My perpetual suggestion has been that this pretense comes from the “wrong kind of selfishness.” That the world must conform to your conception or be dammed. I think, as a convening of my attitude of “already having arrived” I was able to experience a proper contentment and happiness yesterday. It stood out. The dominoes already looked lined up and ready to watch be knocked over. Were it not for a moment's propensity to be fleeting, I wouldn't find myself writing now. Was I the wrong kind of selfishness in feeling good? Is it the wrong kind of selfishness to try and explain it away now?
Bloody hell, I truly don't want to make this ridiculously abstract. I'm trying to consider circumstance. I'm trying to consider the “secret struggle” that is often alluded to when deciding whether or not you're going to volley shit back at whomever threw it at you. I'm thinking about Martin Luther King Jr.'s “arc of history.” I'm thinking about time and alleged wastes of it. I'm worried that how these thoughts are making me feel will be lost if I don't focus on tying them coherently together.
Let's start simple and talk my circumstances. The prompting of the title. I have couch potato privilege. There are people who would literally feel sick and ashamed to live like I do. There are people who make lucrative careers doubling down on what I do. Do I mean to suggest a kind of balance in writing about them this way? No. I genuinely wonder if there's an underlying truth that can guide my behavior with a brain forced to engage with dual contexts.
Much of what I do, or mostly don't do, now is a result of working very hard very quickly and learning that my circumstances overrode my willingness or capacity. I hope everyone gets a chance to work themselves to exhaustion one day, but hopefully it will be in service to a measurable positive consequence. As popular conception has it, if and when you work hard, you’re aligned with those who can be picked up from a war field in South Sudan and come up to be a lawyer. The message, fund the organization that created that guy. At once behold the glory of charitable giving and feel shitty about your life having never been forced into being a child soldier turned lawyer, but you definitely got through another Game of Thrones season.
Do I immediately sound defeatist? “Overrode my willingness or capacity.” I haven't stopped working on what I want to do in life, I just stopped going about it, as I'd describe it, like an overly-enthusiastic child. It's because I know what I'm capable of I pull back. Energy doesn't come from an endless source of benevolent intent. When I'm motivated and working hard, I need you to feel that, not watch me act like I'm terribly motivated and working hard.
I find myself choking on a flood of ideas. I need to compile lists of wholesalers of crafting supplies because I want to see how big my step-mom's business can get. I recognize her talent and set-backs being the only one doing what she's doing, couple this with a fuck ton of business reading to recognize barriers, and know there's a lot to be done there. I want to get into enough studies to hire researchers to keep filling in my map so I can literally revolutionize how we conceive of and use information. I want to get the reading out of the way on how to do little side businesses that pop up on reddit all the time for a few grand here and there. I want to find Brandly Cooper's personal trainer for American sniper because I hate dieting and exercise, but John Krazinsky had the same guy and said it can only take 6 weeks. Yet, still, I want to watch all my backlogged TV shows and read all my menacingly staring at me books.
What is a privilege if I exercise in service to “hot air?” I thought I was setting good examples, and it's led me here. I thought I was acting like a person with foresight and diligence. I suppose I certainly still think I matter. Everything I post to facebook gets saved on an excel sheet to be mined and mapped later. I relate my circumstances and most people just breath heavy and make some comment about being lucky or wishing for my freedom. I talk about getting a couple spinal taps for a study and people think “what the fuck, noooo” and then I say it made me 9 grand in 10 days and they go “weeeelllll.”
I feel fractured. My energy has nowhere to go. My accomplishments don't register as “personally meaningful” because I'm already sold on who I am. I don't want to learn anymore, I want us to work together and sort of already know the things I do. I'd like to teach and like actually have that be respected like it once was. I'm almost positive I'll get there in some form or another. I'm just so hopelessly lost on why it has to take so long. I'm 27. I'm basically dead already. Move your asses, society.
P.S. Fuck rich people. If I had fractions of what I consistently read about what they piss away on stupid shit, you'd never hear another word out of me that wasn't about what I was creating next.
