Seneca Boy, Why Would You Go There?

"Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last."

The Lulls of Certain Evenings

Growing up happens in waves.

One time you're a kid frolicking in the grass somewhere, the next you're grazing it with your back bent and your knees wiggling under you. It's not an exaggeration about those knees, they're the first to go if you're not active enough.

I haven't been walking nearly enough. I have it in mind to start again next week, once the blisters are gone from my feet. Whoever wants to go to weddings, anyway?

I hate weddings and funerals. I've always thought of them as private events. People grieve in private, and they join their lives with another in the company of a few friends. As it should be.

I was just about to sit down and do some coding when I thought I'd come on here and try to tear my chest open and degrease those cogs. They've been running on overdrive and doing their fair share of squeaking.

That's what I plan on doing today, get some much-needed alone time and learn a few things I might never need with the hopes I might one day need them. I'm rather stuck, I made it to a part that I can't get past on my own. It's pretty advanced since I'm almost done with that language, and I need to backtrack and go over some things again then make another try. I'll be doing a bit of that tonight.

Tonight, when everything happens if you just let it.

It seems like every time I get on here I whine about almost turning thirty, but you can't possibly imagine how much that kind of thing hovers over you. I'm almost halfway done with the year, and as much as time feels like it's running on snail juice, I don't know where time flies when you're aging. You enter through that wormhole in a back-alley and come out in a dingy off-road that takes you on a highway you don't want to be on, where you waste the slowest three hours of your life to get somewhere you don't want just to get to a place you want, and it all happens way too fast.

What's so scary about turning thirty anyway? Other than the realization and the scary round number. It's just like every other year. My face is not exactly lined with the passing of time, not yet at least. I think it's just knowing that you're there with the weight of all the expectations you had about it growing up. I think I may have written myself a time capsule email when I was eighteen that will make its way to me next year, if the service is still up anyway. I hope it does. Maybe I'll remember all those damn expectations that are weighing on me behind my back. 

I don't even have that many expectations. What IS scary about the big three-oh?

I remember coming on here and wanting to write about the hunger, and the foreboding sense of endless waiting. That post is now scrunched up in my virtual backyard. I'll get to it when my muse forgives me.

Why did I need to go to that wedding, I'd really like to go for a run, but my feet look like something out of Chernobyl. It would be another week at least until I can even take the subway. 

Today was the first Sunday since I started my new job that I didn't want to work. I kept listening to music and talking to people with a gnawing sensation at the back of my head telling me that news doesn't wait for anyone. It's not like I'm a real journalist, I'm a flimsy tech journalist reporting on blockchain technology. No one will die if I don't write about it. No one will cease to live either.

That's not entirely true, I love my job. I just didn't feel like doing it today. I did it anyway, but it was a new feeling, one that I didn't think would visit me for a while. It must have something to do with the fact that I've been having trouble sleeping. I enjoy my time with myself too much to cut it short for some shut-eye. This morning, I must have been staring at how the light fell through the curtains for hours. It felt like sleeping, with my eyes wide open. I was at rest, engines whirring lightly in the aftermath of a good burst of energy. I wanted it to last for several more hours, but hours fell off the clock like ice cream melting on a sunny day. 

Why doesn't time go by when we need it to? 

As pretty as the office is, I hate staying after hours. I'd much rather be in my room, sitting in the glow of my large gaming screen and pursuing some interest or other in the manufactured quiet of a long evening. Not long enough, as I keep realizing. It ends too soon, I'm not done being by myself when I'm wrenched away to be with other people. 

How do people ever find comfort in public spaces?

I could sit like this for hours, and not nearly be done. Just staring ahead, lost in thought. I'm trying to remember if I was ever like that or if that, too, came with age. 

So many things came with age, but none that I'd care to recommend to a younger person. I still have hope that it's only a matter of time until the unpleasant aspects go their own way and leave me be. Time does that, it never sits still, even as we do. 

Bubble Woman

I haven't blogged in ages, I may have forgotten how to do it. Let me try.

Lately, time has been moving in pond circles. It's almost as if I have aged a thousand centuries and I'm now looking down upon humanity with its trivial pursuits and wondering what I could possibly want. Most of the time, it feels like I don't really want anything.

Conversations fade into the background of my thoughts, I'm never really paying attention even when I look like I am, and socializing is such a humungous drain. Every time I'm out with someone, all I can think about is when I'm coming home.

I'm also having trouble with my personal pursuits, I don't seem to want anything so the drive is not there anymore. Even the things I know I want, I seem to psych myself out of them only to browse for hours with a feeling of restlessness that could make the sphinx get up and take a stroll.

I don't know what's wrong with me, I had so many dreams growing up. 

I still do. 

I want to write a book, make a game, and travel the world. I want to build an international animal rescue network and do martial arts well into my 50s.

But even when I was travelling lately I'd get hit by that sudden bout of ennui. It is unshakeable and overwhelming, all it does is eat away at your presence until there's nothing left but a whiff of you that suggests you were there but no longer are.

I keep telling myself I should just do things and it will go away, but it doesn't go away. It's a state of being. I don't want to spend my thirties like this, or what's left of my twenties. But how do I move out of a state of being?

I can't remember the last time I was excited about something in a way that lasted, and more importantly, I can't remember the last time I expressed that excitement and pursued similar feelings out loud.

It might not sound that big but it's really important, to be loud about the things you are.

