I got Soul Asylum’s biggest hit on repeat while attempting to focus. The song’s chord progression somehow touches the right spot in my chest, and I feel like I have to pay attention to it before bed.
It’s merely half-past seven, and my eyes are heavy; I think I’ve had about thirty hours of sleep in the last five days, and it will catch up on me tomorrow. It does every weekend. Recently I’ve enjoyed spreading myself thin. But the job is not part of the enjoyment. I’m a nice person (at least I think I am), but the constant desire to tell customers to fuck off doesn’t just make me a bad employee, but also a bad person. So what happens is that I feel guilty about my thoughts. This is not good for me or anyone else around me. What can I say–some people are not made to work. Not that way.
This summer ended with a greater sense of determination and freedom. I’ve been smiling on the inside a couple of times, which is usually a sign of self-confidence, but it’s also because it’s autumn, and not many people understand the beauty of it. I like the end of many things. It’s time you take a breather. You’ve accomplished something; it’s the end, now cool down. If there is anything I’m scared of, it’ll be new beginnings. Unlike Hemingway, I’m not a fan of spring. To a new beginning…the beginning of WHAT?!
I still love you, Ernest – my fellow Cancerian who could paint emotions with a metaphorical brush! (The end of A Farewell To Arms, you know what I mean.) At the end of things, you sit back and meditate. You absorb the moment by smiling on the inside, embracing the cool air on your skin.
I won’t deny that I’m knackered, but by spreading myself thin, I remind myself that I’m alive and that there’s always something that needs to be done.
On another note, I feel so damn empty, and I mean EMPTY. I have shallow desires, numb emotions – just nothing meaningful at all to share. But I’m still smiling inside – for friends and family. Reminding myself to create meanings to live for, but there isn’t much (Camus, please give me a sign).
The existential dilemma started at the age of eleven when I wrote in my Hello Kitty journal. Suddenly everything needed meaning, and my emotional stress needed a home.
My friend Nate says that emotional intensity wanes with age. You will always go from one relationship to the other more jaded – you’re mentally so scarred that you’d rather do something else. And you find that you’re good at ‘something else.’ He also got me thinking about the difference between an emotional connection and a deep connection. And it is the deep connection that strikes me as interesting. Maybe Miss de Beauvoir shouldn’t have resented Sartre for being a polygamist. It was her choice to stick around. But in the end, she had her own focus – her own meanings to make.
I’ve somehow lost belief in a lot of things, but that spot in my chest is still alive, it’s not broken or anything, jaded maybe, tired yes, but most of all, it’s aged. There is nothing much to see. All the major emotions have found a home in many pages, and that’s where they will continue to go. Make meaning on a page. There is nothing else that I know better.
