April 1st

March has ended and I'm finally about to leave this place.

Much of my life is spent in what I like to call "waiting periods". When my executive dysfunction manifests not just in procrastination of my daily tasks, but procrastination of whatever thing in life I'm currently most motivated to do. These are awkward times where I find myself stuck in the in-between, where I find myself exactly where I was a year ago, and no meaningful progress is made. I never intend for them to happen. It's always, well, one chapter in my life has ended, I'll go back home, visit my friends, and move on to the next thing. And then I get trapped. I sit down, take a breath, and suddenly it's three months later and I haven't stood back up. This repeats every year, around this time of year, November to March, roughly, usually at its most concentrated in January. Perhaps I follow the same seasonal cycle as a bear, and this is my natural hibernation.

I wouldn't say I particularly regret the past few months. I would have much rather been out there living my life rather than hiding from it, but it's not as if I didn't accomplish anything. Okay, that's a lie. I've barely left my bed since December. I've regressed to avoiding even the bare minimum of social interactions. I've been consisting off microwave dinners, putting in only enough effort at freelancing to not get my van repo-ed, and completely destroyed my formerly strict sleep schedule. Frankly, I haven't been doing great. I've been telling myself I'm not depressed, because depression requires sadness, self-resentment, hopelessness. I haven't felt any of those things. On an emotional level, I've been fine. I'm as positive as ever. I'm completely aware of how temporary this state of mine is, so I don't feel too bothered by it. I wake up every day and say "Eh, it'll be better tomorrow." What an ironic, useless form of optimism.

I guess what matters is that these periods always eventually come to an end. I'm not sure how I do it, but I wake up from my fugue state one day, pack my bags and leave. It's very arbitrary when this decision happens. I'd like to say it happens whenever I'm finally fed up with myself enough, at some great emotional climax in which I recognize my personal failings and take action full of desperate inspiration. Sometimes that is the case. It was initially. But honestly, I usually leave on just as much of a whim as I chose to stay. I stay because I'm lazy, I leave because I'm bored. Sometimes it can be as simple as that.

That isn't to say I haven't been feeling more excited or motivated recently. I have! I've had some sort of breakthrough where I suddenly feel comfortable with writing again. I'm allowing myself for the first time in years to be creative, and it's brought me a lot of joy. I don't think this in spite of my self-inflicted isolation, but rather because of it. A lot of great things come from boredom. Boredom breeds restlessness, and so I start talking to myself and wondering around. That's most of what I do, really, even at my best, I'm just talking to myself and wondering around. It's fun! You should try it sometime.

Recently, I've been reading Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer, and I think he described the in-between phenomenon I so often get stuck in better than I ever could:

"And so, lacking any of the trappings of permanence, I was perpetually on the brink of potential departure. That was the only way I could remain anywhere: to be constantly on the brink not of actual but of potential departure. If I felt settled I would want to leave, but if I was on the brink of leaving then I could stay, indefinitely, even though staying would fill me with still further anxiety because, since I appeared to be staying, what was the point in living as though I were not staying but merely passing through"

This is definitely the trouble with the kind of nomadic life I lead. I don't live anywhere, so when I do stay awhile, it's always with the mindset that I won't be there long. I mark these in-between periods as distinct from my travels, but really, I'm always in a state of in-between. There is nothing else besides in-between. I don't think this is the case because I'm nomadic, I think it would apply even if I remained sedentary. I'm much too restless.

So how should I define the distinction between my depressing winters and adventurous summers, then? I think it's a matter of whether I'm doing something new or not. When I increase the amount of novelty in my life, I feel neither trapped or restless. It feels like making progress. Stagnation only happens when one fails to challenge themselves, discards the desire to learn, and gets stuck in the comfortable things that bring them stability, but lack any sort of wonder or exploration to them. Personally, I find exploration to be essential to my spirit, as I don't really have any other reason for being. I make progress for the sake of making progress, because the alternative is giving up and letting my soul wither away.

My method of challenging myself is travel because my default state of being is borderline agoraphobic. As much as I'm fascinated by the world, I'm equally as terrified of it. The only way I see myself moving forward is to strip away any comforts I may have, as I find it much too easy to relish in my misery. If I have a bed to sleep on, I will never get out of it. And so I throw myself head first into the world with as little resources as possible and try to survive. Maybe it's just another form of relishing in my suffering, but I have a lot more fun doing it this way than the alternative.

