Old me
You can’t be the old you. And if you spend time thinking about it you might as well accept that you’re in a alternate universe. It should be liberating to not have to be your old self. If you had glory years, if the best is behind you, it gets a little harder though. How do we move forward without repeating ourselves, without competing against our formerness, which has no bearing on the world the older us is navigating. I’m so much better than who I was, but I miss who I was, there was a lot of freedom in that earlier version of me.
As a futurist I’ve spent many of my waking hours trying to peer into the future, so that I could chart a path that it made sense to travel down. I remember when I was young my ideas were always a little too big. Things would start with a simple enough idea, but the scope always grew in my head. Eventually I would have to split the idea into parts, everything was a trilogy. Most of the time the humble idea no longer lived up to the opus that started to build in my mind and I’d abandon it. That isn’t how most people get into thinking about the future.
I did eventually get better at coming up with an idea and working on it in manageable chunks. I did start to believe the big fiction ideas were just that, immense daydreams that my mind made to pass the day, this was grounding, but poetry and think pieces were real, world building was less of a thing I could build to.
As I got older I found myself anxious with my routine. I began to worry that my successful creative hobby, and my good working career were me. They were. We are what we do. I was a succesful IT professional and an early Internet blogger with some following. Life was good. I was growing uncomfortable though. On close appraisal, the more certain and firm things felt, the more they seemed insubstantial. I was starting to see the first hints of the world past adulthood, the early uncertainty of middle age.
The nineties recession had left everything dingy and decaying, except for the growing presence of the internet. In the real world White flight was continuing its migratory pattern to newer suburbs. White families were fearful of non whites moving in and lowering property values, so they moved their kids to new poorly built suburbs. A world of new schools, longer commutes, no apartments, few black and Latino faces.
So it is again curious to think that years later I would find myself riding pretty high and uneasy. As the two thousands picked up so did the housing market. All over the world people were taking dated and neglected homes and remodeling them. There was an opportunity to make money and the home was important again. Home ownership became a rally cry. Most middle class and wealthy people will own a home in their lifetime, multiple homes, for the poor it is another matter. During the 2000’s though everyone was owning a home, or multiples homes!
Home ownership was changing, consumerism was also changing. Everybody was upgrading their homes. The natural pattern of buying a “first home” and then getting the larger home cause your family was growing, and you wanted to move to where the “good” schools were, and then maybe downgrading to a smaller home when you got older was changing. People were trading in homes like they were cars or shoes. Flipping became a term. The cost of houses was rising at an alarming rate, like Dutch tulips.
The thing about trends and events that everyone is drawn into, especially when money is a componet is that everyone is suddenly a fucking expert. Everyone is trying to figure out how they can get in on the action. And everyone is sure the party will never stop.
I liked the Internet, but I was growing slowly concerned about the house game. The thing about lows and highs is that they always average out. Naturally you don’t want to buy at the top of a market that is going to topple. Really you always want to buy the ugliest house for the least money, but that discussion is for another time.
The Internet was filling with promise. My livelihood was based on the internet. Computers had gone from being these devices which were capable of doing great feats, they were slowly becoming the looking glass to the information highway. Housing on the other hand was turning into a party where someone had spiked the punch.
In the perfect scam the mark becomes convinced that they want to be in on the action. You’re not hard selling them. Usually you just have to drive a nice car, wear nice clothes, and have things they want. This is how you rope them in.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the newest and best version of me was going to toss on a sandwich board and wail on and on about the sky falling. I was looking into the future and everything was fucked. The thing is that people who are on the opposite side of delusion are decried. No one wants to hear what you’re saying, they don’t thank you later.
I didn’t short the market. I don’t do the stock game, that isn’t in my wheel house. I did eschew debt though. I did fight off the advances of buying an additional house, that my ex wanted to do at the time. I wish i could say that meant everything went well and we won, but you lose sometimes, even when you’re on the winning side.
Looking back, I was continuing to lead a life that didn’t have a lot in common with the people around me. This is lonely. Most of us find a tribe of like minded people. Most of us do not want our conceptions challenged. We are comforted by the same. When you’d stop dreaming about stories to pass the time and you realize your job and your outlook on life are going to dramaticlaly change, the uncertainty is crippling.
And that is where I found myself. I was losing weight, paying off debt, more than skeptical about the hysteria people were going through and I was afraid.
Fear is a motivator. My growing anxiety and fear that everything was about to come unhinged is what saved me. Old me wouldn’t have seen that. Old me was oblivious.
