If I Could Exist As Some Kinda Layabout, I Would Do That. I’d Shave When I Want To. I’d Sleep When

What the fuck do I call this?

If you know where the dream ends, you’re being watched. 

If you can find the seams, the stuff you jerk off to that you don’t tell anyone about is being written down by a government agent who is slowly falling in love with you. 

You make the nipples of their soul hard enough to cut diamonds. 

I clear my throat, “Look. This is bullshit. See, the beginning of wisdom is being able to tell where the dream ends while at higher frequencies. If you can do that, shit will be less scary.” 

See. There were moments here. Undeniably. Some of it was bullshit. Maybe most of it was bullshit but some of it was not a dream. Sometimes I heard right. Sometimes I heard just right. 

That song I know. That I heard somewhere. One time. 

Yo man. I don’t know how I feel about that song thing, man. 

This is garbage, isn’t it? 

Maybe. There were moments though. 

There were moments you thought I kinda had it. 

Maybe. 

Maybe. 

Maybe. 

The audacity. 

to try to utter the unutterable. 

Holy shit, I better stay in my lane, right? 

The crowd builds messiahs. 

Nobody is insane enough to believe that about themselves unless they are high 24/7. 

I don’t gotta worry about that though. 

I’m not that good. 

This though. 

This is courage. 

If you tried. Fuck. That’s cheesy. Good night. You know what I’m getting at though, right? 

Seriously though. Good night. 

Tuesday

I woke up before my alarm today. Damn. Isn’t that a sentence that just grabs your attention? You want to keep reading, don’t you? You gotta start somewhere. I woke up way before my alarm. I could have gone back to sleep but I decided to just get the hell out of bed. I wanted some extra time to fill up my tank. Having to stop for gas when you’re in a hurry gives me mad anxiety like so many things do. As a result, I end up in the office early. I’m typing away at my thoughts but to the untrained eye, it might look like I’m hard at work at some arcane IT task. People might be thinking, that boy works hard. That boy shows up early. That boy is going places.

Monday was uncharacteristically gentle. The world be fuckin’ with me. The world be slow rollin’ me into a false sense of security and then BAM! I’m asking my doctor if Paxil is right for me. Sometimes things go okay. Sometimes they even go well. I don’t ever trust it. The world always be up to some shit, ya dig?

The world is mundane and strange at the same time. Everybody goes about their business chasing nickels and dimes while the next apocalypse or whatever the fuck happens in slow motion. Life really does just go on.

Sometimes I wonder if somebody is going to stumble across this and recognize me and then it occurs to me that people who kinda sorta know me might read this. The fact of the matter is that some of what I’ve written here is cringe-y. I’m just going to have to live with that.

I look at my LinkedIn profile and that’s my name. I really wrote that stuff on my profile. I don’t really recognize that guy. I hate LinkedIn. It feels strange to say that I hate the corporate world when I barely exist in it really. I’m barely in it. I’m low-level but I think I’m okay being here. I don’t really have too much of a desire to go any higher. It occurs to me that I’m fairly good at playing a role. I’m good at occupying a role satisfactorily. I guess my work persona is that of a semi-techy Mr. Rogers. Pretending. Double-lives. That’s sexy, isn’t it? Or is it? Day dreams about being a spy. Not James Bond shit. More like The Americans. Day dreams about infiltrating some drug operation in 1980s Miami. Modern but still retro reboot of Miami Vice. I’ve watched far too much TV. It’s only recently that I’m realizing just how much that has fucked me up.

Double lives? I wonder what kinda double lives people have here. Not even double lives. Just secrets. Drugs. Freaky sex stuff. Honestly, the only thing that interests me right now is drugs and freaky sex stuff. See. There is TV messing with my mind again. People are people. They are not characters in some shitty prestige TV drama on HBO. Real life is just real life.

