[903] Oregon Trailer

I want to talk about the difference between “coping” and “processing.” Of course, this will, as always, just be my interpretation and how I might think to use them in my own life.

 

I think the primary difference between coping and processing is “intention.” Children have to cope, they don't have a choice. My body, my habits, and my thoughts were shaped by my quasi-abusive upbringing, and the things I did or continue to do were coping mechanisms. Obsessive thoughts, picking, headaches, or less maladaptive things like learning how to joke (in a cruel or otherwise manner) fall under that umbrella. I didn't say, “Hey, that's hurtful or confusing, let's make my head pound for a month!”

 

Processing is deliberate. Processing is writing. If I encounter a difficult or stressful situation, I want to exhaustively investigate each moment of what happened. If, in less than a second, I swing from immense pain to sadness to a flicker of joy back to pain and right into confused emptiness and disembodied consternation, I want to know if every beat of that constitutes their own paragraphs or singular words. I respect my brain's capacity to fuck me relentlessly over “small” things or “fleeting” emotions and sentiments. I respect that it can do so in a way that massively outweighs its ability to remember and reflect on what's good or worthwhile, and is even evolutionarily designed that way to protect me from underestimating potentially deadly dangers.

 

Even more disparaging of a thought, there is no guarantee you'll ever really be able to process something. Maybe you lack the mental acuity. Maybe you're never provided nor able to discover the series of words that result in a genuine epiphany over struggle to manufacture insight. I had a lot of extremely naive ideals about “love” and what a “healthy” relationship were before I decided consciously to tango again and again. Had I remained in that “intellectual” posture about what coupling was or who people should be, it wouldn't be a stretch to say I would severely lack the visceral insight, bravery, or patience to engage with the infinite series of questions and struggles that arise from our ever-iterating entanglements.

 

As long as you're alive, you're coping. You're coping with getting older and things failing you. You're coping with less-than-desired novelty. You're coping with growing obligations or responsibilities, which are not the same thing. Maybe the coping is helpful, maybe not, maybe sometimes, or maybe results in a threat to someone else's coping. If you've adopted a kind of “radical honesty” that has manifested as an amazing tool for stress reduction in your own life, but everyone hates you and what you have to say, well, hi. Without the hyperbole, you can understand the different kind of approaches to life when you contemplate the difference between when you're able to counsel verses when you need it yourself.

 

I think most healthy adults most of the time don't react to things like literal babies or young children. Spilling a little food isn't going to have you crying for an hour. Stubbing your toe isn't going to prompt you to throw something or punch the wall. You would counsel that child to come to you, maybe kiss the spot that hurts. You would redirect their attention. You would try to make them laugh. You know spilled food or a bruise are not the end of the world, for someone who's perspective is so small or short-lived, how can you expect them to know it isn't, in fact, the end of the world as they've come to know it? It's the parents that were treated like adults and traumatized to grow-up and suppress before they had the tools or time that break the little brains of their offspring. “I'll give you something to cry about.” They had room to introduce more pain, but not room to explore or find a better habit or perspective.

 

Somehow, I've found myself in the position to now be an addiction counselor. I say “somehow” somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I've been aggressively exploring my place in the universe for 16 years. I parse out the language. I take the time. I write it down. My attempts to relate my experience were felt, put into practice, and I'm sitting in the consequences of every moment. Every extra second of patience, every more-exacting word, and each opportunity that builds on them is the best I have to offer. I know you can't move me when I don't want to be moved. I know the difference between feeling and behaving indignantly verses genuinely not understanding what you're talking about. Even if I may remember or recall feeling viscerally, I also know I've chosen to approach those feelings in a way that moves them away from “coping” and into “processing.” Both surely happen and often at the same time, but you're watching my chosen habit. Yours might be different and function the same way. Only you'll know.

 

There are a lot of cliches that become apparent even in scratching the surface of group therapy or addiction counseling. One is, “Meet them where they are.” Where any of us are appears functionally or practically impossible at first pass. Where am I? Well, I'm behind the computer or leading the session, physically. You don't know what's going on in my head, and it'd be a wild amount of pride to suggest I knew it “perfectly” or “exactly” either. Where are you? How am I supposed to understand where you are? Maybe you'll tell me. Maybe you're lying. Maybe I won't understand. Maybe you have a very narrow word box that keeps you penned in. Maybe you've never read nor heard the *exact* way you've been feeling, so that even when you hear it, it does not translate because it's 15 syllables long and in German.

 

The whole of conscious existence swirls around that kind of battleground - provided you're not on a kind of hippie spiritual or experiential flow that tries to not engage with it all. It's one that I'm notably learned in generally, now, remaining “ambivalent” or “nonplussed” about, and it has “chased away” a great many of my relationships which were not prepared to break things into minutia or “argue” semantics. I state pretty quickly and confidently that I'm aware of my role or posture in those relationships, and have made peace with the ones broken or will in fact break in the future if and when the idea of talking, writing, and honestly sharing is beyond the kind of respect or patience they are willing to extend to me as I show for them. I may not like them or wish to “fix” or “forgive,” but they aren't my focus or source of ongoing pain.

 

There's a reiteration in counseling to be aware of “thinking errors” and “irrational thoughts” that come with all-or-nothing thinking or presuming you know someone's motivation when you feel slighted. I printed out a top ten list of irrational thoughts to be aware of in cognitive behavioral therapy approaches to counseling. They apply to just thinking and people independent of addiction. I'm aware when I've employed them to misstep, and I'm aware when I'm tempted to say “everything” or “everyone” or “nothing” as though merely asserting the words makes them true and comprehensive. I don't expect you to understand any word, let alone blog, as I've “intended.” I expect you to take what you can, leave what you can't, and honestly engage, or there is no conversation or connection. I'm under no illusions about where my “power” lies or which thoughts I derive comfort from, and they aren't in the idea that I'm *necessarily helping you more than me.*

 

Would I like to help you? Sure. Can I help you? I don't know. I know what works for me. I know how it works against a myriad of reactions, judgments, and descriptions you might offer about it. I, more often than not, observe the “processing” and “progression” towards what I'm reaching for. Are you? And if you're not, do you have anything you are reaching for? If you were an addict it might be reflexively “to get sober,” a disembodied generalization that has nothing to do with the underlying compulsions or trauma. I had fuzzy goals of “being rich” or “exacting revenge” that have gotten so specific like “acquire 15' x 8' ft 6500 GVWR each double axle trailer to tow large equipment, vehicles, thousands of bricks, or in-tact sheds to stockpile for future self-sustaining plots with on-hand salvaged/recycled resources.” That's one goal in a chain of hundreds of lists, less-specific goals, and built on new discoveries and experiences along the way. I can confidently say if you found me a trailer like that from free to affordable, you will have helped me in service to a transcendent yet specific goal.

 

You can be that exacting in your behavior to stressful or triggering situations, but not if you're unwilling or unable to ask yourself a lot about your needs and learn at least a bit about the [trailers] that are going to facilitate your goals. How are you going to understand the weight you're carrying? I understand enough about my own to seek out more. I understand how to differentiate mine verses what you or life broadly may ask me to carry. I want the kind of trailer that's prepared for all things. I know that's going to take a kind of patience to find one within my budget. I know it's an invitation to more work and risk as much as it is a solution. I have to search, wake up early, budget, make the repairs, work the “normal” job, cope with my own anger and sense of futility, drive safe, find patience, and remain open and pliable to modifying goals or dealing with threats independent of what I think the trailer can do for me. Like all things, it can help or hurt depending on your approach, and the more you understand how it will invariably do both is going to speak to “where you are” relative to the infinite possibilities.

[902] But Seriously, Like, Read This One

I really want you to pay attention to this blog. I'm going to try and approach it very deliberately, run some numbers, and speak to some of my highest aims. I had a momentary resolute surge of hope for the future, and longtime listeners will know how much I dislike the word “hope.”

I genuinely want everyone in my orbit to be organized in a way to “maximize” themselves. This is not a small or simple feat. It's also not synonymous with being “efficient” or presupposing some level of opulent lifestyle aims (which, to some extent, I have).

If you have goals in mind at all, they are likely to vary in as individuated of ways as you conceive of yourself. Maybe you covet a certain kind of decadence or environment. Maybe you want the simple pleasures indefinitely. This is “fine,” in some broad, existential way, but it also might mean you are not my audience. Or, in the spirit of “hope,” you're a $1/month subscriber that functions as a kind of thumbs up for the greater political project and contributes to an ever-more-imposing supporter count.

