Month: August 2018

As an honest confession, I have the lowest opinion of myself and my abilities. Fully embracing this reality is depressing, and debilitating, and even life threatening, and it’s a poor reflection of my faith in humanity more generally, so I opt for the other extreme, and exercise a zealous faith in humanity and others, in the potential and possibility that lies dormant in every spirit, and do my best to act as if the struggle was won, and a more purified sense of self has been achieved, but the existential conflict remains, and the degrading opinions persist to peck at my weary worth.

“But your too hard on yourself! Look at all you’ve done! You’re expectations are too great!”

Cognitively this all makes sense, but it’s a spiritual depression. Transcending it with lofty ambitions is a temporary salve. When I come back to earth, and I am alone, and reflect on who I am, and who I want to be, and observe the abysmal gulf between the two, there’s no amount of therapy or achievement that can make up for it.

I’m slowly losing my mind, or gaining it. I can never tell which way it goes. One day I feel stable, grounded, sensible. The other, completely unhinged, disorganized, a threat to my being.

What is the best way to proceed? I think, all day long. I preoccupy, mostly. My thoughts buzz. Mostly about unproductive matters. It’s nice when I can tune them to work, hone them on matters of importance. But then its back to buzzing. I’ll pick up a book titled The Principles of Thermodynamics  by Hatsopoulos, and read for an hour, then The Mathematical Universe, and finally, I’ll break out some novel, such as The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

I enrolled at community college with the aim of getting my associates in engineering, or maybe computer science, although creative writing sounds fun. But so do all the physics courses.

Its better if I give myself something to think on.

They buzz, all day. I preoccupy, like a crutch, deflecting the radiant energy into menial activities, just to burn it away. I could work out. That was the release for years. I’m finding balance, I tell myself. I’m trying to accomplish something other than with my body, but with my mind.

Well, what is it? My job?

My routine is worse for wear. I haven’t the slightest bit of structure to my week. Not like I need it. But I do. Sometimes I’m thrilled that I can just work as freely as I’d like. Schedule meetings whenever it suits me, work for as short or as long as I’d like.

But deep down, I don’t like it. I like the pressure. I like when people are barking at me, like a dog that needs to dig deeper. Or, I like doing the barkin. It keeps me sharp.

But the isolation isn’t too great. Working alone, with a lone mission, isn’t the most uplifting sense of work.

I should speak more highly, with a better attitude.

The reality is, I can’t cope with reality. I fantasize endlessly about escaping myself. There are dreams that flood my mind throughout the day. Be a writer. Go back to school. Get a Phd. Get an associates in engineering. Invent something. Make something. Move somewhere else. It’s just a non stop barrage of thoughts. Which is why suicide has always been such a friendly option. Just turn out the lights.

Of course, I could just sleep it off, which I often do. Sleep, forever. Then there are the drugs and alcohol, but I don’t like messing my mind up. I prefer to keep it sharp, even if it does naw me to the bone.

Tomorrow I should write some more, not when its 1:15am.

 

Emotions are weird. They’re primal. Primitive.

Aren’t there dystopian movies about that? I feel like I’ve seen one: “Equilibrium”: A hyper rational society where people take pills to shut off emotion.

The thing is, that reason supplies the coherent logical structures from which we build

But emotions provide the values which we build upon; the foundations.

I’m not sure we can reason our way to values. I feel like that would be dark. Utilitarian.

Reason only works if the assumptions are representative of reality or truth or fact in present time and context.

Emotion is present, viscerally rooted.

Reason is an abstraction of the present.

I’m open to like exploring this idea, the corporeality of emotion.

Emotion is like embodied reasoning, if you think about it. A more holistic form, an intuition of the present. It’s not cogitated. It’s the reaction of the body, a physical instinct, based on hormones and senses… but also… perceptions…. which are mediated by the mind, which makes it tricky, and hence irrational.

Reason is like this chain of thoughts… and it can stray too far from actuality or the present if it’s not rooted, whatever that means.

Thoughts can be present. They should be anchored to “real” things or concepts, which everyone can also refer to, and corroborate.

If they are too abstracted, it may be hard to corroborate, unless other minds follow the chain by reason on their own accord and end up at the exact same conclusion. They may contain truth.

Emotions and intuitions: They are like the realest. But also not.

Good intentions. But easily deceived

It’s like The Giver. Or Fahrenheit 451.

Reason becomes like an ideology: Axioms to live and die by, without nuance or idiosyncrasy, but pure reason.

You know what’s weird?

It’s weird that you can’t fully communicate what you “mean”. Like meaning.

You can say something, you can elaborate, but the meaning your words or actions represent are imbued with a lifetime of experiences that fall short of fully translating.

Like, you can say a sentence or write a verse, but even you may not know how to communicate the profundity a lifetime of experience has made it. Even now, all the examples that I’m trying to synthesize in my mind to produce and convey a simple idea that means something to me, and I’ll never be able to contain it all in a few words… unless you traced all my thoughts and experiences.