Anyway, this was meant to be a more casual entry/life update, so I won't spend too long waxing philosophical. I'm excited to move on soon, to start a new chapter in my life, and that's all that really matters. I'll be receiving a Japanese futon in the mail on Friday for my van, and if all goes well, I should be able to leave this weekend or the next. I intend to spend a week in Colorado as my first destination. It's a very sentimental place to me. It's familiar enough to not be too intimidating before I throw myself into unexplored waters. I have no idea what I'm going to get out of this adventure, but that's what's so enticing to me. I'm more aimless than ever, but I think that opens up a lot of possibilities. It's very likely that the patterns of my life will continue to repeat and a year from now, or maybe two, I'll find myself back in Kansas once again, right back on the edge of a different journey. I think I'm okay with that. I always get moving again, after all, and I don't think that means I haven't made any progress. I come back to this place I different person than I was before, allow myself to remember who I was and still am, and then I leave to discover and reinvent myself again. I think it's possible for a life to be both linear and cyclical. I need the off seasons to remind me why I do this in the first place.

March 27th - Ants

This year I've been having an unusually high variety of strange dreams. I'm not the type to believe there's much merit to dream interpretation. Anything mystical or spiritual I engage with purely through the lens of examining the subconscious, not through belief in signs, messages, or the supernatural. However, I do find the potential symbolism in dreams to be quite fascinating. It can reveal whatever anxieties we may be repressing, and I think there's a very emotionally raw kind of value to that.

Last night, I had thought I had woken up covered in thousands of ants. This is not an unrealistic situation for me to find myself in. During my time living at the camp in California, I had engaged in a war against a colony that had asserted their claim to the territory known as my bed. Honestly, it's kind of on me for daring to eat a croissant in my tent, but I'm not here to speculate on the validity of political motivations. The battles were fought with spray bottles of vinegar, pesticides, sugar traps, and occasionally the frustrated sole of my boot. There must have been casualties nearing the thousands, yet they would send in reinforcements the next morning undeterred. I'm embarrassed to admit: I lost my war against the ants. After a nearly month-long campaign, I had successfully managed an assassination of their queen. This led to a week of ceasefire, only for an eventual return to conflict marked by the morning I awoke covered in bites, running into the forest half naked, wildly flinging the tiny soldiers off my body while crying out for mercy. I ended up packing my bags in shameful defeat and moving into the much more secure employee trailer. They could have whatever crumbs may have remained in that accursed dwelling.

I suppose this has given me some sort of ant-related trauma, as I relived the distress of that experience in my dream last night. Every inch of my body, every limb, every orifice, absolutely covered in the inescapable black swarming mass of insects. I sprang upwards and watched on in terror and in helplessness as they overtook my bedroom. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that there was nothing I could do but let them consume me, and as I awoke once again, for real this time, I clenched my fists in frustration and annoyance at my lack of ability to defeat them.

Ants have a terrifying resilience to them. They care not for their individual survival, only the survival of their colony. Killing an ant is a fruitless endeavor, actually quite counterintuitive at war with them, as their allies will be drawn to the pheromones released by its body, resolving to whisk the corpse away to a location that could either be considered a cemetery or a garbage dump. They do this for purely utilitarian and not sentimental reasons, their primary objective being to maintain the health of the colony. Thus, attempting to fight the ants is futile. They will be all the more motivated to crawl upon the most dangerous areas, including my very flesh.

Ants are generally guided by the smell of their own. As an ant marches forward, it releases a chemical marking a path that the other ants are then compelled to follow. An ant has no awareness of its potential destination. It's guided by the trust in its comrades that there is a mission to complete, a prize of food they will add to the community's stockpile awaiting at the end. Perhaps their collectivist nature is somewhat inspiring, but personally, I find their dogmatic adherence to following one another somewhat alien and disturbing. It's reminiscent of the myth of the suicidal lemmings, who will follow each other to their death off a cliff absentmindedly. Yet ants engage in this behavior with much more intention than the supposed cliff-jumping lemmings. They are happy to sacrifice themselves for the good of their colony if the need arises, as they are just one of tens of thousands blindly marching forward, caring not for who or what they step over, driven by the frenzied, yet systematic pursuit of a shared goal. I must indeed be a true American individualist to find this concept as frightening as I do.

I wonder what caused this reemergence of ant-related anxiety in my subconscious? The simplest answer would be that I spotted one in my kitchen the other day. At the sight of the creature, I instinctively began to question if there was vinegar or cinnamon in my pantry so as to defeat the potential horde coming to collect whatever speck of food waste that may be hiding in the crevices beneath my microwave. Yet, I chose to spare it, in recognition that becoming the aggressor would only likely lead to an escalation of Ant War II (electric BUGaloo?).

But let's take a more abstract approach in examining why bugs were the subject of my recent nightmare. According to Dream Dictionary dot org (surely a credible authority on the matter), an ant dream should make one ask, "What's bugging you?" They are also apparently cited as being representative of cooperation, structure, and completing goals.

