25

Another year :)))))

Very different from last year in some ways but in others not so much.

Christmas passed two days ago. I just bought baths new album on itunes with a giftcard. It's good.

It's been weird. Whereas last year was characterized by a series of unpleasant events, nothing terribly bad has happened to me in a while. Most importantly, I've haven't been the cause of any unpleasantness.

The other day, while I was sleeping, a noise crept into my room, waking me up. It wasn't a single sound. It was continuous. At first I was angry. I felt like something was being taken away from me: my sleep, the quietness in my room. But the anger was replaced by a revelation.

It was the only revelation I've really had all year. In that moment, I felt worthless. The burning turned into a stillness. Nothing belonged to me. Not my time, or my ageing, or my accomplishments.

It's not beautiful, or good, or desirable. But it feels like an escape. It is even an escape from the Goblin image I was feeling last year, which is accompanied with a feeling of guilt. But the Trash image is different, there is no shame to it. There isn't anything.

It didn't matter that I had spent a summer two years ago making music, or 3d modeling and animating last summer, that any and every lazy attempt at "art" was worthless, that the time I've spent attempting to create are as void and purposeless as the ones I've spent staring into the void of the internet.

I feel like I'm clinging to this idealized version of myself whose worth is measured in creative output. I'm not sure why I'm like this. For some reason I feel like even this blog post, as sad and self deprecating as it is, is some weird attempt at reaching that goal.

I can't say for sure, but I have a feeling that this is a specifically male problem. To be so self absorbed, to want to be feared and admired, if not through merits, then at least through pity. Did you read that New Yorker story, cat person? Nothing is more disgusting to me than that image of masculinity, 30 something, stalkerish, clever.

Anyways, this trash revelation is not one that has stuck with me. I mean, it hasn't really changed me significantly. I do feel like I have grown a little wiser this year. I feel like I have become slightly better at internalizing negative feedback. But this has also made me quieter.

I still feel the disquieting sensation of my youth vanishing with nothing to really show for it. No contributions to society, no personal growth. I feel like I'm lying next to a conveyer belt and everything is passing by me. I'm in a constant state of anticipation for the next moment, but also beholding the object currently in front of me, wondering what I'm supposed to do with it, knowing that it will soon be lost forever. Most of these objects are boring and repetitive. Looking at computer screens, looking at code, looking at speed runs of super mario galaxy 2, a game I have already played but that I have chosen this hour to fill with.

In fact, I wonder if I am not regressing in some ways. In spite of this year being without all the catastrophes of the last one, my anxiety feels through the roof. Social anxiety of course is at the forefront. I've found myself walking into crowded rooms and then leaving immediately. Knots and other unpleasant sensations form in my stomach daily. I can now say that to some extent my anxiety is crippling. And it is not just exclusive to social situations.

You probably haven't seen the anime Re:Zero, where every time the main character attempts to explain he is cursed by a Witch her claw like hand tightens its grip on his heart. That's kind of the feeling I have when I make these vague attempts at social interaction. I can almost feel the hand playing with my insides every time I enter a room of people, pulling me back.

So that is a kind of strange development this year; social situations are making me more often than not feel physically sick. I've gone to parties and left in the span of ten minutes. I've walked into various rooms of people and felt hostility from them saying things like "hi" and, "who are you?"

The good parts of my life have always involved circumstances/people blessing me with good things. But I feel like every time I reach out and attempt to seize a dream, a goal, I am left feeling worse than disappointed  and wishing I had just continued on the path that had been laid out for me.

Something I've been doing now is joining my colleagues for lunch. Last year, I would go sit on a park bench. In fact, this is the first time since middle school that I've had lunch with other people. (except for two years in community college, where the only place I ate was communal). But I keep losing the thread of the conversations. I can't focus on what people are saying. 

Working makes me feel like a slave.

Its easy work. But I don't want to be there. So now that I'm sitting here idly watching the conveyer belt steal my fleeting worthless life away I consider with the smallest sense of panic (because two and a half years is still far away) how I'm supposed to do something, anything that can make me happy.

The sad thing is, I don't have a lust for life. I feel desperation, as if something is slipping between my fingers like sand. I find myself wishing I was a more passionate person. Wishing I desired more. 

A funny thing that's happened is I got the dating app tinder a few months back. And every time I "match" with someone I'm too terrified to initiate a conversation with them. 

So there's just these two people on there that I've matched with and will never talk to. I'll see some random thing I like on their profile, like that they are getting a degree in media or that they like the song Take Me Somewhere Nice by Mogwai and so I'll swipe right.

But then when I match with them I'll have this low key panic attack and try to come up with something to say.

