I feel like there is a conflict raging inside me.

And that’s good. Conflict is good. Conflict gets things done.

The war is basically between the old guard and the new hotness. Between the old sick part of my mind and soul and the new, strong, healthy part that wants me to rise and grow and get some kind of a god damned grown-up life for myself.

I feel like the door to my emancipation is wide open. I’m just having trouble deciding t go through it. The part of me that doesn’t want to have to change holds me back.

Hence the war. The part of me that is alive and healthy is fighting to overcome all that freezing fog and glacial ice inside me in order to take over and finally heal me, fully and completely, without the old guard’s fucking interference ruining things.

And the new growth will eventually win. It’s inevitable. The old guard is fixed and moribund and unliving. The new growth is vital and resilient and strong. The new growth will grow and spread and bring new life to the frozen plains of my Midnight Tundra, and soon the land will live and grown again.

Spring at last. Sweet lord almighty, spring at last.

And I can ease this process along by remembering to deliberately send energy down into those lively, vital parts of me in order to energize their growth and make sure they can overcome all that dead scar tissue and the husks of old emotions to reclaim my soul and my self from the fell clutches of mental illness.

Lord knows I have lots of energy to spare. My body might be tired and sick and depleted but my mind is still an electromagnetic powerhouse that generates gigawatts of raw electricity merely as a byproduct of the massive amount of mentation going on at all times and at all levels.

This mind of mine is pretty fucking amazing. It can do so much. I’m a freaking wizard, Harry, and yet I languish in the Failure to Launch zone because I’m also crazy.

And part of that insanity is being afraid to grow up. The central pathology of Failure to Launch seems to revolve around this feeling that to grow up is to die, because growing up means going out into that mean old world out there, and we are convinced we cannot possibly “make it” out there.

And that’s definitely crazy, because like… why not? Getting a job is horrible but doable. Finding an apartment is also bad but doable. Paying bills is easy in this day and age. Housework is not that bad, especially if you keep on top of it.

So what’s the big deal? It must be that whole “fixed sense of self” thing I have alluded to in the past. To grow up is to change on a deep and fundamental level, and to the fixed self that seems like death.

Try to convince a caterpillar that turning into a butterfly won’t kill it. That it will still live on as a butterfly.

Similarly, becoming an adult won’t kill me,. Or rip me out of my cozy tomb and throw me to the wolves. Or cost me some important part of myself.

But it will mean change. The kind you can’t back out of. It means changing as a person and that’s always super hard and scary to do.

There will be pain. And fear. Maybe even some (metaphorical) blood.

But I will emerge from my chrysalis as the radiant glory that I truly am.

And all the world shall be warmed by my glow.

Plus I’m going to get MAD laid.

More after the break.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

I wonder what a chronology of the public perception of “the world” would look like.

And I mean, the modern perception of “the world” as a spinning ball of dirt with a bunch of different nations and cultures on it.

Obviously, if you define “the world” as “all there is”, we have had an idea of “the world” ever since our “world” was just one tiny slice of Olduvai Gorge.

This question first came to me as a child in the 1970’s, when it was very common for people to bemoan “the state of the world” or to say “this world’s got problems!” or to ask one another “what do you think of the world situation?^[1]“.

And I am pretty sure that was new. I don’t think people in the 50’s and 60’s thought that way, or though about “the world” much at all.

Despite the rise of mass communication (like TV and radio), things that happened in far off countries could just as well be happening on another planet.

But the Seventies brought a rise in mass communication power and intensity. Color TV came along, as did international phone exchanges and touch tone dialing. Satellite communications allowed for live coverage of anywhere on earth to be beaming directly into your living room. The baby steps of the internet happened in the Seventies.

Mostly nerds at universities and military bases text chatting with one another.

“The world” was getting smaller. Small enough to fit inside people’s heads, I suppose, at least as a conceptual space.

I suppose before there was “the world” to complain about, people complained about “life” or “this life” being harsh and cruel and full of misfortune, misery, and woe.

The difference is that back then, it really freaking was. War, famine, plague, and death stalked the lives of pretty much everyone.

Anyhow, that pessimism about “the world” and the universal belief that “this world has a lot of problems” is something that a lot of us Gen X types grew up with.

And people wonder why we are so sullen and cynical.

WE LEARNED IT FROM YOU!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.