010123 to get us going, here’s some crows from 2022 us moving out situation cudahy for example looks promising, but the high school—potentially a nightmare office politics & other work shit or more to the point, what if I’m actually just bad at my job? it’s so hard to focus and just do what needs to be done; why can’t i do it unless someone’s fucking forcing me to? how to function without supervision or immediate, obvious consequences? or maybe it’s not “good” or “bad” but can I handle it? Isn’t that a symptom of depression: incompetence? inability to just do what has to be done? feeling overwhelmed and deadened lately need to start kicking a little more ass at this job, or genuinely work towards a different one new year starting and all my confusing notes and imperatives and not being sure what to work on how/when or even how to be sure when i’m working or not NB: if there’s never a period of drag or unpleasantness, you’re doing it wrong; cf. T-51, sorting on a Monday, etc. How efficiently you get through said period (and in some cases whether you get through at all) depends on what the consequences are of not doing it; generally, the more immediate and personally damaging the consequences, the less you’ll bs yourself about just getting the shit done; an ability to *grok* longer-term consequences (and perhaps rewards) should increase your options and potential accomplishments. lack of purpose, future seems meaningless, work seems dead-end, etc being a high school teacher basically means pretending to be an authority while everyone knows you’re not one because either you don’t need to be and you’re no fool, or (more likely) you’re not able to be and you’re pathetic ok, so what (if anything) would you like to be perceived as an authority on? money shit still being a guarantor for megan and mil leases (but no tax benefits for them) still strongly pulled towards throwing away all discretionary income on toys and self-soothing impulses aging parents my love/social life or lack thereof i need to go to a gym or something and actually start to feel less disgusted with my physical self “real appeal”? YMCA??? how i hate and fear people; how i’ve become so misanthropic the ongoing lack of a perfect solution for what the cuboid was striving towards looks like it has to be either just plain text files + scripting or automation as needed, or else I really do need to learn how to program my own whole shit from the bottom up; there’s no “software” by someone else that’s going to fit perfectly or even really close to perfectly how about “what is thc really doing in my life” MB: “If you can’t afford therapy, write in your journal—write down whatever you’re sad or angry about, zoom out, encourage the main character to make good decisions” > Many psychologists believe that artists use their work to heal and soothe their minds. But if drugs heal artist’s minds for them, is their work still needed, or would it even be produced? ok here’s my deal with megan: she scares me and i don’t trust her and she triggers my need to protect myself. I am furious with her for going to her grandmother’s house for christmas and then failing basic behaviors like saying thank you and volunteering to clean up without being told. I am hurt by how much of a fucking brat she acted like here for NYE when it was just SUCH a FUCKING BURDEN for her to have to get up early to get chauffered back to the train station to catch the train I paid for because she spent her last twelve bucks on chik fil a or whatever the fuck. that’s after she asked for all the fast food and wanted me to open my other bottle of wine. performance and insatiability. my gut reaction is to back off, create a distance, because so much of my life was incinerated by trying to do the right thing and be the good listener and save everyone and make everything right. i just don’t think i can still be that person, at least not with her. does that make me a bad parent? but she’s a grown ass adult. or if not create distance for its own sake, at least refuse to compromise my integrity and make the boundaries and what i need clear. but sometimes distance is the only way to do that. the pictures show it. it sounds schizophrenic but it’s true: the nye pictures where everyone’s at the table with the sushi. the way she holds her phone. the way the camera catches her looking, wary, ready, the flickering between the frames of the facade. always with her the surrounding feeling of loss, imminent loss. this makes me terribly, wretchedly, heartrendingly sad. the other day she said “i’m pretty much beyond the point of caring if anyone’s judging me” and that sounds like a rah rah fight song but it can just as easily become a fucking tragedy and millie thinks she’s gonna move to chicago and suddenly not be bored or lonely anymore? yeah, good luck with that. how do you wanna be used? what role do you wanna play in the princess’s ball? i guarantee you will not be the main character. there’s better times, closer times, yes people grow and change, but it feels like this will just always be there with megan, if not out in front then waiting around the next corner. i hope to god she can get