EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION

There’s something like four different ways I’ve heard this story told. I guess I don’t have much choice in how I myself tell it, but you should know going in that you might get a different version if you head into town and ask around. Might be age? I don’t know. I was a kid, something like thirty years ago. I’ve told it so many times there’s a hole in my head where the memory used to be. I’m gonna get a pitcher of ice water and a couple glasses and then we can get going. This humidity makes it hard to think. Be right back.

So like I said I was told this story in something like 1991 er ‘92. I remember the yellow ribbons around the trees out in front of the school showing support for our troops in Operation Desert Storm. My cousin Bobby was in the Air Force, a navigator for refueling tanker aircraft. Makin’ sure the bombs got all the way across the ocean to Iraq, I guess. Anyways, I remember the ribbons, which is how I remember when it was. You’ll see. When you get older, not even old, just older, all the shit in your head will start to run together and yesterday could have been ten years ago. You start finding ways to reassure yourself you were who you was when you were there. It’s hard to explain but you sort of live all of your years at once, all of the time, stacked on top of one another. The weight eventually starts smashing them together. In this case I’m pretty sure we’re talking the first couple years of the 90s, though. Because of the ribbons.

Can I pour you a glass? Iced cold. Fights back the breathlessness in these dog days.

Anyway, you asked about Paul and what I’d heard happened to him. It started in the fall. We all came back to school after a summer of bee stings and sword fights. Jackson Valley Elementary pulled from five rural counties. Most of us kids were spread out with our families through the spread of homesteads and half-dead farms. If you had a friend at school, there was a good chance he might live thirty minutes away by car. Summer time was sort of, you know, us going our separate ways. This was before cell phones and the internet and so you either lived nearby or you didn’t exist. I always came home to a mostly empty house -- another story for another time -- and spent most of my days out of school waiting to go back. I learned quick what boredom was like, you know? A boy could only entertain himself so long. I never would’ve admitted it as a kid but every year but by the end of summer I was aching to get on that bus back to school. What had all my friends been doing? Did they go to the shore? Did they see the Braves win streak? What secret knowledge would they each bring back to the lunch table? Swears, stories, evidence of the unknown adult world. None of us will ever forget Tom slowly and secretly pulled a torn magazine page out of his pocket and unfolded it: a jagged quarter page of Pamela Anderson, topless and missing her legs and a hand. David came back with a broken arm and a story of intense bravery involving a ladder. Matt showed us the pocket knife his grandfather gave him. Corey spent the summer with his Dad in Florida and was tanned so dark he’d somehow matured more than the rest of us. Kelly let us pass her new Gameboy around in awe trying to top each other’s Tetris scores. We all knew Lucas was making up his summer camp stories but we played along anyway. We were astronauts out in open space, reporting back to each other about what they’ve seen and what might exist outside of the infinite stands of trees. Our lunch table was home base. There was no truth but what we’d seen with our own eyes and could swear to god we weren’t making it up. Evidence of more. Evidence of potential.

Evidence of potential.

So you probably know the facts, right? Most of the details have been dug up and laid out for all to see. “Crusher: the disappearance of Paul Stoker, a True Crime Podcast.” Yeah. Yeah I’ve heard it. Couldn’t help myself. Haven’t watched the streaming show that came out a few years later but I heard it ain’t great. Not surprised. No one really likes an unresolved story.

‘Course they don’t ever talk to any of us. There’s enough info out there in the papers and such to get most of the basics of course; the names and the places, the police reports and the newspaper archives. In the advertisements they used our second grade class yearbook photo with a big red circle around Paul’s picture. When you go back home pull it up and you’ll see me two photos to the right, missing both of my front teeth like a cartoon character.

