That’s what I feel like, more or less.

Not in a really bad way. I’m not ill or anything. I don’t have that poisoned feeling I get sometimes. My mood is good, not great, but good. I am happy.

But I feel kind of messy and disorganized inside, so let’s time to type stuff out until the place looks at least halfway decent for a change.

It’s not that I like things messy…. not all the time, anyhow. It’s that I lack the motivation, focus, drive, and to a small extent the skills to clean stuff up and keep it clean.

And it can be said that I don’t like it when things are too clean in my home environment. I prefer my environment to have that lived-in kind of feel. Like a home, not a hospital room. If I ever have a partner who is very neat and clean, I would have to make a serious adjustment, and fast, before I turn into spaghetti-flinging Oscar Madison from the end of The Odd Couple.

Stop removing all traces of my existence dammit!

I noticed that the hotel that hosted VancouFur had signs everywhere telling us that they had “executive hotel apartments” available, and I thought that was interesting. I know that in Europe, and possibly in Japan, executives above a certain level expect to stay in an apartment, not a hotel room. It makes sense, in a way. Even the nicest, most luxurious hotel room is still a hotel room. It still has a somewhat dehumanized feel to it, and it lacks the little home amenities that we all take for granted as being part of any home.

So in that sense, an apartment is much nicer (and thus higher status) than a hotel room. And for busy executives who travel a lot, something that feels more like “home” must be wonderful.

Of course, it got me thinks about whether I would enjoy the “apartment in a hotel” lifestyle. I think I would. It seems like the best of both worlds. I would have the comfy homeyness of the apartment, but I would also have people to take care of the cleaning and laundry and whatnot for me so I can focus on my writing.

It would be an oral-retentive writer’s dream come true.

I have been thinking a lot about that kind of life lately. It really seems like the whole school thing is bothering me more this semester. It all seems like way more of a drag. Maybe that’s because I have made it far enough down the road to recovery now that I am beginning to feel restless and want to roam free.

Or maybe that’s just a side effect of Spring coming. (Yes, people from the Island, spring starts in early March here. Not like back home, where it starts mid-April if we’re lucky. )

Regardless, I am finding the whole going to school four days a week thing to be increasingly hard. It all seems so pointless sometimes. I know there’s a point – like getting into VFS, for one – but a deep part of me wants to be roaming the world in search of laid back fun and interesting experiences. No plans, no goals, just living a pleasant life free of toil and strain and full of gentle adventure.

But that’s probably just the other side of the fence calling to me. It’s called to me all my life, but I have never listened. I was always too practical, too sensible, too logical, and above all, too chickenshit to ever do it. There’s been dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times in my life where I have heard the call of the road and felt wanderlust stirring within me, trying to get me to wander away from it all and seek my fortune in the big wild world.

But I never go. All my wandering, like much of the rest of my life, takes place inside my head. In my mind, I explore facts, opinions, ideas, connections, and above all, perspectives as I try my damnedest to figure out what is really going on in this world. And what to do about it.

I still dream of doing the actual wandering one day, but being so sensible, I will have to wait until I can afford it. Or someone else is paying for it, like a publisher, or the company I rep for.

I would make a great company rep. Not a salesman, because I don’t want to sell things unless I truly and sincerely believe in them. But I could be a rep, the kind that goes around to a company’s customers and sees how things are going, if they need anything, or have any complaints, or whatever.

Sounds like a nice life to me, at least for a while. Traveling on the company’s dime, seeing the world, and making a living doing it. Sweet.

We started in on virtue-based ethics today in my Ethics class. The main idea is that an act is virtuous if it is what a virtuous person would do. That seems like it’s begging the question, but the Greeks thought everything had a purpose (telos) and virtues (arene) related to that purpose.

A good knife has the virtue of sharpness, for instance.

And the purpose of human beings is the pursuit of Eudaimonia, which is often translated as “happiness” but is a broader term than that.

The whole notion is elegant but primitive, as one would expect from a theory from the dawn of philosophy. The concept of everything having a purpose is very anthropocentric and not really compatible with a modern scientific worldview. To have purpose, sometime must have a goal, and to have a goal, there must be intention, and to have intention requires a mind.

And what mind lends purpose to some grain of silica buried six miles underground where nobody will ever see it? What is the purpose of the Andromeda galaxy? What is the intention of a black hole?

Anyhow, enough cunting. I need a nap.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.