick the goal, not have it prescribed. You have to establish that you have a voice at all, then decide it's worth expressing, then fight for it with every ounce of care or bother you can discover. I think I can never improve the world more than to be me all over the place. Maybe I tone things up or down depending on the audience, but it still has to be me. Maybe it comes out violent and harsh on first or twelve passes, but it came out.

I think the indirect destruction of ourselves plays out with things like fascism. We play with the obnoxious absurdity at our peril. The vast majority doesn't want what's happening in politics and around the world environmentally. Except, indirectly, it's the only story we've celebrated. Limitless growth, greed, and indulgence. It's one thing to read in the newspaper the virtue of a particular industry or to hear on the news the various touted “values.” It's entirely another to embody it yourself. There have always been canaries and hippies in some form or another. I can swallow the buzzwords and image-insecurity of my State job, or I can push, every day, when they pretend “child safety” is synonymous with meandering meetings, arbitrary power pinches, burned out employees, and badgering people not in a place to recognize or change.

I write blogs attempting to directly dictate the endless mess of words and impressions and seeming coincidences that make the stars align. I also know just enough that I'll never know the real impact they have. It still brings me joy to recall the drunk friends who said they read me, but will never say anything in the comments. It confirms there's indirect air swirling. It means my voice was worth tuning into in spite of so much else to pay attention to. When I let these go into the wild, like a child, they may end up dead in a drunk car crash, or they may provide the same kind of launch point that the people I admire inspire in me. But no matter what, it's okay, as long as it's exactly as I say it to the degree I attempt to understand it. I'm listening for the next line like I find my best joke material in the moment.

It's incredible to think that the whole world passes through you. Part of my undying confidence is a deep appreciation for that which I consider as fact. That we've conjured the internet is our best stab at appreciating the extent of the phenomenon. No matter who you are or what you're doing, you can instantly be an interpreted version of that for the entire world. How vital does it become to do as best you can? How important is mere honesty then? We look for heroes and representations because our best impulses have to be dug out and fought for. The general human disposition tilted towards remembering pain and experiencing suffering hardest is still at play. You can be someone's hero and fight. Everything literally dies without the fight.

I think we get deceived by the idea that things have to be “perfect” or unimpeachably moral. That's not honest. Even and especially your gods don't operate under that projection. The virtue signaling exhausts me. The cancel culture got very sick very quick. They started going after jokers and the story tellers and things snapped back hard, neatly glossing over any honest reflection on the impact or motivation of the aggrieved or targeted. I think we got incredibly lost in the search for an honest voice and representation, so we gave ourselves a stark-raving lunatic to beat us over the head until the fear of death pushed things into alignment. I think the people who defend the wildly irresponsible means we landed on for psychological course correction are those perpetually unable to find that voice and personal responsibility. Maybe they're broken and traumatized. Maybe they're just cunts.

The self-destructive impulse is alive and well in drinking and smoking. It's self-deprecation and overbearing power trips. It's the low hum of anxiety no matter how far you move in the direction you're being pulled. This is why we can't have nice things! You need some of that to dream bigger and push yourself, but anymore if you're not constantly distracted or flooding the mental memesphere, I don't think you know what's sitting there if all else was left alone. I don't think the power is appreciated. I don't think the capacity for change feels like it can voice the nature of its choices to hopefully create a world for the people who will never meet them but for what they left behind that should be worth finding. I don't know who built the roads or any of the technology I'm using to “be me” for the whole world. I do know I want to ensure whoever else might exist gets the same chance as I did. When did we lose that impulse? Who believes we should bear children into incoherent fear and death? We torture children like so many tortured children.

[833] Snip It Good

I want to talk about an incident from my childhood that I know I've brought up before and referenced plenty, but don't know that I've dug out all there is to say about it. I've found myself thinking about it a lot recently, I don't know if goaded by my slurry of thoughts while sick, or just because I'm starting to play my psychological life a little fast and loose with my presumed future financial security.

I'm watching A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. It opens panning in on a picture of a main character which Mr. Rogers says is having a hard time forgiving someone who hurt him. The physical mark on the main character's face not the source of inflicted pain.

If you don't know, because it's one of my favorite stories, when I was a child my mom made me pick out one of my stuffed animals for her to gut and cut up. I believe I had accidentally broken something of hers, and it was retaliation. I remember being filled with dread, thinking it unbelievable. I remember genuinely loving each of them, piling them on to sleep with every night. I remember them as friends, from the oldest given to me by my grandma, to the new ones we might've won in a game.

I remember picking up and putting down my friends, trying to weigh what they meant to me. I settled on my most recent bear won from the claw machine at Fudruckers. We had the least history. Through heaving hollowed-out pleas, screams, and tears I begged her not to. I fell to my knees. She chopped off a paw. I beat the floor. She shoved scissors into its stomach.

I literally can't genuinely put myself back there without getting misted, every single time. It's the kind of “go there” place an actor might pick to sell a sad scene. It works. She regularly hit us with different things, manifesting as my flinch response until college. She'd scream and yell and pile on chores. But having me pick out a friend switched something off in me. It made me a murderer. It made me preside over life and death, and then to be forced to carry on like it was just desserts, eye for an eye, her thing therefore my “thing.”

In my adult life I've watched this “offness” manifest as a contradictory set of behaviors. I hated being touched, when it's all I want to do to be cuddled up or hugging. Comforting touch was so often betrayed, and besides, the things you're snuggled against can get torn to shreds. My relationships seemed rooted in that “useful thing” place. If you weren't good for something, you didn't exist. If I felt something for you, it was an irrational inability to cope with a flood of anger or otherwise. I was nowhere near in control. It's not that every good feeling or sense of care and belonging I experienced was overturned, but they could never settle into the same place. There was always the very real sense that it meant absolutely nothing.

This may sound unfair to the people who genuinely love me, but the thing about trauma is you can't really help it. You can work your trauma into a new scheme. You can teach your trauma to follow a different habit pattern. You can't make your trauma alter your feeling of it. I'm not going to regard the memory joyously one day. I'm not going to get back the years of feeling off and broken.

Today, thankfully after many years of writing, I incorporate my worst and most problematic senses about myself into a kind of instruction manual. (Arguably the only manual I bother to read.) I know you can read dozens of books on psychology and piece together the different slices of your mother's narcissistic and own poorly endured traumatic childhood. I can know which parts of the brain degrade so you become a batshit ideologue and the infinite ignorance that is being human which contributes to far greater tragedies than a lost bear. None of it contributes to my impulse to “forgive.”

I'm still a murderer. I didn't learn that through deep consideration in my freshman psychology class talking about the brain differences between personality types or those with psychopathic tendencies. I learned it like a child given a gun and told to point it at his family. It speaks to why I confidently say I'm likely the craziest, meanest, or some other extreme-est kind of character in a room. I know what's underneath as I'm telling a fun story, being hilarious, or otherwise mimicking all of the human things that make me get along in the world. I still feel, it's just “now,” when I think it can be trusted, before it flows over the generally cold indifference I hold for nearly everything and everyone when the circumstances call for it.

It's why when I designated “real friends” it was worth the navigating if that was a wise thing to do. The purpose was to help thrust me away from that, designate the examples I'd want any future friends to live by. I didn't take it for granted that everything was superficiality and incidental time spent in close proximity. It was significantly more idealism than naivety, as I already knew the cold and distance, I just thought if given the choice people would choose what I was after. I suppose when they get disgusted or complacent enough, they do.

It's why I'm steadfast in my posture regarding “I don't really change” as the world finds its reasons to be pissed off at me and keeps its distance. You know who else doesn't really change? My dad. He's there for me like I want to be there for people. I always refer to the “friends that stick around” who continue to keep an eye on me or like a post from time to time. Something there hasn't changed between us. Whatever that is, it's the pulse that I ride into all my future dreams about who I'm surrounded by or why I'd bother to create. You don't reduce yourselves to so many “things” as interchangeable space and time fillers. The murderer in you, I suspect, sees the murderer in me, and doesn't give me shit about it.

Forgiveness, as I've said in the past, seemed always about forgiving yourself. A self-serving piety for placating over obsessive thoughts that are causing you harm. Do I forgive my traumatized brain? Do I look every insincere instance from my past with some wizened sense about not knowing any better? No, not really. I learned that I could make that choice, and thus all choices, and never let the lesson take root. I abused my shitty relationship with my mom to drum up a lot of other antagonistic and shitty relationships with other people. I'm still a genuinely mean and shitty person just begging for the proper circumstances and excuses to be anything besides the soft-spoken mumbler walking you through your trash-person drama.

My push for wanting “the world” is about hopefully shaping it into something that doesn't produce the underlying pathology that is me. I want there to be “people with a temper” doing like Mr. Rogers and practicing patience and understanding, not “people waiting for a reason to kill you” barely hanging on but for blessed exhaustion and endless distractions. I want people who see the best in everyone, not just their little selfish cohort, after being empowered to recognize their place in concert instead of opposition. I want to subvert the naked animal that tears each other apart. Unrealistic? Probably. But I wish I could carry on without always thinking I have some atrocity to account for, some endeavor that needs to transcend me.

