I find that I’m positively useless alone.
Now, I knew I wanted that to be the opening line as this has been on my mind for weeks, but I’m hoping in the recesses of my brain the various details surrounding it haven’t been forgotten. By saying “useless” I don’t mean in effect that I can’t do things. It’s more a lack of spirit until I hit a particular wall. I may clean the house on a whim, for example. I may decide that the next 8 hours should be dedicated to my guitar. This is “doing things” for sure, but it seems a step removed from purposeful or fulfilling.
I think I’m in constant “seeking inspiration” mode. If I’m with a person, I’d almost certainly rather be following along with whatever they’d like to do simply because it’s an option. It’s stupid as fuck to wander around Wal-mart when you’re bored, until that’s what you want to do, and now we have a mission. It can perhaps be described as a disconnect between my capacity and motivation with my sort of “logic” about my situation. I rationalize to a defaulted generalized comfortable state.
That is, there’s nothing like having your back to a wall. I’ve done everything in my power to demolish the wall. I don’t yet avoid bills, but could I have discovered an easier way to pay them well in advance? From a stress standpoint, this is magical. As a person who’s had his blood pressure taken well over a hundred times in the last couple of years, there’s little to freak out and lock up about, according to my numbers. From a “what I’ve done in the past” view, the contrast seems striking.
We often talk of potential. I like to focus on environment. I sat in for class in the Gary school system and wondered what I’d think about the world if that was the kind of system I came out of. I was the oddball who was constantly reading, constantly pushing how quickly I could get work done. What would I do in a place without workbooks? Without instruments? Would you and I be proud of my ability to manage in community college and maintain the kind of dwelling I currently reside in?
Is it a matter of disgrace that I don’t have “more?” Or perhaps phrased, haven’t accomplished “enough?” After all, isn’t someone who reads like me, writes like me, and talks like me supposed to have an Elon Musk kind of drive to win the Whole World game? Or would it be better for me to shuffle off to my basement and never comment on my state or reasoning again? You know, so as not to bother people by my insolence or ingratitude for my circumstances.
It often amazes me how or why my thoughts have shifted about things. I remember complaining about always being the leader and always taking responsibility. Everything under the house roof was my fault or responsibility, justly or unjustly. Every aspect of getting the coffee kiosk going fell at my feet apart from some of the cash. You feel important and empowered by taking the reigns, don’t get me wrong, but everything is a give and take. You put yourself wholly into something, it starts to wear on you in particular ways.
Like, I want to be “efficient.” I like to believe that for all the time it took for me to get the kiosk up and running, me and like 3 people who could have helped me efficiently could have done that same thing in a week. Machines are poised to take a ton of jobs so, perhaps learn the language of the machines right? Oh, there’s constantly evolving and new languages as the machines grow more complex. Your codecademy course hardly seems responsible to list on your resume. Be apart of enough start ups or read about enough peoples’ journeys and you start to realize that sheer force of will for your idea over months or years is a really dumb thing to have if you could have spent an extra hour or two on Google figuring out why you were bound to fail.
I’m stuck on overt skepticism. I’m so turned off by the common story and conceptions I spend hours listening to hippie Alan Watts types explain that “everything is as it should be,” or, perhaps better said “is” and “is balanced” and that’s just the way it is. To which, you know there is no science to back up the yin yang, but it goes down nice when you just want to take in “culture” from TV several hours a day. Because holding your conflicting, often contradictory, views about society is really hard when you opt to work within that society.
I suppose I don’t want people to believe in me. I believe in me and that’s basically always been enough. It seems like a weird thing to say. Like, I wouldn’t take pride in being called a “writer.” I’m a blogger. I’m a well-read teenage girl in her diary, endlessly redundant and self-indulgent, but thinking I’m going to find the love of the quarterback by the time I reach the back cover.
Watts talked about that moment when you’re doing without thinking. When you embody the “impossible” task of being instead of thinking about being. Not letting the devil know your intentions. I’m constantly letting the devil know what’s up. I tell him about diet and workout plans. I tell him about building things from a house to various businesses. I tell him about whether or not I’m in a mood to be a particular kind of person at the bars. It always leaves me preferring to be on the couch.
But when you get to be in the moment...When you just start cleaning and now the house looks magical. When you just move the furniture and realize in your past life you must have been a feng shui master. When you’re just in the middle of a party or conversation blissfully unaware of phrasing. I paused tv because I felt too much of what I originally wanted to say was going to be forgotten. If I had planned to write this tomorrow night or something, it probably wouldn’t have been done.
It’s not that I don’t have an “itch” to “do something more.” It’s just nothing like the itch that made me get good grades, start a party house, or open a business. It’s a “take it or leave it” sense that isn’t offered much but distractions or facts. It’s “of course I’ll help you right now and for as long as it takes,” but damned if there are projects or opportunities worthy. I’m not a child taking 50 selfies in my utterly pointless band class kind of arbitrary, but telling me to step in and turn that class into something meaningful for the kids without instruments isn’t a fix for either of us.
I deeply empathize with the joker. I understand taking the game seriously, but not too seriously. Like, politics matters, but Donald Trump winning the election won’t stop me from leaving the country. Again though, arbitrary act of selfishness that doesn’t speak to anything but my capacity to take a plane. I could resolve myself and say he’s part of the whole. He exists because he’s supposed to, just as he is, just as I am, and go about my day. Doesn’t that feel like a lazy cop out when you’re seemingly confident in your explanation of literally all existence? Isn’t it more life affirming, more pursuant to “truth” to strive to overcome those compelled to needlessly “balancing” the scale?
I’m sorry, I’ll just end with this would have been better a few days ago. But it fell through. Today, tomorrow, what’s it to me? I suppose I’d rather know, what’s it to you?
