Deviant Rambling

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.

I have spent most of the current election cycle sure that we were barreling towards the inevitable disaster of another Trump term. It felt like a certainty, and I remain cautious of the possibility.

But once the Democrats finally pulled their heads out of their asses and confronted Biden with reality, it seems like the whole scene changed for the better. For the first time since 2012, I feel as though I am not left to choose between the lesser of two evils. I have begun to come around to the idea of voting. I don’t feel icky about the candidate the same way I did in 2016 and 2020. That comes from a place of genuine ignorance about Kamala Harris’ record and aspirations. I knew too much about Hillary and Joe to ever feel completely on board with them, but the alternative was and remains truly insane.

The air around us changed when Harris picked up the torch. Something shifted in the national conversation and in my own heart and mind. I believe it would only be fitting for a woman of color to run away with it. It’s high time we gave women a chance to run this thing because we have seen what hundreds of years worth of white men accomplishes. More of the same is a sure path to ruin.

I am sure that the particulars of Harris and her record will be known by election day and I am sure that they will not find any skeletons that would stop me from believing she is the better choice. I continue to maintain that my vote will be a protest vote, but I will cast it happily this time. As an act of defiance against a man that I believe could spell the end of democracy.

We seem to be living in an age when people can do things with zero inherent value and get paid for them, so long as enough people interact with the content. I’d rather skip the middle part where I have to feign interest in a subject to make content and push it as hard as possible to get traction, ever seeking virality.

Can I just have some of your money, free from conditions and judgment?

K. THX. BAI.

In daring to open this space to the public, I run the risk that my opinions on the state of the world will meet with resistance. As these are merely my opinions, I expect them to be taken with a grain of salt.

But I am not sorry for how I feel and I will not hold back. I see the world as I do and I give the benefit of the doubt to as many folks as I can. It just isn’t realistic to believe you can meet everyone in the middle and I suspect I wont’ be able to.

The political landscape we find ourselves in is a veritable minefield and I know I will step on a few as I trudge through this journey called life. So long as I can avoid any truly insane responses like doxing and the like, I should be able to proceed unabated. I expect a fair share of wounds but if my thoughts reach even one set of receptive eyes and land as intended, it was all worth it.

You’ve been warned, and I’ll try to keep the political detours to a minimum, but it is impossible to avoid entirely.

As a person who pulls words from thin air to transmute them into money, I am curious about the nature of these insights. They seem to appear of their own accord and often out of sync with when you need them. This leaves me convinced that such wisdom can only be obtained through careful observation and through the practice of taking mental notes.

When an inspiration arrives from nowhere, you should do your best to stop everything you are doing and observe what is being communicated. From these ethereal threads, you may be able to piece together a work of art or at very least, grab hold of an idea before it finds another, more suited recipient. Make as many mental notes as you are capable of storing in your working memory and then get them down on paper or in an app.

Given the apparent random nature of these epiphanies, it can seem a futile project to take notes at the time. But these notes can be just enough for you to see the outline of a puzzle you didn’t know you needed to solve. Assembling this outline after the fact is only possible through your diligence, and recognizing the signs of this gift from the heavens.

There will be times where you simply can not devote the energy required to wrangle these forces to your whims, and this is an inevitable form of suffering that you must learn to endure or better yet, accept. Any and all ideas find a home where they were meant to be, and if you’re exceedingly lucky, it just might be in your heart and mind.