After?

     What waits for you in the afterlife? Closure? Acceptance? Inky black nothingness? Worms? Damnation and penance for your wrongdoings? Each one of these presupposes that the afterlife cares or even knows about the events that occur in the current life. Is it reincarnation? Another chance at getting things right? Another lesson to learn in a new world? Another egg one step closer to hatching? Perhaps you are born into a new world with new horrors and joys you couldn't conceive of until you left the first one.

My hope is that it is none of these. All I can hope for in the afterlife is a nice deck chair, a piping hot cup of tea, and about 5 minutes where I can truly have an empty head. Just bleak eternal nothingness. A white welcoming void of endlessness that stretches on for an eternity. Nothing. Just a deck chair, a little table with some tea on it, and peace. That's all anyone is really after right? You're forced into a world that churns like an ocean and forces you under wave after wave. There are peaks where the waves crash so far over your head you feel as though you'll never surface again. Some don't. Some drown. And there are valleys where the ocean seems to dry up. You can almost stand! You rise up and proclaim that you've won the battle. Life has failed to drown you, and then another wave crashes down on your head and sends you swimming. It is that ocean that makes people hope for anything more than a break in the afterlife. You think you need closure but the afterlife doesn't care, you get nothing and that scares you. So you make up some shit about a big guy up in the sky who cares about you so much he has a special place for you right next to him, and then when you eventually do drown or bite the bullet or kick the bucket or what have you, and you come up expecting to meet this guy you made up? You're disappointed. Because it's really some sort of cosmic horror so incomprehensible that you can't even see the colors it's beard hairs are made out of. And the cosmic horror says only "Isn't this what you wanted?"  Of course its not. Your self righteousness tells you that we are made in God's image. How fucking feebile are you. To be made in the image of a god is to give us power that we cannot handle. Look what we do with the power that we made up! We create these infantile systems that cause death and despair so that fake money changes hands and you can own more. What do you own truly? Is it land? Is it people? Is it Control? Is it a fancy car? Do you think that your fancy car awaits you in the afterlife? What are you going to do with that stupid fucking car when you get there? There's nowhere to drive to because there is No Where. And when you are met with what waits you. When you sit down in your deck chair and you look down at the cup of tea, you were so foolish as to not even appreciate tea. You don't like the flavor. You didn't enjoy your time on Earth and so you will not enjoy your time in the vast nothing. I hope that doesn't happen to me. I hope that on my deathbed, in my train crash, when I am finally hit by that proverbial bus, when I kick the proverbial bucket and my blood spills out on the sunbleached sands I hope

I hope that the tea is peach flavored.

I hope that it is sweet. I hope it is bitter. I hope that the taste reminds me of all the different teas I drank and all the people I shared them with.  I hope that the tea makes me cry. I hope I finish the cup, and set it down. And when I look to that ever setting sun that disappears over the empty white horizon.

I hope I am satisfied.

Chasing satisfaction is stupid. But I live a life full of irony. It's stupid because the more I chase after satisfaction, the further I get from really being satisfied with my work. The mentality that you can always Do more. It's not true. You have a set amount of actions, and when you run out you die. That clock is ticking from the moment you are born and it ticks all the way till the end. That scares me. I will not complete all the things I want to. It's impossible. I have to complete as many as I can to make sure I'm enjoying my time here but that's not how life should be lived. It's not a competition or a collect-a-thon. It just is. You choose what you do with it, and I'm just scared of making the wrong choices.

What will make me satisfied? When will I rest easy? Is it just a matter of making sure those around me are loved and cared for? That I'm loved and cared for? Is there more to it than that, do I have to try every food and experience every culture and visit every place and fill my life up to the brim with all these other things? Or is it simpler than that. Is it really just a cold beer on a beach. A loving husband or wife or spouse waiting for me in my bed when I get home. A warm cup of tea and a friendly face. Is it game night every friday with my family, my real family, and crafting art with my sweet boys on Sundays and Wednesdays. Is it that act of self expression so vulnerable and raw with others? Is it that alligator head that sits on my desk? Is it two loving arms wrapped around my neck as I cook? Is it 2 warm bodies pressed together in the cold night? Is this all I really need to be happy?
I fear that it wont be enough. What If I reach all of these things, self actualize. Look around in 5 or 6 years and realize that I'm still stuck in the same loop. Digging my hole deeper and deeper and when I can't dig anymore instead of climbing out I just start filling it with water. It wasn't enough because it never was. Nothing is ever enough for me. Is that something I can fix myself? Will I Be Satisfied?  Is it even worth pondering these things? All I've been doing is asking the same questions over and over again and hoping for different answers. How Will I feel When someone answers honestly? I predict anger. I won't like the truth, I never have. I make up little fantasies to live through to protect myself from it. 

Sometimes I feel hopeless, like I'm just going to keep spiraling down and down like a bug being washed down the drain. Like I have nothing to live for. I know it isn't true, but sometimes things feel so artificial. I have no reason to doubt the honesty of my circumstances and yet I can't escape this suffocating feeling of fakeness. That I'm fake, that everyone around me is fake. That it's lies all the way down. It can' t be, but my brain wants it to be, so that when I fuck up, when I hurt others, when I do wrong,  I can excuse myself. "it's all lies anyways" "we're all puppets" well if they're puppets and I'm a puppet too, what difference does it make. If we are ALL puppets, that makes me a puppet too. It's a bad excuse. A stupid justification. But what else is no, I'm just another ordinary person excusing their bad behaviour with faux reasoning. I Need to let this go. I need to let everything go. I need to embrace living in my mistakes and faults. Every person has em, to be without fault is to be inhuman. Even gods make mistakes, I think my presence here proves that. 
Weirdly, that's reassuring.

