[452] Move Along

What am I after when I write?

The prevailing answer is usually to blow off steam or get rid of a headache. But surely it must go deeper. I started writing trying to figure out love. I wanted to know why it seemed to be slapped on domineering and borderline abusive relationships. I wanted to know how it was supposed to influence or guide my actions while being tied to butterflies in my stomach. I wanted to know whether it was coming from God. I was after a kind of truth. I wanted to understand.

It seems to stand to reason that as long as I am unable to understand something, there will surely be something to write about. I’ve had ideas about friendship evolve and morph into various forms. I’ve discussed my relationship to work and my idealism versus pragmatic constraints. I’m always down to probe how relationships play out. I like to think that after 451 diatribes I’ve achieved some kind of mental place that would be impossible had I not done the work of digging out the words.

I’m no less concerned about the idea of “truth.” My last blog threw “responsibility” completely under the bus. I’m surely responsible for typing this, but in a significant way living out the drama my environment as provided me. The broader you allow your view as to the pieces that made you, it’s not so much that you want to forgo thinking you have decisions to be made, but they register so small as to feel insignificant. Naive insignificance to be sure, but the feeling is no less prevalent.

I try to start with what were/are staples of my being. No matter what else you can say about me, as a child, I was doing homework grades above the one I was in. I was constantly reading. Before I got a chance to get my stupid adult brain over-analyzing things, I was hungry for knowledge in general or got off on the idea of good grades. I’m starting to reconsider how obnoxious I might have been. I grew up where nearly anything I did wrong could result in getting the shit beat out of me. What might’ve been “normal young boy shit” in my mind might still register as “unruly little bastard who needed to be slapped.”

So then even this could be an exploration of just how well or not I remember myself as a child. How much of that speaks to how I conceive of myself now? Am I a sociopath? Or was I treated in a way that understands when being a sociopath would be better than complicating things with moral ambiguity? Is that question alone not evidence enough? Is the inability to feel significant guilt more helpful or harmful? And in service to what? Money? Helpful. Friends? Harmful. Real friendships? Helpful. Being a better messenger when your concerns revolve primarily around translation? Extremely harmful.

What happens when you get somewhere? What happens when you get your answer and prove whatever it is you needed to prove to yourself? If you can’t divine something else to do, you’re just sort of waiting around to die, no? Once you’ve traveled everywhere, made every kind of friend, maybe made all the money in the world, locked down some hot piece of ass you never thought would be into you. And then what? What happens if you accept things being “boring” or “old hat” or “obvious” and undermine the chase?

I feel like I’m chasing for the sake of it. My biggest impediment in life is just waiting. Whether it’s waiting for old people to die or waiting for the world to spill its guts with the consequences of capitalism on the environment and financial markets. I don’t need to figure out how to believe in myself. I don’t need lessons on how or why I should, begrudgingly or otherwise, respect and treat my friends a certain way. I don’t really have dreams. I have expectations like a train showing up approximately on time.

And yet every time I write, I feel like I’m looking for something new. I’m looking for a voice that never finds itself in conversation. It can’t zero in on a mood or point me in a direction until the transmission of what’s on my mind is complete. I can never define what it is.

I learned how to not believe in god through writing. I learned how to not believe in love. I learned how to break up my disconnected thoughts into little blurbs and paragraphs to suggest coherence in a way giant walls of poorly punctuated text never could. I consistently explore just how fluid and wide words are as I try to employ them in a more solidified form. And so next month, what will I be on? A headache? Complaining about the dangers of Tea Partiers? Baffled by incoherent media? Reflecting on some too-big-wordy philosopher finding out once again how brilliant the world of thought I have yet to explore is because some hippie got to it 50 years before I was born?

I think anymore I’m after the kind of comment I got tonight about being a good writer. I’m consistently hoping to connect with angst ridden, or luckily just thoughtful, people. I’m looking to get what I consider whiny diary writing out of the way so there’s more room for surprises. I want to know my willingness to explore or beat something into the ground suggests you should as well. Of course knowledge can never be complete. But when you’re pursuing it, what’s it in service to? Am I going to figure out how to create a commune-esc situation in which I’ll get to live around all my friends? Hardly seems up to me alone. Will I be able to tie together disparate industries and ideas into innovative “forward thinking” ways? Ok I’ll get rich and still have to wait for everyone I know to get off work much as I do now.

In a way I already feel dead. Like playing through a video game and refusing to confront the final boss. So many side quests accomplished it doesn’t even feel like a challenge. So entrapped by the story you don’t want to let it go. I want to stress that I look forward to the future like I do accomplishing a game I’m already beating the shit out of. And it’s a weird place to be when you’re not so much excited as you are expectant. Maybe in the moment a rush might overcome you, but then you’ll come down and say “well, finally? What’s next?”