My bills, at what I consider something of a modern subsistence level, are $106.50 for the internet, between $117-$374 for electric (3 space heaters for months straight - not typical), and food, which were things to get dire, could be supplemented by the food bank or food stamps. What this translates to practically is, at bottom and in splitting the bills, I'm only obligated to pay $240/month, in the worst of all possible space-heater worlds. Do I need a cell phone? It's a kind of luxury, but that would push the bill to $265/month. I don't ever need to leave my house with the amount of books, movies, and instruments I've amassed, so gas and car insurance/maintenance/registration would drop precipitously. Property taxes can't be ignored, so $326/month if I don't pay them in a lump some. Every year, being a hermit who wants the internet and to wear his contacts too long, it costs me just under $4,000. Unplugging the space-heaters knocks that down to just over $3,000.

Of course, that's kind of ridiculous, right? I like eating at restaurants, leaving the house, and playing with new toys and tools. It's not “realistic” to expect myself to hunker down for the entire year and really feel “human,” unless I was oddly gratified by becoming a mythical miser. I designed my lifestyle to try and account for what might happen if I had to work at McDonald's, and still wish to feel like “me” in pursuing my larger entrepreneurial and world-takeover goals. I'd cover the basics in 3.5 months flipping burgers.

I currently occupy this weird space that is filled with increasing amounts of potential. Last year was amass the supplies and tools. This year, they are in the next room or sitting outside. Last year was dig up the hundreds of saplings or dump piles of driveway stone one wheelbarrow at a time. This year it's detailing with soil amendments and shoring-up muddy holes. I'm *excited* to build experimental structures that are blowing over to ground me in what I can and can't do with salvaged wood.

So much of this process has been a pain in the ass. Who wants to drive to the middle of nowhere? Who wants to learn how to compost if you grew up “normal” and flushed your cares away? Who wants to deal with Trump flags, fast-food 20 minutes away, and ticks? Who enjoys the aesthetics of a shed for their living arrangement? Who wants to get nominally used to water that smells like sulfur? Any one of those things would have stopped me from bothering with this project had I maintained the point of view prescribed to me through a “modern” upbringing. I'm supposed to have a mortgage and car payment, right? SHEDS AREN'T HOUSES!

The failings of our capitalist system have turned “tiny houses” and shed-living into not-so-niche points of pride and creative excitement. Poverty re-branded as a lifestyle choice is a coping mechanism. It's not more or less an effective one than the polite pleasantries we offer to excuse our behavior in service to austere neoliberal capitalism or “conservative” thought. The antidote to those modes of being has been fashioned as a kind of “radical socialism” in which even marginally giving a shit about one another is branded as un-American and begetting the inevitable road to... communism? We get boxed into this rhetoric, paralyzed and exhausted by endless working hours, and become distracted indefinitely, if only to survive.

And then what?

I think I unconsciously ask myself this all the time. What happens after I make “enough” money? What happens when my dog catches the car? A wheel makes a revolution, always returning to where it began save the wind around it or the wear-and-tear. How fast do I want to spin, and what kind of air do I want to stir? When I stop spinning, will I have worn myself down for something worth it, or did I just spin too long because I could?

I've spent 3 or 4 years to go from buying the land, to the shed, to turning it all into something resembling a house and degree of comfort I look forward to driving back to each day. I vividly remember staying here without power, without rocks to walk on, without running water, and without any idea of when or if anyone would be joining me...ever. It's a level of focus and work-ethic that I take a lot of pride in speaking about. I also simultaneously SAVED THE CHILDREN if that counts for anything. It chases back further to being able to save enough money to buy the land, and discovering that I did, in fact, want to spend as little amount of time being subjected to “normal” as humanly possible.

I don't want everyone to “suffer” like me, but I do want people to appreciate the level of dedication and detail in their own stories as well as mine. One of the things I took for granted - especially talking to a mostly-white middle to upper-middle class group of kids in how I conceived of what our futures might be – was that there was an appreciation for how many tools we'd been given and how lucky it was that we had found each other. The “goal” or “obligation” seemed clear, don't fall into the habits and traps that got us all waxing about the folly of the past. Build sustainable things. Work together. Pragmatically pursue a kind of life that enabled what everyone was saying was going to be hard to impossible given our corrupted and (literally) crumbling conception of ourselves.

Oh to be young. And, really, I get why people in their 30s hesitate to call themselves “old,” my knees or general circulation be dammed. In truth, I've had less than 10 years to, not only attempt to circumvent the circumstances I was born into, but navigate all of the new psychological drama of algorithm-infused myopic “hatred” combined with a political project to ever-institutionalize American fascism that's been churning for 50+ years.

Like a conservative laser-focused on overturning all that is good and true in the world, I, too, have an indelible focus that believes I can achieve my ends. I think I can recognize my place on the wheel. What is yours?

I have land I'm offering for you to live on *rent-free. That comes under the condition that you do the same amount of work and sacrifice in service to your largest goals or narrative as you've watched me put into mine. There's room in between, I'll happily collect rent, but you know we're both better than that. What is your money going to? Where is your time spent? I want you to be exacting in your budgets. I want you to imagine what it would mean to take over the world.

When I look at my friend list, I don't precisely know how to understand it. There's people I've been familiar with, worked with, and a couple strangers. There's people I know a fleeting amount of their bill or life obligations. There's people I've gotten drunk and dreamed big with. There's people I'm waiting for my big birthday party invite no-one's going to show up to to delete the day after. They've probably still got student loans, donate to charity, or you wouldn't believe how complicated kids are! I see occasional personal wins or celebration. And then what? What is the goal? Wait for Joe Manchin? Die old and in your sleep?

I want to drop rocks, rehab a couple trailers, and rent free-to-cheap. Do you want “passive” income? Help me. Buy in.

I want to scale up worm production.

I want to grow food and live off-grid.

I want to build sustainable little communities on small and large acres that supplant the impact of the larger power brokers and psychosis of myopic depression and anxiety.

I want to sleep and wake up at whatever times I want.

I want to be left alone to practice a small measure of difficult music for as long as it takes my fingers or lips to figure it out.

I want to be busy with things that give me energy and get me up early in the morning.

When all of that comes under threat I want to organize my vigilant and accountable crowd to beat back the enemy (Guess where we are on the wheel.)

Then I want to get back to building the infrastructure that lends itself to letting me piss off and play music or sleep until the next Rush Limbaugh is born. Or, I want to have created such a robust and meaningful system, it incorporates the Rushes and the Trumps and the Hitlers in such a deliberate and awake way, we avoid bending ourselves into jagged spokes being turned against our will.

What does that look like for you? Where in my goals do you see any of yours? How much time do you want to waste doing 1/10th alone what we might do together? What's your budget? How much do you spend on rent? How precious is your locale?

16 or 17 years ago, I sounded a lot like I do now. The macro-picture has not improved, and I don't mean to dismiss the musing or statistics of a Bjorn Lomborg, Stephen Pinker, or Coleman Hughes, but they don't seem to have a way to account for what seems like the heart of a sickness. I can't “persuade” well-enough-off people to form a more aggressive Rainbow Coalition around a shared truth or identity that renders the ticks and funky waters of life as mere details. I can't persuade people to even *speak* to their goals for fear of provoking the embarrassed resentment that begets the flood of excuses for their behavior.

Keep asking yourself – and then what? The wheel is going to turn regardless. Where are we going?
In 3 or 4 more years, I bet I have another camper or 6 set up. In 10, I suspect I'll have stopped associating with the vast majority of every eye-ball that might be looking at this now. In 16 or 17, I hope to not sound piddling and pathetic about the state of the country, environment, or my prospects because we all saw what was coming, and couldn't be bothered. I am bothered. I am doing something. It won't be enough alone.

And if you can't figure out how someone so “bleh” like me could ever be worked with, borrow from Am's or BT's example. I'm basically just an obnoxious proxy for their behind-the-scenes calculations.

[901] Set Phasers Too

I feel I'm in a different phase. I don't yet know what I mean by this.

First, I can look at writing. Writing has been this tool to help me calm down, ease headaches, or violently puke ideas that no one was around to listen to me drone about smashed. Now, I feel more like a redundant chronicler. I'm not so much discovering new insights into my thought process or reasons for doing things. I'm watching and living the consequences of so many conclusions I've drawn over time. I rarely know when to stop blogs anymore. There's not so much a central “issue” I'm examining from all sides, because little carries the kind of emotional depth or suggestive trauma anymore. I'm matter-of-factly speaking.

I find this unsettling because I'm still an idiot. I work within the confines of my knowledge and access, and they are infinitely small for as abundantly they may make me feel as though I'm correct and doing the right things. I imagined myself testifying to the behavior of this particularly aggressive, lying, and spiteful mom; “Your honor, I can't diagnose nor have evidence of her drug use, but every song is made with the same 7 notes.”

On my drives home, I'm thinking about things that I believe would lend themselves to a blog. I get home, I either forget, or they feel diminished. That mom from above, for example, is nothing special. I've met her before I ever met her. I've made up my mind what kind of professional attitude and series of excuses I can lend to depersonalizing her behavior. I can bemoan the impropriety of her CASA praying with the family, thus advising the court they're A-OK, in spite of track marks you can see from the moon and her very-likely intoxicated/withdrawal state for the last visit. We can move right on past her former DCS ongoing case-manager being placement of her children, because that was a year ago, so no issues, right?

