November 12, 2013
If someone had asked me in high school, or even a year ago, if I was the kind of person who would have started, of my own volition, a blog that has no academic purpose (or even a purpose in general), I would have bequeathed them with... The Look.
You know. The Look. In glorious capital letters. We all have one. Some are more fantastic than others. They tend to be an expression of our general outlook on the world, on life. As I don't often have the pleasure of giving myself The Look, I am going to be shooting from the hip here on the exact impression people derive from my Look. My goal is to generally say, "Pfffft." Or, on a particularly sassy day, "Piffle."
I digress.
The point of that was that I have never imagined myself to be a person who posts all their quibbles and trials on the World Wide Web. I am generally a very reserved person. My Facebook post frequency is about one post per three to four months. This may be a reflection on how boring my life is, but I like to console myself with the idea that I am just a rather private person who doesn't need to post every little detail of my life in order to get attention. I suspect that this whole undertaking might shoot that particular fantasy to Hell.
I'm not sure if you are really out there, oh nebulous audience. For the sake of my rather fragile ego, I am going to pretend that you are out there. If I don't receive any comments otherwise, I am also going to take the liberty to imagine that you, my spellbound audience, think that everything I say is both riotously funny and touchingly profound. Please allow me my little vanities.
I speculate on all this because I am a novice in the blogging world, and as I am unable to navigate the blogging world and discover new and interesting blogs without the aid of friendly Facebook posts by intellectually-minded acquaintances, I am going to assume that no one will stumble upon my own little blog either. Because what this truly is, or so I am adamantly telling myself, is a last-ditch attempt to impose some kind of reverse-entropy on my life. Or maybe allow a safe structure with which to release all of... Whatever it seems needs to be released.
I cannot even completely explain it to myself. Which is quite perturbing. I have a great fondness for language and the power that it holds. Nothing makes me giddier than phrasing something just so. The idea that I have this huge dilemma, this monstrous presence that is wreaking havoc on my life and I cannot even pin a name to it makes me want to tear out all my hair (which I have a prodigious amount of, by the by). And so begins this blog. This rather public, yet anonymous, diary-journal-something that I am going to commit to posting to. Religiously. Every day.
The thing is, at this moment, I can believe that this is the truth. That's part of my problem, you see, oh dear audience of mine. On days like today I encounter something in my life that fills me with drive, with purpose and direction, with motivation. On days like today I can look ahead into my life and see all that's waiting to be done and experienced and accomplished. And I can see myself doing it too. I have this wondrous vision of who and what I want to be, and I see the path of exactly how to get there. And I'm filled with this fantastic, light, frothy feeling. Like someone decided to bake the perfect crème brûlée in my chest cavity. I think it might possibly be what some would call "enlightenment." My ego hasn't expanded to quite that size yet, oh audience of mine, but I have the general inkling that it might be a small step on the journey there.
The problem, dear audience, is when tomorrow comes. And that might not actually be tomorrow. It might be in the next three hours, when I have to go to class and listen to some professor drone on about a subject which I have no interest for. Or it might be in the next thirty minutes when I convince myself that yes, the dishes do need to be done, and no, it's really not the best idea to put it off until tomorrow, and yes, I can do them all by myself, and no, it's really not that freaking hard. Or it might be this weekend, when I let myself sleep in for a morning and end up lazing about all day, sufficiently killing every productive bone in my body. Or it might be two weeks from now, when I travel 5 hours home for Thanksgiving alone, save for my cat, in a vehicle, slowly succumbing to the motion sickness that always plagues me when I travel.
My point is, tomorrow always comes. And when it arrives, the light, frothy, crème brûlée feeling has vanished, leaving in its place one of many less fantastic, less delightful feelings that generally characterize day-to-day life. And this is not bad, dear audience. This is life. Life cannot be one continuous, frothy crème brûlée. Vegetables can be just as delightful as a sugary dessert (although, don't let my mother catch wind of that particular admission, or I'll be bombarded with more winter squash than I know what to do with). My problem comes when, for some reason, the absence of the sugary dessert and the transition to the nutritious and (sometimes) delicious vegetable experiences some kind of disconnect. And when this happens, no food is consumed at all, whether it be sugary or not. When this happens, I sink into some kind of pit that I cannot crawl back out of. I don't care anymore. I just don't. Some part of me knows that, well, I really should. It's more logical and beneficial and frankly enjoyable to care, to accomplish, to complete, to maintain. I know all of this. I just don't feel it.
I think that is an important distinction. I know a great many things. I should, I've been in school for almost 15 years. I can write a paper, perform equations, write a lab report (under extreme duress, because lab reports and I are bitter enemies till the end), give a speech, analyze a text, apply a principle. And yet. And yet. These are all the things I know. How much do I actually feel? I know that if I don't apply myself I'll lose my scholarship and my chance for my ideal future. But can I feel it? Can anyone? Can I feel that utter distress, that horrible, irrevocable loss of a chance that may never come my way again? Even as I write this, describing with words the wrenching, devastating agony that comes from lost opportunities and wrecked hopes and dreams, I still doubt my ability to feel that consequence in my soul, to truly understand that reality. And so, I push myself. I procrastinate, I half-ass, I squeak by, trying to stimulate some kind of panic as a way to get myself in gear. Is this the smartest way to handle my life and my education? Probably not. In fact, most definitely not. And yet. And yet.
And so begins this blog. My attempt at creating some kind of framework in my life with which to pull myself out of the dark pit of my mind. To foster some kind of commitment. To halt the eternal slide into the schlump of laziness. To develop some sort of constancy that I can fall back on when tempted to say, "Oh fuck all this shit." And that, oh non-existent audience of mine, is what you're here for. You are the silent witness to my struggle. If a stray happens to wander to this blog through the intricate and dark pathways of the web, and actually feels interested enough to read this mammoth monologue, feel free to comment. Who am I to complain at extra incentive to stick with my goal? But that really isn't what I am expecting from this endeavor. In truth, I simply need some kind of framework with which to let out all this... something. Everything. Nothing. And it needs to be out here, in the open, not buried in a journal on my bookshelf or in the archives of my computer. It needs to be laid out in the open for me to see. For the world to see.
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