I've always been a draw to the depressed kids. I've always played therapist. I've maintained a kind of fervent or manic optimism fueled by the overwhelming darkness of my jokes and perspective. I've been lucky to have my brain motivated more to dig than destroy. I've been lucky to catch glances and good genes. To consider the world a swirling ball of people like me in worse circumstances is to not have to imagine much beyond what we're currently doing to ourselves. To be able to inspire in spite of that, to be able to create something that lasts longer, yells louder, and beats to death that which actually deserves it is an ultimate game. It's one I don't think you can play in the confines of what's seemingly normal or stable. I still play therapist. I still hold the candle for those who've couched their depression in memes and #lifegoals check boxes.

Maybe I've been too hard on my kid self. Maybe the only reason I have who I have in my life right now is the result of doing the best with the tools I had at the time. Maybe my construct-o-house, collapsing pool hole, and boundless puppy-esc enthusiasm are a testament to the method I've deigned as the madness required for moving forward.

[832] Pooled

I hate getting sick. It's something that's both inevitable, and for me, seemingly intolerable. It's one thing to feel weak or helpless, and another to be thrust into a pool that drowns you in thoughts and feelings about how weak and helpless you are. It's realizing how little certain thoughts matter to me or how willing I am to start negotiating the terms of my surrender. Something like a sore throat is the nagging cat scratching at every swallow, erasing the pleasure of taste. A head pounding says sit, stand, or lay down, it's no matter it will pull on the muscles around your brain and eyes until you can't see or think.

In truth, it's hard for me to piece together what to make of my “thoughts” when I'm severely ill. It's one long dream-like state of delirious pain, reacting to the chills or sweating per my body aches and heaves. I really wanted help. At bottom, just someone to like bear witness that I wasn't over or under reacting to what was happening. You don't really know how bad you have it, and sometimes until it's too late to do anything. Every scowl and laughable question about, “Who dies from the flu?” becomes less funny. Not that I have more evidence than not to suggest I was about to die, but the question rings louder the more isolated and without the necessary resources you are.

Sickness is memorable for me. I was thinking about what makes something memorable, and the severity of the change in my disposition certainly counts. I know the “differentness” of not eating for several days at a time. I know how foreign it feels to not be able to put two thoughts together for longer than snapshots of time. I know how empty and hopeless and desperate I am to just black out until it's all over. The physical nature of it sucks enough, but the mental is what elevates it to the next level. Who am I when nothing matters but the writhing and rocking of my legs or emptying my body of every last drop of bile? Where do you want to go but down when you can't see or hold yourself up straight?

And then how do we bother to understand or share sickness? In truth, I don't get sick often beyond annoying colds or tension headaches. The big ones stand out for their ability to completely incapacitate save a fledgling ability to drag myself to the bathroom. Our first instinct is to offer “help” and also simultaneously be a little suspicious, no? How sick is sick? Too sick to work? How do you have to sell and explain yourself so you're not punished on top of being sick for not living up to your responsibilities? How desperate and persuasive do you have to be to be accepted back into the ranks after being such a burden to your cohort or family? I think this is a fairly unique American instinct.

In any event, even while I consider myself on a path to be able to squirrel away the resources to be able to account for my inevitable sickness, universal healthcare or not, there's still all the time in between. There's still the injuries I'm begging for and car accidents don't stop just because you had one recently. The same afternoon I got a hole dug for a pool, I went from perfectly healthy, to exploding in a few hours. Which aspect of my day will feel the most memorable? The excitement at the prospect of a future swim spot, or the drama and pain? I think they'll be about equal. I think they'll be equal because of the irony underlying how life works. You have to work and affirm and overcome to match the default pain and suffering that comes with existing at all. That's what makes it bearable and makes you want to keep living when you've lost all direction and hope.

When I started to feel like my shit was coming back together, figuratively and literally, I wanted to get the laundry done, get my car dropped off to be worked on, and compile the medicine I'd hopefully have on hand in case the next disaster strikes. Whatever hell you're experiencing doesn't have to be the end of the story or definitive in any way beyond how it's made you better prepared or appreciative of the health or security you're currently enjoying. For as often as life seems it's trying to humble me lately, I keep insisting I couldn't really be sitting any prettier than if I were able to layabout and arbitrarily invest unlimited time and money.

I guess there's also the sense that say I did randomly die, it would have been on the day I moved forward with another thing I said I wanted to do, have a pool, and I'll be dammed if there isn't a gaping hole in the ground not 30 feet from me. I need shows of good faith from myself as much or moreso than I do from others. You can't say I'm not trying, even if it looks less prepared or pretty than you imagine the process should take. If all I know how to do is move in the world one expenditure at a time (given the frivolity of the hearts and minds approach), well, feel free to stop in and stare at the latest attraction.

I still don't feel 100%. I don't feel “bad,” but I feel like modest effort beyond basic ambling from one place to the next is going to provoke the kind of huffing carrying my laundry yesterday did. My mouth hasn't returned to normal; it's got that dry opaque “medicine feel” like it's been hollowed out and numb waiting for permission to be a thing my brain can ignore until it's been bitten. My day is flirting with feeling like a “waste,” which again testifies to how suspiciously I/we might think about recuperating and rest. I'm hoping any remote insight or subconscious shift that might've taken place manifests over the next few weeks. It was literally impossible to string together thoughts that weren't basic survival/cleanliness instincts, but I distinctly remember how little a shit I gave about topics that did pass through, if not what those topics were explicitly.

[831] Muddy Buddy

I haven't written in a bit. I suspect it's because things have been going basically well. The break from work and time spent with my girl certainly aren't things to bitch about. The general propensity I maintain that forgets sources of income and assumes more in losses than feels necessary in the moment has me believing I'll be entering a high-intensity fugue state in a few short weeks as I compile tools and resources. I'm beginning to feel “powerful” again. When things happen to me, they feel manageable. When I'm in an uncomfortable setting, I can play along. When I've campaigned a little too hard for the positivity, we can stand back in awe that I actually bothered to campaign and my instinct wasn't to relay ironic mockery for the modest defeat.

I've said a few times that I believe I'll be insufferable when I actually get going. When I can realize the change I want to see, have it paid for if not completed, secured the spot, learned the next step, or otherwise seem to have discovered a way to enable the pieces to move, that's all I want to do. I want to do it because I still suspect life doesn't give a shit about what I want to do and will try to cause my car to break down in an expensive way before I get it paid for. I think life will try to make sure some unforeseen responsibility is foisted upon my shoulders when it sees I have nothing else to assert in its smirking face. I think striking quickly is often as important as striking wisely when the ongoing task is more fundamental than the infinite variable details that will need smoothed out regardless.

I'm a little concerned about returning to that level of intensity and expectation. Seriously, what happens when I've literally paid my bills in advance, for years, and every red cent I can use to get in trouble? I've never had that. How much more impatient am I going to get with the bullshit at work if I've already budgeted buying and building another spot in California? What happens if I use my refund check and can manage to get enough solar power and batteries to get off-grid, reducing my obligations even further? [1/25/20 idiot] I've had all the time in the world, in a sense, in the past. I'm confident I can occupy it, but what am I going to make of a disposition shift and that isn't “practically sitting pretty” so I can pay the bills or get out of debt?

Something on my truck broke and is now protruding through the bed. I bought 800 pounds of soil to aide in driving when the snowstorm hit. It helped. Apparently driving around with that much weight just generally has contributed to an issue that I'm sure won't be as cheap to repair as I'd like it to be. It's a great example of life not giving a shit and the infinite things you'll overlook while puffing what little chest you can. It's indicative of why we need societies and backups and reliable people and tools to insure against that infinite see of destruction. It's goading the piece of my life puzzle I'm most excited about addressing. It's being the change I wish to see in the world.

That thought has contributed to the feeling powerful. You can't change people, but you can condition them. You can shame them. You can make them fit a comfortable place for you, if not for them. I don't need help from people who can't or won't. I won't share enough articles, argue brilliantly, or vote my way through humanity's innate fascism. I have to design and live like I know what you are, accept where you are, and render you as a cog in my machine, or helpless in the face of my growing edifice. There is no “winning,” so to speak, my game, but for life manifesting in the ways only I am capable of designing and observing a certain way. That's the importance of preserving your individual voice and reinforcing whatever it is you have to say. People who burn candles alone in the street for peace don't want to the world to change them, they don't believe the candle stops bullets.

The work of affirmation is complicated. Like most things, it can look like anything else. “Jews will not replace us!” What? Insane insecure ramblings of idiots certainly looking like they're asserting something. The powerful truth of what you really believe in is what takes hold. Scapegoating, bullying, and fear-mongering are their gods, not their scrupulous invectives and poignant chants. To the degree you answer with what you actually believe and understand about the real consequences determines who wins. It determines who wins forever, every day. I flick off the Trump flag house on my way to work every morning because fuck that.