Ultimately the safest solution always seems to be to just say nothing. Too late I realize that nothing could be said in 300 words to make me want to text someone on a dating app, no matter how many common interests we share.

I think I'm in love with Kat. There's no question that I've had a crush on her since I've met her. I imagine everyone has a crush on her. She's perfect. At this point I feel less reticent to just admit that if I ever loved someone it would probably be her. Just because I still keep thinking about her, feeling my heart race. I wonder if she knows this. I would never tell her, of course. If I were her, I would use deductive reasoning to just assume that everyone has a crush on me. 

The problem is, I don't know anything about her. I don't feel like I could just exist in her presence. I don't feel like I could just walk through a wal greens with her. Or any store

It would be cool if we could get matching tattoos. But what would they be of? Everything is terrible and all signifiers have negative connotations. What I'm saying is, if she asked me if I wanted to get matching tattoos, I would say yes, whether we were together or not. There's something appealing about participating in a constructed act of romance without the organic and human parts that I find so awkward.

Ritual and artifice are the only things keeping me tied to relationships. Work and school are mandatory, so I am there. I can't just exist in the presence of others, like I see happening around me so often. That dream of existing with another person, platonically, romantically, or otherwise can only be a dream, because I can't simultaneously be around someone and not have some sort of agenda or task justifying our coexistence.

In FFX Auron tells Titus:

Your story isn't over.

For some reason the way he says it, as an authority figure, kind of makes me want to cry. Why don't mentors ever say that to people?

Here is something I wrote once, while hiking:

I beheld heaven and felt nothing.

I'm referring to a mountain. One time last year I hadn't left the house for a while. When I finally did, just to walk around a little, it was the worst. I just felt this terrible sense of going backwards...

Once in Kansas my roommate was talking to me about his Rasberry Pi. Its like a small computer. The subject interested me, but I found myself standing awkwardly in his room, not knowing what to do or say. He was really nice, and let me borrow his spare laptop when my charger broke. But the more I lived with him, the more I avoided him, crawling deeper into myself and into my room. Some of my best memories from college are being all alone in that room, wrapped in covers, watching videos, letting thoughts and sentences about The Legend of Zelda percolate through my brain.

It might seem weird that all I can talk about is being an introvert but from my perspective, it continues to surprise me. It doesn't feel like layers of antisocial behavior that you can visualize clearly. It feels more like an elaborate mansion entirely designed to distance myself from people as much as possible.  Like the fact that I can't focus on what people are saying. Or that I get quiet when I am sad, or quiet when I am happy. Or that I strategically ghost friends and acquaintances. It's like my introversion doesn't come from a central place that permeates the rest of my brain. It's more like every section of my being just so happens, by some weird coincidence, to have its own version of anti social behavior. Interlocking like clockwork. 

Another funny aspect of this is that it's the only thing that's "wrong" with me. I'm one of the most privileged humans alive. White, male, no handicaps, symmetrical features, not living in poverty, and getting, as far as I know, one of the better educations. No diagnosed health problems. No insomnia. No trauma. So if I had literally anything else to write/complain about I guess I would. And if I wasn't an antisocial shut in, then I guess I would write/complain about other people, instead of myself. But the chances of that are pretty low.

Here is a quote from C.S. Lewis, maybe:

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

Here is something from the Bible:

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

My clothes are drying above the room heater my aunt gave me. Someone opened the dryer they were in and left it open, for some reason.

Today I am listening to the Hype Machine's curated playlist. Dumbo Gets Mad is the name of a band. I like that.

That is another thing I am thinking about: that I am 23. Time used to feel like dropped framerates but now it feels more like sand through my fingers which I can't complain about because the sensation is nice, but it's kind of hurts.

The other day, someone I didn't know very well, but who I worked on an oral presentation with, said I was weird. And I was like, I know. It was strangely validating. But in retrospect, I'm kind of sad about it.

The presentation was for Cinemas of the Southern Cone. The films we watched always made me sad to be a human being. Slacker films, films about silent people, failures.

Another walk home. I walk home a lot.

Tonight, I attended an awards ceremony for my major. These things are bittersweet for me, but mostly bitter. Thinking about the past is almost worse than thinking about the future, and as the other students, who I never bothered getting to know, walk on stage for their achievements as film makers, I wonder with regret whether I should have been more active, either in socialising or in doing film work.
But this week, I got all the praise I need. Someone on facebook complemented my latest film. It took me a year to make, but that is because I hardly ever worked on it. Its an animation. The person who complemented it is someone who I really look up to. They are the kind of person I aspire to be like but know I never will. So it was great to hear kind, albeit confusing words. I didn't respond to them, but I liked their post.