TRES: CHILD
I JUST LIKE TO BE THE 'IDEA' GUY.
You want recognition for a spark of intuition the same way you would want it for working your ass off.
This is the reason you are the only one who will be willing to give it.
It is unearned.
People celebrate work and sacrifice.
Even the process of celebration requires work and sacrifice.
You want permission to be seen.
You feel neglected often…no…not neglected…
NOT GIVEN PERMISSION.
You are living without authority…
Authority from others.
You want to be celebrated as a hero…a savior…a genius…anything that will fill the hole inside.
You are the person who glorifies their work title and says it like you want it to land deep in someone’s soul.
Employee of The Month.
Assistant to The Assistant Manager.
You are a husk of a God.
A chalk outline of someone great.
You have an idea and people don’t care, and neither do you because you need them to care.
So you abandon it.
Then you have another idea…maybe you see an ‘opportunity’ and you take it on as your new idea.
It falls flat.
Before long you have a collection of dead children you could never grow because you needed permission (approval) to grow them.
Even if you got praise and approval, and it motivated you…the moment that praise was lacking or nowhere to be found you would abandon that child as well.
Effort and Inconvenience easily convince you to quit because you don’t mean the words you speak.
YOU ARE NOT LOYAL.
YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE.
YOU LIVE IN FANTASY AND INVITE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME WITH YOU.
I AM THE CHILD.
I lost relationships being caught trying to be something I was not yet.
I could have slowed down, but my need for approval drove me into a frenzy of seeking shortcuts.
Seeking shortcuts left me frustrated when I could not prove my worth as fast as I wanted to.
When people visibly did not take me seriously, I got angry and bailed on a project, thinking the next one might change the result.
I always resonated with other children.
People who were funny and interesting; and they got by…but they did it like me.
It would be one new idea, and then another, and then another…
Every time I would be encouraging to them because that’s what I wanted.
They would be encouraging to me as well.
It WAS nice.
We had created an echo chamber of empty ‘yes men’ and none of us got anywhere.
It was the abandoned Island in Lord of the Flies.
Or Peter Pan’s Lost Boys.
Nothing but lost children grasping for meaning and survival.
None of us knew ourselves and we certainly didn’t know each other.
Some children have money.
I have met the child-millionaires.
Some children have popularity.
I have met the popular kids.
Some have nothing at all.
I have been the homeless man sleeping on the concrete in front of a Burger King.
Below is a video I took of a guy sleeping next to me by his wheelchair and a lady I can only assume was on some good shit because she spent like an hour just dancing her ass off. This was in front of the Burger King.
Shout out to the random Hawaiians in a van that rolled up to give us all Bento Boxes. I’ll never forget you.
Children…all still lost and, frankly, lucky to be alive.
But aren’t we all?
I was a child.
A child with a child.
I dated people who lived as children.
I worked with and networked with people who lived as children.
I had bosses that were children.
I had elders and family members living as children.
Always terrified of responsibility and incapable of passing the torch along to the next generation.
Parents who never became parents is where I came from.
If you can’t be responsible, you can never know who you are…and as a result you walk around empty.
Truth becomes scary.
So weak men and women replace it with ‘my truth’.
You only have the ability to have a vision as a seed.
You never let it grow.
You don’t take the responsibility in caring for it.
You just keep wondering why a seed is not a tree or a tree is not a house or a house is not a smarty city.
You have NO STAYING POWER.
You avoid the hard conversations.
‘Leader’ is a nice title, but you don’t want to actually lead.
Vomit Rocket:
His name was Mike.
I met him in Hawaii when I was seeking a room to sleep on Craigslist. He came off pretty nice. Dressed well. Had a father who had built multiple businesses and he wanted to start a non-profit on the island. His father was also an author. Very cool. This was a good find. A laid back dude in Waikiki with a dope little spot. I mean, it would be a shared space, but whatever.
The view was kick ass and we had our own pool and laundry…fucking solid.
(Side Note: I didn’t realize it at the time but I was looking at an American state that had basically wiped out all the Native Hawaiian people and enslaved who were left for American jobs. Fucked up.)
