Pride and Letting Go

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I've been thinking a lot about pride lately. I think it's so important to me because growing up I had none and now I have some and I'd like not to lose it. I like getting to enjoy being who I am. And for me, pride is an important component of that. It's the feeling you are somebody. And even if you can't protect your pride at all times, you can have faith in your belief that you'll fight over it or do something about it when people try you, because you are somebody, even if people try or succeed in knocking you over. I hate the idea of accepting your station in life, your station below other people as lesser than they are. And I'm not tricky enough to swallow insults and do something about it later in a trickier way. I'm not good at it. I'm not good at swallowing it. I'm not good at doing something about it in those ways. But maintaining that sort of pride, the more active form of pride, is very difficult because maybe it's different in other countries or other cultures, but I think the United States is infected with pride because it seems like everybody is either fighting over slights, real or perceived, or they are dealing out slights. There's no getting along with people. And I think that's exacerbated by how totally everybody is put down. And that creates this ugly cycle of trying to build ladders to climb back up and tearing each other down and then being brought into the ugly fold when you get torn down constantly, more than you already are. I think it's—I don't know the number. I know it is one of them. One of the rules of acquisition: Dignity in an empty sack is worth the sack. Pride feels like a trophy made out of some kind of metal that rusts very easily. It doesn't do anything other than maybe look pretty to you, but it costs constant and difficult, pricey maintenance. And why do you do the maintenance? Why do you pay the price? Because it allows you to feel like you exist. But keeping it up is painful.

I think pride is also the idea—or why it's so important—is it's the idea not just that you're somebody but also the hope or the dream that because you're somebody you could become even more. And if you let your pride get shattered or taken, then you lose the idea you could do anything because you've allowed people to destroy or steal your pride from you. So when you're lugging pride around, you're in a confusing and difficult spot because pride alone does nothing for you. But if you don't have it, then at least you feel like you can't do anything else or you'll never get anything else or you aren't worth anything else. And I understand that's not the case. People without pride, people without dignity get very far. They accomplish a lot. But let's think about comedians for a moment. Why is Patrice O'Neal so revered even though he was not super successful in the end versus someone like Kevin Hart? He's extraordinarily wealthy and famous. But if I had to choose which person I would want to be, I would prefer to be Patrice because he died with his pride and his dignity. He wasn't lesser than anybody else in non-quantifiable terms, even though so many other people were above him materialistically. But if you do want to succeed materialistically, unfortunately, you need to think hard about your pride.

And because of a few work things recently, I've been needing to re-evaluate my position on pride. Not just because this death-before-dishonor idea is risky, but mainly because it's so emotionally and mentally exhausting. Now, I've mentioned this work thing a few times now, but let's talk through it and then think about how it has led us to this point of re-evaluating pride and considering what to let go and when and how. I work for a nonprofit. We are sub-$100,000 in funds right now. Since I've joined up, we've been on a very slow upswing, but we haven't really been accomplishing our mission as well as we should, and we are bleeding money. Now, I think that's primarily because of our location, the facility, this big ancient [ __ ] off building in the middle of nowhere housing, I'd call them, the nerve centers of a few nonprofits. And for what that is, that's great: relatively low rent, centralized space, lots of resources and people and contacts right next to one another. But it's very, very bad for publicity and therefore donations and funding and even just general awareness, public awareness. If this is your only spot, this is your only face. You have one face and your face is hidden in a haunted mansion on the end of a road out in the middle of nowhere. And we've tried other methods. We've tried fundraisers. We've tried advertising. We've tried collaborations with other nonprofits. Nothing is getting people in the door outside the people who really need us. And even then, not even them. Other people are doing what we do better than we do, which is embarrassing, but we'll get to that. We are bleeding money. We are—we have no income. We have no donations. We have nothing. And our plan thus far has been to sit here and do nothing and wait for it to die. And that's not—that doesn't—that's not going to work for the organization and it's not going to work for me because I don't get paid enough to babysit this thing until it dies. If we keep going at the rate we're going, I won't have enough money. I don't bring in enough money for me to have enough money to relocate when we go under because going under for us at this location would be an inevitability.