I’m not always busy at this job. Sometimes things move slow. I’m always conscious of how busy I look. I always try to look occupied. No matter how slow it gets, you will not catch me playing games on my phone or on my computer. That shit looks bad. I will mutter things to myself that are technical so that it looks like I am chewing on some problem for someone upstairs. The last thing that I need is someone wondering what I’m being paid to do. I also get up and walk around so that people see me. I figure it looks weird if I just sit in my cubicle all day.

I’ve written just over 600 words today. I suppose that’s a good thing but there is very little in the way of insight in any of these words. Of course, I didn’t have a clear objective. I guess what this comes down to is making writing a habit. I want to make writing a habit because it satisfies me. It makes me feel better. I like the effect it has on my mind. There probably never will be a time that I’m not some neurotic mess but maybe I can do something with that.

It’s starting to become not enough to just write. I’ve written semi-diligently almost every single day. I want to say something. I want to get close to the inexpressible and get kinda close to expressing it. I want to get so close that god damn it, I actually fucking expressed it. 

Dog-whistling Dixie. That phrase kept occurring to me on my drive home today. Dog whistling Dixie. Dog whistling Dixie. I dunno. 

I’m actually close to having read an entire book in I don’t know how long. I got to spend a lot of time just reading at my desk today. That was nice. Seriously. I took care of some minor shit here and there but most of the time, I just got to read. We’re not talking anything that literary. It’s The Great Divide by Matt Taibbi. It talks a lot about the machinations of the financial collapse of 2008. I barely remember that. Seriously, I think maybe I was barely conscious. That event touched everything though. It was a complicated shell game that ended up torching the lives of so many people and no one was ever really held accountable for it. That’s crime on a massive scale. There’s crime and then there’s crime. 

Something that can send me into a rage is local news broadcasts because of all the “crime” stories. Maybe they’ll have some story about some thieves that are stealing packages on people’s doorsteps. I remember once seeing a video on some local news station’s Facebook page of some package thief nicking a package and then slipping and falling and the comments were all, “KARMA! IT’S A BIIIIITCH AND SO AM I,” and “THEY WAS LUCKY I WASN’T THERE WITH MY GUN CUZ I WOULDA GONE PUNISHER ON HER FAT ASS.” All this ire for some desperate petty criminal but where is the rage for the banker who ripped off their pension fund on Wall Street with a nose full of cocaine while getting head from a barely legal prostie? C’mon man. I know it’s not the 80s any more but I’m pretty sure Wall Street still runs on cocaine. You ever see that episode of Cops where they were stopping and frisking people outside of a luxury apartment complex and hitting Wall Streeters with coke possession charges? No you don’t because it never happened and it doesn’t happen. Nah, if you are one of the brain dead idiots who enjoys a show like Cops, you are treated to shirtless folk in trailer parks getting busted for meth and domestic violence and monologues from boring motherfuckers with crew cuts talking about how they are like a 4th generation pig or some shit as they drive along on patrol with their eyes peeled for people of color. 

I will be going in and seeing a therapist on Monday. Fuck! A god damn Monday. So, I am going to be groggy and ready to just go to bed after a long day but I can’t just go home. I gotta go talk to some guy I’ve talked to exactly twice. I better think about what it is I’m going to say. Damn. I wonder how honest I really am going to be in there. I’ve got to make at least some attempt to be honest or there really is no point, right?  So, what is it really? 

Hmm. So. Here’s what it is. I’m really fucking bored, lonely and I can get really anxious. Look, I’m doing better than I have in a long time but god damn it, what else should I be doing? 

Sundays, My Voice, Etc.

This is me trying again. 

This feels like trying to carry a depressed sumo wrestler on my shoulders. 

I want to say that I had something specific in my unremarkable, possibly second-hand head. I kinda do but see, I don’t really know how long I can really go on about it. 

It’s a Sunday and those are tough. Sunday means Monday comin’. Feels like the day before the chair, ya dig? Thing about the chair though. Thing about Old Sparky is that it is a cure for Mondays, right? Yeah. I don’t know if it is. I got suspicions about what happens after death and I don’t really want to discuss them with you, okay? I’d rather discuss them with a naked woman in a room full of something like love on some night that’s way too warm and sticky, maybe on some day where there is nothing else to do. 

