The Experiment

R and I took a long walk last night and as has become habit of late, ended up discussing my recent affair with apathy. So I did my whole dramatic speech about not just not wanting to do anything, but also not liking anything and how I just very simply don't care about anything anymore. But then he said something that really should have made me mad under the circumstances. He said 'I don't believe you'. What he meant of course is that he doesn't believe that I don't care about anything. And you know what? He's right not to believe me. Because this phase of retro-adolescent angst I am experiencing right now is, I think, another experiment in being alive. While I totally hate this sensation profound boredom, I recognize that it's interesting. And maybe, just maybe, the rantings and dramatic ravings I put my poor eternally patient r through almost every night are further probes into this strange hypothesis. When I sit here writing these posts, I know it can't be as totally hopeless as I have billed it - if it were, I wouldn't be here trying to attract other bored strangers with the details of my life. I am sorry for behaving so miserably. And as you always remind me and I always choose to ignore, things aren't as bad as they may seem.

Friday #33 + 12 hours

This is an update for you, the sole reader who has stumbled on this blog by repeatedly hitting the 'next blog' link at the top of the page: I came pretty close to having an eventful Friday evening. R and I almost went into town to get some coffee. But it's about 9:30 now and he's dozed off in the hot, itchy red chair. I haven't totally given up hope yet, so don't worry. I figure that if I let him nap then maybe can get my hands on him later....

Friday #33

Its Friday, yet again, just like it was seven days ago. I really don't know why I get so excited about Fridays. I know I won't be doing anything special after work - no going out, going to a show, no going out or for drinks. Not even out for a cup of coffee. It's not that I know that I get to sleep in tomorrow, because I don't. This is our last weekend of treating the animals. Finally.

But I am in a pretty good mood nonetheless. Maybe because there is the dim hope that r and will actually do something different. That maybe I won’t pass out at 7pm from exhaustion. Its been really interesting experiencing boredom the way I imagine most people feel it. I didn't understand before - the desire to go out, party, socialize, enjoy. Yup, it didn't make sense to me. But I get it now. Before, in my past life as a motivated person, my path was clear. I enjoyed making my work, and because there was nothing else I wanted to do, everything else in life became either secondary or totally irrelevant.
But Now, now that I am a regular member of the working drones, I understand how people try and make it through day to day. It’s a craving to be fulfilled – and my initial impulse is to peg it as escapism, but it’s got to be more than that. I think it’s more akin to scooting closer to an ideal, to a more perfect life. What are you talking about beef? What I am talking about is the WANT for the company of strangers. The ability to introduce yourself as the person who you want to be and not having people discover you as the person you really are. Your lover knows you far too well for this. Your co-workers know you in that quotidian way that is like a chain around your neck. But a stranger knows nothing and can be anything. And what it really is, is trying to very carefully and responsibly live out a fantasy. Trying, but obviously failing.

Another recent development is the fact that I am reverting into the adolescence I would have had if I hadn't cared so much about what my extremely close knit group of friends thought. I have been on a late seventies punk mission, listening to whatever I possibly can. I have been telling stories about the crazy stuff I used to do in high school (which are admittedly not very crazy at all, but it looks like getting your tongue and nose pierced seem crazy to my co-workers) and if that weren't insane enough I have been fantasizing about getting a tattoo. Yes, I am in my own repressed way trying to take life by the balls. The problem is that I am NOT the bad ass I want so badly to be right now. I am a chicken shit with a steady job that I can't afford to lose.

Enough to Make Big Daddy Shiver

Over the past week I've started two posts and abandoned them both. I've also been excruciatingly bored this week- both at work and at home, so it's not like I have been too busy to sit down and write. I just haven't felt like it. Like I haven't "felt like" drawing, painting, or doing anything even remotely artistically productive over the past 2 or 3 months. Thinking, oh great, another thing that I have become totally uninterested in to add to my list of recent steps in my downward spiral.

