Somewhat existential.
Been feeling a bit of a cloudy sort of mood for a while. Not exactly the “Oh woe is me, I’m going to die” thing or the “wow the Universe will die too so the idea of preserving yourself in a legacy is kinda short-sighted” thing– I think I’ve sorta come to terms with both of those facts. I accept them to be true. I think what I’m sorta troubled with right now is the feeling that I’m not doing very much with either of those realizations. And I don’t want to veer into Notes from Underground territory, where Dostoyevsky’s character basically bitches and whines in an articulate way about how he hates everything, including himself, and how he does stupid things, blah blah. (I should probably read it again to make sure I’m not re-reading). That’s somewhat predictable, and I don’t want to be predictable. I’m not saying I want to be some sort of magical special snowflake, I know that’s not really an option (well– except by digging really deep into a particular domain, which I hope to do with my writing over my lifetime).
But here’s what’s bothering me. I feel like I’ve done all this reading and all this thinking and daydreaming and planning, and somehow nothing seems to interest me very much anymore. I don’t know what I care about anymore, except maybe the fact that I don’t want to feel bummed out when I go to bed. I don’t want to feel like I wasted my hours and days. I don’t feel like I have any crazy big ambitions anymore. I used to want to somehow contribute to space travel– I still do, but I recognize now that having that as a goal is too far away, too abstract, almost a form of escapism. Focusing on that doesn’t help me at all. I ought to just focus on sleeping well at night.
So how do I sleep well at night? What’s stopping me from sleeping well each night? Well, I feel like I don’t do enough. Enough of what? Writing, and work. What writing is enough? I think I should be doing at least one word vomit a day that gets published, and I feel like I should also be publishing something somewhere else. I catch myself spending time on Reddit or Twitter again, after having gone through one round of social media detox sometime last year. I feel like it’s time for me to detox again. But more importantly, maybe I should just prioritize how I spend my limited time. I’d like to do a word vomit and publish a “regular” post every morning.
Why do I want to do that? Well… I want to feel connected in life. I want to feel like I’m a part of the goings-on of the universe. And I know, you always are, no matter what you’re doing. Just by breathing. And to a slightly more substantial extent, by producing and consuming all that you produce and consume. Well… I don’t like the idea of expressing myself through my consumption habits. How do I want to express myself? Why do I want to express myself? What do I want to express? Who do I want to impress?
The only person I actually want to impress anymore is me. But what impresses me? For the longest time, I thought the answer was, “the approval of other people”. If I can get popular people to like me, I must be doing well. But it’s clear that that’s not all it’s made out to be. It’s unnecessarily difficult and not all that fulfilling, and people are going to judge you anyway.
Feels like I’m repeating a script, let’s ditch that. I’m not sure if I’m going to be writing short stories or novels or commentary or whatnot. I don’t really care for being some sort of social activist anymore, I think. I got a bit jaded and also felt like things are going to turn out however they turn out regardless of intervention. As I write this I wonder if that’s necessarily true. I think it’s helpful to give people the tools they need/want to achieve what they need/want to achieve. And if I can do that with a marginal amount of effort I think I should do that. I don’t want to spend all my time crusading in some blogosphere for some issues. Really, I just want to sleep well and work out and get buff and feel comfortable in my skin. I might start doing vlogs, for a long time I’ve been wanting to do vlogs of some kind but I don’t yet know what I want to say. I just know that there is some limit to expressing myself in the written word, and I feel like using the spoken word will make me feel less limp, less weak, more confident and assertive.
I want to feel powerful. I want to be able to beat people up. I want to never have to ever do that, but I’d like to have that ability. I’d like the ability to intimidate people, and not have to use it. I feel like that’s something that’s lacking in my life and I thought I’d finally come out and say it.
In a sort of meta way, I’d also like to be done with this constant need for validation from other people. I’m not sure if these vomits count as an attempt to get validation– after all I am publishing them online and linking to them on Twitter, but also sorta try not to draw too much attention to it. The posts are intentionally long and meandering so nobody’s going to figure out what the fuck I’m talking about unless they’re equally crazy and want to get themselves embroiled in my shit. This isn’t a cry for help or anything, it’s just my personal sort of nonsense. I feel like this is a nice balance. You can opt in if you want, but most people are going to walk right on by and that’s just fine, I like it that way.
But that feels like just half the picture. I think I also need a steady stream of output that’s almost-optimized for public consumption, just as I’ve almost-optimized this for personal introspection. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll go to sleep now first.