another day of sun

...i don’t even know what this post is about anymore

here we go again - back into darkness, into the void, into a place i’ve known for years, maybe my whole life. it is not painful or pleasurable, it is not upsetting or encouraging, at this point i simply look around and think to myself oh, this is where i’ve ended up again. i learned a long time ago that i can never truly escape the endless calls of what the fuck am i doing with my life?, that there will always be more crises of faith, that whatever else happens the feeling of vertigo will eventually return

this does not make life futile. i remember the kinds of episodes i used to have - three years ago whenever i had a crisis i’d hate myself and lash out at people near me; that mostly stopped once i figured out some things about self-worth. one year ago whenever i had a crisis i’d feel alone (in the cosmic sense) and block out all my friends; that mostly stopped once i realized how precious my friendships were. this is progress, even if it does not always feel that way. i think it’s a kind of progress the hedonic treadmill fails to acknowledge - that, yes, feelings like despair do not change or disappear, but the way those feelings interact with the rest of your life can improve greatly. and things really do get better as a result

sometimes i am shocked by my own strength. wednesday night i cried for hours because i thought the world was ending and thursday morning i woke up with a new set of resolutions. it’s bizarre because i never did anything to cultivate this kind of resilience. probably it is some artifact of evolution

my current problem is that i’m the lowest conviction + lowest ambition person in every room i walk into. this might not actually be true, but it certainly feels that way, in the sense that i’m a lot less obsessive about things than most people i spend time with. and perhaps this is a personal failure but i’ve never found any long-term cures to emptiness other than obsession. once i saw a tweet that went something like “i want to build a temple dedicated to you and then set myself on fire inside it” and maybe that explains some of my erratic behavior recently - i have been on a search for something to build temples and immolate myself for. i do not know of any other way to live

i’m reminded of how one of my favorite articles describes lifting: “When I lift, there’s no room for anything else. Midfoot under the bar, feet shoulder width apart, grab the bar, shoulder blades in back pockets, take the slack out, DEEP BREATH, pull back through the heels. Powerlifting is as mental as it is physical. There’s no space for wanting to die.” there are only a handful of things i’ve ever been able to devote myself to so fully that every last drop of wanting to die is wrung out: math (in middle school). music and writing (for as long as i’ve been doing them?). teaching (in college). my current job (on good weeks at least). i wonder if there is something bigger that i am missing though?

for the last few months i thought the answer was Friendship. i am less sure now; probably that was an overly romantic view. all my life i’ve oscillated between craving other people (all we need is the Power of Friendship!) and rejecting them (Friendship is just a distraction from work!), and while the cravings and rejections have both become more mild over time i have not really found a stable middle ground yet

here is what i do know about Friendship: empirically i meet new people whom i feel very safe around and understood by roughly once or twice a year. sometimes those people stay in my life for a long time and sometimes they don’t. the gaps in between are like winter - they eventually end, but while i’m inside them it feels like they’ll go on forever. i know that i will find you again, but who can say how long i will have to wait this time?

it’s true that i could focus on increasing the rate at which i meet people. but i already have relatively little free time as it is and it’d probably be good to set aside more time to work on myself so that i don’t become a permanently stunted 23-year-old. none of which is to say that Friendship isn’t valuable, just that some of the craving has died down and i understand that obsessing over Friendship alone isn’t going to make my life good

and so after spending quite some time looking for something to obsess over i’ve decided the right thing to focus on right now is… myself? which feels like a rather strange conclusion to draw so i am not sure how long it will last. it’s been a couple years since i explicitly prioritized myself though, and i have accumulated many changes to implement. some of them (daily stretching, cutting down on sugar, nonviolent communication, being more open) i have already started, and others (home maintenance, physical therapy, learning math seriously again) i hope to start soon

perhaps this is what obsession looks like for me right now - no Big Ideas like Love or Mathematics or Technology (though i do not shy away from those ideas either and still spend a lot of time working with them), just a hundred little ideas that i am constantly pushing on, ideas so ordinary that most people might not even notice them

is that okay? it feels so wrong, so mundane

i tell myself that the value of obsession was never in the Big Ideas anyway but in how it forces you to fill your time with things you care about, how it floods your veins with tenacity, how it leaves no space for wanting to die; i tell myself this is just a temporary state, one that i am merely passing through as i figure out what Big Idea to prioritize next; i tell myself that this is progress, or at the very least not regression; i do not know if i am lying to myself