I guess it doesn’t have to be like that. It can be with someone who has somehow become like a brother or a sister to me. There are a few like that if I really take the time to think on that. You need that or else you’re like some inmate in solitary fixin’ to bang your head against the wall. 

A moment of silence for those in solitary. It breaks my heart that that happens to anyone. I don’t care how guilty they are. Fuck. Maybe it happened to me. Maybe it will happen to me. Maybe it happened to you. Maybe it will happen to you. 

I’m trying to make this weird. Is it working? Truth be told, I hope it fuckin’ is but if not, at least I tried. 

I haven’t really tried at this in awhile. Fuck. I don’t know if I’ve ever really tried. I lack discipline. I lack focus. No Mr. Miyagi or Yoda or Mickey Goldmill is gonna show me how to get focus. 

Life has a shape, ya dig? Well, mine does. That shape is a mess. I promise I will go into details on that mess and some of those details are not gonna make me look like a big, god damn hero. Thing about life is there are no big, god damn heroes. Just people. 

That mess though. My mess. The mess I’ve made. It’s been a whole lot worse. Maybe I’m making progress. 

What was on my mind is my voice when I do this thing. Lord knows I don’t talk like this but I don’t typically get the chance to talk about anything that actually matters if I’m gonna give the vocal chords a workout. I will confess to you though that I spend a lot of time concerning myself with whether this sounds vaguely cool. 

Shit. I’m 35. I have no business worrying about what’s cool.

Am I talking about my persona on the page? Yes. That’s me being clear.

Part of me thinks I’m just not really being authentic. I’m just stringing a bunch of words together that sound cool so people think I am some great soul. Some wise soul. Like, sometimes I think about shit hitting the fan for someone. Red alert. Barbarians are at the gates. Chips are down. Abandon all hope. That person going through that wishes I was there to tell them it might be okay, that I’ve seen beyond the veil and that there is absolutely no reason to be afraid. 

I mean, what the fuck is that? There’s mountains of ego there to be sure. I just hope that that isn’t all there is. 

What is it? Okay. There’s this desire to make someone go, “I kinda know what this weirdo is talking about here. I get it. Somehow I get it and I kinda felt something.” 

I can live with that. I think. 

Friday War Story: Man Versus Wide Format Printer

The week been gentle. The week been chill. Too gentle. Too chill. I don't trust it, man. Shit has to get a little crazy some time. Why not today?

I get in. Email waiting for me. See, there is this special printer on the third floor. It's this beast of a machine that is used to print and scan technical drawings. It seems most people cannot scan to their network folder. Turning the machine off and then back on did precisely dick so it falls to me to exorcise the demons from this fucking machine.

 I ascend one flight of stairs to see this for myself. Stick the piece of paper in. It scans. Well, son of a bitch. It works, right? Well no. For some people, it scans and then prompts for a password but guess what? The touch screen provides no way to actually enter in a password so whenever it prompts for a password, I'm sunk. That's a brick wall.

 This has me sweating. Everybody is being nice about this but if I can't fix this, I'm thinking maybe it harms my reputation. Maybe people start thinking I can't hack it. It occurs to me now they probably don't care THAT much but being the anxious, neurotic son of a bitch that I am, I sweat.

 So, I'm about out of ideas. I've not seen this problem before and Google is no help. Fuck. Why the hell did I come to work today?

 I let the office admin know that I got no idea what the motherfuck is going on. She puts in a call to the printer company and she says they will call me and send someone out. Thing is though, I know they are gonna push back cuz there is no god damn way this is their problem. They call me up and tell me to piss off.

 Yeah. I get it but fuck you too, brotha.

