From the Mouths of Babes

Some times it takes time to sit back and look at what happened in the world in the past to better understand what's going on now. 

Being back where I am has me loookng at where I came from to better understand where I'm at. 

The thing that really got me over the past couple of days is that i've been playing Battlefield and letting the sound scapes and the situations take me back to earlier days.  

I was leading a squad and a young kid says "can I tell you a jke" to the squa at large.  "It's dark humor."  
That caught me a moment but people ome from dark places and sometimes humor grows from it.  "It's kind of racisist he ads."  

"I don't do racist humor."  I responded.
"Well it's dark, but a little racist." 
"Look, if it's a little racist it's still racist."  

And it got me thinking.   What makes dark humor legitimatly humerious?  
What makes any humor funny. 
When it's self depreciating.  
And that's the difference between meanness and humor.  
Meanness is trying to paint someone or something else in a bad light and finding the pain that it causes funny.  
Humor looks at an aspact of ourselves and brings it into the light for blunt examination. 

Dar humor isn't racist, or biggetist.  
Dark humor takes a thing from the darker parts of ourselves.   The dark aspects of our lives and talks about it.   
Dark humor makes people uncomfortable because not everyone has that kind of darkness in them.  
the darkness that comes from survivingg various types of trauma. 
Mean humor takes someone eleses trauma and treats it with disrespect.  

That's what i thought of while we continued running and gunning our way through the various theaters of WWII as presented in the game.  

It's a strange thing.  
I find myself quetioning why I play these games.   
The run and gun types.  

The only answer I have is...work. 
A way of having conversaations with myself, and when I find myself opening up enough to turn the mic on, with others about what the meanings behind the confilicts real and ficticious represented there in.   

I often look back at the decision in my life.  
Look at the decisions yet to be made and ask myself. 
"Can I live with it?" 
The thing is, no matter what ecisions one makes the answer is yes. 
I have to. 
The only thing that I can do when faced with such decisions is to try and make the most forward moving and try to leave something behind a little better than how I foudn it.   

The one thing that Ifind as I take away from the film Ijust, Judas and the Black Massiah,  watched that kind of goes along with the topic is a quote from Fred Hampton, which Ithinkg he got from Malcolm X . 
"War is politics with guns and politics is war without guns...."

We often want to paint the children fighting in the wars and given the guns as the terrorists or the bad guys...
I've never seen it that way. 
Not since Iwasa a child 
in a hundred armed people there might be one or two that are hell bent on causting destruction but most of the time the shooting starts because of someone making the decisions put people into those situations.
And most of the people doing the shooting are either doing what they're told or what they were taught. 

Dehuminizing....
That's the difference between dark humor and racist, or what ever ist, sort of "humor" one may use. 
One humanizes a dehumanizing moment while the other dehumanizes a human moment.

PtP

Stay safe out there. 

Steel Hearts and Electric Veins

I keep looking for ways to revitalize a nation fallen to hard times, deindustrialization, and the dark side of globalization.  

I wouldn't say that globalization is a bad thing, just the way it was gone about was very...wrong. 
As larger companies realized they could find cheaper labor over seas and American factories began to shut down, people began migrating into the larger city's and city centers.  
Leaving small towns and the older people that live in them to essentially die alone.  

As the Pandemic grinds on and these schisms in the fabric of the American culture widen and are shown how large they really are under the scabs that have grown over them in the last thirty or so years on thing keeps coming back to me.  

Remote work and the needs of a national works project.  

Setting aside the crimes against the labor forces that constructed the rail industry and the forced home relocations that came with the interstate system I feel like it has reached a point in our nations history to start another large scale project like that.  

There is nothing more healing to the mind and the body than finding a project to throw ones self into. After the loss of a family member or dear friend it is often finding new things to work on to reflect on how things have changed in our lives.  Sometimes the cause of the losses is because of drastic things and it is returning to something of a normal routine that returns stability a mind a heart at turmoil.


So how do we do this for a nation?  

We rebuild it.

From the ground up.  

For the past century America has gone around the world and attempted to help other, smaller nations, rebuild while our own nation falls into neglect and disrepair.  
I see it.  As someone that has worked in almost every sector of our economy.
From building homes to stocking shelves.
From laying streets to teaching children.

