Gaze Deep Into My Navel And Despair...

How am I supposed to grow up?

I want to grow up.  I really do.  No, more than that, I need to.  I need to grow the fuck up.  I'm almost forty years old, but I still see myself as if I were twenty-five.  That might sound appealing on some level, at first; "young at heart" and all that.  And maybe it would be, if that's what I wanted for myself.  But it isn't.  I want to grow up.  I need to grow up, because I can't keep living like I'm twenty-five.  I'm not twenty-five anymore.  I can't eat like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  I can't move like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  I can't party like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  Fuck, I can't even sleep like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  It all hurts me now in a way that it never did, and I can feel myself breaking down at an astonishing rate, as if the force of Entropy inside me were being fed by some radioaction of chemical combustion.  Accelerated Decrepitude.  But on the other hand, trying to live within my almost-forty means, while still feeling like a twenty-five year-old inside, is so monumentally depressing that I can't even fucking bother; I always just end up feeling like I already have one foot in the grave.

A twenty-five year-old trapped in a forty year-old body.  How incredibly pathetic.  How incredibly modern.  How incredibly privileged.

But how am I supposed to grow up?  I don't know.  My observations tell me that for most people, this happens as a natural side-effect of breeding.  That creating a child shifts all perspectives, and forces the new parent into a maturity that cannot be achieved through any other means.  That makes sense to me.  I can understand that.

But I'm never going to have any children.  So what am I supposed to do?  How am I supposed to force myself to achieve a state that, for most people, requires quite possibly the single most life-altering event they will ever experience in order to achieve?

Sometimes I think, maybe I don't actually need to grow up?  If I don't have any children, then what do I need to grow up for?  Why do I feel this need anyways?  I can only assume it is because I reflexively compare my life to the model my parents set for me.  When I look at myself, and try to judge whether I'm doing well or not, I compare it to the life they lived.  And I always feel myself coming up short.

They went to college.  They got degrees.  They worked hard.  (My father still works harder than almost anyone else I know, and while my mother never worked as hard as he did, she still inarguably worked harder than I do now.)  They bore and raised children.  They owned houses, with yards and multiple floors and everything.

But I dropped out of college.  I have no degrees, and probably never will.  Yeah, I have a career that doesn't leave me wanting to kill myself, but I still hate it, just because it's work, and I hate work of any kind; I hate being forced to sell myself every day in order to sustain myself.  I don't own a house.  I own an absurdly tiny condo that I hate and will never be able to sell for as much as I paid for it.  I am almost certain I will end up having to live in that tiny little box for the rest of my life, watching it deteriorate around me, with me - and that thought terrifies me on a regular basis.

And even these modest achievements - a well-paying job that I can sort of do well and tolerate, and a tiny little condo I'm trapped in like a prison cell - even these barely note-worthy accomplishments I never actually earned; I didn't work hard to achieve these things.  I got this job because some well-meaning middle-aged women that I worked with took pity on me, and talked to their bosses, and told them they knew this kid they thought would do well as a programmer.  And they were right - I am a good programmer.  At least, I'm alright.  But again, not because I try to be, or because I studied or worked hard or went to school or anything else.  I just have a natural talent for logic and pattern recognition and symbology, and so I am a naturally decent programmer.  I could be a great programmer if I wanted to be; if I tried to be and put forth the effort.  But I don't.  Because I don't care.  I only want to put forth the minimum amount of effort to get by, and save the rest for indulging in my life's pleasures.

And it's a similar story with my "home."  I didn't work hard and save money every day so that I could eventually put a down payment on my dream home.  My grandfather died, and since my mother (his daughter) was already dead herself, the portion of his life's wealth that should have been hers (and he had worked hard all his life to achieve that wealth) came to me instead.  And I used all of that money to buy the apartment I had been living in for almost a decade at that point.  The biggest, most "adult" accomplishment of my life - becoming a home-owner - and it only happened because I was in a position to profit off of the deaths of two of my close family members.  And so it has never felt like an accomplishment to me.  It feels like blood money.

