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New Year
7 years ago
Should I rephrase this? Nah, nevermind. It's gonna get misinterpreted anyway.
I really should be sleeping now. I'll be back to the grind tomorrow and I'm badly in need of a sleep schedule un-disrupting, but I ought to mark this occasion in some way, even if it is just a return to my usual thing. Once more I'm two con reports behind, so other things have backed up while I procrastinate very consistently on those. Lots of stuff I didn't talk about because of that queue. I did some more moving out, bought the new car, and of course all the holiday things. It's just another one of those cases where I give myself homework to do and then spend the ensuing weeks hating myself for not doing it. It used to be that if I held off on things that I enjoy to make me do things that really need to get done, that would get those things done. In college that transitioned over to me just spending all my time doing whatever I deemed not fun enough to bother denying myself. I've been that way ever since, and these stalemates with myself only seem to get longer as time goes on.
Hard to believe I spent all of 2018 too scared of my employer's ongoing bankruptcy to actually live my life at all. And 2019 is slated to go exactly the same way. This place I supposedly work at is damn short on answers, and it feels like it'll stay that way for as long as it exists. Whether that's two years or twenty. I feel like that would be their long term future, even if this isn't their death knell. Every couple of years they have another crunch and find a way to narrowly avoid oblivion and keep limping along long after anybody stopped thinking it would be a good idea to continue doing this. It's not like I'm not guaranteed a "yes", I'm not even guaranteed an answer. So many of the futures I envision here don't go well at all. Yet I feel like leaving would suck just as much, and then it would all be MY fault.
To me, it feels like the underlying lesson of all the 'Freaky Friday' type scenarios is that no matter what the circumstances of our life are, we'll find a way to hate them. The biggest insight of this radical, magical change in perspective is "Wow, your life sucks in ways I never would've imagined." There are many possible lives that I could live, and right now it feels like they all suck in ways that I could never have predicted when choosing a path. I'm not doing all that bad. I've afforded myself a comfortable lifestyle, and losing my job wouldn't hurt me all that badly in any practical, tangible ways. I command a serviceable collection of resources that I can ply to my needs. I am in many ways quite free to do whatever I want. I just don't know what that is. What DO I want?
I was doing more cleaning out of the old house over Christmas. I tossed out a bunch of school stuff. Seemed nice to hang onto at one time, but I'm dubious of the usefulness of 15 year old math homework. The college stuff might've actually been useful in some way, but I threw that right in the bin too. I just felt like, fuck this. Fuck both of these two decades that I spent constantly worrying about my performance, spending long hours doing things I didn't want to do working towards a reward that I'm not getting now.
Dad saw me throwing away some of my old essays. "Hm, you always were a wordy one, weren't you?" Yeah, I guess I was. Writing has been my whole deal for a long time. Since before I even understood what that particular art could really do. There are times when I don't appreciate that gift enough. Things that come to me so naturally seem to be mighty struggles for others. I often sit wondering which of my many ideas to realize first, meanwhile there are many people out there struggling to come up with some suitably informative words to name a file they're saving. Writing is a wonderful tool and means of expression, with rewards I never would've expected. And pitfalls I never would've imagined.
Writing is by nature an antisocial endeavor. Pursuing it has always exacerbated my struggles in reaching out to other people. Sure, the finished product is something to share and talk about, but the actual process is such a lonely, tedious slog. More homework for me to sit on. I guess that's the true reality of adulthood. For a lot of tasks outside the scope of your survival, nobody holds you to account if you don't do that work. No punishment. There are plenty of goals and ambitions in life where nothing terrible and heartwrenching happens to you for missing a particular milestone. You were the one who put that milestone there. Who is going to judge when you do not meet it? Nothing changes whether you win or lose this invented solitary game. In fact nothing really changes at all. That's the only consequence. Nothing changes. Ever. And on and on. And then you die having never really grown as a person. And despite that being quite existentially terrifying, it still isn't enough to get me moving.
