#rationally you will but emotionally your brain has conditioned itself out of hope and self regard

[misspermitted]

“Look for the strengths in yourself” this. “Your trauma doesn’t define you or make you inherently wrong” that. Do it out of spite. Value yourself out of spite.

What? Those douchebags told you that you weren’t worth anything? Fuck them! Treat yourself like you’re worth something! Get back at those fuckers!

Those assholes conditioned you into thinking you were terrible by treating you like shit? Condition yourself back! Keep valuing yourself and doing self care over and over until you drown them out. Until they’re as stupid and small in your brain as they are in real life.

Fucking win the emotional manipulation game! Win it! Draw something shit because it makes you feel happy! What, you can’t say no to people because you’re not worth as much as them? Fuck that! Say no all the time! Treat yourself like the most important person in the universe because they would hate it!

[zmwisethepoet]

Question of the Green Light Infidelity

Published in Feminine Collective

Dear Slightly Self-Conscious Self,

            I am about to present you with a tale of juvenile hilarity and intrigue. Feel free to read this whenever your life’s sunlight begins to dim a few shades darker than usual. Although this is your first attempt at an epistolary essay, it is not your first attempt at amateur journalism. If anything, it is a documentation of the senses when caught in a state of mind that is much too peculiar to describe, let alone pinpoint it on parchment. It is a brief, but detailed recollection of a series of moments witnessed by your pair of curious eyes, as well as numerous others surrounding you. It is an icebreaker that can lead to multiple possibilities, as well as multiple outcomes. Decide for yourself, Dearest Reader.

           A relationship ended on the road this evening. In the plainest and simplest terms, that is what I saw through my seventeen-year-old windshield. Let me premise this with the following: I despise automotive vehicles with a passion. I loathe driving as equally as I loathe assuming the role of a passenger in one. I often reminisce about my preferences in public transportation, i.e. a train and, hypocritically speaking, a bus. 

           On this slightly drizzling Wednesday night, I was driving from a work-related meeting to meet my father for an early dinner. Since my favorite half of the year began with Daylight Savings Time last Saturday night, I have been basking in the joyous wonderment of darkness welcoming the night an hour earlier. Darkness feels more peaceful to me. The goths of the world will know exactly what I am referring to. I did not have a clear mind when this unexpected cinematic encounter occurred. I already had a menagerie of thoughts swimming in the torrential water beneath my chaotic motel mind, for I seldom (let alone never) think about one solitary thought. It is during this event that reaffirmed my automotive vendetta. It is not so much the contraptions themselves, but rather, the people inside them. Certain individuals still have yet to realize that vehicles are two-eight-ton death machines. My misanthropy flared a tad at the mere pondering of this. Though it is wasted energy, one cannot help but feel disgusted when a reckless driver treats the various roads like they are his or her own personal video game, minus beating prostitutes to death with a splintered baseball bat. Thank you very much, creators of Grand Theft Auto, for influencing the easily swayed and impressionable.

           At a particularly busy intersection where the light is green for eight nanoseconds and the light is red for eight years, the unthinkable happened to me and the surrounding rush hour drivers who were anxious to arrive at their abodes. An ivory van that sat diagonal to the left from me opened its passenger door. An emotionally disturbed couple was having a heated and non-domestic squabble that was obviously going nowhere. The couple consisted of two disheveled miscreants: the passenger, a man who looks like he recently exited the four-year prison sentence that is high school, and in the driver’s seat, a woman who looked five to ten years older than him. Let us call the woman ‘Jive Turkey #1’ and the man ‘Jive Turkey #2’. I would have called them ‘Guilty Party Victim’ and ‘Guilty Party Perpetrator’, but let us avoid the perplexed philosophy. I am sure they both have splendid names, but who in the blazes cares at this point? On the road, an individual is nothing but a schmuck to me. Harsh? Oh, yes. Still, one cannot help but wonder. I entered this situation unbiased and unless I had the opportunity to obtain any information, that is how I was going to exit it. Jive Turkey #2 was quite thin, so thin that the faceless Slender Man would take one look at him and feel extremely self-conscious about himself.

