By all outward measures i am a looser, a failure and a parasite to society. At best I might be a lover to reckless young women, but I don’t even provide that service. If anyone calls me a douche bag I say “Douche bags get closer to vaginas than I do. Your insult is a fallacy.”

But am I a looser for struggling to participate in a profoundly insane society and keep my humanity? I am not offering apology for my laziness and unnecessary existential angst. I am simply making space to forgive myself for not fitting in.

Since we have so much in common, i.e. we are both homo sapiens living in an environment we are not well adapted to, we can find common ground no matter the origin of your alienation. Our problems are different btu we all need a place for humans…..imagin…A Place for Humans. Real humans. Not apes posing as techno-gods. Our crown achievement, the smart phone, kinks our brain stems thus decreasing “nerve conduction velocity.” In short that means our “text neck” is exactly making us retarded (retarded simply means ‘slower’)

How do we create a cohesive society given the technology available to us? I don’t know. That’s why I dropped out.

However, yesterday I realized that I hadn’t dropped out at all. I quite my job selling shoes because I could not sell a product I don’t believe in. I went back to door dash which is arguably worse. I drive around burning gas and facilitating craving for high carbon foot print foods. Ergo, shame.

I imagined a happy time in my past. I taught fishing for 4 summers at a boy scout camp. Then it occurred to me that even in that time I was teaching young children that it’s okay to torture small animals for sport. Even in my happiness I found shame.

Where is my pride. What value can I offer. I can post silly thoughts on my blog in hopes of making a stranger chuckle at my hipster quandaries. I could post videos about being a looser and make everybody else feel better about themselves….like Jerry Springer. Everybody feels like a good person after watching Jerry Springer.

Or maybe you’ll feel like I’m the one winning the game of life. Its hard to tell. I’m lonely and poor but I have weathered the storm of the artificial society and I barely have my nose above the technocratic waters. I have my health. Since i have few friends I can eat super foods for breakfast lunch and dinner.

The world seems perfectly ridiculous to me. People worry about my health living on the street. That’s the big joke. I eat healthier than most people because I spend so much money every month on super foods. Sedentary lifestyles are killing us. I treat every pizza I carry as an opportunity to use my biceps. I walk all the time.

My van is my cave and my horse. I am savage. The shoes i used to sell only make us weak. Walk barefoot and discover your personal trainer. Your trainer lies between your soles and the Earth.

Van life and shame? NVM. I am simply coping in a maladaptive way just like everybody else…mostly

……I dressed as a Native American at a red white and blue party here in Marin California? I mean is ant o go on a tirade about the massacre of natives. But everybody knows and no one cares.

I can light a cigarette by rubbing two sticks together. They cannot ignore me. I wont have to say anything. But I’ll be saying loud and clear “The Red Man is not amused by your Manifest Destiny)

My dad always brings up the fact that most of Native Americans were killed by disease and not European malice. As if that where to creat space for forgiveness since at the end of the day the genocide was not really white peoples fault. By some measures up to 90% of natives were killed by disease before and colonist contact.

Suppose I raped a bus full of kids. But afterwards by no fault of my own the bus went off a cliff. How do you think the judge would respond if I said “You’re right I did rape a bus full of kids but to be fair all those kids are dead now. Can we just let by gones be by gones and let me off scott free?

They acctually believe this was God’s plan. To build a red white and blue America. I can roll with that. I’m just saying is there anything wrong with God if he wants to manifest a new destiny? A destiny that blends indigenous wisdom with objective sciences.

Can we manifest new destiny?

Manifest destiny and American exceptionalism are just ways of saying. “Hey all you people that lack might. Fuck you. We are here to play out way of life that is incongruent with nature but it works with the traditions of empire. We know it cant last forever. That’s why we are going to Mars next”

How do you forgive Nazis?

I usually dont run truly barefoot but I’ve run up to 5 miles before.

I’m my imagination barefoot running as a way for me to have fun with others, break free of corporate lies about the importance of arche support and all the shoes compansating for supination and pronation. (There are many good minimal shoe companies but they know how to charge!)

