I used to get around 2000 hits a week on this thing, now it's more like 200.
It's my own fault- I stopped inputting data. The content froze. The crowds moved on.
I've been working on a novel, so anything remotely clever I may have had to say got slipped into that. And I have an iPhone too, which means if I need to self-diagnose, I record a voice memo instead. Very therapeutic.
Today was a little odd. I have trackers on all of my social media, so I know when my exes are stalking me online, or their friends. I see them poke around, look at my life, and leave (usually without incident). I have a policy to NEVER EVER look at their feeds, as that would indicate an interest in the past. I know there are no answers there, so there's no point looking.
But today a sister of someone I used to be involved with decided to drop a totally ill-informed rant on my Instagram, with the intention of hurting my feelings. I will tell you now, facts hurt my feelings. But barbed invective of exactly the kind you find being shouted by angry schoolgirls doesn't have any effect other than to make me feel sorry for the people closest to whoever is doing the ranting.
This rant got the wrong end of every stick currently available, and was factually incorrect at every level, so the capacity for offence was obviously diminished with every new word typed.
It also accused me of being "old", which I fail to see as an insult (it's an inevitability). And considering the amount of friends I have lost to disease, suicide, and misadventure, I wear it with pride, to be honest. It accused me of a number of things, all of which were baseless, but the net result was that it made me pause and think for a moment.
My first instinct was to think about all of the obvious faults inherent in my accuser. The family secrets that I know, and they don't. I was sworn to secrecy by those closest to them, and despite my lack of affection for any of these people any more, those secrets have been, and always will remain, firmly hidden. If my accuser knew what I know, their personal world would end, both because of the facts involved, but also from the shock that their own family never told them about it. It's all very juicy, but that's all I'm going to say about it.
Then my mind wandered to marinate on my own inner journey lately.
This is my blog, so I'm allowed to be as honest and blatant as I want (especially as I don't have a large readership to cater to any more).
I have struggled with suicidal feelings for so long, but it's not something that needs an intervention. I mean, I probably do, but please don't do that. What I'm saying is I feel so remote and disconnected from a world I'm really disgusted by. By people.
I don't fit in anywhere, but I'm not depressed about that. I can fool people into thinking I'm part of their group/scene/whatever when the necessity strikes. You have to if you want to remain employed. But it's all an act. On my weekends, I stock up on everything I need, I go home, shut the door, and don't come out for two or three days. I don't talk to anyone, I don't arrange to meet people, because I am far happier being alone. My housemate is exactly the same way, so it's perfect. We're ghosts.
My suicidal feelings aren't related to belonging, I'm horrified at the thought of belonging! I opted out on purpose, after all. No, they are related to the apparent pointlessness of life without whatever the singular form of gregariousness is.
There is a nagging, ever present background hum that says "You're doing it wrong", because the idea that of the thousands of people I have met in this lifetime so far, they have all meant so little, that I purposefully elect to actively stay away from people and avoid fresh interactions completely.
Is that what life turns into?
I mean, I know I could change it if I wanted to... it's the not wanting to that seems so out of place and which makes me question what the point is.
I keep myself very busy. I have 3 jobs, two of which are my own businesses. I sleep a maximum of 6 hours a night, I simply cannot sleep more than that any more. I have creative pursuits that I lend myself to regularly, despite my bleak outlook that after I die, my computer will be wiped and given to someone else, and all of the music and writing I have poured into it will simply be deleted. But I mean, that's true, isn't it?
No one is going to give a crap about any of it. And why should they? I have never claimed to be talented or necessary. I'm just another ant, doing ant things. And when I dry up and cease to function, other ants will take my place in this great and magnificent dance we call life.
And, shock/horror- I'm fine with that. I guess I just concentrate too much thought energy on "Why wait?"
And I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that I laugh every day. Quite a lot. I'm very entertained, I do a lot of fun things, I enjoy myself immensely. But a large part of my personality is that I get tired of things very quickly, so even if I'm laughing and having fun, my inner cynic is still always waiting to yawn and point at its watch.