            Aside from listening to fragments of the argument, which was possibly their last, I needed no conclusive evidence to prove that this relationship was about to come to a screeching halt…in a multitude of ways. As tragic as the entirety of this calamity was, the rapid minutes that followed contained the finest quality of amusement, though ‘amusement’ might be an understatement. I began to speculate that there might have been infidelity afoot, judging by the actions taken. Jive Turkey #1 pushed Jive Turkey #2 out of the vehicle, though he tried with all his might to stay inside, what with the current weather conditions and the ever-growing congested line of rush hour drivers. This predicament was obviously too much for him to handle. Just then, something happened that put the odds against him more so than ever: the stoplight turned green. The look on his face switched from annoyed to sheer terror. The lovely and radiant Ms. Jive Turkey #1 took the action that any rational human being would take in this situation: she began to drive…slowly, at first, but picked up speed within seconds.

          The army of moronic drivers behind her honked their horns with fury. Blast loudly, O’ Automobile Trumpets! I wanted to join in the merriment and be horny (pun most definitely intended), but because my vehicle is in a constant state of deterioration and the horn does not function, that was not possible. As she drove with this blank stone face, he held on to the door handle for dear life, with his seemingly lower half of the body dragging itself on the uneven pavement. Picture, if you will, someone flying like Superman, but everything below the waist is moving like rubber. Finally, he let himself go, whether he was fully aware of his fate or not. To reach the other side of the road to salvation, he was now required to deal with one too many pairs of evil eyes glowing in the dusk-to-night setting, mine included. It was nothing personal against him or his former significant other, for I was nothing but a fascinated and increasingly amused and entertained social observer. My dislike for people in vehicles rose that evening, considering I disliked this couple no more than I disliked virtually every other driver. Cynical and misanthropic, you might think? Absolutely. However, it has kept me alive and well for just over a decade. I encourage this public mantra to every person out there: trust no driver but yourself. It has worked for me quite well.

           Anyhow, from my rearview mirror, I saw the deeply disturbed Jive Turkey #2 cross the street with a surprisingly minimal amount of trouble. Jive Turkey #1, on the other hand, sped away into the ether of madness. She left him stranded. For his sake, I sincerely hope he knows the area well, with or without nocturnal vision. As I pulled in to my destination, I hypothesized about three possible distinct scenarios. First, Jive Turkey #2, a man of very little brains, committed the inhuman act of infidelity or an equally greater action. Everyone has different circumstances when it comes to infidelity, but it is still inhuman. Secondly, Jive Turkey #1 was absolutely psychotic. Finally, the relationship was entirely too toxic and that was the way to sever all ties between them. I thought of so many more, but why go through each detail on paper when the rawness in the mind is bittersweet on its own? Perhaps they were not in a relationship at all and they were related in some twisted and demented way. I have made my opinionated conclusion on the matter. Feel free to manifest your own. A minuscule part of me thought of pulling over to the side to assist Jive Turkey #2 in some way, but while I do not have the gift of precise intuition, I sensed that it would not be wise of me to be involved in the fresh aftermath of this rigmarole.

           So, there you have it, Slightly Self-Conscious Self. When you feel that your life has burdened you with misfortune and turmoil, read this and may your troubles instantly dissipate.

 Most Sincerely,

 Your Insignificant Holder of the Pen

November 8, 2017

[paoulkaye-blog]

My Many Worries

                 Is anyone else having this problem? That there is too much to care about?

                I mean, okay, I’ll admit I have not always been the most outward looking person. I’m a creature of habit and I enjoy my little comforts and if that bubble remains undisturbed, you could probably rob my next-door neighbor and I wouldn’t bat an eye. I mean, yeah, I’d like to see justice done and that sucks that it happened, but it sucks even more for other people than me and I don’t see the point in getting all worked up about it.