There is a place for orthotics to be sure. However, the message is this: “The genius design of your feet is not enough. You need the help of modern technology”

Last time I ran a 10k I was wearing my primitive style hemp sandals. People looked at me as if I was doing a magic trick running with barely any shoe.

Am I super human? No. I’m just a regular human living a in a profoundly insane society. Walking barefoot was the biggest life hack. I became a much better athlete after respecting the sense of my soles. Every time I put my foot on hard ground my whole body had to respond with softened.

In undergrad I asked myself “what is the perfect walking and running form?” After bare footing or near bare footing for almost 2 years I found tat the best for is formless.

There is one way to walk in hard flat ground. Another way to walk on slippery kitchen floors. Another way to walk on rocky trails and another for running on grass.

How does one know what from is best? It’s simple. Do not cram your foot into a form (shoe). Your soles will tell you how high to lift your knees, how gently put down your foot. Your soles will even tell you where to put your shoulders and your head.

I know this sounds weird but you just have to trust yourself and try bare footing.

Buildup slow, walk. Dont run! Dance, dont run. Wax on and wax off barefoot, but DON’T RUN. Side step, hop, skip, DON’T RUN. When you can skip barefoot you are ready to run. A lot of us runners have hurt themselves in minimal shoes because we thought the magic was in the shoes. It’s actually in your foot muscles which where never developed because we have been wearing shoes since our muscles were growing as children.

“The human foot is a masterpiece iof engineering and work of art” -Leonardo DaVincci

I know what you are thinking “But, Garrett. What about all the science about orthotics. Are you saying all the podiatrists have their head up their asses?

Yes.

Or perhaps they just have their motives in their wallets. You cannot buy your own innate wisdom! But plenty of people, gurus, doctors, therapists and life coaches will sell it to you anyway.

OK so what are people really saying to me where they say thinks like “People are different that the paleo days”

What they are saying tio me is “I’m a coward and I fear realization that all my money and time invested in shoes selection was a waste of time. I’d rather look like an athlete sooner, not later, by cheating with orthotics,getting out on the road and imitating running than actually becoming an athlete. Besides Garrett, your training routine looks like you openly invite pain into every step of your life. Please don’t remind me that life is suffering”

When I started barefoot walking I said to myself “Is walking really this difficult? Nowadays I say “Is walking really this easy?”

All of modern life is life this. We run from pain only to find more pain than we left.

My body is a prosthetic for my soul. My soles need only the thinnest prosthetics. I am technology.

I have been working for a family of Trump supporters for the past 2 or 3 months. I mostly just dont talk but ti has been a curious experience. They are very nice guys and cool people to be around. However, fear and loathing underscores there world.

Needless to say I have been seeking some common understanding and we argues some one night only to discover that I’m much more well read and they they are niot irrational people. They are simply not aware of certain factors and ideas.

But we are both ignorant on certain things. I mean to adddress the emotion behind all the rationalization.

One of them accidentally told me the true fear. One said with out any insistence or patriotism that “We already have a culture. We eat burgers on the 4th of July. Immigrants will have to join our culture.”

Then I realized this Trump supporting isn’t a racism thing. Or at least it need not be one. They fear a loss of what they think of as America, her red, white, and blue, culture. My wild speculation is that if every immigrant took it upon themselves to sport the colors and eat burgers instead of tacos then the Trump supporters would breathe a big sigh of relief.

They misunderstand who America is. In my mind America is freedom and The Constitution. Not our culture. Our culture is an immigrant culture. Unless you are Native American.

Trumpers are upset about immigrants coming to “Our country,” while ignoring that we are all immigrants.

Colonists went around the world bringing colonized people European culture to them.

I’m not even gonna say that ther is anything wrong with imposing your culture on another people. That’s just manifest destiny right?

But if you are a real patriot then somehow Americans are an exception to the rule because this is God’s county.

If a Trumper goes religious on me I cannot argue.

However, I have now met some Trumpers that are not religious at all. My baseless accusation is that they have replaced Christian religion with American civil religion. This article explains half of my case. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion

This idea can be portrayed as a good or a bad thing depending on which side of the fence you are on. GK Chestersone described Amrerica as “the only nation…founded on a creed” and “A nation with the soul of a church.”

