Thursday, Feb. 05, 2004 - 1:20 p.m.

Spring Madness

Spring Is Here

Flowers started blooming in Eugene right on schedule, on February 1st.

Springtime for Bush and America, winter for Afghanistan and Iraq.

After killing hundreds, perhaps thousands of people on the silver screen, The Terminator is about to execute his first guy in real life.

Roller Coaster

My life has been like that children’s book, Good Luck, Bad Luck.

Good Luck: my missing investment came back online, paying interest again

Bad Luck: it’s interest rate was only a third of what it was before, giving me a little less than what I need to maintain my current level of poverty.

Good Luck: I still had the prospect of making money with the Liberty Dollar

Bad Luck: Because the price of silver went up, the discount rate on the Liberty Dollar dropped from 20% to under 10%. This partially undermined what I was doing by diminishing the incentive for local businesses to put the Liberty Dollar into circulation, as well as diminishing my own profitability.

Good Luck: I resolved to get a job, after concluding that even wage slavery is preferable to living in constant fear of not having enough money to live on. Having some money still coming in gave me the luxury of feeling able to not apply to jobs I know I’d hate.

Bad Luck: I had friends coming to visit, postponing my job hunt.

Good Luck: Anarchy Man and Squirrel Life, and Squirrel Life’s sister came to visit.

Bad Luck: Good as it was to see them, having three guests staying with me in my one-room shed apartment drove me crazy with claustrophobia and frustration.

Good Luck: After they left, I was able to resume my familiar lifestyle. I began to experience inner peace.

Bad Luck: Only one person responded to the classified ad I placed for the Liberty Dollar.

Good Luck: That one person was totally gung-ho for it, and decided to sign up as a Liberty Associate, earning me a $100 referral fee, of which I promised to refund him half.

Bad Luck: My inner peace quickly vanished, and I spent last weekend mired in painful anxiety. For years, I’ve been proud that I was able to lick my former problem with panic attacks. Whenever I become aware that my anxiety is in a positive feedback loop, I have no problem breaking that cycle before it snowballs into a panic attack. But now I’m having to concede that I have made no progress in stopping that anxiety from arising in the first place.

And then what Nonviolent Communication would call my “inner jackals” got going: I started thinking that I’m just plain messed up, that I can’t make it in this world, which just proves that I’m not meant for this world. “I’m not even supposed to be here,” as Dante said in Clerks. I fancy myself an artist, but I don’t even do any art, and that’s gone on for too long to imagine it’s temporary. I fancy myself a political theorist, but where’s the book I claim to want to write? I’m just a useless eater, and need to be institutionalized, or put to sleep. There’s something wrong with me psychologically, as proven my paralyzing anxiety, that I can’t organize my life enough to accomplish more than a fraction of what I want, and, of course, by the fact that I have no money and I’m not making any significant amount of money. It’s obvious that I’m a big freakin’ failure. I can either blame myself, or take comfort in the knowledge that I was broken to start with. I need to admit that my life is out of control and then just give up.

Good Luck: I quickly concluded that the above sentiments represented the most whiny, narcissistic, disempowered, counterproductive, learned-helplessness aspects of contemptible contemporary American culture. I hope I got that it was purgative, and now I can resume being bold, proactive, and indefatigable.

I actually accomplished a number of tasks I wanted to get done, despite my “paralyzing anxiety. Just not as much as I wanted to get done. Perhaps, I realized, I have a Herculean amount on my plate: trying to market the Liberty Dollar, while continuing my Internet money-making stuff, looking for employment, reading for my molecular cell biology class, reading for my anarchist study group, and three creative careers on the backburner: author and lecturer, animator, and composer and performing musician. How could anyone succeed at all that at once?

Bad Luck: I think I might cause myself such anguish because I’m addicted to accomplishment. I have a difficulty just chilling out and being. Which is not to say that I still can’t find ways to waste time, nor to imply that what I’m accomplishing is necessarily useful.

Good Luck: Meditation stops my anxiety, and I’ve been moderately effective in my intention to meditate every day.

Bad Luck: As soon as I stop meditating, and try to make plans for making money, the anxiety returns.

Bad Luck: My abdomen is riddled with a thousand little pains and discomforts, all psychosomatic.

Good Luck: When I meditate, they reluctantly dissolve, one by one.

Good Luck: When Anarchy Man was here, he goaded me to write my book, and helped me get inspired about it again. I wrote out a new and better plan for my book.

Bad Luck: I can’t bring myself to write until I know where my money is coming from.

Good Luck: The Jester called me to say he’s making a rap album, and wants me to record a track of my rap to put on it.

Bad Luck: Can I set aside time to do this while my life is falling apart?