From serving tables to repairing sewer lines.  

I see it. 
Going from places that once were fresh and newly built to the veritable ghost towns  of neglect that they have become. 

I can't get this crazy idea out of my head.  
The one about rebuilding the railroads.  
To connect communities back together. 
To give a nation of people searching for meaning a common goal again.  

That's the funny part.   
When the nation was stitched together, for good or ill, with the steal of rail tracks it created something. 

That something was literally cemented together when the interstate system took the place of rails.  
But as that concrete based started to crack and crumble it was patched back together with asphalt.
Now those patches are starting stretch as the underlying problems beneath them continue to rot away. 

So what do we do?
How can we fix things? 

I say by running the rails again. 
Relaying the track.
By stitching the communities back together. 

There's no real need for taking new land for this project.   The old rail easements are still there.  Empty lots where the stations used to sit. Crumbling down towns full of empty store fronts like crowds holding it's breath waiting for the teams to enter the field. 

We start simply.  
We get the steel, sitting in junk yards and scrap yards and we recycle it.  
Into track and engine and cars. 
While the foundations are being formed we find the routs.  
Along old highways and forgotten lines. 
Through the hearts of small towns, stopping at reservations and parks. 
Transferring and stopping in cities. 
From there we gather the bottles and cans.
And spin it into the fibers needed for a digital foundation.  
Once the routs are found and all of the old steel and plastic and glass melted and reshaped 
We build. 
Rail lines to carry people on commutes from rule communities into the cities to work, trade, explore, and plan.  
To carry people from cities to rule communities to live and play. 
Fiber lines to keep communications fast and open so that those stuck at home through disease, handicap, age, or choice can work from where they live.
To create solid foundations for the digital age we find ourselves and help better study, teach, and stay in touch with the larger world. 
And carry the grid. 
The electrical grid that keeps all of the toys and tools and cars charged and ready to go. 

We build. 
And as the building draws to a conclusion we plan.  
For the repairs, for the upgrades, for the maintenance, and for the emergencies.  
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.   
Every step of the way rebuilding old industries in a modern age. 
Creating new industries to support and rebuild things from past ages.
And turning forgotten small towns into vibrant homes.
Crumbling cities into bastions of education. 
It's a lot of work.
And work that will help a nation heal after centuries of fighting with its self and act as an example as other nations build towards their futures. 
A solid partner to those nations that have built on their own foundations and continue to thrive.

And a sign of respect to the nations that were here before and hopefully will continue to be as the land and it's people begin to heal. 

Maximum Effort Minimum Pay

As the nation grapples with what a living wage should live like $15 an hour is the number that most people are shooting for.  

It's not an unreasonable wage considering the cost of living in most places in the America.  
Average apartment rent is $1500 a month, bills when factoring in phone and internet costs usually come out to $200 or more a month, groceries on average $300 a month.   And that does no factor in the costs of transportation, clothing costs, and other necessities that are required to get through the average month. 

So, if you figure that $2000 is the average cost of base living expenses and a $15 an hour minimum wage working 40 hours a week comes out to a grand total of $2400 a month or an income of $28,000 a year. 

Think about that $28,000 a year when your monthly costs average $2000 a year, leaves $8000 a year to cover other expenses such as child care, education, vehicle costs (which according to AAA is roughly 700 a month is insurance, fuel, and maintenance) then $28,000 a year just barely covers the costs of housing, food, and transportation for a single worker without dependence.

One of the big arguments that people have been throwing arounds that if $15 an hour became the new minimum then there would simply be a cutting back of jobs.   
To which I say fine. 
Let's look at this from a family stand point. 
Currently it takes two incomes bringing in over $50,000 a year to cover basic costs for themselves and a, singular, child.  That's still requiring both individuals to work full time or more at an average of $15 or more.  
Two full time workers at $15 an hour to raise a child and that doesn't even realistically cover the costs of child care for those parents to be able to work full time.   Usually for a family raising a child you need a singular income of $50,000 so that one person can work part time to cover child care and supplement their own time and energy to cover the costs. 