So through a mixture of luck and hard work and teamwork, we finally put together a deal in which we could move somewhere that might—it's not guaranteed, but we might be able to succeed and it wouldn't cost us all that much more. And at the very last minute, the former president who stepped down, stepped out of that position, tried to butt back in and force us—and sneak—not to do it—to [ __ ] up all the work and doom us. And because of the influence he wielded and still wields to an extent, I had to fight him directly, very hard, to keep everybody on board because dumb [ __ ] nonprofits, it's all democratic. People should not be allowed to vote, or people should need to earn their right to vote. Not everybody should get a say, but they do. And I worked it and we're going through with the move. Now, that former president said—after I won everybody back, got—got the plan reconsolidated—he was just playing devil's advocate. But how do I know that's a [ __ ] lie? Because he's still complaining about all the [ __ ]—all the complaints he put together in his little missile attack at the last minute. He's still complaining about it all. And one of his liar—lying tells—because he lies a lot. He's a very private person. Normally, if he doesn't want to talk about something, he won't talk about it, or maybe he'll mention it once and then make a point of not going into greater detail. When he's lying to somebody, and I've watched him do it with so many other people, when he lies to them, every time he gets the chance, he will bring up that lie to them and try to reconvince them of the lie after he's already gotten away with it. It's like a tick or something. And he's been doing it with me about this playing devil's advocate thing. So, I know he's lying on that. I caught him in—or I have caught him in—another lie. I've been waiting on a raise since December when all that [ __ ] went down and it became clear that I needed a lot more money now. And that's still going on. I'm still saving. It's the waters appear to be clear, but the way things work, flip a switch—flip of a switch—it'll go—it will go really ugly again immediately for no apparent reason, and I won't be able to do anything about it. So, he's been talking with me about my raise for a long while now. And oh, he's fighting really hard to get me a raise, but I need to let him handle it. He's going to speak with our treasurer about it. And it's odd because our treasurer is very outspoken. And in hindsight, if he had been speaking with her about it, I think I would have heard something by now. But at that time, I hadn't.

Anyway, leading up to the raise discussion, I put together a wage increase justification sheet so I would have something—or a foundation—to argue on and so people would have something to look at and to be thinking about. And he said, when I gave it to him—gave copies to him—he would get one of those copies to the treasurer. Well, I found out after that meeting when it became clear that I was not going to get the raise and I—I had a bunch of additional copies with me just in case people had forgotten theirs. I gave one to the treasurer when they said I was not going to be getting a raise and the treasurer didn't really have anything to say—looked like a confused discussion thing. And she looked surprised when I gave her the—the sheet, which was odd because apparently they had been arguing about—apparently they had been arguing about my wages. And she had seen the sheet. And then I find out later she had not seen the sheet. He never gave it to her. Now maybe she's lying. Maybe she's making some kind of a power play because, again, to be fair, she has lied in the past, but when she lies, it's this emotional thing. And you can tell when she's lying because she's normally very sharp mentally. So when she lies, it'll seem like she's arguing in favor of something really stupid and you're confused because how does she not see this as stupid? No, she does see this as stupid. She just doesn't care. That's her form of lying. So maybe she is lying. I know they don't like each other very much. But contributing to my thoughts, she is not lying about this wage increase thing is now she's actively pushing harder to get me money in whatever way she can. Now again, maybe I'm a—I'm an idiot. I am an idiot. I—I am very easily controlled by promises. I haven't broken that stupid thing. I still—I don't know. My word is very important to me and I assume other people's words are as—as important to them and that's not the case. So maybe she's not really fighting. But we'll see. In any case, for both of them, there is a history of lying. And I see the way they lie—or the ways they lie. Everybody's a liar—everybody. And it's not just within my nonprofit. The last nonprofit I worked at, same thing. The last nonprofit I worked at, same thing. Everybody is lying at all times and I hate it. Why do you think I'm trying to get better at lying? And I'm good at omission lying. Or if I don't want you to know something, then I'm just never going to mention it at all. I'm not good at the forward-fabrication lying, but I'm working on that because you don't have an option. You need to—you need to be a good liar to succeed. Honesty—what honesty is—you're giving someone ammunition to shoot you in the face with later with their lies. I learned that the—the very hard way with law enforcement. You need—and it's hard. It's still hard for me. I'm getting better at it, but really, you need to assume everyone is lying to you about everything at all times. You're in a Yakuza game.

