Depression Part 2: What Am I So Afraid Of?

What am i so afraid of? Achievement? No, that can`t be it, because i used to love getting good grades and studying. It wasn't very hard for me, and i hardly ever had to study, so maybe that's a bad choice.

Am i really afraid of what other people will think? Will say if i do or don`t do something? I think i am. Which is stupid because i don`t really have that many friends to begin with.

But the fear of being alone runs really deep for me. I hate being alone. I would rather be in a room full of people and not say a word than be all by myself with all the thoughts in my head. Maybe that's my problem. I`m too afraid that the voices in my head are right. That passing thoughts are actually stone carved truths. Deep down i know they aren't, but i let them be. Because its easier. Because it makes me complacent. Complacent in my own demise. Its easier for me to just sit by and be lazy than it is for me to confront what it is I'm afraid of.

They say what separates a hero from a villain is this: a villain does what he does for the villain’s sake, whereas a hero does what he does for the villains sake. Am I a hero? When was the last time I did something for someone else? I don’t mean giving the homeless guy on the corner spare change. That didn't take any effort, and its change that’s not already designated for something else, hence why its spare. I mean really did something for someone else. Whether I wanted to do it or not. I can’t think of anything really. Or if I have, I don’t recognize it as such. And that is likely another problem I have. Putting up Christmas lights or getting presents for family members is absolutely for other people, I don’t get anything out of it really, except the joy on their faces when its done.

Why would I rather sit at home and watch TV? Why don’t I paint something or read a book or go out and exercise? Because I really don’t want to? No, that’s not it. Its because I'm afraid of the outcome. I'm afraid of missing out on something by doing something else. which is stupid because I end up getting nothing done. I sit on Facebook or just troll the internet for hours on end, doing nothing productive or of consequence to anyone or anything except burning the time I've been given.

I've been “gifted” with many things. Decent looks, relatively high intelligence, a kind heart. But what I haven’t got is determination. I don’t do things. I squander my gifts. I leave them in a corner and don’t pick them up save for rare occasions when they’re either truly needed or I simply can’t stand looking at myself in the mirror any longer without doing something.

I need to do something.

For a long time I used to tell people I was going to save the world. it used to be my mantra, my catchphrase, my ideal. Somewhere along the line I stopped listening to the little voice that was saying save the world, and I started listening to the voices that said what if you fail? What if it doesn't work? what are you going to do if something goes wrong? And because I didn't have answers for those voices, I started assuming they were right. I didn't have all the answers, as I had in my school days. I was now at a point where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. I had gone from the rigid right/wrong world of school, to the unfastened world of…the world. I graduated college with a one sentence life plan, and a poorly constructed and almost completely unsupported one at that. I had been given a flag to plant, and I planted with gusto. Into ground so loose and unstable that anyone could have seen it was going to fall.

And it did.

I fell with it.

I skipped around from job to job, not having a goal, not having a purpose, not knowing what I was doing or where I was going, and it showed. I was terribly depressed because I had done the one thing I had planned on doing, and my one sentence life plan was at the end. My flag had fallen on the ground, been stomped on, torn, drenched in the mud.

And I think that’s when I stopped flying it. When I stopped believing in myself. Gone was the time when I could save the world. gone were all the super powers I thought I had, in school, in life, in church. I had gone out into the world, and the world had knocked me down so hard, I think I refused to get up.

I don’t think I have gotten up since. Sure I'm in a much better place, my finances are stable, my troubles with the law are over, I'm paying my bills and saving money at the same time, but I'm still just…there. I come home from work and I don’t do anything. I make excuses like I'm too tired, or I had a really long day, but I know deep down that’s bullshit.

I haven’t gotten up.

I took down my flag pole.

I folded up my flag and I keep it hidden. Afraid of what others will say about it. about what it represents. My past, my present, my possible future. Every time I think about pulling it out and flying it again, I look at it. I see the tears, the holes, the mud, the muck. Its not pretty enough. Its not perfect enough.

I'm not enough.

I refuse to believe I'm not enough. I'm really the only one who’s saying that. I'm the only one who sees all the bad things that have happened to my flag. I'm the only one who knows where its been.

Because I'm the only one who sees it anymore.

This ends now. Heroes don’t sit in the corner, looking at the tears in the their capes or the mud on their chests. They’re too busy moving forward, saving the day.

Saving the world.

I am a hero.