(It's true that I performed magick to get the job and the money and the apartment, but even taking the assumption that my magick worked doesn't help the situation any.  Magick is a short-cut.  It's easy compared to actually working hard to learn or to save money.  And it's fun to do, and for that reason alone I wanted to do it, whether it worked or not.  So even assuming that I came by these things through sorcery, it still doesn't feel like an accomplishment to me.  It still doesn't feel like I really earned them.  It feels like I cheated.)

And I will almost certainly never see that much money again in my lifetime.  I can barely maintain a savings of more than a couple of thousand dollars at a time.  I live paycheck-to-paycheck, even with my fairly significant salary.  I've always been that way.  If I have money, I want to spend it on making myself feel good right now, and I can't seem to deny myself comfort or happiness in the present, in order to save it for some undefined future.  As I've written here before, I feel like the Grasshopper, fiddling away as the first snow begins to fall.

But why do I determine the value of my life by comparing it to my parents'?  They were completely different people, living in a completely different time.  And who wanted completely different things from their life than I want from mine.  And I know this.  But I still can't shake this feeling that I am somehow failing at life, because I seem to remember my parents being so much better off in their twenties than I am in my thirties; or will be in my forties.  I just want to be happy, like anyone else.  But I constantly and consistently feel that the things that make me happy aren't good for me.  That they are self-indulgent, or immature, or masturbatory.  That I am a bad person for living my life the way that I do.  But trying to live my life any other way always leaves me just as miserable, if only in a different way.

I just want to spend my life relaxing in the bathhouse, playing games, reading, writing, watching TV and movies, sleeping, eating, drinking and getting high, and punctuating the whole thing with the occasional orgasm.  That is really all I want from life.

And I feel like a worthless waste of a human being for feeling that way.  I hate myself for feeling that way.  But even so, I have no idea how to change it; I have no idea how to want anything else.

Okay, sure, I want other things.  Bigger things.  I want to have a big house with a yard and a basement and an attic.  I want to be able to support myself through writing, or some other form of creative expression.  (If only I could make a living playing games!)  I want a sense of accomplishment.  I want to feel like my life mattered, in any way.  I want to feel a sense of confidence that when I'm gone, I will have made some mark on the world that is all my own; that I will leave behind something more than a pile of carbon dust.  I do want all of these things.  But when I think about them, and I envision the monumental amount of work it would take to even try to achieve any of them - with no guarantee of success! - I lose any hope I may have had about ever actually achieving them.

Because I know that I will never do that work.  I just don't have it in me.  Achieving anything of any real significance requires a single-minded devotion that I just don't have.  Have never had.

Because deep-down, I don't want to be great.  All I really want is to be comfortable.  And I guess I am.  So I should be happy, then, right?  Then why do I feel this way?  I just wish I could learn to be happy with what I have, instead of hating myself for not being able to be great.

I guess what it all really comes down to is this:  I feel lazy, and I hate myself for being lazy, but I don't know how to make myself be anything else.  And I hate myself for that, too.

+          +          +

Or maybe I'm just depressed because winter is coming, and I'm all out of drugs, and I can feel both of these things gnawing at my bones.

Magick Beans...

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Coffee, without whose potent magicks, this week would have been a complete disaster.

May your Beans roast Full-of-Flavor for All Times in the Percolators of your Dark Father.

Amn.  And Caffeine bless.

Blurble...

Just a quick update while I scarf my breakfast.

Wireless card is definitely dead, so this weekend I'm going to back it up and take it someplace to get fixed.  In the meantime, I'm going to try to get my backup laptop up-and-running so that I can get back on the internet.  (Yes, I have a backup portable computer.  Doesn't everyone?)  But that will require a complete reformatting, so I might not be able to get that done this weekend.  But, I need the internet to play Mass Effect, and I am seriously jonesing for some Mass Effect right now, so hopefully that will be a good motivator for me.  Will me luck.

(And I just have to add a quick note here.  I'm really surprised that I'm not more upset about this than I am.  My computer breaking, again [I've never had a computer break as many times as this one has - it's absurd at this point], just as we finally get the internet fixed, which is something we've been struggling with for over 5 years now, is exactly the kind of thing that would've sent me off the fucking rails at any other time in my life.  And I honestly can't explain why I'm so calm about it now.  Just more even-keeled in general, I guess?  I don't know.  If I knew how I did it, I might even be proud of myself for it.)

