I am about to sunset a long-standing weekly appointment that has been on my calendar for literally years. And I was surprised to discover how much getting back that time made me happy.
The block on my calendar was for something I very much loved doing and valued highly, so the sheer joy was unexpected. But as it turns out I loathe having a consistent obligation on my time.
This isn’t to say that I don’t like being responsible, reliable, or on time. But rather I like knowing if something comes up that I have some flexibility. And I don’t like to disappoint people by needing flexibility.
My suspicion is that this represents some lingering guilt I have about having a chronic disease. While I rationally know that I did nothing to deserve being sick, I do carry a self limiting belief that being sick is a weakness.
I’ve always prided myself on being a “mind over matter” person. I’ve shown up to countless events, meetings, pitches, and other obligations while in pain. I’ve been known to repeat “Michael Jordan, Game 5” as a mantra to remind myself that I can perform in even the worst physical circumstance.
Michael Jordan famously played and won with the flu. And the logic in my mind was surely I can do the same when something is on the line. So I always have. If someone expects me to show up and perform I do it even if I am struggling.
But as my season of no has begun I think it’s time I stop romanticizing my capacity to work when sick. I love having my time back on my calendar and I love the flexibility that I have to work whenever and wherever I want.
Maybe some people would chose to work less under these conditions. For me though, having more flexibility in when I show up means I’ll find even more time to put into my work. Because I love showing up for me. And sometimes it’s easier for me to show up when it’s not a damn calendar block.
In other news, I’ve had a bit of a hard week and I’m shutting down a lot of access points so don’t take it personally. The churn is here.
Maybe we’ve just reached the point where the warring info-hazards that are our closed garden social media feeds have decided to make us all literally go insane. I can’t entirely tell as I’m loathe to give up algorithmic level control on any of my feeds and do not use social media that doesn’t offer me a chronological feed of my own choosing.
I watched Idiocracy when it came out and I did not want to believe that it’s always been true we’ve allowed our world to be overrun by our unregulated appetites but PinkyDoll is just a hardworking Québécois hottie who has no time for your bullshit. Yum yum yum! yes yes! Gang gang!
And to tie together my title on all this, while I like Cherry Crush’s work I can’t back the white elf who says no spicy. It’s just too weird. Stay safe out there people and don’t let the brain worms get you.
Lots of reasons to be optimistic in America that our wheezing economy has been goaded into forgetting that money shouldn’t be free. Again. We imploded the banks and a number of international allied economies but we achieved a soft landing for some Americans. I don’t even know how I feel about that sentence.
It just really feels like shit is going off the rails all over the place but you can’t quite make sense of all the things coming at you because it’s coming at you so damn fast. And everyone is being dramatic about it. As if we didn’t have all kinds of fair warning that the ride was going to be bumpy.
I recently had someone not handle a professional (but somewhat personal) transaction as anything the way I’d hoped. It wasn’t s big deal. I recalibrated something in my life in the face of grief and some personal realignments. Everyone is fine. Everyone has their own shit going on and it’s never about you.
But it does seem like a lot is going on for everyone and whatever the fuck else is exploding that hurts your life and your people. A lot of people are very reactive and it’s all being shown in real time on Twitter.
And yes it’s making me feel like yup however this next world war 3 thing it is going to go is overlaying on your personal life. It’s reminded me that I need to protect myself as I’ve got a job to do no matter how spicy the market gets.
And I’m grateful for your faith in American systems. We need to aspire to treat everyone as well as we have treated our most favored citizens. Our most privileged are an aspiration for us all. The American dream is working towards allowing a fragile peace of mutual freedom.
But you’ve got to remember that in big enough groups everyone is fighting to preserve their status. And that always comes at a cost. And until that cost occurs to more people with power we tend to let it slide. So I hope we inconvenience more Americans soon so we can get back to the business if welcoming the world to our aspirational ideals.
I am experiencing very palpably the literal meaning of being “thin skinned” this week. All the areas where my skin is thinnest (eyes, lips, fingers, and other more delicate spots) are inflamed.
I’m beating back some kind of this autoimmune response to having some pets in the house with everything I’ve got, and have thus far kept it from cascading but only just. It’s taken a lot of pharmaceutical intervention. I’m high on anti-histamines, cranky from the itchy, and fearful it’s already turned into a systemic infection.
I’ve got some animal allergies that I’ve kept from being isolating and overwhelming by simply not keeping pets inside. I can usually tolerate some exposure if I’m very careful with hygiene. Please ask me about my psychotic indoor clothing routine. And yes it was developed with an allergist hospitalist when I was 15. I’m beyond embarrassed by it.
I suppose this approach might make more sense if you knew that I’ve had my immune system rebooted with drugs as diverse as cyclosporine (they use that for organ transplants) and chemotherapy injections (methotrexate the WWI superstar).
