Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: What sort of <i>Playboy</i> fan blogger faces homelessness in a matter of days?

May 9, 2010

What sort of Playboy fan blogger faces homelessness in a matter of days?

In spite of the hokey-jokey allusion to Playboy’s famous ad-for-advertisers campaign in the above question, it’s not a joke. Although the structured legal settlement over my father’s 1997 death will bring me more money in June, I can’t afford my motel room for more than the first two weeks of May. I’m worried about paying for food all month long, too. For obvious reasons, the crisis is prompting self-examination. What sort of man am I to have fallen into this easily foreseeable situation?

I have spent my life running in terror from responsibilities of all kinds. When I’m forced to carry out responsibilities, I feel imprisoned and humiliated. To behave responsibly is to die a living death. I rationalize away the benefits of being responsible—pride, money, love—as not worth the trouble. My friends in the libertarian movement will remind me that responsibility brings freedom, and I can’t refute it. But I didn’t become fully libertarian (instead of left-wing “liberal”) until 2003, the year I turned 31. Bitterness and the force of habit cause me great difficulty in unlearning “responsibility” as taught by America’s Prussianized public schools, where the term is associated with coercion, intimidation, and an endless series of utterly pointless tasks. In a Sudbury-model school, an education system worthy of a free society, I think I could have avoided the tendency towards panic or rage at the thought of being responsible. It could have been a pragmatic issue, not an emotionally charged one that affects human relationships. Today is Mothers’ Day in the United States, and I refuse to observe the holiday out of spite.

Then again, I anticipate complaints that I’m just finding another way of avoiding responsibility when I blame my upbringing for my behavior. I don’t know what to say about that, except to suggest that I’m experiencing a teachable moment through the crisis. If you think you know what constructive criticism or rhetorical ass-kicking might be called for, please leave it here in a comment or send an email. By the way, I’ve been wondering if I have Asperger syndrome, which can result in the kinds of problems I’m describing. But since an Asperger diagnosis would be complicated and expensive for me to obtain as an adult, I have to rely on moral guidance from friends.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 7:36 PM

  • Blogger Lame Duck left this comment at May 10, 2010 8:37 AM  
    Have you thought about adding a tipjar of some sort to your blog? Many great bloggers accept donations and there is no shame in this. It is the internet's equivalent of musicians who perform gigs in coffee shops putting out a tip jar. You are providing a service to the world and there is no shame in asking for a tip. I for one would be more than willing to donate to your blog. I do not know how many readers you get but it might at least enable you to stay in your room until you get another stream, of income.

    Here are some possibilities:
    http://www.scratchback.com/

    or

    http://www.tipjar.com/about.html

    and

    http://www.themoxiemomblog.com/wordpress/buy-me-a-beer-coffee-paypal-tip-widget

    I wish you luck,

    Ryan

  • Blogger Robohobo left this comment at May 10, 2010 8:46 PM  
    Hey, you immature idiot, why don't you do as the guy at the Reason blog suggests?

    Go suck start a shotgun you worthless POS.

    Either grow up or get off the planet.

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at May 11, 2010 3:02 AM  
    You sound like a self absorbed idiot. Quit bitching and take care of yourself. You know what you need to do, why ask anyone else?

  • Blogger SGT Ted left this comment at May 11, 2010 6:27 AM  
    Go down to a Military Recruiter, take the ASVB and join the Air Force in one of the less demanding physical jobs that your aspergers will compliment. They are the least "militarized" of the Armed Forces, will tell you what to do and when to do it, you'll get decent pay and housing, you will be serving your country. When you deploy for the war, it will be for no more than 4 to 6 months at a time and you will be able to get great OJT for when you get out. You can join up to age 43.

    Quit being a bum, begging for other peoples money and man up.

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at May 12, 2010 9:12 AM  
    I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.

    ^you need a job, but alas, so do I

    the lack of productive activity is likely the cause of your self-pitying demise

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at May 21, 2010 10:13 PM  
    Are you kidding? You get money from your dead father and insult your mother? Who provided that inheritance/settltment for you? Who worked for it so you could indulge your selfish bitterness against those that sustained you? You wear irresponsibility, bitterness and arrogance like a badge of honor. Who do you think you're impressing? Well, you ARE making an impression...a very bad one. You need to raise a child before publicly disrespecting your parents. That says far more about what kind of person you are than what kind of a mother you have. It goes without saying that your father had to have been a much better man than you. Incidentally, what exactly do you do for a living? Who gave you the home you are so contemptuous of that you cannot seem to provide for yourself? In my opinion and experience, your worldview is quite common in immature and underdeveloped minds that freely criticize what they've never achieved themselves. Get a life, Playboy.

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at February 20, 2011 12:21 PM  
    Good for you for your (modest) inquiry into the relationship between freedom and responsibility. The next time you can scrape up a few hundred dollars for the tuition, take a seminar with Landmark Education. It will help a lot with your search for (true) freedom (regardless of what you may have heard about it having cult-like practices). If you have a bit more money to lay out, do a four day retreat with Arnold Siegel. (Google "Autonomy and Life"). Believe it or not, a lot other people have been where you are and come out the other side just fine.

    ps. Don't for a minute count on your Dad's money resolving the existential angst. That's from you, not your circumstances. Wherever you go, whatever you have, there *you are.

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