But anyway, let's think back to this former president for a little bit because this—he is the main attack on my pride and I would argue on the organization. He's the—the focus. Now, when I came in, the situation was bleak. But I thought everything was going to be okay because even though I'm not bringing in a ton of money, I can cover my expenses. I can treat myself a little bit within reason. And I thought my living situation was going to be okay. It's not. But at that time, whatever. I am happy to have a job. I am thankful I'm getting to develop these skills. And if nothing else, I am developing skills like a madman in a position like this. Now, because our organization has died multiple times, that's another thing to mention. Our organization, the specific charity we perform, we are the oldest in our entire state. That's something I take pride in. I am proud to be part of. We incorporated officially in the 70s and I still have that original document, but we have records going all the way back to the 50s. It's wild. But our organization has died and revived quite a few times over the years, always with different leadership, but always still with this—I don't want to say reverence because it's not—it's not reverence. It's more like an affection that grows on you toward the founders because they were weirdos, but they were trying to do something really good. And despite how far we've fallen, during the golden years, they were doing a lot of good. They were doing a lot of good. But anyway, we've—this is—we're on our very last legs. And this former president who ju—who recently stepped down was the one who reinvigorated this organization—this last time. But because the—the organization was basically dead, although there was a board, none of them were especially involved and nobody was committed. There was no momentum. So he did most of the heavy lifting. And because democracy—because giving people the right to vote is such a terrible idea—he needed to go behind their backs to do things very often, keep them out of it until something needed to be voted on. And when something needed to be voted on, they were instructed to vote on this thing. But otherwise, it was all done cloak-and-dagger style. And that was still the situation when I got in. And it's been the situation pretty much the entire time I've been here. Except now instead of just him doing the work and sneaking around, I'm helping with the work and not making a fuss when he sneaks around. To my credit, I—I'm sure if the light were shown on everything, people would accuse me of being a sneak, but even when I was letting it happen, I didn't like it. Because when you sneak like that, you're waiting for problems. And the more you sneak and the more you lie, the more ammunition you are giving to somebody who wants to hurt our organization. And I mentioned this a long time ago, you'd think nonprofits would all be on the same page, all want to help each one another. It's not the case. Nonprofits hate one another and they want to destroy one another even when they aren't even in competition with one another. And in a nonprofit, in a charity, why is there competition? It's sickening. I'll—I will never ever donate to a charity straight ever again. In fact, if you want to be a charitable person, don't send money and think you're being charitable because you aren't. That money is going toward payroll primarily or event planning primarily—operational [ __ ] Very little money goes toward the actual helping. Volunteer, be involved. You want to do good, that's how you do good. You don't give money to the organization. You use the organization as a diving board or jumping-off pad to do the good you want to do. And that's within charities that are really trying to do the right thing or the good thing. And that's one thing I will say about our charity. One of the reasons we have such big money problems is we do lose a lot of money trying to do the right thing, according to the founders' names and their wishes. But that doesn't change the fact we're a shitshow. Normal nonprofits trying to do the right thing are also shitshows. And that's like saying there is such a thing as a good nonprofit. We've said it before. We'll say it a million times. Most nonprofits—corporation donates lots of money to some charity or foundation for tax purposes and then what does that charity or nonprofit or foundation do? They hire contractors to do works or big projects and those contractors are usually owned or affiliated with that corporation or that wealthy individual in some way. Nothing has happened really other than some workers got paid in the middle and some wealthy granting organization got a big tax break. That's the way most nonprofits work. It's why they're so corporate. You go into a nonprofit, you expect people to be hippies. It's all yuppies.

