Why Do I Humiliate Myself So?

As of December of this year, I will be 24 years old. In this time I have experienced and accomplished a lot. I have also had plenty of fuck-ups and mulligans. Throughout it all, there's this pervasive suspicion that I am not quite right, in multiple senses of the word. There are many simple things that I struggle with that others navigate with ease.

Although my social skills seem to improve with age, I have observed that when I choose to say something that's on my mind, I am often met with a confused look, silence, or a change of subject. For this reason I tend to stay quiet unless prompted. Although I would like to think that I can understand facial expressions and body language, it's easy for me to misread what someone may be thinking or feeling, and negative feelings or expressions make me more anxious then they should. Asking questions, no matter how inconsequential, is also an anxiety-inducing endeavor, and in some cases I stutter before I can get the first word out. I often ask questions and then forget to listen to the answer. I also have a lot of trouble making eye contact with people. I don't know why it makes me so uncomfortable.

People often ask me to repeat myself; I realize it's because I have a tendency to talk too fast, too quiet, and kindofblendwordstogether intoonebiglongsound. Likewise, I often ask others to repeat themselves, because for some reason my mouth asks for clarification before my brain can finish processing what they said. Sometimes when people talk itsoundslikeonebigunintelligablegarble, and once they repeat it enough times for me to understand what they're conveying, I wonder why my brain was trying to deconstruct the message in such a back-assward way. A lot of the time, I can't figure out what the hell they just said, so I just pretend like I did because I'm too uncomfortable to ask a fifth time for them to repeat themselves. I also have a tendency to take things too literally, interpret a joke as being serious, interpret serious statements as jokes, and misunderstand instructions in the vein of the classic "who's on first" routine.

There are some scenarios in which I can literally feel the mental block in my head - for example, I have never been a great athlete/sportsman because my brain shuts down in the heat of action. I was forced to play soccer, baseball, and football as a youth. Over 3-4 years of this, I could count the number of games I won between all of them on one hand. Once in baseball, I made a first-base-hit, and for some reason just walked back into the dugout. I wasn't out, had no reason to do it, just gave up the base and walked away. I was also deathly afraid of being hit by the ball at bat and always played left outfield (when I was put in at all). The one time I was pitcher, I cried the whole time and couldn't throw the ball anywhere near where it needed to be thrown. Once in soccer, I got possession of the ball, and subsequently kicked, ran, and cheered my way to the goal... my team's goal. I should have wondered why nobody was attempting to stop me. All I remember about football is how uncomfortable the shoulder pads and helmet were, and getting the wind knocked out of me and coming to with everyone looming over me wondering if I had just died. I had no idea what I was doing in any of these sports and often wished I was at home playing Sonic Heroes on PS2.

The word of the day is UNCOMFORTABLE. I am so uncomfortable with everyday banalities that it can drive me up the wall. I get this ineffable feeling in the core of my torso, like my ribs are being cooked sous-vide and my every breath is a sensation of inhaling electricity. My blood becomes warm and my brain becomes overclocked and clogged at the same time. The voice in my head that questions my every move and manufactures worry overtakes everything else. I have my good days and my bad days - I just wish I could have a better understanding of WHY one may occur rather than the other. Some things can trigger it, sometimes nothing triggers it and it just comes out of nowhere. I guess it's what most people would call ANXIETY.

I suspect at the core of it all is the fear of being the target of negativity. Although I may consider myself introverted and a bit antisocial, I do love people, and the fear of someone I love being inconvenienced or peeved by my shortcomings is what's really terrifying, especially since I perceive simple mistakes and inconsequentialities to be unforgivable transgressions until I find out that the person in question has forgotten about it or isn't really upset in the first place. When it comes to people I don't love or care for, I have made strides in not giving a fuck about what they think, but I struggled with it immensely for a majority of my life. It affected me the most near the end of high school. I was becoming so disillusioned with the state of the world, the busywork nightmare of school, the impending doom of student loans and financial responsibility around the corner, and of course the social song-and-dance of it all, and I was ready to give up. I couldn't handle the pressure. I feel blessed everyday to have climbed out of that hole. I was healed by music, art, revelations about the world around me, and finding kinship in the people who I would go on to form a band with, and at the same time meeting the woman who would become my wife.

