10:22 pm - Fri 1.08.2010
The Commonplace of Existence

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence".

- "Sherlock Holmes" -

I wrote down the above "quote" (From an Onion "AV Club" review of Sherlock Holmes) because it spoke to something I think about often - the fact that everything I do is an attempt to distract myself from loneliness, anxiety, and, ultimately, from death.

And as I've been telling people lately, if everything I do is basically just an effort to distract myself from my impending death, I can live with that...I just want to come up with more and better distractions.

But the difference between me and an actual three-legged dog is that the real three-legged dog doesn't know it's a three-legged dog - It doesn't envy all the four-legged dogs and feel sorry for itself and avoid doing things four-legged dogs do because it won't be able to do them as well. It just goes about its business.

-Sylvia Plath-

I quoted that line as my Facebook status recently, with a snarky follow up that "killing yourself by sticking your head in an oven has 'self-doubt' beat for stifling creativity."

But smart-ass comments about Sylvia Plath's suicide notwithstanding - And it was a weird comment for me to make, actually, since I don't think of myself as being terribly judgmental about people killing themselves - the woman had a point.

After all, I feel a constant drive to be more creative, and the reason that "drive" never really goes anywhere isn't because I stuck my head in an oven some years back and I'm actually dead now, it's because I doubt myself.

(That Sylvia Plath is one smart dead poet...)

I like the sound of that. And being more "authentic" has been a drumbeat in my head for years now (Especially when it comes to writing in here).

It's pretty high on my list of "Things I Want For Myself In The Remaining Time I Have On Earth".

-Emily Bazelon-

I don't even remember what Ms Bazelon was referring to with that quote - From an article on Slate.com - but I know I wrote it down because, again, that's an "issue" in my journal writing; "complexity" is "tiring and harder to explain", so sometimes I don't even try to work through complex issues in here.

Which goes back, in a way, to "self doubt being an enemy to creativity" - this journal could certainly take more interesting turns than it has, but I've stagnated, afraid I won't be up to the challenge (The writing challenge, the emotional challenge, etc).

And I think that applies, more generally, to my life - I doubt I'm up to handling the more "complex" issues in my life, so whenever possible, I avoid them altogether.

It's not a good way to live.

"I ate, I slept, I watched tv, That's about it."

That was a guy on tv (Or maybe it was YouTube...?) talking about his life as a 650-lb man.

I wrote that down because I've sometimes felt like I didn't have much more of a life than that myself...but I never had the excuse of weighing 650-lbs.

So it made me feel guilty for not making more of myself and my life...but at the same time - honestly? - sometimes (More often than I'm comfortable admitting) that really is all I want to do, and I wish I could just eat, sleep, and watch tv.

It would be nice to not worry all the time, to not feel guilty because I don't want to work crappy jobs, or to be able to give up the stress of trying for something I'm afraid I'll never attain.

But I'm not meant for life as a 650-lb man who just eats, sleeps, and watches tv - I think I want to be relieved of the pressure of having to achieve something (Even if that "achievement" is merely to continue keeping a roof over my head and food in my stomach), but the fact is, my entire life has been lived with the idea of "not letting the bastards win", and "650-lb Jim" would definitely signal that the "bastards" had indeed won.

And on that cheery note, since it's gotten late, I'm losing consciousness here, and I have a WW meeting in the morning, I'm going to bed

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