Month: July 2023

One of the worst things that social media of the 21st Century has inflicted on us is the influencer.  I think we can agree on that.   But one of the worst forms of these influencers is the productivity/hustle mongers that tell you that the pathway to your dreams lies in not sleeping. 

I have to be honest, it’s an alluring concept.   To be able to find systems and processes that help someone like me keep track of what in the fuck I’m doing, and the idea that if I can do it—whatever it is—consistently from 5 pm to insomnia o’clock from now until the heat death of the universe I might get what I want out of my life just before my nervous breakdown and confinement in a rubber room. 

The problem with that mindset is that for some of us, there’s no off switch, and circuits that are constantly energized eventually short and burn out.  Bad enough when it’s the compressor switch on your refrigerator, that’s a week’s worth of food down the drain.  When the switch is your brain, that’s another problem altogether.    For me, a person that is simultaneously goal oriented and riddled with ADD, there’s a lot of self-loathing that occurs when I can see the thing, and I want to do the thing, but I’ve already failed at doing the thing in my head because I couldn’t keep up the pace of what I thought the thing requires.   Take this podcast as an example, or the stories I’ve started writing, or the myriad of websites I’ve scrapped and started over because I wanted to clean the slate and try again.  I think my want to play mad scientist and nuke everything and start over gives me some squirt of the happy brain juice because as near as I can figure, the planning and making of the thing gives me more joy than the maintaining of the thing.  It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. 

There’s another layer of suck you can add to this 7-layer shitcake, and that’s the input from people who think adding some shame into the game is going to help.  Bitch, you can’t beat me up any more than I beat myself up, so have a Coke and a smile and a fucking seat.  I can do that part all by myself, thanks, and I’m so much better at it than you are.  I’m not an expert at much, but I can knock myself out.  Trust me. 

That’s why I went on a quest to find external help in the form of self-help books many years ago.  I thought I might find the one thing that unlocks my problem and explains it to me like I’m five so I can figure out THE PLAN ™.  Unfortunately, as I’ve said before, self-help is a long con, where many different faces and personalities say the same 6 or 7 things and offer you more help if you’re willing to pay for it in their members-only section.   THERE IS NO HELP IN THE CHAMPAGNE ROOM, ONLY A RECURRING CHARGE. 

Finally, and this is a new thing I’ve been dealing with, does any consistent endeavor really matter when you look around and see the world around you going straight to hell in a handcart?  It’s really hard to be creative—much less funny—under the circumstances we’ve found ourselves in the past few years.  I can’t lie, I’m hung down, brung down, beat down, my head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus.   

There’s a reason I hit on this subject this week, and it started when I ran into an old friend last weekend who asked me how my Act III was going.   Honestly, it isn’t going at all, but the more and more I think about it, it’s because I haven’t been trying.   Between me and Act III is some self-invented Final Boss that looms in front of me.  It’s a koan that presents me with a real problem, but then that’s what koans are for. The hell with logical thought, this way to enlightenment, you fool!  

And in the spirit of forgetting all about logical thought, the answer is simply that my brain is playing a neat trick on the rest of me of thinking I’m burned out and on task all the time.   No, I have no idea how that works.  No, I have no idea how to stop it.   Yes, I have an idea, and again, in the spirit of forgetting about logical thought, I’ve decided that the first thing I need to do is stop caring about it so much.   It makes no sense, but somehow I’ve hit upon the idea of trying to get one over on myself.   Maybe this gets easier if I don’t beat myself up over it and just do with no expectations and let things happen organically.  I don’t know, it just seems like it’s crazy enough to work when you stop to consider the wetware I’m working with.  

Or not.  We’ll see.   

In 1968, after Congress passed a gun control bill that was, in the words of the late ABC anchor Frank Reynolds, “emasculated”, Lyndon Baines Johnson asked—to paraphrase—how much more anguish must America endure?   Now, before we start going down the gun control rabbit hole—Trust me, we’ll have time for that—I’m choosing to focus on that quote, and another one.  You’ll know this one, it’s Patrick Swayze from Roadhouse.   “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”  

I find it hard to not be nice anymore.  Here’s another quote for you, Keanu Reeves.  “I’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right – have fun.”  I want to be kind or be silent.  I want to get rid of all the drama, go live by the beach somewhere, and just…be. 

But I can’t.  Because it’s time to ask once again, how much anguish we must endure.  It’s time to not be nice. 

It’s time that we do not agree with the people that think 1+1=5, and tell them to have fun.  All the fivers believe there is an objective reality where this is true.  They have people in the alternative and mainstream media that pander to their fivieness, They have politicians that lock on this fivedom and run on it.  They post fivist memes on social media to own the twos.   Frankly, I’ve had my fill of fives.  

It’s time to insist that 1+1=2.   Firmly.  

It is time to not be nice. 

It is not time to reason with the fivers that ask “What about the threes?  You don’t mind the people who think 1+1=3?”   It is not time to justify a Two who said something nice, or even something atrocious about the fives years ago.  It is not time to deal with the fives of bad faith who scream about why you, a two, won’t debate them.  

It’s time to insist that 1+1=2.   Firmly.  

It is time to not be nice. 

Fives did not suddenly appear out of thin air.  They weren’t created in a vacuum, they weren’t grown in a vat of ooze, they’re people who, in a lot of cases, hopped on board much later.  It’s kinda like going clear and then they tell you about Xenu and the Space DC 10’s flying Thetans into volcanos.   You, a two, look at these folks and ask HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU BELIEVE THAT? THAT’S CRAZY.   That’s easy.  1+1 didn’t equal 5 originally.   They found time in 1968 while Mayor Daley was out preserving disorder to just bump it up a little.  It equaled 1.1 back then.  And little by little, they bumped up just a tad every year until they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar in 1974.  Then they had to reset.  1+1=2 all the way through to 1981 when they found a guy who was good at making people believe 1+1 was whatever he wanted to be, and we went along with it, mostly, because whatever 1+1 was at the time, this guy had a way of making us feel really good about it.  So much so that we didn’t notice what those incremental little bumps were doing to some of us.  These little bumps continued until someone with a uHaul truck and the belief that God told him the answer was 2.5 said the quiet part out loud and blew the front of a building off, and then things quieted down for a bit.   But one of those guys who got ejected during the reset of 1974 decided he needed to create a platform for all the folks who knew objectively that 1+1 was whatever we say and if you don’t agree, you’re Two Stupid.  They even made up a nickname.  Two Stupid.  If you’re Being Two Stupid you have mental problems.   You might even be what’s destroying this country!   And over the years that number has been growing and growing until some guy who deals with more zeroes than anything else got elected President getting people to believe 1+1 is now 5.   And now you see how things start small and snowball, and it gets crazier and crazier and the people get more and more zealous and…

It’s time to insist that 1+1=2.   Firmly.  

It is time to not be nice. 

I don’t want to be an asshole, I don’t want to cancel anyone, and I don’t want to belittle anyone.  I don’t want to own the fives.   As my Dad used to say “You have the right to be wrong.  You also have the responsibility of what being wrong means.”, and that’s where the proofing meets the problem, which is twofold.   First, the fives believe that there’s no consequence for believing 1+1=5.  Second, and this is more important, there are more twos than fives.   A lot more.  

And it is time to insist that 1+1=2, it has always equaled two, and it will always equal two. 

Not maliciously, not condescendingly, but kindly and firmly. 

Because, at long last, it is time to not be nice.