But I Have To Anyway.
Dec. 27th, 2018 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoonI'm hoping it's just holiday stuff, just that but really, I don't feel it. The it that lends coherence to the day-to-day, the through-line that makes things make sense. I'm just feeling deeply the foolishness & futility of all of it. I've got a big thing coming up at work that I prepared for months ago. I should prepare again, I guess - but I don't care.
This is the confounding thing about just everything. You drift around through your existence and things happen - it's by caring about these things that they're endorsed with a purpose & meaning. When you're not energetic enough to give things that gravity they just become nonsense, just a foolish exercise that's got to be completed for... some reason.
Life, I think, is usefully compared to a jigsaw puzzle. If you've got no picture of what the final result is, the pieces are just nonsense - broken nothings that you can, if you're bored enough, piece together somewhat idly. But without a vision of the future, of what you want things to really be? They're just trash without any value at all. So that picture of what it could be - that's caring at all. If you don't care at all about what will happen?
You can learn this discipline, of not caring. Here's how you do it. You try, really try, and do something, anything, but behind the effort you put your heart & your sense & your future, you put it all there to try and make something like a future. You do that and then it doesn't happen. She doesn't feel the same way, they don't feel the same way, they just want to keep doing what they're doing, whatever - whatever thing, you run against the banality & cruelty of the wider world that is bent in service to the lowest sorts of thoughts & the meagrest goals. You run up against indifference & stupidity so you say: "I. Don't. Care." I've been on this a long time - the letting go & being free. You free yourself from caring because it's too infuriating when you do - too much opposition - pointless opposition based on idle whims & desperation. So. You relent on the caring angle & then what happens? You've got this catalog of effort pitted against that obstacle without any care to push it over the top.
Maybe I give up too easily. I might. I can't say. But I feel like I don't care at all. That the things I'm tasked with are just tasks, to keep me busy. "You fill your life with unimportant nonsense & then you die." I really shouldn't have watched all of Bojack Horseman again. I really shouldn't have. But I did.
Some part of this is the final pushes of this book. It'll be a pretty good book I think, when it's done but I'm at that part of it where I'm choosing what is left to do. This is the shitty part of a book. Where is the finish line? Should I add a chapter? You write all the things that'll be useful to you and fun & then you connect them, painting on the sinews & filling it out with some guts. Then you have to address those others, the people who aren't you - make the book make some sense to them. That's a bit of nuisance. That's, I guess Writing - clarifying & making real, for others. Anything else is probably just note-taking, but sure, writing - you make it clear for others so the book is really a book. Then you've got those things that are more narrative - the things you've done that you have to record, make sense of the past, your own past. Rewrite the scenes so that they link together coherently - plot. Man, I'm no good at plot.
I guess it'd be hard to be, if you don't really think that things are connected in a story, just random pieces of a puzzle thrown together.
This is the confounding thing about just everything. You drift around through your existence and things happen - it's by caring about these things that they're endorsed with a purpose & meaning. When you're not energetic enough to give things that gravity they just become nonsense, just a foolish exercise that's got to be completed for... some reason.
Life, I think, is usefully compared to a jigsaw puzzle. If you've got no picture of what the final result is, the pieces are just nonsense - broken nothings that you can, if you're bored enough, piece together somewhat idly. But without a vision of the future, of what you want things to really be? They're just trash without any value at all. So that picture of what it could be - that's caring at all. If you don't care at all about what will happen?
You can learn this discipline, of not caring. Here's how you do it. You try, really try, and do something, anything, but behind the effort you put your heart & your sense & your future, you put it all there to try and make something like a future. You do that and then it doesn't happen. She doesn't feel the same way, they don't feel the same way, they just want to keep doing what they're doing, whatever - whatever thing, you run against the banality & cruelty of the wider world that is bent in service to the lowest sorts of thoughts & the meagrest goals. You run up against indifference & stupidity so you say: "I. Don't. Care." I've been on this a long time - the letting go & being free. You free yourself from caring because it's too infuriating when you do - too much opposition - pointless opposition based on idle whims & desperation. So. You relent on the caring angle & then what happens? You've got this catalog of effort pitted against that obstacle without any care to push it over the top.
Maybe I give up too easily. I might. I can't say. But I feel like I don't care at all. That the things I'm tasked with are just tasks, to keep me busy. "You fill your life with unimportant nonsense & then you die." I really shouldn't have watched all of Bojack Horseman again. I really shouldn't have. But I did.
Some part of this is the final pushes of this book. It'll be a pretty good book I think, when it's done but I'm at that part of it where I'm choosing what is left to do. This is the shitty part of a book. Where is the finish line? Should I add a chapter? You write all the things that'll be useful to you and fun & then you connect them, painting on the sinews & filling it out with some guts. Then you have to address those others, the people who aren't you - make the book make some sense to them. That's a bit of nuisance. That's, I guess Writing - clarifying & making real, for others. Anything else is probably just note-taking, but sure, writing - you make it clear for others so the book is really a book. Then you've got those things that are more narrative - the things you've done that you have to record, make sense of the past, your own past. Rewrite the scenes so that they link together coherently - plot. Man, I'm no good at plot.
I guess it'd be hard to be, if you don't really think that things are connected in a story, just random pieces of a puzzle thrown together.