 Aight. MacGyver time, man. Think. I'm up and down those stairs. Hey. Wait a minute. There are a few ports on the back of this printer. Got an ethernet port. Got some funky looking serial port and a USB port. Hmm. I run downstairs and grab a USB keyboard. I plug it into the USB port on the back of the printer and... IT TYPES. I can type in the password now. I type the password I think it wants and check the box that says 'remember my password.' ... IT WORKS. Holy shit. I fixed it. Inside I'm ecstatic. I walk tall. I'm like that guy at the end of The Right Stuff walking away from the wreckage with a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

 God damn. I need to chill.

Saturday and some stuff and things

The words written the night before (See post entitled “What the fuck do I call this?” I think that’s what I called it.) were what they were. That was an experiment. If you surmised that those words were the product of an altered state, you are correct. It’s fair to say that I do have a relationship with cannabis. It’s been an off and on thing for about 3 years but mostly on. I despise a lot of the culture around this drug. A lot of it makes me cringe. That said, I do find it a valuable exercise at times to write while under the influence of it. 

That can be easier said than done. The temptation is to just chill and listen to some music until I just get drowsy or to play some Rocket League. Rocket League while high can be quite the trippy, beautiful experience. That’s often when I can enter ‘the zone’ when it comes to that game. I know when to challenge for the ball, I somehow make decisions that seem to make sense without really thinking, I seem to react automatically and I’m okay trying something crazy to see if it works and it seems like I learn how to make “crazy” work. 

A soccer game with rocket powered cars while stoned as fuck is only so satisfying so at some point I’ve got to pry myself away and look at the page. I’ve got to ride the green dragon and take it where I want to go. 

I’m less judgmental of my thoughts. The flow is easier. There is a danger there. If you’re high as fuck, you can be really satisfied with mediocre or lazy ideas so you find yourself in the position of trying to figure out whether you are onto something or if you are just being silly. If you can tell the difference (even sort of) then you are getting to be dangerous. 

What Happens

What happens is the machine 

goes through us 

too damn quick

til we got nothin’ but fun size Milky Way wrappers 

in a Halloween treat bag. 

-

What happens is sometimes you find yourself ponderin’ what hell is. 

It’s geographic region. 

The shit that goes down there. 

Always in the same ZIP code you’re in. 

It’s Monday eternally. 

That deep, polar bear cold you feel all over your body

never quits 

and everything you got to do to eat that day 

is gonna kill you. 

-

What happens is sometimes you live 

and you’re happy enough to (almost) thank god. 

Your walk has swagger to it.

Maybe the air that slowly kills you tastes sweeter. 

You think maybe it’ll all be okay 

till it all wears off like a crack hit. 

- 

What happens is life. 

Unknown

I’ve only been doing this thing for a week. Somehow it feels longer than that. 

I feel like an itch has been scratched. I feel like I ain’t got no itches to scratch today. None. Is that a sign of trouble? 

I guess boredom, shit. No. This isn’t boredom. I don’t know what this is. I swear I’ve been aware of a keener sense of myself lately. No matter how keen your sense gets, you still find that your sense isn’t all the way calibrated. There are uncharted waters within you. 

Maybe this is just being chill. Maybe this is how most people are. 

There is another state of being I sometimes find myself in though it is rare. This is the state of being unfuckwittable. I’ll try and describe that to you some other day because right now there is no fucking way I’m going to be able to do that justice. 

I can’t do most things justice. 

I wasn’t even going to try this today. I was just going to leave it but that seemed like a bad idea. 

I sit here at my desk. Daily Mix 3 playlist from Spotify is blaring and I keep hitting repeat on a particular song. I don’t know why. Not in Love by Crystal Castles. Sometimes I kinda nod my head to it and sometimes I low-key white boy dance to it. The words don’t really speak to me. I can’t really speak to the beat or the musical qualities of this composition because I’m laughably unqualified. 

I find myself thinking of ending montages in TV episodes. Ya know, shots of the characters with little or no dialogue in the closing minutes of the episode as some song plays. 

Yeah. That’s it. Drive safe. 

I sorta tried. Sorta. 

Dad bod and the mind of a philosopher king.

It’s.. hey. I don’t really think I’m a king. It’s me being  braggadocious.