Once again an update long belated and devoid of any real, interesting content. Life has been as it always has – dull and uninspiring, the same old same old repeated ad infinitum. I’m always in awe of how people can have interesting lives and do interesting things. Not jealousy, as despite my use of the what is generally considered negative term boring, I am in fact fairly content. No, rather I find that I just don’t understand how people manage it.
I think the real issue here, if I re-examine it from another angle is that I don’t actually find that much interesting. I’m an incredibly cynical person and take very little joy from many of the things I do. Okay, that’s not really true, it more that what joy I do take doesn’t last very long. I’m not miserable or even unhappy by any means. As I said, I’m content, but I guess that isn’t the same as being happy. Maybe it is. I don’t know. I’m incredibly lazy when I have the freedom to allow it. I don’t go anywhere or do anything, partly down to a lack of means but mostly down to a lack of motivation. I’m just not interested and that comes back to the crux of the matter. It’s not that I don’t live an interesting life but rather that I don’t find anything interesting about it. I could do something about it, but I can’t be bothered and I don’t know where to start. I mean, how do you actually find things that interest you when you aren’t interested in anything? It’s always seemed to be that one interest feeds into the next but starting from zero tends to make that hard.
And, low and behold, this post has become another introspective whine-fest, moping about things in a public forum and for what purpose? Catharsis, perhaps. A cry for help, maybe? Again, too lazy to make a change myself, hoping for an external force to instigate change. My cynicism again, asserting it’s sarcastic, dismissive view on any and all things.
The thing is, I do sort of enjoy my point of view. I get a weird kick out of depression and pain and melancholy, something satisfying and meaty and nourishing. It’s where a lot of my writing comes from – when I can be arsed to write at all – from this hunger for despair, this mining of my own personal vein of nihilism. That’s what it really is, I suppose, at the end of the day. Nihilism. I just don’t see the point in anything because there isn’t one. No purpose, no goal, no meaning. And I’m good with that, but I’l admit, it’s a poor motivator. Maybe that’s the real reason for abandoning reason to things like faith, because without some external motivational force or some goal to work towards, the sentient mind falls into a stupor. To be honest, I’d be happy to spend all day for the rest of my life doing nothing, mindlessly consuming content because I can’t be bothered to imagine, never getting out of bed except to excrete. Eating, excreting, entertainment, the three Es.
So why don’t I? Why not just give up on doing anything and just lay down in the dirt and wait for my next handout? Because I can’t. As I said, I’m content, I like my life as it is, even as I compare it to others and find it lacking. I like routine, my routine. I don’t want the change or, frankly, need it. To be honest, I think if I allowed myself to do that, I’d lose the little motivation I do have, but maybe that’s the point. Embracing that emptiness, motivation becomes meaningless.
I think maybe this isn’t a problem isolated to myself, but rather it’s a spreading epidemic amongst the population. Apathy, a sense of impotence. Those that fall prey to it become as tumours in the meat of society, a cancer that spreads by virtue of showing everyone else that such blissful emptiness is possible, that in can work, the irony that it’s only supported by it’s antithesis often going amiss.
What started as introspection became a commentary on my opinion on society. Seems cheap and I’m not even sure I believe it myself. After all, the mind plays tricks and it’s easy to shift the blame, to stop looking inwards and blame life, blame society, these faceless forces we know are there but refuse to really acknowledge until we don’t want to take responsibility for our own actions.
The funniest thing about all this is that I find it amusing. Going back to an earlier paragraph, I feed off this stuff, this self-doubt, this self-loathing torrent of cynicism and introspection. It actually makes me feel good, it makes me smile, laugh even. This kind of bizarre self-torment and introspection is a source of macabre fascination and again we come back to an earlier topic, the circle is complete.
There is something I’m interested in, and that thing is suffering. Melancholy, sadness, loneliness and that feeling of displacement, of not knowing where you stand in the world. I’m fascinated by them, hungry for them. They make me smile. It’s why I like my dark comedies, my atmospheric progressive rock from the likes of Anathema and horror stories unresolved rather than fairy tales with happy endings. The world is a hedonistic place, full of the pursuits of pleasure, the definition of self-worth in every purchase of another piece of pleasure and maybe that’s why I feel uninterested in so much of it because I don’t want that, I want something different. I think there is a place for sadness and bitterness and hate. I don’t want them to exist, I don’t want to feel them, but I want to acknowledge that they belong, that they are a part of all of us and that we need them, that a world without them would be a world without human beings, without thought or reason.
So whilst everyone else enjoys the pleasures of the world without, I’ll suffice myself with the things that lurk within. Let outside march the gaudy parade, I’ll watch from my dusty basement window, a dine on my meagre supper.
If I can be bothered, that is.
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Chelle (@Asheyna) are discussing.
Chelle (@Asheyna) 6:09 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink
Well you’ll have me cheering you on! And giving you random weird suggestions for scenes. I too am having trouble plotting too much of my novel, no real clear outline although I know the major plot arc from beginning to end. I plan to just see what happens.
I hope you find the time to write it, Crowd Dodging is such a neat concept!
Mykell 7:46 pm on October 31, 2011 Permalink
Love it, and so excited. I hope we both make our count this year…