So if America is a quasi-religious establishment and many members, such as myself, are deeply critical then American civil religion member (dem and rep) would naturally take offense to malcontents benefiting from the very freedoms they fight to protect.

I mean even the fact that I can complain about my government freely proves the value of the government, right?

What they do not appreciate is the college educated hippie perspective that one of the reasons the USA is so successful is the virtues of our culture. The other is that colonialism is alive and well, albeit much more complicated.

Indeed so complicated I cannot explain it. I have only read books about it. Ok Ill try.

Consider that Latino immigrants are crossing the border because their small family farms have been displaced by Monsanto/GMO crops. They say “You should be greatful that you don’t live in poverty in Mexico.

Yes I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to contribut to a transnational corporation that bitched brown people around the world. Ummm,. I’m suppose I’m greatful for having the oppotunity too feed the devil instead of being his victim?

II do try to not give Monsanto so much money by buying a good deal of my food from a farmer I trust.

So this post started with Trump supporters and ended with Monsanto.

I wonder if they have heard of Monsanto? We are living in wildly different worlds of information. Is educating people even a good idea. I think not.

It seems like they live in fear of a certain death of the America they knew. America is changing. Evolve.

The Story of That Something in summary is an invitation to faith and I hope it will be a faith different from that which you may have learned in church.

Its a wonderful story of a real man, B.J. Plamer, the developer of chiropractic, but if I share it with others I will really just be encouraging myself.

It is a story that it’s designed to be told and retold and retold again. It’s a pity that this story was not part of my first (and so far only) year in chiropractic college.

Chiropractic, in some circles, namely Life university and Life West colleges, can carry and evangelical vibe about the profession. The Story of That Something is a such a vehicle for the spiritual aspects of chiropractic.

Of course our people who want to be seen as people of secular reason turn their noises up at Spirit. They are not my audience.

Too make a decision means to cut away. I’m at a point in my life where I must cut certain things away so that I may invest fully in one or a few things.

Given that I’m not entertained by the Hunger Games or The Game of Thrones I see an opportunity to have fun with my culture instead of hating it.

I think i might want to be a performer. UGH! Why? Because life coaching is important bussiness and people basically need too be comforted with the assurance that their lives will be fun now matter what change happens. IDK about you, but I don’t like change. I’m guessing change is best served with a side of entertainment.

Well, I suppose jokes are so important because the first nobel truth always comes back to rear its ugly head. The irony is too painful to hear with out a sense of humor.

I paraphrase the truth as such: Your pain isn’t your problem. The fact that you think pain is a problem is your problem.

Im still working on the way out of suffering (or should i just stop trying IDK) but I think it has something to do with That Somthing.

I’ll take a stab at defining That Something. It’s faith or prayer and how absolutely real it is.

We experience prayer as a mystical phenomenon but it might not need to be. For example, I may pray for somthing to come into my live and it shows up because God answers! Or was I simply not paying any attention to the asnwers that I was simply blind to until I put my mind in a mental posture to be observant? My guess is both are mechanisms of prayer.

Faith or active trust in a priciple I don’t fully control, like trusting a parachute. However Faith seems to be a very funny creature. We hear all about how well faith work in religious traditions, however I’m not convince that there is not a health dose of biology to respect.

So us primates have this monkey-see-monkey-do thing. We respond to others according to the social cues they give us too. So if a human primate gives indications of he has faith in himself I others will also believe and then lift him upon and fulfill a prophesy based on nothing but faith and then it becomes real.

IMO the primate tendency to be change by our perceptions of others and our perceptions of ourselves is the very water our mind swims in or the lense with which we experience reality. It is so intimately part of us that we think it’s a mystical experience when we are really just participating in the most complex form of primate communication.

Ok thats a bit convoluted but let me give an example from some pick up artists. Women will respond positively to men that have an air of self entitlement about them. While this attitude is officially unacceptable women (American women anyway) reward it anyway. Why? Because some guys really do come from wealthy families and they feel entitled, women prick up on it as a cue that he has resources to spare and thusly become attracted.

