All my words

painful conversations between young adult narcissists with a singular interest in talking about themselves. and for all their yammering they have nothing to say. i did this and i did that and i’m so good at this and my friends say this about me and blah blah blah blah blah   translation: I don't give a fuck about you. I won’t allow you room to fit in even one word about your mediocre, small town, never-won-an-award-for-shit life and i do not care if you cum. you will exist as an accessory to my life because this relationship and everything actually is about ME if you’re a man, and you’re on a date with a girl, please just focus on her. Forget yourself, become interested in her life and her thoughts and what she smells like and what she needs and if you’re good at it, she will naturally reciprocate this interest. You may even be able to cure her own narcissism. sometimes you can just be nobody. sometimes people just want someone to listen, someone to be there. they don’t want to giv...

and I believe that this inability to focus has led to a loss of control over myself and a loss of control over my life. and that is why I am here.

You smile because you know you’re mostly an animal, a machine with inputs and outputs, and this input should trick your brain into feeling the good output. But it’s losing its potency with every forced gesture, and so eventually it results in that classic barely-keeping-it-together, pathetic, obviously sad smile.

From 2018 to 2023 I must have gone on hundreds of dates, with millions of different girls. All the while not considering myself the type of guy who “goes on dates” or enjoys that kind of thing.   They were like exams: something I could pass or fail. Success was satisfactory and failure was catastrophic. Like anyone who confronts the same challenge over and over for years at a time, I began to notice patterns and optimize my performance with autistic precision.   One resounding convergence I noticed among the entire female species: an extreme distaste for any kind of decision-making or planning. They don’t want to be responsible for or in charge of any aspect of our experience. They want it to just happen to them, like a movie, unfolding before their eyes: unpredictable, suspenseful, new.   You can do anything to a girl but bore her. 

today i listened to a couple in their 30s talk at the park. they're seated about 8 feet to my right watching the sunset. talking about life, high level. the guy had a pretty nice voice and seemed capable of putting words together so i took off my headphones and just listened to them. i couldn’t hear what the girl was saying but it didn’t matter. he was trying to help her put her life back together. the kind of high level “What-do-you-want-how-will-you-get-it” conversations I find myself in so often.   she’s a 4th grade teacher. She suffered some blunder at work. Someone thinks she’s racist. Hilarious. The guy asks: if not here, where do you want to go? I can work from anywhere. Chicago, Boston? He sounds creative and articulate and potentially wealthy. Music to my ears. i then learn that he’s a consultant. Makes sense. He offers advice for a living. But this is clearly a relationship. He says she should “reach out to her friends.” Oh no. He says she should stop thinking in terms of...

after a deep dive into the online self help rabbit hole, i’ve found that the biggest “life hack,” by far, is having had two parents who love you and encourage you and care.

S ometimes I fear that all the sex that I’m having is telling my brain: WE WON! We’ve made it to the top of the hierarchy so stop trying to achieve goals and maybe all of the real advancements I made in my life were while I was single and maybe that’s not a coincidence. Is that really true though or does it just sound true? Am i blaming my complacency on my girlfriend again ?  

I think modern day peoples have gotten a little too liberal with the word “abuse.” The word implies that the perpetrator of abuse is gaining something from the interaction, that they’re taking advantage of the victim.   But I see it used mostly in situations where two people are confused sad and angry together and taking out their issues on each other. not for gain, but because they can’t help but be that way. and whoever gets hurt worse is “abused.”

I tend to resist eye contact with most people because I am aware of the effect that it can have and I don’t wish to abuse that effect unless absolutely necessary.   It does feel a bit painful when I’m in a conversation and someone is pointed at me with their whole body, completely vulnerable, while I’m half-faced away, broadcasting detachment and shame. I’m not trying to win some machiavellian power game, it's just too intimate to communicate inches from their face. In most cases. Maybe what I have noticed in my infinite primal wisdom is that people are susceptible to a sort of hypnotism or emotional manipulation when engaged in face to face communication which obscures reality and makes it difficult to logically process information. And I resist by keeping half-a-face turned at all times, parsing the facts for myself, undisturbed by the alchemy of love.  

my sanity is nourished by small doses of being outside and alone, where no one knows where i am or who i am. i have no past, no name, no job, no expectations. i’m just a young man in a tight shirt.  