It feels like all human achievement is motivated simply by the fact that we have a finite amount of time to make our mark on the world before whatever happens to us, happens to us. I once felt that same drive. It doesn't feel like that anymore though. I feel like I've got plenty of time. Far too much in fact. Hours upon empty hours to remind me of all the things that I'm missing, and how helpless I am in my efforts to find them. Or identify them for that matter.
I still don't know what I want. Experience has taught me that I'm pretty bad at identifying what things will make me happy. Feels like a rigged game at this point. I know what I don't want though. I don't want more of this. I don't want to spend more time waiting to start living my life because I feel like I need answers that I've no guarantee of getting. I've been here a year. So it's time to start acting like I actually live here. And time to start living like I'm actually alive.
Hard to believe I spent all of 2018 too scared of my employer's ongoing bankruptcy to actually live my life at all. And 2019 is slated to go exactly the same way. This place I supposedly work at is damn short on answers, and it feels like it'll stay that way for as long as it exists. Whether that's two years or twenty. I feel like that would be their long term future, even if this isn't their death knell. Every couple of years they have another crunch and find a way to narrowly avoid oblivion and keep limping along long after anybody stopped thinking it would be a good idea to continue doing this. It's not like I'm not guaranteed a "yes", I'm not even guaranteed an answer. So many of the futures I envision here don't go well at all. Yet I feel like leaving would suck just as much, and then it would all be MY fault.
To me, it feels like the underlying lesson of all the 'Freaky Friday' type scenarios is that no matter what the circumstances of our life are, we'll find a way to hate them. The biggest insight of this radical, magical change in perspective is "Wow, your life sucks in ways I never would've imagined." There are many possible lives that I could live, and right now it feels like they all suck in ways that I could never have predicted when choosing a path. I'm not doing all that bad. I've afforded myself a comfortable lifestyle, and losing my job wouldn't hurt me all that badly in any practical, tangible ways. I command a serviceable collection of resources that I can ply to my needs. I am in many ways quite free to do whatever I want. I just don't know what that is. What DO I want?
I was doing more cleaning out of the old house over Christmas. I tossed out a bunch of school stuff. Seemed nice to hang onto at one time, but I'm dubious of the usefulness of 15 year old math homework. The college stuff might've actually been useful in some way, but I threw that right in the bin too. I just felt like, fuck this. Fuck both of these two decades that I spent constantly worrying about my performance, spending long hours doing things I didn't want to do working towards a reward that I'm not getting now.
Dad saw me throwing away some of my old essays. "Hm, you always were a wordy one, weren't you?" Yeah, I guess I was. Writing has been my whole deal for a long time. Since before I even understood what that particular art could really do. There are times when I don't appreciate that gift enough. Things that come to me so naturally seem to be mighty struggles for others. I often sit wondering which of my many ideas to realize first, meanwhile there are many people out there struggling to come up with some suitably informative words to name a file they're saving. Writing is a wonderful tool and means of expression, with rewards I never would've expected. And pitfalls I never would've imagined.
Writing is by nature an antisocial endeavor. Pursuing it has always exacerbated my struggles in reaching out to other people. Sure, the finished product is something to share and talk about, but the actual process is such a lonely, tedious slog. More homework for me to sit on. I guess that's the true reality of adulthood. For a lot of tasks outside the scope of your survival, nobody holds you to account if you don't do that work. No punishment. There are plenty of goals and ambitions in life where nothing terrible and heartwrenching happens to you for missing a particular milestone. You were the one who put that milestone there. Who is going to judge when you do not meet it? Nothing changes whether you win or lose this invented solitary game. In fact nothing really changes at all. That's the only consequence. Nothing changes. Ever. And on and on. And then you die having never really grown as a person. And despite that being quite existentially terrifying, it still isn't enough to get me moving.