End part 1.
The Fix
I think we’re all in a pot of water. I don’t think anyone expected to be here, with a crazy president, a pandemic, protests, a collapsing economy and 3 hobbit movies that were all so bad.
I think a lot of personal recessions are going to happen. The have not will suffer more, but not in any shocking way, just more. The middle class will carry on, but continue to resent what feels like a life less than what they imagined. I guess this is especially true for many white Americans who were really clearly at the top of the food chain. The thing about being on top is usually you’re standing on the backs of others. This isn’t a condemnation of white people, lord knows they’re getting a lot heaped on them these days.
Our values have been replaced with the value we place on the things around us. If you’re poor you’re likely to stay poor, this is cause you can’t usually afford to not be poor. If you’re middle class you have a good chance of staying middle class, but you’re likely to be your own worst enemy, if you’re wealthy, you’re likely to stay wealthy. This is the class system, it doesn’t look the same as how the British had to deal with it, which was transparent, still a barrier though. The Indian people are even more nuanced about it with their caste system. In America we’ve always been this land of opportunity. We were always a racist land, we always also believed in class, but if you found some way to make money we weren’t mad at you.
The thing with values though is that we all want. We all want it to be better. Even when we minimize, we want a better minimum. The reason why giving up things is considered enlightenment and hard to achieve is because we have things. And all things are not the same, there is version after version of everything and they’re either cheaper or more expensive. Our values have been rewired to focus on our wants. There is so much fuckery going on here in the US that no one wants to hear the “You can do it” speech. No one wants me going on a tear about the poor and how they could if they just… I know better, it is a more complicated, at the very least a more nuance discussion.
I’m gonna really muddy the water and say that we are held back by our lack of imagination, there really is this truth we lack an understanding of.
Growing up upper lower class it was made plain that if I was clean, carried myself in a respectable way, and worked hard, I could succeed. They weren’t wrong. No one told me race wasn’t going to be an issue, everyone made plain it was a huge issue, i just had to live with it.
Growing up poor also taught me to think the good life is luxurious. Just to be clear, the good life is luxurious, it just doesn’t feel like that, once you get used to it. Once you get into the good life you’re always tempted with nicer versions of everything. You don’t take things for granted when you’re poor. Sometimes the fridge is empty when you’re poor. Clothes are finite, you have one “good outfit” and shoes. I looked ok for school and each year I had a clean outfit that wasn’t threadbare, that was for going to special places, to see family and such. Growing up poor taught me not to take anything for granted. I grew up rich in dignity, that was pretty surprising since a teenager raised me and I usually saw my dad a few times a year.
People are ill prepared with leaving their comfort zone. I moved away from what I knew and was transplanted to the south. When I came here in eighties the whites around me were in some form of middle class living and the blacks were just trying not to draw attention to themselves, they seemed in a place and worn down. The integrated form of southern racism was far worse than the segregated racism of the midwest that I came from.
The fix is done in broad daylight and all we have to do is oppose it, we’ve not been good at that lately. They keep taking cause we let them. I think everyone should protest, but I also think everyone should vote, I think before we burn everything down, we should just change it with participation, there are more of us than them, we’re just not putting the right effort into it.
We're not the same and I don't relate
July 2nd 2020
A recent study has come out explaining that money can buy you happiness. The approximate number is an income of 70k, you can make more, but there isn’t a much greater level of happiness, they say. The things around you just get nicer, in theory.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-happy-according-to-wealth-experts.html
They’re not wrong.
The thing is that people will tell you that money creates its own problems. I’d say how we spend money is the problem source. In my late teens and early twenties I went from job to job. In each instance I made more money and I ended up spending more money. It was only during a period of a couple of years that I contracted that I had good savings habits.
The difference between a salary job (false sense of security), and contract work (you really won’t have this job long), was that the money from contracting was and still can be a wild ride. On one job, for a few months I’d be scraping the barrel and making $700 every two weeks. I’d then go six months making $3000 a month. It was a wild ride. In addition to not knowing what I might be making in the following months, I also had to deal with being unemployed for weeks or months at a time.
You always had the choice to hold out till you hit your number. A lot of people did that. They’d retire in increments. In this instance you’d declare to yourself (and anyone around you that), there was no way you were going to accept anything less than 80k a year. At that point it was just up to you to make do till those big ticket offers came in.