a better handle on it than you fucking know who. i hope she doesn’t think just taking drugs and doing whatever is all she has to do. i guess it’s partly my fault, or anyway due to my failings, both as a parent and stretching back waaaay before any of that. but not entirely. and kinda, a little bit, that doesn’t matter. people can grow and change applies to me too, you know either way, there’s a wretched, sinking hole in my heart good thing i’ve had those before, and don’t immediately freak the fuck out about it and become useless 010223 Just dropped casually in conversation with cel the other day, “also i want to be moved out of here by the time your mom gets out of prison—not that she would try to do anything weird, but you never know” and so on. You know, just a normal thing to be chatting about as you drive around Muskego in the truck. So, what about that? Is she going to try to contact me? Am I ever going to talk to her again? What would possibly compel me to do so? Under what circumstances would I take the risk of opening up to her even the minuscule amount it takes to exchange a small number of words with someone? I can’t really imagine it. Every time I try to imagine it, I always come back to shutting down, saying “No thanks, not interested.” Something like “your life is not my story anymore” but not even that generously cheesy. Basically just “No” and hang up is where all the imagined scenarios conclude. I guess one could ask “why?” I guess cuz I got more hurt during my life with her than any other time I can recall. Nothing else has ever hurt me that much—*and I don’t want anything else ever to again, duh.* So why even go to the next level of questions? says my body any time this topic comes up in my mind. ## what i like in a story: - not too intellectual, has to be sexy and punky, funky, etc - not dumb either though, dumb in the sense of insulting or lazy. it can be dumb in the sense of, you know, the good kind of dumb - should make you yearn to be young but also a little hopeful about being old - doesn’t matter what it’s about, as long as it leaves you with a little boost to your will to live conjecture: Biggest reason not to “be a person who does things” is fear of simply not being able to do them good enough. but what if “doing the things” is its own reward, and leads to other doors you didn’t even know were there? doors to where you *can* be good enough—at something, anything!? MAYBE I’LL JUST DO LIKE OLD WALT, AND KEEP REVISING AND ADDING TO ESRIEL’S CAFE. Like VERSION IT OUT ON FUCKING GITHUB or whatever. KEEP THE CYCLE GOING OF “IN OR OUT” “YES OR NOW” “KILLER OR FILLER” and see where it goes next?????? or maybe not or maybe something else where some of the bits move over to a new home? there are bits of brilliance. *i need an editor,* whether it’s myself or someone else 010523 a large part of teaching is just propagating the metaphors we’ve found most useful, beautiful, and perrenial you want the city to entertain you, inspire you, endlessly fascinate you—but what do you have to offer the city? 010723 “It seems obvious, though, that stars are not living” - https://nautil.us/will-we-know-alien-life-when-we-see-it-256501/ No it doesn’t. Especially not now that you brought it up. 010923 am i actually dying? i can’t breathe properly anymore, especially when lying down. i am scared and sad. i long to the depths of my aching driftwood soul for our mermaid summer, when cel was 12 and lib was 14 and we went swimming every day and everything was blue and vibrant and humming with shimmering life and promise, and i could BREATHE. without thinking about it. i like a decent computer, i like to type and fuck around with a computer. i like to listen to music on my good old stereo system that i twist-tied together from a mixture of obsolete and quirky new bits and pieces. i like a good camera. i like to take pictures. i need to type and/or write things down, i don’t know why but i do. here’s what I absolutely do NOT want to waste any more time on: phones, trying to write or type anything with a phone, it’s literally a constant fight and makes me furious and i own that fury, i deserve that fury and it is righteous. worrying about my “job”—either do it good enough to where you don’t have to worry about it, or else quit, period. dude, you are no longer the righteous complainer, you are no longer the one who suffers under the oppressive ignorance of the board, the culture, “our educational system,” or any of that putrid tripe, LITERALLY NOBODY CARES, you are no longer the one who would be a bloody genius if only it weren’t for all these GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, if you don’t want to do it, QUIT AND LET SOMEONE ELSE DO IT AND GO DO SOMETHING ELSE, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I’M SO SICK OF ALL THE WHINING. getting it all exactly right, that’s useless too, unless you’re talking about a thing you already wrote and it’s the luxurious, decadent time of revision, like with the magic markers and the retyping every single page with care, knowing the thing is alive, the serpent is agile in the garden, you could change nothing and the wild thing