The thing with my old mentality... sometimes it would work out for the best. One thing I've come to learn and fully realize recently is that most of what's true and Real and important are things I don't understand. I used to think they were things I didn't fully understand, but I'm growing more and more certain that I don't understand them at all. I feel like life is behind everything I deal with... like the yolk inside an egg or the filament in a light bulb. When something affects me, or moves me, I often don't even understand why. And much less can I explain why. I've seen this manifest in ways before: I've written my best songs when I've hardly been paying attention; things I've seen or read multiple times before will suddenly have a totally unexpected effect... it's like everything in my life happens in the periphery, and I have tunnel vision. I'm not complaining about this (though I used to); I'm just coming to understand it.

I really need to re-write the Rotary-Dial ethic. It still stands, but... I don't know. It just needs some updating. I was trying far too hard to sound like a business when I wrote it. And it is a business, and in ways I still want to operate it that way, but I have more of a mission for it than I even realized at the time. It all ties together. What's strange about music is that it's the single thing I'd rather do more than anything else in this life, but I'd never want it to be my job. And that's how I feel about Rotary-Dial as a label... if I ever had to worry about making money with it, I'd inevitably have to compromise somewhere. I'd rather approach it expecting to lose money. That way at least I could concentrate on releasing the music I want and say screw it to everything else. But then the question remains, "How should I make my living?" And I don't exactly fare badly in that regard, because for years now I've been able to get very "good" jobs. "Good" meaning well-paying. But being the way I am about money, I tend to screw up and get fired because I really don't care about being well-to-do. I have a panic mentality about money... it's like, "Oh crap! I'm going to get evicted! I'd better get a job!" But whenever I'm working, I feel like a total slave to the system. I don't support capitalism; in fact, I think it's an agent of death and decay; that it's the leech on the neck of humanity, sucking the life out of us on an individual level as well as a social level. In its halls there's no room for ideals... there's only room for trickery, dissatisfaction, and exposure. Capitalism spawns ideas like planned obsolescence, and "Fun sized" candy bars, and materialistic dependence. The best selling products are not the best products--they're simply the best KNOWN products. All this has disgusted me since I was a kid, and whenever I'm working I feel like I'm just supporting the cause of this sickening force, and it kills me. What motivates me to work now, though, is the realization that this mentality is STILL working to serve the same forces. Debt is practically a requirement for existence these days, and I meet that requirement in full. And this debt is a spider in whose web I am caught, who slowly sucks me dry, but never enough to kill me... it keeps me alive (barely) so it may feed on me at its leisure. So now on a personal level I'm fighting the system with the system. Working to be free and then evaluate what I might do.

I've felt many of these things for a long time, but I've not talked about them much because I am not a revolutionary, and I don't wish to sound like one. I'm not part of any "movement", and I don't wish to be. But I'm tired of my ideals floating around; I want them to land. Even if it's on an island in the middle of nowhere.

So this update is a part of that whole process. With .pointfive, I have an aim. I can't say exactly what that is, but I do want to express something. Writing all these things that I feel like no one wants to hear or cares about is a step... a step towards expressing whether that expression is wanted or not. My mind is a knot I'm slowly untangling. Up to now, I'd been caught in it and I was making a bigger mess of things. So now that I'm pointed in what I think is a good direction, I can focus on exposing a bit of what I think is Behind things. I've never wanted to be meaningful or deep, but this un-want is what drove me to nonsense before. Now I just want to Be, and however faux-zen that sounds, arrive where I arrive.