I saved a lot of money during those contracting years. It was the only time in my twenties when I had really great financial habits. I eventually left contracting, it was too unstable for me. The financial uncertainty felt agonizing, though I never really struggled with managing my money, outside of anxiety. In addition to that, as a contractor you feel like a second class citizen, put that on top of being a minority and it really was a bummer socially.
The way to tame money is to not spend it.
The thing with not spending money is that our entire society is built on consumption. If you can afford it, why aren’t you doing it? Why aren’t you drycleaning your clothes? Why would you clean your house? Why are you driving an old car, that is ugly, sometimes needs repairs and is paid off? Why indeed?
We are seduced by the now, with little heed of the fact that we’re all time travelers with capsules likely to land us into barren futures.
Taking a small portion of your income and saving that for retirement and making it rain with everything else you earn is normal.
When I got to my thirties I was really overcome with anxiety about finances. I had a salaried job, the economy was a rollercoaster. I had to change my life. I started with paying off debt, it took years of conditioning and change to get there. I truly did not suffer while doing it.
Once I got to my later thirties I realized that my identity was tied into my profession and ability to make money. That made me aghast. So I doubled down. The debt was gone, but I wasn’t saving in any significant way. So I had to push harder to be better at that. And I did, I started to save, but you first have to bring down your entire cost of living if you want to really save. And I did. Then I took all of my savings and started to invest. Investing is saving, but you do take your liquidity and turn it into an object, whether it is stock, or a rental house. I again had no money, but now I was able to live on an income of 22k a year. This was far less than the nearly 100k I was making before.
I didn’t have any money though. My cost of living was greatly reduced. My money had a long term mission that was serving me, but there was really just some emergency money around. Again, no one was starving. I still had family vacations. We still went out to dinner.
End part 1.
The sky fell during an earthquake
This piece was started on July 1st 2020.
I started today at 5am. The summer has been fairly mild and I’ve been biking on the Dahon Mariner. I’ve recently begun selling off all of my bikes and somehow this bike has become my favorite people powered bike.
The weather was maybe in the sixties, very comfortable out, unexpected for July in Georgia. I rode eight miles with the sun slowly above. Down close to my wheels I watched as worms raced slowly across warming concrete, desperate to reach the envied comfort of grass, they had little hope of success.
It is easy to either feel comforted or filled with despair when you do the same thing every day. Riding back I saw wild flowers raising their head to meet the sun, and pigeons as graceful as doves wooed me with the motion of their wings.
My mind of late has dwelled on the brightness of the future I've laid out in for myself. This is in contrast to the unknown end that I know I have no control over and also ponder alot.
I’m still haunted though. I feel I should be doing better. In a recent conversation with a friend, they did the back of the napkin on my state of affairs.
“Aren’t you X? That means you’re fine, you should have no worries anymore, why be so serious, life will pass you by.”
I didn’t disagree with the assessment, though I made plain that I do not feel i’ve gotten to the place where I can truly stop. It isn’t enough to be in the place where I don’t have to worry. Where I am, all will be good, but I could find myself not comforted with my routine. I could still be burdened with some chicken shit routine, so I can “make do”. There is a new level of uncertainty that says to me “Push on, shit is unpredictable.”
What happens to your psyche If you’ve always assumed the sky was going to fall and instead the earth beneath you opened up? Do you get eaten up cause you didn’t see the earthquake, or are you just glad you’re prepared and you realize you just knew some disaster was going to strike.
I have overcome this financial hurdle. I don’t feel like I’ve lost everything to do it. I was never comfortable with working for the right now and just hoping future me will be ok. I was never comfortable with the fact that the people around me, family, friends, peers, take no heed of their circumstances and act powerless.
I grew up and watched people who were not “have” and “Have not”. I grew up and saw people who worked incredibly hard, had families, went to barbeques, enjoyed life and they retired. They weren’t miserable. I grew up and watched people who most certainly wanted every moment to be of their choosing and those people did not age out well. Half those people did not have to worry about retirement cause they killed themselves, in uninteresting ways I might add. The other half just went into their sunset years with nothing, certainly not their carefree youth.
I need to make one more push.
Drove my chevy to the levee
Disclosure This piece was originally written 15 years ago. I no longer have any shit to say about George Lucas and what he does with his movies, tinkering with them. Things have been edited here. Some commas got sent to the wood shed. I do commas like a five year old does rose petals at a wedding. I also snipped out a piece or two, where i knew what i was saying but I said it with too many words. Sometimes I was trying to be clever, other times I just should have come back and edited again. PS
I hear Hunter S Thomson offed himself....