Anyway, so his mode of being has been sneaking. And he likes to sneak. He likes to lie. He's a control freak. He likes to think—and I'm not saying he's not smart—but he likes to think he's a lot smarter than he is. And we got along because I didn't fight him on anything because I'm—I'm here to learn and here to get paid and I don't need to fight for more money or anything. And at the time, I wasn't super invested in the organization. And with his methods, he had a point because the board wasn't going to be involved. If we needed the board or if we tried to rely on the board heavily—on the board—or all on volunteers to get anything done, it wouldn't happen. And then with the control-freak stuff, fine. I might not agree with it, but right now—or in this situation—it's really not worth fighting over. And all the while this entire time he's been complaining about the board, criticizing the board for not being involved. And I agreed with him on it. They did very little. But at the same time, can you blame them? They aren't allowed to be involved and our organization sucks. So he decided to step down. He's tired of being president. He's tired of doing all this work; he's an old man, this and that, and it's time for other people to step up. And for some reason, instead of stepping down and remaining as a board member, he stepped down and gave away his right to vote, but he wants to stay involved. I'm not sure what the game plan was on that because I don't know if that was some kind of play to try to get more power, to try to get people to beg him to come back and then give him even more power in the bylaws. The stated reasons are not wanting to do the work and wanting other people to step up, but why, if that's your goal, to try to get other people involved and get other people into controlling positions, do you continue to try to be in control? And that's what I thought then, but I think it even harder now because to everybody's surprise, even the people who did step up—people stepped up. Everyone left got a lot more involved and they started getting even more people involved. We started building that momentum the moment he stepped out of the way. And now he's stepping in again to try to control everything because while he's not technically a member of the board or a voting member of the board, he is the head of a committee that basically controls all of our day-to-day operations. And he can be removed; he can be voted out, but that would require a vote. So he retained a lot of power for himself and now that people are getting more involved, he has a big issue with it. And that—trying to stop the move from going through thing—that hurt me personally. That felt like a very big betrayal. That felt like even more of a betrayal than this money thing because what are you doing? Someone a while ago within the—let's say—outer rings mentioned it feels like he wants this organization to fail and I thought about that but I didn't give it a tremendous amount of credence because he was the one who revived it. Why would you put in all this work to revive something if your end goal is to run it into the ground? But recently, it seems like that's—that's what it is. It seems like he's doing everything he can to [ __ ] this up. I mean, appear to be helpful on the front end while cutting out everyone's legs from underneath them on the back end, which is what he does. I just—I'm hurt that he would do it to me. Well, that's another thing. You need to pay very close attention to the way people around you treat other people, especially in negative ways, because if they aren't doing it to you now, they will eventually. That's a rule that doesn't just hold up here, but it always shocks and hurts me when I realize it in life. I don't know what the game or the reasoning is, but it has been a pattern. I mentioned earlier the controlling thing. Anytime I would try [Music] to start some initiative to maybe make things work while we still had the money and the time, it would get snubbed before we could even take it to the board or I could even take it...

To the board. Anyway, a new set of issues have cropped up, and they're so obnoxious I can't stop being angry about them.

Recent example: one he insisted we contact him about because he has some kind of big trailer or whatever to move a bunch of stuff. And the day before we were scheduled to get this bigger group in of volunteers to help move all this stuff and use his trailer, he cancels. I saw that coming from a mile away, and I had a secondary plan together, and we still managed to make the day productive. But why is it pettiness? Is it trying to make yourself appear to be valuable and then retract so people can feel like losing you is some great loss? It wasn't.

Next one. Without getting into specifics, we have access to one resource that even if the community, our community, chooses not to use it—and the argument was, well, nobody was using it—well, nobody was using it because we're in the middle of a rock in the middle of nowhere. So, of course, nobody's using it. But let's say they continue not to use it in this new location. This resource still makes us look good in or when we're applying for grants. It's still a resource for us because we can say it's a resource for the community even if the community isn't using it. He wants to get rid of all of it. Oh, and that's another double-back thing. He told me in private he wants to throw it all away. When I say I don't want it thrown away, he gets mad at me in front of a bunch of people and says, "Well, we wouldn't throw it away. We would donate it." Um, you lied again. First, second, I can use politer words if you don't want me to bruise your vagina, but the key here is we *not* have it. No have, no more have. And what's the reasoning behind we no have? Or what is the reason for no have anymore?