I take regular immuno-suppression for ankylosing spondylitis which is functionally psoriatic arthritis in my spine. I have inflammation inside my body & outside on my skin depending on the flares. And I’ve done everything I can for it from allergy shots to 4 separate daily antihistamines
I am more reactive to my environment than your typical take a Benadryl allergy type. If you’ve seen that video going around of the 300mg THC pizza joint and thought “what the fuck who has that kind of tolerance” well I’ve got that kinda tolerable but with allergy medication. I can toss back 100mg of Benadryl and remain conscious.
I’ve got no Darwinian explanation for how someone like me is an end point for evolution except that we must value the extremely sensitive for some less legible but nevertheless crucial pro-social function. Maybe we spot the danger sooner? I truly do not know.
But I am thin skinned. I’ve been trying to manage additional allergen exposure all week as we’ve had dogs in the house that I very much would like to be able to tolerate.
I really thought with proper medication and cleaning I could keep reactions to a minimum. I didn’t want to make it a thing. And it would seem the reward for being thin skinned is actually having to inconvenience people by telling them that my having thin skin has consequences.
It’s unlikely I can get my symptoms down without having a total reprieve but we’ve done what we can. We didn’t resort to steroids so it could have been worse. Though part of me wishes we had as some skin is beyond uncomfortable.
I feel both embarrassed and frustrated that no one noticed my discomfort till I had to say I can’t tolerate it any more.
It makes me feel like I don’t matter unless I come with a story of misery and pain. Having to speak up for needs with extremely firm uncrossable lines always feels like abandonment to me. I wish people would see the discomfort, misery and isolation isn’t a choice so much as a medical necessity. I do my best to manage it but it’s easier when it’s a shared priority.
If you have spent time on this blog, you likely have some familiarity with my usage of crude language to get across a wider point. Sometimes being rude or lewd is simply the most effective manner of communicating a difficult truth.
While I have an overused forced metaphor tag given for my tendency to write in overwrought imagery, I’ve only just realized that I have written a trilogy of crude metaphors in service of explaining power as simply as possible. Those crude metaphors include shitposting, dickriding and now unsucked dick.
Without attention-grabbing taboo cursing, these topics can otherwise might seem too complex or academic. If you have read critical theory texts you know what I mean.
Overly formal language is alienating and tends to entrench us in our priors. With that context out of the way, I shall now get into today’s crude metaphor.
An unsucked dick is someone who is willfully giving up their own power to victimhood through refusing to act for what they want. And everyone wants their dick sucked. Metaphorically, at least a little. Those that don’t want power are usually loathe to admit it.
This turn of phrase is NOT intended to be gendered. Unlicked cunt doesn’t work as well for a host of sociopolitical reasons on sexual status and power. Don’t get too worked up about it. See the bigger truth.
You will find unsucked dick when the hard work of getting what someone wants is either is too much effort on their own, or otherwise requiring collective action & leadership on behalf of a group that is in disfavor from those currently in power.
Let me illustrate with a shitpost. Perhaps you too have had to organize a group of activists who would rather squabble and in-fight than win power.
My ambitions are bigger than running the internal politics of dozens of tiny activist groups that can’t see beyond their own unsucked dicks but this isn’t very polite to say.
A dick that is unsucked is the inversion of the dick that is ridden. You may recall that dickriding occurs when a group surrounds it’s most powerful member with praise and flattery. The leader has the sucked dick.
You can use tactics like shitposting to attract some of a groups’ energy away from the ridden dick. Shitposting is deliberate act of soliciting a response online. It’s traditionally used as a lower energy way to shape engagement and conversation away from the traditional or current power holders, particularly when you know no other method will break through the noise and narrative.
The collective action problem in the many disenfranchised groups in modern society can often be boiled down to unsucked dicks desperately shitposting as dickriders. They want power but either cannot or will not find ways to gain it.
I don’t strive to organize unsucked dick into powerful constituencies and I’d bet you don’t either. It’s exhausting to control others. Politicians and celebrities have their simps but it’s often a complicated and unstable relationship. Audience capture by your simps tends to turn you into the New York Times or Andrew Tate.
Everyone needs to be responsible for their own dicks (gender neutral I swear) and get on with achieving their bigger goals. If you are not actively getting beyond purity politics and activist in-group fighting you are not serious about winning the thing you claim to want.
If having is evidence of wanting a lot of you simply do not want power. And that’s OK, if that’s actually what you want. Just be damn sure your actions are true to want you want. And if you want something go fucking get it. I’m happy to help.
You can feel it. I know you can. The chessboard is being reset. Pieces are being moved. Gambits are unfolding. Absolutely everyone you know is going a little bit nuts.
I would not be surprised if these small informational disruptions will be recognized as part of a global conflict in a hundred years. I hope my heirs recognize that their mother fought as an information resistance fighters in The Great Dislocation Wars. Or World War 3. Just spitballing.
It’s humorous to me to talk in such a grandiose fashion because the reality on the ground is much of life is just a little bit harder and a little bit worse. But we still presume the world is basically still abiding by the same rules as yesterday.
I often forget how much people don’t want to hold power. The current moment shows a strange ambivalence about wielding anything yourself. Anyone with power is bad right? Well, it’s nuanced.
I want to assure you that your instincts in this matter is largely correct. You should distrust anyone that wants power. Be skeptical of the impulse.