                But lately, this year especially, I find myself more and more getting wrapped up in these massive things where I am that crippling combination of emotionally invested and devoid of any real agency. I am the impotent flame of the candle, raging against the storm outside my windowsill. My glow may provide some measure of comfort for those that look for me, but in reality I can do nothing to abate the fall of the rain.

                I can turn a neat phrase, though. That I can do. And I can rant with the best of them, and appeal to the better nature of my reader with the… probably top 60% of them? I don’t know. I do not have a metric to measure the general moral compass and my effect upon it. Google ought to get on that. And I ought to get back on topic.

                As I have evolved from self-interested lay-about to competent father and husband with a real stake in the world, I have developed purely as a side effect of exposure to responsibility, a nasty a pervasive condition known in the medical community as ‘opinions’. Now the severity and disabling effect of opinions are many and varied. Opinions supported by facts and life experience tend to be chronic, but you can live with them. Opinions based on outlandish claims and news cycles tend to be socially fatal and leave a certain kind of scaring that can make you a pariah in certain circles.

                But the main thing opinions are is exhausting. If you have an opinion, it seems like you have to share it with as many people as loudly as you can as often as you can. At least, that’s the example provided to me by the rest of the world at large. This takes a lot of time and effort for a former introvert who now has opinions on real life issues because, surprise surprise, that stuff actually affects me and my family. And lately, as I’m sure you have noticed, I have opinions about many, many things.

                Healthcare, honesty, politics, taxes, work ethic, children’s toys, traffic laws, guns, planes, trains, comedies, tragedies, elections, police shootings, civilian shootings, crime of all collars, international relations, those fucking pricks at UPS, gas prices, children’s shows, video games, books, television, musicals, movies, comics, news, clothing, shoes, and the list… pretty much stops there, I think (edit: Corporations as people. See below). For now. I’ll probably think of more later. But still, that is a lot of things to have and maintain an opinion about.

                And frankly, it’s too much. I have a hard time shutting my brain off in a normal rest state, let alone with that cavalcade of possible disasters on my mind. This year more than any other, I have felt artery hardening stress about things that are well and beyond my control or ability to influence. I know what’s to blame, that’s simple enough. But there will always be that apathetic man in his bubble of comforts inside of me that wonders if it’s even worth it to give a damn in the first place.    

                Even worse, I’m not the only person with this problem. And since corporations are people for some stupid fucking reason that has never been adequately explained to me… and let me go back and add that to the list… it turns out that news organizations have the same problem. Between the Russia hacks, the Investigation into the Russia Hacks, the investigation into the possible collusion between Russian agents and American idiots, the Republican Healthcare bill, the lack of vital government positions being filled, the general demeanor and mood of the President on any given day, the terror attacks across the globe, the horrors and hardship facing the refugees from Syria, the divorce of Britain from the EU, the leaks, the lies, the scandals, and Beyoncé’s new twins, news media coverage doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself.

                All this to say nothing of the opinions the various channels are afflicted with. CNN is convinced that all of the news, everywhere, is breaking. They may not be far off in hyperbole, but still, CNN is exhausting to watch. MSNBC pretty much picks a topic to care about every morning and beats it into the ground, and lately their topic of choice has been the obvious disconnect between Trump and reality. Don’t get me wrong, that is news and something worth discussing, by the others things happening in the world as a result of that disconnect? Those deserve some attention as well. And spending some time on those issues might go some way to helping MSNBC appear like something other than the leftist conspiracy network its detractors are so convinced it is.

                And FOX… good lord. The loudest and proudest voice of the right wing of the political spectrum actually used to be okay. I mean, it was a counterbalance, of sorts. I could always flip to FOX really quick to get the right wing view on the events of the day and sort of temper my view of the world by trying to understand how the other side was interpreting events. But lately? Boy, if corporations are people, FOX needs to go into rehab. Sexual misconduct and getting way too high on Presidential edicts and pyrrhic Republican ‘victories’ while ignoring the raging fires that are almost literally burning the network down around their heads are all signs of a broadcasting network too far gone on the media equivalent of free-based heroine. With even more paranoia somehow added to the mix.