So, the argument is that there would be fewer jobs because of how expensive it would be to employee people at a $15 an hour minimum wage is arguably moot.   

From the less jobs stand point most people living or working on minimum wage are having to piece  together two or three jobs plus side gigs just to pay the bills.  If they only had to work one job and be able to pay the bills I don't think they'll complain too much about one of their three jobs not being there anymore. 
Let alone those living on fixed incomes needing to continue to work  would be able to work less in order to maintain basic standards of living and better address the issues that have them living on a fixed income to begin with. .

From the stand point of small business, yes, there would be what would feel like an exponential rise in the operating costs of employees.  However, if small businesses were offered tax incentives for maintaining employees rather than being charged to have employees there could be some work arounds done. 

I'd also argue that small business employment could be a supplemented by unemployment programs through application to a program similar to the PPP program used during the pandemic. So that if a small business (10 or fewer employees) is unable to cover the cost of those employees after all of the over head is paid. ( or maximum of $280,000 + operating costs) then the salary of those employees could be supplemented through unemployment benefits and allowing the small business the ability to get through applicable financial hardships like pandemics, catastrophes, or dissolvements but protect the employees incomes for the work they are doing.  

The other thing that people don't consider about minimum wage work is that if minimum wage were in fact livable many of the tax supplemented low income programs would see a huge drop in need and operating costs. 

Raising the minimum wage isn't an argument of how it will impact a flagging economy.  Raising the minimum wage is a reflection of the  rise in costs and life with dignity.   
The short of it is, if the minimum standard of working is not capable of offering a worker to to do with dignity then is it really a standard at all? 

News to Me

One of the things that has had a very bumpy ride into the digital age is the news.  
News papers fail to get support as people move to online sources like twitter.  Ads and subscriptions put things behind paywalls that many people choose not to scale in favor of sticking to the "sources" on platforms like Facebook.  

About the only news source that hasn't changed much is the public news sources.  

As part of my work and research over the years following the news across multiple platforms and checking in with multiple sources has not just been a practice, but has been required because of the mixture of editorial and commentary being billed as news.  

Which brings me back to the pay wall.  
The best news is often behind a subscription and arguably it should be part of platforms financial distributions.   

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, google, etc.  disseminate a lot of news and are the platforms that many people turn to.  Twitter is a bit different because many of the reporters and editors are on the platform as part of their every day already.    

Independent news has been demonized as fake news by sources that are backed and steered by political parties.
Because of the way that State News sources have been turned into propaganda machines by governments that would use the news as a way of controlling the populace.  

The only news, at least in the U.S. that has stayed both objective and solid is Public Broadcasting.   PBS and NPR.  Once these two sources of news were funded by tax grants and revenue and then supplemented by donations and things.   But during the early 2000's they were defunded, largely because many of the people in political authority viewed objective and educational news and entertainment that refused to be swayed by political hierarchies didn't need to be receiving funds.  

Luckily they have received a lot of support from independent donors and their broadcasts have become like the radio shows of old where the commercials of corporate donors play as part of the broadcast.   

Though, unlike many other news sources one of the things they always state when talking about a company or individual that donates large sums of money to them is that they note it in the article or news story.   And, again, thank the powers that be for Public broadcastings and Public Radios unwavering journalistic integrity over the past 20 years, they still pull no punches regardless of the size of donor. 

"We'll take your money and we'll use it to do the news but that doesn't buy you fluff and nutter reporting when you or your company get  up to shenanigan's."  Is not what they say but it's good and damn well implied. 
The only downside to this is that these are national news aggregates, NPR and PBS, which makes it difficult for local news to be disseminated in such a way as news papers slowly fade and local news fights for recognition as streaming and national sources start to interject.  

NPR One though.   

Yeah, I admit I'm a public broadcasting fanboy, but the model is solid.  

Through the app you get all of the national news and podcasts and then select your local station to get the local broadcasts. 
But funding. 
Nationally they're pretty well funded because of the big donors and the local stations paying in to the kiddy to be able to broadcasts but getting the local news the funding it needs to shine lights is the issue that we need to work out.

So...
I say, as I work on a tax restructuring plan to be proposed on a national, and then world, scale is this.  Fund them, out of the taxes.  Fully recognize them as the fourth estate in the government. 
 