Because being in charge sucks. It’s a shitty job. Anyone who has wielded any power from parenting a toddler to being a CEO probably intuitively knows this.
But once you have been given any legitimate form of authority, choosing to ignore that you wield power is a dereliction of duty.
The trouble with all reactionaries is that they assume once they take over, that their experience of power will somehow be different from the current horrors in charge. If they had bothered to crack open their minds while reading Shakespeare (or Thucydides or the Artashastra or literally any Great Book) they would know all men are subjected to the laws of power.
We lie to ourselves about how power functions because it’s very energetically easy to hand over your power to someone else. To be aggrieved is to have power over those you hold in contempt for exercising their power over you. Don’t be tempted by this trap no matter how righteous your cause.
Once you have picked up the mantle of power you must see through. If your people have given you authority you must see it through or hand it off to someone who will.
It’s very hard to own power. You most likely will not enjoy it. And you will be tempted to shunt off your agency. Just remember that you never carry power alone. It is always in concert with those who have consented to give it to you. Good luck on the great chessboard of life.
I’ve got two uninterrupted months in Montana ahead of me. Maybe I mention this as significant because I spent so much time on the road this spring. I’ve also had multiple catastrophic level dislocations professionally and personally in the front half of the year.
Catastrophic dislocation seems to be the new normal for everyone. I hate to consider that I may have some bargaining & denial about my own thesis at chaotic.capital. But I find myself wishing to be wrong about where I see the future heading. Wouldn’t it be better if our modern lives were getting simpler instead of more complex?
I know that’s a childish fantasy. The complexity in our world has brought about so much good. The costs have been high but the benefits were tangible.
And yet here I am hoping to have some uninterrupted time in a quiet corner of the American empire so that I can cultivate my own strengths. I want to reconnect to myself and recovery from the effort, pain, and grief of living. I want to live and work and build without the chaos of history turning back on again. I dislike how much I now believe ignorance to be bliss.
I don’t know why I chose violence today, but apparently I dropped a chaos grenade onto my Twitter timeline. I hesitated, in extremely soft language, to ask if anyone has noticed that kids from conservative households seem have more pro-social behavior. I phrased it with a lot of ambiguity as I don’t know how I feel either.
Going to float a very controversial observation but anecdotally in my limited experience: The children of my conservative friends are better behaved & more individuated & well socialized than the children of my liberal friends. Anyone have takes on why this is the case?
Naturally when something pulls on a thread of social insecurity it will unravel quickly. I am a very gifted shitposter. I step on these third rails on purpose. I am not an activist for any cause so much as comfortable being uncomfortable. Alas I have already hit Godwin’s Law on the Tweet so for my own nervous system I’m done.
But I have noticed that as cultural pendulums swing, there is a distinct lack of appreciation for tolerance of other people’s constant dysfunction. Where we draw the line as to appropriate social behavior is a hugely contested space online. Much as it has ever been in literature and history. I hear Socrates got the death penalty for perverting the youth.
My point in all this is that we all benefit from having youth understand the world and their place in it. Our toddlers cannot be expected to have the fully formed rationality of a legal scholar.
Sometimes the answer is no because Mom or Dad said so. Not every social boundary is bad for us. A child throwing a tantrum is asking for you the adult to help them find the self regulation that their environment isn’t giving them. And it’s absolutely ok to be authoritative. It’s not the same thing as authoritarian.
The general consensus on the thread seems to be that multi-generational and multicultural spaces for consistent socialization combine well with firm boundaries. Knowing when certain behaviors are appropriate can often be a winning combination for learning to individuate into your own person. Feeling safe to be yourself looks different for everyone.
Now I’d read all of this mouthing off from me with a big heaping spoonful of that fucking libertarian-pirate-hippie-Silicon Valley-born-Rocky-Mountain raised salt. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just a very American kind of mutt.
I personally have found it helpful to be as accountable as I can be to myself while holding as much empathy for the experiences of other people as I can. I will disagree with you a lot. I’m ok with that because I have firm boundaries too. So don’t be an NPC ok? Let’s make civilization work together.
It’s nice to have another milestone day on my journey to write every single day. One hundred more days of writing till the big milestone that seemed unreachable when I began.
I have so much constancy to be proud of as I look at the body of work I created. I gave myself permission to let myself show up every single day and just start doing shit.
It wasn’t always good. I have up and down days of quality, quantity and even basic legibility. But because I have let myself be free I came with a week of bangers.
I am trying to let a lot go at the moment. Family is sick. A few are so ill we fear for their imminent loss. The world is shifting and the sense of change and acceleration towards something is palpable.
So many of us are fearful. But what else can we do but let it go? Wasn’t that the point of Disney’s mash hit? It’s a relatable multi-billion dollar franchise because it’s reflecting the human condition.
There is so little I have control over in my life. But I also have so much agency. If I chose to accept my life, and the choices it offers, I have so many possibilities
The present is here with us with all its many demands. Don’t borrow trouble from the future. Live your life prepared to let go of what you cannot change with as much responsibility and agency as you can for what is up to you.
