Tag: Fear

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Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 588 and Skills Deficit

Today’s most exceptional viral Tweet is a Pyschology Today listicle that says the quiet part out loud. Men are lonely and struggling with how to fix the problem because women are higher expectations for relationships. I’m sure you are shocked by this.

A screen shot of a Psychology Today article summary that has circled the first bullet point in a red MS paint-style bubble. The circled text says “Dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as healthy relationship standards change.”

Apparently women prefer to be in relationship with men who are good communicators and emotionally available. That common sense piece of wisdom naturally caused the internet to erupt in mirth because I guess last week someone’s husband ate a peach. Women be asking for men to do more than be a paycheck and this has had mixed reception.

I struggle to understand some of the feminine discourse around husbands that don’t do any emotional or housework. My husband does most of the cooking. But I do worry about the fact that men don’t seem to be aware that you can fix not getting laid or struggling to keep a woman around just by learning some social loops. The pick up artist community wasn’t completely wrong that some aspects of dating are just techniques anyone can learn and it does help you build confidence.

I am happily married and missed the worst of the dating apps so my advice might be for shit but I do want help any lonely men out their with their up- skilling if they feel lost. I’m happy to help as your favorite male-brained autist that happens to be packaged as a cute but accessible girl. I’m basically a honeypot for right coded shape rotators. Except you can’t have me so I’m definitely safe to talk to. You too can learn how to communicate with women and even participate in hypergamy.

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Emotional Work

Day 585 and Rip Off the Trauma Bandaid

I hope I can capture even a fragment of my emotions as I am on the other side of several hours of post-moving therapy. And I am drained but also armed with more wisdom than when I started the effort.

Moving is obviously a traumatic experience for most people. Anyone who moved as a child has some memories of how the change revealed new aspects of who they are and what makes them feel safe. Parents worry about it a lot about moving and for good reason. I know my mother certainly did and she did her best to protect me.

But we know that life is chaotic. Any type of change is already in a dance with accelerating entropy. Expect your unfinished shit to get drawn into the accretion belt surrounding the event horizon of your fears. Black holes are scary because we know they will kill us unless we commit enough energy to the fight to escape.

Sometimes some parts of us don’t make it. They become lost to the nothing. The dark impenetrable inversion point where we are forced to face the powers of destruction within us. Of course, it’s natural to sacrifice some part of yourself to banish the demon we know to be who we are.

It’s actually shocking to realize that inside of you might be some kind of personal Kali ready to rend the apocalypse at your weak side. But then you try not to think of it too much right? You’d rather ignore your demons right. Don’t feed the wolf right? Feed the good they say.

I am here to tell you that the shadow exist even if it scares you. It’s pulling you in just like that black whole. You can fight it your whole life. And maybe you win. Maybe you have that kind of fuel.

But if you ignore that shadow you will be pulled in it no matter what. Wouldn’t you rather run the calculation on how to achieve escape velocity? It’s going to be expensive. But it’s better to know the costs of living.

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Emotional Work

Day 582 and Overclocked

I have always been a bit of an intense personality. I’m a little prone to getting overstimulated, which often shows up like anxiety. But whatever the fuck is going on in the last couple days is way worse than usual. I’ve been so overwhelmed by even small things, I feel like I can’t control my reactions.

I am hoping it is just a residual effect of moving and the attendant stress. Perhaps my central nervous system is overclocked and it doesn’t yet know I’m in a safe place. It will just take some time to let all the cortisol spikes drain out and the other sundry overstimulation issues to get back to baseline.

But until then, it isn’t taking very much to set me off. I was driving a friend to the airport and had a full on scream in terror moment when a car honked and cut me off. They got so close to me me I ended up getting forced into a right turn only lane that stuck me onto the highway in the wrong direction. I just couldn’t stop myself from trembling and crying. I was so upset.

Today I had to ship some things in the mail It involved a shopping trip and figuring out some logistics. By the end of it I was completely overcome with a feeling of helpless anxiety as I discovered error after error no matter how hard I concentrated. I tossed my phone across the room just to see if I could relieve the building sense of pressure. It only helped a little.

I’d really like this feeling to pass. It feels a little ridiculous to have my body acting this stressed when I’m living quietly beside the mountains and my own creek. I don’t understand why things that are pretty minor have been crying and panicking. Fingers crossed my body realizes it is safe soon. Or that all the asshole drivers go back to California soon.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 576 and A New Chapter

I don’t live in Colorado anymore. I’m not really sure I felt like I lived there at all right now. I feel as if the last two years were just a Covid blip attempting to do the impossible; to go home.

By home I mean I left Manhattan for Colorado. Back to the city where I was raised. Boulder was a city where most of my childhood and firsts happened. My first dog. My first period. Where I met my first love. And where then I had my first heartbreak. Where I had so many silly little personal accomplishments that make up a childhood. All of those life milestones happened in Colorado.

