Bear with me here, because I woke up on too little sleep after a weird night, thought, “God, just let me get back to sleep,” and popped a triple dose of my Clonazepam (ahh, wonderful benzodiapenes…my Valium, my Valium, my Valllll-iiiium) but couldn’t get back to sleep. So I’m in a semi lucid sort of hazy almost dream state here.
Mostly I just want to say, after three years on my own, I’m fucking tired. I cannot find a way to beat the disability trap of “You lose any and all assistance if you work at all, and you need to keep countable resources at $2,000 or below at all times.” Trying to get around that with my Special Needs Trust, but it’s moving incredibly slowly and it’s not that much money anyway after the fucking house burned down.
I desperately want to write more interesting and creative things, but here’s the thing — I’m like my dad. He used to hand out free advice to politicians as a political consultant. Which was insane. It was his job, the ideas were used, and he should have charged. The problem was, my dad just enjoyed the game too much — pulling a string here and there and so on and watching things play out in the news. He was also just a hell of a nice guy (when he wasn’t angry).
When I was younger, I suffered much the same problem. I threw out a lot of jokes and ideas here and there among creative people, they were borrowed;; I don’t really feel very angry about it, like my dad — it was fun watching them play out, and I like to keep a low profile anyway. But as I got older I began to get more and more pissed that hey, writing and ideas are my profession — if you want the good stuff (this isn’t even the good stuff, this is a random rant written on a handful of fucking benzos), you have to pay — or if you’re a known entity, you at least have to ask. So I kind of stopped writing, started putting blander stuff on the blog, and locked down a lot of the more controversial stuff and the humor.
As a result, I feel like a pressure cooker. I have a lot of stuff I want to just blurt the fuck out, but I will be damned if I will blurt out creative things and so on — for Christ’s sake, it’s my only form of capital — without some form of compensation. Plus, it’s difficult when you don’t have other people as sounding boards, and I don’t have any editors or colleagues right now.
I don’t know, what do I do at my age? Lock writing behind a paywall? I don’t know if I have the patience for the rejection slips at the moment from various places and also I do feel as if I’ve earned at least a goddamned toe in the door.
And, of course, I mightily miss my parents, and my old house, which burned down and in the process cost me a fortune and immolated every precious memory I have.
So I’m casting about. So fuck you. This world is nothing but a clusters of strip malls and televisions connected by wires and waves — who really gives a fuck, you know? I’d *like* to make more fun of it, but I’m not doing it until I’m paid or receive recognition. Which is very me. I remember an ex-gf told me once, “You withhold yourself from the world and it’s a crime.” Very flattering, yes, I know, she probably wanted a better birthday present by buttering me up, but she still said it.
Fine. It’s a crime. I just don’t have the fucking patience for a lot of you people. I’m an amiable guy, and — especially after COVID — people are just generally assholes. What to do but hold your sunshine in and try to be polite to people, right?
Ah well. That’s my post. And that’s why I don’t write that much anymore. I would very much like to blow this popcorn stand and get back into creative circles, but I’m tied down and I can’t seem to reach any of my old contacts. C’est la vie.