The  Legislative Branch is responsible for writing laws
The Executive Branch is responsible for enacting laws
The Judicial for reviewing and Evaluating.  

The News and Media is, in modern democracy, already recognized as the "disseminators of the actions and information's of the other three.  
Why not make it official.  
Make sure they're funded, almost like a military branch.
Or exactly like a military branch.  
Formally charged with the responsibility of investigating and consolidating issues, laws, and happenings with the highest standards of journalistic integrity and without the push and pull of political bandying.   
CSPAN was a good start, cameras in the rooms where laws and things are being debated.   But many people working and doing all of the things required of life can't keep up with everything that goes on.  
So, tax subsidized Associated Press offices at a State Level and communities and counties with populations of 20,000 or more be assigned an Associated Press office with the responsibility of compiling a weekly, physical news paper of events to be delivered by mail.  
Ahhh, the idea has merit and I think I've already written about this before

But the break down would work about like this. 
   $100,000 annual budget and 2 editor/reporters
per 20,000 citizens.  

So, roughly $5 a year per citizen in a community.

i.e. 100,000 citizens would be a $1,000,000 annual budget and 10 person staff and then they become, essentially a wing of the existing public broadcasting structure

Their task would be to curate 

A daily news letter with local events and government meetings and public works projects 
 A weekly summery of the government actions and funding decisions.
A monthly report on community services, need to know contact and summery of those services, and available grant/scholarships/tax incentives/subsidies programs.

To be made available digitally through text that can be printed from the website.
Audio versions
And mailed to those that wish to opt in for a daily, weekly, or monthly paper. 

All hiring, coordination, and supplemental historical articles for the paper managed by the Library of Congress and local historical societies.  
It's a dream. 

But I like it. 

A lot of this comes on the back of the pandemic. 
Finding ways to get reliable information about the vaccines and emergency situations taking place. 
Making sure there is a news source just reporting the facts as well as making sure that people have concrete information on what to do, where to go, and who to talk to when things like this are happening. 

Like I said, it's all part of a larger tax plan.  
Shoot, let me be honest. 
I'm trying to rebuild our nation from the ground up and find some way of balancing a capitalist free market with a government structure that will keep our basic infrastructure needs like emergency services, utilities, and communications on rock solid foundations.
Trying to work out the logistics of what a truly balanced employment and housing situations look like.

A nation that provides opportunity for those that can and will work for it while providing safety and security to those that can not.
A representative democracy where there is Truth and Justice for all.  

We're getting there. 
We're closer than we were when the nation was founded to get away from imperialism in 1776. 
Closer than we were when Slavery was outlawed in 1865

Closer than we were at the beginning of the civil rights era in 1964

So my question is, how close can we be by 2063? 
How can we steer and shape our nation to more resemble the ideals it was founded on?

...and Beyond

 One of the things that keeps me up at night are the sacrifices I've made over the past few years.  By way of friendships, by way of loved ones...by way of time. 

The thing about being a person that will do anything for anyone is that many people do not know what anything really means.  

I have a job. 
A self appointed one, but a job none the less.  
One I volunteered for almost twenty years ago now and it is yet to be done.  
Not because of lack of doing or not doing but because jobs like this take much more than a weekend or a couple of weeks to accomplish. 

The thing about this job is that it has required a lot of research and a lot of digging  into things that people don't want dug into.  Asking questions that people don't want to answer.  Bringing into the light things that many people would prefer to stay in the past because it makes the present easier.  

But the thing about doing the job, solving the problem, is finding the roots.   

The world we live in is an ever growing, ever branching tree.  Intertwined branches sprouting a myriad of fruits and a leaves. The thing about this tree is that it started as many different seeds that grew together over time.  
Many think that doing the job and solving the problem means ripping the roots of one of the seeds out and that it will remove the rot, or the undesirable parts.  But to rip out one set of roots, as one examines further, will find that it hurts and damages the tree as a whole. Will create a void within in the structure and system and will cause the Tree to fall. 

The thing that will see the job done is not removing, but directing.   Propping up some branches so that they can get better light,  taking the fruit of some to help feed and reinforce new growth, while trimming the limbs of other sections to allow for healthy growth to occur. 