When the world turned inside out during Covid, I wanted some sense of safety and certainty and recognition. You can’t really go home though. Being back felt like an interlude. Like a break where I was vacationing from real life. Convalescent after one too many curveballs. Which is a surreal way to feel about a town that raised you. But it just never quite stuck.

I’m driving through Montana as I write this. My mother and her husband are helping Alex and I move up to Bozeman. I’ve got about a hundred miles till we hit town. We are driving alongside the Yellowstone River on I-90. And I suddenly feel like I am home.

Categories
Politics

Day 575 and Harm’s Way

I got put in a hotel room for the final days of packing up our Colorado townhouse. I’m useless at lifting heavy things right now. I find this to be vaguely insulting as I used to be an avid power lifter.

But I can’t dispute that the high cost of my energy makes it uneconomic to involve me in physical labor. My family and friends reasonably want to keep me out of harm’s way. My role in our groups is to be Tom Sawyer not the paint brush brigade. Or if you prefer a story with less moral grey area, I am the mouse Frederick from Leo Leoni’s classic tale about story tellers and community. I scan the horizon and organize people. It’s probably the original professional path for the disabled. We’d have gone instinct in a Darwinian view of simple capacity and yet here we remain.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to mitigation of tail risks recently as the person tasked with keeping our group out of harm’s way. The average prepper isn’t much more convinced that the world is ending than your average person. We simply think that probability being what it is, it is worth doing some work to stay out of harm’s way if you can. Complicated worlds have complicated risk profiles. Buying insurance is just doing the math.

Not everyone is convinced that moving to Montana is staying out of harm’s way. A marketing executive and Vice contributor recently wrote a viral essay about how people like him (and me) are walking into some kind of a Trumpian civil war. I am skeptical of this position having been raised in the mountain west that things are quite so dire in Montana. It’s not Idaho.

But I agree with the basic gist that culture wars are getting hot. But I’m also a native of the West and deserve to be there as much as anyone. I code just as much right wing as I do left wing. My plans are to integrate back into country living. I am all for good neighbors and church and building sustainable communities. But I am also virulently anti-MAGA as populism tends to go badly for diverse populations. And I believe the only way we keep anyone out of harm’s way is by simply resisting simple narratives and taking sides.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 569 and Scarcity

There are a number of memes that have taken off in the last few years related to food scarcity as a mechanism for elite control Coverage of climate change and the need for change in agribusiness has been covered extensively in mainstream media so it’s no surprise there is backlash.

I Will Not Eat The Bugs is one of the originating memes in the wider World Economic Forum conspiracy universe along with “You Will Own Nothing” Great Reset discourse. It’s a rich memespace and one that every doomer should be watching closely. Twitter went nuts when a cultural review of cannibalism in literature and tv got posted by the New York Times.

Unfortunately the memes were a harbinger of the fundamental challenges of moving towards greener policies through dictate. Especially when you do poor planning that doesn’t account for transition times and significantly lower yields. Sri Lanka’s attempt to go cold turkey on industrial fertilizer turned disastrous.

With the war in Ukraine grinding on, the world is slowly realizing that chemical fertilizers and cheap grain are in danger of being in short supply. Commodity watchers reminded us that China stopped exporting key fertilizer components last year.

It’s not that Americans haven’t noticed the higher costs of food before. The inflation issues plaguing the country are often framed in terms of simple costs like eggs, milk and chicken. Doomberg sounded the alarm in January that we would see a significant food crisis. But there is a new urgency around scarcity that is exploding into the spotlight. My favorite preparedness website Unprepared published a whole guide to dealing with the coming food crisis.

I personally don’t know what will convince people that we are in for much higher prices and harder times. A lot of cascading factors are converging. But I think it’s wise to keep a close eye on scarcity discourse. If you want to keep ahead read things like AgriNews and Bloomberg’s commodity and supply chain newsletters. It’s better to go in with eyes open.

Categories
Politics

Day 565 and Mommy Issues

I just want to scream into the void about how disappointed I am in American men right now. I probably shouldn’t but this is my own little space so I may vent briefly and without a lot of citations. I’m angry and sad and I’m pretty convinced we’ve got a bad case of mommy issues with the way we are treating women’s rights this summer.

I’m surprisingly steamed that gay marriage is being protected via legislation before bodily sovereignty. It is just so American to protect the fucking tax regime. Like I get it. We organize all our property around monogamous two person households. Everyone should have equal access if we have it.

Also maybe we could not have the government involved instead. But nope we’ve chosen to get the government involved in social organization and now we’ve got to fight for equal access. And sure the liberals in America are scrambling in this particular summer to front run the Supreme Court being open to overturning settled precedent on all kinds of shit. I get it. I swear. I get it. I’m glad something is being done.

