Work in progress: my life

CAUTION: This is long and self-righteous, so please handle it accordingly

Ok so I was thinking for a second and I think now would be as good a time as any to reflect on myself. It’s a tough thing to do. I mean, sit down for a second and try and think to yourself “what do I really think?”. It’s one thing to feel one way or another, but trying to put them into words is really really hard. That’s why I mooch off others. Other people put things so much better than I do most of the time.

And also, what the hell do I say? Anything I write right now is going to be funny to me in a couple of years. (at least that’s what I secretly hope). I kinda feel like a balloon that gets caught up in a jet stream of air that just pushes it haphazardly in random directions it chooses. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When people I know tell me they feel helpless to society, and just a part of unforeseen conditions, most of the time I just sympathize with them. It’s easier than trying to explain something to someone who doesn’t care. All people want these days is sympathy anyways.

All the while I’m just thinking “that’s because you ARE helpless” and yet, people take this to be a negative thing, but I feel kind of empowered believing that I’m helpless. Being able to think that I am helpless just puts me with one less thing to worry about I think. Sure, I’m helpless to a lot of stuff, but that doesn’t mean that it has to carry over to everything. I have limited control to make myself happy, and it’s not that difficult to utilize it and make something positive out of it. But the positive stuff takes some work. It’s much easier to bitch about it. I’ve come to really detest conversations these days because a good 80% are just complaining, complaining about school, work, the weather, george bush, whatever. It’s all the same. All you do is spout off information you believe to be true while someone else either concurs and goes right along with you, or they dissent and you get in an argument. While sometimes this can be fun, most of the time I just don’t care.

I am not searching for a higher purpose. I am not looking to change the world. Right now, I’m not looking to do anything but get out of school. But why do I even go to school? I ask myself this a lot. It’s not like I’ve ever been in a real tight spot before, so I can’t say that I’m going to school to avoid working shat jobs all my life. So as I jack ben, I say all jobs are shat, you’re a monkey pressing buttons with a limited ability to make active decisions. This limited ability to make active decisions is the only reason a machine isn’t doing it yet (they’re much less whiny and don’t need all those rights). But I don’t know, school is harder these days but it’s getting more enjoyable because I’m finally doing good at it. It’s nice to get A’s and B’s and know that you earned them. And earning things is all I really think I am. It seems much nobler to base the person you are under pretenses that you earned them instead of the reality of stealing..

Money is great, (again, straight jacking ayn rand) because it allows you to quantify the things you earn. It’s an arbitrary system that assigns values to services, goods, and the amount of skill or time or effort that goes into producing it. you can go dig a ditch for 8 hours a day for weeks on end and end up getting paid 500 bucks a week. You can become a doctor and get paid 500 dollars an hour to sit around and diagnose people. I could go dig a ditch right now. I couldn’t be a doctor right now. Doctors earn the money they get. It’s not easy to get through medical school, and deal with life or death situations, probably a lot of stress I wouldn’t want to deal with.

But besides money you earn knowledge for yourself too. It doesn’t even matter if it’s worthless, as long as you have it. Even if it’s arbitrary, it’s still something you believe in. what ruins this though is that people don’t think anything is arbitrary. The way I’m thinking right now, everything is arbitrary. But it’s not arbitrary to me. I make the active choice to believe something, but I know that doesn’t automatically make me right. I’m right and comfortable with what I believe until some other data comes in and allows me to tweak it. But damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I know I don’t really get any outside input without interacting with others. But most of the time, interaction just becomes competition. No one talks about ideas anymore, they all compare beliefs. (hmm, when I think about it, I think that’s out of dogma). Everyone gets self-righteous, and defensive, and feels they have something to prove. I really don’t need other’s approval to believe in something (although it is nice) and I certainly don’t believe that I can change anyone’s opinion by trying to explain my point of view to them. I don’t really mind explaining myself if people really want to hear it, but people take it the wrong way. Most people take explaining your point of view as an attack against theirs, so they get defensive (I would prefer indifference). This is hugely counter-productive and it makes a conversation into just waiting for your turn to talk (fight club), hoping to make that one comment that just makes everyone go “oh man, I never looked at it like that, what was I thinking all this time?”. like anyone is going to just up and 180 like that.

