Deviant Rambling

Yesterday I woke up feeling a little off and by the middle of the day I was in a full-on state of depression. Nothing could get me out of the valley I was in and it felt as though I was determined to stay there.

Today is a much better day but the root cause of this foray into despair remains. I have recently come to fully grasp the state of my life and how it has essentially been brought back to the beginning of adulthood. That is to say that in some sense, I am right back to feeling like I did fresh out of high school. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life so I punted and took the simplest path forward, to take part in the family business. I figured I’d get going and take a new path once one presented itself, but no path ever appeared so I maintained course.

Decades later, I had given so much of myself to the business that I could hardly recognize myself outside the context of that endeavor. And the rest is the history I’m trying to pick myself up from still. Two years ago now the primary reason for keeping the doors open died, so I pulled the plug on the business and resigned to take some time to figure my life out.

I’ve been spending most of that time shifting my service from the needs of the business to those of the household I’m a part of and the family I live with. But in doing so I’ve traded one evil I know for another, making zero progress on determining what my actual purpose is and focusing on those needs. Now I feel it is time to pull back on those efforts and truly focus on myself to establish who I am and what I want to be doing with my life.

At 42.

I realize it is somewhere in the middle of the potential game, and that many folks have made their greatest works after even 50. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling daunted by the prospect of starting from zero. I feel the same things I did as that naive young man, but with the wisdom to know that one fact remains true. I am capable of anything I set my mind to. It is that old nugget of inspiration that my folks gave me like so many supportive parents did for their kids. I honestly believe it’s still true, because I have seen first hand what a steady practice can accomplish in any field. Greatness is seldom spontaneous, it’s normally the work of many years behind the scenes.

The work I have been doing all of these years behind the scenes primarily revolves around my writing and I have to acknowledge it as my most profound gift. Transmuting that effort into money takes a lot of work, but the payoff is worth it for the way it makes me feel.

Travel is the other thing that brings me to life just thinking about it, so it follows that I need to write about travels. I also need to approach it as a business and make it the bulk of what I spend my days doing, the way I did with the traditional business I helped run with the family. I don’t need to go for broke, I’m already there.

I consider myself a person who is able to experience the creative works of others deeply. I commit to a complete understanding of the work and the motivations that brought it to life, and I am utterly fascinated by other creatives. This extends to every conceivable medium and it is an amazing time to be alive because the sheer amount of content to consume could serve as a full time job.

Now if there could just be a full time job that allows me to consume creative works non-stop, I’d be good to go for life. I could spend my time immersed in the worlds others dared to create and share. I could promote the works I feel the strongest about and hope that doing so could encourage others to bring their creations to the world.

I believe that the creativity we all possess in some form or another is the primordial spark used to light the flame of consciousness burning in all of us. This spark lit a fire in me decades ago and the fire has never went out, at times consuming everything. Yet other times the flames will be absent but a bed of hot coals remains ready for new fuel indefinitely. So long as I breathe, I continue to provide one of the key components to this infinite combustion.

I want my life to be about the pursuit of creativity. The creativity in others is every bit as crucial to me as my own, and I want to champion this superpower that so many of us possess. How I go about doing that in a way that helps me pay the bills is still just beyond my understanding, but I feel it is possible. It is a task that I am certain I’d be great at, and it would thrill me to no end.

Now that I’m able to stomach the news cycle again, I clicked on an article on NPR that was detailing the polling for the presidential election. The default map displayed is referred to as the “Electoral Weight” map and it shows how much of an effect each state has on the overall election.

It looks something like this, stolen without any sort of permission from NPR:

Pretty self-explanatory, right?

Those of us out here in the middle country are small-to-medium sized squares, almost exclusively dark red. This represents the states that the GOP can reliably count on securing in November. That should come as no surprise when you look at the states in question, many of which push some of the most backward and regressive policies the country is capable of. Perhaps a more important detail is that you can see with few exceptions that most of these states have much less of an effect on the electoral college than the ones on either coast.

I just think it is a fitting picture of how little the concerns of Middle America actually register when it comes to decisions of leadership. This is reflected in the words and actions of both campaigns as they blow tons of cash in the “yellow” states in order to persuade as many independent and undecided voters as they can. Granted, you can make an argument that Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are all considered Middle America, but they are exceptions, not rules. But for those of us who aren’t conservative and Middle American, it can feel like we are being abandoned.

I completely understand that it is sound strategy to go for broke in the states that actually decide the election, and I have come to terms with the fact that I don’t live in one of those states. I live where we routinely go back in time 50 years to a simpler, more openly discriminatory state.

It should be noted that all of this is educated guessing based on poll aggregation on today’s date. So if the election were to happen tomorrow on Tuesday the 27th of August, it might turn out like the map shown. This is just data as it stands, and it should be treated with a healthy dose of doubt. I am honestly amazed that there are so many states that are effectively a toss-up, and I’m confident that this election will be another that won’t be decided for several days or even weeks.

I am also confident that if Donald Trump loses, he will refuse to accept defeat. This is not a statement of praise, it is an admonition. He refuses to believe any result that involves him losing in anything, and he’s been that way his entire life. I am not confident I know what will happen next, but I am sure that it will have his face on every news channel and publication for months. The exact thing he strives for to his core will be his if for a brief time: attention.