I'm tempted to disregard any teamwork-related interpretations, as alas, I have not spoken to another human being (in person) in nearly a month's time. That is to say, I have very little going on socially that could warrant any dreams about the importance of working together with others. But it's possible my recent phase of isolation is precisely the reason I should consider that potential meaning. I am, in fact, rather terrified of the need to incorporate other people into my life, as I'm the type to try to forge my own path and deny any help from those surrounding me. Maybe it's a sign that I should reintegrate myself into society, let myself find belonging in the masses, and follow the advice of others, instead of continuing to distance myself from human connection. That was what I was attempting to do when I returned to Kansas recently. It was one of my major goals for this year, but it's something I've partially given up on. Introversion is much more comfortable than the vulnerabilities associated with communication. I have resolved to implement some level of forced socialization into my upcoming travels, however, in the form of dating apps and meet-up groups. Much like ants, we are a tribal animal, after all, we cannot exist, nor thrive, in solitude.

I think the most pertinent interpretation, in regards to my own life, is that the ants represent a lack of control. As the ants overtook my body, I didn't attempt to fight them. I accepted my fate with internal resignation, all too aware that any victory I could have gained over them would only be met with countless further waves of undeterred ants. Sometimes my philosophy in life can be rather deterministic. There's little meaningful resistance we can put up in regards to the passing of time, the rules of society, or the actions of other people. Sometimes all we can do is accept the way things are, the things that happen to us, and tell ourselves to just let go and let the tides of the river take us along. This doesn't make it any less scary. Quite the contrary. If you've ever been the victim of a form of assault, you may know it's a survival strategy. It's an act of instinctual stoicism to disconnect from one's emotions to relieve the pain of the struggle. Acceptance in the face of hopelessness has its merits; it can bring peace to the soul, but it's undeniably an uncomfortable process. Letting go requires assessing the situation and determining that there are no possible actions to take. The realization can be both distressing and blissful. When control is out of our hands, we bear no responsibility for it. Whether this is a curse or a relief is highly contextual.

My choice to spare the ant in my kitchen was a recognition that the fight would not be worth it. There are many things in life I do choose to rebel against. I'm a highly untraditional individual. I mean, I'm a transgender anarchist who lives in a van by the river. I'm not exactly someone who conforms to society's expectations, as much as I have been pressured by my family, my community, and recent politics. I spent many years as an activist; surely I cannot claim that resistance is not a worthwhile endeavor. And indeed, it is, but on a more psychological or spiritual level, there can be value in choosing to accept things as they are. Being alive is not something we consent to. We're born into this world helpless and without control. We're subjected to the passing of time without any choice in the matter. Existence itself is a constant struggle, a battle to meet our base and existential needs. There is no way to defeat life itself, as death could hardly be called a victory. Most of our inner turmoil is rooted in the discomfort of simply being alive.

For me, the ants represent all the tiny parts of life that make up the bigger picture. We're all lying here helpless to the things in our lives that we can’t control. It's hard not to feel as if these things are consuming us slowly, one minuscule bite at a time. I think it's important to note that in my dream I was not fully consumed. I got up, and I panickily shook the ants off my body. I may have had to surrender my bedroom (my sanctuary and my prison), but before I woke up, I was already planning how to move on from the assault of the ants. I think there is a balance between letting go and fighting back, and that balance is moving on. It requires the same acceptance as letting go, a bitter acceptance, but there is an ironic sweet victory in choosing to walk on regardless. There are plenty of battles I know I will never win. I can never fully eradicate my depression, my trauma, my dysphoria, my anxiety, or even a hill of ants. No individual can solve the discomfort of life, society, or self. At times this becomes overbearing, and one may be crushed by the frightful weight of hopelessness. Moving on, to me, is relieving the pressure by choosing how to engage with it. It's not giving in, it's not struggling against, it's adaptation to the circumstances.

In California, the ants may have taken my tent, but at the end of the day, I was able to move to a much more comfortable cabin. This may have meant I lost the war, but it no longer feels like a defeat to me. Now that I had distanced myself from the battleground, I could laugh at the absurdity of the situation. It didn't take away the sting of the bites, but I did find relief in sleeping somewhere with air conditioning for the first time in months. Mindset can be a very powerful tool. It's our greatest form of agency, as we always possess the power to change our minds. The first night I awoke covered in ants, I was filled with determination to take back my bed from them. As I realized the futility of one man against a hundred thousand ants, this perspective changed. At first, I was angry. I was humiliated and pathetic, and I sat there and let the ants crawl over me in the stubbornness characteristic of any true pity party. The ants took not just my bed, but my agency, my peace of mind, and my sense of control. But I retained the agency of choice. I could choose to die on that ant hill, or I could move on, both in body and mind. This attitude is reflected in my general approach to conflict, both internal and external. By becoming aware of my limitations and the limitations imposed upon me, I can realistically ask myself, What can I do about it? Sometimes, the answer isn't what I want to hear, but there's always an answer. If the ants in my dream do represent the unstoppable forces of life, perhaps my subconscious is telling me to get up, shake them off, and keep moving on.