I really want to get out of school and get going in a career, because I don’t want to be indebted to anyone anymore (at least monetarily, I’ll deal with the emotionally later(although I think it is even worse)) but I know I’ll have to patient for that one, it’ll come eventually….i just hate feeling indebted to people. It’s like a power game where people can hold it against you, and I’d rather it wasn’t like that. while I’m semi-indebted to friends I have, it’s not something I would rip myself up about. I’m way over my head when it comes to my parents though. The amount of time, money, effort, blood, sweat and tears that have gone on to give me the life I have is ridiculous. Here I am, 22 and living this life I have now due to their hard work. It’s a debt I can’t repay, and (pardon my whining) unfair. I like the finality of being able to take care of some debt or problem or whatever and closing it. But you can’t just do that with your parents. It’s like the debt is just so huge that it doesn’t hold an amount anymore. Of course I think my parents would be happy with whatever I do, and that’s why it’s so damning. Am I doing the things I want to, or what I think they want me to? I’d really like to think it’s me, but there’s a lot of factors that go into “me”. Hence the reason I want a career, if I can be independent monetarily, at least it’s a start.

People who are happy with their jobs look at it as and end. Everyone who is unhappy with their job looks at it as a means. I’ll never be able to look at a job as an end. I’m working for money so I can go spend it on things that I do consider an end. I consider working and playing two separate things, and it just seems to be counter intuitive to be at a job that would blend the two together so harmoniously that you couldn’t tell one apart from the other. This doesn’t mean that your job should blow goats, but I just can’t imagine having the same kind of fun at work as I would doing something I wanted to do. I say congratulations to anyone who can live like that, but I don’t know if it would work for me.

Intelligence is a funny thing to have, I don’t know if I truly appreciate or not, but I think I’m starting to grow more accustomed to it the more I’m forced to deal with it. i could always be smarter, I could defiantly be stupider, I don’t think it would have too much bearing on my goals in life (whatever they may be, I just know they’re pretty unambitious though). I can be good at anything I try though, especially if I apply myself. It’s a bit of a shocker when you can glide all the way through your education, and then suddenly you realize you have to work for once. I think this happened to me in late high school, but by then, it was the end of high school and it didn’t matter. Then you get to college, and the first two years are bullshit, and then bam, what the hell happened to being able to pass tests studying for two hours before hand. Either I got stupid or the stuff got harder. Probably both. Defiantly both. But now I know that I can learn any damn thing I want to and be good at it. Not the best, but adequate. I have no special talents, I’m just mediocre in everything. Give me a video game and I’ll get pretty good in about 10 minutes. Give me an instrument and I’ll figure out the basics in a couple of days. Teach me anything and I’ll be able to pick up on it pretty quick. But then it just hits that barrier, where I stay at the same level. There’s just a threshold I hit where I can’t tell if I’m getting any better, it just seems the same to me. It’s kind of frustrating, because I see other people doing it and even though I caught on quicker, I just see everyone else fly by me. I still haven’t found anything where I’m the person who’s flying by. but damn, I could be a whole hell of a lot worse off. I could be missing an arm. I could be on crutches all the time, I could have HIV or something.

Could always be worse.

I remind myself of that a lot, cause it defiantly could be. The fact that I can go through all these daily routines (which are pretty high risk) and not be dead is amazing. It just seems like statistically, I should be dead by now. There’s a whole lot of things that can kill you out there, and it seems like one of them should have struck me by now. It’s just a muse though.…

Caring is something that has been bugging me a lot too. People always spout off about how much they care, or how much they don’t care. It’s pretty easy to say that you care about everything, but it seems to extreme to say you care about everything, due to the fact that somethings you care about are polar opposites of each other. And being truly indifferent to everything seems impossible too If you held to your beliefs as someone who is indifferent and doesn’t care about anything, you really should have killed yourself by now. But something makes you hold on. I know I could never bring myself to suicide, ever. I can’t even picture myself doing it. I mean, you’re gonna die anyways, what’s the big rush? Caring is one of the most arbitrary things out there. I care about something because I want to. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, it’s just what I felt like doing. I really don’t feel a need to justify what I care about to anyone because they got their own justifications for the things they care about. I can justify things to myself any way I want to, and anyone else can do the same. It doesn’t really make any difference in the end. People can get so defensive though. I believe in things because it’s convenient or it’s just the way I am. I can’t really control what I believe (in a sense) so why should I think I can control it in others? Sheesh…

But shit, it’s almost 3, I’m out of steam, and I think I should go to bed so I’ll be ready to do my thang, whatever it may end up being.

Happy birthday to me…I earned it.