A few years ago I was faced with a choice. 
Rip my heart out and see the world safer for it and maybe be able to get my heart back later
or
Keep my heart where it was and let someone else worry about the problem.  

The decision I made was to do the job. 
Whatever that meant.  
To see the task done and maybe be able to get back to the life I loved after it was done
Or die trying.
The reason I chose to move forward, to put everything on the line is because the people in my life didn't know how or didn't want to help with the job.  And this job, as it is, will never make me rich or famous.   In fact the more recognition I receive the more dangerous it becomes....
Which makes it understandable as to why people are hesitant to work with me on this. 
Already, as things move forward I see the deaths of people that could have been prevented. 
People in harms way just because they are choosing to walk on the right path and that is a risk that they and I knew we were taking.  
But even though it has grown harder than many could have imagined and gone in directions that I, and others, only feared it would there are things about it that are giving hope.  
Long hardened enemies starting to see eye to eye as situations become clearer. 
Tasks that many thought could never be accomplished being completed because good, hardworking, people are showing that the impossible is only impossible if we believe it to be.  

I'll be honest.  It is hard to keep my hopes up sometimes.   Living in the isolation that I have over the past couple of years.   Feeling the dull ache where my heart used to live and not even knowing if it is still safe or not.  

But I keep on. 
I keep searching, keep working, keep developing. 
One thing that gives me hope though is that there has a been a earth shaking shift over these past few years a months.
One that has torn back a veil of secrecy and fear and shown the world in all of it's horrifying beauty. 
A shift that has been both painful and cathartic and even though it is hurting and hard for many now it will get better.   A wound that was under a rotting bandage finally being cleaned, stitched, and properly covered for the first time in over a hundred years.  
As anyone that has recovered from injuries and had to go through rehabilitation can tell you, the healing can hurt worse than the injury in a lot of ways.   But if we are willing to endure the pains of healing then we will be stronger and better prepared for when such pains if they come again. 

After all,

"We are in the business of breaking generational curses."
"That's why things do not come easy for us."
"We are who our bloodlines have been waiting for."
"Do not give up."
"We are almost there."
"We are geared for this."

"It's okay to not be okay."
"Do not give up."
"You are seen."
"You are heard."


That's the hard part sometimes. 
Remembering that even in isolation that we are not alone.
Remembering that there is a goal and that it is within reach.
And even if we do not get to fully enjoy the fruits of the labors we do know that things will be a little better than how we found them.  

Stay Safe
<3

Capitalish

This might sound a bit on the strange side but I've been working on balancing the World Economy since the market destabilizations of the 2000's and the housing crash of 2008.  Listening closely to economic professionals.  Studying the growth and expansions of the various world powers and how the world market has grown, changed, and fluctuated since trade and barter were established.  

The most important thing to remember when studying economics is that Money, technically, has no real value.   Money, it's self is a tool of measurement for for things of value.   Much the way that a ruler is not a distance but measurement of distance.  

Think about that for a second.  

So, going back and looking at the earliest uses of money it was simply a token or a marker.   
For example a wood cutter would go into a town, city, keep, or where ever a market would be set up and check in at the warehouse or wherever a storage facility would be set up.   The market manager would issue tokens with a mark representing a pre determined amount of wood.  The wood cutter would then take the tokens into the market and trade and barter their lumber as per usual.  Then, at the close of market the wood worker would take their remaining tokens back to the market manager and return the tokens that were not traded as well as tokens for other bulky trade goods like bags of wools and sacks of grain that would have had tokens issued for them.  

One of the misconceptions about money that many people have in the current market place is that  trade and barter are no longer practiced.   That's both true and untrue.  It is true because many of the goods and services represented in the market have established values but the bartering comes in the form of the logistical side of the market.  In the barter of work wages and the value/cost of production of trade goods.   The barter and negotiation process is done on the production and labor side creating what is supposed to be a more stabilized marketplace. 

The Capitalist market it as it exists now was established on this system but the standard for trade was based on the trade of guns and slaves. Before the gold standard was fully established it was the value of a slave. As the slave trade was systematically outlawed new value basses were found, like gold, then oil, then housing.  