Got a lot of work to do today, and I'm hoping I can get a large chunk of it taken care of and off my desk.  Then we've got our double-header for the season in Kickball tonight, so that ought to be interesting.  Being a double-header, that's going to mean twice the amount to write-up, so I might not be able to get that posted tomorrow like I normally would.  Especially if I'm in the hospital.

My scale hasn't been indicating much weight-loss since I started working out (maybe 2 pounds), but my eyes are telling me a different story.  My stomach is clearly much smaller than it was in April, or even at the beginning of March.  My pants fit better, and my belt is easier to fasten.  And when I look down, I can see my dick, without even sucking in my gut.

I call that progress.

Post Title Here...

Now is my time to write.

I've got another hour or two left at work, and nothing to do.  And when I get home I will be busy with other things.  So, now is my time to write.  But I don't feel anything to write about just now.

I've got a list of twenty ideas for things to write about.  Ideas or topics I want to explore, funny or poignant or interesting stories from my life I want to tell, that kind of thing.  All there for an occasion just such as this, where I need to write, but I'm uninspired, or out of ideas.  But I look at that list, and I'm still not feeling anything.  Sure, there are things on there that I could write about.  But if I don't feel inspired to write about them at that moment, if I don't feel a need or a pull to tell this-story-right-here-right-now, then I don't want to write it.  I want to do a good job telling these stories, and writing these essays.  They mean something to me, and I don't want to just toss off something mediocre simply because I couldn't come up with a better idea at the time.  That feels like a waste.  So, even though I've saved these ideas for times just like this, I'm finding that I can't actually use them for times like this.

Ok, so, what else, then?  I guess I have no choice but to do what I'm doing now - basically writing out the internal monologue I'm experiencing regarding the process I'm currently going through.  Not quite stream-of-conciousness, but still a think-it-then-write-it kind of situation.

Wow.  Thrillsville.

So, what else?

My boss and I have been limping around the office like Jerry's Kids all day today.  But at least he's got an excuse - he's fifteen years older than I am, and he played a double-header last night!  I, on the other hand, nearly break my hip just trying to run to first base.  I guess that's what fifteen years of sitting on your ass getting stoned will get you.

She's going out with one her girlfriends tonight.  (Actually, to be truthful, her only girlfriend.  But that's ok - it's still one more friend than I've got.)  They're going to hit some bars and get drunk and try to enjoy themselves while fending off the drunk old men who see them as An Opportunity.  Afterwards, her friend will be spending the night at our place.  Which will be weird for me, because it means I will have to wear pants.

I'm looking forward to having some time alone tonight, actually.  I've enjoyed having Her home lately, no doubt about that.  But I must admit I've also missed the little pieces of time to myself that I used to get each week.  So, having a few hours to be home by myself will be nice.  I plan to spend the time playing video games.  While not wearing pants.

Reading all of this, it strikes me as sounding really pathetic and lonely and sad.  So let me just clarify that I'm not in any way upset right now.  Not at all.  I feel fine.  Not great, but perfectly alright. Not jumping off the walls with excitement or anything, but I'm not depressed or upset at all, either.  Just killing some time until I can go home for the weekend.  Just calling it like I see it.  Just my usual brand of casually brutal honesty.  (Focused inward, as is so often the case.  She thinks I'm too hard on her sometimes, and I often wonder if she has any idea how much harder I always am on myself.)

On a brighter note, we're going to see The Avengers tomorrow night.  In IMAX 3D.  Something I've been excited about, to an unhealthy degree, for literally years.  We went to see Thor and Captain America almost entirely because we considered them to be essentially prequels to The Avengers.  Afterwards, we're going to go out to a late dinner somewhere and geek out over the movie we've just seen.  Which is still one of my all-time favorite things in the world to do with Her.  And I'm going to order a Shirley Temple, and try to enjoy feeling ten years-old again.

Shouldn't be that hard, if I'm honest.  I barely feel post-pubescent as it is.

Maybe she'll let me kiss her when I take her home after dinner.

And maybe, just maybe, if I'm really, really lucky, she'll let me touch her boobies.

A boy can dream...