Everything was alphabetical of course, so Paul was only ever a few spots away from me whenever we were lined up or sorted out. I was always behind him, so I remember him better from from the back. Honestly, that has always freaked me out. I can’t remember his face, but I can remember that he always had his hair spiked up with gel. Bright blonde. Always had a gold chain around his neck. Maybe for a cross? He mostly wore blue. He was a few inches taller than me, even then. Those are the details I truly remember. I think I truly remember. Of course I’ve gone back and looked at Paul’s picture plenty of times to remind me what that face looked like. Should look like. That ain’t the same as remembering, though. I wish I remembered him more, is what I’m saying. Even though we only knew each other a few years something like this sticks with you. Kinda haunted, you know? Hate to use the word. He was a real person and something real happened to him. I don’t mean to say haunted in like a magical way. Something real happened to him.

it is probably the case that i'm overthinking this moment in my life as some crucial turning point. yes, i am jobless, and yes, i'm also pretty much connectionless. yes, i could be recruited into like the CIA and no one would know the difference. yes, i could turn myself into a nationally renowned florist. yes, i could sell my house and become a cryptid on the Appalachian Trail. yes, i could go get another software job, probably.

(yes, that job probably involves managing "developer performance" which is shorthand for "we spent too much on AI and the shareholders demand sacrifice")

yes, i could become a line cook probably. at least at a bad restaurant. i could probably go be a drug dealer of some kind (fulfilling kelly's 5th grade prediction that i'd end up the biggest weed dealer in Pennsylvania). yes, i could go network with a bunch of people who, like me, are lost in a sea of cancerous opportunities and unstable social contracts. yes, i could become a writer.

look at me! i'm writing right now. i think in this context, however, i'm more like, talking about a professional direction i can head in which will allow me to maintain my lifestyle of air conditioning and bagel bites and my dog robert getting fancy treats. so yes, i guess i could try to revamp all of what i am into something new. there's not an entirely huge amount of time left in my watch spring all things considered. i kind of already invested quite a bit into this professional direction. and would anything else really be more fulfilling?

yes, i suppose something might be, in like, the literal sense. yes, i hate everything i've tried so far. yes, i resent having to earn my life day after day. yes, making money for shareholders while i survive is distasteful. yes, if I could I would do nothing.

only after doing nothing for forever do i ever find something i want to do. yes, find something i want to do. yes, find something i want to do. yes, find it. find it, yes. yes.

---

listening to:

...Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

---

let's talk about what happens in 365 days. that is, it's been 365 days since i first published something on this blog proclaiming a return to writing and a concurrent battle with depression.

actually, let's not talk about it. i can't talk about some of it yet, legally. i need to keep getting my severance checks for another 8 weeks. i also can't talk about it some of it because it's deeply interpersonal; in that, it involves those i love and it's not my story alone to tell.

all that being said, i thought i had sort of hit the deep end about a year ago. i was pretty wrong. ain't that the way?

where am i now? i am sitting in a coffee shop in my detroit-area suburb a month out from being disconnected from any professional responsibilities. hell, there are not a lot of aspects about my life that haven't been completely upended in the last year aside from still living on the same grinding midwest suburban dead end.

i do intend to write about the past year at some point, including the deeply personal stuff. i just don't really have anything but raw deep breaths to work through; nothing considered or even very far from "well, fuck this."

truly, we are all dogs in god's hot car.

well, not truly, but like, you get it.

it's been hard to express for me but all of these challenges i've been pushing up a hill for the last year have been coated with the slimy shit-stinking background radiation of the "AI revolution" mixed in with terminal enshittification and lit on fire by genuine social contagions. i've never wanted to be a like, "fuck you i'm going to the woods" type of person (i generally don't trust myself enough to rely on myself to survive) but every day the trends of the things i care about head downward and the trends of events that make me want to chew off my tongue continue to increase. i don't really know what to do about it. i escaped society onto the internet as a kid and now the internet is this. i don't really know where to run now.

as if i can run! i need to find a job, and quickly. i have the luxury of a small break, but the reality is that the midwest suburbs have a certain burn rate and sitting in front of a computer watching youtube until you run out of content doesn't cover the bills for long. (not that that isn't pretty much how i spent my first two weeks off.) i don't really know what i want to do for a job, except that i know what i've done in the past and what people have been willing to pay me for. i wouldn't say any of the professional work i've done in the last 15 years has been passionately or even particularly fulfilling, but it certainly has shifted me from "rural bankrupt parents who never want to college" class to the "metropolitan, professionally educated, and financially invested" class and that isn't nothing.