The reason we've had market crashes in the capitalist market since the removal of the slave trade as it's basis of value is because slaves are essentially a never ending, exponentially multiplying "trade good"
It's a cold and analytical way of looking at it, but it is how the market was established. Each of the replacement standards have had finite pools and storage capability but the market never readjusted to compensate. 

In recent years digital goods and services have taken over as the trade good of value and has stabilized the market in the short term. 
But we also run into a larger problem with the digital band-aid is that digital goods do not match up to the physical goods that are needed to be distributed in the "market" or rather, in the world. 

The strength of capitalism as an economic system is that is brutally efficient at calculating supply and demand.   However that brutal efficiency was based on and developed around the basis of exponential growth in a time when land was considered boundless and would never run out.  When the only real limitation was how quickly that land could be developed.   However, under the capitalist market, with the aid of industrialization it has been very harshly discovered through economic hardship and famine that the land and space available on the earth is also finite. 

Moving into the modern era two forms of government rose to prominence to fill in the labor gap that was created by the absence of slave labor.   Communism and Socialism. Both direct responses to the industrialized economy.  

Communism as an very authoritarian system that rose from the scarcity of resources and many of the nations that have grown into it have done so based on their farmlands and water sources being corrupted or cut off. 
Where as socialism arose under slightly different circumstances which I'll get to momentarily.   

Both systems as a  result of the wars and colonialism that shaped our modern geopolitical landscape.  
After the end of World War II capitalist nations such as the U.S. grew out of nations largely untouched by the ravages of the war.  Communist nations out of the nations that lost much of their ability to produce food to feed themselves and had to develop severe austerity measures to survive.

Socialist nations and practices grew out of a balance between the two.   Nations and that were ravaged by the war but had trade and support from outside capitalist markets that fed their excess resources and goods into them to facilitate the socialist supports that helped them recover after the wars.  

Many of the places where fighting is still taking place is based on the two extremes capitalist and communist governments are clashing over which is the better form of management and recovery while socialist nations have been slowly stabilizing.   

That's the odd thing though.   Socialist nations could not exist without a capitalist market and communist regimes would not have gotten such a strong foothold if the period of extreme scarcity that was seen by the world during the period of late 1800 to early 1900's.  

This is all very longwinded and as I've been working on my economic theory I've been trying to figure out ways to more concisely explain it. And the easiest way I can explain it is as follows.   

Capitalism is a brutally efficient and flexible way of  handling goods and resources but it's success and management method is based on "limitless" labor and resources.   

Communism is an equally brutal and efficient method based on authoritarianism that is given it's foothold and legitimacy by scarcity of stable food sources. 

Socialism is a form of labor management that is resource heavy yes but a humane alternative to slave labor.  

A replacement to the needs and drives that slave labor facilitated during the process of colonialism and industrialization.  
I'm still working out how to get this argument on a more understandable level but it boils down to this. 

For our economy and world to be able to stabilize and adequately a capitalist and free market place is needed to facilitate innovation and  quickly adapt to market needs where as a socialist work force is needed to keep that market functional and stabilized. 

The only thing that is necessary to fully stabilize that market is addressing what it is that gives dictatorships and authoritarian communism their footholds in the world.  And that is access to clean water and healthy and adequate food sources. 
So arguably the new gold standard needs to be established to keep the market from outgrowing it's self. 
A plan and concept that I argued a few years ago. 
Water, storage, food, medical care. 
Need and balance. 
 The hard and scary part is preventing another population boom.   The world can't handle it and is currently suffering from the hardships of one caused by the prosperity and relative peace that industrialization brought to the world.

Still working on how to find a balance between the three systems to avoid the one child rules later 1900's China and the brutal dictatorships that grew into the voids caused by the over production of early industrialization.

Because we have entered into a new period of history.  The Industrial period that helped develop the ways and means for producing enough goods and resources to meet the demands of the worlds population and into what is arguably the Digital Era.  An period of unprecedented prosperity that has been tasked with managing and stabilizing the logistical hurdles of  distributing the goods and resources that industrialization has made available.  

It's funny.  

