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.