like a baby – find your voice by using it 080125 what im worried abt today - gotta start **skool tomorrow** (and 2nd sem. still awaits) - **megan** (bday, tera, all that guilty weird energy) - money (car, trip, old habits, etc) - collapse of america (perverse inverse revolution) - cars, chains, how shitty milwaukee and mostly everywhere is - apple tree, arborvitae, etc - **tera** (which place to go; will they do it) - work - lib transition to mad re meds, etc - not knowing what my job is, as what i’ve thought of as reading and writing seems to fall out of favor in favor of the illusion of efficiency in pursuit of artificial arbitrary task-completion (but i do know; it’s alluded to near the end of [avalanche](https://npydyuan.mataroa.blog/blog/avalanche/)) August 4, 2025 sorry but mke kind of seems like mpls’s retarded strung out cousin. maybe i should try to retire here. maybe i should visit in the winter first a couple times tho 08??25 God would like to see you now. I was surprised. Not shocked, but surprised. Would you like a couple days to not complain? Not, you know, do a bunch of crazy skydiving and stuff necessarily, but just ... not complain. Okay. A couple days though — that’s all you get. Any couple of days. That’s all you ever get. 081325 the brain is just an out of control monster! said the brain pay attention to it! it said thump thump thump thump thump (heart invited everyone to play) 082025 ## birding it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought it’s always deeper than you thought ## rain isn’t it disgusting? to have bugs crawling out from under your fingernails because you flushed out their garden 082125 #treefrog i do have something to offer. i shouldn’t give up. it doesn’t have to be all or nothing 082225 it’s not the hard part, it’s the *easy* part that’s hard 082325 evrythings drivn by irritation the beauty the ugly mysterious mundane you see holes in the fabric of why can make it hard to sleep and not sleep do something radical evry day a little encouragement goes a long way ## to me these goblets and vases look the same to you theyre just something to hold water ## popcorn tiny bits of cumulonimbus over the city of my fucked up dreams 082625 I had been pretty stressed out about the thing, but then by the time it got time for the thing, it was fine. A week earlier, I had heard myself say to my mom, “I’m freaking out, but I’m sure it will be fine. It always is.” And she agreed with me, and immediately after that I wondered if it was true. But it turns out, it was. Like it always has been, so far, and for that, as for the deep breath I was able to take on the way into the building where the next part of the thing was, I am grateful. Later ... The next part of the thing turned out OK too. There were some rough parts leading up to it, some compressed evenings of stress, a bit of frantic attention and forced focus, which I was able to get into the mode of for long enough to get the thing done, but nothing I couldn’t handle. And then it was OK. Not perfect, but OK. There’s a difference between saying what your greatest regret is, and thinking it. Sitting around our pre-Libby’s-move-in-day campfire, Cel asked everyone, what’s your greatest regret. Being the only old person, I was never really called on to answer aloud, because young’uns are so needful of answering aloud, and need to hear each other more than they need to hear answers or information or the pontification of experience. (that feeling of “you are no longer the target audience”) But what popped into my mind made me pause — and, had I actually answered aloud, may not have been what I would have said, and definitely wouldn’t have been unfiltered if I had said it. But it also made me think, just because you regret something doesn’t necessarily mean you “shouldn’t have done it” and just because you realize you regret something doesn’t necessarily mean you can (or “should” try to) do anything about it now. why do i feel like i have permission to be disaffected and disengaged at a skool staff meeting, whereas at the post office for example, i would have just sucked up my discomfort and got on thru whatever bullshit there may have been? perhaps there was less bullshit in the air. it’s easier to pay attention to information and communication clearly geared toward accomplishing a quantifiable physical goal — staff meetings seem so many-tendriled, divergent, abstract, based on so many conflicting and ill-defined assumptions, and when the elements do start to coalesce and clarify, what they indicate tends toward the realization that this whole “industry” is (still) corrupt —  on the other hand, maybe i abstractify and bullshitify myself — maybe the task here is more concrete than I want to admit, and i’m just afraid i’m not qualified to get it done — because it’s an ephemeral mix of love and work, standards and improvisation, arbitrary and authentic — the parts i love call out from some deep well; the parts i fear keep trying to roll the stone over the opening — the disillusionment and cynicism of economic reality — but what is reality? ask the homeless guy clambering across capitol drive with two ratty blankets billowing in the breeze this morning, who i passed on my way to this meeting — the younger, newer, or more (what? extraverted? aggressive? comfortable? what is it they have or where are they coming from that i don’t or am not?) ones in the room look around with a hungry glint in their smile; they speak up, they laugh incisively at the right times — what am i doing? i got my raise but what do i really *do* here? what *am* i going to do here? why? how? in other words, ugh, here we go again. it’s time to shift back to future tense and make this all make enough sense to keep my breakfast down. I know how to do this but I don’t know how to do this. Note to self: don’t project your cynicism onto the people who need your earnest effort — ask the kids you claim to be aligned with against the “system” if they’d rather have you try to work within said system — system that attempts, no matter how quixotically, to institutionalize what “should” be done on a personal level, ubiquitously, but isn’t (why?) — or give up because you’re superior to all that. What do you think they would say?