(no subject)
I get little time to be alone with my thoughts.
Which is an odd thing for me to say because I spend almost all of my time alone, thinking.
I talk to people, in person, rarely. When I do it feels strange, like walking with newborn foal's legs. Like learning to walk again after recovering from a stroke.
I used to love livejournal because you could be whoever you wanted to be, and you could say anything you wanted to say to anybody. This eroded with time and meeting people physically, but at one time it was a terriffic draw. I could make so much progress with people by not fearing hurting their feelings and telling them what I thought they needed to hear, like that was a service I provided for free, like I was a hero in costume dispensing counseling and philosophy, mostly to people who weren't aware yet they needed it. Stirring up the pot.
Now? People read here, and I don't want to un-friend them, but I don't necessarily want everyone knowing what's going on with me, and I think that being so open about my feelings in my relationships ended up hurting them, and anymore I deal privately with the individual rather than air it out in public.
I hold back when I tell them what I think about them, or their situation, or what I'd do if I was them, or what I'd like to do with them. It's strange that I'd feel that way, but I do. I'm a prisoner of fear.
The thing I think I fear is my conscience. I seek to overcome my first nature -- to be totally direct and honest about what I see and how I think -- and be more kind to others.
I look at pity and politeness as a kind of virtue, and self-censor out of misplaced mercy, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like saying nothing is a great failure to engage, and that I haven't tried hard enough -- if I've even tried at all, and that I should have found some way to speak up when I had the chance, accepted the inherent risks associated with doing so, and faced them, worked through them, and trusted that in the end, most of what I wanted to say could be heard and understood without destroying anything that didn't need to be destroyed.
I've always been secretive and paranoid -- a consequence of growing up in a hostile, bully-rich public school system in a lower-middle class suburbia, wherein sociopathy was a seemingly winning strategy. At least it meant you were cool enough to be able to see through all the bullshit. Maybe you had a chance to see clearly the things that actually matter in life, to hold onto that shred of yourself that you kept at your core and convinced yourself was "the real You" -- the one you'd betray last, if at all.
I'm really glad I'm me, and not someone else. I am not doing the greatest job at being me, but never mind that, I couldn't stand to be anyone else. I think a lot of people are miserable, and they look at other people's lives and think, "Why can't I be happy and normal like them?" But actually everyone's miserable, in hidden ways only they know. You might catch a glimpse but these days it feels smarter not to say anything -- whether out of mercy or cowardice.
The main thing is to not worry about all that fucked up stuff, and just figure out how to do something cool, and do it with your life. Don't waste your time. You're only going to be alive for so long, you should at least do something memorable, so when you're gone people will think "Oh, that's too bad. But at least he gave us ________ and that was something." But most people, I think, they get sucked into their misery and get lost in there for years at a time, only to emerge and see time has passed, and now they are older. Or some people, they churn away at repeating some empty cycle of work that maintains a status quo, but at the end of all of it, they sit up one day and realize that for all that, all they really have is some more zeroes in a bank account, and a whole lot of slashes on their calendar.
There's more to life than that, we want to believe. There is. But it doesn't seem like anyone's talking about it, or doing much about it. A few are; when I see them, it gives me some measure of happiness. And something like hope, or the closest to it that a doomed mortal could mistake for hope.
These are the thoughts that are with me, fleeting, during the day when mostly I'm reacting to the news, the wall feed, and the things going on at work that need my attention.
There's more than this afoot, as well, but it doesn't need to be discussed here. I don't even know how I would begin to summarize it, so this vague allusion to nothing is all I'm afraid I can give here. Suffice it to say, I am well, and have not been this happy for at least an age. Whether it might be an illusion or not, it seems, is at least somewhat up to me. I have a good feel for the angles, and my instincts so far -- for once -- seem to have been leading me true.
That's enough, for now....
Which is an odd thing for me to say because I spend almost all of my time alone, thinking.
I talk to people, in person, rarely. When I do it feels strange, like walking with newborn foal's legs. Like learning to walk again after recovering from a stroke.
I used to love livejournal because you could be whoever you wanted to be, and you could say anything you wanted to say to anybody. This eroded with time and meeting people physically, but at one time it was a terriffic draw. I could make so much progress with people by not fearing hurting their feelings and telling them what I thought they needed to hear, like that was a service I provided for free, like I was a hero in costume dispensing counseling and philosophy, mostly to people who weren't aware yet they needed it. Stirring up the pot.
Now? People read here, and I don't want to un-friend them, but I don't necessarily want everyone knowing what's going on with me, and I think that being so open about my feelings in my relationships ended up hurting them, and anymore I deal privately with the individual rather than air it out in public.
I hold back when I tell them what I think about them, or their situation, or what I'd do if I was them, or what I'd like to do with them. It's strange that I'd feel that way, but I do. I'm a prisoner of fear.
The thing I think I fear is my conscience. I seek to overcome my first nature -- to be totally direct and honest about what I see and how I think -- and be more kind to others.
I look at pity and politeness as a kind of virtue, and self-censor out of misplaced mercy, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like saying nothing is a great failure to engage, and that I haven't tried hard enough -- if I've even tried at all, and that I should have found some way to speak up when I had the chance, accepted the inherent risks associated with doing so, and faced them, worked through them, and trusted that in the end, most of what I wanted to say could be heard and understood without destroying anything that didn't need to be destroyed.
I've always been secretive and paranoid -- a consequence of growing up in a hostile, bully-rich public school system in a lower-middle class suburbia, wherein sociopathy was a seemingly winning strategy. At least it meant you were cool enough to be able to see through all the bullshit. Maybe you had a chance to see clearly the things that actually matter in life, to hold onto that shred of yourself that you kept at your core and convinced yourself was "the real You" -- the one you'd betray last, if at all.
I'm really glad I'm me, and not someone else. I am not doing the greatest job at being me, but never mind that, I couldn't stand to be anyone else. I think a lot of people are miserable, and they look at other people's lives and think, "Why can't I be happy and normal like them?" But actually everyone's miserable, in hidden ways only they know. You might catch a glimpse but these days it feels smarter not to say anything -- whether out of mercy or cowardice.
The main thing is to not worry about all that fucked up stuff, and just figure out how to do something cool, and do it with your life. Don't waste your time. You're only going to be alive for so long, you should at least do something memorable, so when you're gone people will think "Oh, that's too bad. But at least he gave us ________ and that was something." But most people, I think, they get sucked into their misery and get lost in there for years at a time, only to emerge and see time has passed, and now they are older. Or some people, they churn away at repeating some empty cycle of work that maintains a status quo, but at the end of all of it, they sit up one day and realize that for all that, all they really have is some more zeroes in a bank account, and a whole lot of slashes on their calendar.
There's more to life than that, we want to believe. There is. But it doesn't seem like anyone's talking about it, or doing much about it. A few are; when I see them, it gives me some measure of happiness. And something like hope, or the closest to it that a doomed mortal could mistake for hope.
These are the thoughts that are with me, fleeting, during the day when mostly I'm reacting to the news, the wall feed, and the things going on at work that need my attention.
There's more than this afoot, as well, but it doesn't need to be discussed here. I don't even know how I would begin to summarize it, so this vague allusion to nothing is all I'm afraid I can give here. Suffice it to say, I am well, and have not been this happy for at least an age. Whether it might be an illusion or not, it seems, is at least somewhat up to me. I have a good feel for the angles, and my instincts so far -- for once -- seem to have been leading me true.
That's enough, for now....