It feels like all human achievement is motivated simply by the fact that we have a finite amount of time to make our mark on the world before whatever happens to us, happens to us. I once felt that same drive. It doesn't feel like that anymore though. I feel like I've got plenty of time. Far too much in fact. Hours upon empty hours to remind me of all the things that I'm missing, and how helpless I am in my efforts to find them. Or identify them for that matter.
I still don't know what I want. Experience has taught me that I'm pretty bad at identifying what things will make me happy. Feels like a rigged game at this point. I know what I don't want though. I don't want more of this. I don't want to spend more time waiting to start living my life because I feel like I need answers that I've no guarantee of getting. I've been here a year. So it's time to start acting like I actually live here. And time to start living like I'm actually alive.
Also, my own workplace is in slight turmoil as well. And being up too late last night, even. Although judging from the time this journal was posted, you were up all night into the next day somewhat.
I also lament haven't not kept up with you. We're rather similar, and I think I knew that before. Maybe it's a case of how one always imagines that if they had a copy of themselves around (a clone, or a time-travel-caused duplicate, perhaps?), they wouldn't actually get along, or would somehow be automatically repelled by one another. I'm not saying I was repelled by you, but we did sort of bounce off of each other a bit, didn't we? >__>
Anyway, happy new year! I hope you do manage to turn over a new leaf and stop waiting and start doing more. Also, stop it with the con reports! Or just forget about the old ones and maybe you'll do new ones as they come, if you feel like it. I have projects I've 'wanted to do' for like a decade. I should and have more or less let them go completely now. They're old ideas, and if they deserved to be made, they would have been done by now.
I've run into an eerily similar image of myself before, actually. I suppose such scenarios have some merit because he's become the most treasured friend I've ever had. When someone asked what our dynamic was and how we'd gotten so close I had to respond "If he had been cloned when he was six I would be the result." We were both high academic achievers in high school that parleyed that performance into a lucrative technical job in the military, went to college and used all that experience to start off a career in a related field. Why do we get along so well? Because he's living my life a little ways ahead of me and can give me lots of advice about what's down the road a little ways. If he was my match in the fields of career and practical things, maybe you're my match in my less tangible endeavors. Like my creativity and this whole online persona thing I've been doing lately. I do thank you for reaching out.
I reached a similar point about a year ago with my con journals. Many reports piled up, five or something. It was looking impossible, but a comment from a friend got me started on one, and thus fortified I plowed through all of them in a single, concerted effort. So I know that I can do this, and I also recall from then how much it pained me to think that I would give up on something that I've really come to love over the years. My experiences are something that I've come to treasure a great deal over the years, and as I'm not one to keep souvenirs and other junk, I feel like these accounts form a connection to those things. I find it very valuable to have a form of memory that doesn't haze over time. It ought to keep me from forgetting myself. It's a little shallow and self-delusional to say "Well if I'm still 'Going to get around to it' then I haven't really given up. I haven't really failed." But a lot of the things that fell to that level are things I did get back to, and things that went quite well. I remember I had a story that sat on the shelf for over five years, and it became one of my favorites when I finally finished it.
So yeah, what will I do exactly? Well, as I hear so often from my employers, "We'll see."
Hugs
Bunners
I've spent the better part of my life waiting for something to happen. Half the time I've felt like I was literally being pulled in two, between the life I had and the life I wanted. Now I'm too old to be a child prodigy, I haven't won a Pulitzer or been on the NY Times Bestseller list, I don't have any kids or a college degree or even a job resume to show that I've done anything with my life except talk to animals and inanimate objects. I do have a terrific husband who puts up with my nonsense, but I've spent the past ten years not setting down roots in this town in case his job didn't work out. So now I don't have any friends here, and all my friends "back home" are now getting old and dying off on me.
If I were to croak tomorrow, I'd be hard pressed to scratch up six pall bearers.
I've taken an interest in your writing career, Bucephalus, because I see myself at your age, and don't want you to squander your talent the way I've squandered mine.
I hope things do work out for you, I really do. But aside from another trite saying, "Bloom where you're planted," I got nothing.