My first Hunter S Thompson book was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Gerard had just died, and to get away, I took a trip with a family that Gerard and I were close too. The Smiths were part of a americanized (and international) Yoga movement known as Siddha Yoga, which has a decent foothold here in the states, a large presence in New York and California, and some satellite offices in other states where a lot of members live.
I don’t want to be a part of some Google search and be seen saying flippant things about Siddha itself, because as an organization that I was a fringe member of for two years, it seemed pretty nice, just Americanized a bit, and in that I mean, that enlightenment (courses building towards it) had an optional fiscal cost. Organizations must survive, and survival will come from the largesse of its members. Besides, I don’t know a better group of harmonious people, and they have incredibly reasonable rates for the common pilgrim seeking spiritual and physical refugee.
Laurie and myself were both very close to Gerard, she invited me with her family to travel to New York to the Siddha Ashram (an annual family retreat), a huge facility nestled in the woods. And when I say huge, I mean this facility had auditoriums, various levels of housing, support buildings, retreat sites, it is amazingly huge. And for a philo-ligous place, it is one of those places where you register like you’re in a resort, choosing lodging and how you want to stay. The lowest tier of living participation involves working on the site while you stay; the next stage up is to do a dorm scenario. In all the living arrangement tiers which went from part time working, to getting your own Chalet, basic food is free as is basic services for meditation. It was interesting and amazing, I should do it again sometime, it was a very positive experience.
I took a few books with me, Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas was one of them, I read it at night, with a book light, the same way I’d been reading since I was a kid, pre e-reader. I bunked with four people, including a hunky, (blonde all over) guy who was not shy about his nudity or his dangle. Oh to be thin and good looking. So it was a bit peculiar, and my initial comfort was to escape into myself those first few days. I mean, this is a story about my trip to the Catskill Mountains to stay at a Yoga Ashram while I mourned the loss of my friend and read one very fucked up book. And for that week I skeptically spent my daylight among the happiest and most positive people I’ve ever met, this is not exaggeration, and I allowed myself to participate in their practices and explanation of their philo-ligion, and when time was my own, more often at night then during the day, I would read Fear and Loathing. And I never laughed so much in my life, that strange book about drugs and writing, came to be such a comfort.
I basked in upbeat people during the day, stared at the most brilliant clouds, and felt a greater disconnect with the Chrisitan (manmade) God I’d grown use to not understanding, but at night I laughed. HST will be most remembered for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (thankfully not his ESPN series, or say The Curse of Lono), And Vegas is a interesting book, not just cause it’s about drugs and a sharp interpretation of how your psyche changes on drugs (if you’ve seen the movie on TBS and were turned off read the book fool) Vegas ends up being a book about being way outside the outskirts of behavior acceptable to society, it also doesn’t let up, it stays raw and ridiculously intense. It is sometimes hard to imagine that he wrote anything after that, but he did, a strange bibliography which forked on politics and counter culture. I mean this is the guy who honestly meant it when he said "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
I can’t say that it was Hunter S Thomson who saved me from suicide or a depressing life, turning me around and making me a better citizen, but that book, that page turning solace where I didn’t feel guilty to enjoy something was a huge help. In addition to that sojourn to one of the most peaceful places I’d ever had the opportunity to travel to. Hunter did turn me on for a long time to some great reading, and a awesome sense of individualism. If you’ve never read his books, his body of work is worth the read. Wikipedia is a great place to begin referencing his work and life. click here. And of course when I was told about his death (I’ve been offline for over a week) my comment was not glib or from sadness. What a full life Hunter S Thomson led, and if anyone had the right to choose to end their life, surely it was that man.
We are savage to those who show brilliance and dare to still walk the earth as mortals…
Good for Hunter. Where was he in the end? I don’t know, so hard to be a writer, persona and have to constantly live up to what you have created, being larger then life is a bitch. But if you vaguely know Hunter S Thomson, through his work and writing, you know if he wanted to check out, it was his call. So we should celebrate his passing, whether he chose it for good reasons or not. Some people whined cause She Who Moved On cracked about HST blowing his brains out like hemingway, which was a bit of a generalization. They both blew there brains out and were writers, similarities stop there though I think, but does anyone genuinely think HST would be bothered by some other writer saying some shit like that, probably not.
