Slacker

Of my voyueristic subjects, I think the slacker is one I have a particular weakness for. How at odds with the company of highly motivated and passionate folk I spend most of my time with. In the spirit of sweeping statements that I don't have to make good on, permit me the following: if you removed all incentives and societal expectations, and asked me what I wanted to do with my time, well. Sprawled on the couch, a book always within reach, the headphones playing the comforting sound of country and western. I suppose writing every once in a while, if I could stand the stress of introversion, and the reminder of failure from these ventures never really amounting to anything. (As for why they persist, well, at least there's commitment to failure.)

But I stress voyueristic. Because I seem unable to cope with the real thing. When I go through it myself, I get a crushing sense of uselessness. Is it the inability to let go the shackles of expectation that have controlled nearly every decision up till this point? Or is it, more simply, the pretty fantasy colliding head-on with the slab of reality I seem so keen to escape? As with most personal experiences, it's hard to disentangle everything, and so all hope may seem lost. But. When I see it in others, whose life course bears no impact on mine, I must admit feeling that it is the latter. I can't help but feel I am witness to a life unfolding before my eyes, squandered to no end.

Time is fixed, but what we do with it isn't. I don't know what we're meant to be doing. But nothing, tempting as it is, doesn't seem the likely answer.

Blue and Grey Shirt

As a pleasant respite from the usual pattern of my processes, I've found myself looking back on certain times from the past few years with, dare I say it, nostalgia. Now that's something I never saw coming. In my defense, I never thought I'd find myself here in the first place; I imagined the experience was the sum total of existence itself, and that its conclusion may as well never happen, because it's not as though I'd be around to appreciate the freedom.

Anyhow, one lesson today is simply what Joni Mitchell famously sang about. It may even be a statement of the tenacity of the heart: even when what I had was barely worth calling a life, it seems that some things were still able to move me. Were it possible to pick out the greatest hits, I suppose near any life might seem not so bad. True enough, taking too much out of this is the likely cause of innumerable bad decisions, made out of simplified nostalgia and the belief that life can always be better. But I'm not claiming anything more than what I've been feeling: as a whole, things were probably as bad as I remember, but that doesn't mean there weren't things to hold on to.

All of which is warming, but I hope that it's a lesson I don't need to be taught too many more times in the future. I'm tired of a life that's just a series of goodbyes, of doors to other hearts shut because my restless spirit demands wandering. And yet I seem unwilling to do what is required to make that not so -- unpack the flag, set it down, and call someplace home. I'll admit there's something vaguely poetic about carrying on as an eternal wandered, stopping ever so often to write fondly about people that are gone. But sometimes I don't like poetry much at all.

1) Elliott Smith, "Can't Make a Sound". The effective closer to probably Smith's weakest album has always been arresting because of the melody and sound, but to me the lyrics have never been more than merely fitting to the mood. After returning to it several times, I think I've now determined how my senses choose to interpret them -- the repeated last line is surely not to the one thing found, but a mocking question to the narrator himself. As it happens, a question I've had to ask of late, hence this missive. Songs like these remind me why I'm happy to have a weakness for the melancholy -- while I understand the (critical) majority's distaste for the style, if you happen to be afflicted with a pensive persona, it isn't always easy to wish away the shades of pale that sometimes cross the mind. Having this struggle expressed by someone else does, at the end of the day, offer solace in that your struggle is by no means unique. Sometimes it also offers hope, which Smith does to an extent (treating the circumstances of his exit as accidental). Of course, all of this knowledge is only any good if you can do something with it; but until you name your foe, you have no chance of besting him.

Happy Boys Happy

I think I've collected enough data to conclude that on the inside, I'm still not far from a precipice, and that it doesn't take much to make me peer over the edge. Old lesson, but it bears repeating: serenity is best measured when things aren't going well. But this is not to imply that what I've been experiencing prior to this point is illusory, or naive: just that more is needed to truly consider myself far from the edge. Given the circumstances of the latest recurrence, I'd have to begrudgingly admit that they probably would not have come up had I decided to do something else with my time. But things don't seem as hopeless as they used to. Because I'm genuinely optimistic that in the long term, this gig will do me some good. In the off chance it doesn't, there'll be no stopping me from saying goodbye to this path once and for all, and find something more within my capacity.