I'm already home in the thought that in order to address what seem like particular egregious details in any one person's character or series of professionals' judgment, I need my own kind of thing. I need to be a kind of advocate and accountability marker that does not exist in my orbit, or at least in great enough quantities. This is a posture I've taken to my voice and work broadly. It's the decision I come to any time I find myself under the growing myopia of grievances left perpetually unaddressed. I need to own, destroy, or somehow put outside of my thoughts. Acceptance or forgiveness are off the table.

The weather is improving. I'm again looking at the land as a series of things I could theoretically do at any moment. The ground is soggy, but that's not too big a deal. There's wood begging to be nailed together. There's money waiting to be spent on details. I have another client whose whole family lives on about twice the amount of space we have. 5 houses, relatives with independent businesses. It's got little street lights, enviable garages, large equipment, and it's a class of people who make sure to buy another basketball in case the one they have isn't pumped enough or the tip is lost from one of the several air compressors neatly tucked on a wall shelf. They're living a version of what I want, superficially, as at least one of their members couldn't avoid methamphetamine.

I've met a few of those late 40s or 50-something guys who talk like their accumulated wealth or extremely specific hobby or job is just another take-it-in-stride kind of thing. Just enough grey in the beard and hair, slim and going to the gym just enough. One day, you buy an ATV, the next, the garage to house all of your toys you take out maybe a couple times a year. It's natural, right? Keep your head down, do your work, save and budget, you can be an ATV dad. Then, one day, you'll maybe have the privilege of getting old enough to be a great-granddad who tells his granddaughter's visit supervisor about how you played tag growing up in the small town a half hour away.

I return to the idea of already being home. Tonight, after consciously saying I've zero interest in rushing to get paperwork turned in on time, I've pushed right on through with my day, drove the opposite direction of home to get pizza, came home and started my show, and now, more than half the way through the pizza and show, have taken the time to write. I still have to get my notes in. I've got plenty of extra time in the morning in which I can sleep in. I remember the version of me that would be exceptionally anxious to get things done NOW, and he's still there, but more careful about using it in service to “better” things. It's wholly subjective, but I'm not going to work myself up in service to people or organizations I don't respect. This blog, TV show, and pizza are more important than your deadline. Significantly more.

My general posture towards the “professional working world” has been so degraded. It's one thing to read a polished business book about how alleged titans of industry work, think, or organize. It's another to have it hit just how goddamn fucking stupid everyone is piggy-backing off their privileged space in time, reinforcing entitlement with ego loops, and regurgitating convenient truisms to maintain a kind of stasis. Say you get in at the ground-floor of some company. Hang on long enough to get a little more power. You adopt the company-speak and demeanor that weathers every possible conflict. Did you do anything? You were there. You stayed. But just like playing a board game, you didn't craft the pieces nor invent the game, nor expect yourself to think about whether or not the game could or should be improved. But, damn, doesn't it feel great and “adult” when you tell people your title? Fucking rotten posers.

I suppose my interest in this next phase is pretty simple. I don't know what happens after all of the things I already know are going to happen do. I knew I'd get this home base into a livable, expandable state. I'm living here, not alone huffing drywall dust after having trudged through wet grass. I knew this kind of environment is going to appeal to my kind of person, and she arrived. This is not meant to be some “master of the universe” kind of statement divorcing her from her agency. It just means bros find frat houses, and no one finds that remarkable. I know that each of the pieces of this spot costs money, you get money from keeping a job or few, and if you show up and do math, you get more shit. All perfectly foreseen, if not the amount of money it might take to keep things fixed. This is often where that grey-enough guy I meet starts to lose me. Domestication takes over. Regular drinks at the Cheddars becomes the highlight of the week.

I still want the kind of thing only I can create. I want the light shining between lines of a blog to illuminate something I can hardly imagine. Just like I keep searching in writing for what's really on my mind or for a way to combine all of the flourishes into something digestible. What could you call my 900 blogs? Simply, writing? Everything I've ever tried to say? A path to personal enlightenment? An ego-maniacal diary of someone who never learned how to just smoke weed and shut the fuck up? It doesn't matter, and that seems like the point. Your approximation, wholesale disregard, or somehow obsessive fan-boying don't matter. I found the will to move here, build here, write here, through writing about who I was or still am. I accepted, deeply, my power to own or destroy, and anything I couldn't put outside of my mind, I put on paper. Maybe that's a blur of old friendships no one wishes to own in how they were destroyed. Maybe that's echos of dreams better learned from than pursued.

It will probably be pushing midnight before I bother with this program for inputting my notes. I'll be over-tired as the itis kicks in from all of the pizza. Tomorrow, I'll try during staffing to stifle my enthusiasm for my drift away from this latest blip on my work-experience radar indicating again how just barely anything works. I'll weave into my next gig, pull in more money, glance at my cameras and see the garden shed installed, perhaps renters at the end of the drive, and I'll be out of debt, or not. It's still the realm of all things I'd be perfectly reasonable in expecting to happen, but it is changing. The phase shift by its very nature is unknowable until it's happening, and that's why I'm seeking it out.

[900] Power Off

This can be considered an ongoing riff on power.

 

I just got out of a conversation with two good-ole-boys otherwise understood as my neighbors. One, a former trucker, another, some kind of job that requires neon clothing. One, agnostic, man-of-all things with a lot of hillbilly knowledge, and is perfectly okay with treating people as they treat you, but damned if he'll tolerate a trans man going into the same bathroom as his daughter. The other, a Christian, was raised to believe if you're choosing to be gay, he views it like all sins including stealing or murder. He's suspicious of unions and doesn't believe his friend is genuine in his recent talk regarding a union he joined, but is trying to fit in. He does not believe in “white privilege” and knows plenty of poor white people, and disputes systemic racism. We all agreed that there's a lot of divisive talk in the media and that people need to get to know each other.

 

It's a kind of conversation that only takes place when people feel “comfortable” honestly relating their various strains of extremely problematic views immediately tagged with a held-harmless “reasonable” thing to reassure you. It's variations on, “but I have a black friend.” It's familiar, I find it boring, and it's the kind of thing you do just to kind of reassure your neighbors that you don't hate them when you'll need their heavy equipment.

 

To me, it highlights how, almost functionally useless talking can really be. I'm, in theory, diametrically opposed to, at least the Christian, neighbor, and for as cliché or stunted as the other's view on trans issues may be, he's never going to have the opportunity to confront a trans person who may be in the same bathroom as his, adult, daughter. The power, to not lose the theme, comes from listening, sharing honestly, and allowing for the discomfort of ambiguity chase them home to reflect on how you may (I did) pock the conversation deliberately with guilt or introspection-inducing ideas. Don't you know how uncommon it is for the “average” person to really sit down and figure out how to live with each other? Takes a special kind of person, perhaps the numskull Christian across the way, to really wrestle with practicing what he may preach.

 

The Christian neighbor made a point about how people want to belong. This was servicing his argument that democrats were being divisive and wanting to lean on anything, like race, to build a camp to belong to. I think his point is important in understanding how most people feel power. They belabor their family values, their traditions, or their creature comforts. For as much as you might profess to have your “faith,” it comes with a tangible community that is bringing you food when Jesus can't be bothered. I think there's a move to defer to the ambiguous values of the community as a kind a faux humility. In pawning off your good deeds, you're able to eschew the responsibility for your bad ones too.

 

I think a new kind of community can be forced. I think I can build a coalition around, “I'm tired of being poor.” Am I going to moderate the humble-ignant-religious nut as they hopefully discover their gay neighbor isn't choosing to, functionally murder, their soul? No. I'm past that. Don't need the seminar. Deeply and dismissively appreciate how long it will take you to find the truth. In an important sense, attempting to meet you where you are would absolutely destroy where I can and want to go. You don't get your PH.D. teaching kindergarten, but no doctor would dismiss the idea of educating children.

 

Do I consider not needing a god, my basic understanding of people as people worth a degree of understanding it might take work to achieve, and significant amount of reading I've done to conceptualize myself as a small piece of the whole powerful? Well, how am I using it? Neither of my neighbors walked away from that conversation pissed at me, if they even understood 90% of what I said in analogizing or drawing from historical examples. If I can no longer access their tools or a phone call when a new car comes to the area, what would “I and all my book-learnin'” get me? What did I want from that interaction? Simply, to honestly represent myself. I do know a lot, use big words in between saying fuck a lot, and am extremely sympathetic to black people and liberal views. What that looks like in that kind of exchange is almost like practicing an art.