If he wins, I fear it could be the end of democracy. And although it can feel as though democracy died decades ago out here in the middle, I know that it is alive and well elsewhere in the country.

I spend entirely too much time in my own head bemoaning the direction my life has taken. None of this does me any good but it can be a hard trap to free yourself from.

I am 42 and I need to figure out what I want my life to be about because all it had been about for decades is no longer relevant. That life doesn’t exist any more, so I am left to build one from nothing. I am unmoored and drifting and I am ready to right this proverbial ship once more.

The nothingness is daunting, though. I fail to see an ideal direction to take so I do nothing. I focus on a task or series of tasks, look up, and hours have passed. No meaningful progress has been made in achieving traction, and I feel once again discouraged. The days blend together in a meaningless cycle and it makes me question whether this is all there is or not.

There are so many different lives being lived by others right now and I can’t help but think that many of them are waking up to a dream every day. I would be happy with that being the case for any portion of time.

Some days are better than others. Today isn’t great.

There was recently a security breach somewhere in the government which exposed the private information of every man, woman, and child that holds a social security number in the United States. This puts over 300 million people at risk of fraud as this information can be used to apply for credit of all sorts.

The press coverage on this has been small thus far, with a little blurb here and there well down the list of links in my news feed. But it should be one of the first items that everyone sees.

I am astonished that this information was stored anywhere that a group could illegally gain access to all of it. It feels like the sort of thing that should only be available locally at the facility used to house the computers that store it all. The kind of data that was compromised should never be facing the public at all because this was inevitable.

The information must be worth billions of dollars on the dark web, and I’m sure whichever group is responsible for the breach has already made a mint.

There was a twenty on the sidewalk in front of the gas station and as luck would have it I saw it first. I reached down to pick it up and inspect it, looking around for a possible owner but there didn’t appear to be anyone missing it.

A few people to the side were talking and noticed this happening, congratulating me on my good fortune.

“Did you find any more?” – A man broke from his conversation to ask with a chuckle.

“No. Why, do you need it?” – I wasn’t really asking.

I walked over, placed the bill on his motorcycle seat, and proceeded to go about my day. The man looked at me in astonishment and he may have even thanked me but I wasn’t around for any of that.

A completely random event reminded me that the $20 didn’t matter to me. It wasn’t mine and it wasn’t that man’s either, but I have enough that it didn’t bother me to give it away. I feel fortunate to have everything I already do and what’s more I have reached that elusive goal of enough.

Most of us have a gnawing sense that we need more, always more. But if I can live in relative comfort with the occasional chance to travel, that’s plenty for me. Money is a means to an end and we must guard ourselves from letting it become a god we spend our lives worshipping.

I didn’t need reminded but the world conspired to do so anyway.

I find myself contemplating the life I was living just a few years ago and how out of balance it was. I hold up my life today as a model for comparison and it would seem like someone else’s.

In 2021 around this time, I had really begun to feel the effects of burnout from helping run a business. I was never able to be truly free from the day-to-day concerns of the venture and it sapped my strength do want to do much of anything outside of what needed done. I was near the peak of my drinking problem and more and more of the daylight hours were spent in some stage of intoxication. Alcohol is numbing and it is effective on pain of every variety including physical, emotional, and mental. But that temporary relief was less effective by the day and I had to ramp up the quantity because my tolerance was becoming heroic.

Now it’s three years later and my life has so few concerns that I look back on this period as an informative one. I could see every single thing I didn’t want my life to be daily and I felt powerless to change course. There was no end in sight so I resigned that things would finally come around when I was able to step away and put this life to rest for good through a business closure at some distant point in the future. I clung to the idea like a drowning man clings to the floating wreckage of his ship.

I was sure it would take a death to be free of it all, and almost as if by fate, there would be one.

But now I have the exact opposite set of problems to contend with. Although I’m not burned out from having way too much on my plate, I’m finding myself more and more disillusioned with having literally all of the free time in the world. It has made me available for others 24/7 and there is a sense of fulfillment to be had from being there for those who need you when they need you. But the pay for that kind of work is nonexistent, so I have to pick up freelance gigs to cover the few obligations I still have.

I want to be doing something with my time that helps other people on a broader scale and also allows me to make a living like the one I had from the business. I wasn’t an employee, so I didn’t report to anyone, and that is how I will have to work for the rest of my life. It is one of the few aspects of my old life that I want to maintain in the era I find myself in now.

Not having a lot of resources to draw from has been a blessing and a curse, because although it sucks not being able to get out and see more of the world, I worry about so little. It has made me prioritize what I want my life to be about, and it makes me appreciate the feasts between periods of famine.

There is nothing that could make me want to go back in time and relive the life I was struggling with a few years ago. Not even the alternate universe where dad didn’t have a stroke and die. Because that life didn’t seem to have any happy endings, and this one seems completely open to the possibility. I just have to make happiness a priority and find it everywhere I can.

