Monday, February 23, 2015

Procrastination vs Death

I don't feel like I've been doing much with my spare time for a while.  Development generally consists of exciting and painful growth phases followed by rest and recuperation phases, but this year+ hibernation I'm crawling out of may have been a bit excessive.  I have many times thought how nice it would be to have a time or suspended animation machine that would let me wake up 50 years, time having neatly dealt with all my little problems by serenely passing them by.  To procrastinate then, is to be a frustrating mix of wise and foolish:  wise enough to know all of our problems fade to insignificance with the passage of time but foolishly succumbing to the temptation to do nothing, hoping there will be enough time on our personal clock after to do something else or perhaps resting lightly in the delusion that maybe I, for the first time in history, will turn out to be immortal.  The singularity is right around the corner you know!  Or perhaps Jesus.  Or maybe the Buddha  or Odin or Allah?  Who can give me immortality?  Is it Ra, god of the sun?  I can be in Egypt by morning.  I have a lot of procrastinating to do and I need more time to do it.

Of course, the universe is not required to play along with my delusions so I remain obstinately mortal and procrastination, by any definition, is still more or less just wasting my own time.  Moreover, the universe, obstinately unconcerned with my hopes dreams and personal and psychological well-being, moves on and moves objects and people as it will and occasionally the little space I've built for myself where I allow myself the delusion of sameness and stability and safety keeps the walls but loses the floor and my dogmatic belief that I can get my shit together if I just float here in sameness long enough gets shattered by the realization that I've been sinking for a while now and if I want to see the sunlight again I'm going to have to get my shit together enough NOW to at least swim for it.

Which is to say, getting one's shit together is a laudable and reasonable aspiration but asking the world to, you know, maybe stop for a while in the meantime is not as much as such.  I keep asking the world to stop and it keeps laughing and at some point maybe I should take the hint, you know?

The latest Wile E. Coyote freefall moment was prompted by my partner's request for an open relationship, which truly I never saw coming.  It has not been the end of the world, although I initially processed it like it was approaching that, although I believe we have worked through it with an arrangement more or less to my satisfaction and comfort and I believe I have made the best choice of the choices currently available to me.  But it has been yet another stark reminder that even people I know well can and will surprise me and that the universe is under no obligation to proceed as I have foreseen it.

There is a form of monogamy, that I often practice, where one is tempted, if not outright encouraged, to believe that what is joined should never be rent asunder and that who I am now is who I must always be and how I feel now is how i must always feel and what I have with another person will always be there for me to take comfort in and I'm convinced that this is maybe not the best version of monogamy out there.  It's too tempting to let it slide into personal procrastination where maybe I stop taking care of myself (check) and stop taking care of the other person (sometimes check) because we are committed and we don't have to keep trying so hard to be visibly "mate material" all the time and that what is "good" about it is the eternal commitment and co-dependent attachment of it all.

It seems to me like it must be better to take the world as it is, on the only terms it will offer itself to me, and accept that the only constant is change and that a commitment to change together is a fine thing, but the recognition that a given relationship may not work for all parties forever is not such a bad thing, in that it provides incentive to maintain oneself and tend the relationship. So at least if it does end I can take considerable comfort in the knowledge that I was engaged and and kept up my end of the arrangement as best I could and really that's all I can ask of myself in any relationship.  This is not at odds with monogamy in theory to be sure, many fine relationships embrace the uncertainty, but it may be at odds with monogamy as frequently practiced, where fear of uncertainty leads to an unrealistic sense of security and procrastination and jealousy and co-dependence.  To be in a healthy monogamous relationship then may necessitate recognizing one's partner is tempted by others and is still attracted to others and sometimes wants different things than you and is sometimes a really different person than you but can be trusted to abide by the terms of your relationship (which are there, even if only implied) and can be trusted to come home to you even if someone else merits a lingering glance from time to time.  More to the point, letting oneself forget the fickle and chaotic nature of the universe and the people within it leaves one more flat-footed when the rug is inevitably pulled out again.

So to me, at this point, the open relationship is just extending that trust to an admittedly scarier, and admittedly socially controversial degree, of letting the other partner date casually and meet and fuck new people and trusting them to abide by the explicit agreement one might have made about that kind of thing and trusting them to still want to come home to me.  The particulars of the agreement are very much specific to the needs of the individuals within the relationship, but what's important is that there is an  agreement and a good faith effort to abide by it.  Not that it is better than monogamy per se, not that I don't personally have my concerns about the whole endeavor, but I think it's the best fit for us right now and it's been the conclusion of both of us staring at the frightening uncertainty of it all face on,  and doing our best to come to terms with it.  My partner and I are considerable late bloomers in our own way and I think the relationship had stalled while we both avoided the implications of that.  Is an open-relationship the best answer for that?  Maybe not, but we don't see another we're happier with at the moment.

I have few beliefs these days, but I do believe in grown adults get to come to their own arrangement in who they love and how they love them and I believe in embracing uncertainty and learning to be nimble in facing life's challenges rather than constantly trying to plant oneself on shifting sand, even though I am objectively terrible at actually being nimble (emotionally or otherwise).  So while I am not super thrilled at the wake-up call, I am grateful to once again be attempting to face the world as it is and preparing myself to adjust to the world as it will be.  I am grateful to be awake.

