A couple of vomits ago I wrote about “Be Dangerous”, a post that I read on Dave Trott’s blog. I tried to think of something on the spot but I couldn’t, I was stuck. But I think it lingered at the back of my mind, and I have a bunch of thoughts now. One is– I could let go of my current writing voice and start writing absolutely insane, crazy shit from alternate viewpoints. I’ve been trying to give everything some sort of coherence, but maybe I should just go random and wear masks and outfits that I don’t normally wear.
Another “dangerous” thing I thought of doing was to deliberately write in a manner that contradicts everything I’ve been trying to build or talk about up to this point. Why? I suppose because I’ve been getting a little tired of writing the same old shit and defending my position. Why am I even in this position? I sorta inherited it, and it was me sorta fighting back against some perceived ill or slight. Essentially it’s some sort of grudge match. I protest too much, I think.
A part of me just wants to drop everything and run naked down the streets, metaphorically speaking. But another part of me thinks… if I do that it wouldn’t be interesting anymore. It would just be sad. And I would, in the process, get reduced to some sort of… I don’t know what to call it, but I wouldn’t find myself very interesting at the end of it.
Okay, then. If blowing up is not interesting, and hiding everything is not interesting, then clearly there’s some sort of middle path that has to be more interesting. I finally finished the Ender’s Game series today (ending with Children of the Mind), and I enjoyed it tremendously. I also enjoyed Orson Scott Card’s thoughts about how good literature ought to provide a model or framework that includes the past and the future. I feel like I think about my past a lot. I’m not very sure about my future. What should my future be? The future I typically think of is either tomorrow, which typically sounds like a lot of work, or the infinitely distant dismal future of the heat death, when everything is lukewarm nothingness and all will be for naught.
That’s quite funny, because those two things really are the dominant lenses through which I view the future. And the past is a bunch of pain and suffering interspersed with a few moments of pleasure and fun and glory. Lots of lukewarm nothingness in the past, too (but not as much as there will be in the distant future!).
So there we have a rather simple explanation for why I tend to be so… lackadaisical. It might be the timeframe that I think in. I should be thinking in weeks and months, not days and infinity. (Or not JUST days and infinity.) I need to optimize for my lifespan, or my reasonable estimates of my lifespan (remembering and factoring in the fact that at any moment the whole thing could just go kaput by fluke). And I need to optimize for now.
So… what? Going back to the dangerous thing. I know I still want to do 1000 vomits. I’m 350 done, 650 to go. But what do I want to talk about? I don’t want to spend another 100 or 200 vomits talking about how tired I am and how I don’t exercise enough and how I ought to sleep better, that’s boring shit. I should solve those problems and move on to more interesting ones. I must have started on the supposed solutions to these problems literally a hundred times by now. But I’m always running in circles. Maybe I’ve fundamentally got the wrong attitude. It seems likely that there’s something about me that secretly or twistedly enjoys playing this loop. This playground antagonism where the real goal isn’t to win an actual fight, but just to perpetuate the drama.
I can say out loud, and intellectually, that I don’t want no drama, that I don’t want to be stuck in this loop. But I’ve been writing about this loop for over a year now. In fact today I bought dinner from the same subway outlet that I was at the last time I was writing about the loop. Oh wow, it’s been over a year– it’s been at least since August 2013. Soon it will be August 2015 and I would still be in the loop. Maybe I’d have saved a bit more money, I’d have done a little more writing, but in many ways I’m the same person living the same life. I’ve put on some weight. I’m less fit now, though I’m trying to change that. I’ve read a few decent books and watched a few decent movies but I don’t feel like I’ve contributed enough, you know? I feel like… if I knew in 2013 that I was going to be dead by now, I would’ve spent the last two years a lot better. Well… why do I assume I’ll make it to 2017? And how little would I have accomplished by then?
Remember Visa, it’s not about the accolades. It’s about treating yourself right, giving yourself the freedom and opportunities to live a happy, wholesome life. Which you know you’re not quite doing. You’re just tired and frustrated and anxious and sedated and distracted, over and over again, maybe less than before, but this is not how you want to be at 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. Your life is in your hands, it’s definitely been so for the last 2 years at least, and you haven’t done that much with it. You haven’t thrown it entirely away, you haven’t screwed it up, you’ve been hanging on. That’s something to be proud of, no sarcasm. It’s a good job. But you’re going to have to do better. I don’t want to sound like a parent or teacher. God knows we’ve had enough of that shit. But we shouldn’t be stuck and afraid and lost, you know?
We shouldn’t be anxious. We shouldn’t be afraid. We’ll be 25 and we’ll stand tall and breathe deep and smile and laugh with confidence. Because hardly anybody else has any bloody idea what they’re doing, anyway. So we can get what we want, and we shall do just that.