To put it shortly, I find almost all social interactions to be a chore. I would much rather spend my time ALONE doing something I like to do, like music, drawing, or whatever other miscellaneous spontaneous hyper-fixation project I'm tackling for the week. I love these things so much that I have been known to box myself in. It took a bit of work for me to give some of my time to the people I love - I used to perceive it as getting in the way of things that were important, but really the ones you love are just as important, and just as temporary as everything else. I have also deduced that becoming a social and physical agoraphobe has a negative effect on inspiration and leads to a lot of wallowing in art block. There's a fine balance between time spent on responsibilities and time spent on your passions that complement each other perfectly.

The point of outlining all this is to show that I am a paradox of a person - my anxieties clash with my philosophies. I would consider myself an artist above all else, and the main form of media that influences me is music. I would consider people like Frank Zappa, Zoogz Rift, Todd Rundgren, and Vivian Stanshall as just a few major influences on my way of thinking and operating in life. Although all very different people in their own ways, a common theme among them is counterculture as a way of life; being at odds with their surroundings and not being afraid to point out the absurdity of life as a human being, even at risk of alienating others. Brave iconoclasts in search of a better world. Most people chalk it up to having a sense of humor, but I would call it having a sense of vitality. There are many things humans do that are just plain stupid, but we do them because they are traditional, popular, or societally expected of us. I would argue that most people are happy to act the way they are told to by their surroundings as to get through life with the least resistance possible, or maybe it's just that most people don't actually crave anything outside of the normal things that we conceive to be part of life as an individual in a society. Artists have a different spark within them, the uncontrollable urge to explore between, around, above, and under the lines, to push the boundaries of what we conceive as normal or acceptable, and a dedication to their craft above all ancillary social and bureaucratic bullshit. Discovering the work of artists like this showed me I was not alone, I was not the only person who was amused yet befuddled by the many stupidities and hostilities of the human race, and I wasn't the only person who was more absorbed by the world within them than the world outside of them.

Therefore, I have no shortage of strong opinions, and I have been emboldened by these artists before me who have unabashedly asserted their thoughts about this crazy fucked up experience. Their work has healed me in inexplicable ways, and it has shown me that art has the power to save lives. I owe mine to Frank Zappa. The gateway drug was "Joe's Garage", a masterwork that asserts itself without regard for any convention of artwork before it (and anything after it, for that matter). It even ascends its own medium into a work of imaginary opera, following a narrative and conveying that the message that LIFE IS FUCKED UP AND WILL GRIND YOU DOWN, BUT AT LEAST WE HAVE MUSIC. The album that saved my life was "You Are What You Is", a musical manifesto criticizing the American way of life and stopping just to have a bit of dadaist fun every once in a while. If there's anything these two albums communicate, it's that there are people at every turn who will get in the way of what you really want to spend your time doing in your life, and many bad actors quick to inject their doctrine into you to mold you to their needs. There will be many to take advantage of you at any chance they get, and leave you with nothing and return. There will be many stupid people around you who do worthless things and then look upon you with scorn for not joining in. And yet, the crux of the biscuit are words of wisdom such as, "it's just a lotta nothin' so what can it mean?", "***insert the entirety of the lyrics to "Dumb All Over" here...***", and "imaginary guitar notes and imaginary vocals exist only in the imagination of the IMAGINER... and... ultimately, who gives a fuck anyway?".

Everything is temporary. We all die. Empires fall. Artifacts crumble. The sun will explode and vaporize everything we've ever known. And as smart as we are, we are all still FUCKING STUPID. But even Zappa would tell you to lament this would be foolish. He spent his life doing what made him happy, at a great personal cost, extreme headaches, countless hours of hard work, dedication and effort. The result was an eclectic career with hundreds of recorded albums to his name and some of the greatest live bands to ever play on this planet - and yet his goal was not to be remembered. It was never for anyone but himself. Even after all of this selfless work, most people remember him as a novelty rocker who made songs about dog piss, tits and beer, and eventually turned into an asshole political activist who shoulda just kept his mouth shut and kept playing guitar.