But like in what fucking world is bodily sovereignty for half the population the sort of problem you don’t bother to codify into rights first. Or at all! Why is it easier to protect marriage than my body. What message does it send we protected gay marriage before the right to manage your own body.

We are able to pass legislation on protecting equal access to some dippy tax scheme but we couldn’t figure out how to have control control over your own body if you can get pregnant. White gay men have more sway than brown women. I get it. I get it. I’m just so fucking disappointed.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 557 and Fixation

I’ve got a gift for generating momentum. If I can summon the energy and the willpower, I’ll put my total focus on unlocking whatever blocking issues hinder my goal.

The trouble is that this process doesn’t allow for multitasking. Once I turn my eye on a blocker, I’ll fixate on it until it is solved. I’m incredibly prone to tunnel vision.

I’m usually quite competent at prioritizing and ordering priorities correctly to take advantage of the is tendency toward focus. But sometimes I’ll get fixated on the wrong thing and I’ll stay stuck on a problem that shouldn’t be my first priority.

And it’s really hard for me to pull away from a problem if it’s an emotionally charged issue. Those typically involve my personal life. Problems with my friends, my family and my husband can easily hold my energy hostage. Even if it’s not a top priority, if it feels emotionally like it should be a top priority I’ll struggle to let it go.

Over the spring, one of my fixations was finding a stable living situation. In May when Alex and I went scouting for our second time in Montana I poured all my willpower and focus into removing blockers to purchasing a home. It was a grinding emotional process as where to live and when to make a major investment are hard questions.

Now that I’m less than a month out from the move, I can feel my focus shifting. The creative generative driving energy that secured us a homestead is now searching for its next home. It makes me shiver a little bit. Like I’ve got my own personal Eye of Sauron probing my reality for it’s next target. I know what it should be. But sometimes my focus isn’t well behaved.

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 551 and Enjoy The Decline

I didn’t celebrate Independence Day yesterday. At least not in any meaningful sense. Typically I like to watch Roland Emmerich’s classic film Independence Day and cheer on American exceptionalism with explosions and hamburgers.

Instead I’m abroad and trapped in a small Airbnb that has me tethered to the nearest air conditioner. Pollution and climate change isn’t very good for enjoying time outside. 100 degree heat and a lack of EPA pollution standards are not a great combination so best of luck to my friends in Texas.

Nothing breeds appreciation for capitalism quite like spending time somewhere it hasn’t existed for long. Even at the end of the empire, American capitalism is so effective, our living standards still eclipse eastern block countries and other experiments in strongman style socialism. There is a reason people want to come to America and it’s not because we make it easy on immigrants or offer a strong social safety net.

It will be better to live in America for another fifty years or so than nearly anywhere else. Even with all our problems and bullshit, America at its worst is better than most of the planet. Entropy is a bitch though so you may you may as well enjoy the decline as eventually our lack of infrastructure and crumbling institutional capacity will destroy us.

Eventually “the crumbles” and the “Jankening” will eat away at our quality of life lead over the rest of the world. And let me tell you having been reminded of how much it sucks to live without the comforts of modernity, life this life to the fullest while you can. You are not going to enjoy the average lifestyle of a Balkan or Baltic state.

Which might be optimistic given some of the reactionary types striving to be the next Victor Orban. So might I recommend going out to eat at some fine fast casual restaurant and then making a Target run for things you don’t need. It won’t be around forever.

Categories
Travel

Day 549 and Rekt Travel

One more institutional bit of trust has frayed and snapped for me. I don’t trust travel any longer. Maybe I trust the big airlines and well traveled routes but off the beaten path travel isn’t for me any longer.

Someone didn’t fully understand my limits and I found myself struggling in a situation well beyond my physical means. The trust was so broken I don’t know how to even begin putting back the pieces from it. I’m exhausted yes, but the worst part is the fear I feel from being put in a bad situation and seeing just how incapable I was of fixing it myself. I’m not independent anymore. And I’m scared and angry about it.

I envy people who can have a situation change and have it’s impacts be immaterial on their day. Oh it’s inconvenient if the travel estimates were three times longer than planned. Oh it’s annoying that there is no air conditioning. Oh it’s frustrating that all these minor details are annoyances for you and intense health risks for me.

I fear I’ll come out of this experience paranoid and much much sadder. I feel stupid I couldn’t protect myself. I feel gullible that I let someone else handle the details. People tease me that I prepare for travel so aggressively. That it’s eccentric and odd and a sign of being a crazy woman.

But when the consequences are so expensive; a thousand dollars gone in a hotel scam, a fortune in gas, an extra thousand to weekend hour doctors to stabilize. I think it’s sensible to be extremely prepared. Nothing black pills you faster than being sick. I tried to act like I could be a normal person and just got rekt.