Dissembling Doubt and Sabotaging Sabotage

I really like what Henry Rollins has to say in hisi "Big Think" video regarding surviving The America and being an Americanist. I think for someone like me, there is a lot of good information and insight to be gleaned from his world view. This stems from the fact that Mr. Rollins talks about "guys like me" in reference to himself. Guys who should leave early because they'll probably get lost on the way. Guys who have to write something three times to get it right rather than just once. The guys that need to shut up, sit back, and learn instead of running their mouth about what they already think they know. Essentially, Henry Rollins is a guy like me, talking to guys like me about how to be successful. He saw his shot and he worked and worked and worked and worked some more. He just really never stopped working. He got to sing with this band called Black Flag, who just happened to be his favorite band. He started his own publishing company, did poetry readings, took acting gigs, and did voice over spots. The guy saw opportunity and grabbed on and when he grabbed on he didn't let go. He created opportunity and once he created that opportunity he put his heart and soul into making that opportunity work for him. I think what I really want to take from this video is what I want to take from my mom. My sisters. My neighbors. From every good teacher I've ever had and every optimistic dreamer I ever shared a cigarette with--what I really want to take from any of them is to work hard no matter what at achieving the goals in my life that I find worthwhile. Not the ones that I find achievable. Not the ones that are easy or the ones that I don't have to work for. First things first, is setting goals. On a day to day basis, I sort of stumble through life, what happens, happens and that is just the way it is. I don't have progress points. I don't have short term objectives that show my progress on a tangible scale. I operate as if I'm expecting the grand revelation of my life to just fall out of the sky one day and from then on out I'll be living inside of the life I've always failed to imagine, because I figured I'd know it when it happened. Well, that's fantastic for whoever that happens to. For whoever it has happened to, I'm very happy for them. But at the same time, I guess they kind of missed the point. Just like I've been missing the point. The life I want to live has to be just that: the life I want to live. Not wanting something is not the same as wanting something else. "I don't want to be hungry." Is not the same as "I want to work hard at a, b, and c in order to make sure I am never hungry again." My not wanting to live at home with my mom and have nothing to show for my 22 years of life is NOT the same as wanting to make it on my own by writing and reading and creating in any capacity possible in order to secure myself in a life of my choosing where I can travel and see new places and meet new people that will inevitably lead to new and greater opportunity. Sitting at home smoking cigarettes with Shaun, reading a book here and there, cooking food from time to time, and visiting this friend because I haven't seen her in a while and this friend because I haven't talked to him in some time...this rather uninspiring present can really do nothing but lead to an uninspiring future and before I know it I am left with an uninspired life.



This is my uninspired life. This is life uninspired. I just got a job at McDonald's. I start orientation next Tuesday, and after that I will be gainfully employed as a burger boy/fry hand at the local incarnation of what is in my view one of the most disgusting corporations in America. But hey! It's money, everyone says, congratulating me. I know it's gross and I know it's against who I am as a person. What I stand for. But hey! You have to start somewhere. I shouldn't be starting. I'm not going to complain or beat myself up over the poor line of decision making skills which I have followed over the last few years.



My uninspired life wasn't so uninspiring a few years ago. Not really. I graduated high school with honors and went to college and a really decent university scholarship that was dependent on keeping a certain grade point average. My first year of college that really wasn't an issue, I could have performed better, but I made the marks I needed that first.

The second year, oh boy. Well, I started smoking pot and hanging out with people who did not push me to be the best academic version of myself, but I can't blame them, that's on me. Honestly, I have to attribute my spiral down to complete mundanity on my lack of faith--in anything. I stopped believing in God, I stopped believing in old friends, eventually, I stopped believing in my own ability to succeed. Miraculously (read: foolishly) I retained my sense of self-importance and a deep rooted belief that even if I wasn't doing anything to prove that I was intelligent or capable of success, it didn't matter. I still saw myself as one of the smart ones. One of the guys who understood the intricacies of life and the complexities of the world and in that understanding, I was better off. Sure, I wasn't navigating the landscape of hum-drum life in order to find my out and up and onward, but I could sure see that the landscape existed and if I just felt like doing so I could certainly get along just fine. For too long now I've rested on my laurels and I've allowed my past successes (which were never that noteworthy to begin with) to speak for my present self. So, here is what Kyle Burke would typically do in a case like this. He would make a grandiose statement about how he recognizes this pattern and how it's been happening for too long and how he is going to change it. He's going to prove himself and no longer is he going to rest on his laurels and and and...



But Kyle Burke has a job at McDonald's. Just let that sink in a second.

If that doesn't set off alarms, I don't know what will.