I guess I'm curious about when or whether you feel powerful. It came up again that someone in my life pointed out that my affirmation and explanation of my plans and the ways in which I think I can cultivate society sounded condescending. I often need to work on my verbal delivery, but I tried to reassure that I don't really go to that excited explanatory place with people I don't feel like I'm conspiring with. If you're still reading me or waiting for things to exponentiate, I hope you never feel like I'm talking down to you. I'm often talking from a place of desperate loneliness and needling anxiety about the time it's taken to inch forward. It's frustrating how many people “get it,” and how many ways it becomes or feels impossible to live like we do. I consider you co-conspirators, knights of the round, or ladies-in-waiting poised to slash the throats of their particular oppressors and their pageantry.

It's a small club, and I don't make the rules for how you're going to react. Maybe that's what I'm worried about. I can be all crazy me in my own way and own time, but what happens when I make the call and it's silent on the other end of the line? Back to forlorn consideration of cold-calling and door knocking? Stewing with my toys? Coming back to these lines, commas in the bank, a world of creation outside my door, and a laundry list of those I've alienated and moved-on from? I have to consider it at least. I think I got at least one or two that'll stick it out.

[830] Prō-vidē-re

I'm super sleepy and full. I've had nothing but a series of scattered lines and thoughts I considered for blog titles flitting about my head. I'm not sure how I'm oriented lately, and I think I need a meandering meditation.

Sometimes I get the weirdest songs stuck in my head. I don't know what they're associated with. I couldn't just start singing them unless they were already playing up there and I happened to notice. It'll be the chorus to some 90s pop song that I'd never hear but for the themed bar night I might attend. Worse than that will be commercial jingles or show intros of things I've barely or never watched. It seems explicitly random.

“Random” is something I think a lot about. I find the more untenable the notion of random becomes, you're willing to swallow increasing piles of bullshit in order to piece together a story. I could tell you explicitly, a dozen times, that each line in this blog will be the random array of noises clunking around in my head, and if you found a common theme by the end, you'd rather consider me “deep” or “insightful” than both of us almost perfectly arbitrary.

I watched a pseudo-science “documentary” that talked about the connectedness of all things. “Quantum” is thrown around a lot, as well as a special dignity to the emptiness we're all mostly made of. I'm finally experienced enough in my media watching that I can see the dozen signals in something that's bullshit before I get to the end. (I still apparently fall for IT test scams at work though). The lone scientist who claims to have unified physics who can't get a single colleague to appear in his film is a solid indication. Using the words “sacred geometry” anywhere will tell you too.

I've certainly contemplated the degree of my feeling connected or not and its impact on my behavior. Basically, I don't feel it. I know intellectually I am connected, but that connection is shaped by the “honest” ways in which we can connect our shared experiences. This is the whole complicated mess of the appropriate use of language and degree or capacity in which one can or should bother to infer anything for which they can't conceive in themselves. I want to believe my starkness or frankness is the right kind of “powerful honesty” that lends itself to the world getting better organized, but I don't feel it reciprocated. I don't experience the gain in any form but the story I tell myself and occasional “I appreciate that” sentiment from someone who's probably lying. I can put my house together, mental or physical, slowly, one brick at a time, functionally alone. (Shout out to my followers!)

I've been to the gym a fair amount recently. The majority of each week in fact. I'm the good kind of sore. For as on-again off-again I've been about the gym, I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering now. Maybe I just have a super in-shape girlfriend I don't want to be too fat for? Maybe I'm subconsciously thinking it'll only be for the 3 months I've signed away to history where, at the end I'll be out of debt and beginning my adventures in hood-rich status? I like pretending that every day, no matter how light the workout, I've lost weight or trimmed an area or two. I like not huffing and puffing and the mental clarity to juggle the different obligations I have to different families. I dislike the smell and general state of the gym locker room.

I was told I didn't have the minimum experience required for the job I applied for. I knew that going in. On paper, I'm a vagabond. In life, I've managed more people and disparate variables than the jackabouts who've climbed the corporate ladder for 25 years mostly with the strategy of explicitly not managing people. I didn't want the job. I want the license or requisite power to be of meaningful consequence in a medium chosen for its utility more than any ideal.

It's the next night and I've picked this back up.

It's suitable that I should carry on and get distracted while revising a line about not connecting only to be met with a facebook conversation yesterday. Today was very flowy. I had achievable goals, just hard enough, that occupied a lot of time, and it's 10:09, I'm home, tucked into my chair, and looking forward to playing with my new toys.

This “vibe” for the last two weeks has been a sort of “full void” so described in Waking Life. I swallowed the idea that I'd be “freer” in two months, and each day has kind of connected in a way that's made sense. I haven't even considered grinding my teeth, I'm allowing for the plethora of small disappointments I have with people brush off like they're only as good as those examples, and I'm stoking the kind of flame that had me burning to do everything every day with the due focus and enthusiasm. It's still going to take some doing, but I felt at home several times today. Out in the cold picking apart a scrap wood pile, getting in a few episodes of One Piece while doing the laundry, and even now, doing what I primarily do at home in sitting and staring at the screens, feels more complete.

Money is a huge component. I feel free when I can chase my energy and ideas, and if I can't sink that $300 into the right tools, I feed on myself. Knowing that functionally, 3.1 or 4.2 checks are going to register the same to my disposition but for how the intervening time is being occupied has me feeling less “hunker down and wait for crisis” and more “gotta google how to...because I'm starting tomorrow.” It's hard to really stress the importance of being able to smooth over your existence with money. I haven't met a single family with their dozen relatives all itching to call the DCS hotline on them I'd rather trade places with when they're poor and miserable.

I like looking down on people. I was asked why I make a point of speaking to when people guess that I'm in my 20s. I like to believe it's an extension of how I approach life (both my parents were routinely told they looked a lot younger than their ages, so, you know everything in this paragraph will be bullshit.) But, my “stress” is a different thing than for most people. I'm not worried my kids are going to die, or have the same weight of bills. I try my best to forget “my families” as quick as I enter their lives. I like to think that people envy my general disposition, begrudging gym body, or the life I've tried to set up for myself after picking “easy” paths in that they were already laid out. I also don't think anyone gives a shit about my life lol.

I've watched chunks of the documentary Shoah at the gym over the last couple weeks. The pain or annoying parts of going to the gym don't really register when you're paying attention to the details offered regarding “the final solution.” Yeah, the shower seems a touch dirty...incoming imagery of bodies piled and falling through gas chamber doors! Life is as much that casual horror as it is the motivated self-serving story of your place relative to all others. Feeling little enough to keep on carrying on is different from feeling so small that you must destroy everything around you.

Arguably, that's what I see. People tearing each other down, not because they just have fun with it and it's part of what I consider my broad and unyielding parody on life, but because they're helpless. They're looking for the excuse to make a mess. I recognize in myself when that gets triggered, perhaps after a giant loss of respect for something, but I don't operate on that level at bottom or perpetually. What people who don't have the naked problem of generalized poverty and unalleviated trauma are slow to realize is how often they share the language of excuses and passing of responsibility. Like, fascism is winning, and not because it's the majority opinion, just the majority dishonest disposition.

That begs another exploration of “truth.” I'm still bothered by the idea of “personal truth.” What's personally true for me is the smallest selfish conception of how I keep the worst things about me at bay. It's not a guide to enlightenment or something worth being proud of. I find the regular world operates explicitly on personal truths. That's how you can offer invitations to people you don't want to show up. That's how you can pray instead of buckle down. That's how you can have the same water-cooler conversations every day. That's how the fiction of your ability to care or lead manifests as the language of other superficial actors and you advance in the game of basic bitch business as usual.

“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded”

Bullshit. At least, in the regular world it's bullshit. The regular world is about placating over those demands. If I demanded you live more sustainably, more humbly, and with an eye on a prize that pushed your knowledge and or ability to tolerate, after you move past confusion or laughter, you'd leave me alone to trod down your own path. We're in our 30s. We've been given the keys to the castle, and so far the demands are proving too much and we're watching it burn. We were given degrees, friendships, families with solid amounts of money, and we speak to each other occasionally in text or through likes. We bury ourselves in personal gratification. My game has basically degraded to a kind of pissing match to bury myself further and faster than you, and probably speaks to why it's taken me so long to find a path resembling the worthwhile expenditure of that much energy or belief in anything. I can barely remember the last time I met someone with a vocalized goal they actually then began to pursue.

I like to think I recognize that I've been given the world. I'm cush as fuck. I'm pretentious in ways pretty people can't fathom. I look for messes to introduce myself into, and casually approach taking things over because I literally cannot find people who, in their own fucking worlds, want the responsibility of speaking up or being blamed. In what universe am I applying to head a local office State agency? Your pathetic one.

