Negative Capability

No ads, no compromises, no kidding

Negative Capability

No ads, no compromises, no kidding

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No Ragrets

We are born into regret. Our parents were just having a good time fucking and months later come the consequences. Exhaustion, misery, bickering, all because of this urge in us, like that bump on the inside of your cheek that won’t go away because you can’t stop biting it. That initial regret is usually subsumed by joy though there are moments that the regret bubbles back to the surface.

I’ve hurt a few people, let many people down and probably gone too far with my words in anger than I would ever tolerate from anyone else. With me, often saying nothing is the kindest I’m capable of being. I’m proud of the person I am inside and overconfident about the majority of my abilities and yet I know I have behaved terribly in many situations where a reasonable person would condemn my behavior.

I regret a lot of things I’ve done from overindulging in drugs to answering the phone when my neighbor calls with a computer problem. With the zine, I regret some of my design choices. They were informed by an overriding desire to maximize content and even ink use. Part of it was this stupid notion that if I screened photos behind the text, it couldn’t be photocopied and ripped off. I also bent and wrapped text to show off all the shit I learned how to do in Quark but that made it impossible to OCR the thing to make it searchable, again, like anyone is trying to search the contents of my zine. I made a meh PDF of the first issue and when I tried to do it to issues #2 and #3 I found half the fonts missing and none of my Quark Xtensions were supported, so there will never be PDFs of them unless someone carefully takes a physical copy apart, scans each page individually and puts it back together. It would be easier to just have a paper copy, so buy one before they are all gone.

Way more than ten thousand hours were spent mastering Quark and I haven’t had a copy of the program in a very long time. Print production is a quaint hobby, like shoemaking. I finally understand why people making a living destroying the planet are reluctant to change, even in their own long-term self-interest. Change is hard. We all instinctively know transitions are the hardest part of life and avoid them as much as possible. No one wants to move, get dumped, fired or ghosted. Even though there are dudes that enjoy getting their testicles crushed, they still don’t want to be chasing someone to be their friend.

For me, little regrets get washed over and rounded down because I can’t let them accumulate. The big things stick in my throat like a splintered bone, making it hard to breathe and filling me with regret. A lot of my writing relies on my innate negative capability and I structure so many things as a “yes, but,” statement that sometimes it’s deliberately vague which way I truly feel.

I regret that I am permanently banned from Equinox Fitness because I threw a tantrum over waiting 20 minutes with a stroller for their one elevator. There’s more to it than that though I’ve decided that for this telling, there is no room for equivocation.

Someone that I once considered my best friend told me in no uncertain terms to fuck all the way off and never contact them again. They haven’t blocked me but I didn’t even respond when I was told off. I have made a rebuttal argument in my head, decided it would get me nowhere and moved on with my life. Maybe I do deserve it. Maybe my words should have consequences. People don’t have to be my friend forever, I get it, I can be too much for some people. I never had a falling out with most people I’ve known and if I saw any of them today I would be more than cordial. There are others who have grown so far away from me that trying to befriend them again would be a waste of everyone’s time. I know from experience that the ones that are meant to stay in my life always will. I don’t regret the people I surround myself with and I don’t think they regret their association with me.

I will always regret not spending more time with my dad though I was a lonely teenager who finally fit in with cool people and I couldn’t get enough of that. I regret not asking more questions and listening more and I made up for it by getting those questions answered even if it was much later in life.

I regret being so insecure that I started smoking cigarettes and took a few years to give it up. I regret joking that I would never go to the gym until they put in ashtrays. I regret not exercising more than skateboarding and the occasional pick up game for most of my 20s. It wasn’t until my wife and I were faced with the prospect of losing a friend to the gym life that we decided to exercise. It also helped that during a physical the doctor pegged me at 196 and I said I’d never top 200 pounds while I could still walk.

Any time I saw something I thought would make a cool tattoo I remember how in my first issue I praised Rudolph Giuliani. I regret that very much though at the time, he was my celebrity neighbor that I saw in the bank and he was making a name for himself as DA, prosecuting mobsters and Wall Street scammers. Like many others, I was very wrong about him. Ditto for Bonaduce. I can’t believe called him “honest” when it turns out his whole zine persona is a lie. I may not regret a tattoo but I’d rather not take the chance.

I met my wife while I was insulting strangers in a chat room. Fuck, that makes me sound so old. You get what you deserve, Mister Job. That must mean I also deserve my wife and kids. I have so much and if I deserve it, well, thanks, I guess.

When my elderly neighbor pays me in Amazon gift cards that I do not need for tech support that I do not want to give, I wind the clock back. When I let everyone else at the four-way stop sign go first, an angel gets a handjob. When I keep my hilarious but mean comment to myself, I die a little inside though it’s better than regret and a scolding from my wife.

When Graham was 18 we went to Toronto and he grew a beard to get some legal weed. You only have to be 19 there and he looked the part. It’s what I would have done. The next day I casually asked if he had pulled it off. He said it took a few tries to find a place that didn’t care and I was proud of him. I didn’t tell him to do it, he’s learning how to make himself happy and make shit happen. I know weed is bad for the developing mind but maybe anxiety and depression are worse. I don’t know any teenagers who don’t have a little anxiety and depression, it comes with the armpit hair and changes in your voice.

It’s impossible to live without any regret though I would say that part of your growth should be learning to forgive yourself and accept yourself. I did that a long time ago and was often told I was arrogant and obnoxious for feeling that way. As noted scholar Dennis Rodman once said, “I'm not gonna never win with you people.”

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