Hi, I'm Dan, and I'm Bottom bouncing ...

I've been on STEEMIT for a few months now and there's a great deal I like about this platform. It seems like, for now, there is a kind of "open range" feel to this place, as if ideas are not off limits. With Facebook or Twitter or any of the other mainstream social media, the opposite is true - words, ideas, beliefs, feelings, are constrained, boxed in, and it is an unwritten rule that nothing "too real" should be discussed, expressed. I'm not advocating for madness, rudeness, indecency - but I do advocate for honesty. Honesty is not TRUTH - honesty is, in fact, a personal reality that might map to truth but does not have to. So I am here, telling my "truth", and at times it might seem harsh to others - but it is really just my honest expression, something you can agree with or not and that's cool.

I've had some great interactions on Steemit, but as with the 'normie' social media, there are still many topics that even here, in this space, feel taboo. I've been honest about my feelings of suicide, my personally held belief that this is a choice, like all others, and it has consequences. Do I want to die? - not really. Do I want to live in a holistically integrated 24/7 society where I am, in whatever form, always a participant in things I abhor? - no. I find the America I was born into despicable, violent, imperial, vicious, vapid and simply not sustainable. But who knows how long this madness continues? - it began before I was born and shows no sign of relenting. It's easy to say "well Dan, it's just Trump" - but that guy has NOTHING to do with what I'm talking about. Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump - these are the names of facades, walking, talking, Potemkin Villages ... engineered to confuse, mislead, and misdirect. The real control is hidden, and what these controllers intend? - I simply am too small, too minuscule to have any knowledge of (other than speculation).

It's ok if you like this America - it's ok if you want to tell me "Dan, what's wrong with you? - things are great". That would be YOUR TRUTH. But for my part I've decided that either I'm going to find a job and start working again (which I'm actually working hard to do despite the prejudice in the Seattle area against software engineers of my demographic) OR I will find some kind of "Plan B". I respect each person's choices - if you enjoy paying taxes, ignoring what those monies are used for, and believing that the "next election" will set you free? - please, keep voting, keep believing. If you have kids, by all means, maintain the illusions for their sake. But for a middle aged software engineer being interrogated by Indian managers at Microsoft, in rude and ridiculous ways? - well, they would like me to dry up and blow away and I suppose, at some point, their wishes might come true.

I am bottom bouncing - I have some days where I can see a minimal future for me, assuming I dig myself out of the financial black hole I am in right now. I do have those days where I pretend "maybe I'll have time to pay off my student loans, credit card debt, all the bills from all the mislaid trust of 2016/2017 and then buy a house" ... I have those pretend days ... and I keep pretending, or forcing myself to, because I know there are (supposedly) a few people in my life that would be sad for 6-9 months if I disappeared.

I also have those days where I remember my graduate school study of the former USSR - oppression, censorship, absurdity, and alcoholism. I recall the crossing graphs of addiction and party membership - membership went down, drinking vodka went up. It's easy to mock the Russians, it's what people do when they've run out of ideas, they mock. But if you compare the late USSR to America, today? - there is more to find in common than not.

This bouncing along the bottom of the trench, forcing myself to wake each day and find some reason to live, is a kind of ritual - and as long as my current arrangement continues (I'm couch surfing with a relative) I can keep this up, I think. But this is a kind of limit process, in the calculus sense, with each bounce energy is lost and, eventually, as X->infinity, Y->zero. Which means: as this continues, absent some "magic juice", I will reach a point where the next "bounce" is nonexistent. I will, inevitably, reach the zero point.

I'm ok if you are the "cheerleader type" and want to talk about puppies and flowers and sunny days ... it's ok. I'm not going to bore you with details of watching my sister Nancy die of late stage cancer, when she was 43. Let's just say that experience gave me the clearest picture of "humanity" in our wondrous America - she was simply a transaction in a medical billing process, a means of profit for the cancer industry, so more (very expensive) chemo drugs could be sold. Cheer-lead AWAY, I say ... it does not stick to me, not since she died in 2012.

I know there is always the comeback, "you have so much to live for ..." - but not really ...

What would someone of my ilk be living for? - less privacy, higher taxes, more corporate/government corruption, a world where the richest do NOT pay for their actions but the poorest are vilified for being poor? - no ...

If you enjoy beating up on homeless people, but believe HSBC (the bank that terrorists love) should only be handed a "speeding ticket"? - then you are one of those reasons I don't want to be here any longer ...

If you think it's ok to indiscriminately bomb moms, dads, children, because of 9/11 (assuming any of us really know what happened that day), you are also a reason I want to exit ... this perpetual war thing is simply depressing on its own.

If you think paying taxes is "patriotic" and the Federal Reserve is a good thing? - yeah, I'm not going to be hanging around to have coffee with you bro.

The bottom bouncing for me continues until I run out of what few resources I have left - and perhaps I'm in a race. A race between my own decision tree for existence AND this broken, disgusting, half-ass civilization we call "America" collapsing. But it's really not a race I can probably win, for the simple fact that the "system" is a black box for ordinary people - we don't know how many stratagems are left, how many gimmicks, how many more cycles of quantitative easing or stimulus. We simply don't know, if you're like me. They, TPTB, might not know either, but we wouldn't know that - it's mystery layered on enigma.

So yes - glad to be on Steemit for as long as I have the wherewithal to stick around ...

Might be another few weeks or months or even years ...

(God only knows)