My point is that people will give you power if you give them encouragement. I suspect that courage is a most rare resource, because civilization gives us so many reasons to fear.

Hence is why life coaches are becoming an infestation. I’m a loser by com ion defintions but I have courage few have. I may not have much influence over society yet, but people find my life fascinating because society has very little power over me. Be encouraged. Living in a mini-van in Marin is actually kinda cool.

This is not a depressing post believe it or not. I’m not often feeling such um…I think equanimity is the word. Living in my van I have many inconveniences. The most perennial problem is looking for a shady spot to chill a minute and keep my ice chest cooler.

Recently I’ve take no to the perspective that being comfortable is often too difficult to justify the effort.

I say “It’s ok, I’ll just suffer more” and laugh out loud. I realized how twisted I have become a few days ago.

So I locked my keys in my car and struggled with it in the sun for about 20 minutes. After I unlocked it I got an applause from the folks at the bar across the street. I had no idea they were watching. So I waved and had a moment of celebration.

Then I pulled my towel off the top of my van. I had forgotten that I had placed a rock I was using as a hammer on the towel.

It fell right on top of my big toe

And I laughed.

No ouch. No “Jesus!” No resentment. The emotion was “of course I’m experiencing randomly pain again. Whatever. This neutrality toward pain is such an unusual mix of feelings that I must laugh.”

Am I just that cynical? No, I know that it was my karma. I put it there. If everything is my fault then why did I make the universe hit my toe with a rock?

It must be because I hate myself. I ought to stop doing that. It hurts.

How do I love myself? Just asking the question is a good place to start. I’ve heard in church that the faucet is the first to get the water. So loving others is a way to experience self love.

But I digress from the title of this post. I’m sick of I comfort. Well that’s good news because making connections with others hurts me. Well it doesn’t hurt per se, but connections remind me of the complexity of the human dramas.

My own drama is plenty thank you. Who the fuck am I thanking! Your the internet. No one is reading this blog.

Ok, I guess I’m saying that I’m tolerant of physical discomfort to the point that typical Americans would regard me as a masochist. E.g. I sit on the ground more than in chairs. I could complain about it or I could just get used to sitting on the ground.

However! When it comes to social discomfort I become a total pussy. (Lets not use that word. I prefer the term ‘coward’ which is really more accurate.)

You know what it is. With physical pain its here and it goes. It’s transitory. The pain of society is infinite and incecently demanding of attention…..well thats what it feels like in the social media world.

Ok I’ll admit that society and friends of any kind annoys me but social media just makes it that much worse. The dinger of interruption via false pocket gods (smart phones) reminds me of Harrison Bergeron. It’s a short dystopian story where the more intelligent people are required to have thought interruption devices installed in their heads to promote equality.

Anyway, barring my prejudice against the medium of social media human drama is……oh shit.

I just realized an alternative way for me to connect with people instead of social media: staged drama.

What’s the niche in the market right now? What aren’t people doing? Spoken word and other LIVE performances.

Well fuck me sideways. Is this the choice? Come out the closet (or van in my case) via social media or live performance? Everybody just needs a damned singing dancing monkey to relieve them from there boring ass lives in this poor excuse for a homo saipan habitat.

Why do we lust after entertainment so desparately that a Netflix binge is considered normal and not a cry for help? And some of us binge on stuff that makes us uncomfortable. Like Mr. Robot. Fsociety. We actually crave discomfort because we can’t experience discomfort from our couch. Erebody need some yin for dey yang mutha fucker!

Well thanks internet. I’m glad we had this disccussion. My next move will be to read and rehears the following story so I can entertain people live and in person. It’s one of my favorites. It’s called “The Story of That Something.” http://ithacachiropractic.com/story-something/

My life coach advised me to keep a daily blog to both attract clients and organize my thoughts. Then I stumbled upon a podcast with Tim Ferris interviewing Seth Golden (both are super nerds). Seth said keeping a daily blog was on his top five list of best business discissions.

I was getting nothing done today due to too many thoughts running around in my head. So now I’m here sharing some angst with the internet. Anyway, I just thought of something to blog about just by sitting down with an overpriced beer at Buffalo Wild Wings.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.