i don't know what i like doing. i don't really like doing anything and i never really have liked doing anything. i do like the feeling of people reacting to a thing i've done which i believe was generally the motivation for my more creative pursuits... but i can't remember the last time i received praise for my professional skills or output aside from monetary compensation. i'm sure that is most peoples' reality. i did get to be that person for lots of others: reminding them of their worth, their value, and their contributions to the people they work with. but what's the thing about emptying out your cup all the time and no one filling it back up? all of that is real. all of it. after years of giving what i wanted to receive i am empty. beyond empty. desiccated.

i owe a lot of people a lot of things. so many folks reached out with kind words and offers of support and i had no response. i think, over time, this blog might help me get to a place where i feel like giving again.

so uh, i think that's it for today. be kind to yourselves. protect what matters.

things to talk about in the future, for future me:

• therapy
• ketamine
• cruelty
• robert the dog
• a short story or five
• the "novel"
• and oh god i need a job

---

today i'm listening to "the songs of cowboy jack clement" played by David Fergeson. this one really cut me deep.

"and that's how progress goes..."

[a programming note: this is my second attempt at this post, because i am so far out of practice that i refreshed my browser before publishing the post and lost it all. honestly, though, that hit me just like it did when i was a kid blogging on the internet and gave me a kind of "alright motherfucker" energy with which i... waited three days to write this again.]

long story short, my therapist thinks i should be writing. maybe even writing publicly. so here i am, being a good patient, doing the thing, one day at a time.

it's sort of timely, because a year ago this week i was in partially hospitalized for a bunch of mental health issues. imagine the bad ones, and maybe pull it back like slightly, but not too slightly. anyway, i spent a month there. it sort of reset who i thought i was.

a long time ago in a galaxy yada yada i found my way out of the small town through writing every day for an audience of people i didn't know. i had to "fill two screens" of the text box in my homemade CMS, every day. Did I often

Write

like this? yeah. it sort of became a style built out of unexpected consequences. it also propelled me out of my passive acceptance of being a "computer kid", allowing me to extend the conception of myself into something... more? sure. something more.

it was good for me, i think.

why did it stop? it's a long story i'll tell here at some point, but needless to say i left my daily public meditation by the side of the road in exchange for crashing through my 20s and early 30s, collecting up all the experiences i had been sheltered from and packing them away in the back of the attic for a rainy day.

somewhere in there, during my undergrad years, i switched from a 5 year Computer Engineering program to a 4 year Creative Writing program. everyone said i was a good writer, so why not chase your skills. why not. why not.

adult life being defined by the job and the salary and the insurance really fuckin' took a toll on me. i went to grad school to make more money, but basically also just increased my cost of living an incredible amount at the same time. the stupid treadmill still takes a toll on me. i don't know how creatives can be their full selves and keep a roof over their heads. i'm all or nothing. all gas, no breaks as the kids say. it always felt completely incompatible to try and "do both"

and so i don't know, maybe bottling that up for too long in the service of "adulting" was not that healthy for me. maybe i need that process, that sort of public evacuation of ideas and feelings; maybe i shouldn't feel so bad about wanting an audience. maybe i need some extrinsic motivation.

this is all my therapist, by the way. "hey maybe if people told you they like what you did, you wouldn't want to not wake up." jesus doc... when you put it that way...

so here i am, writing again. i think. i hope. i have a few ideas for stories i'd love to get down before my hands stop working. i have a lifetime of experiences and scenes to pull from. i have things to give, both from my personal life and my professional life, and they aren't doing me any good rattling around in my spray paint can of a head.

so here are some ground rules for myself and for you:

1. whatever that quote in movies about unintentional coincidences applies here. no real names. no totally truthful writing but with intense transparency. writing that feels truthful, so truthful that it might be about you.

2. i owe this fuckin text box words twice a week. i can do that. we can do it, together. i believe in us.

so yeah. first post! that used to be a thing.

it is very weird to be a 40 year old internet kid. what a world.

what i'm reading: Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

what i'm listening to: Infinity Knives x Brian Ennels - everyone i love is depressed:

what i'm stuck on: how depressed am i allowed to be vs. want to be vs. need to be vs. compelled to be.

now and forever your friend,

-allen