EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION

you load sixteen tons, what do you get?

...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:

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..."