So here I am, sitting in the room by myself, confronted by a pile of work that needs to be done. Professional work. School work. Personal project work. I suppose I ought to do it. But first, an overture.
—
It has been an interesting 36 hours. Okay, scratch that, it has been a fscking problem 36 hours. There are two tendencies in my life that conspire continually to someday wreck me utterly:
1) A self-destructive streak a mile wide that emerges at inopportune times.
2) An overwillingness to commit to things (and people) and to tackle problems bigger than myself.
It is, I sometimes think, a miracle I’m anywhere at all. Much moreso that I am where I am. It makes me wonder about the rest of humanity, in a cynical way, I think. But there’s no way of knowing anything, really, so I’ll just wonder about myself instead.
—
One problem at issue is that I can often have trouble differentiating in the moment between my self-destructive streak and my self-correcting mechanism. The latter is absolutely essential for my ability to function in the world; the former is a pretty good destroyer of my ability to function in the world.
Age has served to mitigate this ambiguity to some degree, but it has not, nor do I believe it ever will have, eradicated it completely. It is thus increasingly essential that I find some other method of divination or sublimation with which to cope since I am not (as I have just indicated) getting any younger.
—
Sometimes I think I haven’t been truly unhappy in ten years.
Other times I think I haven’t been truly happy in ten years.
These two do not go together. Or if they do, they paint an unfortunate picture. Have I lost something?