Operation Achieve Anything: Day Three-Hundred-Forty-Seven, Dateline 12-13-2018

We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.
— Winston Churchill

Good afternoon crickets. Welcome to day number three-hundred-forty-seven of Operation Achieve Anything. I just realized that back in 2012, I made a post on Facebook where I referenced the old adage, “If you don’t vote then you can’t complain.” I joked that if I agreed to this deal, I would never complain about politics again in exchange for giving up on this stupid two party game. My biggest issue with the US Presidential election is the false sense of choice, both by the system that set up kill any third or fourth choice and the citizens who claim how vital it is to pick one of the two pieces of garbage that we’re being sold. Meanwhile, both option A and B end up ruling in favor of profit over the people.

Everyone went nuts acting as if my vote was the most important in the world until I then said I’d vote third party to at least boost their stats in hopes for at least one more choice in the next election. After I shared this, I was then treated like I was an asshole from both sides who at the same time were pushing the importance of my voice as long as it went their way. This was the first time that I felt Catch 22 logic was literally coming into play. I really felt like I was being strong-armed into making a choice that I didn’t agree with, and both sides were horrible in their approach to win me over.

This was probably the turning point to where I started to feel like there really was no place for me in this world. I just want peace, comfort, and happiness for all minus all of these bullshit games that are played purely for profit, especially when said games are set-up to be fair. Sure, life isn’t fair, as they say, which is why this was the point where I decided to attempt to find a way to play my own game. This is the reason I created this blog, with hopes to someday turn it profitable enough to be my own minimum wage paid boss in hopes to slip under the radar while doing my own thing throughout the rest of my existence.

I probably just should have kept that political joke from 2012 to myself while sticking to the same deal. The same results would have happened, either way, considering the “choice” just got worse in 2016, but I would have stuck to my promise by not talking politics at all. Instead, the backlash toward a joke, that wasn’t even offensive sent me down this path where I constantly feel the need to defend myself for having my own opinion that neither side is doing enough to provide the leadership needed for society as a whole to meet its potential with financial gains being the ultimate boss.

Now, I feel like I have defended myself just from thought floating around in my head that I’m still trying to work out where I actually stand. I don’t even have to publicly share any of these beliefs. I once saw a post saying that if your afraid to share what’s in your head chances are you are wrong. Which I can see being the case considering it appears that I’m way off on my naive beliefs that we should do more than just talk about focusing our efforts into fixing the world instead of committing to the money-making venture of destroying our own home. Apparently, any actual attempt should only be made through lip service.

As of today, I’m going to fulfill yesterday’s task of exploring the idea of humility by owning the fact that I don’t have the answers as to how to save the world, or how anyone else should be thinking. Though I will continue to share any thoughts that come to me through this blog, where people would need to actively seek out my point of view, I will no longer share my political beliefs on social media and get back to just having fun. I’ll leave all of the social commentaries to the experts while sticking to positivity on my end.

As I’ve said in the past, I follow anyone on social media using the logic of keeping your friends close and enemies even closer. This means that with just a couple of down scrolls, all I see is how we’re all doomed no matter which side you are on. Side A will say one thing, Side B will say the opposite, while the sideless like me cover the fact that nothing will change either way. Seeing all of the perspectives at once is probably the reason why I feel extra crazy while trying to wrangle my own point of view as it continually evolves.

Years ago, I started to hide friends on Facebook who got too political whether or not I agreed with their views because these are people that I know and I just wanted to keep the platform fun since it was already painful enough to visit the site ever since I’ve become a legitimate shut-in. I left Twitter to be the Wild Wild West since Facebook was for friends and Twitter was always meant for following celebrities and strangers.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to start to unfollow anyone who gets political too much, even if I agree and am a huge fan of their work. I just need to stop getting so agitated over how I interpret these stranger’s Tweets and how the Tweeter would probably think about me. In reality, I am, or at least used to be extremely easy to get along with in person because I am so open to entertaining other’s thoughts and agreement isn’t a requirement to get along. In fact, I’ve probably had more fun conversing with people who are on an entirely different page as opposed to bickering with the choir over the wording of the same exact argument.

Though I didn’t really focus on my belief of what humility means, I do feel that dropping the idea that one of my brilliant Tweets might strike the right chord to change the world accomplished what yesterday’s assignment was asking for. Not that I genuinely believe any of my Tweets had the power to do so, but consistently seeing the platform’s power with the word Twitter being in the bulk of headline news anymore, it can definitely seem like the Twitterverse is the most critical “verse” of them all.

I feel that, for the most part, I’m in a really good headspace compared to where I was during the rock bottom of my midlife meltdown that just happened to sync up with the 2016 Presidential election, which makes my connection to politics even twice as rough. This was also the time period where I started to collect voices from every side of any arguments that I was interested in. My hopes were that I’d be better informed about the reasoning behind why there now seems to be an ever-widening difference in our thoughts and how we handle those who we disagree with.

My personal battle to understand has been lost so I’m throwing in my white flag. I’m okay with this though because I really hope this will allow me to lighten up and get back to having fun. Ever since Sunday, when I had my last political vomiting spell on social media, I began to make an active effort to be more positive. I’ve started liking and commenting on posts that I enjoy and have more to do with people like me who have projects that they’re attempting to share with the world, over trying to win over people who will never agree with my thoughts because they're stuck in their ways just as I am. Since making this change in my efforts, I’ve already seen a more positive change in my outlook toward the world in general and want to keep heading in this direction from here on out.  

With that, I’m now going to switch gears and start to wrap this one up by introducing today’s assignment where I’m now supposed to try to figure out how I can push myself even more. This might be a bit difficult considering that I’ve been giving it all minus any success for close to a quarter of a century by now, forty-three years if we’re talking about my non-writing efforts to stay alive through all of my self-destructive phases. Of course, I’ll dig deeper into the details when I actually fulfill the task with tomorrow’s post. Until then, it’s now that time for me to sign off as usual by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.