Another day!
I didn't do as much today as I really ought to have done in my quest towards getting myself situated towards a prosperous 2025. I did a few life things, securing a few jobs for the future, paying my Sag-Aftra dues, and re-upping my lease. But, those are all things that need to be done. You need to push past those into the "should be done" zone. That's where it gets a bit dicier. Because it's pure self discipline and motivation at that point. The returns aren't immediate.
It's weird how social media, and maybe age(?), has made the Livejournal space so barren. I don't think it's for the best. Online journals were a good thing, it kept young people engaged with writing even if the nonsense we were spouting off about was completely inconsequential and unimportant. We were doing it mostly for ourselves.
The thing that was cool about it is that it made you appreciate moments. You thought on them. After they happened you thought "I gotta write this down". It's different than the social media dynamic. On social media you're creating moments. Getting together for pictures, tagging the location, the people, the event, and sharing it. It's cynical to call it all artificial nor is it entirely true. But, it's not entirely untrue, either.
Memes and photos on group outings but...what's really going on there? Where is your mind? In the water... or in the clouds, or in the grave...or, nowhere at all? I wonder sometimes why things feel emptier around me as my life appears to feel more lush. I'm in a stable functioning relationship (very nice!) and have actually established myself within a creative space. As a DJ, and promoter, which is not the space I would've predicted or maybe preferred when I first began journaling but it is no doubt an accomplishment and one I am proud of nonetheless.
I wonder often times if it's simply the fact that I am aging and as such I look at things within the scope of "limited time". The world doesn't feel like an oyster, perhaps. It may be that. I've also wondered if it's expanding into a scene. Lots of relationships but many of them are merely surface-level. Meaning we're friends because we like goth, post-punk, the alternative lifestyle. But beyond that do we actually know each other? Mostly no. So I feel like, in a way, I traded in some friendships for a lot of acquaintances and business partnerships.
My life was particularly chaotic in the early 2010s. I mean, who am I kidding, it was always a bit chaotic, but in the sense that I finally had girlfriends and had completed the move to the city and was starting to expand my social circle and was trying to balance becoming, well, ME. I drank too much and hadn't found the right partner and wasn't making enough money and my grandparents were still helping me out with rent more often than I'd like to admit. Yet there was a weird comfort there.
Ottos was a near-by home base. Nancy was a close friend I spoke to every day. Stephanie and Ilaria were close as well. Susan was still in my orbit. John Huebert was also in the mix along with Dan, and a side of Teresa and David Costa. Plus not every moment with Victoria was a nightmare, there was some fun and goofiness in there. I dVR'ed the 49ers games, discovered Impractical Jokers, and Netflix DVDs were still a thing. Oh, and politics were a sideshow.
Occupy Wall Street was a block away from where I worked at "The Phone Store" and they were a mere curiosity. I'd wander through and check out their camp on lunch break sometimes. Other times just head straight to Subway. But it was never overwhelming. There weren't lines drawn in the sand. At least evident ones. I didn't know how my 7th grade science teacher felt about it all, for example. There were issues, of course, but "National Divorce" wasn't on the menu.
Still, life was messy. Finances were tough. Making the type of money I am making now, still not a lot by most standards, was dreamy to 2010s Ryan. The relationship was one I reasoned to skeptical friends, "all couples are supposed to kinda hate each other," which is the kind of cope you could have written into an episode of The Office. I wasn't writing much. I hadn't considered DJing yet. It was really a sort of dead zone. And yet...
I felt comfortably tethered.
It defies reason. You could say, that's the magic of nostalgia. One of God's little tricks is to never appreciate what you have until it's gone. That whole bit. But I don't think that's really it. Or, at least, I don't think it's a complete abstraction in that way.
I suppose I'll have to keep trying to figure it out. Maybe create an excuse for intimate touch points. My connection with places and friends was so often necessitated on the chaos of the present moment. Lacking that you lose, or forget, how important that closeness was to sustaining you. Too often recently I feel very collapsable. Like there's a pit of emptiness hiding not deep beneath the surface. It's a feeling I'm not terribly familiar with, but when it comes I know that my tolerance for bullshit and the little inconveniences of life, the things that I can usually swallow, are running thin.
My issue is I don't really have a clear answer as to why I'm at where I'm at. So what needs to change?
wasz, ryan