Staving off the worst of it

Sometimes life gets in the way of doing the things that you want to do. Sometimes you just get in your own way. I think I can dispense with saying 'sometimes' because I do it constantly, and I think that I'm not alone.

You do it, too. You waste time in so many ways that it would take a solid afternoon of self-reflection just to list them. I know, because I've had to do just that.

I think that the final decision comes from a place of fear and denial. Staring, every day, at yourself in the mirror and finding your flaws is difficult. It's impossible for most people. For me, it's hard because I can see behind my reflection a vast nothingness that silently assures me that none of this matters anyway. Cosmically, even the worst genocide or war is an infinitesimal blip on the timeline. My life means nothing but what meaning I assign it. Having that much control over your own destiny is an interesting dilemma, because until this junction I felt that I had no control at all.

Some would say that I still don't; that the control I feel is a necessary illusion that perpetuates the human condition and the propagation of the species. I call bullshit.


 I don't believe that predestination is a valid belief system, if only from a practical standpoint. It creates an extremely self-obsessed worldview that justifies everything we do while simultaneously removing us from reproach and guilt. It creates a void where meaning should be. The struggle against the innate laziness and mind-destroying depression that threatens to grip me every day is the only thing that matters. It is what gives my life purpose and direction, as vague and confusing as that direction is.

For all of my indecision about life and the bizarre social constructs that attempt to drive my behavior, I'm still going about things in a very orderly and boring fashion. I'm working full time at a job that I don't love but pays the bills and then some. I'm going to school full time as well and, though it is not a subject for which I have an undying and passionate love, I'm studying every day. I will graduate and I will do the things that society says I should do. I will do these things because it's a viable canvas on which I will paint the meaning and creation of my life.

Not a great post, but no-one will read it anyway.