But today after waking up from a long, deeply satisfying nap on the floor in front of the air conditioner, I realized in real language why I have been offish to my blog. Earlier this week r started a blog, after several weeks of urging him to do so. I must not have thought he would actually do it, because even though I rationally know that it's a good way for him to expand what he's doing and thinking, I was secretly disappointed. No, I was jealous. This was MY idea first. It also dawned on me that he might be actually reading my postings more often as he is in the neighborhood making his own. So now what am I supposed to do? Expound on my inane dissatisfaction with life privately - on pen and paper? What I decided today was, no. I will not force myself to keep a journal is some cramped gridded notebook just to save myself the humiliation of facing up to what I have actually written. I have never kept up this long with a real journal anyways, so I think the fact that I am still here is telling of my exhibitionist tendencies. While I might recoil at having people recognize who is actual writing this, I secretly crave it. (Well, not so secretly anymore)

The other thing I realized this week was that in starting this blog I have joined the millions of people who write about nothing in the hopes that someone out there will read it. Apparently, I am not alone in my attention seeking. This realization also contributed to my freezing up on the writing front. In my boredom, I have spent (correction, wasted) huge amounts of time paging through other people's blogs in hopes of reading something even remotely interesting. Having failed at finding anything other than self absorbed rantings, it dawned on me that I was one of them. That I have contributed nothing truly original or noteworthy to warrant a repeat visit by any unassuming reader. So why bother generating more junk? This leads nicely to another conclusion reached this week: that the best thing for me to do at this moment in my life is to continue not caring about anything. I will continue to not care about my future, my job, the disarray of our apartment and my utter lack of ambition, for as long as I see fit. With this strategy in place, there is no room to care about whether what I post is relevant, interesting or novel. After all, I should be so lucky to have a reader at all, even if they leave rolling their eyes at the mendacity of it all.

I'm Gonna Kick Your Ass

I wish I were a bad-ass.
That's what I want for my birthday - a big heaping shot of bad-ass please.

That image we all have ourselves when we daydream - you, only a little better. All the little things that you just wish could change about yourself, but can't for whatever reason, are corrected in the daydream. Recently, I have been a little taller (ok, like 6 inches taller), more clever, slightly quicker in my rebuttals and much more crass - in an elegant way. The only part of this that happens to be leaking out into reality is the crass part, sans elegance.

We had a guest speaker come to the lab today, and normally it is my job to help them set up their presentation in the lecture hall, show them how to advance the slide - all the the stuff that a working PhD should know already. Today has been kind of a hectic day anyway, aggravated by the fact that I have been extremely physically tired from the moment I step into work....

You know what? I don't want to tell this story. You can't really be interested in what happened at this lecture. I sure as hell wasn't. The point is that I was pissed because I had been rushed to be there early and when i got there someone had done my job for me already. Ok, I was off the hook and I could enjoy the carrots I had smuggled in my pocket in peace. But I was pissed. And while I sat there being pissed, I felt like I was exuding a dark cloud of cold and righteous angst - and I loved it. Sadly, the expression on my face was probably one of sleepy boredom. But I pretended I looked like I was ready to kick some ass.

The Curie Family

Last night in the car my mom was telling me about the elaborate ways in which members of the Curie family suffered due to excessive radiation exposure. Pierre Curie died of a highly invasive cancer of the leg at age 48 and daughter Irene of Leukemia at 59. Surprise surprise, considering that the couple had a container of radium adorning their nightstand. Amazingly enough, Marie Curie herself held out until age 67 perishing from aplastic anemia. So this is what we talked about. Workplace hazards. How you don't know what you don't know until you know it. Oh, you know, the typical mother-daughter conversation.

A favorite nugget of wisdom that she likes to dole out to me is that I, like her and my father, will always bear the burden of anguish. Yes, it's a fact. Just like I have inherited my father's nose, and my mother's shape, I too have inherited their sense of anguish. And what she means by this (I think anyways) is that feeling that nothing is ever good enough, that you are never good enough. That there is always further to go, and every step taken to reach the ultimate destination is a step wasted simply because it is your own. What is her prescription for this malady? There is none, only to accept the pain. I have accepted this conclusion, taken those feelings of insuffiency and ran with them, if you will.

What I realized yesterday however was that for the first time, she misdiagnosed my problem. Because these past few months I haven't felt 'anguish'. Sure, I have felt like a loser, but who cares. We are all losers aren't we? Right? The problem, if it is one, is that I am bored out of my mind. Yup. It's painful to admit because I have always prided myself on never having been bored by anything, of wringing creative and/or intellectual gusto out of almost anything. When I say bored, I mean profoundly bored, bored to the depths of apathy. I simply don't give a shit about a whole lot of stuff that used to make me break out in tears worrying about. My future for one. I used to wonder how I was going to do something unique in art, make my mark. Instead of writing a blog at work I would browse one grad school after dreaming up what I would do next. And now? I don't really want to go to grad school, because I have come to doubt my vocation as an artist, seriously this time, not just as a passing fancy. I don't really care where I am in 5 years; I don't care if I make something new; I don't care if I get fired or if I don't. Its all fine. My mom suggested that maybe what I was experiencing was happiness. Hm. That’s a thought. If it is I don't think I like it.