I have been wondering what's underneath and why I wanted to stroll through. I found the anger. There's always an exasperated navel-gazing screamer in my chest who remains ironically clueless the tragedy he's watched played out in a familiar way. “Why don't they just do better!? Why don't they try!?” Maybe that's why I've managed to find my gym vibe and extra energy. Maybe I've finally been able to put that nascent regard for people as people back into the black box I'd rather beat them to death with, and it behooves me to again stop pretending there's any room for me and my manner with regard to them. Yes, they're too fat and lazy, stop inviting them and you'll stop empathizing and acting like them. Yes, they're too stupid or busy, get an insane jump on a dozen projects, and be confident in your ability to navigate them alone, not dejected like them who said “if only,” were given it, and then receded. Yes, people are trash, and the name of a sustainable life is recycling, not singing along with Oscar.

[829] Crazy-Z-Bich

If I'm going to remain stuck in the moment, I might as well write about it. Let's start easy.

There's different kinds of liars. I tell people often that mostly, my job is to get lied to. It sounds weird, but it's true. My job is not to “ensure safety” for children. My job is to ask questions, get lied to, and then see how often I can prove those lies and combine them with fancy inflammatory words to get you caught up in the State.

Today I was lied to by a most insidious type. There's the general pieces of shit who fluidly flow from one nonsense lie to another, often in the same breath, and you can't shut them up. They're like a waterfall of bullshit, and everyone involved, unless you're their case manager, learns to let it wash over them as streams of bullshit will. The type that lied to me is what I consider a cancerous cousin of this type. The stream of consciousness bullshitter is warped in a pitiful manner. The cancerous cousin is malicious.

This kind of liar wants to see you dance. “I CAN'T MEET! MY SCHEDULE IS SOOOOO BUSY!” Always exasperated and insistent. This liar will tell you they couldn't be bothered to answer you for over a week, send you a text before the ghosting suggesting good will for the holiday, and then throw their own cancellation of plans in your face. This person will knowingly tell you “yes,” anticipating the next minute’s “no” to the same question, after you've pulled out the form, and after they've reiterated their “very serious” concern about signing anything.

This person feels like they need to attack, but they're broken, so the attack is broken. They won't lash out, because they don't really believe in anything. They have to act dumber than they are, put up walls not because they feel defensive, but because they're angry the world might ever direct its attention at them for any reason, let alone the genuinely concerning ones. I realized as I was getting heated twice with this kind of person, there's something special about how fucked they are and what it speaks to in me.

I try incredibly hard to keep it together. I'm a short fuse when you hit the right buttons. It's literally a categorized character type and nothing special, but it's something to be aware of. Not much will set me off, like it takes straight up violence most often, and even then it's a toss up. More often than I'd like, I'll flare up when it comes to how we're approaching the “truth.” I get lied to all day every day, why was her approach so unsettling? Different quasi-parallel circumstance that comes to mind: why did I get snappy at my girl when she kind of dismissively was writing off something I was saying about myself and perspective?

I want to be recognized for how much it's taken to get to be who I am. I want to be seen for all of the words and effort and pulling-it-together after the teeth grinding and panic and incredible amount of rage gets distracted by a cheeseburger. To disingenuously play with that isn't just rude or bitchy, you're fucking with my functioning foundation for fucking with life. I can recognize a scared bitch, an angry cunt, a stupid fuck, the insecure, defensive, sad, or a wanna-be “crazy.” But what do you make of a chaotic condescending malicious piece of trash who, so ashamed of themselves think it best to, not cope, not implode, or not speak with humility, but turn on the very concept of accountability or those who represent reasonable caution and concern?

It's a different, extra shitty animal. They aren't looking for sympathy for their poverty or past. They are daring you to acknowledge their depravity at any moment so they can invite you into it. I found myself relatively speechless because every word becomes an opportunity to be squeezed beyond comprehension. I meet a lot of pieces of shit, but when they go above and beyond, it's absolutely necessary to parse out their demon. You gotta know what you're fucking with and who's trying to fuck back.

[828] No Solution

This promises to be extra mundane and redundant. I wouldn't read it.

For quite some time, I've described variations on my “perfect day.” It's the flow from one form of indulgence to the next, be it work I consider meaningful, or the time and mental space to engage in something as deeply as it requires. I don't want to casually know my instruments, I want to play the most difficult riffs. When I was able to do so, I was spending minimum 8 hours a day. When you read a great work, you need time to put it down and pick it back up again while retaining the thoughts it conjured. When you go to build, you need to strike while the weather and help are on hand, so as not to continually push things back into the “forever one day” pile.

To be clear, I think it is impossible to achieve this flow with any degree of “regular work.” I think binding yourself to the construct of 9-to-5 is simply not how conscious experience functions. I get inspired at night. I'm awake at night. I carry a lot of the drama and nonsense, not so much in the form of internalizing it, but in that I have mirror-neurons, of my day-to-day. My experience is highjacked and apologized for. It's my job to “cope” and exhibit the mature detached stoicism to the degree I'm able. While you're working on all that, you're not dreaming about the circle of fifths.

I return often to my sense of “pragmatism.” I'm a normal kid brought up in a normal way. My deviations have come at great struggle and sacrifice. I've garnered a degree of anxiety and weird personality things that come along with feeling like the loneliest person on the planet. I'm reciting “in 3 months, in 6 paychecks, in just a few more hours” constantly. Like in 3 months I'll have a giant home edition and not be wishing for the space to have ten thousand more books and a shipping line.
You always need that thing to strive for. There always has to be more to accomplish. This is not a kind of personality flaw as it's sometimes described. There's “workaholics” who are doing everything in their power to remove themselves from otherwise psychological torture, and there's people perpetually able to recognize and consider what more can be contributed to the suring-up of the bases at-large and interpersonally.

I don't know if it's been a terribly longstanding feeling, but I feel like I'm being left behind. This sounds weird. By who? By what? I think time more broadly? It's still angsty 15-year old me writing with barely improved sentence structure and grammar. I'm still not a millionaire. I still don't have my working culture meant to churn out the kind of example I thought was as desperately required then as it is now. I've been idling in the parking lot. I've been paying homage to the “used to” in blogs. I'm not forcefully transcribing the anxiety of not feeling useful or worthwhile.

Has tempered enthusiasm won? Have I learned patience? Am I broken, and barley able to conceive of myself as such but through a depression-adjacent fog? That seems more than over-selling it. While there's something to be said of little things you might do to speak to the whole adding up over time, I'm the type that requires something big. I need to see the earth move. I need to feel the instant relief of the drain coming unclogged. Little things feel like a mockery. Even a shake up in your disposition. If I got the chance to draw out those reluctantly accepting faces during an interview to run the show at work, that might last me a week in commentary and speculation alone.

Not too long ago I wished I could fast-forward time. A day job will do that. The next 3 months will be over tomorrow and be the longest period of my life. The last year and a half has felt like an eternity. Having debt will add to the weight. Every day for 3 months I have to watch myself creep closer to the big shifts I might start to be able to make. Not talk about paying the bills a year in advance, have it done, and breath in that moment...every day...for the next year. Load my car up with the wood for my home addition. Click order on a boat-load of crap from Amazon. Buy up lot after lot of books and follow in the first footsteps of Amazon.

I really want another job. I don't just want to replace the one I have (moreso, I'd rather improve the one I have) I want to show that I've set another target that I'm capable of blowing out of the water. 3 months? Why not a month and a half? Why not work that job and make it to the gym, and figure out an eating situation that doesn't suggest low-key decadence? The will is definitely still there, but the bump against reality, the time constraint, and mental exhaustion cannot be denied. I did not respect them as variables in my vision of the future. I never got old or tied to this much crap I don't care about in the visions.

The trap then really is debt. I've been poor. Poor you can try to play things in the short term. Debt means someone's coming after you in a more aggressive way. Without debt, I could do that nonsense part-time thing, eat light, and poke my head into things in a more free to read and inquire sort of way. I don't need money to disassemble the broken truck engine. I'd barely need money to drive around picking up scrap metal in the truck. Hell, I was literally paying my rent donating plasma. I need to not get trapped. It seems like leeway, but it's truly a psychological trap. If I'm not actively working on or with whatever the reason I've gone into debt, it's a net psychological loss.

So some of the stuck is circumstantially justified. I am stuck paying off debt. That's 3 months of this job no matter what, or stuck that much longer if I quit or get fired for something dumb. As long as that remains the main focus, spending money here and there for progress on other things perpetuates the stuckness. Do I want that much more work done on the bathroom right now? It's caused me nothing but strife, so is hot water really worth feeling stuck for three and a half months? Not really. So I should accept my frozen ass and be thankful the toilet still basically flushes, and keep showering at Planet Fitness. I'm not obligated to make my builder guy feel like we're still on good terms by throwing him work he won't do in a timeframe that contributes to me feeling good anyway.

I killed the professional designation on Amazon for selling books, so I'm in no rush to figure out their stupid excel sheets for book listings. I bought more bricks to aide in keeping my shoes dry when walking across the land – affordable, achievable, practical. I'm in the middle of like 3 books I could just bother to focus on and complete, as well as could find audiobook copies. I could just sit and play videogames for a minute. I have a dozen I haven't even opened. 3 months in videogame time is like 10 minutes. There's ways to continue with aspects of my perfect flowy days without mocking it.

