Boredom. Depression. Malaise. The sense that time’s just passing, the thought that It has designs on you, is going to fuck you up, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe just as soon as you stop thinking about it. Worse yet, the idea, able to manifest itself spontaneously if only you look around you or examine your life, that you’re no good. You’re not enough. You’re older than you used to be, and still…you aren’t who you thought you’d be, you haven’t gained the certifications or the trophies or the unspoken recognition of your peers. It’s not that nothing seems worth doing, but moreover that you don’t feel suited to any task. You don’t want to do that which you perceive you’re “supposed to” (and even if the overall goal is something you’d like to reach, there’s too much banal or impossible shit to do before you can get to the point), and the rest, well…you play at hobbies for a while but the feeling that you’re getting nowhere burns in around the edges until you’re left clutching the largest available piece of ash.
It lasts for days, weeks, months even, for all you know this is all there’ll ever be; how many truly old people have you seen who seem still to be entrenched in this? Apathetic, or sad, disinterested, the external decay visibly outpaced by the rot within.
You are fucking yourself over. Some people, books, ideologies would have you believe that you’re lacking the principal ingredient of living, of being human, but that isn’t exactly it. You have the material. What you lack is the catalyst. The stuff of motion, the essence of getting it done. Sure, there’s some treacle of it here and there, you manage to go on breathing, you scrape by enough to ensure that you don’t actually die of this. But you’re cheating yourself out of volume; you’re starving yourself on crackers and sugarwater though your pantry is full.
The fact that you have gotten through whatever has come your way to get to where you are now, however undesirable or inadequate, is a useful proof of your possession of the material you need to ascend the bullshit existence you’ve created for yourself. You aren’t broken, you aren’t wasted, and if anything is actually fundamentally wrong with you, either it’s not strong enough to kill you outright or else it’s young and small enough to be rooted out before it conquers.
You do not need a special thing. There is no car, no pill, no outfit, there is no diet or manual or salve that will suddenly activate your abilities. Living, actually living, is something you could do if today you threw out everything you owned. In fact, getting rid of things is more productive for this task than acquiring them; you can treat yourself to things once you’ve built yourself into a functional, truly alive person –someone who’s able to use things correctly rather than to instill in them some hope of inward personal change.
And there’s no pep talk or fortune cookie that will activate you either. Even if this post itself appears to be some aside between me and you, fashioned to make you feel better; it’s not. Fuck you. People in the business of making you feel better by saying nice things, by motivating you, are either con men (consciously or not) out to get your money, or else they’ve made it their job to train draftees and recruits. I’m not selling anything, and it matters neither to my purse nor to my person whether you ultimately succeed or fail. What matters to me is truth.
So, have it. The only thing you truly need is the decision. Mind you, acknowledging its veracity and acting accordingly is implicit in making the decision: you are going to live. Not half-heartedly, not with a but or an unfortunately. You’re going to do it, that which you do, fully, with everything you’ve got. Your body will ache. You will sweat into your eyeballs, you will cry, you won’t always sleep, it’ll seem like you’ve been working at the same goddamned thing for so long a monkey in an empty room could have by now produced what you’re trying to make. You’ll keep doing it, more diligently, you will go on.
And though you may never get those certificates or trophies, though other people may leave off their silent non-recognition of your greatness in favor of outright mockery and scorn, you will know that none of that matters one whit. You will feel every movement, your muscles shivering in bliss, you will taste every bite and catch every note, your palate distinguishing between things you never before knew existed, you will understand essences and so intuit specific facts. You will live.
