Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
i need friends
I did a lot in 2010, huh?
But that tack of self-inquiry really began with, "What more do you want?" asked in needling, mock exasperation. Another voice, this one more solemn, answered, "love."
I try to keep my perspective grounded and fair--and, in my equanimous moments, I rationally acknowledge my blessings (both circumstantial and the ones for which I've worked). Still, in my day-to-day goings-on, I'm haven't been satisfied with, or proud of, my life since graduation.
I wish I could say that it comes down to unfulfilling work, but, mostly, it's just plain loneliness. I'm definitely one of those people who gets down for no good reason, which happens just about anytime I have time to myself, which is often. For all that I did in 2010, what I really want in my life in 2011 are friends and time with friends--for the initial and very selfish reason that I don't want to be down so much. I also have an inkling that life's joys, at least for interpersonally-inclined me, will be found in my relationships and not in my accomplishments. One (most of all, me) hardly looks back wistfully at a day spent watching DVDs or studying for that German test as one would when reminiscing about times spent with friends. Working through new ideas and other practices at life-mastery became goals of mine because they were the alternative, the things that one's left with aside from hobbies and hanging out. I've sustained them because I want to be an interesting person, fair and equanimous to all of my friends and acquaintances. But I can't say any of my competencies in the humanities have ever won me a single friend...
I know that I'm not incapable of making close friends. I've made them and I have them, but they live hundreds, even thousands of miles away. They even tell me that I'm not repulsive and mostly normal, if a little eccentric and sarcastic. But I still get jealous when I see groups of friends or others with full social schedules and I wonder how I've bungled my life up to this point that I'm alone and bored yet another Saturday night.
I feel like a silly chimera: outwardly aloof/deliberate/calculated/sly but inwardly playful, like a labrador puppy running at you. I've had to cope, but time's dragged on since graduation and things haven't improved and my circumstances aren't likely to. So it's up to me? Well, that's disheartening--I've been largely alienated from my peers my whole life and I can count on one hand the friends with whom I can just be. (There's something so great about just sitting on a friend's couch sans all personae. But there's no couch like that in San Diego for me.) Every interaction with a new person is so calculated, so far removed from my spontaneous energies that it becomes a game, a theatrical production where I'm just playing a role. I've been so concerned with coming across in a certain way--of making sure an idealized image of myself (as smart, funny, complicated) was realized in the perceptions of strangers--that I've lost myself chasing a illusion. Well, this is ridiculous.
Action point, then: obviously, I can throw myself at life: at travel, at church, at hiking or marathons, at studying German, etc. Well...I'm thinking I might start to throw myself at people. Better a fool than a loner.
But that tack of self-inquiry really began with, "What more do you want?" asked in needling, mock exasperation. Another voice, this one more solemn, answered, "love."
I try to keep my perspective grounded and fair--and, in my equanimous moments, I rationally acknowledge my blessings (both circumstantial and the ones for which I've worked). Still, in my day-to-day goings-on, I'm haven't been satisfied with, or proud of, my life since graduation.
I wish I could say that it comes down to unfulfilling work, but, mostly, it's just plain loneliness. I'm definitely one of those people who gets down for no good reason, which happens just about anytime I have time to myself, which is often. For all that I did in 2010, what I really want in my life in 2011 are friends and time with friends--for the initial and very selfish reason that I don't want to be down so much. I also have an inkling that life's joys, at least for interpersonally-inclined me, will be found in my relationships and not in my accomplishments. One (most of all, me) hardly looks back wistfully at a day spent watching DVDs or studying for that German test as one would when reminiscing about times spent with friends. Working through new ideas and other practices at life-mastery became goals of mine because they were the alternative, the things that one's left with aside from hobbies and hanging out. I've sustained them because I want to be an interesting person, fair and equanimous to all of my friends and acquaintances. But I can't say any of my competencies in the humanities have ever won me a single friend...
I know that I'm not incapable of making close friends. I've made them and I have them, but they live hundreds, even thousands of miles away. They even tell me that I'm not repulsive and mostly normal, if a little eccentric and sarcastic. But I still get jealous when I see groups of friends or others with full social schedules and I wonder how I've bungled my life up to this point that I'm alone and bored yet another Saturday night.
I feel like a silly chimera: outwardly aloof/deliberate/calculated/sly but inwardly playful, like a labrador puppy running at you. I've had to cope, but time's dragged on since graduation and things haven't improved and my circumstances aren't likely to. So it's up to me? Well, that's disheartening--I've been largely alienated from my peers my whole life and I can count on one hand the friends with whom I can just be. (There's something so great about just sitting on a friend's couch sans all personae. But there's no couch like that in San Diego for me.) Every interaction with a new person is so calculated, so far removed from my spontaneous energies that it becomes a game, a theatrical production where I'm just playing a role. I've been so concerned with coming across in a certain way--of making sure an idealized image of myself (as smart, funny, complicated) was realized in the perceptions of strangers--that I've lost myself chasing a illusion. Well, this is ridiculous.
