I told myself that I would write an entry today that progresses my goals. Specifically an entry outlining how I want to hire someone to do social media for me, and how I want it all to work, outlining my expectations, strategies and ideas for what I want them to do. Or if not, I have other entries i want to make that I feel are important to talk about, like one about my trauma surrounding police brutality and my cop cousin who assaulted me when I was about ten and promised to murder me if I ever talked about it and about how getting over trauma often does not actually look or feel painful and how it can actually manifest as a distortion of reality rather than actual pain. I also want to write a long review of Allen Elementary School in burlington Washington when I went there from 1989 to 1993, and go over exactly how that school just messed me up psychologically through the constant threat of violence and the ever-present us-vs-them mentality. Or make an open letter to officer Mark Stokes of the Bellingham Washington police department and go over exactly how and why the things he did so deeply traumatized me and set me into an emotional struggle that seemed completely hopeless until Black Lives Matter came around in 2020 and gave me the courage to finally talk about these things… and more importantly, try to communicate a sense of forgiveness, or at the very least, a desire to forgive, and a rejection of this us-vs-them mentality that pervades every aspect of our society. Or an entry about this book I listened to recently called The Body Keeps the Score, a fantastic book about trauma, but specifically how it talks about veterans who tell their friends and family their trauma is caused by the enemy attacking them, but then their therapist really digs deep and they finally admit that their trauma was actually caused by their own killing of kids and civilians or raping women, and how I think that my perspective, where we admit that what soldiers do is often morally unacceptable, will actually do more to help heal the trauma of these soldiers than the current strategy of relentlessly insisting they are heroes regardless of what they actually did or the actual effects they had on our society. How we should be treating veterans as human beings, not as faceless heroes.
But I’m … scared? Is that the word? I guess that’s the best word for it. I’m scared… but it’s a vague fear. I don’t really know what I’m scared of or why I keep walking downstairs to play video games, or riding the bus downtown just to have a nice lunch as I did today, instead of writing the things that will progress this forward in the way I claim to want.
Maybe I’m sounding like a broken record when I say that comfort is the enemy of progress, at least in my case. All the comforts and luxuries of life are distracting me. For one reason or another, I’m putting these entries off.
So I guess this entry is not going to be particularly profound, and is gonna be just a general update and non-committed rambling.
I still haven’t smoked weed since a week ago thursday. It’s sooo much easier to quit than tobacco. It’s really not hard at all, at least once I committed to it and let my supply run out entirely. And it’s not an absolute of course, as nothing in my life is an absolute. I’m still gonna smoke occasionally, when other people offer. I’m just not going to buy weed… well, unless it’s a special occasion or something.
Like for example, I bought a DVD of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and want to have a little viewing party. Obviously I’ll want to smoke a little that night. But the days of Kalin being a pothead are over. Can’t believe I’m actually saying that. Pothead has been one of my core identities for 25 years and I’ve never felt any shame in that.
I’m starting to dream again. (marijuana prevents dreaming) Last night had a dream that I posted something to a work Slack channel that was totally unrelated to the channel and then agonized over whether or not I should have done that. It wasn’t anything that would get me sent to HR, but I still agonized over it and finally decided to delete it, but then I couldn’t find the channel, and for some reason Slack turned into Google Maps, so I was searching a map for my entry.
Then night before last I dreamt that I went to the water slides with the Bill Burr and he was giving me advice on anger management, and how he goes to the water slides as like a meditation technique that helps him understand his frustrations. Tells me that meditation can come in all sorts of wacky shapes and colors, and it’s okay if yours does not fit the mold, just so long as it’s effective at helping you toward your emotional goals. Anger management is like half his content, which is why I love his comedy so much, like he seems to really be trying to cultivate a style that is more than just funny, that actually helps people, particularly men with masculinity issues, on how to manage and understand their anger.
I bought some fruit trees, an Asian pear, a peach and a plum. Gonna plant those three this weekend. Me and a couple friends actually started doing it on Saturday but then finally realized that even though we were only going down like 18 inches, and it’s my own property, legally we still need to call 811 (call before you dig), so now these trees are chillin in my backyard until next weekend when we will plant them in a more legal fashion. If they survive the first year, I plan to buy two or three more next year. I eat a lot of fruit.
I’ve listened to my four books on Audible. I have not converted Against A Rock into an audible book because I’m afraid it won’t turn out right because so much of it is in italics, which indicates that the main character is thinking or communicating through her brain implant, and I’m afraid that it won’t translate very well. Also, they need to have a table of contents to be eligible which they don’t have currently. Daughter I can give a Table of Contents, but that’s written as a journal, so every entry would need a line in the table of contents so it would be a table that’s like three pages long, though I think that would still be eligible. But it’s a lot of work to set all that up.
so it’s like, I’m disappointed with this entry today. I’m hiding from the things I really want to talk about by talking about these mundane life things, that probably just aren’t holding a whole lot of value for you the reader. I always try to think, “what value, actual value beyond entertainment am I actually giving to the reader” and if I can’t think of it, then I shouldn’t be writing it, even if it’s really entertaining or seemingly interesting.
I wonder if Bill Burr thinks like that, like he always asks himself what real value people can extract from his comedy beyond just laughs. His most recent special I watched recently and was really really impressed, all the way until about the last four minutes where he starts talking about his kid’s genitals. I can’t fathom why he made that choice, to end a fantastic comedy special on his kids junk. It was such a phenomenal special and then just went downhill so damn hard in the last few minutes. Like, what the hell was he thinking with that? Was he scared of being seen as deep–scared of being a legit force of intelligent and meaningful perspectives, so he tanks his special at the very end to prevent people from taking his ideas seriously?
Am I the same way, scared of the pressure of actually being respected, of actually having people read my stuff?
Is it fear? Is that the right name for the emotion I’m feeling that’s stopping me from taking my writing to the next level and hiring a social media representative? I’m just not sure.