I'm here refusing the grand sweeping statements of change promised. I'm denying any sense of self revelation that has me HERE AND NOW staring at my own destiny, no more to squander my abilities.

Those kind of appeals have never gotten me anywhere before. I've not been able to overcome my own doubt by "really really feeling like I can do it!" I've not been able to end the cycle of self sabotage simply by acknowledging it's existence and simultaneously acknowledging that I only hold myself back. What if I just tweak the wording? Like, just a tiny bit. What if instead of feeling like I can overcome my doubt, I simply stop doubting? Hey, I kind of like that. I like the freedom it inspires. What if rather than acknowledging my cyclical self sabotage and my ability to hold myself back I turn the sabotage on itself? Like, what if I safe guard my decisions and my actions with a secondary sabotage system that sabotage's the sabotage, thereby creating progress out of internal competition? What if I took the good of which I am capable and used that to combat the not so good things which are more often than not on display? Let's be clear here. A change in the wording in and of itself is not useful in anyway. It takes a sense of follow through, which is something I have lacked hardcore in recent years. In my life uninspired, follow through has been viewed as some kind of optional thing. Something secondary rather than linked directly to a thing itself. I really want to say NO MORE, I'm here to follow through. But because that rhetoric has gotten me nowhere in the past, I'm ceasing the use of conventional positive reinforcement. I have come to put as little stock in my own word as those around me. I'm doing this new thing where I don't give my word or make vows or promises. If it isn't given, I can't break it. And maybe if there is nothing to be broken, I'll be able to follow through more often. It's just a theory and I'm not even sure there is any solid basis for it, but I'm attempting it.

a love i ran from

it blows on the wind every once in a while
drifting and settling in.
it blows on the wind and starts settling--
in gold dust and smoke and pain.
it shimmers and promises
and swears by the moon,
while the sun is fast asleep.
as diamonds of night
cast shadows that dance,
it imbues the spirit of that
which light has deemed
unfit [whatever that means].

she understands the trees and stars;
 i've never seen a more broken heart.
the scars on the canvas and the scars on her arms
tell of a darkness that lies in the heart of everything.

start

The problem is I never  know the story I want to tell. Need to tell. I don't know where to start or if there is a good place to start or if any of that even matters, because the end and the beginning are intertwined anyway.

Could you explain that, please?

Sure. It's like...In all things. In life, in death, in destruction, and creation. When God said "Let there be light" that was the end of darkness. When Bilbo left the one ring with Frodo it was an end of one chapter and the beginning of another. So it is with the business of the play I'm writing. I started it because...well, I'm not really sure why I started it aside from needing something to do to get my mind moving a little quicker than molasses in January. The weed doesn't help, and the cigarettes are just killing my singing voice. These songs that Davey writes are written FOR me. Just like the dialogue I'm writing for Eilanna is written FOR her. But I can't sing, and Eilanna is depressed and just doesn't seem to be able to deliver the sense of "fragile hope" that the character Marietta HAS to convey. But replacing her is impossible. Not only because Eilanna is the only girl I can talk to without hyperventilating (though, that definitely plays into it), but also because there is no one else in the world who can literally read Button's mind, and for this piece to work on any real sort of level the mind reading thing has to be authentic. Otherwise the whole play falls apart.

This play seems to be very ambitious. I mean, there is a lot going into it from a lot of people who don't seem to quite be in the frame of mind to really pull it off. What do you make of those challenges and where do you go from there?

No, I mean you are absolutely right. This is a really ambitious thing we are doing and like you said we aren't really this cognitive whole yet, and there is a ton of shit piling against us. I guess though Davey is kind of our green light at the end of the dock, in a way. He's that thing that keeps us going and makes us believe that what we are doing is all worthwhile and possible and could actually mean something, you know? He's pumping out these songs and he's got something like 25 songs all written and there is backstory and plot ideas and page after page of notes to go along with every song and from that what we do like, 95% of the time is get together either in Davey's mom's basement or out in the woods at the cabin and we take Davey's songs and he teaches them to us and we all kind of add and take away, sort of molding these songs from being "Davey's Songs" into this collective work and then we play the songs and we smoke and we drink and we do dramatic readings of the notes that Davey has included and then we pass out and get up the next day and do it again and we'll do this for like 18 hours a day some days, and then we'll sleep the whole next day and then the day after that we'll do it all again. So, the songs are coming along really well and it's as if we really are delving deep into the world of this whole story and living inside of it. The thing is it has just become so big and just real to us it's like trying to put it on as this 2 hour stage production is just mind boggling. Because everything has become important. All the little details and the factoids that tie together. You know it's really hard to explain, because like I said there is just so much to it.