Good Luck: Sometimes I can remember that this money stuff is all just numbers, and my shame at not having money is socially constructed, a trick of language. When I look at my objective conditions, I’m fine. I’m healthy, warm and dry, and well-fed. I don’t have any actual problems, like the people in Iraq do.

Bad Luck: My food stamp benfits stopped paying in November, but since they provided so much more money than I needed, I was able to save money on my card that I’ve been using up to the present. Then I got a letter saying my balance would be deleted.

Good Luck: The food stamp people said I had one month to spend the remainder of my balance before they delete the money off my card.

Bad Luck: When I go to the supermarket now to stock up on food to use up the money before they take it away, I feel like its going to be the last of my food, like, ever. I know there’s other sources of food, and I could still, like make money and buy food, but it’s a struggle to convince myself that my days aren’t numbered. I’m gonna buy a shitload of ramen.

Good Luck: In the beginning of December, I got Digital Subscriber Line service. Since I spend the majority of my days on the Internet, this has been a huge improvement in my quality of life. Now it’s no problem to download music, and cartoons, and software. And I can actually receive my phone calls. It’s the only way to live.

Bad Luck: Great, all I need right now are additional financial liabilities. Still, I can’t go back to 33kbps and frequent disconnections. I’d eat nothing but ramen if I had to in order to keep my DSL. Man does not live by bread alone.

Good Luck:Yesterday morning, I got a phone call from a clinical research facility (that I had previously registered with) inviting me to participate in a drug study that pays $5250. Which would be more money than I’ve ever had. By far. All I have to do to qualify is travel 6 hours north for a medical screening to see if I qualify. If I got accepted, I’d be spending 38 days in their facility chilling out. Which is perfect; I’d been thinking I need money while feeling like I need a vacation.

Bad Luck: I had no money with witch to travel there.

Good Luck: I thought I had a little interest I could withdraw from that resurrected investment, which might add up to enough for the bus ticket.

Bad Luck: There was an announcement on that investment’s website, saying they were closed for good, and would not be paying any more interest.

Good Luck: They said they’d start refunding everybody’s principal. If I got it all back, I’d be able to subsist for a couple months on that sum.

Bad Luck: They said the refunds would take a while and made no promises, or even estimates of how long it would take.

Good Luck: I remembered that my father offered to give me money if I ever really needed it. For my own sense of integrity, I didn’t want to ever lean on him unless it was a dire necessity. I hadn’t mooched off my dad since I was last living with him 10 years ago. But now I had finally reached the point where I had no money, and no options (aside from hopping trains or hitchhiking).

Bad Luck: While I certainly didn’t invent the practice of begging a parents to send money, I still felt ashamed to be doing so. By our cultural code, it’s a clear signifier of failure. Still, it was shame combined with relief and hope, so altogether it was more good than bad. I’ll live it down somehow. At least I’m not in the Asian culture of familial shame.

Good Luck: Being tempest-tossed by mercurial fate has increased my equanimity. If I don’t know what the fuck is coming next, I never have a chance to develop expectations.

The guy who signed up to be a Liberty Associate is an odd character I shall call Libertarian Hemp Activist. He’s a gray-haired hippie guy with a burning passion for marijuana legalization and returning the US government back to a constitutional republic. He’s part of the Soverigntist movement, and likes presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Not stuff I’m into, but he represents a stunning synthesis of left and right that gives me hope. I had actually met him once more than a year ago, when he consigned some books about Skull and Bones to my short-lived bookstore. He makes a point of driving without a license on the principal that the government has no right, according to the Constitution, to regulate his movement. He’s been arrested several times for this, and the last time he was hobbled by cops while in custody. The colonized part of my psyche says it’s dumb not to get a license, and that making an issue of it is not picking one’s battles wisely. Another part of me is awed by his bravery, and thinks amazing things could happen if everyone took a similar stand. We went together to canvass several more businesses. After the first one we went to, I had to ask him not to mention cannabis in his pitch for the currency.

Last night I went to a showing of Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War. During the discussion afterwards, I stood up and told the Democrats assembled that they should use alternative currency to reduce the Federal Reserve Bank’s ability to fund imperialist wars with their unlimited line of credit., and I directed them to my website. I felt a little slimy going there solely to promote my business (I had seen the film before), but I do genuinely believe that it’s highly germane to the issue. This marks the first time I’ve spoken publicly to a group about the Liberty Dollar, hopefully the first of many. It gave me a strong sense of accomplishment, deepening my addiction.

It’s yet to be seen whether I can get the Liberty Dollar to take off in this liberal town, but I still maintain that silver coins make a better alternative currency than pencil shavings.

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