I'm sorry it took me so long to get to the point, but there it lies! Zappa was unapologetic in his opinions about life, its beauty and ugliness. Many people thought a lot of the stuff he said was stupid, or that he was a narcissistic jerk who should have stayed in his lane. No matter where you stand on his opinions, art, or way of life, you gotta admit - THE DUDE HAD BALLS! There is nothing more commendable than standing by your word and not caving to the pressures around you. Being unafraid to assert what you think and not being concerned with those who may ridicule or scorn you. That is VITALITY. That is LIVING. Zappa showed me that we gotta use our brain in life, it's okay to think for yourself, and we have to create conversations about the absurd shit that we go through, or else we are wasting our fucking time. Zoogz Rift, a fellow Zappa devotee, put it best in his song entitled "Murdering Hell's Happy Cretins" - "If you close your eyes do you think the ugly world will die? ... There is good and there is evil... By avoiding a commitment, you allow this shit to happen! By escaping into dreamland, you are fucking yourself over, and dragging me down with you... Can't you see why I despise you?"

And yet, my ribs still sizzle and my breath still burns when I remember the times I have asserted myself. The times I have been met with scorn and ridicule from others who have read the things I've written and told me I'm a stupid asshole who should stay in my own lane. The times people have called my art bad. I sweat a bit over the possibility of something I said being wrong or unfair. I stress at the thought of something I said being picked apart and used as ammunition to paint me as a chump, sap, dumbass, or what have you. My brain knows that I SHOULDN'T GIVE A FUCK, and yet my anxious nature pokes and prods me with torturous glee. Herein lies the paradox. How can I live the philosophies I know are right to follow when it literally pains me to do so?

Everybody is an individual, with their own values, desires, strengths and weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. It is as VITAL and as ALIVE as you can be to share yourself and be okay with the possibility that your views may be slightly flawed, slightly abrasive, slightly myopic (okay, maybe more than slightly) because it is RAW EXPERIENCE. It is a reflection of your reality, an assertion that you are thinking, and evidence that you are using your physical equipment to its fullest extent. After all, when you break everything down to its basest form, NOTHING REALLY FUCKING MATTERS. It's all just a bizarre, absurd bunch of subjective nothing. The only value in life and its contents is what we attribute to it, and value is a human concept. All concepts are human concepts. When we're all gone, there is no value. There is only existence. Maybe there isn't even that. We only perceive things to exist. The point is that the world is what we make it, and although to a certain degree there are objective truths, at the bottom of it all we can only verify what we can perceive. How much of the universe CAN'T we perceive?

How much more alive could you be than to challenge the forces that surround you? To assert your truth despite the negative outcomes that may occur? We are still on this planet because the material that builds us has withstood the many challenges of this reality and its rules, and by chance evolved to survive them. When wounded, our bodies heal. When facing adversities, we adapt and overcome. The act of living in itself is an act of resistance against all outside forces. Think about it. Isn't it pretty fucking crazy that, with all we know about what surrounds us, we exist as a life form on this clump of rock floating around in an infinitely incomprehensible plane of existence, and we get to enjoy the conscious feeling of love and happiness? Even as all the deadly factors that will put an end to us will eventually wipe us out, and it will all be for nothing, the feeling of happiness is so good that I can't see a reason why we should just throw in the towel and succumb.

I may not feel very well as I live by this philosophy, but I will continue nonetheless. My works of opinion, such as my articles on AI / the state of the internet, may be flawed, idiosyncratic, boorish, and long-winded. I understand if people find them to be inflammatory, short-sighted, or just plain stupid. These possibilities, as I explained before, do make me pretty uncomfortable. However, it would be wrong for me to endlessly edit, append, or remove the articles altogether just to quell these bad feelings. I want you, the reader, to know that my life has been a challenge, and it's a challenge I'm still navigating, and the reason I share myself with you is TO MAKE YOU THINK. You don't have to agree with me, I'm not writing these things to make you think I'm rilly smart and you're a dumbass, I'm not attempting to have any "hot takes", I don't do this for glory, fame, or money. If I can inspire JUST ONE person to confront the absurdities of life with an analytical mind, or to challenge their own worldview, then I have accomplished my goal. I believe this is what will push the human race forward.

There are plenty of injustices and tragedies in this world, all of which depress me to no end. There are also so many beautiful things to experience in this temporary life, and I want to encourage people to celebrate these things while we still can, and stand against the bad so we can make the world a better place. I try to waste the least amount of time possible on petty squabbles, negativity, and assorted bullshit as I possibly can, and I would encourage you to do the same. We will stagnate as long as we blanket ourselves in the security of the status quo, and the status quo is a pretty fucking sorry state of affairs. So, let's THINK. Let's CHALLENGE. And let's have a sense of HUMOR - no, VITALITY.