très cool

i read part of a spiritual self help book once that started with an anecdote- well i don’t remember if that’s how it started but i do remember this particular anecdote.

the author spoke about her mother’s last words. They were about how much of a massive waste it was spending so much of her life feeling like there was something wrong with her.

I imagine something like that can only come into true clarity when you’re at the end of it all and are looking back. It makes sense to me that you’d realize it then. At that point you’d be able to see that it really didn’t matter at all.

Maybe, I don’t know.

Often I’m caught between wondering if I should push and strive, or just accept and let things be. I don’t think I’ve ever given the second option a real go despite how much I’ve wanted to, despite how much I’ve aspired to be like those who are able to. Walking home from work today, I thought about that line, “if the rule you followed brought you here, then what was the point of the rule?”

If there’s one definitive rule I’ve followed my whole life, if there’s one desire uber alles, I suppose it would be that I try to spend all my energy and efforts doing only what I want to do, what I enjoy or find worthwhile. I got a lot of pushback from the adults in my life as I grew up, but I’ve always been adamant about it.

So where has that rule taken me?

Well in a lot of ways I feel like a loser, a failure, like there’s something wrong with me. Truly though, this is by external metrics. I don’t have a car, a college degree, a girlfriend, a home, a loving family etc etc. All of that was sacrificed, (not willingly or with great cheer) in chasing my bliss. But was it worth it?

I don’t regret the experiences and stories I’ve collected from living as I have been at the very least. I feel I’d maybe be more miserable if I’d done everything I was supposed to. There’s plenty of evidence for that, I hear the same stories time and time again.

I was talking to a friend for the first time in a while and asked him how things were going. He said he and his girlfriend moved in together. I was jealous, I wish I had a girlfriend and we lived together. He described his daily life as (verbatim) “we wake up we work we sleep we repeat”

he said he was sick of it but bills needed to be paid and he needed to make progress on his business. I tried to make some encouraging statement about his reasonings for putting up with it being important and he said “it’s just to feed my cats”

I know he’s bored and miserable, but that seems like a pretty good and stable life.

I could maybe make something like that for myself, but I also know I wouldn’t be satisfied. Every time I’ve tried, I find myself miserable and resentful. I’m also horribly afraid. How many stories float around out there “we were married for 27 years then I found out the kids weren’t actually mine. ” “we divorced, she kept the house and i’m still paying alimony” I see stories like that every day, hell I watched it happen a handful of times growing up. How do you cope with having your life utterly wasted in such a treacherous way? How would you sleep at night with all the thoughts of how your life could have been different if you just hadn’t settled down blah blah blah.

But it’s not so glamorous either the way I live. Well that’s not true. I see wonderful things and meet beautiful people. It’s just that it’s lonely. Terribly lonely.

I wish I didn’t care about such a thing but as the animal known as man it’s just a hard wired fact of the matter, we’re social creatures.I’m horribly lonely, and that’s bad for your health.

I do what I can to maintain the friendships and relationships I do have but well, it seems my demons and luck always come through to degrade those in time. Everyone has too much to deal with on their own anyway, so gradually, like clockwork we all drift further and further apart.

I hold back from engaging with people. I’m afraid of all of that and yet I yearn desperately for friendship, family, community etc.

At what point does cautiousness become cowardice? At what point does bravery become stupidity? and lastly, as a creature who by all accounts so desperately wishes for the end of it all, to be annihilated into oblivion…

why am i so concerned with protecting myself and avoiding those pains?

the punchline is, all of this, this whole spiral was started because as i walked home from work, i saw a girl who was 100% my type get into a ridiculously expensive luxury car with some fuckin guy.

what a gag!

the absolute gag of it all!

god i’m a mess.