I wandered onto YouTube to see what a couple channels I subscribe to had to say about all of the recent developments in the world and it was refreshing to see sane conversations being had. The comments sections were supportive and echoed much of the level and rational thinking that highlights how I try and view events.

Granted, there are always people with an axe to grind, and they will be the loudest, but it was a nice reminder that there is such a thing as a “home” crowd. Living in a historically red Midwestern state like Indiana, it is hard to find folks who aren’t the new brand of conservative. It seems like the version of Republican I grew up around is gone now in favor of the flag-waving, Bible thumping, autocrat-supporting kind of people and it feels impossible to reason with that kind of disconnection.

I am still outside of any party but have recently taken to researching left-leaning Libertarianism because it is where I fall on the political spectrum. Being left of center is a mark against you and you have to be careful to mention that out loud in mixed company. If I were to lead with Libertarian, most people around here would just see that as Conservative and as acceptable for that reason. But I’m not either one of those things, and I wouldn’t be able to leave well enough alone. I’d be in the political weeds almost immediately and given my surroundings, I’d be on the constant defensive. Or at least that’s how it feels.

But thanks to the power of this incredible communication tool that is the internet, I can seek out others like me so that I can enjoy the same camaraderie people enjoy in-person here. I felt something approaching this when I attended a 2020 rally for Bernie Sanders in Iowa, but it was all-too-brief and I knew that the very next day I’d be back where I was surrounded by folks who would threaten physical violence against me for attending such an event. I stay in my lane and only discuss political ideas with those I’ve confirmed will not make it about how wrong I am and that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is also wrong.

It is my hope that I can some day return to the state of affairs prior to 2016 when identity politics truly became the law of the land and we all set up shop in the “us versus them” mentality for the long haul. I want to be able to respectfully disagree with a viewpoint and have a conversation without it devolving into a meaningless tirade. The only thing that is in that direction is the death of discourse and I want to go the opposite direction.

Civility in D.C. has dissolved entirely and elected officials are just openly hostile to one another and encourage their base to do the same, further attempting to cement the “us versus them” contest. They will never let us in on the secret they are trying to keep and that is the fact that they’re just trying to keep their seats and will do whatever it takes to do so. If they were civil and attempted to come to bipartisan solutions, though, they could keep the seats forever as far as I’m concerned. My gut tells me I’ll never have to worry about that level of cooperation in Washington, ever.

But among the people I might call kindred outside of my own loved ones, I hope to establish a community and a rapport. I hope to affect change through the limitless ranks of folks online who I surely agree with. And more than anything, I hope to be a force for good through reasoned, level-headed discussion about common issues we all face, aiming to place party aside first and proceed as fellow human beings.

I’m a dreamer, for sure, and I’m always looking for others who dare to do the same.

The economic landscape has seemed to drop out from under everyone in the past week as markets took a nose dive. My response has been giddy laughter at the panic of all of the people on the news as they describe what has happened and what may happen next.

No one is asking me my thoughts on the matter because I am one of the millions of unwashed Americans who have no business discussing the matter at hand. But I think that what is happening is the result of an unprecedented time of growth following the historic events of 2020. The decline was inevitable because the growth wasn’t organic by any stretch of the imagination.

When the markets started to go absolutely haywire and only up, I knew what was coming, and it was just a matter of time until the momentum died and took the economy with it. I continued to watch them climb with no end in sight and as it happened I saw the cost of living for everyone creep up at the same time. Now the idea of achieving anything even remotely close to the old American dream is dead and buried.

Restoration will require a dramatic decline, and I personally want to see people throwing themselves off buildings. I want the markets to bottom out and I want the rampant capitalism to have a reckoning. People need to have the excess stripped away so they can see what actually matters. It isn’t their 401k or their real estate holdings, but they may only realize it once those things have lost their perceived value. Because none of these things, money included, have any inherent value, only the value we assign to them.

I realize that just because a thing doesn’t have inherent value doesn’t mean it can’t ruin your life in very real ways. No money is no way to live, and that’s just a sad fact of the life we find ourselves in. But if you could just find your way to enough and be satisfied with it, then you will be a more generous person in the event that you have abundance.

When the world is on fire, I won’t be looking for toilet paper, milk, and eggs. I will gather the ingredients for smores.

It just occurred to me that I have changed my entire tune on voting because of something Trump did earlier this week. In order to clarify if you happen to be reading this at some other point when the news cycle has moved on, I’ll remind you what it was.

Trump was invited to be a guest at an association of black reporters and he was to be interviewed, appropriately, by a black woman. The first question was to bring him to account on his record for black folks, and he decided it would be a good time to attack black folks head on. He then brought Kamala Harris race into question and said he didn’t even know she was black until recently when she started saying she was. I will not speak for Kamala Harris but I have always seen her as a person of color and never once questioned her racial bona fides because I’m not a sociopath.

But with just this one, over-the-top display of backwards, racist, ignorant thinking, the man ensured that I would be voting against him. How Harris handled the conversation and the fallout convinced me that she was capable of serving the office and by extension the people that it is accountable to: all of us.

Now I have begun the work of diligence to ensure that my vote is as informed as it can be, and more to the point, so I can feel good about casting a ballot for the first time in 12 years.