 

They know I don't hate them, nor do I believe they hate me, and I think I could throw a party with as many different kinds of people as I wanted and they'd be safe out here. Does that mean the Christian neighbor would stay for the whole party? Probably not. Does that mean I want to attempt to mediate a bathroom argument while intoxicated between my other neighbor and the trans friend who defriended me for persistently disagreeing with a meme about thought and word policing? Fuuuuck no. Everyone is toothless, dumb, and extremely insecure. I wish you would bear that in mind about most people you talk to. Not me, but like, people. If you're going to be like them, respect what they actually consist of, and don't make a boogy-man and lazy conception that pretends they're dumber and lazier than where you're coming from.

 

Get in the mud. Focus on what's true for you. Years ago, I don't know that I would have had the patience or maturity not to simply make some smart ass comment about “dumb religious fucks” and how little I cared what they thought of me or what they might offer. It's not even that hard or a secret to understand that's not the way to go, unless you're me. You might not be as dramatic, but the same forces are at play in our political discourse. The same fears and discomfort preclude talking at all, let alone about the hard things. Ambivalent power will fill the void and we'll keep eating ourselves out from the inside if you can't find your voice.

 

My voice is moving to a new job. My demonstrated capacity is again disregarded. One day I went to sleep, the next, 6 months later, I woke up and am pursuing a new job. It didn't take 2 years like the last one. I didn't allow myself to get worked up and excessively stressed out. I trusted my voice, honestly relayed where I was at, and can cut ties without resentment. I'm judging the shit out of people dumb enough to let me leave, but that's on them. I'm hoping the example I set and conversations I had are little seeds for other people to use to find a place more representative of what they are worth too. There are so few examples of those willing to remind us what we're worth or what we should be shooting for.

 

No transition, but I've been thinking of a way to talk about a Jordan Peterson video I struggled to watch. Peterson has been severely ill for the last few years. His wife beat cancer. His daughter has had extreme health issues throughout her life as well. Recently, he was in a conversation with Jonathan Pageau. I don't know Pageau, but Peterson enjoys him and considers him a deep thinker with regard to Orthodox Christianity. Peterson, broken, searching, is discussing the “inevitability” of Christ when you chase all the ideas of the greatest good and what it means to be conscious. Peterson is on the verge of tears several times throughout the discussion. Peterson posits, “Does the fact that that's how it should be mean that that's the way that it is? And that's trust, that's a question of trust.” in discussing aiming for the best, and embodying what you believe.

 

Pageau gets a smug look and says, “It's a question of truth with which ends up manifesting itself in love [] and I think that like the love that you have for the world which is [] clear...anyways, it shows me that you migtht be closer to that trust than you might want to admit to yourself maybe.” as his voice trails off.

 

THIS IS THAT INSIDIOUS POWER SHIT. Fuck that guy. 

 

Peterson says he doesn't know what to do with his thoughts, is the most confused person he's ever met, and says he's working at about 5% of what he considers normal. Peterson is vulnerable, and here come the Christians coming to prey on him.

 

This kind of power I feel is precisely why most things are fucked beyond measure. If you want a convert, go at them at their best and win. Don't hijack their weakness and pair subversive language to their struggle. Are you a pathetic boss who doesn't want to be undermined? Drone about policy and abstract plans until someone like me quits. Are you ashamed or naive about your privilege? Tell all your white friends, where it's safe, and your ideas can congeal as a vote for fascism. Parasitic subversion is the preferred method of the worst ideas and behaviors into popular discourse precisely because when it's uncovered and felt for what it's doing, you might struggle against how it's killing you.

 

The comment section is littered with chirps and prayers and the typical, excruciatingly gross prostrations I can only depict in the image of those crowds falling over when the preacher pretends to be imbuing the congregation with heavenly manna. What's the power they seek? The power of the crowd, the familiar affirmations, and deeply personal shares of their own pain or epiphanous exhaustion that finally brought them to accepting the truth of the metaphysical. Since it's true you should be good, and Jesus is good, Jesus is the truth! – circular reasoning triumphs! Transitive property FTW! It's definitely not assumptions couched in word-salad and trust/love-laden language foisted upon the self-confessed exhausted and confused mind. GO TO HELL!

 

I'm not angry or suspicious when you say you care about someone or enjoy talking to them. I'm extremely skeptical and pessimistic about the move to divorce your agency from your actions towards them. I don't care how many thousands of words you use to “minister” to someone, you will inevitably find yourself drawn in a circle, justifying anything or everything and nothing but because you could and it makes you feel good. You'd rather hide from the ego that nakedly enjoys it. You'd rather shutter your window into yourself and the world and play on the merry-go-round of your reasoning to nowhere. You're not seriously engaged in the world when you can blame Jesus or when you're preying on the weak. You're letting the world burn in service to egos high on their own supply.

 

I seek to destroy with my power. I don't want explosions and death. I want to kill this fluid habit of acting like parasites looking for hosts and validation in everything besides our best ideas or capacity. You want to “intellectualize” religion and call that Christ? You take on all the baggage. The predators are on your team. Is your sacrifice of who you are for what they tell you you are worth it? Jordan Peterson has meant a considerable amount to me, and not for his ability to break and choke down bullshit because a pleasant goatee mirrored his pain and called it love.

[899] Power On

Let's riff on power.

I think people underestimate me. Be careful to prevent yourself from reading that with more than what I'm saying. I'm not saying I have extra or secret powers to be unveiled after appetizer skirmishes. I'm not saying they are consciously saying, “no” or “I don't believe you.” I'm not even saying the ones who aren't would understand what I'm putting down as powerful would regard it in the same way I would.

I think people underestimate me because they underestimate themselves. Where they doubt, I bet they could. Where they profess the truth, I doubt it's so sweetly understood. I habituate a contrarian impulse that shapes my approach to the world. Every “I could never,” if nothing else, gets its thought experiment for just how deeply and aggressively I could. I divorce my ability to entertain every terrible or amazing idea from an insistent moral or value flavor were you to share it with the wrong person.

I consider this ability part of my immutable power. As long as I can feel, say, or do otherwise, nothing will remain sacred or too powerful. Your authority is suspect. Your words will be open for discussion and dissection. Like all forms of power, it's ambivalent to the outcome of its exercise. I either crash your disposition and into how you conceive of yourself, or I don't register at all but as someone carrying on a discussion or making a harmless point. Rarely, if ever, am I able to tell something to someone they don't already know about themselves, but the reaction isn't so often a nod in solidarity more than a condemnation for the whole intellectualized posture and mere speculation of their character or motivation.

I think people have considerably smaller conceptions of their own power that often conform to modern narratives or prescriptions from authority. What's a “middle-manager?” Someone who has played along long enough to get someone underneath them they can dictate to. Whether they are actually feeling responsible for those people, or what they say to them, is entirely removed from the hierarchical structure's implication. They're your boss. They manage. In fact, “management” is whatever they're doing. There's no check on the implicated reality without you bringing one to the table.

I think people are embarrassed at the amount of power they have and double down on their embarrassed paralysis in observing how little they use it. It's not that they don't know what they could do, it's that they don't choose to engage the consequences all the way through. This is born of a false notion that everything isn't playing out its series of consequences at all times. You have to pick what you're choosing to suffer or the suffering that's going to happen anyway will be for nothing.

I find myself in a persistent power imbalance. I have a habit of being able to demonstrate my ability in ways I struggle to describe as anything beyond making people feel inferior or resentful. I have the “power” to play-along, find my middle-management impulse, and settle into the kind of graduated authority I obtained in my first job in high school. It generally takes less than 3 months before someone, somewhere, gives me the license or authority well before and independent of a matching title or paycheck. This translates practically into me getting taken advantage of and elicits an endless array of bureaucratic platitudes to my offers-cum-pushes for increased access, control, or responsibility.

The first rule in The 48 Laws of Power is to not outshine the master. Be deferential, and god forbid you're charming, try to avoid working for them altogether. In my capacity at DCS and now social working, I connect. My habit of seemingly baseless (invisible) speculation on my observations allows me to get people to crack or comply. My unwillingness to compromise on a certain kind of behavioral standard makes the rules by how I orient my life real for you. I'm charming, deadly honest, and I happen to have an inexhaustible well that's oriented to making a big show or example of what I'm capable of. I denounce the concept of masters and routinely leave them blind. It's never been a secret why I've wanted to strike out on my own entrepreneurially or am super enthusiastic about turning a spot in cousin-fuck Indiana into something remotely representative of my values.

Am I powerful in other ways? I'm fairly strong. I'm terrible at getting sick, but have tended to survive. I have strong opinions on the forms political engagement should take place. The relationships I cultivate and seek to protect form a basis around how I think my values can be extended and manifest independent of me. I try to keep the chaotic and angry ship of my brain flowing with the wind and current yet not carried away. I think writing is powerful. I'm giving shape to the infinitely abstract. I'm building another anchor and reference point. I'm seeking a point of connection I can never know and trusting the consequences matter.