In principle, I quite admire you, the informed contrarian. But in practice, it seems to invite a complete disregard for empathy, which I admire less. My every experience is reduced to the unremarkable result of some set of equations and principles that operated without me knowing. There's the implicit belief (and don't you try to deny it) that this diminishes the experience. Whether or not it is true, I simply don't care. Instead of trying to arrive at these dismal conclusions, how about relating to the person? Marvelling at the arc of their story? That's why, to me, you don't understand anything about the world at all, or at least not the one I occupy, and wish on others. Your universe, whose uninvitingness you mistake as a certificate of authenticity, is a wretched place. We all may be dirt in the ground at the end, I don't deny that. But you are not alone in feeling pity. Yours is based on a jaundiced view of the world. Mine is based on the belief that happiness is not something that needs to be justified.

Half year report card

By way of explaining, for the foreseeable future, I suspect time will be measured relative to the end of that experience. I wasn't in a mood to pin down any resolutions or concrete goals for myself at that time, but certainly decisions were made with internal harmony very much in mind. It seems worthwhile noting how things are going on that front, then.

Overall, not too bad. While I still suffer attacks from a swarm of overwhelming negativity (as earlier posts attest to), they're not nearly as frequent as they used to be. Certainly I no longer go through entire months of black. My attempt at curing the blues thus far has been to go quite overboard when it comes to consuming things I enjoy -- music, movies, etc. -- and attempt to put in place structures that facilitate positive interaction with people I spend most of my day with.

The former has been going swimmingly. With age comes throwing away the shackles of self-assumed responsibility, and so evenings have been largely devoted to rock 'n roll, rather than grinding away at calculations. This feels closer to what a balanced existence is probably like, and it has kept me quite satisfied. At some point I imagine I will add books to the list of things to obsess over, and dare I say it video games too. Some restraint will likely need to be exercised in future, to prevent a healthy balance from tipping into wastrelry.

The latter has been going well enough, and certainly the environment is much better than before. I do think there is more to be done socially, though, at least in my immediate surroundings. (Those from the past life don't really count, though of course I'm always pleased to know they are vaguely around.) I'm not sure how to go about doing this, exactly, though; once a critical threshold is reached, as I understand there is a strong feedback loop. So getting to that threshold is the key. It might help if I had hobbies that were best shared with other people, but that's pretty much the antithesis of carefully considering records in the twilight. So what's the way forward with this? Not sure...an open problem, I guess. If progress is made on this front, and everything else doesn't deviate too wildly, I will be quite pleased with the annual report.

It's a pity
These words must end
Because this is all I know is true;
Each day
Repeats the lie
That life keeps going without you.

I thought that there was hope that an odious trait I observed while on exile was endogenous to the area. I speak of my peers' tendency to casual, vile putdowns of anyone deemed not technical, intelligent, or accomplished enough to occupy the same planet as them. The fact that it was based on perhaps the most vapid of criteria -- the ability to crudely manipulate symbols -- was bad enough. What was more shocking was the callous disregard for the human on the other end. It's one thing to come up with an assessment of someone -- I think that's near unavoidable as the result of an interaction -- but another to convert that to a judgement, and yet another to confidently proclaim that to the rest of the world. I had hoped that this was a function of the environment they were in, the gag-worthy self-congratulation and deluded disconnect from the lives of everyday people. It manifest in for example the tendency to treat people from different fields as inferior beings, a laughable conclusion. Anyhow, today I realised that far from being an isolated issue, it seems to be a common ailment to anyone in this profession. It is the environment, but not the geographic one. The field seems to attract egomaniacs and sociopaths, who think their (undeniable) skills deign them elevated status over the roaches that populate this earth.

But, I've concluded that this is just the way a greater evil manifests itself. People as a general rule seem to seek power and control, and when they can't get it in the absolute (which is most people), most settle for the next best, which is getting it in the imagined. Any system or collective where human nature is involved invites, possibly encourages, abuse. From my perspective, as someone whose thwarted non-quest for power resulted in me deciding that giving up was the best option, I think that means that there is no utopia. What I've sometimes blamed on study choices and distance from familiar faces is likely instead me coming face to face with what they used to call the "real world", the one outside my precious books and records, the one I will have to inhabit by myself for the lonely years ahead. The journey has just begun. It is not one I am enjoying.

Her usually composed smile, never revealing what she really thought or felt, broke for a second. He was laughing at his jocular reply, clearly oblivious to how she was taking the moment of awkwardness. This was what I thought I wanted, as I imagined it was a sign of her being more honest, less emotionally distant. But I took a look again at that dumb grin on his face, and wondered what else one could do when putting up with fools all day.

I stared into the black mirror, and could foresee the countless times ahead when I would find myself here. No matter how difficult, any way out has to be better than this fate.