I work very very hard, and that's great, because I gain a great deal of satisfaction from a hard days work. I don't enjoy work at all, but I do enjoy it. It's like if Escher did personalities.
But to drag this rattling out-of-control word salad into some semblance of a point, I really want to declare this:
I read back through a few posts in this blog today. And while there exists literal clouds of wanky, self-indulgent, ultimately meaningless garbage; there are also some very solid posts of which I am extremely proud of. And I don't need any form of wider recognition to validate them. I don't care if only 3 people read them, or if they become mandatory reading for High School English. I needed to say some things, I said them, and the way in which I articulated those things tickles me to revisit.
Mission accomplished, so to speak.
And it made me realise, no matter what anyone has to say about me, no matter how negatively I may experience my own self at times, and even no matter how pointless we all are with our ideas and careers and cars and brain tumours; some of the posts in this blog are of a high enough standard that I feel I achieved something worthwhile in all of the living, assessing, experiencing, learning, mistakes, revisions, and other ephemera that went into the creation thereof.
Words are an acceptable legacy in my opinion (and no, that isn't a cry for help or a threat of self harm).
Just sayin'.
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
It's my own fault- I stopped inputting data. The content froze. The crowds moved on.
I've been working on a novel, so anything remotely clever I may have had to say got slipped into that. And I have an iPhone too, which means if I need to self-diagnose, I record a voice memo instead. Very therapeutic.
Today was a little odd. I have trackers on all of my social media, so I know when my exes are stalking me online, or their friends. I see them poke around, look at my life, and leave (usually without incident). I have a policy to NEVER EVER look at their feeds, as that would indicate an interest in the past. I know there are no answers there, so there's no point looking.
But today a sister of someone I used to be involved with decided to drop a totally ill-informed rant on my Instagram, with the intention of hurting my feelings. I will tell you now, facts hurt my feelings. But barbed invective of exactly the kind you find being shouted by angry schoolgirls doesn't have any effect other than to make me feel sorry for the people closest to whoever is doing the ranting.
This rant got the wrong end of every stick currently available, and was factually incorrect at every level, so the capacity for offence was obviously diminished with every new word typed.
It also accused me of being "old", which I fail to see as an insult (it's an inevitability). And considering the amount of friends I have lost to disease, suicide, and misadventure, I wear it with pride, to be honest. It accused me of a number of things, all of which were baseless, but the net result was that it made me pause and think for a moment.
My first instinct was to think about all of the obvious faults inherent in my accuser. The family secrets that I know, and they don't. I was sworn to secrecy by those closest to them, and despite my lack of affection for any of these people any more, those secrets have been, and always will remain, firmly hidden. If my accuser knew what I know, their personal world would end, both because of the facts involved, but also from the shock that their own family never told them about it. It's all very juicy, but that's all I'm going to say about it.
Then my mind wandered to marinate on my own inner journey lately.
This is my blog, so I'm allowed to be as honest and blatant as I want (especially as I don't have a large readership to cater to any more).
I have struggled with suicidal feelings for so long, but it's not something that needs an intervention. I mean, I probably do, but please don't do that. What I'm saying is I feel so remote and disconnected from a world I'm really disgusted by. By people.
I don't fit in anywhere, but I'm not depressed about that. I can fool people into thinking I'm part of their group/scene/whatever when the necessity strikes. You have to if you want to remain employed. But it's all an act. On my weekends, I stock up on everything I need, I go home, shut the door, and don't come out for two or three days. I don't talk to anyone, I don't arrange to meet people, because I am far happier being alone. My housemate is exactly the same way, so it's perfect. We're ghosts.
My suicidal feelings aren't related to belonging, I'm horrified at the thought of belonging! I opted out on purpose, after all. No, they are related to the apparent pointlessness of life without whatever the singular form of gregariousness is.
