[377] Cement Shoes

When is stasis the correct choice?

For longer than I care to think about, I've been struggling with why it's felt so good to do “nothing.” TV shows whiz by, books and articles get noted, and my hands feel sprained from drumming. I've done a few deliveries with the van, but I'm not out on the beat handing out flyers all day like I thought I would. I'm just confused why I don't feel bad about it. I think it has something to do with abundance.

David Wong speaks to the amount of crap that already exists and the kinds of bullshit pretexts we operate under to “keep the motor running.” I've said the world feels cheap and bland. It simply seems like too many people are “doing things.” Instead of thinking about whether they are good or bad for themselves or the world at large, you just keep your head down and do it.

I don't want to be a content provider. I've written nearly 400 blogs that I don't consider content. It's organization and redundancy. It speaks to why “I've never done anything” with my reading and writing. We're at a point where I'm not really making a calculable difference in life by simply “putting it out there.” There's this ho-hum air people express because they're starting a business, they're working on a novel, they're keeping up the fight until they break through. Pardon me, in my ever most modest, but I am trying to make this little light of mine shine on our collective proverbial sun.

Nothing is really a secret. I'm haunted by the creepy one-legged crypt keeper at the Carpenter office who chuckled to himself after saying “kids these days think they invented sex.” In his infinite wisdom, it's like he's peered into the last thousand conversations I've had over the years. Or wait, it's not like that at all. Actually, all of sex, in every incarnation and in every way it can be talked about has even evolved passed the word “sex” and has become “Japanese.” But the only way he can get a laugh out of himself is to remain ignorant of “how the kids think.”

I think this is how I start to associate things like pride with ignorance. Why I'm quick to denigrate what, on the surface, is very positive and life affirming. I don't mean simply having respect in yourself and enjoying what you do. I mean something akin to piety. Almost as if you've been handed a mandate from heaven. A perch to look down on the ignorant masses who can't see through the fog.

I think our “doing stuff” habit is a distraction. Like, I genuinely don't think I have a “better” take on the world at large than the people I read every day. That's why I'm not going to put something out there that isn't simply a condensing and reflection of what they've said. That's why I don't feel like I'd deserve to get paid for it.

But stasis. Why stasis? Why sit and read and write and play instead of job and money and fake smiles? I think if you lament and hate “the system” to the degree in which I do, it's hard to see yourself perpetuating it. You'll end up on the “dark side” as Wong puts it, but what you've done to yourself or the world around you on the way there is just as important of a story.

It could just be exhaustion. Maybe catch up on a few years of sleep and then hit the ground running later. I don't know, it's not like anyone, save a couple, really care what I do anyway.