What's the nature of your power? If it's memes, try again. If it's self-effacing excuses and shoulder shrugs, try again. If it's mocking the very idea or question altogether, think about the example you are setting. Think what you would tell a child you cared about. Think as though what you can do or say will last forever, and whatever people may think of you, that's what they're going to see. Would you recognize yourself in what you said or did? Were you even trying?

[898] Both Ways

I'm still thoughtful about a status I wrote this morning, copied under the blog, and after listening to part of an episode from Know Your Enemy discussing a prominent Jewish leftist who turned conservative while mixing in the intellectual circles of the 50s and 60s.

 

I try to emphasize in moments between frothing that I'm but one, infinitely small, window into the world, often befuddled, confused, and barely approximating the language that would “best” describe where I'm coming from. I approach sharing and vocal exercise with the idea that they are stomachs that need feeding or muscles that need stretching and conditioning. It's an analogy for everything worthwhile or terrible in life. You are what you do, or if you're stuck trying, what you're working on and shooting for.

 

As such, walking the line between “what I feel” and “how I think” can seem perfectly arbitrary or endlessly ambiguous to someone reading a blog in isolation or who is wholly unconcerned with giving me any credit. If I doubt that my tone or word choice was altogether awesome, I'm gonna bring it up. I'm gonna ask myself why and make another pass. A lot of that is just work I think you do as an individual to keep yourself honest. I want you to believe I'm doing my best, but I also need to be confident that it is, in fact, my best representation of the moment, if nothing else.

 

I want new ideas. It underlies why I bother to be an “everythingist” about life. I watch all the shows for a line or character I haven't met before or a point of connection with a stranger where something harder to recognize is never known. I want to have a perspective on different mediums of story-telling, like podcasts, and attempt to discern the “best” messages I've been missing or strategies for explaining something in a skillful way I lack.

 

In Know Your Enemy, the hosts are very giving of their praise and cutting in their criticism for different writers. I might choke at the idea of a “conservative intellectual,” but it means something that has practical and longstanding implications. They read the books. They describe the psychology, justifications, and emotional tenor of people compelled to functionally destroy what may otherwise be a salient opinion of fiscal responsibility or foreign policy but for all of the racism and ego. They point out how weird it is for a prominent public figure to brag about his A+ grades at 35 and to ignore his “self-made” conception of success started with a publishing company passed down from his father.

 

I really don't want to be that dumb. I try to incorporate the people that have shaped my perspective and drive. I try to shower praise and include your perspective into the larger project. It is very real for me how little I can do alone. That comes with it the burden of making sure people grasp and respect themselves and relative place in the picture so you can honestly discuss how to move forward. That comes with some actual vocalization and engagement with perspectives that are different from yours and approaching them with the patience and openness to ask more than tell.

 

For whatever I do in fact excel at, I have extreme deficits and perfectly visible blind-spots that almost everyone is keen to keep secret from me. Occasionally when they interject, I have a habit of pointing out a contradiction or confounding variable that becomes the pivot to a meta-discussion about the discussion and eventual derailing. One such instance is the offered argument that “I need to take responsibility for how I come across.” Superficially easy to say and agree with right? That alone is good advice when you're dealing with a world that is going to judge you and hold power over you. What happens when you breathlessly move on to your next argument that “you shouldn't care what people think?”

 

The details start to matter. Well, you should care about what the people close to you think, but not the ignorant masses lazily judging. You should at least vocalize you are taking responsibility for your “harsh” language, and then continue to do it anyway. When we feel personally attacked, we want the other person to take responsibility. When we feel we're “just being honest,” fuck the haters.

 

I don't believe you get anywhere if you don't start honest and believe the other person is too. Norman Podhoretz, the conservative on focus of this podcast episode, was friends with James Baldwin. He went on something of a racist tirade towards Baldwin who told him to write all of his grievances down and publish it, which he did, and it became a notable historical essay. I love this story, because I regard James Baldwin as an extreme truth teller first and foremost concerned with the truth. He didn't lash out and fight back, he said put that naked ass of your honest expression on paper to someone very comfortable displaying their naked ass, fast forward 50 years, we get a coherent throughline and useful perspective on how to discuss racist cultural issues.

 

I want a zeal for accountability. I'm fine with “crazy” people, so long as they are honest in their craziness, and we honestly account for their influence or what we're going to do about it. There are sincere racists that I want us all to be on the same page about how large we empower their influence. There are 74 million proud fascists which you shouldn't shy away from calling fascists. Your boss or owner is probably greedy and proud they sit above you, high on the perch of their small window. Lazy and loose talk will allow you to try and have it both ways, a false notion of your own righteousness married to perpetually justified ignorance of the many roles you're playing in destroying what we need to survive.

 

-------------------------------------------------

 

From daily life to catastrophes, I can't shake the thought that it's a product of over-thinking. Over-thinking is not critical thinking. Over-thinking is coming to a relative or often obvious conclusion, and then doing nothing. Over-thinking is a coy held-harmless description about agency and taking responsibility for the moment.

 

I haven't been particularly anxious this week of snow days and very little money making. I'm not worried about the bills, the car or shed debt, or myself as an ardent TV watcher. This morning the sinking stomach started. I'm reminded how good I felt being able to pick up scrap again. I'm going to see how my play to leverage a new job works to let me make something worthwhile out of my current one.

 

It's obvious I should be paid enough to live and reward what I do. Every day I don't build how I'm going to live the obvious truth and consequences of that is on me. The "cling to practical" model of how to cope in two-week stints is obviously a path to hell. I'm not anxious about advocating for myself. I'm anxious about how hopeless it feels to do so. I'm hearing the "professional" excuses. I'm anticipating the open questions and work of mitigating an attitude that has crippled how we are to conceive of and relate to ourselves.

 

I want so little and increasingly obvious things. It makes for a stark contrast when I evaluate how little the systems I'm plugged into are designed to provide for those wants. If I want to grow, the system wants me in debt. If I want to show up and work every day, the system gives me an endless sea of entertainment. If I want more responsibility, the system says we should hold several meetings to dissect this curious notion of "responsibility," and maybe you should consider "doing your job."

 

I'm to believe that "fixes" or "hope" lies in some "generational struggle." These systems are failing me every day. They're freezing Texans to death. They're starving children. They're addicting you to opiates. The excuses for why the world feels like shit are happening right now. Can you hear them? Can you recognize the familiar patterns and design?

 

Why don't we, obviously, hold ourselves accountable? Why don't we force power to pay up? Why don't we strike? Do you want dramatically more than me at the expense of everyone else and the future? Why are you quiet? Why are you pretending you are a "good person" who can sit and wait until "the world" will bother? Are you a coward, or cunt?

 

Listen to the array of excuses and pleading for sympathy that washes over you from the last question. Feel the guilt. Watch how you ignore the real enemy and focus on my tone and word choice. Then forget this moment when someone pats you on the head and dismisses your needs in a "polite," professional, political manner. Come back to your easy target when you can't sort your feelings out, but you'll be damned if you're not going to continue thinking and praying about it. And you don't need my negativity trying to provoke you.

 

There is no hero if you're not one. It's obvious, at least to me, that I'm not the problem or enemy. I speak. I fight. I create. I state my goals and work on them. I pay attention. Do I want allies? If I could recognize any, sure. I'm not alone, but our club is too small for the size of the problem. It's got its own obligations and personal problems too. But it stays honest and fights back. It remains open and informed. It wants to isolate and judge and believe you can be left alone to suffer your decisions. But it knows the consequences of abandoning the project. The cancerous cultural mass is consuming us all.

[897] Gomu Ningen

I'm on the verge of being caught up on One Piece. It's been a 2 or 3 year saga, serious periods of not watching at all, and nearly every episode sped to twice normal speed. It's not an accomplishment. It's not something to be proud of. It's not even a show for which I've watched the most episodes. It's just another show in a lengthy perspective-informing bender on what I'm to understand from my seat observing culture, even if Luffy is my spirit animal.

Regular watchers of anime will know this one falls into the same category of many others. There's an underlying thread of constantly improving, training, or getting stronger as the chaos of a world full of enemies ups the stakes every arc. A previously perceived unbeatable foe is actually the key to unlocking new abilities and an awareness of your own power. Enemies become friends. Characters you may not enjoy end up getting normalized for their look or play some integral part you wouldn't guess upon first meeting them. It's got jokes, it's got fan service, and like most things that I've spent a lot of time with as I near the end, I don't want it to end. At least with this series, it's likely got several more years, and I've never read the manga.

I vibe with the thesis of normalizing a certain kind of struggle or exercise of power. I think I've felt what might have been my ultimate knock-out blows become warm-ups, both in periods of actual physical activity, but also psychologically, and as it pertains to coping skills. I don't know if you've heard, but I hate everything and am super negative, so the fact I've managed to keep anything together or going at all is nearly miraculous. (You wanna talk about comments that have stuck with me, I genuinely have yet to fully understand or digest being called “negative” as assertively as I heard it however many years ago, so, good one, Chelsea.)

