My head is full of circling ideas and half thoughts and cockeyed schemes. None are coming clear and I'm left with a restlessness of the mind (but definitely not the body). Can't even settle on something to watch/read/work on. It's the kind of day where I just want to hole up and be cozy while it's gross outside, but I apparently feel that I need some project to take advantage of the holing up time. And I can't think of any project that I want to do.

Maybe it's just a dissonance from thinking I should be doing something, even though there's nothing I technically have to do. It's a low income month, and I've been thinking about that. That inevitably leads to some agitation over all the wrong things, which is just frustrating. It's like I'm almost stirred to action but at a time when there's no action to be taken, and I search for a substitute. Then it's over. Of course, if there comes a time when action should be taken, I quite possibly will not recognize it, and it will pass by unnoticed.

I know everyone has weird mental blocks, and it's in their nature that you cannot understand them, but it still feels annoying -- I don't know. You are who you are; you're all you've got. Take it as it is. Or my newest personal catchphrase: Own It. (not unique, I know)

I'm in an unreservedly good mood today, have been since yesterday evening. I have no idea where these things come from. Would love to be able to duplicate on demand. Oh, well. Just be glad of it (which is easy, see above re mood).

Anyway, captioned HLA meeting and did a good job. More importantly, I felt like I did a good job, so that's contributing to the upswing but it started prior. Very outward focused and even social (gawsp). All in all, a better side of my personality has come out to play for a while.

You can only find the meaning of life within your own life; it doesn't come from outside.

What a nice day.

Your only duty in this lifetime is to be magnificent.

That's from a recap of doctor who series 4 by Jacob over at TWoP.

What is magnificence? Does it include an element of presentation or is it wholy internal? Or maybe one follows the other. If you live magnificently, do you shine so brightly that you show up without trying?

Who hides? Why? What is the point of it? If you feel you're of no interest to anyone, of no threat to anyone, not significant, what's the point? You could leap up and down on top of the Earth and no one would take note for longer than 15 seconds. Is that the point? As long as you don't take a chance on being seen, you can't be dismissed as nothing. You can continue to think that maybe there's something about you that can't be ignored, that would be valued outside of yourself.

The importance of that slim possibility vs the almost certain feeling that there truly is nothing drives your every action. What would happen if you were seen and dismissed, ignored, belittled, scorned? What does that matter? The views of others, who inevitably see you as Other, do not make you Other to yourself, do they? Are you already?

...It's not fear of being misunderstood; it's fear of being understood. Understood in all your mediocrity. Understood in your place in the world, which is paramount only to you and meaningless to everyone else. That's truth, and it's easy enough to accept that as an intellectual exercise, but what does it mean in relation to the importance of your existence to you? When nothing you think matters, all that matters is what you think, because that's all there is. What the fuck do you do with that?

Your only duty in this life is to whom? Is it all about what you owe yourself? And what does it mean to be magnificent? To fulfill your potential, to live life to the fullest, to not waste the existence you have -- what relation does that bear to the world. In chaos theory, the smallest thing can affect the whole in unimaginable ways. So it follows that your life affects the world to some degree, but how does that work? I don't understand how that works.

You would think that if you're more visible, if you leave a bigger footprint, you'll have a more significant effect -- that seems to be the way western society lives. That's why environmentalism is so hard to impress upon people. What's the point of leaving the earth for your grandchildren if that means they never knew you were there? It's all about being remembered, even though most of us won't. I won't, and I don't care that much, but I worry that that means I didn't fulfill whatever potential I had.

It's all so simple when it's just about physical posterity and DNA and evolution. When it's ideas and culture and all that messy human stuff, it gets really warped. I don't know if anyone has figured it out. We've only been leaving a written record of our thoughts for a few thousand years. And now we get the books about race memory and cultural memes and evolution through indirect knowledge and not learned experiences. So now the pressure is not just to produce offspring to carry on your genes, but to produce writings, or theories, or art, or discoveries, or other intellectual legacies to carry on your ideas to the next generations.

What are you if you do neither? If you don't breed and you don't create, if your physical traits and your thoughts never leave your body. You don't build anything, you don't write down anything, you don't even really impact other people in any significant way. It would be like you never existed. And you certainly don't care about that when you're dead, so it doesn't necessarily matter to you. But what does it mean about you? Obviously it must matter to some degree or you wouldn't worry about it at all.

I guess I don't care if the world at large thinks I'm good or bad, smart or dumb, a success or a failure; but I care what I think about myself. And I have to use other people as some kind of gauge of myself: test subjects, baselines, comparison studies. And I have to think that some part of the achievement of myself is related to myself as a social being and part of society. Yet I've never really wanted to be a big part of society, never wanted to leave a footprint. My question is: Am I right or wrong to feel that way? And I mean right or wrong not according to a set external code, but right or wrong according to being the best I can be. So as not to miss out on being magnificent and knowing it. For whatever impact that has on me in the here and now.