When I was 16, in my Junior year of high school, I jokingly suggested to my friend that I’d take Adderall to get a better score on the AP US History Exam. He was terrified. He reached out to my sisters and made a real serious concerted effort to stop me. I never really was going to take the drugs anyway. I laughed at his sincerity. I planned never to take drugs or alcohol in my life.   — When I was 17, in my first semester of college, I ingested an unknown quantity of edible marijuana, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the dorm bedroom of the most beautiful girl who had ever taken interest in me up to that point.   After the common ‘i didn’t take enough, i’m going to take twice as much’ rookie mistake which soon rendered me unable to understand the rules of Jenga, I immediately turned my attention to people. I laughed so hard I cried. Painful physical convulsions. I emerged from her room anew. Looking people in the eyes, smiling, laughing, loving, entertaining. And with the...

he didn't take anything valuable because i dont own anything valuable and nothing was in there but what he did do was even more disturbing: he broke off the rear view mirror and left his big black XXL pants in the passenger seat. why did he leave his pants?

you must see a lot of people working in a place like this. a lot of first dates, a lot of laughter, a lot of life. stuff you don’t see when you’re trapped in your apartment staring at a screen wishing you were dead.   the irony is that you’re sitting here right now, in this bar, staring at a screen wishing you were dead.   i have too much pride to work in the service industry. i know that being in a physical servant position would make me feel terrible and chip away at any confidence i’ve spent years curating.  

$32 a month: it’s the cheapest gym in the city and you work out amongst the occasional godlike steroid enthusiast bodybuilder who has been showing up relentlessly, maniacally every day for 12 years. And you get the girls who are thoroughly moved by The Culture to sport their $89 bright-pink Lululemon leggings fulfilling their new years resolution to live their “best life” in 2023. And you get the boomers who don’t really touch the weights or machines but just show up every so often to take their shirt off and carry their pale beer belly into the 10x10ft singular hot tub that we all share in mostly peaceful awkward silence.  

how to never be sad:   don’t want anything. don’t love anyone. don’t try then you will never be let down. this is also how to never be happy

Phone is kind of annoying, but incredibly useful. Phone can do anything. Phone is always listening, Phone just wants you spend more time with him and buy more things from his friends.   But you need Phone. How else will you get home at 2 AM from a bar when you’re drunk and all your friends have left? You need Phone. And Phone takes pictures! How else will you remember things? Laptop is everything. Laptop is the reason you have a job, or a home, or food, or anything, really. You couldn’t have done it without Laptop, hanging out for hours and hours every single day for years and years, ever since you were old enough to make your own decisions about how to spend your time. Laptop taught you everything you know.   Unfortunately, laptop can’t teach you how to be comfortable around other human beings. Laptop just makes you smarter and sadder and more alone. But you need Laptop. You can’t be homeless. You wouldn’t last a day out on the streets. Where would you charge Phone? 

L ast december i took my girlfriend to a christmas town in eastern washington for a holiday vacation. peak washington winter season. snow on the road. people told me not to go. they said you need tire chains. and even with chains it’s dangerous. young men love risks because they can’t imagine the consequences.   i thought: this is one of those times where people warn you about something but actually it’s fine, most people are fine, they’re just virtue signaling, wanting to be the ‘i told you so’ guy if something goes fantastically wrong. wanting to be the guy who stops other people from taking stupid risks. wanting to be a good friend. so i took her and we went anyways. i bought chains from AutoZone. they were expensive. i thought we wouldn’t use them. we start driving from Seattle to Leavenworth. as soon as we get near the path I see why people advised against this. the winds are strong. stronger than winds i’ve ever felt while driving. i lost control for a couple seconds at 60 MP...