How many themes are recycled over time because of this?

Motifs, so profound and timeless, but they appear new when spoken by someone who tries to capture into present words, like a revelation.

Are you an intellectual who wants more from life?

I would like to invite you to play a game.

The first three rules of the game are simple:
1. Protect the game at all cost.
2. Increase membership of the game.
3. Enjoy the game.

Protect the game. Promote the game. Enjoy the game. 

What is the game? 

Instructions will be sent to all inquiring. 

Person A receives instructions to go to location 1, which is a cache containing instructions for Person B to go to location 2. 

Person A recruits person B, and provides instructions for location 2. 

Location 2 has instructions that 

Give me books, philosophy and fiction and mathematics and science, give me unadulterated nature, give me the freedom to explore these things, and express my wonder for truth and life and the human condition, and the ability to have community with others who revel in these things, and I will be a happy man.

I think society is mostly a charade. Once you figure that out, you can do anything. All you need to do is march in step, dance with the rest, do whatever tricks are expected, and you will rise. It’s not rocket science. Just be a parrot. Be the best parrot.

The problem is when you reflect.

It’s mostly a joke. Most people are a shiny shell, a mirror reflecting back what everyone else expects from them, never inquiring into the authenticity of their desires.

Once you realize there is no substance, that it is rare when others are interested in depth and substance, that pausing to probe deeper into others or the world and these narratives is the last thing people want to do, mostly because of fear, of finding out that there is nothing substantive within them, that there is no foundation or floor anchoring these charades, then the dog and pony show is up, the theatrics lose their luster, and existential vapidity of being an empty shell begins to crush you from the inside out, and opting out doesn’t seem such a drastic choice.

I’m undergoing a reformation, of sorts. Of values, ideals. Time, money.

I have a stable job, which pays well. I have about $170,000 in debt, ranging from auto to student to credit cards to backed taxes. About $5,800 of my monthly expenses just covers my fixed expenses and minimum payments. I have about $1,700 for food and gas and whatever else. This doesn’t include semi-annual and annual bonuses that I’m expected to receive, depending on my sales objective achievement.

I started working out again, which has been painful. Willpower is essential, and physical activity develops it, and this will power translates into other intentions in your life.

I had things on my mind that I wanted to write about, but now I’m tired, and those thoughts are difficult to articulate.

I’m not doing much from here on out. I want to simply live within my means, or well under my means. Hibernate, so to speak. Budget and track every meticulous detail of my life, finances, to calories, to books and my professional career and sales numbers. Track is all. Meticulous notes and accounting. Where is my time and energy and focus going?

Social media and all other contrivances that distract, that offer the illusion of utility, but only siphon on valuable attention, have slowly been purged from my life. I still struggle with the occasional Hacker News, and less frequently Reddit, and even Twitter, that cesspool of mindless drivel.

I want to separate myself from society and live for myself, in solemn solitude, monkish and pure. And there are lots of past times I’d like to develop.

When I was a child, I would sit at home, in my room, for hours each day, and read. Or draw. Or play my guitar. Teach myself these things. Write. You name it.  I just sat down and became occupied. And when I met other children my age who had TV or video games, I realized I had these gifts, which were nothing more than a result of my efforts to cure boredom by taking up an interest and having no distractions. I’d be holed up in my room for hours and days and weeks. Sometimes by my own volition, but other times because I was grounded. I didn’t seem to mind though. I had my books. I had my paper to draw. I’d almost relish in my ability to fully embrace being grounded, almost to spite my parents. Like, you can’t hold me anywhere against my will, if that’s exactly where I want to be.

And I suppose I’m trying this out in my life today. I have few friends, which is nothing unusual. Growing up, I always had a ton of friends, or no friends, as a result of moving dozens of times.

I just need to identify a worthwhile hobby. I want to build or create or engineer something.

I bought a Raspberry pi, but I need a few things to get it up and running, specifically a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and any peripherals depending on the application I want to create. I’ve been thinking. I want to learn programming, and engineering a project might be an excellent way to get my feet wet.

What is happiness? What is life? Why does it matter? When will it matter? Will I wake up one day and suddenly its over? Or are these few years simply a fleeting season?

More soon.

Too bad that, cut out as you are
for grand and noble acts,
this unfair fate of yours
never offers encouragement, always denies you success;
that cheap habits get in your way,
pettiness, or indifference.
And how terrible the day you give in
(the day you let go and give in)
and take the road for Susa
and go to King Artaxerxes,
who, well-disposed, gives you a place at his court
and offers you satrapies and things like that—
things you don’t want at all,
though, in despair, you accept them just the same.
You long for something else, ache for other things:
praise from the Demos and the Sophists,
that hard-won, that priceless acclaim—
the Agora, the Theatre, the Crowns of Laurel.
You can’t get any of these from Artaxerxes,
you’ll never find any of these in the satrapy,
and without them, what kind of life will you live?

—C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems

The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

—Walt Whitman, 1819 – 1892

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar