Days are short. Sun’s out longer. I burn energy in it or I don’t. I pass days in indifference.
I no longer read. I barely write. I’m binging an anime written for teenage boys. It’s okay. At 120 episodes in, I’m tearing through the series. It’s a compulsive tear.
I started drinking again. Nothing insane, but that’s how it starts. Just a couple nights with tequila, the old friend. My beef with booze is how it ruins sleep. How my next day is shot. How I’ll stay up ’til 4AM hanging out with friends. It’s not a terrible use of a day, but in the best of times it makes me less productive. In the present, it renders me inert. A strange problem: there’s no obligation or benefit to having a day of full function. I’ve no need to remain alert. The booze whispers: “There is nothing else. This is fine.” And where’s an argument against that?
My diet, so honed and refined for price and nutrition, my sleep schedule, so perfectly graven, ruined in 2 days. A large pizza. Pop tarts. 50 episodes of anime. Videogames. A 5th of tequila. I should feel guilty about it. I don’t. Is that dangerous?
The weather is improving. I plan on sitting under a waterfall tomorrow, meditating. That’ll be my first shower in 3 days. I hadn’t need to shower the last couple. I’m not moving. I’m not sweating. My deodorant is strong.
The prior 6 days were a smear of constant motion. I deal with life in extremes. I exercise maniacally, I diet strictly, and I lapse lavishly.
I cannot seem to focus, so the simple activities preoccupy me, eat energy that would otherwise take the form of 15 thoughts a minute caroming around my skull with no proper outlet. Dopamine. Dopamine. Dopamine. It’s not so bad, but I require a drying out period. I’ll need a dopamine fast.
Finally, I am periodically preoccupied by a lack of intimacy. Mostly I enjoy my solitude, but sexual compulsion is ineluctably human. Like any emotion or trait, it can be repressed or suppressed, but doing so creates strange side effects. Little outbursts when you’re unaware. Moments mid-activity where the mind screams “FUCK! GET SOMEONE PREGNANT!”. Where an errant leg in a show looks extra appealing.
Relationships in the shonen I’m watching serve as a surrogate for personal intimacy. I can see why the genre is so seductive for the disaffected. Saccharine recountings of idealized childhoods, discovering love and affection, dealing with feelings, processing the trials of life with reliable friends. It’s a distraction. It supplies people with experiences and models of what they feel they are lacking in life. I’m reminded of fast food. It hits all the buttons, sweet, salty, fatty, with just enough nutrition to keep you alive. But if that’s all you’re eating, everyone’s gonna know. You’ll collapse sooner than later.
I am earning more money on unemployment than I was at the job I worked for 3 years. It’s a bizarre inversion. I’m more relaxed and calm during this crisis than I’ve been in years. I feel quite free. The lockdown is nothing to me. I live in Appalachia. Give me 30 minutes and I can be alone in a forest, next to a waterfall. I am browned and hale. The air is clean. Life takes a brighter hue. Spring ignores petty human travails. Bees dance to fresh blooms. The albino squirrel fights with birds for seed. The bastard ants are back. Glory.
People are out screaming for things to open again. It seems insane behavior. Everything seems insane. “Normal” is insane. If not for the massive death toll, I’d welcome this as a fantastic opportunity to shut everything down and force people to sit at home, shut up, and think about their priorities. A national sabbath, a moment where work is strictly forbidden. We abandoned God’s day, and we abandoned ideas of humanity’s intrinsic worth. We abandon the idea of values extant outside of economic metrics. People are losing their minds: who am I without my job? What do I do if not work? What will justify my existence?
They’re finding extrinsic justifications only. My job needs me. My kids need me. I am needed by these systems. What if the systems fail? They can’t fail! They’ve worked my whole life. I’ve been told this is the right way my whole life. What if I’m 50 years down the road and I’ve been traveling the wrong way the whole time? It’s time to double down. There’s no way I’ve been wrong. I’ve done the right things. I deserve better. I want a damn haircut.
The sad aggression of confused people unwilling to pause a moment even at the expense of their lives.
I feel weirdly untouched. I require little to live. Good food, a roof, internet, my car. This isn’t a happy feeling. It’s not peace. It’s not depression either, I’m not anhedonic. It’s neutral. It’s an apartness. The world is ending? No. Minds are changing because pain is being applied. And where they’re not changing, there will be more pain, and more.
And I will sit here and make memes about it.
04.20.2020