Welp.
The place was smaller than he let on. It was literally a studio that he was renting out to me and a grumpy Micronesian guy who was already sleeping on the floor.
Fuck.
Here we go.
I already paid the dude, and frankly, he wasn’t there much and the other guy had a job…so fuck it. I would take what I could get.
Of course, like any good psycho, Mike had left out the details of his drug abuse. He was a hard drug guy and pill popper. Oddly enough, he didn’t drink alcohol. In the time that I had interacted with Michael, he showed up to the studio fucked up on pills a few times. He would often take ANY pill you offered. He didn’t care WHAT it was. He lost a bike that be bought because he was too fucked up on pills to know what was happening and he crashed it.
He would instigate fights with me on a regular basis and got me so pissed that I screamed at him in the street. The smile that spread across his face when I yelled at him was eerie. I yelled so loud a cop pulled up to check on us.
I feel bad for that one.
But it was official, he was a ticking time bomb and I needed to get the fuck out of there.
He had told me he’d been in and out of rehab multiple times and it was mostly his father that was keeping him alive at this point.
I forgot to mention that he talked about being in jail and brought up having sex with men, obviously to test the waters with me. I had heard so much wild shit from this dude that I let it slide almost as if he hadn’t mentioned it.
Finally, I had a little bit of a free day at the studio and no one was around to bother me so I could relax a little.
But not for long.
Mike showed up sweaty as fuck.
You could probably get him naked and slide him across the fucking street on his bare ass if you wanted to.
I asked if he was okay and he said he wasn’t sure. He admitted to popping a fuck ton of pills. I told him we need to get him to the hospital. He said to hold off and let him sleep it off. His hold lasted less than 5 minutes. He got up and sat on a chair heavy breathing, sweating, and panicked.
Then he took a deep breath, lurched forward, and let out a thick green stream of puke about a good two feet forward and onto the bed. The stench immediately filled the room. I dashed to call the building security to get an ambulance over. This lucky mother fucker puked out all the poison he dumped in his body.
When the medics showed up, they asked what had happened. He said he tried to commit suicide. I felt bad and at the same time was so used to him lying that I was not sure if he was telling the truth. He spent about 3 days in rehab to get back to clean for a bit.
The clean up he left me with was fucking…
Fuck You, Mike.
There was hardly anything to clean with and I had to make due with an old tee shirt I found after I ran out of paper towel and toilet paper. At least he had some fucking household cleaner.
When he came back, he seemed a bit more normal. We talked about it a bit but I didn’t ask too much since it was all pretty fresh. I invited him to grab a little pizza with me and we did just that. It seemed okay. We got back to the studio and had a little something to eat and put on some bullshit TV.
The Micronesian was silent in his corner…I couldn’t get much out of the guy.
He thanked me for cleaning up and I told him the situation…that I ended up using one of the shirts.
“Well I wish you hadn’t done that. It was a good shirt.”
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
“Dude I cleaned all this shit up for you.”
“You really shouldn’t swear so much. It’s unbecoming of you.”
ACTUALLY YOU KNOW WHAT?
FUCK MIKE.
BOY DOES THAT FEEL GOOD.
I told him that the only thing unbecoming is getting fucked up and leaving me to clean up after his ass.
I immediately spent what I could on an overpriced hotel room for a week while I figured out how to get the fuck out of that town.
When I finally did find a better place to stay at North Shore (so much better) I got a text from him saying he wanted to return the money from the last months rent.
Fuck that.
I’d rather take an Elon Musk rocket up my ass.
THAT…
Is an extreme case of The Child and The Victim.
Common Speech Patterns:
Let someone else do it.
Can we outsource that?
Are we allowed to do that?
I would but _ said I can’t.
I’m speaking my truth.
Ugh, it’s so hard. (Add the whiny tone.)
Is there an easier way?
What’s the guarantee?
Not my responsibility.
What’s your problem?
What’s WRONG with you?
Why don’t YOU do it?
Why didn’t you do it like ‘this’?
I could have done it better.
Oh, you did that? That’s easy I could have done it.