It's Late

[jsnlv]

It's later than it seems. A guy on my Friends page just posted an enormous locked entry about the crazy life he leads. He's got so much stuff in there it's almost hard to read. That's not a bad thing, though. It could even be admirable. Sitting here, after I'd almost read it all, I wondered how it'd moved me. After a careful inventory, I determined the only emotion I contained was a little bit of misplaced pride about something ridiculous and pointless I'd once done. The particulars are irrelevent; all you need to understand is that I once spent a great deal of time and effort to accomplish something frivolous, and somebody else was impressed enough by it that he pointed it out.

That's all I've ever aspired to, with this journal: I wanted to do something inconsequential that nonetheless interested people. It's hard to dedicate time and energy to an activity with that attitude, and so the nature of this journal's various failings should be easy to predict.

I want to do something more with this space, though. I started suggesting that I had a plan months ago; I did have a plan, but originating as it did with my original motivations, it had little chance of success.

I think now it's simplest to just say what I have to say, and stop making overtures toward unnecessary complexity. I'm getting around to it, now.

The most dissatisfying thing about life is the variability of its contents. I have a hard time committing to any path whose requirements are such that alternatives are no longer feasible; if I must choose between two directions to move in, I will postpone that decision until the last possible moment. Even once my decisions are made, they tend to be the choices that are the easiest to recover from: either they're easy to undo, or they're somehow more neutral than the other alternatives.

What's disappointing me tonight is the recognition that this approach to decision-making still fails to solve the fundamental problem, that it's still impossible to take every path. With that awareness, I find I'd rather commit to a more extreme position--but force of habit is preserving my neutral attitudes.

This is cropping up all over the place: whether to move in with new roommates, whether to move out of the city, whether to commit to my current job or look for a new one, whether to wear certain clothes or behave a certain way or respond to a coworker's flirting or to continue holding out forever. Hell, even my writing style--particularly my writing style--maintains an even tone, downplaying what's bothering me and lifting up the irrelevent in an attempt to give equal weight to every issue.

At least I'm getting a raise.

Comments

[jasonlove.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes, yes, yes. You got it, there--I feel like I have obligations on several fronts to fulfill, but it doesn't feel right to abandon one in favor of fulfilling another. I agree that it's a mistake to rely on the same ol' methods to solve the problem, but I don't really feel like I've got room to maneuver at the moment. The trap lies in being unable to tell when that belief is correct and when it is only convenient. It's easy enough to tell in hindsight, but hindsight's hard to apply to things that haven't happened yet.

Yeah, Waiting For Godot is one of my favorite plays. I got a chance to see it when it came to Lawrence in 2002.