                FOX stopped being an opposing viewpoint and went straight into propaganda machine territory sometime during the Obama administration. And then they were de-facto promoted to chief spinners of presidential bullshit when Trump moved into the White House and made FOX and Friends a known part of his morning routine. During no other era in American history would such hypocrisy and sycophantic waffling be even remotely acceptable in a national news network. But hey, that’s the times we live in, apparently.

                But in the end, all of this is only a collection of symptoms of the real problem: The life I lead, with a wife and two kids, two cars, two jobs, school starting soon, and bills to pay, is not an isolated animal. It’s tied up in all of these strings that moor these unfathomably gigantic issues and surreal conversations to the grounds of reality. There’s too much, too many things to worry about. And I DO worry, and it’s going to kill me at this rate. Issues don’t come in a ‘This or That’ state anymore. It used to be if you had a job, you knew you could pay your bills and your rent and still eat things that were not Ramen noodles until the next paycheck. Now? Not so fucking much.

                We’re not secure like that anymore. There is no state someone like me can get to that will ever completely eliminate any of these worries for me. It just isn’t possible in this day and age. I know too much, I pay attention to too many things, and in the end I worry, even just subconsciously, about too many things that night time is often an exercise in staring at the ceiling until the alarm clock goes off.

                What I think I need to do, and maybe you might want to try this as well, is to figure out the things that deserve, really need my attention, and just focus on that. Wife, kids, work, bills. Those parts of my life and their related worries and joys should be my focus.  But that’s hard.

                I won’t give a damn about CNN, MSNBC, and FOX anymore, but I’ll still hope they get their collective act together. I wish I didn’t have to be worried for the environment of the planet we all live on, but hey, guess what, someone has to. I’ll happily cut out politics if politicians would just cut it the fuck out themselves and stop playing games with legislation that could feasibly deal real, lasting harm to the people they are supposed to be listening to and being the voice of. I’ll even stop getting rationally angry every time I see the words ‘President Trump’ or his big fat orange stupid face if the man would just shut the flying fuck up and be a responsible adult.

                And there’s the really bad problem: I’m worried about a lot of things, and the people who can and should actually be worried about those same things are not doing a whole lot to help put my worries to rest. And I know I’m not alone in feeling like that. I shouldn’t have to pray to higher power, asking for help in getting these jackasses to pull their heads out of their self-congratulatory asses and do their jobs, but I find myself doing it more and more lately.

                I don’t want to be my old self, ignoring the world and thinking only about myself. But it shouldn’t be so goddamn stressful to want the best for my fellow man either. I’ve said it before in this space, but it’s true: We are ALL in this TOGETHER. And I know I’m not the only person suffering with the opinion that it’s time some people in some high profile positions started picking up their fucking slack. Thanks for reading.

[easa010-blog1]

Big boys don't cry

“Big boys don’t cry” of course. We are conditioned for that from delivery and even from our mothers. Yet the reason I’m writing this to try to explain why men tend not to cry in public and why they often will not even do it in front of their wives. The fact is clearly a frustrating, infuriating and phenomenon that is confusing women, when faced with emotional crisis, the man shuts down and disappears into the garage to fiddle with all the carburettor. The women is left no focusing on how he really seems, what he is thinking, planning or what he may do next. Perhaps more than anything else its also a maddening fact that two different people who love people just cant speak openly. If this offers any help for women facing this dilemma great, but also I hope it might help other machos not to feel so bad about crying.

