Bah, humbug.
13 September 2009 21:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulI've been prickly and irritable for a few weeks, possibly even months now, and I seem to have completely stopped writing in my LJ since discovering Twitter. Twitter has been bleeding off my need to communicate so that I don't really get a chance to work up the sort of mental pressure a really good LJ post requires.
I'm irritable. My safe spaces no longer feel safe. The clubs I used to dance at annoy me now. My pleasure in gothic industrial music has been waning for years, but it's now reached the point where I don't get any pleasure at all from going. There was a time once when no matter how foul a mood I was in, once I got to the club I would, at the very least, tap my foot to the tune. Now it just aggravates my sullen mood, the beat pounding into my head like hammer, driving home every minor annoyance until it pierces to the quick. I haven't found anywhere else that plays anything which moves my spirit like that. Hellfire and damnation, I can't even find another club that has a decent sized dancefloor, except for the gay clubs. Is it too much to ask for? A danceclub with a decent floor, girls to flirt with, reasonably overpriced drinks and an acceptable cover?
My safe spaces no longer feel safe. I spend so much time traveling that I have not been witness to the slow tidal shift of social strata in all the places I called home last summer. Even though I'm over most of the angsty post-relationship stuff, spending time around other couples serves only to remind me of precisely the sort of relationship-energy that is missing from my life. I have a tendency to focus on the negative already, a habit I've been working on lately with the help of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but I feel like this has only encouraged me to be snippy at other people who focus on the negative. I can't bring myself to say anything good about the friends or lovers in my life. I see only faults, inadequacies, indiscretions, failures, weakness. I'm petulant, not merely angry with myself for not living up to my own incredibly idealistic standards, but angry also at others for not living up to standards they never aspired to.
Nothing feels good enough, nothing feels satisfactory. A friend once told me that you never remember the green lights, but with some subjects I feel like I should be able to remember enough of them to know that they even exist. I have no sympathy left for other people, because I'm spending so much effort just trying to not kick myself in the 'nads over every little failure, every misstep, every greatness just out of reach. I feel like a pretender. I feel like I'm just playing a part, and if anyone looks close enough they'll see the pathetic truth of my life. I'm not even sure what that truth would be, except that it wouldn't be enough.
I just can't seem to develop any discipline, any good habits. I have a giant pile of books waiting to be read, a slightly smaller pile of training videos I've yet to watch, another pile of projects I should be working on. My mind is being pulled a thousand different ways and I react violently to any perceived encroachment on my time.
With every breath, I grow one step closer to being a frail, old cynic lying on his deathbed, lamenting all that he has not done. I am so frightfully aware of my mortality and there is just so goddamn much that I want to do, want to be, want to achieve, and I feel like I haven't made any progress on any of it.
I am frantic with the need to be about it, to be working, to feel as though I have achieved. And yet, I know that I am in some deeply integral way incapable of measuring my own successes. The only solution I can think of is to establish some means of tracking my life, some kind of spreadsheet which can draw a graph clearly showing Progress. These tasks have sat on my back burner and added to the weight of impotency and inability that I feel. In this hurricane of self-abuse, I cannot even bring myself to be excited about the things I want, the things I dream of. I just spent $300 on a new set of image-making tools, and all I can say is, "Great, another thing to suck at for years."
I feel like I am perilously close to becoming the sort of man who starts drinking bourbon at 10 o'clock in the morning. Of course, that would require waking up at a decent hour. It's been over a year since several friends of mine had suggested my sleeping habits might be a medical condition, and I'm still struggling to set aside enough money to ask a doctor about it. Just like I still haven't put aside enough money to start the physical therapy program I found for my back injury. It'd be alright if I was exercising on my own. I got a free exam from this one company, and they gave me some exercises I could do on my own. But I haven't.
It's the same old story everywhere I look in my life. I have this tidy little plan, but I haven't started on it yet. I feel like I haven't started on anything yet, because I'm too goddamn busy doing all these other things which for some reason I can't adequately explain don't count as things I could be doing with my life. Why don't they count? Why won't I let them count?
I feel like I'm hiding behind a mask I carved by scratching at the walls of an unlocked prison cell. I feel like some kind of predatory animal snarling at the pack trying to protect him, worried they'll get hungry when they smell the blood. I feel like I'm hiding in a cave and licking my wounds and I don't know how I got injured this time and it confuses the hell out of me.
And every thought I have is interrupted with its own defense, its own counterargument, its own opposite. I'm lonely and uninterested in spending time with people. I'm angry at people but I don't know if I have the right to be angry with them. I feel apathetic, but maybe it's only because I'm doing all this other stuff. I'm wrong but only because I never acknowledge when I'm right.
The only thing my Gemini mind can agree on is that right now, I should avoid anyone who might want to comfort me.
But neither part of me could tell you why.