I need to remain “here.” I spend an incredible amount of unproductive time in the future. I don't allow myself room to breath, sleep, or enjoy unless I'm in good company, which is an incredibly small amount of my time. God forbid I actually surround myself with my people. I doubt I'd ever find the time to write about nothing again.

[827] Thanky, Gimme

One of the chief complaints my mom had about us as children was that we were spoiled. (Because we raised ourselves and bought fancy things? #projecting) I forget the circumstances, but one time when we had pissed her off, in a rage, she demanded that from that day forward we were going to have to declare something we were thankful for every day. My stomach immediately sunk. I didn’t really understand the task, and in the same sort of way that you know you’re going to fail a test in school, I had no idea how I was going to figure out a way to answer every day with something that wasn’t going to get me beaten. Luckily, it was bluster, and after the night of our egregious offense, she forgot or didn’t bother with pressing our duty the next day. On this day literally named for thanks, I offer my most visceral memory associated with the term.

Older, wiser, it’s a lot easier to conceive of “thankfulness.” I could parse it down to incredibly specific and small things or sweeping conceptions I enjoy working with. I know what it’s like to experience the highs and lows, and I know the real work that goes into giving you the kind of grounding to realize the infinite amount of pieces that go into you being able to function in the world. My fingers work in my healthy-ish body as I type this on my one of several computer devices. I’m full of food, and just beyond those walls are people who would look out for me in shitty situations. I have an important job which affords me the opportunity to dream and plan as though I’m going to live until tomorrow and the next several years. I have redundancies and failsafes and insurance. I have leisure and an opinion about things that suggest a certain class. I’ve had access to inspiring ideas that provoke my creative impulse.

My intensity regarding what I’m thankful for has certainly dampened. I recall listening to Cassadee Pope say how different jumping up and down at 30 is from when they were doing it on tour at 21. “Life” as a holistic concept is a conservative force. It’s not asking you to build a shelter anymore grand than nabs you a mate. It’s not begging you to feed the homeless, make millions, or respect the balance of your microbiome. The haphazard organization of your social and emotional life, if not almost perfectly arbitrary, is a blueprint shaped by a bygone era and fundamental gamble mitigated only in conscious decision. You can get fat, do what you’re told, and use normative language and “win.”

My family, for all of its petty in-fighting, telegraphs that conservative pulse. We manage to throw together an array of food, talk of sports, movies, and the detailed descriptions of Chicago travel directions to rival an SNL skit. Through a baseline of “up, work, home, TV, bed” trips get taken, bills stay paid, and no one seriously believes we won’t be able to manage some way, somehow. The network that is my family has its own baseline and expectation I think most middle-class and above families do. You can waste as many years and words in hatred in the “in-between,” as long as if shit gets real you rush to the chance to reclaim your place and purpose while you build ever-more resentment that you had to be bothered. (One shudders to think what my family world would look like if my dad and step-mom hadn’t been my grandma’s primary caregivers.)

I find that as long as I don’t expect things from my family, I can get along well enough like I would at any table of “regular folk.” At this point, “thankful” becomes a complicated subject. I can’t say I’ve ever had too strong a conception of what family was supposed to mean, but if I were to guess, trust would be a kind of ground-floor component. Can I trust them? Here I return to an answer that I use for most people I entertain in life. I trust them to “be who they are.” This is a life-affirming respect when you conceive of someone as an individual. On the other end, it’s a forlorn shug you might offer about a humping dog who’s gotta hump. They might be significantly better than nothing in a proper crisis, but in that conservative tradition, they’re not going to partner with you to head-off said crisis.

I try my best to reduce this sentiment to a dispositional more than personal grievance. My concept of what I have empowers and enables me to want to explore and grow. Because I’m thankful for how the knowledge of how hard it can be, there’s a fair degree of things I can “suck up” that I get a series of confused and pitying looks from others when I speak about. (Namely my living conditions.) I understand the rule of “have more space, you’ll fill it up” and “have more money, the more you’ll spend” so I look for ways to utilize the space I occupy and resources I acquire that will build the intangible. What does it mean to argue against a culture so many are perfectly contented to? What does it mean to try and mold the abstract that is thought into future taken-for-granted gains? It means you’re perpetually alone and very confusing to all the people who wonder why you’re not happy to have a family, movies, and ability to describe the layout of a major city street by street. We’ve survived fascism much worse than Trump, they’ll say.

I understand conservatism in a way I don’t respect. It’s the thing already there independent of examination. No matter how far and away a “lefist” or hippie you might be, you’ll respect and desperately require the organization and oversight in clean water and traffic laws. The same can be said about a great many things. The task is to maintain a respect for what it takes to keep that basic structure in place and then take on further responsibility to shape higher orders of organization. If you’re fat and happy, you should consider doing something more to slim down and find something worthy of worrying about.

That’s my insufferable persistent push and ask. For the countless times I’ve been told something positive or affirming about me, what can that truly amount to if I were playing this life game “correctly?” What does it mean if people like me, presumably that cohort in college I was all crazy about, organized around those higher order principles? What if you had people who signed on to addressing the foreseeable crisis in a way the world at-large can barely conceive of or recognize when they arise? Is it a job for the Illuminati, the politicians, or pseudo-benevolent technocrats and billionaires? For the amount of times I raise the prospect to my incredibly small circle of influence, I’m lucky to find 1 in 100 that will entertain the conversation, let alone consider the plan of action. I’ve watched for years while we wait for the next viral star to save us or placate with eyebleach and feel-good videos.

To be sure, there are many organizations trying *something* to “fix things.” None of this is to pretend that I have the sole, or even that great of an understanding or grasp, of how *everything* should run or be organized. But I can retain the awareness for what’s missing. I can crave a spirit of accountability and engagement I can’t find. I can watch as people avert their eyes when presented the opportunity to bet more for a reward that can’t exist without sufficient sacrifice. I can watch people emptily envy me when I profess how far in advance I seek to pay my bills or how I manage to see and do things “on a social worker’s budget,” so ill-conceived. There is no age I believe I’m supposed to get to where all the bluster I’ve exhibited in blogs is supposed to reduce to barely cooling my brow as I waste away on a beach cliche.

So how thankful are you? Is it enough to affirm and strive for more than your place at a familiar table? Is it enough to see what every day can really bring and worth suffering the feeling for what more you think you could do? Are you thankful that you have the mind and body that can do a shocking amount relative to the conservative mean or next to someone missing one or a dozen of your gifts? I didn’t need to get a job where I routinely surround myself with poor people to recognize it in myself. I didn’t need to hear the tired stories and excuses of those who always have someone else to blame. My mom dropped the “thankful” game because she wasn’t, and still isn’t, accountable. My family bites off its nose to spite its face because it can’t focus or organize around not just what’s gone so well, but what could be with goodwill and thanks for the memories. I hope to emulate or design a way of living where every ounce of thanks you can squeeze from yourself translates into the greater cultural immune system, because mine’s operating in a fashion so many more deserve as well.

[826] No Thyself

If you take people out of a structure, they float. If the structure isn't built into their being, attempts to impose structure are going to overwhelmingly fail. Whether we agree with broad-stroke attempts to define and understand the world at-large or not, there are lines on the road, rules codified, and norms that evolve to meet the psycho-social environment. The merit of structure is undeniable. The predictability, imperfect as it may be, is invaluable. I want to know that most of the time the cars are staying on their side of the road.

When do we ask ourselves how much structure is necessary? When do we reflect on what the structure is doing to our ability to float away from something harmful? I find myself both enhanced and handicapped by norms and rules. I severely dislike being late, even if nearly no one shares the same courtesy or anxiety. I couldn't stand school, and still didn't routinely skip class. I'm going to be pressing my luck with my awakeness and desire to contribute meaningfully to my workday, but I'm pretty clearly still intending to make it there.

I'd rather be floating. I've discovered 100 playlists tonight I want to sit here and listen to. I've been doing really well getting through all of my shows, and would like a clean slate to start something new tomorrow. I keep eye-balling a couple books that I need to finish. I was drilling myself to try and identify frets on my guitar by note. Instead, I have to pause, and reset, and shift into “the grind,” so-named for it's ability to wear you down in existential spite.

I was watching Atypical, and the kids are debating whether college was the right kind of course for one of them. I've always been intrigued by people who knew early college wasn't for them. I didn't know I had any other option. School was easy, college was a joke, and ten years later I manage to use my degree for an incidental job after I exhausted my naive resolve to power through alone on my quest to conquer a self-righteous sovereign archetype. I mean, that game is still running, but there's rules I still feel obliged to follow after hitting 30 that I didn't feel I had to follow so hard in my 20s.
Do I still want to break those rules? Absolutely. I'm in a very shoddy approximation of what “structure” and “safety” we're supposed to be bringing to families in crisis. There is no lateral thought. There is no stark-naked facing of the practical truth to how we behave. I didn't know the true extent of the problem in trying to be the only adult in the room. It doesn't matter the field, you have people operating under the cover of that structure, not rocking the boat, come more often hell than any amount of water to put out the fires.

