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.