Casually Compromised - Book 1

What you Want, What you Get

It was happening again.

There are periods in my life where I experience ample amount of connection, meaning, synchronicity. I'm rather obsessed with synchronicity actually, that being defined as: the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. The online websites really didn't do the word justice. To me synchronicity occurred at peak times of emotion, creative intake, love or in moments where the understanding was near but just out of sight.

"Club bound.." a text reads on my phone.

People seem to know me.

"No" I reply.

A few business contacts heard I did a day shift at the club. To colleagues like this you get mixed reviews, you're either really cool or a degenerate. I didn't mind either title really. I wonder if that's how the girls take it from friends and family- approve with flying colors or rejection, shame, you're trash.

I figure alot of these girls keep their narratives to themselves. Their little secret. We all had secrets. I had trouble sorting the secret from the shame.

I never had to heart to tell my mother I had a founded a death metal spoof band in high school. I was a odd kid or likely normal in high school. In those days I was a fountain of creativity. I nearly failed history for that spoof band. I created reams of content back then. Wrote 50 songs. When you're young, exploring the darkness is a right of passage. Sure it was a spoof band but when you write songs entitled "I'm Gonna Fuck Your Daughter" you likely have issues. I was only 17 then. I enjoyed channeling the strange, out of place, out of time. Another memory, repressed for all time, locked in the vault deep within the mind. How many locked away memories are you holding on to?

I sat in the co-working space, a tech hub of sorts, working away on the list of things to do. Co-working spaces today are filed with designer, programmers, hustlers, all out to work their trade. What's trending I ask myself, pretty obvious, apps, everyone wants an app. Some interesting systems like what we had done at the club, but few were really pushing the boundaries of possible. I wanted to go where others wouldn't go. I was obsessed with the intersection of tech and experiences. When technology is invisible, or less notable, but equally powerful, that was something worthy.

After some meetings on a few new projects and enduring an ungodly long conversation on a startup's new product that I will never use or be apart of I overhead "The Order of Death by Public Image" playing back on a developer's laptop as I walked by.

The Order of Death. This track was one of the first tracks in a playlist I had created when I took the great leap from corporate cubical world to world I'm living in now. Its a depressingly great tune. A smashing reality of- "this is what you want, this is what you get..." oddly fitting for the now.

The business I started had exploded and of course as they say, mo money, mo problems. Likewise my experiences at the club, started as a hey thats neat and turned into obsession of sorts. An obvious dose of "this is what you want, this what you get" repeatedly haunted me despite the encouraging words from the shot warden and Vera that it all wasn't just a lie. I needed it to be a lie. This song really pegged it for me and here it was taunting me as I walked by- this IS what you want, and this IS what you get.

Veer arrived and we did our state of biz report, a kind of breakdown into what projects, what problems, what payments, what's next. Overall not bad, most things seem to be in order. Still alive. Payments were up, we'd be sitting on a bed of cash soon. We had to scale next. This meant letting more people into what we were we doing.

The news rattled on the flat screen TVs in the tech hub. More of the same, a constant dribble into how fucked up we were as a society, a government constantly falling down an endless stairway. I hated the news. It was endless. I wondered where the dreamers lived. Where did they dwell?