The problems of the early world was pure and simple survival.  
Then after survival was figured out through agriculture and irrigation. 
We entered into a world of exploration.   
The world explored, or at least the boundaries within which that exploration could be done it was figuring out how to provide for large and settled and populations and industrialization took hold. 

Now the boundaries of exploration established, the ways and means of providing for a world population developed the task before the current generations is finding fair and humane ways of distributing the goods and resources while still giving the world the room to breath and inhabitants the freedoms to explore, learn, and develop. 

Long Pauses

 My writing has taken a bit of a back seat over the past couple of weeks.  Part of this has to do with the relocation.  Trying to find my place and rhythm in a place that is both new and old at the same time. 
The other issue is that the place I find myself in is haunted by many memories and photos of people that though I've come to peace with the parts they played and the times we shared good and bad cause a lot of self reflection and questioning about myself and my place in things. 

Not just that but the quite isolation that I thought I would be holding has not been as quiet as I had hoped.   There is an option that would move me to a quieter space but it requires a lot of work that though I have the time to do I do not have the resources or the drive to do it on my own. 
That's the thing.  I work and do most things by myself or on my own and, at least currently, I don't have the motivation to do them anymore. 

It could be that I have not fully recuperate from the hardships and nonsense that I dealt with over the last year, or it could be that I feel like someone is coming and I'm waiting for them to arrive.  Or I'm hoping that someone is coming.   Or, and the more probable of things, is that I'm not really certain how long I'll really be staying where I am. 

All of these things dance through my head as little snippets of the stories I've been writing try to to coalesce between the thumping and pounding that I can just never seem to get away from. 

The other thing that I'm crunching and munching on is all of the data I've been sorting through.
Little things, big things, world things.  Trying to find the balance that would see an end to these endless wars.   Or at least a peace that the world has not truly experienced yet.   It seems impossible but as I reflect on the last year, beyond the personal hardships and sorting through the wreckage of the past decade I realize that it is much more possible than I originally thought.  That for some insane damned reason the world has been following an outline, dare I say, a plan that I postulated a handful of years ago.  

Then again, it could just be that the trajectory was already set and what I put forth was not so much a plan as a notation on what already was coming to pass.  I'm not sure, and with little to no outside support beyond the blind kindness of strangers simply trying to keep positivity going in the world and my own need to help other struggling with their own identities and place in the world I just don't know. 

My what I do know is that my year on Tik Tok is nearly over and I'll be compiling a years worth of videos into something, what I don't know, but something.  

I honestly don't know if I'll keep the existing account and making a new one or just be stepping away from the platform all together, but I will be compiling none the less. a project that will take awhile to be sure.  Luckily the videos and things being limited to only a minute at most and my posting relegated to a handful of videos per day means that I will not have an impossible amount of footage to sort through. 
Approximately 120 hours on the long side.  I'll need to format that ps4 external drive to create enough space for the videos and edits though.

that hurts my heart a bit. 
out of all of the tools and toys that have been stolen or broken over the past few couple of years loosing that one hurt the worst I think.  That system and it's set up rebuilt what few friendships I had and reminded me of who I am/was before all of this nonsense started.
It is what it is though.
I still wish I had help in doing the actual work and editing part though. 
Knowing me I'm going to get lost in the editing and nothing real will come from it.
But we'll see.
I'm thinking I might pull out the story book and start typing up some of the story I have written for the Emerald so far.  I was hoping to finish the notebook before doing so but not having a truly peaceful space to work or the Cannabis necessary to  still my mind long enough to pull the stories together that part might need to be put on hold. 

That's the thing, I don't know if it's a broken part of me or what but the fantasy and story telling often comes from the hyper focus and stillness that partaking of cannabis brings to me.  While formulating the background and foundations of the writing and research come from the ever cascading and unfocused nature of my anxious and broken psyche. 

Either way, I'm back in a place where it is unavailable to me, one of the last states in the U.S. refusing to recognize the medical and scientific benefits.
Either way, the year is almost over and the mountain of videos will be needing compiled and the many papers I've been pecking and picking at will need to be finalized and published in some form or another.

in the mean time, back to the pop culture research and trying to figure out what this Frankenstein's Monster of a body and mind is still capable of. 

Stay Safe out there.