Once again, without getting into specifics, it's the equivalent of: I want to throw away this very expensive vacuum cleaner because the cardboard box we store it in is really valuable, and I want to put things in the cardboard box. And okay, let's say we're not going to throw away the very expensive vacuum cleaner. You're going to donate. Let's say you're going to donate it. Firstly, who's going to line up the donation? It's a really big [ __ ] vacuum cleaner. This would take time to organize. And then really, who would want it? Because although it's expensive, it's kind of a piece of [ __ ]. Who's going to organize that? If we need to get rid of it, why don't we sell it and at least benefit us in some way? But the board—because that's another thing—he'll try to spring things on people and then give them half the story and then get them to vote on it without the time to think about it or without the full picture to think about it clearly. That's one of the ways he's used to getting his way. But I made sure this time, and I didn't say he was the one who was proposing it. I put together a list of these proposals from anonymous board members for the board to consider. First, they're in favor of throwing it away, or excuse me, giving it to someone who's really going to care about it instead of selling it or keeping it as a resource, which is what I would like to do. Or even my adjusted proposal, which was: well, let's donate half of it and keep half, and I'm good enough. I can still argue as if we had the entire thing. They don't want to do any of that. They want to get rid of it, and they're mad at me for not wanting to donate to the garbage can—value.

Then we have another example. We have a large—well, not super large—but we have a historical collection of, let's say, the founders' lives. And the founders were not just important to our area but really important to the state. They have—I guess that family has been very important to this state for a very long time. We have a bunch of stuff giving insight both into their lives, lives as philanthropists, and from that era going all the way back to World War I, actually. Former president wants to donate that all to a state university a few hundred miles away. Why? Because it's in disrepair, and we aren't maintaining it, and it's not going to be maintained. My issue with that is it's not that we haven't made any efforts to maintain it because *you* stopped me from taking efforts to maintain it. Either maintaining it myself or getting somebody in here with grant money to maintain it.

And I'm agitated about this for a few reasons. Let's start with the reptilian one. This is another big historical value-add, especially in the eyes of granters. We could probably get grants worth more money than we have in the bank to get professionals in here to maintain it for us. That alone is good value. Money, again, money goes all over the place when grants start happening. We could benefit from this not just by maintaining and building up this preservation. We could maintain or we could benefit from this monetarily and do it within guidelines. Do it legally. And then in other grants, especially history-adjacent grants, once we get the preservation ball rolling, that's another thing that looks really good for grants. It's another thing that looks really good to the public. It's another thing you can say you have and you maintain and you make available to people to inspire philanthropy in the entire world. But you don't want anybody to preserve it. But you're making the argument we should donate it to somebody who doesn't know them, doesn't care, so they can preserve it. Even though we could, even with our resources right now, [ __ ] grants. We could preserve what we have. We have the resources and the ability to do it. So, we're gonna give it away because it's not being done, but you're stopping it. You've always stopped it from being done. What's going on there?

Working in a nonprofit, working in a charity, trying to help people and uplift people will turn you to fascism quicker than anything else will. And on that one, the board hasn't really made up its mind on that either.

Oh, yeah. And then on the more personal side, not just the reptilian money side. When I got into this organization, it felt weird. Almost living in the shadow of these people who people tell me are supposed to be great, but I don't really know them. I don't really know if they're great. But then you learn about them, and the things people love them for are not why I have come to appreciate them. I appreciate them because they're creeps. They almost feel like cultists, and it really feels like some really [ __ ] up esoteric [ __ ] was going on with them the more you look into them. And coincidentally, when I first got in, I felt a weird uninviting presence where I was. You know, I work in a bit of a dungeon. But that has gone away, and it's actually gone on to other people. Other people feel really uncomfortable in this building because apparently they used to own the entire building, and then that went away. But now I'm essentially one of the only people in that facility that feels safe in there. Everybody else is jumpy, terrified of the weirdo lights. Like ghosts are going to come get them. Maybe they are going to come get them. They aren't going to come get me. The ghosts are on my side. The ghosts are creeps the same way I'm a creep, I think, or I like to think. So I feel a bit of a debt to them, to the original founders, to try to keep this going and to try to keep their essence with us because there are founders, and we owe them. We owe them at least the effort.

