Sunday, January 3, 2016

On Embarrassment

I don't have good ideas anymore.

I mean, I have good ideas in theory. Sometimes people tell me they're good. But it's kind of a leap of faith to believe it, and that leap can take some time. But ideas are time-sensitive, and usually by the time I have a sense of what might be worth pursuing, it's too late. So I make a lot of plans that I believe are going to go quite badly, in the hopes that I'll be wrong. I'm not wrong as often as I'd like to be.

What I have learned, in this process, is that my experience is made up of emotions, not events. Events are simpler to deal with. There are fewer moving parts in the world Out There than there are in the world within. Emotional logic requires very long sentences, and people generally do everything we can to avoid those. Observation requires more patience than it does insight. Honesty requires more focus than it does courage.

Honesty and observation have brought me to this: happiness that will not freely offer itself to you, happiness-in-misery, requires a staggering, terrifying, infuriating vulnerability. In practice, this means pain, pain, and more pain. In practice, this means failure. In practice, this means envying the dead; but death will not come. Not yet.

I spam the living fuck out of my various social media accounts. Sometimes it's because I'm proud of stuff; sometimes I'm trying to build my #brand. Most of the time, however, I'm just reaching out to feel anything at all. Sometimes it's too painful. Sometimes I have to withdraw. Never for long, though; time isn't something I have an infinite amount of, so I can't afford distance. I can't afford armor.

It's really hard.

That's a short sentence, but it's essentially all I'm trying to say here. All the violence and poetry in the world can only color that sentence. That's what's true right now. Life is frustrating, and painful, and hard. There's nothing to be done about it. Just breathing, and being, and feeling time making its way over and around me.

It's 2016.

Fight.