Right now, as it pertains to my cartoonish conception of my ever-growing power, I think about the cold. Our heat has been out nearly all winter. Space heaters weren't cutting it. I've got make-shift insulation in the form of blankets draped from the ceiling. I could, in theory, help the situation marginally by filling in certain gaps and holes in the room addition. (Which, I'll remind you, is arguably more extended garage than proper room.) But as inconvenient and shitty as being cold can be, it hasn't risen psychologically to the point that it's required an immediate fix. We've made quasi-stabs at it, watched the Youtube videos, sourced the illegal-for-us-to-buy and expensive refrigerant, and found a guy who might even be able to help but for the sudden onslaught of snow preventing his travel.

I've been colder. I've spent nights out here without power, under a mountain of blankets, and without several layers of appropriately warm clothes. I've worked and carried heavy things through the pre-paved unmowed hellscape of my yard. It doesn't mean I don't want to be cozy and warm no matter what, but the drama and pain and degree of being annoyed is dampened. I don't regard the cold as something happening to me, more a problem on an infinite list of problems I haven't prioritized. That shift in perspective lends itself to all of my ongoing efforts on what I'd like to create.

Luffy doesn't stop. He's impulsive and kind of dumb. He never gets more amped or focused than when he's trying to save or defend his friends. He takes people at their word. He says the quiet part out loud and is almost certain to force an alteration of the plan. He's perpetually looking to learn and explore. He renames people to fit his understanding or memory. He's always hungry.

Me, human, takes enough time out of his days and nights to watch a ton of TV. I still make moves. I look for righteous fights. I maintain focus on how I need to feel during the ride more than what I expect from the future. I'm doing things like leveraging my ability and awareness in aggressive ways to attempt to make a wage that's kept up with inflation. I'm politely, but curtly, snapping back at dumb bitches telling us “we know what we signed up for” in response to someone talking about needing the money to survive and model habits our families require. I'm adopting the headache of insane and inane facebook messages in attempting to sell things.

Right now, on the ride, I'm warm, I'm full, my adopted outdoor cat just came home and jumped in my lap, and I've got the time and inclination to pause my show and reflect. Again, I recognize how many ways in which I've peaked. Again, I can describe the future as the series of doors left to open and peacefully acknowledge and accept the heaters that need fixed. They can be fixed, and I intend to fix them. What else do you need if you're living the truth of your intention and ability?

One of the reasons I enjoy anime is how nakedly *them* they are. The weird ones are comfortable in their weirdness, and then they don't register as weird anymore. If you looked at a random still from a scene of One Piece, your first impression might be that it's one of the goofiest things you've ever seen. How much snot needs to come out of a character's nose? Why is that guy's head in a hippo? It's a test of whether you can pull the substance from what your eyes may be telling you. How good of a story is it in its ability to wrap you up and immediately cut through the garishness while also letting you appreciate the creativity?

As with every show I've wanted or not wanted to end, it will. I'm often suspicious of people who stay too psychologically attached to one show or idea. I've gotten to be a super-fan about Firefly and certain video games, and the reasons for doing so were often about deficits in my real life. I wanted a kind of family or dramatic saga that my often boring or depressed and resentful environment was not offering. Over time, I've watched that depression and resentment grow, and the chasm between me and my “negativity” in what Allie and I have put together out here and whatever you want to make of how others are navigating their subversion, isolation, or poverty is on full display. Anyone feel like we've been diligently hammering away at the issues we railed about in college? Don't you feel the energy and hope in your intentioned and sustainable community?

I don't have a crew, and I'm not the captain. I'd love one, but I'd want everyone on it to be like the Straw Hats; their own powerhouse with their own stories and reasons and vital roles to play. Still, the dumbest, most naive, and childish part of me is trying to create something large enough to carry a crew through the unforgiving seas of fascism and almost certain death. That death is played with constantly in anime. The bullets are sliced or kicked. The Earth shatters in every direction after a fierce blow before a few deep breaths, and the hero stands back up. Certainly the stakes don't feel that high in our day-to-day lives.

The different crews are after a mythical treasure left by the last Pirate King. I suspect a future episode in which Luffy becomes the Pirate King and/or when he finds One Piece will not be the most memorable. They're something of forgone conclusions like in Game of Thrones when Jon Snow sits on the throne. It's the drops from the peaks that make your stomach wrench. It's when you're actually invested and are mitigating the consequences of loss in real time, keeping death close. You felt the dramatic deaths in Game of Thrones, and you feel them in One Piece, even if most are incredibly hard to kill.

One of the familiar criticisms of an anime like One Piece are the amount of filler-episodes and extended intro reminder redundancies. Boss battles can run for 20+ episodes, story arcs over the course of a 100. Part of what makes watching so many episodes so quick is that of 23:50 minutes, only 9 is new information. You're going to keep watching, just like you're going to continue to live every boring or miserable day of your life. Tension needs to build, right? Every episode of a series can't be a perfect 10 with surprising revelations and an end that leaves you silently struck.

I appreciate the kind of sleepiness of snow days and a binge, but equally enjoy being busy, sweaty, and putting together large creative pieces on how to go about this life game. It's a practice-turned-quasi compulsion. I can't rot. I can't slowly die a martyr for some stated ideal or conception of myself. I dare myself to contradict the forces that try to fuck with the example I wish to set, practical-filler-training-malevolent days be damned. I find the next wall or corner to be backed against, and fight through the idea I should settle down or die there. After all, I'm pretty much powerful or comfortable enough, and we all know how the battle is going to end.

[896] Magic Carpet Ride

Settled in for the snow-day-ish, let's begin.

I was a touch unsettled at the prospect of lunging into debt, attempting to get my truck fixed, for projects we're attempting to prepare for spring. I, again, forgot that I should be receiving a tax return, a stimulus check is coming, and I hadn't calculated a paycheck. I should still be “even” within $100 or so dollars over the next month, as opposed to being shackled to my job for a minimum of two.

I'm exploring how to get different certifications when it comes to doing I.T. work. I told my supervisor I plan to leverage not only the good work and efficiency I'm building into their visit system, but my proclivity to learn new things and change on a dime to see if my company will find the wisdom to pay me what I'm worth. She supports the plan. At the same time, I'm finding a kind of pace and resolve for how I engage in my job duties that I find eerily similar to the “comfort” or “familiarity” I found at DCS that had me clinging on for 2 years.

I compare that feeling to the endless fervent desperation to get things done and be “on” that I've managed to, more or less, subsume to what I'm considering a patient wisdom or beaten-into-me humility. Is there “something” you could be doing every day in service to your goals? Depending on how broad or specific your goal, sure. Is it worth it? Can it be assessed in the context of other goals and obligations? These questions are where it starts to get complicated.

My goals have certainly changed over the years, I believe on the whole for the better. Where I might have one day just wanted to be “generally rich,” I have a deeper appreciation for maintaining a contented-enough head-space from which to work in. I like when things feel personal and meaningful on my own terms. I've stated enough that I could pay the bills with a McDonald's-esc job, but I have yet to apply to fast-food in spite of my many points of disillusion about social work. Practically, I'm married to some form of devil for the discernible future, and this one pays a touch more.

I think actually living through all of the sacrifices and negotiations to get to where I am now has taught me considerably about how to prioritize things. I've trained myself to appreciate the good fortune I have when my car gets stuck a mere 5 minute walk from my house and I can pair music with my stride. I recall the images and expenses before I could look at my camera feeds and see projects completed or in-waiting. It makes me think about how difficult the transition from talking out of your ass about hopes and dreams and wrestling with the reality can be if you haven't experienced the work or are simply unwilling to do it.

The disconnect between generations I think embodies the space where discussions about work and what constitutes it takes place. The privileges afforded to generations previous are now weaponized resentments for what they feel is slipping away. My generation had to cope with their entire sense of being in the world systematically attacked. Add the baggage of our country's racial history and sexual inequalities. Add the financial crashes and useless exploitatively expensive degrees. We're broken as fuck and rarely want to admit how beyond meme-i-fying our medication regimens and prompting our celebrities to talk about their own mental health issues.

Say you're not generally as good as me at finding a process to ride through your insatiable desire to comment or bitch about things. Your struggle becomes tantamount to poverty. It's a poverty of spirit if nothing else. You can't be blamed, and much like things aren't going to change if you simply never get the money to afford your basic necessities, debated as they may be, there is no environment, self-help book, or series of interpersonal interactions that's going to magically show you the way to cope or “progress” through your feelings. You might know there's work to be done, but can't define it, never get the tools, and never be able to afford to keep things working over time. Your emotional break-even point is to drag yourself through the day and stave off the worst consequences while you still manage to meaningfully suffer. It's a suffering in service to a broader negligence and disregard for your being, and ironically resentful that you want the bare minimum.

