the worst type of post you can imagine

Wherein I castigate the entire world for not reading my blog:

In the wild wild west that is the interwebs, one can't help but be obsessed with ones self. There are exceptions, but we'll leave them consigned to the margins today. It's not about them anyway. It's about me.

They say you gotta write for yourself. Having trouble finding an audience? Well, I'm right here baby! I account for 3 thirds of the traffic on this site. The Zero Readers have made their voices heard. TL;DR. I get it >:(

Exception: One day some generous soul linked to something somewhere here on the old SoC. Wow cool, I broke the single digit visit threshold. Hell I was at triple digits every day for like 3 weeks straight. It was incredibly exciting. Cheers.

But you know how people are never satisfied, and how one day we'll destroy ourselves because of this fact? I want more damn it! Read me! Sycophants reveal yourselves! You should always try to keep your ego in check. They're ugly things that shouldn't be let out in public. Unfortunately though, I'm incredibly attached to my ego. Why should any one care about this? Oh, no good reason. They all got their own problems. FML

This is when I just need to Zen the fuck out. You start focusing on the process instead of the outcome and you begin to grow some much needed patience. For the Zen Master and the Attention(hint:this word is a dead give away) Whore, success entails 3 key elements and they are as follows: attention, attention, attention. Be careful which one you choose.

I hereby purge myself of seeking outside validation. Online personal mythologies are cool. I know not so secretly that this is a lie that truly desires the heretofore mentioned outcome. Oh well, I believed in God for almost 30 years. I'm incredibly good at deluding myself. Here's to my not caring if you read this or not.

keep the momentum going

I don't feel undeniably passionate about anything. What is life without an overwhelming desire to do or achieve something? This is one of those big decision moments -- danger: I'm getting psyched. I've always been partial to naturally occurring phenomena over contrived productions. However, I see no compelling reason for this bias. Is a desire that isn't wholly inborn, but cultivated over time any less valid than an inherent blazing inferno of I love this and I'll do it forever?

At the beginning of the year I set some goals. Many of which were an act. This is what you do for a week or two after January 1st, it's expected etc. I wonder what's wrong with acting (if anything?). It's all an act, all of it: life , the universe and everything; didn't Shakespeare say as much once? So, it must be true. We choose. One act at a time. Synthetic cultivation of life's passions, is OK. It's going to be OK man.

shout "freedom!" like you're Mel Gibson

Are we free? It feels like it. Using feelings as a basis for an epistemology has proven suspect in the past, but that doesn't mean it wont be repeated. If freedom's an illusion so am I. I can live with that.

the resistance 1

i am my own enemy

resistance is my nature

i am aware of resistance

and it prevents me from achieving the life that I am meant to have

resistance is self-generated, self-perpetuated

it lies and seduces. its goal is my utter destruction

this moment this day

i change my life

help me to defeat myself

and realize fate

-- Jonathan Hickman

I love this statement. There's so much at play in so few words. For instance: Is entitlement always a bad thing? These days, just like any days, but I'm thinking of these ones particularly, there are some untouchables, pariahs of the dictionary, I'm not talking about words improper to use in polite company -- I like swearing and so do a whole buncha other people -- I'm talking words that many people will try to avoid having associated with themselves at any cost. Now there's definitely a spectrum, laziness is not cool, but it's damn near unforgivable in modern society to be a racist, and if you do anything that shows any predilection for bigotry, your critics will play the: you're-just-afraid-of-us-card, because if there's anything worse than a freeloading slob or a redneck asshole, it's being labeled a fraidy cat.

Maybe underneath we're all a bunch of loosely tangled nerves ready to unravel at the slightest provocation and when someone calls us out, it really hits home, because admitting that you're afraid exposes your vulnerability. Better to maintain the bullshit facade that everything's A OK, rather than face up to your sub-optimal existence. I don't know.

Well, somewhere on the spectrum of these unwanted attributables, I haven't figured out where it falls exactly, there's the entitlement mentality. The greatest generation, the BBs, built this goddamn post-colonial, post-war, post-modern, post-rational western "civilization" through pure grit and determination and then ... we came along. We got it easy now days, and we also all suffer from one variation of ADHD or another. We want what we want right now. This is how the story goes whether it's true or not isn't important. It is what it is. We think our birthright is for us to grow up to be rich and famous after we buy everything we don't actually need. On credit. But one day, you know, the piper will come back to collect. He always does. Gen X, Gen Y don't you fix the entire planet that we fucked up. That's our birthright.

What I'm trying to say is that the spectrum has a shadow side, but now I'm talking in reverse, because two negatives equal a positive or something. So, I might be talking about the bright side of the moon for all we know. Everything can be spun negative or positive. I believe that I'm free. My good friend that I only know third hand, Mr Malcolm X used to say: "Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man you take it." This implies that there are barriers to entry; not in the utilization of freedom, we can all do that, but exercising it to the full effect; to achieve something that garners some sense of satisfaction; we are all entitled to that right. It's just a question of whether we choose to have the tenacity to make it happen.

TBC

notes on this post: I just rediscovered pulp fiction for the first time, and this rambling is me subconsciously doing Quentin Tarantino badly. I'm easily influenced.