I miss writing too, I haven't done it in ages. I had this story that I started on Medium and I deleted all four chapters of it on an immensely stupid day. I wish I hadn't, it was wonderful and I doubt I can write it again, the way it was anyway.

A huge part of me says stop chasing away the feeling and just start doing regardless of it, which is what I do sometimes, but the feeling is horrible and I want it to go away. It's also hard to describe, it's a nothingness that has volume and mass and stretches out like there's little to push against until it consumes everything, then it sits there on your face like a huge fucking cat that won't let you breathe.

Sometimes I think it's not actually a feeling, but the absence of a feeling that should be in its place - an indulgence maybe, or an ongoing conversation with yourself that leaves little room for intrusion. 

Other times, it feels like the presence of something bigger that's stuck in the smaller space of my head and won't let me have nice things.

Either way, I want to roundhouse kick it out of my consciousness so I could go on living without pause.

I hope it goes away soon, or I figure out what it is, whichever works. I can't take that for a year or more. I can barely take it throughout one evening.

Maybe someone else has felt it, or has a name for it. What do you call this thing that watches you watch things and lies in wait in case they tickle you so it can rub lotion on your skin and keep you all gooed up and expectant, watching from afar?

I don't even know anymore.

It even affects my writing. The minute I sit down and grab a pen to document a thought or a feeling, it stops me from finishing the sentence because what does it matter if I write this or not, what does it do in the bigger scale of things?

And here's the thing, I don't even care about the bigger scale of things, or if it does something or not, so it's not even a viable argument. 

What is it, anyway? It's not sadness, per se. Or maybe it is. Can you feel sad without feeling sad? Is it a repercussion of sadness? This absolute stillness that has weight and won't move?

The way I see the world has changed so much lately because of it, I watch things like I'm a thousand miles away, and I feel the seconds painstakingly tick by against a wall of air that separates me from feeling it. It's like bubble boy, but with feelings instead of microbes.

It's almost like the aftermath of intense shock, or the feeling you get when you wake up on a cold morning having not really woken up.

Is this what Nausea was on about? That book was mad. I should reread it.

Fucking hell I can't read either though, for the same fucking reason! I think in between the lines, and then again in between words. And then I think while I'm thinking and I have to read it all over again.

I had this feeling in Aswan and Louxor too. I remember being on a boat, really enjoying the view and the wind and trying my best to remember it exactly from where I was sitting for as long as I can. As I did that, time weighed down on me, like the minutes were scratching my skin as they were dragged away from me in the longest cutscene ever known to man. Time was passing, I thought, and it was too slow.

I've been getting this everywhere, and especially when I'm around people. My social battery runs out so fast now, and I space out as they're talking to me and travel to that heavy place.

What's the point of anything if you're feeling like this? And when does it go away?

I want to remember to write about my trip, or try to write about it. I should have written about it while I was there, but I was too busy getting in the way of myself to do that. Maybe it's because I'm getting in my own way that I didn't write about it. Introspection is the shit.

It All Went Dark

Everything is dark.

Over the past few weeks, I've been having terrible anxiety. I get triggered by the oddest little things, most of them surprise me even though there's no one I know more than myself.

At least I'm writing again, but it's different this time. It's not my usual sort of writing, it's letter writing. I'm writing like I am in trouble and seeking a friend.

Why am I seeking a friend in the universe through the electronic folds of this little thing?

I wouldn't know what to do with a friend if I had one. 

I guess I'm seeking myself the most. My bubbly self, the one that fell back on herself and always managed to bounce, because I was one bubbly motherfucker.

Where did all that bubble go? 

It turned into bubble wrap and was used to hide a body somewhere. Not my body, not my bubble wrap.

I feel displaced. 

I want to wake up one day and not feel scared. Scared of the future, scared of the present. Scared of what it all means, or if it means anything at all.

It can't be that hard for everyone, something is wrong.

lol, something is wrong. Of course, it is.

But what?

I got my hands stretched out, which finger finds it first? It's all so dark.

The Cursed Waiting

Lately, I noticed that I keep waiting.

It's odd, and quite useless actually, because I don't know what I'm waiting for. 

I'm not entirely sure when this started, but it feels like I've been waiting a long time. Years, actually, but in the last few months it's been swallowing my days whole.

I'm usually doing something, and I open a new tab to check my messages, or I'm on the couch watching news and I grab my phone and check my messages. 

It even happens when I'm not on devices. Sometimes, I'm just sitting there, remembering things past and people gone, and my thoughts are interrupted with an overwhelming sense of waiting.

It's horrible, and I want it to stop.

It might be anxiety, but how am I waiting for something if I don't know what it is?

The thought is actually quite depressing because I often find myself thinking "what am I waiting for? Nothing is happening, no one's coming" and that just makes it infinitely worse.

The fuck, man.

The new year is here, and last night, I asked myself what is that I really need.

What is it, that when around, I'll consider things complete?

I've been thinking about it all day, and it's all the usual things. Leaving, moving to a new country, a beautiful place with better people, and making new friends.

I wonder if I'll stop waiting then. I wonder if this has anything to do with it.

I then tried to make it so that feeling is replicated, just to see how it feels. What if I stopped waiting? What would it feel like when I'm not waiting?

What is it that I need to do for the waiting to stop?

It's quite weird actually, because it's quite disruptive. I'm finding it hard to focus because it happens in the middle of me doing things. I had the urge three times while writing this to go to a useless tab and stare at nothing.

Maybe it's a phenomenon. Has anyone studied this?

I have some serious introspecting to do.

In Remembrance of the Glitch