This male emotional shut down is not just a cause of childhood upbringingings, but, in my estimation, something which has become hardwired into the male system that is emotional hundreds of thousands of existence, an existence which was quite different from the situation which we live in now. Let us remember that depending on when you classify the emergence of modern human, 5 millions or the modern species 500,000 years ago many of our lives has been lived as hunter-gather/warrior. The male predominantly playing the role of the hunter-warrior and the ladies the gather and up bringers of children. Life in suburbia has only existed for a hundred or few hundred of those thousands or millions of years. While the brain that is modern developing quickly and adapting rapidly, it overwhelmingly still lives under the conditioning of the thousands of years, which preceded modern life and this goes for women as well as men. We know biologically that we have a triune brain - the reptilian and mammalian brain and the recent neocortex that is human. This human neocortex or human rational brain is where we find all our wonderful intelligence and technique. However, research shows that still in times of crisis the human neocortex can be quickly overridden and controlled by our animal brains. This is especially the case when in times of social and crisis that is personal the mask of social respectability drops and the fangs of sabre tooth homo sapiens bear their teeth.

Now back during the very early years of our evolution, normal selection designed a certain division of Labour for the male and female. We will concentrate on the male here. Men became the warrior/hunter class. These activities were obviously the most dangerous occupations needed for the survival and progression of the tribe (excepting childbirth). However, Why were men, instead of women chosen by natural selection to become the class that is warrior? The reason is men expendable. They cannot reproduce. From an evolutionary standpoint, within the species women are more valuable. Many men can die in hunting or battle, but so long as some males remain, it is always feasible to replicate the species. The species would have risked extinction if the women had been the warriors and hunters. But this has had a effect that is negative many means on the male psychology on the eons and continues to filter down today. Hunting and battle necessitate the perfecting of certain emotions than those of hyper alertness, sensitivity, assertiveness and decisiveness Hunting/fighting means the sharpening of the emotions of fear, anger, aggression, self-defence. You have to cut off yourself from being hurt and upset by the sight of death and loss of friends, yourself or others because you may let your guard down and cause injury to. In basic you must become less empathetic and more brutalized to be successful and effective. You have to learn to shut down your emotions in times during the crisis. Indeed, failure to develop such emotions of anger, hate, aggression, ruthlessness, apathy would, in fact, be dangerous for the male under these conditions. Therefore these so-called emotions that are negative, in fact be lifesavers in life threatening situations of hunting and war.

Staying with the tribe for a moment, consequently, the male who tends to openly show “weakness” emotionally by crying and depression, etc. , could be looked on as a potential liability for war and hunting. Being potentially less of a bread-winner, it might also make him a less desirable mate for a female. Consequently, over thousands and thousands of years the male has learned to suppress “soft” emotions and allow their expression only in special occasions – a funeral, a non-war lack of a wife or child etc, but even then, always as a phenomenon that is temporary not part of a longer grieving process, which might bring into question their overall manhood. For the warrior to cry in public was a shame and a sign of weakness. clash of clans hack It could cost him his respect, trust, place and also even his wife. Therefore, the traditional method of the male was to walk off into forests or sit on the top of a mountain alone and grieve here. Right here they could let the tears flow in private, where nobody could see them or pass judgment. .

Of course, the male, in fact, hurts no less emotionally than the female, but has been conditioned into not expressing it in the same healthier way, which do and which learned most likely women by living in the collective tribal village. This imbalance in the emotional development of the male manifests itself in numerous ways in modern society, from domestic violence, drunkenness, social violence, sabotage at work and self-destructive behaviour. Changing these behaviours is incredibly difficult and sometimes not worth it for the women. However, if you are prepared to understand and put up with this if you have a husband who is the “disappearing-to-the garage” type”, ironically you probably have a relatively healthier man and one you have a better chance of living with. You can’t force a man to improve a million years of conditioning in one life time. When he goes out to the garage The reason for this that he is probably following his age-old conditioning and ways of finding release from inner pain. Men tend to prefer to cry alone to this day and I think that while being able to open publicly as a man and cry in front of a group is a thing that is positive I think we must also at least observe that this male isolated grieving is something, which men will and have to still do.

lined regards,

Steve Morgan