The worst part of lived-experience is that it's the same story. They don't want the numbers. They won't take responsibility. They won't define literally anything, ever. When you try, you get punked. When you press the person in power, they lash out and, predictably, attempt to undermine your effort. They ignore how their failures translate into the failures of those around them. I forgot just how much of my drive to do things my way or by myself was predicated on the horrible spirit of those I encounter. The ones who give up and make excuses. The ones who've packed their lives with so many distractions and things that make them hateful and wretched that nothing remotely possible and uplifting really gets through.

The world of constant justification is the one we occupy. It's the one in fantastic display with the fascist governments that can do no wrong. It's why you're meming instead of writing. It's why you'll suffer in silence, alone, or with your incidental partner, and share the photogenic times. I've found myself prompted to offer reasons I'm not invested in for how things are or aren't moving because I don't feel like the one moving them. That's a crack, and it needs filled. I run headfirst into things and put back together what I've cracked open with my skull.

I meet enough people with some form of “fatal flaw.” They have good or creative ideas, but can't be bothered to organize or promote them. They have a degree of politeness and sociability, but they can't be honest about their responsibility to extend that into situations that make them uncomfortable. They have a personality and enthusiasm, but overwork themselves or pack their schedules so they can't be forced to sit and converse about why they're stuck or feeling helpless. People want to be enabled, and the world provides a dozen reasons a day to keep on with bad habits and bullshit words.

The reason I remain different is my willingness and drive to continue to the end. It's the moment to moment engagement with one or all of the things I say I wish to be engaged in. I suffer from too much and not enough time, not too many words explaining away my ability to contribute. I also subject myself to over-arching rules like “pay off all debt” before I engage in my flights of fancy speculation and business games. How boring you look and feel when you're waiting for 2 months to feel like you're allowed to decorate your bathroom or till soil. How useless you feel when the weather is right for tree-digging, but the weekend becomes the most precious thing as you attempt to peel your exhausted soul away from the work drama.

I still believe there's an insane amount of time that goes unaccounted for. I think part of my ability to continue to believe in myself is knowing things can change in an instant. I say that a lot, because it's true. You stumble into something that grows, and suddenly you've got cash or a connection under which the world opens up. My plot to be able to actually use my paychecks is still playing out. I can get into a lot of fun or trouble very quickly with $1000 and nothing else on my mind. I haven't given up on that singular premise for years, and it's afforded me this breathing room. I feel like I've watched people give up on their fundamental place and drive a long time ago, and I'm swamped by people who've maybe never had one.

[825] Snow Dei

It's been interesting, at least to me, to watch myself over the last few...minutes? Years? So much a return to the contrived. I'm plugged in. I'm day-by-day with the same resolve that got through school, drives me on my commute, and does the math to put his aberrant behavior aside just long enough.

It's a wonder how I manage to account for that aberrant behavior, if I manage at all. I legitimately didn't believe in my ability to correct for my language before I started real-world jobs. I didn't have the impulse control to not suffer my idealism with perpetual headaches and impassioned pleas to be listened to for all of the easily-fixable problems I could identify. I think I just started to really feel how actually simple things were. Or, better stated, simple for those who've worked to pursue the embodiment of timeless ideals and cliches.

Take something like responsibility. What does it really mean? I think, on balance, the world is random. There's as strong a case to be made for never and nothing responsibility as there is for my posture about being “responsible for everything.” Is it either? Is it both? What manifests is your genuine belief in either. You find yourself at the whims of fate, or you start dictating how you're going to navigate what's happening around you. That's perhaps the wisdom or spell of consciousness and why I don't feel bad killing bugs. You can find yourself flying blindly into a light, but, honey, you're human. I expect you to do better.

I had some pretty dope lines about forgiveness I don't know that I'll be able to reproduce. Is forgiveness possible? I think the fact that we've pawned the responsibility for it onto magic sky daddies suggest “no.” Without them, that leaves it to us to forgive. That means we have to understand our darkness. That means we have to actually feel good about things we actually never believe we'll feel good about. Does that betray your consciousness? Is it a bitten thumb in the face of existence? What if I “got over” Trump or my ideas about fascism? Without condoning, what if I discovered them as a continuum of human experience? What if I considered them as a wave, just up or down, subject to the gravity in which I could exert upon them? More manageable? Accessible as a physics issue, not an infinitely unknowable series of probabilistic human machinations?

I don't know if I forgive myself more than I try to understand myself. I think when I talk about my “self-destructive impulse” I'm speaking to a kind of ignorance more than a perpetual desire to die or experience pain. Maybe I don't know how to cope. Maybe I never really want to give myself the kind of credit my experience suggests. I find myself in a kind of ever-spiraling humble-brag about what it is I think I can accomplish or have already. I'm proud of myself. I can't stand what I get by way of other peoples' opinions or lack-thereof contributions. That has an insane amount of power I always want checked. Who's going to do so?

I've gotten so insanely comfortable. I'm sitting here at 1am, finishing off my Blue Moons, maybe going to get 3 or so hours of sleep, before I limp my way back to my cushy job dancing around poor and desperate people. Why do I deserve that? Why am I so comfortable, that I can recognize the degree of my regal existence well-before I actually start getting to the financial or decision-making place that will start shifting the world? Did I do the work of humility? Did I eschew the kind of ignorant pride I see on the face of business-school kids? Have I somehow atoned for all of the horrible thoughts or actions I've engaged in with reckless abandon for how we're all connected and what it would mean for the world at large? Do I, in my bones, even believe that high-minded jibber jabber?

What I know is that I've watched most of the people I've been closest to get as far away as impracticality calls for. I know that my supports are good for a good deal, but their heart isn't in the same place. I know that I've been thinking for a while about a line from Bill Maher about, paraphrasing, “maybe some people in your life were just meant to be there for a moment, and you're not supposed to be attached forever.” I don't think I need to facebook stalk everyone I've ever known, but I have an incredibly hard time dismissing the influence I saw you bring to the culture. The “random” text or invitation you get months or years from now is going to have everything to do with that sentiment.

It's the moment I want to sit back and just enjoy, just revel, just laugh, or just stare at what I've done that I realize I'll always want more. I want the world. I want what's next. I want to perform. I want to exhibit. I want to feel my fingers freeze as I cope with my impulse to address some longstanding need that presented itself without warning, so now here we are in some random-ass place and have to deal. (Imagine, figuring a way to transport a large tool in an ill-equipped car – a frequent occurrence for me.) Every span of time I think is “forever” leaves me feeling about for the next lever to pull after the bill gets paid or the months instantaneously blink by. These words, like everything I've ever said, exist now, and forever, and pick to operate in that vein of existence about what's possible verses what's happening.

Like I've said, mildly drunk me is the best me. I draw a lot of inspiration from that guy, and all of my deeply buried lovey-dovey feelings I've learned to repress come out as a befuddling diatribe talking about how great it's all going to be. Get on my level.

[824] Angel Dust

Why do we play some games and not others? My grandma and I used to play a lot of card games. According to her, I was really good at either Rummy or Canasta, but until she told me this was the case, I didn't remember ever playing either. Keep in mind, I might've been 7 or so at the time. Apparently, she taught me how to play, I wiped the floor with her, and then we paused playing for long enough for me to not even remember doing so. With cards, I played because my grandma was a boss and fun to be around given that she genuinely wanted the company of her family. Her including me in card games carried over into when I got older and would proceed to clean up in playing Rummikub with her and her friends.

The familiarity of a game is what I find most potent. It's one thing to have fun, another to consider the competitive angles. But once you know a game, unless you're me as a child, you know it. A thousand protests I can hear in the distance play familiar games with their own versions of the rules or recall memories fighting with family members as someone stumbles through a read from the rule book. You don't need to know hidden banker rules to know how to play Monopoly, and you never have to learn about bluffing or blinds to play poker. You know how they basically operate, and you can carry on in a safe and smart-enough way.

The amount of times I've referred to life as a game is high. The rules are chosen by each individual, and it's played across levels of familiarity and competence. If you choose to pull out of the game, different rules are enforced, and any remote fun or competition is subsumed by all-too-real consequences. The more unfamiliar you are with those consequences, the less the game feels like it can be played with confidence or competence. I think, whether you consider it an over-arching theme in how to approach your life or not, you'd be foolish to not believe there are an endless array of people who don't want you to win.

Win what? Their game or yours? Win how? Monetarily? In notoriety? Winning and losing are ideas before they're meted out as disappointment or punishments. First, you have to lose your mind. You have to lose the conception of yourself as someone who can win, regardless of what, and well before you have the words or vision for what that win looks like. You have to be plunged into the depths of failure and still listen for what's said next. You have to see the inhumanity in so many ideas and land on the side of struggling to push through a conception worthy of life.

My game has remained the same in a lot of ways. I still want to enable people. I still want all of my time to do whatever with. I still want to retain my voice, especially in spite. I want my world to be filled with my people, and I want to see what we create.