My funds tend to stay “even.” My money is in my land and the potential of the tools I acquire. I rarely have the cash or am not buying things on credit. I liken this to how Amazon runs its accounting, never showing a profit, hiding its money in numbers games. Of course, I'm not making money like that, but I think an underlying logic holds true to both. My money is attempting to service a long-term vision. I don't go into debt for debt's sake, it's overwhelmingly an investment on what I can continue to do or do in a bigger way. My truck, for all of its headaches, has enabled more, considerably so, than it has cost.

I trace back what I'm doing to various pivotal points in how my perspective is being shaped. I don't get the tiny house without a place to put it, way to transport it, or credit card to buy it when I don't have the cash. All fairly large, for me, bets and long-term stories that combine into the “easy” and “quick” decision today. That house/shed is going to save me untold hours in the future attempting to build something like it, let alone the cost of materials for which I have an intimate understanding. An intimate understanding, again, born of a willingness to do the work on my room extension and other projects.

The experience chasm only grows. I'm not 22, extra insistent and incorrigible about spending every waking minute in pursuit of my latest idea, cost be damned. That time taught me a lot, not least, it isn't sustainable. Sustainable healthy practice takes a level of commitment and work that is considerably more than we culturally have a notion of. Individuals certainly take on projects or educational pursuits and remind us of the dedication it takes to get certified or promoted, but on the whole most of our future talk is reduced to a kind of bar banter. We shy away from the work knowing it's hard and we've loaded on years of baggage before the idea of voluntarily adopting ever more.

It's hard to find it simply within yourself to pursue anything. You know what your bottom really looks like, and it's a fraction of what you've put together so far. Most of us could be some level of quasi-vagrant if any movie-esc apocalypse scenario played out. We wouldn't like it, and some of us would be overly dramatic, but we'd do it. When you compare that potential reality to the fed, warm, superficially communal and riddled with distractions environment you currently occupy, why fight for more? It becomes an intellectual exercise and boundary pushing that, evolutionarily speaking, is meaningless without an outward compelling force. Why divine reason-enough for manifesting yourself beyond familiar bubbles?

I think the question by itself is an overwhelmingly compelling argument for complacency, whether people understand it as such or not. “Complacency” is a word that doesn't pack a connotative punch given what I believe can be understood about the drama and degree of consequences. It's disguised as a genuine sense of comfort, or worse, “conservative.” It suggests a state of being that is, by default, not doing enough accounting for the constant state of change that we're all experiencing. We don't seek to remind ourselves of this or we'll almost immediately remember that we're going to die and our decisions matter.

I worry about success. I think people are going to drive themselves even further away. I consider what I'm pursuing now a dream-like opportunity that has been clawed away from a reality perfectly ambivalent of my existence. No series of “opportunists” are jumping to be a part of what should be our creation. Why? The excuses are infinite and personal, comfortable and complacent, familiar and in keeping with a baggage story they haven't chronicled in almost 900 blogs.

It can be complicated joining forces or negotiating goals and budgets, but it's absolutely necessary. The level of “risk” it takes to build what it will take to survive is only mitigated by a shared burden and vision. If we can only martial those forces in service to insurrection and war, we're absolutely fucked. Whether we want to make the decision to face that head on, now, together, or be forced into a permanent isolation that kills us slowly, and then all at once, is one presented in every moment. We have individual countries or examples of who we know we'd rather be more like. Adopting our share of the work is to wrench the culture from the hands of the violent and negligent. Are you living in the world you feel comfortable dying in?

[895] Sharp Dressed Man

Perhaps it's because lately I've been inundated with more religious-themed books and media, or perhaps I just can't sleep because my dinner was 7000 calories of delicious carbs, but here we are.

I consider myself a reasonable person. Why? I remain aware of how limited reason can be. I don't “believe” I'm a reasonable person. I think I'm a reasonable person. For me, there's a huge gap between thinking and believing. I struggle to conceive of things I believe in. I have an endless array of ideas which I either can or can't reason my way towards some kind of relative conclusion.

When I'm angry, down, or incredibly confused, I turn to reason. I don't pray the pain away. I don't deny what I feel or the words I wish to use to express it. I don't try to act like things are okay. I don't lust for someone to make excuses for me nor whisper in my ear that everything will be okay. Reason, for me, is nothing if not a tool first. I find meaning in attempting to be reasonable as I allow my thoughts to act through my fingers in searching for what I have to say.

I understand why people don't want to be reasonable. Reason is, at least theoretically, dispassionate. A story told boringly or series of facts aligned don't necessitate your opinion. A reason might be cold, flat, and weighing you down, while an excuse comes out hot and ready to protect you or float into as many ears as will take it. Reason gives us a path to often just as cold and heavy conclusions as the facts required to get us there.

I watched a short documentary from Braver Angels using marriage counseling sessions between democrats and republicans. I listened to Chris Hedges' book American Fascists. I watched What's the Matter with Kansas? In some ways, I don't know how to refrain from rehashing what I feel exists in one tenth of my writing about religious thinking, conservatives, or the inevitable consequences of forgoing your agency in service to things with less evidence than farts in the wind. There's still something I'm missing.

I think I understand religious belief. I think I understand it as a series of forces, not some ardently defined moment or act of “belief.” I see it as a kind of parallel mind where the only thing that matters is remaining alive as a character in some kind of story. I take it for granted that people are incredibly psychologically fragile. The fine line of remote sanity, in sheer practical terms, bolstered by religious myth or interpersonal cult feels almost reflexively mandatory. I think people who bemoan the amount of alleged believers often ignore the series of myths you're required to adopt even as an otherwise “reasonable person” just to function.

As such, I've come to understand the strategy of poking fun, getting angry, or otherwise attempting to belittle someone's faith as futile. It doesn't mean it can't be fun or justified, but it does mean if I'm to maintain that I want to change culture, my pitch is going to have to be more comprehensive. I'm positive I've stated this years ago, and it's manifested as a generalized disinterest in engaging with anyone remotely religious about anything religious more than any kind of advocacy specifically.

What's important to understand about my change in position is that it didn't come from anymore respect for religion or any one religious person. In fact, I still hate staunch ideologues and think religion is the best tool they use to destroy most of what I care about, including the practice and teaching of reason. Reason allowed me to take in more information and adopt a broader view. I could further contextualize not just my antagonizers, but myself and how I feel about them. No religious person was persuasive. No religious argument just shook my feeble atheistic mind. I just kept working to understand the problem broader.

A lot of my anger for religious people is for a perceived intellectual laziness and dishonesty. Fear I can at least basically respect insofar as it's a complicated emotion at the basest level of our brain, and when you're afraid, you're bound to be unreasonable. Once you've removed the fear, or poor excuses to pretend you're afraid, I think it's a direct flight to dishonesty and laziness. Flying right over facts, questions, “I don't know,” or any one of a thousand things that might chip away at the catch-all answers of “faith.”

Religion is often referred to as something very personal. Whether or not you even want to use the word religion, people flock to “spiritual” or some such “mystical” realm of communing with forces “beyond” or “greater.” I've done drugs that made me feel that way. They did not result in religious conversion. Before I did those drugs, I did a lot of reading about the ways people achieve those states and what happens in our brains when they're going on. I sucked the magic out. I didn't let the question linger like no answer could possibly exist and moved on with my life.

We act like there's any real separation of church and state. This intimate, deeply personal, often rallying cry to go out and convert others, global phenomenon about how to characterize your place and organize the world is treated as though it's an incidental afterthought when you go to the ballot box. A lazy economist might say you've got “perfect information” from which to decide who's going to represent your best interests and disregard your “personal values.”

The challenge, and I think so few people understand or agree with this, is to understand how totalizing and threatening it is to have a perspective subsumed by a religious mindset. Maybe Jesus isn't your brand, but something in how we respond to story-telling and club-affiliation is speaking to you. It's no better to be emotionally hijacked by a political party than it is a sky daddy.

We know as well much about how and why people pick these fascist feelings and tendencies over reason. They're desperate. They're alone. They're exhausted and ashamed. They're angry, perhaps even as angry as me, and they don't know what to do about it besides burn things down. Could you have asked for a more lame coup? It played out like a bad TV episode of a TNT show. Faith without acts is dead? The hollowness of faith is clearly alive and well.

I think I semi-consciously decided that the psychosis was too large and the numbers too few to really combat it. I started praising the idea of so much to eat and watch as forms of a stop-gap to any kind of genuine movement towards destruction. There' no more fat, hopeless, and addicted than the ones who vote in service to their fascist values. Fight the next Civil War from the top of any flight of steps and you'll be done by the afternoon.

The word “reason,” like all words in double-speak land, gets tossed around to mean its opposite. “The reason I vote is to save the unborn!” Of course, you don't need a concept of “save” “the unborn” or “reason” to form those words into a sentence. You don't need science. You don't need statistics or analogies implicating your god in significantly more natural abortions than are ever sought medically. A reasonable person knows you're tribal. Your morals are shaped by a story, not morality. Your feelings dictate instead of inform. You feel the story in a way that facts don't concern themselves with.