I am a hero to myself. What I do is not for me, it is for others. My past is my past and I cannot change it. I don’t care what anybody thinks about my flag. I don’t fly it for them, I fly it for me. I don’t plant my flagpole, because I'm too busy waving it in the wind. A hero doesn't fly his flag for himself, he flies his flag for others.

That is what I must do. 

Depression Part 1: Some Nights

Some nights? Might as well be most nights. I'm lost. I'm not lost. I'm wandering. I know exactly where I am. It’s the same place I've been for almost two years now: living with my grandmother, consistently broke, or damn close, and single as a paramecium. I've had girlfriends since I've been here, none of which have worked out. Usually because I've behaved in an infantile way, or disappeared off the map for a while, or she did. Or it was long distance, and that never works. Or I was just in it to be in it, rather than actually connecting with another human being. The phase that keeps coming up is this: “Too smart for his own good.” I know exactly what I means, more so sometimes than most others realize. I can see everything. Not at once, but usually in sequence. I see my side, then their side, then a third person view of the situation. And at that point, it seems pointless. Everything seems pointless. If I can see it like this, this must be how god sees it. And if our purpose is for god to fully experience itself, than everything means something, which means nothing means anything. Purpose becomes pointless, and life even more so. 

Don’t worry, I won’t kill myself. Mostly because deep down I have the same fear of death that everyone has, and no blind faith in anything will take that away from me. I've seen too many cracks in too many coats of armor to believe that anything lasts forever, that anything is really real. Everything is an illusion, either on purpose or by accident. 

I know how it works, I know how everything works. That’s kind of my super power. i know how people work, I know how machines work. cars, watermelons, religion, clocks, politics, music. Its everything. Which means its nothing. What I've done, what I think I've done, what I've seen, what I'm pretty sure was there, it’s all meaningless. I won’t kill myself, I just won’t. that’s the one fact that no one can prove. The one scientific theory that doesn't exist. The biggest religious question that has no true answer.

I think I live in fear. Fear and…and something else. It’s not bravery, its not courage. I am in complete control. But my fear is debilitating. I want to get a tattoo, but I'm afraid of what it might say about me, or I'm afraid of making a mistake. That’s really what it boils down to. My biggest fear is making a mistake. My whole life I've followed the path, never strayed. I was always a good kid. Then I started testing the limits of existence. Why do I believe this? What are the consequences if I do it anyway? It didn't take me long to see that there are no consequences for doing things against what you believe, and at that point, you don’t really believe them anymore do you? So then you start doing things you’d always promised parents and teachers and youth leaders and priests and even yourself that you wouldn't do. and I didn't really feel bad about it. I had sex. I smoked weed. I drank beer, often too much. And I didn't feel bad about it. (psychologically, not physically. Hangovers are a right of passage for a reason). But it didn't matter. As for the bigger picture, I was still “on track.” I graduated early, which I'm now regretting, and did what I had set out to do for almost two years: Move in with Grandma, get a bull shit job to pay for second city, go to second city and “hit it big.” That was literally my life plan. Summed up in a single fucking sentence. How is that even possible? How did no one ask me what I was going to do after college, and then smack me across the face when my plan was one sentence long? Why has it taken me so long to figure out that that was total bullshit? I had six jobs the first year I moved here. None of which I really enjoyed, and I didn't even start becoming productive at my job now until my parents gave me a taste of what it was going to be like if I had to move back in with them. I hated that. I hate that town, I hate the people, I hate the fucking weather. My life was nothing but psychological agony for years there. Sure my parents were nice to me, but I had no real friends there. They were friends of convenience, acquaintances really. To this day I still have no real friends. 

Family members can be friends, but their top priority will never be you, it can’t be.

And maybe it shouldn't be.

Maybe all friendship is conditional. I wouldn't know, I've never had a best friend. Stephen was there for me, but it was never really about us, it was just convenient to have somebody who knew all the answers following you around.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of knowing all the answers. Sometimes I look at somebody like Jordan, and I think, to be that simple, to be that naive. To not have seen what I've seen. To believe in magic. To believe in the possible. To not have that voice in the back of your head saying, “you know this is all bull shit right?” no matter what you do, it won’t matter. You’ll never be enough. You’ll never change the world. you’ll never leave your mark on humanity long enough for anyone to care. The world moves too fast now. Whatever you create will either be improved upon and forgotten, or simply forgotten.

