Thoughts I Have When I Should Be Sleeping

I feel bad for you, reading this. I'm genuinely sorry. I wish I was more interesting.

I wish I could say everything - but I can't anymore.

I appreciate it, you reading this - sincerely

but I also don't completely understand it.

I guess I don't actually read too many blogs myself. Just Reddit and the news, mostly.

I drivel on about my little existence. One in 7 billion. 

How can you even stand to read this shit? Stand to listen?

Is it obvious that I'm writing more for me than anyone else? Just a place to get things out. 

Leave it open so I can feel like someone's listening. Or might listen eventually.

Do you feel like god?

Why do you bother? Do you know me or did you know me once?

Are you somewhere far away and I'm a window for you?

Are you just into it? Do you feel like you get something out of it?

Maybe it just makes you feel better about your own life, somehow?

Do I love this because it's safer? You never have to talk back.
Will I only wish you would until you do?
I could ask or say anything and imagine I'd never have to be held accountable for it
but still be heard...

I'm so curious about that.

I know why I'd do things, but everyone's so different.

What's the appeal?

What do I offer you?

*

I had three days off after what turned out to be a 94 hour paycheck.

I know people who do 118 usually, so that's not as big a deal.

In truth, it was just something different to happen in my week.

(I hate it when people talk about the typical logistics of work)

Then I smoked a pack of cigarettes in too short a time.

Felt sick on Friday and the boss let me go home early.

(Saw someone on the train coming home who promptly got off when I got on and I felt even worse.)

(Portland is a small town.)

uuu offered to cover for me Saturday and Sunday.

And that's how I ended up with three days off. 

I'm stressing that I had three days off because now, on the other side of it, I feel so - unhappy.

Unaccomplished. Bored. Alone.

I feel a resistance saying that - don't tell the enemy your secrets, vvv - but come on that's nonsense right?

How can you hurt me with what I already know? (Really well probably, actually, but fuck it.)

I don't like to say I'm lonely, that's all, but I can certainly say I feel alone here right now.

Sure there are people to talk to about sex and tv shows and travel and the human condition

but anyone who knows me is busy. 

Frankly, even if they weren't busy, I don't have a lot of new shit to say.

I'm not busy, generally.

Even at work I'm not truly busy. For whole hours sometimes, when www takes me to work, we can just stand outside and smoke cigarettes and wait for customers. I took a light nap the other day, when I was feeling sick. I have the perfect job if only I could manage my real life outside of it better.

There's a silence in my spirit.

The silence that's been creeping in regardless of who I have to talk to.

An internal zen forced over me like a cartoon kidnapper's bag over my head.

Realizing all I've done in two years is socialize and now it feels like all I'm wired to do, but poorly.

I suck at it because at the end of the day I still feel alone and hardly remember what was said.

It doesn't feel like I progressed anywhere - 

that I just was there and they were only talking to me because I was just there in the first place.

I just need to get a life, I tell myself.

Create and do and reflect in a way that is for the enjoyment of others, is inspired by them, but doesn't depend on them or some such enlightened sounding words of encouragement.

What the fuck am I talking about - I can't - or haven't - done shit.

That's all there is to it.

During my little three-day holiday, I couldn't even dye my hair properly, it seems.

I couldn't manage to finish making my own room how I wanted it. Things are still in discord.

I couldn't meet my own deadline to have something substantial written. 

This isn't another pity party. Hear me out.

There's definitely an inner voice telling me not to worry. Telling me I'm not a failure.

Failure is only in giving up.

There is a mental mechanism engaged that's telling me everything is just fine.

This is all normal existential bullshit. It's the time for it. It's a phase. Normal. Deal with it.

You've got work to do before you can be anything worth being, that's all.

I'm just 24 years old and awakened to this new way of life, I tell myself.

A world where no one cares about what they used to care about, I tell myself.

6 months until I'm 25 and I should just focus on arriving there as a person I'd more like to be.

Not so obsessed with a midlife crisis as an excuse to have new goals. Something to look forward to.

But I get so wrapped up in what I guess is jealousy, or just cynicism. 

Feeling like Yoga will not solve my life.

A writing class will not (has not) solved my life.

Going dancing will not solve my life.

Fucking around or fucking with love will not solve my life.

A new job in shittier circumstances will just make things worse.

Travel will not cure me of myself.

I feel frozen in motion.

Sometimes it's hard to muster up the love I normally feel for my favorite things.

I catch myself just letting people talk. Nobody cares what I have to say.

And then they think I'm simple and empty when I don't bother coming up with anything.

I feel simple and empty often. There are bursts of sunshine though too.

The rushes where I write some bullshit down that's too hard for me to remember later, or maybe I can't even make out the hand writing. I feel this urge to read. As though I just need to resoak the sponge of my brain in fresh words and phrases. Just stop forcing what isn't working. Stop putting so much pressure on this whole writing thing so I can stop feeling like a common hack with foolish illusions of grandeur and just enjoy myself again - like I did when I first got into it. First found the magical sense of legitimacy within its craft. It's not about the image of the writer, or the potential for crazy popular success, or even about legacy after death - at the heart of it it was about resonance. It was my safe little time warp where I was full of possibilities and completely understood. It could be again but I know I need to read.

So it's very early in the morning and I'll be at work for 10 hours today.

Hopefully I will talk to xxx. She might be coming to live here in July, she's saying. 

Hopefully paychecks will come in, because I am broke as shit and that makes me anxious as fuck.

Hopefully when I start reading again my diction will refresh as well.

Hopefully I won't feel sick and want to just keel over while I'm there.

Hopefully, I can keep up a sense of pep. It helps when I walk to work so I'm not just in one place all day long. Play some new music in the store. Make bags of Kratom. Don't smoke too many cigarettes, especially just to have an excuse to go outside and sit in the sun. Make myself useful. Feel useful.

I think about what yyy's life is like. How his days might fill up.

Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends. Magic.

Reading Game of Thrones. Watching TV, Netflix.

Reddit.

Going to shows. Wonder who he's seen recently. Who he's listening to.

Wish we would have spent more time just listening to music together.

Anyway...

Working a full time job where he gets to tell people what fun things they should do all day.

Sitting round his backyard fire with a beer. Staying up late just to go in the next day without complaint.

Skateboarding around in the sunshine with headphones on. Strumming on his guitar until a song comes.

Going on dates, getting laid, making mistakes, feeling alive.

Eating delicious things because he was a good cook, even in the microwave.

Maybe he's found a way to start laughing himself to sleep. I've seen that as a sign of happiness.

Friends. Fun. Thrill. Work. Adventure. Experiences. Story. Love.

Maybe Portland is everything he wanted it to be now that he doesn't have to deal with me.

And his life is full of things much more nourishing.

I have to say "for him" so I can say "for me" and pretend this is how it needed to be.

It's just how it is...

In other words, I want that, too.

I worry I'm not built for it. I can't keep up.

A full life.

That I'm what's empty.

But I'd be worse off if I didn't even try. 

The question is, how do you try. When does the good feeling kick in?

What if I do everything, and I still feel empty?

How else can I use this time wisely? 

How can I organize my life so it doesn't hurt anymore?

Get everything I want out of it in the best way possible?

Who do I want to be in the second half of my 20s?

I think I'll make (another) list 

and try to stop calling myself a failure since it hasn't helped much

and for three more hours

go back to bed.

*

P.S. Happy birthday to zzz , who turned 58 yesterday.