Reason, devoid of context, gets you into as much or more trouble than being merely faithful. Now, you've functionally broken all the rules. Nothing weaves your thoughts into a context. Psychotic breaks put this on display. Even when you're perhaps technically saying a series of true things, they're anchored to nothing, and you, not anchored, can't tell. Our fundamental need for a story now becomes the game of people marketing their “family atmosphere” at a slave-labor job. It's a story of manifesting destiny and entitlements. It's class warfare. It's righteous slaughter of the threat just over the hill or those guilty of thought-crime in not believing your origin or orientation story.

Where does the individual, or just the capacity to reason, go? If we must have a story, and I think we must, which one do we choose? Here, the apologists for various faiths point to the generally large number of people not blowing themselves up or stoning gay people and consider that reason enough to pat themselves on the back for their club membership. I reject this, and say you should be choosing your story.

Your story is anchored by choice. Refined choices are dictated the larger you make your perspective. If you're a child and you choose milk and cereal for breakfast, because that's all you've ever had or known, or perhaps all your parents could afford, you have little choice. Your story is small, predictable, and speaking to a universal story perhaps about poverty or simplicity. Now you're grown. You can eat literally anything, food or otherwise, and you pick a piece of fruit for books and books of reasons that still may tell a story about poverty or simplicity, but now with your agency and intention. You can recognize your choice now in the broader context. You can reflect on your “choice” as a child as primarily a series of circumstances and ignorance.

It appears many people struggle with this kind of exercise, not because it's hard, but because it begs a lot of questions they start afraid, and then end lazy and dishonest, about answering. How much of your day are you really choosing? Are you still practically a child? What horrible terrible things are you choosing? What might've happened to you as a child that you have no choice but to relive the terror of each time you think of it? What if the people you care most about in the world were actually choosing to do things that would hurt or kill you and the people or things you care about? What if you don't know or aren't confident you can, in fact, ever choose to do anything about anything? (Just double-dog dare these people to lick a toilet seat and then ask them how helpless they feel because they know the rules.)

Much more polite, simple, and “safe” to step right over all that and, god forbid, anyone remark how banal some Jewish snobs regard evil or remark on how it triumphs.

This is what will kill us, in my estimation. It won't be bloody Trump nuts hanging like balls from a neutered nation. It won't be nuclear war or mishap. I don't even think it will be climate change. It will just be the silence of business as usual. It'll be on the wind between the pages of a trillion memes. It will come like a virus. It will come straight-up, nicely dressed, and telling you, exceptionally reasonably, what it's doing and intends to do to you in the future, and you'll usher it inside, introduce it to your kids, and pray it's only joking.

[894] Tell Me Why

What if I can't be fixed? What if there's never a stabilizing point where it all just clicks? What happens when I can't find my stride, I'm stuck rehashing old rhetoric and beating a dream of a kind of existence to death as my hairline recedes, my joints ache, and I struggle to hear what's been said across the room? What if I'm destined for a generalized forlorn blog or biting indictment of politics every week, and every sincere exploration of my being or state of mind is reduced to a randomized index number of a whole-internet archive and never to be seen again? What if I'm not even granted the irony of dying from a car crash while I'm tweeting about how likely it seems I might be about to die in a car crash?

I was riffing on “hate” yesterday on the drive home. I'm reminded often how much of my behavior is driven by hate. I don't “accept” things. I'm not particularly stoic or disengaged. I'm not boundlessly joyful at the sheer absurdity no matter how many jokes I can come up with. Hate is first and foremost on my mind and only after I engage the hate does room for other modes of being come through. I have to talk about how much I hate my job before I pick up the phone and schedule the next appointment. I have to bitch about the weather before I pack on layers and attempt some outdoor task. I have to belabor the shittiness of any given situation before the joke comes or the move to account for what may, innocently-enough, contribute to the shittiness.

It's a hatred that keeps me clenched, tight, and taking Advil like candy. It's a hate the cups the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. It's a hate that has me rehearsing conversations with people or interviewers when I actually have power or the ability to be of the kind of grand consequence I'm under the impression will pacify the hate. Mostly I think it will do so because when I get to “do more,” whether it's the opportunity to demonstrate my competence for things I don't even care to do, or stay busy enough to justify my time and energy, I do feel better, if brief enough to know it's not a long term fix or really the kind of example I'm attempting to set.

I remember not feeling necessarily “good” when all I had to do each day was read or do drug studies, but I don't recall seething with hatred nor regularly clenching my jaw and needing to constantly massage my shoulders. There's a different kind of pain when you put your body, not just your mind, into some kind of contradiction. Thinking convoluted, contradictory, or conflicting things comes with the territory of having a mind. Working and watching yourself betray what your muscles or attention might otherwise be focused on is another level. I don't just think it's silly or inefficient the way the organizations I've saddled myself to run, I'm the engine that doesn't get the oil to function right. And if they give me drops of oil, it's on the condition I ignore the grinding brakes.

Social workers broadly seem to epitomize that “make the best of it” mindset I think has choked the country as a whole. Whether you were driven to the job because they're always hiring, or you actually have some genuine regard for the work, the default presumption, whether voiced explicitly or not, is that people are pretty terrible, and it's up to us with our models, good will, and belief in our better natures to show them the door and hold their hand through the chaos. That chaos can sometimes just be meeting attendance and paperwork, or the ongoing drama of a mental health struggle and addiction.

At bottom though, we are all operating under the basic premise that people suck. It comes out as “it's a hard job” or “I could never do that.” Every study on stress has DCS or social workers as its focus. It's our cultural narrative. People suck so much, they don't deserve to get paid, get healthcare, have access to time off, or even live if you prefer to call them “illegal” or “antifa” in a deliberate dance around the human and ideas they represent. We take these suckers and we get them addicted, hold the pharmaceutical companies harmless, and then we take their children in a process to be overseen by an office with a 50/50 chance you'll get an insecure power monger with their own incredibly sucky behavior dictating how it proceeds.

We send inexperienced or exhausted people out to “advocate” that you don't suck that bad and just need someone in your corner, when the country, county, town, and any remote authority in your life has failed you, considers you a criminal, and were they to not actually consider you a giant ball of irredeemable suck, couldn't help you in a meaningful and comprehensive way if they tried. They are forced to draw inspiration and meaning like a parent cheering way too hard at a soccer game, thinking the deeper they feel and the wider they prostrate, the more of helpful consequence they'll be.

And you're supposed to carry on like this, every day, your whole life, swapping in one job for another, one excuse or company policy disavowing the language needed to liberate. You're supposed to maintain professionalism and maturity as you watch yourself prematurely age or resent every minute you're finally “alone” to think about how deeply you're haunted by the next obligation. And they're obligations because they lend themselves to guilt. You, somehow, still know what you're worth and what you could be doing. You know that the “little bit of good,” be it colloquially or practically is seemingly all you ever get, and being a tired or depressed stick in the mud contributes only one more to the instances in which you weren't able to justify your existence.

How liberating, some people tell me, to be less attached, not full of feeling dramatically one way or another as though the hatred isn't squeezing and visceral. Why don't I go back to school? Why don't I apply to be a...? Why don't I try to pursue? There is no goal if you're not enjoying the ride. The processes that are difficult are supposed to be in service to something, not a self-inflicted painful reminder of something severely lacking for which no one seems bothered to account for. I can't enjoy the movie while the theater is on fire.

We don't have the time to process how big of a fuck up it is that we're at once manifesting and suffering in a loop. And we're told by those who would never doubt their own sincerity or utility of their being that maybe we're just having a bad day or haven't come to appreciate enough about our circumstances. When your hair falls out during chemo, there are so many fabulous wigs, after all, and they just so happen to be in sales.

I want it all to come to a grinding halt. I don't just want “stimulus” money, I want stimulus time. I want to pause functionally begging for the right to exist, be pretty much left alone, and I'll throw you some cash to let me go to the doctor, eat, and keep watching TV. This shit shouldn't be so hard. It shouldn't rise to the level of existential crisis every single fucking day when the car blows a tire or your billable hours maliciously coordinate to cancel on you the same week. My body shouldn't hint to me that maybe an occasion deserves a tear when I'm shown a moment of compassion, understanding, or opportunity because it knows how short we are on supplies.

I'm so incredibly tired of feeling like I have some disorder, deficiency, defect, or determined role like I'm over here wisely choosing each day to play the, “What can I swallow?” game. I'm tired of singing the same song. I'm tired of seeing shit like a Bernie fucking meme go more viral than every fucking thing that man has stood for his entire life. I'm tired of looking for the excuse to tap out gracefully as though the mental and emotional worlds we're occupying can even grasp the concept of grace beyond its weaponized god-ridden invocations.

There are battles worth fighting. There are reasons to live and worse struggles to endure for the kind of rewards required to thrive over being afraid and exhausted. Why does no one believe that?