That’s why I don’t get anything done. I can’t stop the voice in my head. I can’t stop the thoughts that say you’re not enough. I don’t want this any more. I’d like to say it’s not fair, but it is. Its all choice. I made the choice to challenge my own status-quo and this is what I got. The voice. The thought. The fear. With great power comes great responsibility. Those who have the capability to challenge the status quo have the responsibility to challenge it. I often wonder how many other people think like this. Who else has the same demon. The nay-sayer. The Devil’s Advocate. This is why I smoke. This is why I drink. To stop my mind from running down the same damn lines over and over again. 

You haven’t done anything with your life. 

You’re never going to be enough.

And it scares me.

It scares me because they might be right.

I don’t know what the right answer is, and my experience has told me there isn't one. My entire life has been “do the right thing,” “say the right thing,” “live the ‘right’ way.” And where has it gotten me? Its gotten me really good at being right, staying right, or feeling incredibly terrible about being wrong. I mean physically sick because I did something wrong. Pain in my stomach, which leads to self deprecation, and a horrible line of thinking that ends with, you guessed it, “you’ll never get ahead, you’ll never amount to anything, you’re a terrible waste of space, step aside and let someone else get a head of you.”

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. But with that power comes responsibility. Responsibility beyond measure. being responsible for 7 billion people is impossible for one human being to be capable of. Being powerful beyond measure is easy, using that power responsibly isn’t possible. Because there are so many sides to so many stories in so many places with so many people. War isn’t two countries fighting. Its thousands of soldiers and families, and fathers, and sons, and mothers and daughters, doing what they do for every different reason in the book. We’re all different, but that’s what makes us the same.

I can’t get away from two major feelings in my life: The first, is that I should/could/would/will do something great, and be someone important. The other, Is that I will fail miserably, never make a name for myself, and die a sad sack of shit, in a small suburban house, surrounded by things I didn't have when I was ten, and people I didn't know when I was 30.

I make friends really easily.

I make girlfriends really easily.

I don’t make best friends. Ever.

I don’t make partners. Ever.

I am a man on an island, far away from others. Psychologically, emotionally, aesthetically. I don’t want to be here. Not anymore. It was easy in college when everything was party and sex and booze and show up for class and study your ass off just to forget it four years later. I don’t want that anymore.

But there's something else I don’t want. A pattern. Predictability. To be “in a rut.” People say that predictability is good. I hate it. I hate going to the same places all the time, I hate seeing the same people, talking about the same things over and over and over and over and over. It kills me. Let’s talk about something else god dammit! As soon as I feel like I'm in a place where things are “normal” as soon as I've developed a “normal,” I want out. I want out as fast as possible. I want to be doing something new. Tasking my brain with something it hasn't done before, hasn't tried before. A puzzle it hasn't solved yet.

I'm really good at puzzles.

People are like puzzles.

Most are really easy to solve. To subdivide into a category that explains their behavior, their beliefs, their actions. People are really easy. They try to lie, but a very large percentage can’t cover it up well. I've met very few who can. One is my boss. She keeps secrets from a lot of people. And she does it with such dead pan precision that I never want to meet her on the other side of a poker table.

What if I fail? What if I'm not enough. What if I can’t live up to the dreams I've had for myself and for the world? what if I fail? What if I end up failing and that’s it? I retire to a lame ass existence in small town u.s.a? what then? Have I lived up to my potential? Did I ever really have any? Do dreams come a dime a dozen but heroes are one in a million? Or a billion? Or more? What if I don’t have what it takes to be the hero I always dreamed of being? How do I get that validation? Where did I get the idea in the first place?

T.V.

How can somebody love someone who will never be enough for anyone? Not even for themselves let alone anyone else. And people feed me that bull shit and it tastes terrible every time I take a bite. Nobody wants to be with someone who doesn't live up to their potential.

But if I fail, am I worth anything?

And who decides whats worth anything? Who makes these rules? Huh? Huh?

See, it isn't hard to get mired in it. Its fast, and its lethal. Paralyzing actually. Fast and paralyzing. I can’t move forward until I figure out this puzzle. But this puzzle has no answer.

Well at that point is it a puzzle at all? Its simply a statement, not a question. It has the same structure as a question, but it is undefinable as query. Its not a real thing. It has no meaning.

I want to be enough. But if I fail, will I not be enough? Or will I simply be all that I was ever capable of?