And then there are a slew of other things that are not strictly right now related but have been going on for a long time. Like with the complaining about people not getting involved and people not working on anything. He reduces the number of things we do and then did it again in a sneaky way. So, we're doing almost nothing while complaining about people not getting involved or people not doing anything. Complaining about professionalism, saying he wants everything to look very professional when he can't spell. He does pompous speech. He writes all our copy, and it looks bad when the grammar is bad. Words are misspelled. The writing is stilted. And he's tried in the past, he's tried to challenge me on my grammar a few times, but I got that shrunken white on me. I keep that thing on me. So, and or when he pushes or has pushed on that front, he'll back off, but then continue to do what he was doing. I don't get that. I've—you have forced me to sh—I wasn't correcting him, or I didn't go to him to correct him. I corrected him only after he came at me. I have now shown you the correct way to do things, and you continue to do them incorrectly. And then there's this complaining over other people or other organizations doing underhanded things and then doing those underhanded things right back to them. I don't like that. That's another thing that invites trouble. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe that's what you should do. But if you're going to underhand people who have underhanded you, don't complain as if they shouldn't be underhanding you. Adjust the rules of the game. Example, the lying. I don't like lying, but at this point, I'm—it's hard to say something is wrong when everybody is doing it. So, I'm adjusting. I still don't like lying. It still hurts me personally when people lie to me or at me. But these are the rules of the game. And it's my problem if I can't adjust. What I don't like is this acting like this is this ultimate evil thing and then participating in it and then continuing to call it wrong. Is it wrong? If it's wrong, then don't do it. If it's just the way the game goes, you can say it sucks or you can say you hate them. But what is it? Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Oh, and that's another thing: responsibility. It really gets under my skin when he wants something discussed, but he doesn't want to be the one responsible for it or held accountable for it. So, in the past, he'll get me to bring something up, and then he'll act like it was my idea. And I [ __ ] hate that. If you think something, be a man and stand behind it. I hate that [ __ ] But it seems to work. That's another thing I don't understand. Most of the other people in the organization, board members or auxiliary volunteers or this or that, most of them are women, and they've been working with him longer than I have. And it seems like none of them have caught on to the way he does things. What's the deal with this? Is this a woman thing, or is this a—or is the fact they haven't caught on just speaking to the merits of the effectiveness of the way he does things? At least in the short term. Is this actually the way you're supposed to get your way by being a sneak?

Anyway, that's 30 minutes. It's nice to get all that off my chest, but how does this all relate to pride? I think I need to figure out how to let go. Let things go. Stepping into typology for just a moment, I think FI gets fed up when it views something as wrong, and TI gets fed up when it views something as incorrect. And I have gotten a lot better about letting things go I think are incorrect, and that did help me a lot. But I am not good at letting things go when someone is [ __ ] with me or things I care about. And the reason this idea of letting things go bugs me so much, or is because how much do you deem okay to let go? Because if you embrace letting go, then you let go of everything. And then not only have you lost everything, but also you're a doormat. But if you let nothing go, then you're in the position I'm in right now, which is spontaneous bruising on the arms, inability to sleep, freaky nightmares, and lots and lots and lots of anger.

That one resource, the giant vacuum cleaner. Fine. I think I have it in me to let that go. That's really [ __ ] stupid, but I'll let that go. It's another thing we are losing that it's like throwing away life jackets while you're drowning. You're going to donate, excuse me, another one. Not to another person, just—just we know have. That's [ __ ] [ __ ] But I don't care, or I think I have it in me not to care about that. But then you get into the founders' history thing. The reason it's being proposed we should know have it is a reason that somebody imposed—that *you* imposed—and if you got the [ __ ] out of the way, we could take care of it. It wouldn't just be good for the organization on numerous levels, but it would also be fulfilling the debt we owe to the people who started this thing. You're standing in the way of it. You are the reason things are not getting done, yet you're complaining about things not getting done.

I feel like, or I'm beginning to feel like, that's another thing I should just let go and not give a [ __ ] about. But unfortunately, that's something I do care about. And the reason we're even having this dumb discussion is because of somebody being a shitty little sneak. And this is what frustrates me about people, right? Because I guarantee you some people look at the title of the video and maybe have watched the video up to this point and, dummy, they think, "Okay, pride is bad. You should let go of things because that's the good thing to do." But what does it mean? People—people—I—people are so goddamn [ __ ] stupid. They can't think in any capacity more complicated than the basic and the sentimental and the sloganified—the Hallmark movie. This situation, this particular one, is a matter of pride, but I think it's in a situation in which pride is operating on the good side of things, and letting go is on the bad side of things. Because what happens if you let go and stop engaging in the sin, the sin of pride? What happens? A sneak gets talons into the legacy of some people, some dead people.