would be no less unleashed, it lives, it exists, and therefore so do you for a little while longer, but now, yes now, we get to sit here and fiddle and tweak and play and caress and admire ourselves in the mirror and smile and laugh together and get each other ready to go out on a date. worrying about what to “identify” as, lol. i just want to get laid. even if i am on a fucking ventilator by the time it happens, no? probably gay. i like being gay, it makes me happy. i also love women but it’s different. ok? that’s enough of that. there’s nothing more complicated to it than that, after all. it’s just not that serious. capitalization, or not, who the fuck cares? i refuse to worry about doing it, and i refuse to worry about not doing it. i don’t fucking care. unless i do. then i will. whether i “can sleep” or not. if i can, i will. if i can’t, i guess i won’t. how about the decline? how about cognitively losing it, so to speak? I mean I guess I could care about that, but i can’t imagine how worrying about it is going to help me or anyone else. But we’ll see. I also reserve the right not to have all the answers just because i threw my phone across the room and put on my robe and came downstairs to have a crying jag and type all this. This isn’t quite my deathbed speech, yet folks. Good lord, at least I hope it isn’t. I’m not ready. I’m too jokey now but a minute ago I was as sad as I’ve been in a long time, like hollowed out, emptied out, bone broken dirt poor yellow moon swallow the ocean kind of sad. i guess because i don’t want to die, and because i haven’t finished my real job yet, and because i love the girls so much and i don’t want to not be able to go swimming with them anymore. i am a simple man. that really is about all there is to me. not gonna lie, it feels good to have been able to be sad for a bit. the fear and exhaustion will come back, as will the staving off of same in order to “function” lol. but i haven’t really felt much of anything lately, haven’t let myself because of the fear that the fear would take over. it’s true though, if you can’t feel you can’t write, and if you can’t write you can’t.... breathe? damn girl you may be onto something or not, i don’t know, it could be like andy kaufman putting rocks on himself to “cure cancer” and laughing at himself to continue the list of things i am or at least should be done with: looking ridiculous. old gay men are just a bit ridiculous; get used to it. even ones who don’t have their membership card, who don’t have the cred, who don’t wear the scarves, who don’t say the catch phrases, who aren’t a fashionable slut, etc. even just random old shy weirdos sitting in a beige suburb in wisconsin for some fucking reason slight chill between the shoulder blades. could try again to sleep but still don’t feel i’ll be able to breathe right, so.... i guess stay here a while longer? should i do some grading? ugh. grading. grading is what’s wrong with teaching. it’s worse than steve jobs’ stylus: if you have to do grading, you know you’re doing it wrong. that should be the nut of my “action research” somehow. 011123 you don’t have to be in paris to meet people and be surprised by life a 30-second relationship is as valid as a lifelong one; or one you expected to last 30 seconds that turns into 45 minutes. or 45 minutes that turn into a decade 011523 i’ve avoiding learning about the house stuff because it’s nebulous and i can’t see the end of the vast cavern. start with just reading one of the articles in your email job/work stuff just gotta do it well enough to enable you to do the parts of it and everything else that really matter start in the middle, do whatever you can do at the moment without worrying about the perfect symmetry, consistency, holistic rewrites, etc? money stuff still strongly pulled towards throwing away all discretionary income on toys and self-soothing impulses instead of hating yourself for wanting stuff, how about wait until after you move to get a new lens; in the meantime, enjoy finding out which one you really want (based on doing the hobby rather than on sitting at the computer trying to make sure your setup is invincible) honestly, could do the Y membership basically $1000/yr toys! (eating out) (alc) love/life stuff the hike and coffee and shopping with Tom was revelational. Him saying “I see you.” Being ok with being around strangers, loving them, talking to them, asking to take pictures of them—all perfect. Amused by feeling like “the woman” while Tom skittered around “Wingman” (lol) like a little boy looking at all the cool stuff. Gotta find a man to be that woman for. keep up the “Real Appeal;” it feels good to feel like you can make changes on purpose and not fail. Have I stalled out on the weight loss part? (ask coach for advice) thc: i like it. It’s all about the dosage and timing. npydyuan/cuboid stuff keep playing with the blog. doesn’t matter what exactly it turns into as you go, but just for shits and giggles, make it something, don’t just not do anything with it. consider plundering “personal challenge” for items for the cafe page, not necessarily posts? and remember what the personal challenge