Conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace

I came across someone on a site I follow who's very much just themselves in the face of a lot of potential blowback. Some people are just kind of radiant that way, and I admire them. Some of my favorite people are the difficult ones who can neither help themselves nor want to; especially the ones who are that odd combination of cussedness and prickly boundaries. They're usually originals of some kind.

I remember when what was going on inside me was in pretty close sync with what was going on outside, and it has, for better or worse, had an effect on how I've been since then. I did a lot of learning about the ways anger I thought was my little secret was spilling out, then capped it over with a late-blooming corporate career and the attendant toxic positivity you can end up internalizing. It is not okay in those settings to be on the outside the way I am on the inside, and you either learn to tuck it away in the healthy way, or in the unhealthy way. By "unhealthy way," I mean in the way that valorizes repression, choosing to believe you can somehow not feel the things you feel, or that by repressing those things you're somehow protecting others or being community-minded, or demonstrating a "professional" "growth mindset."

The "healthy way," I'm afraid, is sort of hard. I weave in and out of internal and external processing (either brooding or chatting/writing/posting). Internal processing allows me to eventually get to, "well, I know what I know and that's all I really need in the moment." It's comforting enough and everyone's spared a glimpse into my jagged, restless, impatient inner state. External processing ... gosh that's riskier.

I'm curious about a lot of things. A friend once called me "mercurial" in the way I'd swerve wildly into ideas, embracing ideals and aesthetics and wearing them around for a while and wishing people would just keep up and fucking figure it out. And even when I'm merely curious, I'm jealous of my right to be curious about anything, and find my way down whatever path I come across. I liked studying philosophy because that's what you did all day: Pick up an idea and hold it in state, turning it around, prodding and poking and swallowing it whole then spitting it out.

And right now, in this particular political season, I am feeling very isolated. The intersection of ideas I've been chasing for a little while and this particular moment  have come together in a way that make me feel very frustrated: We're in the grips of a profound moment, and so much of the opinionating and analyzing feels like a dead hand on our collective shoulder; a remorseless demand that we re-shoulder a burden we've been carrying for decades.

So almost everything I come across in the average media organ feels antagonizing in some way. Weighed down by old categories, myopia, and obtuseness. I don't know how, right now, passing through an "external processing" phase, to talk about all that without all the anger, impatience, and rough curiosity coming out. 

Sometimes writing  is a way to parameterize and commit to a course, making whoever is out there an unwitting accountability buddy. Welcome and thank you.  You just helped me commit to sitting still  and being  quiet for a little while, figuring out how to use my words and let enough of the inside come out to do some good without paying full freight.