Year End Look 2

So I'm taking another crack at it, this time before the night is running on fumes. I was thinking earlier today how ridiculous it is, how ridiculous it would be if someone said to you "I'm going down to the store, do you need anything" and the first thing you said was "an 8 ball." The last year end look was pretty much a huge fail. Like slamming your phone down when you're angry and the face of it shatters. The first thing being that the person you were talking to has absolutely no idea how upset you were and the second thing being that now you are out one hundred dollar piece of plastic and the third thing being that now you can't even phone a friend to talk about it because your temper has burned you once again. Thrice burned, like a college kid who went to a bar, slept with a stranger, got gonorrhea, lost his wallet, and his girl friend found out later and broke up with him. Thrice burned, like burned refried beans? That's probably funnier. And I can see that because I'm not coming apart in flames.

The goal is still the same, though. Still trying to mash the door closed on 2011, except this time, not on my pinky finger. For a lot of reasons. The number one reason though is that I can't turn away from an open door. Not because opportunities might be beyond it. More like monsters might come in when I'm not looking and rip out my guts from behind while I'm walking away. Gotta close them up when you're done with them. Especially the time doors. I only have one mirror, and I only want one. I have to look at myself before I go out so I know I don't have lint in my beard before I leave the house. Everybody does. Everybody with beards anyways. That's the main reason. But mirrors are a lot like doors. Things coming and going. They're like doggy doors. Always open. It worries me sometimes. And I now realize this is making less and less sense as I'm talking.

Anyway. 2011 was not horrendous. A lot of working. A lot of over working and over reaching from solid world standpoint. I expected a lot out of myself and sometimes those expectations pushed me deep into the red and it was the least I could do not to crash. Far too much speed. I did start biking. Which was amazing. I also crashed said bike more times than I would have liked, the operating idea being that one crash is generally too many. I learned all over again that no matter how nice your managers at your customer service job are, they are really only trying to lull you into exploiting yourself to a breaking point so they get nice bonuses and you get to lay in bed at home not moving because your body is dead, recuperating just in time to go to work the following day to be run down again.

That made me sad. I thought they genuinely liked me. They liked what I did. They liked my stupid enthusiasm. They, however, did not know me or were invested in me anymore than a person is invested in a toaster because it helps them toast bread good. I don't know. I'm trying to understand how to relate to people in the real world. It's hard. I keep believing I am beloved, best friends for life, with people who are actually complete strangers and I end up getting robbed by a 65 year old woman smoking crack while I watch Dream Girls in her living room. Reaching out to the darkness in the darkness. Trust everyone. Trust no one. Trust everyone. Trust no one. I don't know why my head operates in binary. One of the things I'm going to try and fix in this year.

I did finally complete the gift and put it in her hands. It was great closure for me on that level. I finally made good on a promise I could not let go of. I still consider myself a man of my word. When I say I am going to do something I still fully intend to do it, because I don't have money so people can't trust that, and I have education (still kind of don't though as the debt situation with that is pretty much a smoking hole in the ground), but really all I've got is my words and my hands. And my knife. But yeah, one more thing off of my bucket list.

Other than that though it was a pretty erratic year. Far too much movement. But less than the year before. I am officially no longer a nomad. I have a place to stay and actual desk. No car yet. No gun. Both of those will be addressed this year at some point. I tried to write some out and out comedy with mixed success and discovered that it's pretty hard to do it while holding enough of yourself back to keep it entertaining to anyone who is not a sadist. I added to the "dear soandso" vein of what I do to include "that instant" and "the best thing" to capture little bits of things I find funny without including the burden of completely framing everything. I got to hear a lot of new music, which was great, and see some art. I can't remember if I went anywhere. Anywhere faraway. I did get to see some friends too, and I think they were happy to see me too.

I started drawing again. Haven't gotten any closer to making music. Or any closer to being closer with people than the current and necessary distance for a few exceptions. I'm trying to fix that too. Not too quickly though. Trust. You smash, they grab. Pick ya apart. Sleep navigation has been incredible. Difficult. Terrifying. Awesome. Hard to document, however. Partly because the erratic work schedule has pretty much taken a torch to my sleep schedule and all the ashes blew away when I sneezed because I got horny for a second there. I don't know why that is. My nose and my penis have a psychic connection, I guess. Oh wait. They do don't they? By default? I dunno, I'm not a doctor. I guess I still do live to sleep on some levels. The adventure in the territories and the outlands are awesome. Most exciting parts of a lot of days.

