I stuff every necktie I've ever owned into a bottle of Everclear. The astringent smell of alcohol permeates the air. The threat surrounds us all.

I strike the wheel on my Zippo. A ball of smoke and fire erupts from my hand. I am engulfed in flames. You are engulfed in flames. To my left, a man raises his pistol and takes aim at you. A pulse of angry lead passes millimeters from my side. A round strikes between the eyes. A man survives. An idea moves forward.

Sunrise, parabellum.

I'm losing my mind, and when its gone, I won't even go looking for it.

Well that's not quite right. I'm actively trying to lose it. I'm running away, and it is in pursuit. Its chasing me spouting fucked up theories about why we're fucked or the world is in ruins or why we should just give up. I don't have the time or patience to argue about it, but I don't believe it. There's always hope; there's always light in the darkness.

There's a saying that we are each our own worst enemy. I don't know of anyone who epitomizes this any better than I do. There's not a day that goes by where I don't feel like the luckiest man alive. How could I be the one living comfortably, with nothing better to worry about than my own delusions? Me? This fuckin' guy? I live in constant expectation that it is all going to come crashing down, any day now. I take a day at work where there's no sword of Damocles hanging over my head and I don't have a drop-dead deadline to meet and suddenly we don't think we matter anymore, or that we've earned anything, or that I'm worth a shit.

But that's just work. Nobody has a healthy relationship with work, least of all me. Anyway.

I get to make bourgeois choices like buying a new $Thing because the $Thing repair shop isn't open at times that are convenient to me (and the fucking proprietor doesn't return my fucking calls) or like "I don't like these glasses so I'm going to wait through a weeks-long return-reshipment cycle" type shit. I'm not fuck-money rich but I'm fuck-money comfortable, if that makes sense. I can absorb and L or two on a given endeavor and not really give much of a shit, outside of a requisite Midwestern frugality nagging at me. ANYWAY, anyway.

The point of this all is that I can't ever actually *feel* comfortable, no matter what reality looks like. I'll always have to keep one step ahead of both the self-doubt (as described) and the self-destruction (as documented). Maybe I am lucky. Maybe soft-skills are the real winning play; making friends and connections is what keeps you ahead, rather than skills and experience. Maybe I am actually god's favorite. Maybe reflective positivity actually works, and by bouncing vibes off of other people I'm gathering them up into my own ego. It doesn't really matter what the reasoning is. The proof in the pudding is in the eating, and whatever the recipe is, I'm eating well.

But good luck convincing me of it. There's always doom in the rear view mirror. There's always wolves at the gate. There's always a fucking deranged anti-me on the porch ringing the door bell and screaming about the neighborhood and riling up the dogs. There's always a rat that's too smart for the traps, who won't take the bait. There's always a Something that's going to undercut the Everything. And Something won't let me rest.

Maybe this is how its supposed to work. Maybe our brains and souls are tuned to always focus down to the most reasonable threats, and as we go onward in life the scope of those threats just grows smaller and easier to comprehend. Maybe generations of fighting for our lives have tuned us to look for the threat in every dark corner, even when those corners are where we spend so much of our time. I know these places. When I'm stumbling around, I inevitably wind up at least visiting them, even if not for long. There's some spiders and maybe some doubt-demons hanging around but there's nothing worth losing sleep over in those places. Maybe the fact that I'm aware of them is what keeps them disarmed, and keeps the threats at bay. Maybe.

Anyhow. There's no impending doom. I'm not like to get fired; the wife makes more money anyway, and she's in line for a promotion. Egos aside, comfort and safety are secured. So what the fuck am I fucked up about? I dunno man, ask the anti-me. I don't understand anymore. I'm just tired of running away from it. But I'm not exhausted yet. I'm not letting that shitsmith catch me. I'm going to keep partying and laughing and smiling. I might be running, but I'm not scared. Nothing I could ever encounter would hold a candle to the delusions I might invent on any given day.

We're our own worst enemy, and nothing is worth fearing except our selves. My neck is too red for my own good.

Me when any given Friday

RT: https://infosec.exchange/users/da_667/statuses/116700806783028970

Can't fucking believe I see better free software related posts from Equestria dot social than I do from most other places.

Friday night MFs

A beautiful Chinese woman named Deer Xing is guising me on my journey