Daily Archives: October 11, 2011

Breaking the dam

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Yup. It’s more soul-searching navel-hazing rectum-examining blog entry where I spill my entrails onto the virtual page and pick through them in order to try, by sheer extispicy, to figure out what the fuck is wrong with me and why my stomach hurts all the time.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of the intellectual class to require such elaborate and intricate self-examination in order to achieve what a less left-brained type might achieve simply through living, or prayer, or taking the hits that us smarty types are far too clever to let happen to us, thank you very much sir.

And so, we learn nothing, and nothing changes us.

But no, we intellectuals have to process everything through that big messy jury-rigged madman’s supercomputer that makes up our conscious brains, and while these mighty engines have great power in the world due to their excellent facility for abstract reasoning and all the article of civilization that flow from it, the interface does not make for a smooth and peaceful inner life.

Smart people just have smarter problems. Complicated people have complicated problems. Whatever you have, your demons have too.

And lately, I have felt like my own demons’ strongest skill is simply to keep me in check. It is like I am trying to win at chess against an opponent who only seeks to keep me from making any progress, victory be damned.

Like a fatally seized engine, my spirit cannot truly power me forward in life. Some part of my mind always comes up with the equal and opposite force to stop me and keep me safely static. Everything varies but nothing changes. Ice is stronger than fire. Climb up the sides of the well as much as you want, you will never reach the light at the top, and the higher you climb, the more it will hurt when you fall.

And yet, that is still your only way out.

Well, all my perpetual personal ponderings do bear fruit now and then, especially now that the process is vastly accelerated by therapy. Now progress is measured on a historic scale, much better than the previous geological one.

I know that avoidance is my problem. Pondering that, I came up with this motto :

Endure what you could avoid.

A simple enough mantra, but powerful. Take the hit. Go out there and get hurt. Growth through pain, or more precisely, growth through experiencing things, not merely thinking about them.

Finally, I understand the source of the apparently nihilistic thoughts I have been having lately, like “Fuck it, I don’t care what happens to me” and “I guess I am just plain not in charge around here. ”

It’s not so much that I literally do not care what happens to me. I obviously don’t want to break a leg or get hit by a bus any time soon (or ever). It is just that I am so damned sick of my stupid fucking life right now that the actually productive part of my meta-conscious mind is saying, in effect, “Seriously, what could be worse than this? ”

It is kind of like the tiniest slice of suicide, this feeling like I don’t care if bad things happen out of my desire for change because at least they would be new bad things, and hey, a change is as good as a rest sometimes, right?

At least if I change some things, I will have the novelty and challenge of adjusting to new circumstances for a while. Things will be fresh and new and alive, as opposed to stale and old and undead. New experiences will stimulate me and change me and helps me to grow, even if some of the just plain suck.

My current fantasy for a new life involves me attending the Writing for Movies and Television program at the Vancouver Film School and living in either the Davie Street area or near the cool and funky section of Commercial Drive.

I am tired to the meat of my marrow of living a life of quiet nothingness, spending all day playing video games and fucking around online while my life slips away from me with nothing to show for it.

I love my roomies very, very much, and I never want to do anything to hurt them. But it is becoming increasingly clear to me that it is way past time for me to move on with my life, to “do the next thing” instead of just drifting through life like a cloud that passes unnoticed from birth in the East to death in the West.

That’s just not good enough. Time for me to move on.

But it’s going to hurt.

To the keeners, from a coaster

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Our two kinds never have gotten along, and it is not too hard to figure out why.

There you are, filled with tension and ambition and drive and worry and intellect and stress, working as hard as you can to get the highest marks you possibly can, with a future full of scholarships and Ivy League achievement and high powered jobs always hanging in the balance in your mind. The expectations on you are extremely high and you feel you have to scramble as hard and fast as you can every moment of your life to just keep up with them. Fear of failure is constant, and so you try as hard as you can on every level, all the time, never truly relaxing at all. Everything has to be right. The right clothes, the right friends, the right extracurricular activities, the right courses, and of course, the right grades, meaning the highest possible. Sweating every test, every grade, and no matter how good your marks are, you always feel like you failed, because you could have (and therefore should have) done better.

And this tyranny of high expectations takes a toll on you every day, wearing on your nerves, making you anxious and nervous all the time, and yet you can’t let any of that show, because that does not fit the image of the future alpha of the world you work so hard to live up to. That would not be “the right move” and your life is all about the right moves, no matter what. That is what your upper middle class parents expect of you, and not living up to their expectations is your absolutely worst fear.

You absolutely must do absolutely everything right, perfect in fact, and you always feel like you are failing even when you are winning accolade after accolade, and you feel like you are constantly dangling on the edge of a tall cliff, and you are not allowed to call out for help or even let on that you are scared.

And then you look across the sea of other keeners just like you in the classroom, and you see someone like me.

Wrong on all counts. Disorganized, messy, disheveled, sloppy, I seem to float around in a hazy and unpleasant cloud of ignorance, not even seeming to be pay attention in class a lot of the time, taking barely any notes, and looking positively homeless in comparison to you and all your perfectly groomed co-keeners.

By all accounts, by all rights, by all justice, by all the rules of the incredibly harsh and unforgiving world in which you operate, I should not even be in the same school as you, let alone in the same classroom, let alone sitting right there and looking calm and happy and like I am actually enjoying learning. I shouldn’t be chatting with the teacher like we are equals and not only getting away with it, but actually being encouraged in it by the teacher who actually seems to like me.

And I certainly shouldn’t be getting the same marks as you or even higher.

And without even seeming to try very hard!

So I don’t blame you for hating me, even though I know that in my innocent ignorance, I do none of these things with any thought towards hurting anyone. I am just being who I am, a dreamy, brainy intellectual who is just doing what comes naturally to him.

It’s just plain not fair that I should get what you get by sweating blood without even breaking a sweat. And the worst part is, I don’t even seem to know what I have.

Which is that I am naturally what keeners like you try so hard to force yourself to be.

And I can’t even claim it is because I am smarter than you. You are obviously not dummies or we would not even be in the same class. When I look at you, I wish I was more like you. Smooth, confident, organized, controlled, looking wonderfully put together and giving every impression that you are headed for the top no matter what you do in life.

So here it is, twenty plus years later, but I finally understand why you and I never got along. I never had anything against you guys, innocent that I was, but I can completely see how from your point of view, I was something that just shouldn’t exist.

I wish I had understood this back then. Maybe I could have bridged the gap.

Regardless, I forgive you.