Action point, then: obviously, I can throw myself at life: at travel, at church, at hiking or marathons, at studying German, etc. Well...I'm thinking I might start to throw myself at people. Better a fool than a loner.
Friday, December 31, 2010
in 2010, I
ran ≈ 485 miles
completed my first marathon in 3 hours 38 minutes and 4 seconds
drove up to LA with friends just for chicken and waffles at roscoe's
spent a week in san francisco, seeing the sites, visiting friends, easter service in a cathedral, wine country tourin', chats in the parlor
took a photoshop class
was a boyfriend for 5 months
ate apple pie in Julian
ate a fried klondike bar at the del mar fair
got broken up with
got drunk and wandered/danced the streets at 2 a.m., blasting music thru my qc2s, fell asleep in my car
hiked 25 miles round-trip and made it to the top of the 11,500 ft peak of mt san gorgonio
saw scott pilgrim twice at the theater
took a 5 unit german class at a local community college
enjoyed some life-defining albums
saw Robyn in concert
swam with a wild dolphin in Hawaii
finally volunteered at church
soaked in the hot springs of two countries
rode a horse to a waterfall in Costa Rica
rappelled down a 220 ft waterfall
went white water rafting
ziplined
got a picture with a monkey
embraced a label
decided to work on living for myself
completed my first marathon in 3 hours 38 minutes and 4 seconds
drove up to LA with friends just for chicken and waffles at roscoe's
spent a week in san francisco, seeing the sites, visiting friends, easter service in a cathedral, wine country tourin', chats in the parlor
took a photoshop class
was a boyfriend for 5 months
ate apple pie in Julian
ate a fried klondike bar at the del mar fair
got broken up with
got drunk and wandered/danced the streets at 2 a.m., blasting music thru my qc2s, fell asleep in my car
hiked 25 miles round-trip and made it to the top of the 11,500 ft peak of mt san gorgonio
saw scott pilgrim twice at the theater
took a 5 unit german class at a local community college
enjoyed some life-defining albums
saw Robyn in concert
swam with a wild dolphin in Hawaii
finally volunteered at church
soaked in the hot springs of two countries
rode a horse to a waterfall in Costa Rica
rappelled down a 220 ft waterfall
went white water rafting
ziplined
got a picture with a monkey
embraced a label
decided to work on living for myself
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
the consolation of...long quotes
There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain. Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, "that dear delight"; when the love of a modestly elusive Truth seemed more glorious, incomparably, than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. "Life has meaning," we feel with Browning—"to find its meaning is my meat and drink." So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-canceling vacillation and futility; we strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand; "life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with"; we are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov—"one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions"; we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever—"in the light of eternity." We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too. "To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust." We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. "Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt." Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
-Will Durant
Sunday, November 28, 2010
wear sunscreen
recently, I was talking to a young person, a newbie college-student, and, for whatever condescending/parodic-paternal reasons, I had two pieces of hard-earned 24 year-old wisdom I wanted to impart:
-be an interesting person
-don't live for anyone else
"be an interesting person" is actually a piece of advice that came to mind years ago when I imagined what advice I'd give college students decades hence when I was a lauded veteran writer (of course, I didn't, and still don't, want to write anything -- just the perks please).
this first piece of advice I do try to live by, devoting significant efforts in reading, travel, and conversation (though never enough efforts as my psychic taskmaster would like). when my brother hectors me about squandering my energies and youth at TWTSNBN (theworksplacethatshallnotbenamed) or on quixotic fantasies of globe-spanning volunteer work, I remind him that I'm a smart person who has no intention of wasting my life, quite the opposite -- my aim is to get the most out of it.
but, on this journeying toward the contented, accomplished life, I have to know what my lodestars are and what I'm packing. and this is where the thoughts of others come into play, helping me choose the values to live by and the virtues to pursue and developing the faculties of sense, intellect, and emotion that ensure both that my particular journey is the right one and that I'll be best poised for the vagaries and vicissitudes of life that await me.
be interesting, for yourself first and then for others.
"don't live for anyone else" is something that came to mind the summer after my freshman year of college. it wasn't until my 19th year that I became interested in myself, my personality, in a critical/analytical way. it was a revelation, a summer of a-has and eurekas, where for the first time in my life I started to acknowledge and examine the unconscious and subconscious impulses and motivations of my psyche. it was liberating, a reclamation of some agency from the invisible hand of the past. I realized that I was living a life for others: for a father I was determined to be the opposite of, for a mother who wanted a wealthy son to take care of her, for jerks from high school (a successful/affluent life the consummation of my desires for vindictive triumph). unfortunately, I replaced my childhood others with new ones (better ones, no doubt) but there is more work that I need to do. it is a lifelong pursuit, anyway (there will always be others). as a New Yorker cartoon mused, "you're born, you deconstruct your childhood, and then you die."