was, while you’re at it “did i want more? that’s the idea” changed folder “invisible trout” to “visible trout” 😬 011723 walked from a very slightly scary spot on 16th st up to national, into walkers point and whats left of the gay bars. la cage. fluid. one or two others maybe. where Switch was is for lease. ate some purple door brandy alexander and went 134 cals over for the day, ok. walker square park made me stop in my tracks and listen to my blood squishing through my pumps and plumbing, powered by whats left of my squirming, throbbing little heart. just go there at night sometime, trust me. didn’t get a picture of it but it felt like what neighborhood and community used to mean, defined in a glowing square of inward facing ambling old houses. its christmas, its the smell of turkey, its laundry, its an old couch and a long afternoon slanting in thru the old window, its whats on tv, its spaghetti in a big old battered pot for supper, its cats, its after school, its stars and swings, its a rusty rugged rambling song hopping like a hungry finch from porch to porch to porch and then on to somewhere else, cuz we’re all just spaceships after all my friend. the faint smell of cigar smoke followed me down washington street and despite me made me smile. 011823 parked in the orange light off plankinton and 2nd and wandered through third ward and downtown. about 40 cop cars screamed by at one point. “there goes another one” i heard someone say outside colectivo. stuck a manual lens at f5.6 hyperfocal and pointed and shot; wasn’t expecting much photographically or philosophically, but guess what—i relearned something. if you make even fleeting eye contact and look like something other than dead inside, i get it, there’s risks, people are fuckin crazy, but nevertheless, sometimes people look back at you and in a moment, for a moment, you both exist at the same time in the same place, and one of the times i did this, in front of whats left of the grand avenue mall, someone said “cool camera,” and i said “thanks, can i take your picture with it” and she said “well—ok, i’m not very pretty but ok” and when i was done i showed her and said “see? it looks nice” and she said “my name’s katrina, so you know who you took a picture of.” and on her way off down the sidewalk to somewhere else (cuz we’re all just spaceships after all) she said “keep on taking pictures and creating” and i said thanks, i will. 012023 god is one word for another 012323 on throwing open the curtains from bed in the morning, take the measure. that’s how happy you are. currently me not very; too much abstraction and disconnection in too much work; not enough money or sense of time or resources to change that 012323 house just have to start. why haven’t you started. literally just open one of the emails and read the linked article for STEP ONE job/work – do your job, qtip, grade and communicate first, one thing at a time (you can’t lose your job unless you can get one at least as good) – summer school – say yes if she asks you about tdc (ugh) – action research (start now or over summer, see previous notes) money bought the lens. why. what’s next. and so what. and what about it. “If you can do it with calories, you can do it with money” and dude, you actually need to. Now. End of discussion. • food costs more now • rent is more now (uncertain for next year but moving expenses regardless) • student loan pmt going up • cel ortho next three years • silverado • meg/mil support – no idea what tax situation this year (soon find out) – moratorium on toys, impulse bs, software, etc: THIS IS A WHOLE BIG ASS MENTAL THING, LEARN FROM THE RALLY EXPERIENCE, THE NUMBERS ARE QUITE SIMPLE ACTUALLY – eating out only for rare occasions, same with alcohol, thc to a minimum – check other subscriptions etc, see if anything else can be pared down – probly gonna have to wait on the Y after all love/life feeling svelte is gonna have to be fine for now? no but wait—what actually is thc doing in my life? beyond the obvi npydyuan/cuboid scritch scritch scritch is fine for now 012423 justcuz i don’t always act my age doesn’t mean i haven’t seen some shit goin to bed sometimes feels like an ongoing nightmare? well guess what i’ve survived nightmares before, i can do so again 012423 my new personal challenge. last year’s was ‘anything but myself’ and this year’s is ‘scritch scritch no matter what (not in terms of ROCK HARD DISCIPLINE but in terms of the only rule is you can’t make it about good or bad it just has to be a physical act and sensation and you have to just do it when you feel like it and not stop for all the reasons)’ 012523 slowly but surely burst into tears and then couldn’t stop crying for a *good while* on receiving jodi’s email saying aria r. (from 6th grade several years ago!) was in inpatient treatment. it was just one of those cup-tipping “everything” moments, you know? thinking about kids and bike rides and silly emoji-ridden emails and everything else, and then they have to go through all this... shit. ‘scritch scritch scritch’ policy is good for now, as far as writing, actually *writing* in this case, and that means exactly that, nothing more