My brain sure is weird.

I really need to play the drums today.

The song of the week is These Shadows by Wooden Shjips

October.

    Sometimes I think about what would happen if my dad died tomorrow. Would I care, would I cry? Would I be mad at him. How dare he! Would I regret things I said or did? I doubt it. What would I tell people? would it be the truth? Would I make something up? Would I pretend I didn't care until I got over it and then gaslight myself into thinking I handled things well and got closure? Who knows. Hypotheticals are fun like that, You can guess all you want, make estimations, hypotheses, but there are always unknown variables. That'd be H, for human. That throws every equation out of wack because things you think you don't care about can always come back to you. That is what October has been like for me. I think mistakes are important, but the good thing about them is that the more you make, the better you are at making them less, unless you're me.  I've been sad for a little while now after I went on vacation. It was a nice vacation, tripped on the beach, drank, lived utopia for oh about 5 days. I don't know if experiencing such highs returning to regular life caused the lows, or if they just hit with timing. Who knows, maybe its that good 'ol seasonal depression I can always rely on to get me fucked up for no reason. I love the transitional seasons and the yare beautiful, but I'm cold blooded. I need sunlight to function.

    Sometimes I get into this train of thought that my worth is tethered to my body. It's the only thing that got me reliable positive attention for a real long time. I feel extra pressure to use it to appease others, it causes me to do things I may not always think about or want to. My inability to communicate this hurts people. It hurts me too. I don't know why I do things like this, they're horribly self destructive, but it's like something in my subconscious needs them. It wants me to feel dirty, used. Maybe to explain it all, give me something to hide behind. Something to point at when everyone says "Why the fuck are you like this?" A scapegoat. Or maybe my mommy didn't hug me enough when I was a kid or maybe my family didn't treat me the way a kid ought to treated. Who knows. My old therapist probably knows. I was supposed to find a new one ages ago. I haven't yet, I don't really know if it's having an affect on me because I make these posts, and that's really all I'd do to a therapist. Info dump about all the bad things that happened in my week or month or what have you, and then they'd give me a coping mechanism and tell me to focus on the positives.

That's why the music is so important. Just another little vent I can let the things I don't even tell this digital diary. I guess that makes the drums my diary too, or maybe Bethany. She holds my secrets, sure.  Who needs a therapist when you have a blog and a lesser known local band!

    So in the spirit of focusing on the positives. Me and the lads did some recording with another band. I don't wanna give anything away but I'm real excited. It was fun to get a little sample of what recording would be like before we actually just go and do it. I'm eager to record.  I want something I can point to when I say I'm in a band besides an instagram. I don't know why I'm so eager to prove myself, or to whom it'd be proving myself (tho I'm willing to venture a guess). I guess I don't feel like a real "musician" or percussionist I guess, Trev and Jared are pretty good at reassuring me, and telling me that I'm good. That no one choly's like I choly, but I always feel so replaceable. Imposter syndrome got me bad huh? I always have to prove myself. I guess that comes from feeling inadequate and burnt out and stuck in a cycle. Everything is a cycle. The world loops round and round, day to day, week to week, year to year, decade to decade, centuries, millennia, eons, etc. It just keeps going round in a spiral in on itself. Flowcharts to flowcharts that fold inwards on themselves. I try to break free, but it's impossible, you change something and there's just more flowcharts, "If, then:" sequences, Any semblance of control I have is orchestrated and by design to trick me into feeling like I have agency. I've changed a million things. Those who I surround myself with, my job, my life purpose, my goals. I've had epiphany after epiphany and with every passing day I am starting to worry more and more that the next epiphany is that I am the problem. I always have been, and all this work I've done to change has kept me more the same than ever. I've been trying to not think about all this existential crap, and  the meta analysis of every single fucking thing I do, just live in the moment because that's all you've got, but whenever I try It always ends up biting me in the ass. I'm just trying my best out here! But really, when has my best been good enough, to anyone? Do I need to try harder, or change different things? When will I like the way I am? Why can't I just be satisfied with myself. I Need to trust, trust that my river flows through all the flowcharts of the cycle in a unique way that nobody's done before. That my style and drumming isn't just garbage, but that there is quality and talent behind it. That I am not replaceable because I am ME and that's it. It's hard for me, I don't know why, but I've been getting better. I just fear of over correcting into having a big ego. Sometimes I wonder if that's what happens to all those famous people who are "known assholes" You're so scared you are nothing that you shove yourself so far up your own ass to hide from it all, and you end up liking it up there. I guess that's why they're assholes. 

    I was doomscrolling and this stupid trip sitter or trip spirit leader of some kind came across my page talking about ego death and some other bullshit, but he mentioned the easiest way to bring yourself back from an ego death freakout. He mentioned that the reason he thinks that people freak out during ego death is because when you lose the ability to tell where your body stops and the rest of the world begins (ego death I guess) you feel like you are dying, and you think about all the people who you never apologized to and you get scared. So he stole this Hawaiian phrase (or IDK maybe someone told him about it) Ho'oponopono, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. The video was stupid but that stuck with me.  I don't know what it is or why but I just keep thinking about it. I hope to be able to someday be vulnerable to say that to anybody, but I'm too bitch for it now. I also low key don't wanna just start saying an ancient Hawaiian phrase, that feels kinda messed up. I'll come up with something 

Hopefully my band can record soon.

Work has been real nice, I'm glad it's not something I have to worry about anymore.

I'm still very excited to move in with Trev and their sig. other. 

The song of the week  (or month) is Call the dogs out by The Garden