find yourself and live for him. oh, and god.
oh, one more piece of advice: wear sunscreen
-be an interesting person
-don't live for anyone else
"be an interesting person" is actually a piece of advice that came to mind years ago when I imagined what advice I'd give college students decades hence when I was a lauded veteran writer (of course, I didn't, and still don't, want to write anything -- just the perks please).
this first piece of advice I do try to live by, devoting significant efforts in reading, travel, and conversation (though never enough efforts as my psychic taskmaster would like). when my brother hectors me about squandering my energies and youth at TWTSNBN (theworksplacethatshallnotbenamed) or on quixotic fantasies of globe-spanning volunteer work, I remind him that I'm a smart person who has no intention of wasting my life, quite the opposite -- my aim is to get the most out of it.
but, on this journeying toward the contented, accomplished life, I have to know what my lodestars are and what I'm packing. and this is where the thoughts of others come into play, helping me choose the values to live by and the virtues to pursue and developing the faculties of sense, intellect, and emotion that ensure both that my particular journey is the right one and that I'll be best poised for the vagaries and vicissitudes of life that await me.
be interesting, for yourself first and then for others.
"don't live for anyone else" is something that came to mind the summer after my freshman year of college. it wasn't until my 19th year that I became interested in myself, my personality, in a critical/analytical way. it was a revelation, a summer of a-has and eurekas, where for the first time in my life I started to acknowledge and examine the unconscious and subconscious impulses and motivations of my psyche. it was liberating, a reclamation of some agency from the invisible hand of the past. I realized that I was living a life for others: for a father I was determined to be the opposite of, for a mother who wanted a wealthy son to take care of her, for jerks from high school (a successful/affluent life the consummation of my desires for vindictive triumph). unfortunately, I replaced my childhood others with new ones (better ones, no doubt) but there is more work that I need to do. it is a lifelong pursuit, anyway (there will always be others). as a New Yorker cartoon mused, "you're born, you deconstruct your childhood, and then you die."
find yourself and live for him. oh, and god.
oh, one more piece of advice: wear sunscreen
Monday, October 4, 2010
some late night thoughts
first off: I'm listening to shakira's waka waka right now. just downloaded it today. what a mood elevator. I'm toe-tapping as I type. in this buoyancy it occurred to me that I should write a blog.
studying german right now. well I should be. test tomorrow. I don't care for this stress. depression (or should I say unhappiness) is better than this. and then soul-sucking work tomorrow. god made me for leisure and wealth. he made me this way and I think the government, the church, and all civilization really, needs to accommodate my true self. well, I will persevere--the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward self-satisfaction.
broke up with a friend yesterday. friend wanted to squeeze blood from a turnip. well the turnip, yours truly, had nothing left to cede and I decided that even I (a proponent of a little penitential hair-shirting and self-flagellation) liked myself too much to put myself through that. in the midst of the confabulating, I thought "there are at least 7 people (friends of mine) who would never put me through this and they're still going to be around after tonight." so I ended it with, "maybe one day we'll be people who can be friends again." --a line I used once with an ex-girlfriend. if you need it, it's yours. public domain. happy breakin' up.
it's become clearer recently that I'll be working about another year to year and a half and then "starting my life." this means either nazarene mission corps or grad school. now I say 'either' like those are sure-things. who knows. everything is tentative, contingent. but 26 will not see me working at the XXXX XXXX.
books! glorious books! i need to read the ones I already have and I need to read more than one every couple months if I ever hope to crease a majority of those pristine spines before I move far away from these book cases.
gute nacht!
studying german right now. well I should be. test tomorrow. I don't care for this stress. depression (or should I say unhappiness) is better than this. and then soul-sucking work tomorrow. god made me for leisure and wealth. he made me this way and I think the government, the church, and all civilization really, needs to accommodate my true self. well, I will persevere--the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward self-satisfaction.
broke up with a friend yesterday. friend wanted to squeeze blood from a turnip. well the turnip, yours truly, had nothing left to cede and I decided that even I (a proponent of a little penitential hair-shirting and self-flagellation) liked myself too much to put myself through that. in the midst of the confabulating, I thought "there are at least 7 people (friends of mine) who would never put me through this and they're still going to be around after tonight." so I ended it with, "maybe one day we'll be people who can be friends again." --a line I used once with an ex-girlfriend. if you need it, it's yours. public domain. happy breakin' up.
it's become clearer recently that I'll be working about another year to year and a half and then "starting my life." this means either nazarene mission corps or grad school. now I say 'either' like those are sure-things. who knows. everything is tentative, contingent. but 26 will not see me working at the XXXX XXXX.
books! glorious books! i need to read the ones I already have and I need to read more than one every couple months if I ever hope to crease a majority of those pristine spines before I move far away from these book cases.
gute nacht!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)