I have turned 31!
Hard to wrap my head around everything that it means, and even harder to believe that I've been coming here on odd nights for nearly 13 years and documenting how it feels on a molecular level. The day itself was inconsequential, I spent it with a friend and had a ton of cake. Cake is really one of the best things man ever made. Who was it that looked at a grain of wheat and thought I'm going to shove that thing into an oven to completely reshape its biological makeup? We've come a long way from swallowing whole grain or feeding it to poor goats just so we could eat them. I don't know what I'm on about, really. Just a random appreciation of cake.
So the day itself wasn't a big deal. There was no overwhelming vibe other than dread, but I've carried that with me for a couple of years now. It hits you when you hit the big 3 oh and never really leaves, thinking of everything you could have achieved had you tamed your wild mind on those long nights in. I read a stoic saying the other day that went something like this: the mind is a terrible master but a great servant. It was terrifying, the mere thought of trying to direct the ineffable workings of my mind seems unsanctified. It is not up to me to do this, I am merely following its whims to explore the depths of my humanity, for how else would I know where to go if my logic or intuition never hit any metaphorical walls? I was also listening to this podcast and it said something about the mind being eternally caged in a dark room that is your skull, and how it can still manage to make up a world of light. It sounds like hippie garbage at best, but it also made me think about how terrible and messy and fragile the human experience really is.
This is perhaps the best way to describe aging. It's super messy! We try to make our actions into neat little rows but we experience life through five different senses and it can drive us crazy. Meaning is how we make sense of a gushing stream of non-linear experiences that have nearly nothing in common, with zero utility to call its own. We're obsessed with purpose, we want to work to earn our happiness and wages, and deserve our tastes and flights of fancy. None of it makes any sense when you really break it down, but we do it anyway, and we suffer a lot on the way because it doesn't quite work out.
Maybe it doesn't work out because it's not meant to!
Jesus gave us one lifestyle, but can you imagine hanging out with him everyday had he been your friend? Forming a cult, being obsessed with his drive to be a good human. People following similar figures throughout history, this just makes me think of Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom. Wonderful book, full of delicious logical fallacies that go on to make a perfect point. I would have liked to follow a god who made mistakes, walked the earth like Vishnu and fucked shit up ginormously as they tried to explore their own holiness. Jesus is nice too, just a little too idealistic. No one can love that much (except for grandma.)
Right, 31. I don't know. I can't tell where I've changed. I read my blog posts on here and it feels like I'm talking to the same person from really far away. I can remember all the things I cared about and all the things that broke my heart, but it's more like a walk through a museum - looking at ancient relics with no sense of meaningful attachment.
I met a dude I really liked but I think I scared him away. He stopped messaging all of a sudden. That made me think how I still get awkward texting a boy at 31 as I did when I was 17. Honestly, I wouldn't know what to do with him if he does keep talking, so I'm feeling ambivalent about the whole situation. It's barely worth a mention but I'm writing my heart out and he made an appearance.
I feel like things streamed better when I was younger, they made more sense tied up in consecutive little knots than they do now in a mound of ka3bala. I could trace my days back into a week and my weeks into a month and somehow get something out of it, now it's so choppy I can barely piece a day back together through sheer memory. I'm also not assigning feeling or meaning to things as I did back then, it's just a recipe for heartbreak, I know better now. But god knows somedays I am so bored I could take getting a little hurt if it means something happens. Anything. Such a John Watson moment I just had here. "Nothing ever happens to me."
A lot happens to me, I just don't register them anymore. I'm bobbing my head to the tap tap tapping of the keys and enjoying the sound of dying traffic. I used to like writing what time it was when I blogged as a kid. It's not 1:50 am on a jobless Thursday and I'm sitting up in bed trying to give myself something to do, trying to figure out how I feel about breaking the three decade barrier. Man, I've been around for three whole decades, I did a few nice things and a ton of shit I don't like, and I still got at least 30 more to go. Oh god, midlife crisis! I'm square in the middle of my lifespan! Does it only go down from here?
I heard good things about your thirties. You know what you're doing, you peak at everything, you start bringing in big money, you find the lasting sort of love and you know who you are. Sounds good, can't wait. It's mostly sitting in bed so far.
I was chewing some food earlier and I thought: there's absolutely zero proof that people taste things the same. An apple could very likely taste like an orange on a different tongue, and there's no way we can find out just as we can't know what birds are thinking when they close their eyes to go to sleep at night. I keep having nightmares about birds, I had one where birds kept hurling themselves into my mouth to be swallowed, and I didn't want to swallow them so it was very jarring, and another one where a flock of birds chased me off a building like some sort of Hitchcock movie. Crazy shit! I like birds, I'm not scared of them. What gives?
Perhaps a major sign of me growing up a little is that the dogs are no longer that cute. I resent them for taking away my choice to go for a run in the middle of the night. I still wish them well, but merely the thought of criticizing their existence would never have crossed my mind before a certain age. I would have happily given away an arm and a leg to keep them happy and cozy. I mean, I still do, but I do want them to not chase me around the block and bite my ass too.
What is growing up anyway? You turn into a boring person, you don't feel as much, you think along different lines and you are completely disillusioned about the nature of human relationships. How is that good, in any kind of world? I mean it's good because you learn to make better decisions, which increase your likelihood of survival, but if we try to think about it from a humane angle, there's really not much there. I think I'm grieving my 20s, but I'm glad they're over. They were absolutely boombastic!!
I just told a good friend of mine I'm having a rough day and he gave me a 70 pound Breadfast voucher for a Milka bar, just in case you're wondering if my friends have gotten better. The answer is, they have! :D
I was reading an older post and my eyes zoomed out, which made the lines look like literal lines and the white bits get smaller. I don't know what I was thinking, my mind sort of went away into the study and locked the door behind it. Maybe it's sending out some important letters.
Yes, yes. Turning 31. I don't know, really. It's not like turning 30. It's less special. Things get a lot less special after you're 30, it's like people make a collective decision to stop counting. But it doesn't have to be special, that's okay. We are just conditioned to want to feel special by all the treats and celebrations we receive growing up. It's all a lie. The cake is a lie!!!!!!!!!!1
Such a gorgeous lie though.
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