My game has changed in a few key ways. I'm not willing to hate and exhaust myself along the road. I'm not willing to work for those who won't work for themselves. I'm not going to look for more reasons than I naturally conceive of to doubt what I'm doing. Do you know who cares? No one. Pretend you're Chang hearing about your problem. Who's Chang? Exactly, and he doesn't know you either. There is no secret drama or meaning behind your struggle. Pick it, or don't, but leave the excess energy and Chang alone.

I like playing games that make examples. I've played the “build a house” game for a while now. School when I was younger was a “smart kid” game. Just like cards, there's familiar patterns of behavior you can play safe and intelligently enough to get to the desired outcome. College was the “party game.” Drug studies were considered an “efficiency game.” I'm calling my time at DCS a “pragmatic punishing perspective game.” I like to prove a point, an almost always petty one, that yes, I can. I can switch and play your game, or amp back up mine, or do any number of things because I'm able and/or going to win.

This can get you into trouble. This indirect, yet somehow exacting sensibility is to be embodied. If you've ever had a body, you know it doesn't always do what you point and click on it to do. Or, it does, but by electing to play on a different level than you were planning. This sounds abstract and weird because it is. Maybe you adopt habits that help you maintain a relationship. Maybe you blackout trauma and unduly worship to keep your head straight. Maybe it's not an affirmation to conceive of yourself as the only one playing or capable of winning on the kind of board you've build for yourself.

Win? Win your own game? Big deal! Who gives a shit about your game with all of the xyz and blah-diddly-blah in the world? Also, sucker, I've got a game too, and you're not even Chang to me.

It can be easy to forget the wins. The struggle, once overcome, is the romance and nostalgia. Pick a battle too big, you may give up or die trying. Pick an opponent not in your league, you won't even be able to understand the directions of their playbook. I make a lot of predictions and comments about who I think people are or where they're at in life. Usually they pretty much tell me how it's going to be. They don't recognize the game they're playing, I don't actually have super powers.

I don't know who I am if I don't exist in service to the larger and longer game, the people I consider mine, and the ideas I've never let go of. It's not that I need some desperate out-of-reach thing to always exist relative to. It's that I feel empowered when I entertain the implication of running those new games. What happens with the right soup of people? Where does my better organized and engaging website take politics? What springs forth from my stabs at paycheck-affordable business ideas? I say things like this often because they are the things that need to win. They need to beat cynicism and comfort. They need to beat dejected c'est le vie. They need to beat you.

I remember never believing, until it happened, being able to get this far. I'm again, typing from my electrified, air conditioned, outright-owned home on my big screens, under a blanket in a recliner. Each piece of this puzzle a little side-quest adventure. I'm doing a solid run this round, on this level, against my worse conceptions of myself. I'm even finding new people to play with and join their games. And, as always, I'm 2 or 4 months away from the kind of tepid “security” that everyone trying to play for 100+ years dreams of; a playground to shape per the directive of the imagination. I mean, even more, that is, as it's so easy to forget the struggle once it's overcome.

[823] Crunchy Boi

Maybe I want to die.

I was in a car wreck tonight. According to the woman who I was involved in it with, I was coming around a corner fast. According to me, she was in the middle of the road. It was dark and it just rained. Who wins?

I'm not even tempted to admit fault. My instinct is marred by experience, and I work for the State. If what you say is 10% or 5% true, it's used to infer 100%. I lost a wheel to my car. She didn't have insurance. Does it mean anything? I don't think so. It's another bill. It's not even a “lesson.” We both probably already knew dark corners in the rain at the speed limit or otherwise can prove perilous. A deer in the day time that recently nicked my side mirror can attest to that.

I can't help but to think the worst. I feel like I'm perpetually daring life to get harder than it needs to be - to show its nasty face and stop pretending. I can't help but to believe that just as I “escape debt,” I find myself with a totaled car. It's like a cliché television episode. I can't help but to think that for every time I make a joke about dying on the highway, your god is up there saying, “I'll show you, you son of a bitch.” I feel like my task, having come into focus, to pay down or trade down for a car without debt has been “solved” in the most ridiculous and not-appropriate way depending on how the insurance plays out.

The major takeaway, mind you, is how I feel like I'm watching. I don't mean in some kind of traumatized or processing shock kind of way. I feel like I'm sort of carrying on and extremely calm when “real” happens. I'll find myself in a panic politely contemplating the direction of my life on a lunch break or pop a blood pressure machine when I feel on the verge of things being “too easy” in the money-making from drug studies. While I'm sliding after colliding down a country road? I feel, “of course.”

I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I want to get the tragedy over with. I want to crack the joke, bust out the broom, and have the money stock-piled waiting to pay for the series of miscalculations and misdeeds. I fundamentally don't believe there's a reason or plan you don't create for yourself. The lady in the accident had Christian music blasting and commented, “It all happens for a reason, I can't see what it is right now, but you gotta believe that.” I told her that I tag that sentiment with, “It doesn't mean it's a good reason.”

I feel stuck. I feel like there's almost too many things to say, and absolutely nothing. Big and little disasters happen all the time, and they're indifferent. That's the point. I suppose I've been living amidst a series of small disasters that are totally fixable with a little forethought, responsibility, and accountability, and they don't get fixed. Why should I believe those “virtues” would save me for the “big” things? Why should I think, whether it's a car wreck or a conversation, anyone is going to learn or get the clue that life really is short and you should aspire to more than the piddling excuse we hold up for each other on the daily?

I don't matter but for the smallest of individuated circumstances. Car crashes put us in our place. A brief error or oversight erases your chance to do any more good or bad, and it doesn't even have to be your own. So drink and be merry? Use every tool you have to reach every end? Live in spite of the indifference by caring so gosh golly hard others feel inspired by you?

Another perverse angle I entertain is that I've self-sabotaged yet again. Get out of debt? No no, you can't handle the freedom, let's tack on $1000 deductible and keep you safe another two weeks. Part of me thinks the only way I feel I can “deserve” my station in life is if I get there through every possible kind of fuck up and strife so that I'm not tempted to revel in it too sweetly. How unbelievably fucked would that be if this were true? What if there was nothing that could be done to stop it?

Let's talk about the irony of maybe wanting to die. If I wanted it sincerely enough, I couldn't just get a gun and blow my head off. I couldn't even rely on our broadly safe cars and folly of drivers. I'd have to find a way to cut myself ten thousand times in physical and psychological ways. I'd have to feel like I earned my death as much as I've had to crawl and beg through the pain and frustration to get where I have so far. Maybe there's a war going on inside for how vicious each side of my life and death impulse will behave.

I don't want anyone to be scared, because I'm not. I am, and forever will, remain confused though.

[822] Chronically There

Let's see if we can figure out what's going on.

Since about 9:30 this morning, I've been in a low-level panic. The last 2 days I've had a weird off and on sleep thing happening, either crashing as soon as I get home and waking up at midnight, or sleeping from like 11 to 3, and then trying to “nap” between 5 and 7. I'm fairly well caught up on work tasks, and even doing “extra” in reading this book they want me to summarize in less than 1500 words. I'm fed, gorging myself on a pack of cookies, entreating myself to both IKEA meatballs and Portillo's in the same evening. I've been healthy, organized, and had my builder complete some more lining of my room, helping the temperature even out in my bathroom. I've plans for the weekend and the weekend after.

As my deskmate pointed out, if I'm feeling panicked, there's something stirring in your subconscious. There's never just “no reason,” much as I tried to point out it's not a “disorder” because it needs a reason. If I'm unable to claim a disorder, it leaves me begging to speculate. I have suspicions I'll explore, and with any degree of luck or deliberate thought, I'll return to simply biding my time until better things happen verses fight the compulsion to restart clenching my jaw and coaxing headaches.

My job drowns you. Whether you want it to or not, you're dealing with people. People are uniquely tied to people. A dog can bark at you all day, it's not the same thing as someone cussing you out. We expect things out of our clients. We cross our fingers for a degree of civility when we're pursuing some bureaucratic, but seemingly ridiculous, course of action. I'm finding myself dreaming about scheduling and conversations I've had. This is the big “secret” as to “why I couldn't do your job” that rarely gets talked about out loud.

Paperwork isn't hard. Clicking the same buttons for the majority of families on our semi-crappy software isn't hard. Driving, generally, to locations 5 to 20 minutes away, and occasionally across the state isn't that hard. Embodying trauma, excuses, lies, and “don't take this personally” commentary as people just fail on top of failure gets hard. Doing it with no reprieve gets harder. Doing it and being needled over petty and small-minded “concerns” from laughable “leadership” is damn near impossible.

I, maybe, have 5 days a month. Every other day is spent anticipating work, or talking about work. The people I know? I work with them! So there is no getting drunk together without another few hours discussing all the “crazy.” I don't really “do” anything else. I spend my time trying to avoid, not trying to grow or learn. I spend it feeling older than anyone can actually guess I am. (Someone guessed 26 yesterday). I don't feel like I've the energy to do much when I get home but continue the conversation of whether or not to get a jump on tomorrow, so if and when the existential crisis hits, I won't exacerbate the panic by taking a 2 hour lunch.