If you are interested in Siddha Yoga, you can check learn more from there website. click here. A very interesting culture to observe and participate in, and while I can not say that I was a true follower for the two years that I skirted and observed this group of people, I can honestly say I learned about positive healing through associating with positive people. So strange to be so isolated and in pain, and surrounded by such spiritually centered people, not that fake California friendly vibe, just people channeling good energy, it helped me, as opposed to say converting me, and did not require me to believe, did not make me uncomfortable. . And, if you ever think about killing yourself, first consider an intervention of family and friends. And if you are considering suicide, you probably aren’t too in tune with the thought of calling everyone up and asking for help, likewise you might not be in the mood for people to suggest you just check into a local mental health institute, but they do have some good drugs and will flush your system good. But, if you’re online, suicidal and (or just) bored here is one link with some good advice click here.
And here is a google search query to get you started as well. click here.
Cutting room floor…
And this is kinda funny, but did you know that there is a group called The American Association of Sucidology. Interesting huh. This is one of their site pics, captures the feeling of being suicidal to a T, minus the fact it's a group of kids, and they all look cute and cool. dumb bastards. It's really has a "Night of the Liviing Cute Kids" kinda vibe, probably terrifies parents though.
Interesting comments from that time
Kurt Loder kept it real, criticism and respect in one piece, fab.“The melancholy fact is that Hunter pretty much peaked in the early '70s.” link is here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1497300/20050222/index.jhtml?headlines=true
And as far as what She Who Moved On said, she had another agenda, one which references her opinion of suicide being bad (And HSTs death being a bit dull, whatever that meant) which she went on further to do with her little LJ buddies, and finally, she was still wrong (we get the Hemingway reference) just the deaths weren’t the same. The truth is that for many (most of my friends who also happen to loathe She Who Moved On BTW) Hunter was a worshipped icon, a man admired of his work (do you follow folks). But She Who Moved On knew this as well, she has a different audience though, and a different network of friends, so what she said was quite rude for many of us, who took time to be sad at the results of Hunter taking his own life.
I celebrate the dead, I mourn only the living dead. So I didn’t really care what she said, I don’t begrudge her her opinion, nor do I think much of it, it was a simple observation I thought. It’s interesting also, so many people think that suicide is either a.) horrible, b.) not the right of someone to choose, when they want to end their own life. And usually they disregard the fact that if it’s so freaking god awful that you take a gun and put it to your head, if you smoke yourself folks, you gotta be in some godawful pain, the whole selfish thing is true, but kinda trite compared to laying a blank canvas down and painting your passing with it.
If you wanna kill yourself go on, you will be missed, your pain will be ended, but your wake is wide and disruptive, maybe like that negative energy that resided in yourself exploding, becoming shrapnel, and being finally released upon those people you held dear and/or stopped caring for.
I could care less of what her opinion of his death was (his death is irrelevant actually), if you love Hunter S Thomson keep on loving him, keep on respecting him. The finger that pulls a trigger, the hand that fashions a noose, it is desperation, never the idol you grew to love, that’s obvious right?
Do better Paul
I’ve been working on my attitude lately. Throughout various periods of my life I’ve found myself faced with the situation of feeling like I’m a good worker, but realizing all would be better served if I do more. For me that usually means those Latter Day Saint commercials from my childhood creep into my thinking.
What are the things that provoke us to do better? Is it a reaction to something? “I have to lose weight cause I look and feel fat.” Can it be an action that is not a reaction to something? I’m not sure… What is an action of the self, that is not in response to one's enviornment. I think it is possible (I’m hedging my bets here,) but probably it is usually a reaction.
I want to feel better.
I resent usually when I feel like I’m putting this energy forward and others aren’t. It still benefits me to put the energy forward. I ultimately feel better and make the others around me feel better. The debt of whether or not they change at all or just also benefit from my behavior is what usually stops me from acting sooner.
If I think about it from a thoughtful and not emotional place I should just tweak my attitude and do it, end of story; as they say.
In the past this has always worked splendidly, people respond to it with a little incredulity, but reinvention isn’t subtle. The caterpillar doesn’t come out of chrysalis as a earth worm. A little sausage with plenty of feet and spikey fur turns into a winged creature. It isn’t even the ridiculous visual of say a dragon, all lizard with wings. This slow crawly thing becomes something else. No, people notice when you change your attitude, it is a situation that doesn’t go unnoticed.
Epilogue…
It isn’t really about me doing “more”. It is about me not being resentful of what I am doing. Shovel that shit with a smile sir. And it isn’t even shit, I don’t even care about the amount of work. Sometimes work is frustrating just cause of how we go about doing things.