I learned a lot about myself. Managing. The managing. It is partially successful. Mostly a failing effort though. Putting the parts back on the engine just as fast they come off and blow apart on the good days. Not nearly fast enough to keep up, on the bad days and weeks. Gained a lot more familiarity with my sexual identity which is, I learned (if one were to draw a box plot), on the extreme outlier. Like if that graph were to be printed on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, you would need to tape another sheet of paper to it and draw an X somewhere near that sheet of paper's edge. Which helps to explain why it was a sexless year. Not too many other Xs out there to get in bed with, let alone talk to, and not too many other Xs out in that neighborhood that are also gay. So that's been tough to deal with. Trying to figure out how to fix that, but it's low on the list. Just kind of a thing I have to accept as being the nature of the version of America I live in. America, your user experience may vary. Is what should be printed on the Statue of Liberty. Or maybe the Constitution. Whichever is more relevant.

I realized I have to go back to the doctors at some point before I self destruct trying to force my head to work, because I can't do it. It's not that I can't do it, as much as it is a thing that is impossible to do. Think of it this way: you can fix yourself, but only with the tools you build with your own two hands, but you're hands are connected to a dysfunctional machine shop and the tools they make are broken so everything you do with them is damaged and it'll work for a time, but the things you construct for the machine shop in your head to make it better only make progressively worse tools.

The writing last year was better than the year before, but in my opinion not by much. Some experiments turned out fantastic, many turned out so so. It's a love in progress. I haven't given up on churning out. Prolific. Volume shooter. It's the Beatles theory. Do enough writing and something is bound to be decent and listenable and maybe even catchy. Kidding, but I'm trying to put in my 10,000 hours to mastery. I should probably do a calculation or two to figure out where exactly I am on it, but I know that I am north of 6k. Just not how far north. I learned a lot about my voice. A lot about the writing I can do easily and the writing that is still exceptionally difficult. Overall I'm happy with it though. Happy to be doing it. I just wish I had more time to put things together instead of click tracking my way across the stars. It's all love though. Pain filled love.

Nomadic no more. No plans to join the under 27 club either. The warring segments of the parts of my heart trying to live and trying to die. We're altogether though. Crushed together into a caucus shoving around a body and everyone trying to live their life. The hallucinations got worse and then better and then worse. The paranoia hit new highs and occasional lows. The biggest challenge last year was control. Controlling what people saw and knew about you and learning how to begin to understand that transparency is not always great. Understand that closeness and revelation are not hand in hand by necessity or even by course. Over exposure is not something exclusive to film. It's okay to hide sometimes, because not everyone, in fact few people, are ever even prepared to see you for who and what you are. What composes you and informs the things you compose.

2011 was also scarred by the death of a friend. I suppose, a friend of a friend as I was not even close to being a close friend with him the way my other friendships developed. I never had a chance really. By the time I met him I was already pretty far to the fringe and probably ear tagged as "avoid whenever possible", which is fine. It still hurt a lot though. The loss of even an opportunity watch him cut up with the people much closer to him. Just that much, being a window licker, brings me happiness many times because I know I can't support most friendships. Not that they're bad or good or anything like that, but just in terms of accessibility, reciprocity, and the like. A computer that can't run programs as easily as other computers do. When you're that way, it just makes you happy to see other people, and knowing that the opportunity was gone was stunning, and confusing. He was just an awesome person to be around. I'm still broken up about it, but not as violently as then. I still feel part ashamed because I didn't know him as well as his closest and closer friends do and I feel like I'm not entitled or allowed to feel the loss that I do and I don't even know where to begin to talk about it with them or anyone. I don't even know if he actually considered me to be a friend or not. I wonder about it all the time. Worry about it. I don't know.

2011 was one very very very long day. So many wakings from so many dreams into other dreams and having to remind myself that it was real. That it was happening. 2010 was rage. Blood red rage. Are we moving in a right direction? I hope so. I want to believe so. I want to believe we are coming to a calm and I want to cross my fingers that there is no storm chasing after. Love is probably not around the corner any time soon. But a lot of other things are and a friend did walk back into my life last year so maybe another one will this year. Who knows. Things not really to hold onto, but things to at least hold off killing myself for. Things to wait and see another year for. Plus I am not nearly the writer I want to be and that by itself is enough some days to see what more there is out there in the headspace, on this side and the other of the dreaming door. Here's to another one. Let's get started.


///year end playlist up next