March 21st

Journaling in the morning because I feel like writing and I haven't journaled in a while.

I awoke with the urge to write down every thought I have as if they're each something deeply profound. Perhaps this is hypomania, if my bipolar theory has any credence to it.

This month has been spent working on my website. I've been spending at least eight hours a day working on it. I've learned a lot about coding using HTML/CSS, and I'm starting to get a basic understanding of JavaScript. I'm really happy I've had such a creative project to work on, but I have been getting a little carried away. I haven't been eating or sleeping on a consistent schedule, and I neglected work for a week. It has been rather exciting, though. I'm not sure what I expect going forward with this project. I hope that once I finish all the coding, it will be something that encourages me to write more often, and come up with other ways to express myself now that I will have a dedicated space to do so. That being said, I have neglected previous blog projects, but I have a good feeling I can stick this to one, considering how much work I already put in. I've backed-up the files, so even if I neglect it, I can always come back and it will be there. And it's mine! Compared to Substack or other platforms I've tried, this one is much more personalized. I feel a sense of ownership.

This has delayed my return to the nomad life, though. Last month I was really resenting the lack of living I've done this year, and now I've remained holed up in my room. Partially this has been due to my financial concerns, but it's mostly procrastination, and wanting to finish this project first. Checking my bank account this morning, I was pleasantly surprised, as meager as it may be to some others. So I should be prepared to depart in the coming month- but that's also what I said a month ago. However, the weather has simply been lovely (as little as I actually experience it), and every time I step outside, I'm struck with the urge to seize upon it while it's here.

I will once again remind myself of the things I need to complete prior to leaving:

1. Buy new bedding and a solar shower

2. Clean the van/put air in the tires

Wow. That's really it. These are the herculean tasks I've been putting off for several months.

Sunday! I will do them on Sunday. Then, I will assess my budget as of the 28th, book a hotel/campsite for my first night in Colorado, and hopefully depart in the first week of April. Perhaps I should give myself something more concrete. I have to leave Kansas by April 12th. April 12th will be my deadline, and I'll finally get out of here.

March 5th

Waking up, snapping out of it for a moment, but I still can't really see. My ears are filled with cotton and I flinch at the movement of the cabinets as they close. I look in the mirror and question "when did my hair get so long?" and run my finger against the stubble on my chin. Everything around me is so familiar it becomes foreign. My eyes can only pass over, but never truly linger and comprehend, it's all a blur. I tell myself "I got to get out of here" and for a moment I am myself two weeks ago and at once myself in another moment not too far away. I clean my room and it offers some relief. I think myself a great man, but I remind myself that he is dead right now. The optimist in me says it's only a slumber, but he also knows that death has its arms around me even when I have reached the peak. If every second is a rebirth, then I will crawl on my hands and knees until I learn to walk once more. I will wait for the day when I laugh when I fall.

March 4th

I'm so restless. I feel the cold air blowing on my face. I don't know where it's coming from. A train whistle in the distance. I barely hear it. I want to dance. I want to move. I want to run down the street and feel everything on my skin. I'm anxious, but I'm laughing. I'm laughing because it's stupid. A car drives by blasting some sort of music. I feel it in my chest. I take a sip of beer. I grin at my own writing. I rock back and forth. I can feel the texture of the metal touching my fingertips when I grab the can of beer and take a swig. It's all vibrating. I need nicotine. My foot presses against my crotch. I look at my childhood photos and I laugh. That isn't me. I continue listening to the cars driving by outside. Is this our world now? The buzzing of a plane. The air conditioner whirring. What comfort. What splendor. I want to get away from it all. There is nothing to satisfy me. I'm so happy. I'll sleep peacefully tonight. I can’t stand it.

February 26th

sometimes I feel like I lack the ability to truly live. I feel like I lack an immersive life. it all feels very artificial to me, I guess. Like, when you're watching a movie and become aware that the people on screen are just actors and everything is special effects. I want to live my life, but I don't really know how sometimes. I think I just need to do things.It's hard to find the will sometimes. everyone probably feels empty when they're lying awake late at night. I think most people are aware that there's something indescribable and a bit morose about the human condition. Like a hunger that can never be satiated. Or like a nicotine craving you have to keep buying packs of cigarettes for. I just wonder if I'll ever find anything that gives me a spark that lasts longer than a few months. I wish I could find something that's deeply special to me. I usually keep on running away. There's a yearning to be understood, not just by others, but maybe even within ourselves.