And while it's clear I'm still going to struggle with depression and insecurity and self-esteem in the near future, it's becoming clearer once again that procrastination is a habit best left behind me.  I keep building safe, unchanging places and getting frustrated when the floor falls out, and building a new eternal delusion, only to have the floor fall out again.  And again.  And again.  Maybe it's time to admit it's just trap doors all the way down and try something new.

Friday, February 06, 2015

Status Report

Feb 5, 2015 (6 days before my 39th birthiversary).

I have emerged from yet another long hibernation to survey the unattended clutter that has accumulated while I slept and find myself, once again, displeased.  Troubled along so many vectors I have a hard time plotting the shape of it.  Maybe it's best to tackle this topically.

ROMANCE

While it's probably not a terrific idea to go into details, new and exciting challengers have emerged in the romantic life of me, super-pal Jimmy Wholesome, that have prompted the current round of general house-cleaning.  While I am grateful for the boot to the ass the universe has graciously bestowed upon me as motivation to clean house, I resent the general untidiness of the universe and it's inhabitants and lament my inability to self-motivate.  As it turns out my life needs constant tending.  Who knew.

WORK

Is a mess and a mess I've been unhappy with a long time, so long even I am tired of hearing myself talk about it.  But it doesn't have to be a mess forever.  I am optimistic I will figure out a good course of action for myself.  Eventually.  Hopefully sometime before the heat death of the universe.

SOCIAL LIFE

I have let my social life whither on the vine in the last year or so.  So I am preparing a new socializing push to refresh existing friendships and forge new ones.  This will likely involve getting out of the house.  And maybe being on a schedule that leaves me free in the evenings when, I'm told, human types like to congregate and talk about consumer products and TV shows.  But I look forward to it.  I've got the chops, I just need to sharpen them up.

GENERAL EXISTENTIAL MALAISE

I think most people just call it depression, but I think I've been struggling with it for years.  Coming out of the closet made everything, in many ways, better, and I am grateful for that.  Although there are some of other core problem areas to sift through.  I have a hard time finding my motivation to thrive for a variety of reasons I am still trying to understand and I'm very hard on myself for it.  I never felt a part of my childhood church culture and now that I've left it I find I haven't found a place to land in the "secular world" where I feel I belong.  I have not found my people or my place or my purpose (the all-important 3 p's) and I think it leaves me feeling generally untethered and listless and anxious.  For some the answer is to just DO something which I understand, but I also understand myself and my tunnel vision obsessive tendencies so I'm loathe to just grasp on to something and go with it for fear I'll wake up 10 years down the line and wonder, "what the fuck am I doing?"  If I can train myself to recognize "the wrong path" sooner rather than later maybe I'll be more comfortable of the idea of "just doing something."

ANXIETY

I am generally an anxious creature, which I am working on.  This is something that developed later in life and I am not thrilled with it.  Most days I have a general feeling that I need to be anxious about something, about who I am or what I'm doing or what I've done and I generally fill in that gap with some reason without really thinking about it.  This is probably my strongest reason and motivation to exercise as I know from experience that helps a great deal.  I've also set up a reading corner of my own with a turntable and a nice reading chair to provide myself with some "chill the fuck out" space. Sometimes the inner animal can't be reasoned with, it just has to be soothed.

CRIME & PUNISHMENT

I've been having tremendous difficulty the last few years letting myself move forward in any meaningful way, or even allowing myself the pleasure of consuming art that I would find very edifying.  I pretty consciously know what I want to work on and I generally watch myself in amazement as I deny myself the privilege.  There are some truly wonderful and imaginative TV shows for instance that I would love to start/finish but I generally choose to marathon trashier TV that I'm not that interested in instead.  It's become pretty clear to me that some part of me desperately wishes to be punished, for being flawed or being gay/bi, or being something other than what other people want me to be.  I carry the explicit and implicit judgements of other people FAR too readily and I really need to stop, but I find it really challenging even though I know pretty much what the issue is at this point. I would dearly love to stop carrying the real and imagined judgements of other people forever though.  Note to self.

WRITING

There's really nothing standing in the way of me writing except my own foolish self.  The above mentioned sense of deserving no good thing and maybe some more punishment and a REALLY bad case of smart kid syndrome are the big culprits here.  It's clear to me that I need to write to be a happy person, not because it's going to make me rich and famous or well-liked but because I have thoughts I want to articulate and things I want to share and stories ideas that pop into my head non-stop that I would love to realize in some fashion.  But the smart kid in me won't let me do it without being perfect at it the first time and the silly sadist in me wants to punish me for not being a smart kid.  It's silly bullshit and I'm tired of it.  I hope to get past it and finally write stories I'm happy with before the Big Crunch and the next Big Bang recreate the universe anew.  The same goes for my stalled progress in learning piano and Japanese.

POLITICS

Man, fuck politics.  The corruption and structural stagnation that has brought our government to a standstill and feeds and endless culture war seems insurmountable to me right now.  I am sure it is NOT, but jesus.  We desperately need to get our collective shit together.  I find it all very depressing.

