Why do I find my current life so unsatisfactory?
Let’s dive into that.
One of the main planks of my discontent is my utter lack of purpose. Nothing I do matters and I accomplish nothing that’s worth anything.
At least, nothing worth anything to me, and that’s the only person who counts.
I want to have things to actually do. Things that matter in some greater context. Purposeful things that leave a mark on the world and make my being alive and being who I am really count for something.
And relatedly, I want something to use up all the crazy amounts of excess energy my high voltage brain produces. I know I would be a lot happier if I was a lot busier, and yet my mental illness prevents me from going and finding new stuff to do to fill my time.
I mean, why bother, when video games fill the time so well? Sure, they might not matter and I am not actually achieving anything noteworthy, but while I am playing them I can forget about all that and stay absorbed in the game for as long as I like.
I guess that’s what addictions are like. Whether it’s video games, crystal meth, or needlepoint, all the signal that should be telling you to stop doing the addictive thing are silenced by doing the addictive thing.
That’s their deadly simplicity.
And video games are so good at simulating meaningful progress. Your character levels up. He has adventure. You get a wide variety of virtual experiences. It can feel an awful lot like actually having a life.
But in a safe, risk free way that you can exit any time you want if you start to feel overwhelmed and that only provides the comforting and familiar level of stimulation that comes from screens.
That provides a form of life I can handle. The stimulation is all mental. It sparks my imagination and feeds me narrative in a highly digestible form, A form which makes me feel like I am part of something.
More than that, that I am a hero, doing good and writing wrongs and kicking the bad guys’ asses as I deliver justice.
Is it any wonder I prefer that world over the real one?
In the real world, some of those things are not even an option!
Another reason i dislike this life of mine is that, well, it’s gross. And sad.
I live in filth because I can’t clean anything. I don’t know why. Maybe some deep and pre-rational part of my mind still feels like if I try to clean up after myself, someone is going to show up to tell me I am doing it all wrong and that I am only making things worse and then they will angrily take the task away from me and do it themselves while radiating resentment at me.
Those are some very old tapes from my childhood. But I am stuck with them.
All I know is that even thinking about cleaning up brings on that omnipresent and oppressive fear that makes me feel like I am losing my mind.
I guess it’s just another facet of my fear of dealing with the real world. I am only happy when I can stay in my inner bunker as much as possible.
It’s a wonder I can do anything real at all. But I guess no amount of rampant and systemic neurosis can cure you of the need to eat and excrete.
I still feel like I am struggling to wake up from a long, long nightmare.
And I’m make it LET. ME. GO.
More after the break.
First person guilt
I’ve never known quite what to call it. Self guilt? Guilt about yourself? Auto-guilt?
It’s the guilt you feel when you have trespassed against yourself. When you know you have betrayed our own best interests, or violated your own principles and intent.
Tonight, I had to order a supplemental round of groceries because I ran out of trail mix today and needed something or other to accompany my meals until Friday when I will do my bulk grocery order.
Ended up costing me around $20 for two half-kilogram bags of roasted salted peanuts and a tiny thing of trail mix, ordered from Shopper’s Drug Mart.
I ordered from them because I only have to order $15 worth of stuff from them before they waive the delivery fee. Superstore wanted $35 worth.
Not a problem when I am doing my weekly shopping but a problem tonight.
The reason I bring this up is that I feel terribly guilty about it. You see, in order to make that order, I had to exceed my weekly budget of $100/week (damned five week months) to the tune of around $14, and all because I couldn’t make a 1 kg bag of No Name trail mix last the entire week.
For me, that’s double guilt. Overspending from overeating? Oy.
And let me be clear : this will weigh on my mind for at least a day or two. It should be okay once I buy my groceries on Friday, and the worst that can happen is that I go one week without being able to order in even once.
That would be depressing. But not all that big a deal.
And yet the guilt remains. And it’s a sort of guilt you don’t hear much about.
In my life, I’ve mostly heard it talked about when people cheat on their diets.
We tend to think of guilt as being about doing harm to others, so this self-directed guilt goes against that simple formulation, and therefore kind of flies under the radar.
Perhaps this type of guilt is triggered by the anticipation of future consequences, knowing you will have nobody to blame but yourself.
Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe it’s simply that, on a deep level, we care about ourselves as if we were another person, and we feel bad for hurting that person.
The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in between.
Whatever. A week from now it will be ancient history and life will go on.
More or less.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.