In a weird mood. Not exactly restless, just -- maybe I'm anxious because I'm putting off several things I don't want to deal with. None are crucial or need to be dealt with tonight, hence the low level of it, but still simmering unfinished underneath.

Week of tenseness I thought I had left behind -- silly really. You can try to be as Zen as you want, still there will be things that happen that rattle you, things that remind you you're not in control. I don't even bother to think it's not fair anymore, it's just life. Does that mean I'm getting old or is there any wisdom to be found in being resigned to life's inevitabilities?

Anyway, tomorrow I'll pick up the reins again (and turn my phone back on, come what may) and do whatever needs to be done. And maybe for a change I can go a little beyond that to do a few things that I would like to get a jump on. It could happen.

BTW, need to look into the Look of Sartre. Curious as to how that whole self-objectification works and if there's any redeeming qualities to it.

questions about questions

So I’m reading a series of lectures turned to essays by Margaret Atwood; hence the thoughts about self-expression and writing and art and the like. Things I periodically consider in relation to myself. Then, within a few weeks or so, the very idea that I would consider myself as having anything to do with artistic expression or activities turns to self-disgust that I would ever be so deluded. But that’s another story.

It was funny, because whenever I do go through a period of journaling I generally ask more questions than I write statements. Part of that is because I don’t ever believe I have a definitive answer to anything at all. But part of it is just that by writing the questions, I can consider the answers. And most importantly, any answers I consider are not written down, so I am not committed in any way to them, so no further action is required and they can be conveniently released back into the ether without tainting me in any way. I am very much a freak.

And that was another diversion from my original consideration. The point is, I came upon a paragraph in the book that was generally one question after another about what it means to be an artist in our society, what freedoms and responsibilities are connected with that role, what that role it, et cetera. And it made me think of my typical mode of journal writing.

I don’t know what significance that has, if any, but it made me feel a little less cowardly for doing it. There is always value in asking the questions. I still probably need to focus a little more attention on getting down some possible answers.

"In what ways, if any, does talent set you apart? Does it exempt you from the duties and responsibilities expected of others? Or does it load you up with even more duties and responsibilities, but of a different kind? Are you to be a detached observer, pursuing your art for its own sake, and having arcane kinds of fun -- or rather, experiences that will enrich your understanding of Life and the Human Condition -- and if you do this to the exclusion of other people and their needs, will you become your own sin-soaked gargoyle? Or ought you to be a dedicated spokesperson for the downtrodden of this earth, like Gogol or Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo or the Zola of Germinal or the Orwell of Down and Out in Paris and London? Should you write your own J'accuse, like Zola, or are all such accusations vulgar? Ought you to support worthy causes, or avoid them like the plague? Are you, vis-a-vis the average taxpayer, a superfluous parasite, or the essential heart of the matter? (...) In short: if you acknowledge any responsibility to society at all, even insofar as you claim to describe it, does your vocation make you the master of all you survey, or the slave of somebody else's lamp?" -- Margaret Atwood. Negotiating with the Dead

And maybe because I don't think of myself as an artist (and have never been one), I substitute citizen for writer and life for vocation when I think about many of those questions. I don't know that it holds true as a strict parallel -- well, it doesn't -- but those are the kinds of things I wonder about. And they are questions I have a lot of trouble answering.

questions

What is the deal with it? Why should words be embarrassing? Why is the very act of getting down words triggering such a huge amount of self-censorship? What is the exact attitude to it? Writers have to throw down tons of unimportant, irrelevant, impractical, banal, and uninteresting words all the time to clear out the system and allow the ideas that matter to arise. And seriously, who’s going to see it? And if someone did, who cares? Who are you worried is going to read, judge, condemn, ridicule, feel superior? And what does that matter? Even on-line, so someone reads something you write that’s juvenile or dumb or whiny or whatever; how is that so bad? What is so awful down in your core that can’t be allowed into the light of day? This obsession with hiding away is incomprehensible. I mean, you have like 10 friends total anyway. And none of them would be bothered by anything you would say or write or tell them, probably not pay any attention.

And others are as usual paying more attention to their own stuff to spend time critiquing your life. And what is posterity and perfection of image and why is that important to you of all people? How is that allowed to stop you from doing, writing, saying, expressing, attempting anything at all, especially when you consider you’re only censoring yourself from yourself? Seriously, why the big deal about this? And is it important, irrelevant, minor, major, inconsequential or what to get past it? Would it be helpful or just kind of fun, or mortifying or destructive?

And secondarily, what does that attitude, belief, feeling about life have to do with any other acts and impressions and ambitions you have or don’t? Is it the key to unlocking yourself? Is there a key for that? What self would you be unlocking and what would it mean? Is it possible to open the door on your own? Is it dangerous? Do you have to be brave?