SCIENCE and WOO

I've been reading a lot more "WOO" material recently, including books on near-death experiences, evidence of life after death, UFO sightings, and so forth.  Except Sasquatch which I find completely uninteresting.  "A big primate lives in the woods!" Who cares.  While I am myself a scientist and believe strongly that it's a good way of accumulating many types of knowledge, I don't really love the way people talk about it sometimes.  I've been struggling to articulate it in ways that don't make me sound crazy.  People seem to have a hard time distinguishing between beliefs that have some scientific evidence in support, and beliefs about science that reinforce their worldview.  Science is good but it is not all that is true or necessary to consider.  Reason is good but feelings exist and have their moments of primacy and importance.  I largely read woo material because I've always been interested in what's outside the comfortable assumptions of the crowd and I like entertaining a reality bigger and more interesting than the current bullshit.  So I like to read about other people's strange experiences and consider whether they might actually be true, or at the very least indicative of a grander, more interesting universe than the common wisdom currently assumes.  Do I think they're all telling the truth?  No.  Do I think some of them might be a little delusional or unbalanced?  Yes.  Do I think that mean's it's all bunk?  Not necessarily.  Anecdotal data is not as good as scientific data, but it is evidence of something nonetheless, and even if it just turns out to be evidence of the many twists and turns of human psychology I find that in and of itself interesting.  So I don't know how much of it is real, and to be truthful you don't either, we just have beliefs about "how the world must really be." But I'm happy to consider these other possibilities and not assume can't have experienced something I haven't experienced.  I just don't recommend making any big life decisions or wasting too much time on unsupported anecdotes or just really incomplete information which is where I think people tend to go wrong either way.  So no, I'm not falling off the deep end just yet, just looking into the water and wondering how deep it goes.

MORTALITY

I used to be terrified of dying with sins left unforgiven and burning in hell.  Or dying before accomplishing God's purpose for me here on earth.  Or dying before seeing the prequels Lucas was rumored to be working on like a decade before they came out, which was an extremely misplaced fear as it turns out.  And then dying and having it be nothing.  And then dying and having it be something worse.  And then just the ending of fabulous, wonderful, conscious me (despite the fact that my consciousness disintegrates nightly).  Now I'm just worried about dying before I get my shit together.  Of dying before having said all the things I want to say and art left unmade and people left unloved.  Of having wasted my time dithering on this anxious bullshit rather than using the time I have doing what I want to do.  Which is a nicer fear of mortality really.  But really the ultimate currency is time and I want to spend it better.  Relatedly but not causally, I'm also thinking of volunteering in a hospice somewhere in town.  It seems important to tackle death head-on both in oneself and in others and I can think of no better place to start.

SPIRITUALITY

I've been finding myself less hard on religion recently.  For all the problems in most major world religions, they still seem to consciously address and attempt to answer important existential questions for more directly than the secular world which just seems to shrug at some of it, as if embarrassed to be associated with anything religion even talks about.  I'm still trying to define for myself what spirituality is and why it's important to me, but it is.  I will not likely be returning to christianity in this lifetime and will also avoid anything predicated on making you feel like shit for existing and offering themselves as the only absolution (because the mind fuck there, once you see it, is too obvious to ignore).  I may try one of the westernized buddhism churches in town soon, just to see.  I'm not sure I can even buy into buddhism that deeply, but I think spirituality has a value, and spiritual practices may be very useful in finding emotional and intellectual peace of some sort, even if there's nothing supernatural involved.  I respect the search for meaning, I respect the search for peace, I don't think religion ruins everything and I don't think all religious believers are nuts or delusional and I'm trying to find a way to live with them more or less amiably without too much antagonism.  To be sure, it seems like religious types could be meeting me half-way a bit more on that, but it's not an excuse to succumb to cynicism.  Who knows, maybe I'll find something half-worth believing in, or at least practicing.

WHEREVER I GO, THERE I AM

It's weird to be days away from 39 and still be writing self-absorbed "what the fuck am I doing?" updates like this.  This is really, really not how I imagined yours truly at age 39.  I'm not quite sure what I expected, but I think I expected ... more grown-upedness?  Confidence?  Capability?  Stability?  Clarity?  More and more I feel I can be that guy.  Or perhaps am becoming that guy.  I can feel him impatiently wiggling and straining against the current man-child artifice I've carelessly worn for years, wanting to take charge.  Or at least have a say.  My child-self is a nice kid, but maybe he shouldn't be running the show, you know?  But I am still proud of myself sometimes.  Yes, I'm a bit of a late-bloomer, but I came out of the closet, I moved to a better city, I left an abusive relationship and I'm asking myself a lot of the right questions.  Questions I hope to answer before the universe forces the issue one way or another.  Or ends in a fiery conflagration only those outside of time and space will be privileged to witness.

And that's the update this year.  For those of you still reading, I thank you.  For those of you who quit two paragraphs in, you're off the list!  Not enough changes to talk about, a lot of omphaloskepsis, but there it is.  Me in a nutshell.  Cracking ever-so-gently.

James Haus
Age 39(ish)

Transmission ends