I'm irritable. My safe spaces no longer feel safe. The clubs I used to dance at annoy me now. My pleasure in gothic industrial music has been waning for years, but it's now reached the point where I don't get any pleasure at all from going. There was a time once when no matter how foul a mood I was in, once I got to the club I would, at the very least, tap my foot to the tune. Now it just aggravates my sullen mood, the beat pounding into my head like hammer, driving home every minor annoyance until it pierces to the quick. I haven't found anywhere else that plays anything which moves my spirit like that. Hellfire and damnation, I can't even find another club that has a decent sized dancefloor, except for the gay clubs. Is it too much to ask for? A danceclub with a decent floor, girls to flirt with, reasonably overpriced drinks and an acceptable cover?
My safe spaces no longer feel safe. I spend so much time traveling that I have not been witness to the slow tidal shift of social strata in all the places I called home last summer. Even though I'm over most of the angsty post-relationship stuff, spending time around other couples serves only to remind me of precisely the sort of relationship-energy that is missing from my life. I have a tendency to focus on the negative already, a habit I've been working on lately with the help of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but I feel like this has only encouraged me to be snippy at other people who focus on the negative. I can't bring myself to say anything good about the friends or lovers in my life. I see only faults, inadequacies, indiscretions, failures, weakness. I'm petulant, not merely angry with myself for not living up to my own incredibly idealistic standards, but angry also at others for not living up to standards they never aspired to.
Nothing feels good enough, nothing feels satisfactory. A friend once told me that you never remember the green lights, but with some subjects I feel like I should be able to remember enough of them to know that they even exist. I have no sympathy left for other people, because I'm spending so much effort just trying to not kick myself in the 'nads over every little failure, every misstep, every greatness just out of reach. I feel like a pretender. I feel like I'm just playing a part, and if anyone looks close enough they'll see the pathetic truth of my life. I'm not even sure what that truth would be, except that it wouldn't be enough.
I just can't seem to develop any discipline, any good habits. I have a giant pile of books waiting to be read, a slightly smaller pile of training videos I've yet to watch, another pile of projects I should be working on. My mind is being pulled a thousand different ways and I react violently to any perceived encroachment on my time.
With every breath, I grow one step closer to being a frail, old cynic lying on his deathbed, lamenting all that he has not done. I am so frightfully aware of my mortality and there is just so goddamn much that I want to do, want to be, want to achieve, and I feel like I haven't made any progress on any of it.
I am frantic with the need to be about it, to be working, to feel as though I have achieved. And yet, I know that I am in some deeply integral way incapable of measuring my own successes. The only solution I can think of is to establish some means of tracking my life, some kind of spreadsheet which can draw a graph clearly showing Progress. These tasks have sat on my back burner and added to the weight of impotency and inability that I feel. In this hurricane of self-abuse, I cannot even bring myself to be excited about the things I want, the things I dream of. I just spent $300 on a new set of image-making tools, and all I can say is, "Great, another thing to suck at for years."
I feel like I am perilously close to becoming the sort of man who starts drinking bourbon at 10 o'clock in the morning. Of course, that would require waking up at a decent hour. It's been over a year since several friends of mine had suggested my sleeping habits might be a medical condition, and I'm still struggling to set aside enough money to ask a doctor about it. Just like I still haven't put aside enough money to start the physical therapy program I found for my back injury. It'd be alright if I was exercising on my own. I got a free exam from this one company, and they gave me some exercises I could do on my own. But I haven't.
It's the same old story everywhere I look in my life. I have this tidy little plan, but I haven't started on it yet. I feel like I haven't started on anything yet, because I'm too goddamn busy doing all these other things which for some reason I can't adequately explain don't count as things I could be doing with my life. Why don't they count? Why won't I let them count?
I feel like I'm hiding behind a mask I carved by scratching at the walls of an unlocked prison cell. I feel like some kind of predatory animal snarling at the pack trying to protect him, worried they'll get hungry when they smell the blood. I feel like I'm hiding in a cave and licking my wounds and I don't know how I got injured this time and it confuses the hell out of me.
And every thought I have is interrupted with its own defense, its own counterargument, its own opposite. I'm lonely and uninterested in spending time with people. I'm angry at people but I don't know if I have the right to be angry with them. I feel apathetic, but maybe it's only because I'm doing all this other stuff. I'm wrong but only because I never acknowledge when I'm right.
The only thing my Gemini mind can agree on is that right now, I should avoid anyone who might want to comfort me.
But neither part of me could tell you why.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 02:24 (UTC)Thanks for sharing this difficult stuff, Amul.
Kz
no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 02:43 (UTC)my number is 979/ seven zero three-4344. Don't call please before 7am, or after 9pm...otherwise...I'm here. And I'll never pick up if I can't handle a rant, so never worry about imposing--cuz I won't let you. :)
no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 02:54 (UTC)But I'm just a bitter old hater myself.
no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 10:37 (UTC)Please note that I could stand to take my own advice more often, and that even as I struggle to do so, that doesn't necessarily stop me from the aforementioned thought patterns...but it also doesn't stop me, because we can't stop, even if we want to do so.
no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 18:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 11:06 (UTC)I'm not sure why this comes to mind reading this, but it's a blog that helps me deal with those sorts of feelings sometimes: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/
no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2009 22:54 (UTC)