Livejournal, Hello from the Future
Dunno if any of the people I used to read besides Mab are still around, but I wanted to post something to the internet besides using Facebook - Facebook is exhausting, it's like being at a social event all the time when you just want to be yourself online. But that's what I wanted to write about anyway. I don't even recognize what "myself" is anymore. I turn 26 in a few weeks - rounding the quarter century mark uncertain if I even want to make it past the next five years, feeling lonely but never alone, and finding love in the strangest places (not a hopeless place, all credit to the Rihanna song notwithstanding.) I think I'm "grown up" now. Like I can still find wonder in the oddest things, and the feeling of summer breezes and beautiful landscapes and wild imagination still have a power to me, but the basic sense of wonder at reality is fading.
I live in Italy, in a gorgeous town on a perfectly flat plain under the impassively gigantic gaze of the front range of the Alps. I have a great car, good coworkers, a job that pays me a very large salary compared to a lot of people my age, the opportunity to travel all over Europe while Europe's internal opportunities are slowly dying away as the generations stop breeding, and I eat very well by the standards of human history, or even the human present for 3 billion of the globe's people. I have no "right" to complain or be unhappy, and I realize and can analyse just how fortunate I am. I don't feel a deep call to religion, but I do feel this sense of something "missing."
I think what I want is just endless novelty, to always be somewhere else, maybe even with someone else, or with people that I feel comfortable around, but at the same time I feel like maybe I just alienate everyone even when I'm endearing or entertaining. I can't fall asleep anymore - there was a brief time where I could sleep easily and sleep happily, but once again I find myself restless and pensive and analysing every move I or anyone else makes hoping to find something that I've missed. I suppose the simple solution would be to find a cause or some way to help other people and that would quiet things down with the self-satisfaction of "making a difference," whatever that actually means.
I've read so many books, it's not even funny anymore. I just keep reading and reading and reading until my eyes unfocus and my brain screams "enough." But I still crave more stimulation, or freedom, or something undefinable that will make sense of all of the things that have happened or are happening. But there is no "sense" to life and reality - no matter how hard people try to make this "God" thing happen, it's no different than trying to make "fetch" happen for a mean girl - it's not going to, it just isn't. And it's going to mean millions of deaths in the coming decade as freethinking peoples, who have stopped reproducing, face the menace of totalitarian, reproductively successful religious fundamentalism of all stripes.
My job is to make sense of the world and anticipate the changes that are coming, and I'm actually very good at it, I really am. But what that leaves me with is very little hope or optimism about nearly everything. It also gives me a sense of just how historic a time we live in (as opposed to the nonhistoric parts of history? I don't know how to define this, exactly... I guess as opposed to the relatively, very relatively peaceful decades of the 80's-90's and much of the 19th century for a decent chunk of the world.) At the same time as I'm motivated to attempt to "make a difference" or "be a part of something bigger" I just feel like running away from it all and seeking ignorance and its concomitant bliss
I live in Italy, in a gorgeous town on a perfectly flat plain under the impassively gigantic gaze of the front range of the Alps. I have a great car, good coworkers, a job that pays me a very large salary compared to a lot of people my age, the opportunity to travel all over Europe while Europe's internal opportunities are slowly dying away as the generations stop breeding, and I eat very well by the standards of human history, or even the human present for 3 billion of the globe's people. I have no "right" to complain or be unhappy, and I realize and can analyse just how fortunate I am. I don't feel a deep call to religion, but I do feel this sense of something "missing."
I think what I want is just endless novelty, to always be somewhere else, maybe even with someone else, or with people that I feel comfortable around, but at the same time I feel like maybe I just alienate everyone even when I'm endearing or entertaining. I can't fall asleep anymore - there was a brief time where I could sleep easily and sleep happily, but once again I find myself restless and pensive and analysing every move I or anyone else makes hoping to find something that I've missed. I suppose the simple solution would be to find a cause or some way to help other people and that would quiet things down with the self-satisfaction of "making a difference," whatever that actually means.
I've read so many books, it's not even funny anymore. I just keep reading and reading and reading until my eyes unfocus and my brain screams "enough." But I still crave more stimulation, or freedom, or something undefinable that will make sense of all of the things that have happened or are happening. But there is no "sense" to life and reality - no matter how hard people try to make this "God" thing happen, it's no different than trying to make "fetch" happen for a mean girl - it's not going to, it just isn't. And it's going to mean millions of deaths in the coming decade as freethinking peoples, who have stopped reproducing, face the menace of totalitarian, reproductively successful religious fundamentalism of all stripes.
My job is to make sense of the world and anticipate the changes that are coming, and I'm actually very good at it, I really am. But what that leaves me with is very little hope or optimism about nearly everything. It also gives me a sense of just how historic a time we live in (as opposed to the nonhistoric parts of history? I don't know how to define this, exactly... I guess as opposed to the relatively, very relatively peaceful decades of the 80's-90's and much of the 19th century for a decent chunk of the world.) At the same time as I'm motivated to attempt to "make a difference" or "be a part of something bigger" I just feel like running away from it all and seeking ignorance and its concomitant bliss