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I’ve been going through this phase of drinking. All my imagined spiritual leaders that I’ve created for myself to help guide me don’t really have a problem with it. It is, after all, better than smoking pot. Or doing meth. Or snorting oxycontin. But by that logic, xanax is better too (if you’re prescribed) and I think xanax happens to be one of the most dangerous drugs out there. So my logic doesn’t work when you go all the way down but I’m ok with that.

It’s just down another rabbit hole for me, drinking. I mean, it makes you stupid. It transports you to another world. It’s a lot like pot (it makes me hungry) in many ways. It’s relaxing. It could pretty much be replaced with smoking pot every day—it’s about on that level of addiction/intoxication. Except for me, pot might exascerbate my symptoms of schizophrenia. Overall, drinking beer is just a fun way to pass the time. But I recognize the problems.

We have an office on main street in broken bow. My great grandma works there, and my grandpa is there sometimes. They found beer in the computer room where I play on my gaming computer. They told me not to “make the office your beer joint.” But really I only drank two beers. I think you drink more at a beer joint, and I think they’re being assholes, but whatever. I was totally edgy when they accused me of this, and they asked why I had to be so abrasive and I was like, because fuck you!

But I had a great talk with my great grandma when I was up there. I just really value our conversations, and she’s so fortunate to not have problems with dementia like my other great grandma (apparently) has. She is very lucid and understands everything I say, even when I get complex. I started to talk about how a car wasn’t really an asset that I valued, even though my grandpa insists that the savings I’ve saved up is for a car. I already have a car! But I told her I realized he values luxury items, or assets, or whatever, things like cars not things like apartments, which eventually have no value. It told her this really goes against what I believe in, because I don’t think a man is the sum of what he owns. But I’m forced to accept this mindset because my grandpa won’t fucking let me leave. My grandpa tells me he’s trying to teach me a lesson about money, but what he’s really teaching me is that it can be difficult to live on social security—I make way less than I would if I had an actual job.

What I was really surprised my great grandma understood is when I said that my grandpa was just making the gap between the rich and the poor greater when he charges me so much to live with him (almost 50% of my check) and she fuckin’ nailed it when she said that’s exactly what the protestors are protesting in NY and all over the country. It’s almost like I’m cheating, I have such a perfect example of what they’re protesting in my home environment. And I chalk it to my grandpa understanding corporate values and then just pushing them as far as he can, regardless of whether or not they’re good values.

But really, I have no choice but to accept this shit. I called him when I got home from the office and asked him how much it would cost to buy this house. It would be a nice asset to have right? I just started thinking on his terms, and I can tell he really enjoyed it. I mean, I could play the greed game, and just spend all my energy saving up money and investing it in houses and cars but I have one major problem. I don’t know if I’m competant enough to aquire that much capital. And thus, “they” have won, because “they” believe that the people who can’t make money don’t deserve to have it. But on the flipside, I don’t think that behavior is very Jesus-like. And trust me, “they” think they are one with Jesus. I honestly have spiritual problems with equating fortune with actual monetary fortune. I know people that do amazing, amazing things on a five-figure income. I just don’t want to reveal who they are and put them on the spot like that.

When I asked him about buying this house, he mentioned renting-to-own but he said that he had a different house in mind for me to rent-to-own, it just needed some work done on it. And he said that he couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it and that he’d have to do it himself. And he suggested I help him. He said I could learn a thing or two. Now at this point, I balk. I honestly do not want to learn this shit. I might be really stuck up, but I can only reference the John Lennon song “working class hero,” but I honestly do not want to be involved in manual labor because, frankly, I would feel like a fucking slave. You know those people who “respect” workers? They’re a higher class than the workers. They have to respect the workers or they have to do the shit themselves. It’s not something to be proud of, to be a working class hero. I don’t want to learn how to fix houses, I want to learn how to write short stories. It’s just another difference I have with my grandpa. And I really believe doing manual labor makes me a slave. I just don’t want to learn that shit.

Oh by the way, I moved into a nice two bedroom house two houses away from where my mom lived last year. It’s really nice, two bedrooms that I have no use for except to fill up with awesome furniture and whatnot. Televisions. My kitchen doesn’t have enough room for a fridge so I also plan to put a mini-fridge in one of the bedrooms. And when I have enough money, I’ll buy mixing equipment and get to making that album. If only I had more money.

And that’s another place I’m disappointed. My grandma spends 1000% of what I have to spend a month, total, before I pay rent—she spends it on stupid shit too. If they would give me some of that money, I could be a national fucking success, travelling across the country doing writing workshops or meeting artists or I could just stay here and buy some really nice equipment then perform in OKC, which one of my friends made out to be a really valid option for creative people. And I am very creative. I feel like I’m constantly the artist, and also that this new plan, the result of them making it impossible for me to move where I want, is going to take some real creativity to be successful. But I can’t keep drinking. That’s just a stopgap for my real life. It’s helping a lot, I think I’ve already had three beers and it’s only 1:30. Go me!

My plan is to live in two places, with a house in broken bow to spend my time in the summers and whatnot. An alternate plan is to live here full time and invest in music equipment so I can write an album. I like the both plans but they both require a job. You can’t live a life of having stuff on my income at the moment.