There is a nagging, ever present background hum that says "You're doing it wrong", because the idea that of the thousands of people I have met in this lifetime so far, they have all meant so little, that I purposefully elect to actively stay away from people and avoid fresh interactions completely.
Is that what life turns into?
I mean, I know I could change it if I wanted to... it's the not wanting to that seems so out of place and which makes me question what the point is.
I keep myself very busy. I have 3 jobs, two of which are my own businesses. I sleep a maximum of 6 hours a night, I simply cannot sleep more than that any more. I have creative pursuits that I lend myself to regularly, despite my bleak outlook that after I die, my computer will be wiped and given to someone else, and all of the music and writing I have poured into it will simply be deleted. But I mean, that's true, isn't it?
No one is going to give a crap about any of it. And why should they? I have never claimed to be talented or necessary. I'm just another ant, doing ant things. And when I dry up and cease to function, other ants will take my place in this great and magnificent dance we call life.
And, shock/horror- I'm fine with that. I guess I just concentrate too much thought energy on "Why wait?"
And I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that I laugh every day. Quite a lot. I'm very entertained, I do a lot of fun things, I enjoy myself immensely. But a large part of my personality is that I get tired of things very quickly, so even if I'm laughing and having fun, my inner cynic is still always waiting to yawn and point at its watch.
I work very very hard, and that's great, because I gain a great deal of satisfaction from a hard days work. I don't enjoy work at all, but I do enjoy it. It's like if Escher did personalities.
But to drag this rattling out-of-control word salad into some semblance of a point, I really want to declare this:
I read back through a few posts in this blog today. And while there exists literal clouds of wanky, self-indulgent, ultimately meaningless garbage; there are also some very solid posts of which I am extremely proud of. And I don't need any form of wider recognition to validate them. I don't care if only 3 people read them, or if they become mandatory reading for High School English. I needed to say some things, I said them, and the way in which I articulated those things tickles me to revisit.
Mission accomplished, so to speak.
And it made me realise, no matter what anyone has to say about me, no matter how negatively I may experience my own self at times, and even no matter how pointless we all are with our ideas and careers and cars and brain tumours; some of the posts in this blog are of a high enough standard that I feel I achieved something worthwhile in all of the living, assessing, experiencing, learning, mistakes, revisions, and other ephemera that went into the creation thereof.
Words are an acceptable legacy in my opinion (and no, that isn't a cry for help or a threat of self harm).
Just sayin'.
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
3 comments:
I'm still here and still reading whenever you post.
I'm over people just lately. What you have written here is exactly how I have been feeling lately.
I've had a few run-ins these past weeks which make me want to curl inward and speak to others as little as humanly possible.
That is my regular instinct - exactly what you type here. - I too "I purposefully elect to actively stay away from people and avoid fresh interactions completely"
And when I don't have to go to work and face others, I (and my other half) do pretty much what you do - lock the door on the world. And I/we like it that way.
I used to want connection with others, I would crave it or go looking for it - after being burned by people so many times, why would I bother again? I have my cats, I have my chickens, I have the other half, we have a garden and a place to live and if I didn't have to work to support all of that, I would never leave the house except to grocery shop.
I think this is ok. I sometimes think maybe this is how it is meant to be for a while, at our age. Especially if we're not having kids.
Maybe it changes again as we get older, I don't know.
Anyway the purpose of this comment was more just to say I'm still here, still reading, and still glad that however it happened, I found your blog one fine day on the interwebs. Because you have a lot to say and you say it much better than I ever could.
Did you ever see Bill & Ted's excellent adventure, where they would say "Be excellent to each other (and party on dudes". The being excellent to each other is all I have ever wished for in this life. I try to put that out there - of course I never get it back. :(
I'm sad to know it's not just me @Snoskred.
I like your blogs I love solace and solitude people annoyed me I was just like you until I had a family of my own I found my being of service to my family put a whole nother spin on life to be more than I was just living for myself. Family and children try it some time your children will be your biggest fans...
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