I like, and I've thought about it. You know, you're right. If we donate this, if we know have it to a state university, maybe—I'm sure they would take it because it's valuable. I'm sure they would preserve it, but they wouldn't care about it. I guarantee you, I'm an academic. I know how we operate. It would, for them, be the same thing it would be to a different nonprofit. It would just be a thing to sell, and it would be far away from the place this all started, among people who don't really know them, don't really give a [ __ ] about them. So, you're right, it would be preserved, but it's this sneaky shitty little thing. It's—I don't think for him preservation has anything to do with it because if it did, he would have been on board with the preservation grants two years ago, and he wasn't, or even basic preservation efforts two years ago, and he wasn't actively against them. Do you have some kind of grudge against these people? I don't get it. That's another thing because when I got in, preserving their legacy was one of his big things, or at least it appeared to be. But then whenever any actual preservation would come up, he'd be against it. I don't get it. And because this is a democracy, I don't know. It's—I think I could persuade people into my point of view, but you bleed every time you do something like this. I had to bleed to force the move through. And that was so stupid because everybody was on board with it. But then suddenly [ __ ] says we shouldn't, and then everybody cowers, and then you'd say, okay, well, you need to be the one who stands up to him and this and that, but it's—and then everybody will come and follow behind you, but that's not the way it works. You fight, and then everybody will fight on the side they think is going to be the winning side unless you alone pull through, and then they side with you because that's the way people work, too. I don't know. I don't know what to do.

Oh, and that's another thing. He lied—implied he had cancer to get me to let my guard down and be really concerned for him. And I did. Stupid me. I did. He mentioned losing lots of weight. So what did I—what did stupid me do? Took time, my personal time, and tried to write him this essentially a bulking plan for a non-lifter to up his weight. And what was he—what was he doing while I was doing that? If you want to get anything done, if you want to succeed in any way, if you want to be somebody, and not just be somebody, but stand for anything that matters, it's like you need to kill the part of yourself that cares about things that matter. It's like you can't have or protect anything nice unless you have destroyed your ability to care about it or appreciate it. I don't like being a shitty person, but how else are you going to develop the muscle you need to protect things you care about that are good unless you become so sharp and so cold you don't—it's not about giving something a chance or this or that. It's about knowing what the few things that should be protected and all the things that should be destroyed frankly, with no—what's the word—no something given for appearances. You need to know what something is at its core instantly and have the nerve and the power to act instantly. And it makes me question—letting go is supposed to be this really good thing, this selfless thing, this healing and growing thing. But when you look at letting go, what's really happening there? It's selfishness. When you let go, you take away or give away the responsibility, your responsibility to care about something. And in relation to pride, because I think that's the way letting go is usually framed, maybe that makes a little more sense. But even then, what are you without pride? Are you so humble and so selfless you're not going to give a [ __ ] about the things you should give a [ __ ] about? I'm not sure. I think I'm most upset because this is another thing. This is another attack on the pride. I'm probably not really going to have a choice in this. My gut tells me I need to let go of this. And even because it's not just going to be letting go and someone—a sneak—getting their way. It's going to be petty [ __ ] going on there, too. My gut says let go. Stop the attachment. You're fighting for no reason. This is not going to benefit you in any way. Fighting never benefits you in any way. The smartest, most effective thing to do in this situation, I know, is letting go. And I hate it. [ __ ] I hate it. And I don't think it's just about the pride. I think it's also the fact—if you want to succeed, I mean, you can talk all this [ __ ] everything [ __ ] you want, but there's still part of you that wants goodness, that wants humanity, that wants decency. And people and reality at every turn force you into situations you can't be human, you can't be decent, you can't be good. So you—it's just a long line of losing your humanity piece by piece. So, I think I'm going to try to let go, but I hate it. And I hate slogans, and I hate sentiments, and I hate people. And I don't understand why things need to be like this. All I can hope is there is a seat at the Archon's table for me one day. That's what I want. Like if you enjoyed. Subscribe if you haven't.