Thursday, July 28, 2016

[522] Nothing In Particular

I'm trying to figure out why I've just been staring at nothing for the last half hour. I can't seem to orient myself. I have shows to watch that I'm not. I have a pile of books I managed to half address for a couple hours when I woke up. There's inventory and cleaning I wanted to do around the house. But it's like I was stuck. Clicking aimlessly between tabs not really looking at anything in particular. Glancing at the clock as if I'm waiting for the cue to perhaps leave or I don't know what else.

Why? What am I facing when I'm not really looking? What's pressing down on my shoulders and directing my eyes to (finally) movement focused on a single point? Maybe too many thoughts at once? Maybe lingering regret about the last thing I wrote not quite reaching a satisfying conclusion? Some stark realization that my gut and subconscious are trying desperately to keep from my waking mind?

Sometimes I think I'm as angry as I can ever be, but all the time. Not “ready to explode,” but actively, perpetually exploding. I'm angry at my own effort to learn things. I'm angry that I can be made to feel self-conscious not in a way that would make me stop, but provoke me to double down. I'm angry that I pretend there's a thing called “progress” and that enough conversation can fix nearly anything. I don't like how I think, even though I've spent years trying to undermine how I got here.

The flow of it all just leaves me dizzy. Within 30 seconds I can be in a perfectly understood and receptive dialogue and slip into entrenched dislike or anger for my being. The internet of course making the transition all the smoother for when I'm not drunkenly table hopping for conversations. I don't understand why people are willing to harbor such resentment without any effort to explain themselves. Or worse, that explanation reduces to a bevy of insults and accusations with no patience for your position.

Old news though. Why do I care? Why did I ever choose to care? What's left in me that I'm referring to it as “caring” at all, at least as it functions to leave me confused and paralyzed? Again, old news. The whole song and dance about togetherness and empathy. “Respect” for “friends” so on and so forth.

I'm really fucking annoyed though. I want to know why I allow myself to get worked up about what you refuse to do. Is it that I don't want to face the inevitable consequences? Am I just really that bored with seeing things coming? Do I play the scale-up game where I see how your behavior lays the foundation for what we're seeing nationally concerning politics? That connectedness idea is a total bitch. Every one of my failed interactions is a statement about the whole and its capacity. Maybe just too many examples are clouding my view of the world from the negative camp.

I think for the first time I actually voiced how lonely it is to have all of your time on your hands. It gets worse though when you hear how the rest of the world is spending its time. When you really think and can't escape and can't discuss the larger systems of behavior and attitude we're plugged into. I'm just watching people rot. I'm watching my makeshift wood plank sailboat drift farther from the shore. I just turned 28, most people I know have been 40+ for as long as I can seem to remember anymore. I've worked so many jobs like theirs. I've spent so many hours playing the exact same games. How does it not drive them crazy?

It's almost a paradox. The less I pay attention and just focus on indulgences, I can genuinely feel my mood improve. I almost feel motivated to start taking selfies. (okay, that's a lie) I could budget random trips and show you how worldly and cool I am. I could have dozens of beautiful meals. That's how we're judging each others' happiness and stature still, right? It didn't switch on me and I should be making Vine videos about Pokemon Go?

What's next? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Your job still gonna be there? Are you truly afraid of Hitler 2 or just playing along with the copious offered cliches and dialogues? Are you mad? Are you feeling your sanity slip? Are you settled and comfortable riding out your life the way it's going now? Are you just tired enough to find yourself no longer concerned about my, disparagingly named, “ramblings?”

After my facebook account fiasco, my friends list went from 60 something to 48. It's diminishing fast. Who really cares to stay on for the ride? At this rate, by the time I'm 30 I'll be lucky keep my dad on the list. Am I bad? Can people pick on something about me that looms too large? Have I hurt you? It seems like I rarely have to look far for someone mad at me, but I have to wonder if I'm really the enemy. How much harm can one person do from their basement with blogs and statuses to such a small group of people? It seems like way too much.

Maybe I'm just in a weird mood because of the imposed silence for so long. Even reading a book on the future I'm sitting here going, “Don't I already know this, Kaku?” I don't know what I've left to learn or do that isn't wildly complicated, and even then, to some nondescript end. I have no place but to self-indulge. I have no design but to wait for everything I know to degrade or change dramatically. I don't expect growth or understanding. I barely conceive of teamwork or “shared” anything. The friends I engage with constitute that “barely.” Maybe I'm scared of unburdening myself with the responsibility of caring about when things go wrong.

What kind of shit show would that spell? Countless throwaway drunken escapes? Years of social depravity and exploitation? A stark look back down the line flooded with regret about all the wasted time and how “they won?” I don't know who I am but for what forces its way out of me. Lines of potential that keep my fingers moving and allow for projects to run in the background, but I can't force everyone's hand to work per my guide and deadlines. It's just, when am I going to discover something new? Be it to say or do. Is that the faulty destructive assumption I've been operating under? “Newness?”

I don't even know what I sound like anymore. Is that weird? I feel like all semblance of a “tone” that's supposed to accompany questions or ideas is losing its grip on me. I sort of take it for granted that people feel by virtue of me asking a question they immediately feel I'm accusing them of something. In a sense they'd be right, but it's only that they probably don't know what they're talking about. That clear path to winning friends and influencing people Socrates mastered. But why make it about me? Just because I asked. Just because you don't know anymore than I do, why does the anger and blame have to be directed at me and be mine? Why can't you just be as angry and explosive as you'll ever be, in general, and use it to address your approach to yourself?

I just know I'm not going to stop. I'm going to pick and pick and pick until you make yourself unpickable. And usually, that has nothing to do with me needing to quench an insatiable desire to destroy. I need people capable of talking back, keeping me in check. I need real friends. I need real conversations. I need something to rely on. I wish it was you, but we seem to learn so quickly sometimes how it isn't. You don't care, right? You don't care and want me to go away. Say so, or I promise I'll bring it to your door eventually.

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