I'm seeing so little of “me.” I can't talk like I want, not really. I can't explore the topics I want without feeling distracted and exhausted. You'd think, just start reading, no? Just pop your head into a fantasy, or pick up some new factoids. But it doesn't work like that. The information has no room to breathe. It's just words on a page I'm letting slip by.

I think it's worse than that though. It's the sinking feeling that things, broadly, are so much worse than I have words for, and they can't and won't get better. I've been repeating the line, “it's the little things” to myself a lot. Little shifts in how we operate can mean big stressors are alleviated. Little decisions to streamline the process don't get made. Lengthy appeals to leadership get smiled at and ignored. Little attempts to indulge or distract serve the opposite effect. Things don't connect or translate. I don't feel the causal well-intentioned sense or discussion ever working towards anything meaningful.

How the fuck do you fix that? I don't get my sense of identity from work, which subsumes a great portion of my life. I don't get support in trying to map my perspective on making work better. I don't get the impression that for all of the “adults” in the room they could hold a candle to the kind of leadership and example it would take. I run the risk of overburdening the friends or acquaintances I have in looking for something that's not their burden or theirs to offer. And every day I'm just supposed to show up, report, and carry on like there isn't a tear down the middle of my existence, my hand clenched with needle and thread so tight I'm bleeding.

I have an otherwise perfect life. I have too much stuff. I have a brain that works. I have toys. I have people who care about me (sociopath lists them 4th? Jesus) I'm still not too fat. I've managed to keep my car accidents at hitch and deer hitting. My friends are rich enough to let me chance spinning out of control in their sports car. But I can't make the little shifts? I can't prevent the panic from setting in as I stare at the blank depressing walls and recite the office mantras? If there's any word I overburden, it's absolutely irony. Perfect relative to what? To when I didn't have so much stuff? To when I naively believed in a “better” kind of future? To yours? I didn't use to panic all the time. I didn't use to walk around so fluidly as a mockery of what was going on in my bones. I feel I've taken my pragmatism too far, and am finding it incredibly hard to see where I exist.

[821] Orgasm Addict

I just want to write a bad blog because my head wants to hurt. I've been recording and organizing the books I got for free. The journey we've been on together has amounted to a fair amount of effort for so far indiscernible gain. I can't help but to view it as a larger persistent analogy.

I'm all about the probabilistic thinking. I very much doubt anyone's particular “brilliance” or special effort. I believe there's more luck involved even before I pick up a book making a case for just how much. As such, whatever the cost of these books in labor or space, the ideas they give me remain invaluable. I want to hold them hostage as a sales tactic. I want to create ways of quickly organizing and displaying them. I want to try to read some of them.

If life is a similar series of a kind of randomness, I want to set myself up for as many “what to do with all these books?” kind of scenarios. Ideally, the books are supposed to be a series of individuals with a capacity for honesty and introspection you don't otherwise find in a “normal” distribution of people. It's as much the experimentation in business running or marketing as it is toying with websites and general attention seeking. I think the secret to my success will be tying everything I do to everything else. You came because you read a crazy flier. You stayed, or you bought something, because I made it part of my world, and you wanted to be associated.

I think a lot about an infinite sea of associations. Whether I remember the character names or not, I'm associated with thousands of stories. I have a familiarity, or parity of experience. I think a lot about the confused, almost angry look I got from an acquaintance when I said I watch some shows sped up. She didn't understand opening as many small doors of connection as possible. I take it she's getting all she needs from her life.

I think about comedians who say they sounded like their favorites when they first started out. Who do you sound like if you don't put in the time and effort to differentiate? What happens when you no longer borrow from enough sources to push the needle on the topics of importance and interest? This is the concern I have for myself right now. I have a thousand worlds staring at me from the corner. I have books on construction. I have Oprah's book club stamps across covers. I have as many windows for new insight as I do in looking for lines that stick in my thousand TV shows. And they're heavy. Any they fall over when you stack them too high. And they're covered in dust and make me sneeze, and are in “good” to “acceptable” condition, waiting to waste their life on someone else's shelf who can shell out the four dollars.

I think about helping yourself before you can help others. For how many years have I tried to differentiate between the “right and wrong kind of selfish?” My thoughts came from what seemed like nakedly self-destructive acts meant to put distance and shame in the space where a conversation and personal responsibility needed to take place. As I get older, I feel I need to be more conservative with myself. It's harder to juggle things that aren't arranged in a way that makes things simpler. It's harder to have the patience for really bad words and wasted time where an adult or consequences are necessary. It's hard to watch yourself act in a way that seems to betray where your mind was most at ease. Does it have to get hard before it's easy? Or are we just trying too hard to run too many poorly conceived ideas at once?

Whether or not I get my bills paid in advance, the way my life is organized, I'll still need ten thousand dollars a year. Cars need registered and property taxes are a thing. I'm tied to the grid and can't share my piddling thoughts without the interwebs. I'm freer, but I'm not free. I've got people in mind I'd like to spend that extra time with. I've got less than the naive hope it would take to think it's going to amount to more than a weekend or so year without some perfectly random intrusions of money or impropriety.

So I think about the slog. I think about the little pieces I put in place for the families I interact with every day. I think about picking up the pieces and giving the direction they can't seem to find for themselves, and I think about having someone to do that for me. I think about how that plays into me not going to the gym unless it's with someone. I was recently invited to run, something I wouldn't have done on my own, so I ran. I think about wishing I had someone to call me a fat cunt every day, daring me to eat better, so I could have that push-back and accountability. Discovering or respecting that someone has intention or credible expectations of you is something I can get behind and find motivating.

Here I want to break off a bit and explore intention verses attention.

I like attention. I don't want it for its own sake, but I'm always seeking the laugh or the admiration and respect for when I do something better or different. I truly felt at home when I was on stage at Warped. I walk into rooms and theaters, and envision myself giving speeches. I rehearse what I'll say on Colbert. I know, just by virtue of my personality, I'm a literal aberration from the norm in ways that will garner attention. I speak different. I respect my feelings less. I approach problems from an assumed inevitable creative way it can be fixed or reduced. I always want to bite. Containing or organizing that is the task of life. Making it something worth courting those who would find their own intentions with it is the work worth doing.

When I intend to do something, the rest fades. The drive doesn't feel so long. The show isn't a painful marathon of intermittent focus. The day at work isn't the thing otherwise impeding my only route to happiness. It takes the smallest goal to get there. It's why I love food. Whatever else in your day, you get to have a goal with a high probability of a great pay-off and feeling. I don't know who's going to choose to yell at me instead of engage when I call people, but I do know how the burger is going to taste. I can prove the value of my intention.

The larger task? Can you pretend to know the influence of an intentioned life? Can you regard the consequences as “good” on faith? If it doesn't fill you up like a good meal, can the value be measured in other ways? I certainly find myself able to invest more of my time and effort into others' lives when I feel like I'm getting things done and organized in my own life. I remember just the act of doing my laundry made me feel considerably better about typing up the notes on a few cases a few weeks ago. So what's going to last longer than a meal or spin-cycle? With any luck, and some work, your relationships. Your investment and intention for other people.

I suspect this is why people express what having kids has meant to them. I suspect this is why so many kids are living out the consequences of neglect and people grow to resent each other. If you genuinely care, all of the adages about helping other people being the highest calling or way to draw the most from your lived experience may prove to be true. If you hate yourself and/or the space you occupy in the world, it's going to be someone else's problem, one way or another. This is the baggage I attempt to keep from dumping on people. I share what I hate or think you're doing wrong. Rarely are you in a place to engage or cope with that. I don't always react to being triggered in ways I respect either.

Existing in the space as someone else's problem is familiar to me. I've often felt like something to be dealt with or compromised around. If the mean wasn't paired with the funny, I'd be that much lonelier. If I wasn't smart enough to talk my way out of something ridiculous, how much more trouble would I find? If I wasn't large and angry enough to silence, at least to my ear, a degree of immature emotional dissent, how many ways would I find myself petty and distracted by fake villains or tyrannical justice? It's my intention to not be at the mercy of the world that gives me my value. I'll take the judgment as the worst if, by the numbers, I can prove to be better or the best. I'm certain I'll identify a stream of quantifiable problems related to you and your environment while you over-burden the value of your gut reactions or prescribed morality with regard to me. I can maintain my standard for friendships and allow myself the view from the eyes of the people who dare to say they love me (which I still discourage, though less emphatically than I used to) or make them think.

Perpetual good is the smallest shift when it's at the hand of the collective in the right direction. I alone might need ten thousand dollars a year in order to live minimally first-world. That's 5 months of my current time-stupid job. Together with your resources? I don't want to say I'll never know, but the divorces and mid-life crises definitely haven't kicked in yet. I also won't give you the credit to think you've got more you'd like to do than get by the way you are. I'll never be able to tell whether that's bad or good beyond the amount I'm able to lodge my way into your head as the problems I have with things wedge their way into mine.