nothing less. the good thing about it is, you can let it languish for a little while and then come back whenever. you wouldn’t think so, but it’s true. it’s part of the fundamental no-bs nature of the approach. it’s not a scheduled performance, it’s a form of self care. 012623 i cannot sucking believe that number is the actual date. do you realize honey long i’ve been doing this. tom reminded me when he mentioned going over by heather to compare old journals in 5 years backwards intervals (jealous, want to be invited??) but: beware of getting addicted to feeling like you can *do* something, instead of transferring that power to expand outward into the rest of your life. it’s not *just* about “losing weight,” see? (though honey it is definitely a lot about that, girl, you looking *sexy!*) if you think about it, you know why you cried so hard over aria. that’s the teacher you need to be. the one who says “all you gotta do is write your lil’ heart out” instead of the one who looks at a spreadsheet and says “fuck my life, this kid is dumb and mean” 012823 the problem isn’t “ai is going to make me obsolete as a writer” (i genuinely didn’t start it for money or fame, but for physicality and an innate urge, i honestly believe that’s true despite the corruption that inevitably set in around 7th grade), but more “any time you think you understand how to gather food and resources and basically have a decent existence, someone or something comes along and makes it more complicated by locking something up, stealing all the best bits, or otherwise concentrating on oppression and subjugation instead of just basically being decent and cooperative” but yes i realize that’s a big fucking oversimplification, the kind that leads to fatalism and inaction, but still. What I’m getting at is, there’s no such thing as a “bad technology.” All the cool stuff could be cool for anyone and everyone. we get stuck on a specific hard drive instead of remembering the teh-dsa (though yes, sometimes sticking there for a while is good, is how teh-dsa works. like hermit crabs, oysters, whatever). We fixate on an arbitrary instant out of the whole spectrum of technological and artistic history, and say “this is real, this is correct” and then panic when the next instant comes along. This is what keeps us buying things, too. Woe to the schmoe who wants to nail down “how to be a professional” anything. That’s always a gamble, always a long con, always a grind. Eh, so be it. You gotta do what you gotta do. Meanwhile, “how to exist” sings, scrapes riverine across the page, erodes our faces hopefully into smile lines by the time we too kick the bucket or whatever invention has replaced buckets by the time it’s our turn to kick it 012823 house still haven’t started. fucking new landlords don’t even bother to plow the driveway. i HAVE TO MOVE. will start, soon. trust self and let it happen job/work just staying unstoned for a few days at a time should help with live seshs, which in turn should help with motivation, because the connection makes it more real and reality is what makes it seem less pointless. other than that, just grade first and the rest will follow. watch for cues of when you can communicate with people. sad sinking feeling of a sunday afternoon is offputting but at the same actually a good sign because it means either you still care or you’re just totally despondent or both (and the latter will pass as soon as you make a connection; just make sure it’s not too late to make a connection) also don’t give up on finding a new job/career. balance peggy’s “oh, hm, i don’t know if you should commit to being a writer” with tom’s “been through many crossroads and wouldn’t mind another” money mom to the rescue again. still embarrassing, but less so now that our relationship feels more equitable somehow. love/life 179.5 lbs. Now what are you gonna do with it? Shake it, Chili! npydyuan/cuboid still on with the project of making a book of broadsides, perhaps mixed with text and here’s the thing. the whole “should i print my journals or burn them” nag, it doesn’t matter. think about scritch scritch scritch for a second and know i’m right: you make what you make OUT OF the raw materials; you don’t obsess over the presentational quality of the raw materials. they are what they are. yes they can be highly sensorily satisfying and form the substrate of some of your best memories. no you don’t have to justify their morphology. no one has to care, no one has to not care. i don’t save all the crumbs of fried cheese that fell off the edges of my egg sandwich; yes they could be art but there’s no reason to lose sleep over whether they are or aren’t. my god, think of channel 22. think of the squirts of plate conditioner on the plates after you cleaned them at the old shop, and what they led to in a sparkling instant. think of the rings of a tree. think of your carbon footprint. think of the difference between a gift and a present. think of the children. think of what true freedom truly is, and be glad that you have people in your life whose presence will fine tune your decisions whenever your decisions actually do matter. and be grateful.