Okay, lets reason this out: you are capable of x,y and z. yet you only do x and y. z never gets done. At that point, were you ever really capable of z? is z even in the realm of capability? Does there exist an alternate universe where you ARE capable of z? well it doesn’t matter cause you’ll never get there, so alternate universes aside, is it even possible for you to fail? Have you lost anything you didn’t have before if you don’t achieve a goal before you die? You had the want to achieve the goal, which is what drives you toward it, but if your body gives out without your achievement, then your life isn’t missing anything, because all you die with is the want. That’s all you ever really have. The drive. The need to keep moving forward. Look back, don’t look back, it doesn’t matter, it’s happened and you can’t change it, unless you lie, which only ever leads to more problems.

So, failing isn’t taking something away. It’s not being “not enough,” or incomplete, its simply being who you always were. A dreamer. A runner. A mover. A thinker. A shaker. A Quaker. A bad ass. A saint. A villain. A hero. A person.

So finish things in spare time. Take on new hobbies. You can do this my friend. And remember, even if you have to write it on your arm. You can do anything. 

That's SO FOREVER Ago!

This is another post about a TV commercial (I know, I know, I watch it too much, but it's how I grew up!). This time the perpetrator is AT&T. I'm sure you've seen them: two people on their phones, while friends and family come up to them asking questions that they already know the answers to, and tagging it with the phrase "that's so (a few) seconds ago." Now these commercials get me for a few reasons. And since it's the internet, I get to enumerate all of them.

1. They defy physics.

As a physics hobbyist, I consider myself as least somewhat versed in the basic laws governing behavior of moving bodies in this universe. Speed=Distance/Time. Some of the things that claim to happen in these commercials are things that happen at FASTER than the speed of light, and I don't care where you are, your internet is definitely not moving that fast. Now, I would simply be just another pagan if ended this bullet point here, and thus we have to ask a deeper question, "Do you really think we're that stupid AT&T?" We all know that your first generation towers weren't ready to handle a titan like the Iphone, but do you think we've forgotten? Do you really think that people don't know that it takes time to send messages, even with today’s high-tech capabilities? But a deeper and more disturbing question is "Does AT&T think that people are stupid enough to believe that if they switch to their phone company, we'll be able to defy the laws of physics?" I mean, we aren't the smartest country in the world I'll admit. (Check out Waiting for Superman, great info on that!). But do you think we're foolish enough to believe in what you're basically pitching as magic? I think it sends the wrong message to kids of the next generation. You're saying that just by having your phone plan, they'll be able to get what amounts to literally instant gratification. Knowing you have to wait for things is what our parents and grandparents grew up with. It's becoming more and more fluid with my generation, with advent of wide-spread internet connections, but there's still a disconnect between the real world and the virtual one. It still takes time to build a mouse trap. They don't just appear out of thin air. Today's children learn so much from the media, and shame on you for trying to pull the wool over their eyes when it comes to learning patience.

2. Pop Culture follows Moore's Law?

Now, this is more of an observation than a complaint, but remember the times when we as kids used to say: "That is SO two years ago!" Before that, it was that was SO 80's! And I’m sure that was precipitated by 70's, etc. And I remember when the time period in the phase slowly started to get shorter and shorter. That was so last year, last season, last month, last week. Smaller and smaller until now we're measuring our phone capabilities in the spans between movements of the minute hand. It would seem that Moore's Law influences not only technology, but what technology precipitates, at least in today's culture, pop culture.

3. Share the Love.

The intention of the commercial is the intention of all commercials: Make the salesperson superior to everyone else. I get it. I've seen the Music Man enough times to know how that's suppose to work. But do they have to be suck dicks about it? And, granted, I mean that in the nicest way possible. But they always finish the inquisitor's sentence, and jokingly say, in what seems to be the new vernacular of geek put downs, "took ya long enough!" Why can't they be nice about it? Why can't they help people with what seem to be super machines, instead of using them for mindless shit like getting sports scores or sending e-cards? Why not video chat with multiple nations to broker a peace agreement in the Middle East? Or create a supply chain that could feed people in the 3rd world for pennies on the dollar? I thought we were on the verge of global warming/meltdown/crash/insert-apocalyptic-idea-here. If you've got a tool that seems to violate the laws of physics, and has internet, why are you criticizing your fellow peers for their inferior phone plans? What happened to the people who had powerful technologies in the movies? They’re killed by John Conner. I thought spreading the wealth and making things better is what we were supposed to be doing.

Seems AT&T has a long way to go before it gets itself into the next generation of marketing, high school physics, and schoolyard politics. They are so two seconds ago.

Sincerely,

The Future Genius.