Done with the Bullshit

For a long time I wondered whether I'd outlived my usefulness. Was I taking up space and resources that could go to others who would better used them?

No more.

So many other people are doing so much worse than I in the world that I no longer worry about my relative place in it. I'm no saint, but I'm no sinner either. I'm chaotic neutral, to borrow a D&D phrase, and that's just fine by me.

So fuck everyone. I'll continue to take up my few inches of space, and eat my bit of food and wear my few yards of clothing for as long as I can, and I'll drop dead whenever. Maybe I don't deserve that stuff, but I deserve it a hell of a lot more than the bulk of this population, for certain. I'm not good, but I'm for damn sure okay.

Shopping ≠ Living

I wish I had weighed the bag of pens I brought to the office this morning. I have to guess it's around 5 pounds of pens. 5 pounds of pens! Seriously. I brought them to office to get them out of my apartment, so that they'll be used by someone, and not simply be wasted sitting in a container in the closet of my home. I've neurotically bought pens like crazy for the past five years, and now I'm stopping myself. I know which pens I need to write in my journals, and I do not need to buy any more pens until those run out of ink (which, given the number of pens I've kept, is still a while in the future).

I'm dealing with my neuroses. Since moving into my home over five years ago, I've acted like I need MORE  and BETTER  stuff all the time. I've turned shopping into a recreational activity, almost physical in endurance. (I'm the only person I know who will happily WALK from Montgomery Mall to the shopping centers on Rockville Pike, often with stuff in my bag already.) I manically search for books, pens, underwear, socks, etc., like these items will save my life, or at least plug a few empty holes.

I used to say that my life has been about the search for the perfect notebook, the perfect pen and the perfect bag. But really, life cannot be about shopping. Shopping is a part of life in a consumer culture, but I cannot let it be such a big part of life. When human beings were hunter-gatherers, hunting and gathering were what shopping is now. But even as hunter-gatherers, hunting and gathering were only to facilitate life, not be the purpose of life. Even if one were very good at it.

The point is, I've let my life turn into an endless cycle of shopping, and that's not a very good idea. So, to start with, I've brought in these pens to give away. And I'm rethinking how I plan to spend my weekends. Furthermore, I have been looking at myself more closely, to determine what neuroses I need to deal with, and how to replace them with better thoughts and actions.

What I've Learned So Far*

1. Take out the supernatural shit, and the bogus body "alchemy", and Taoism has some profound things to say about the fact that everything is in a constant state of flux. A wise person learns how best to surf that flux.

2. Take out the supernatural shit, and Buddhism has some profound things to say about the nature of reality, such as the "self" is not fixed and permanent, that suffering is due to the clash between our desires and what actually occurs, and that learning to accept what actually occurs lessens suffering.

3. The ethical branch of Stoicism has some profound things to say about learning the difference between what an individual can and cannot control in life, taking responsibility for the former and accepting the latter. In a sense, it is about dignity and integrity.

4. Without letting oneself get too bogged down in metaphysical meanderings, one can learn something from Existentialism, too. Namely, existence is inherently meaningless, and an individual is responsible for creating meaning within his life. Furthermore, happiness is a by-product of the pursuit of meaning. When one tries to pursue happiness directly, he usually fails.

5. Living in a time of unprecedented access to information, with resources on the internet, and relatively inexpensive books being published, a Postmodern approach to philosophy and ethics works best. My personal philosophy may be a pastiche of thought systems, but I've worked consciously to cull the best and shape it toward a useful approach to life.

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*These are my lessons for myself, and not intended as as lessons for anyone else.

Dry

It's been three months since I had alcohol. I was more dependent on it than I'd realized. It was an emotional dependency, rather than a physical one. Still, I leaned on it too much. A crutch.

I'm glad I don't use alcohol now. I do need to learn how to fill the time with something else. Cable tv and Tumblr can only do so much, LOL.

Survivng Just Isn't Enough

I've been having some bad days at work. Inadequate tech. Archaic practices. Arcane systems. Human neuroses. The bottom line: a lot of frustration and bass-ackwards processes.

I used to deal with such bad days by promising myself a beer after work. I'd look forward to pouring a delicious ale or stout down my gullet, or in extreme cases, a sip of bourbon. I'd melt away the lingering frustration along with the ability to feel my toes. My brain would soften, and if I weren't alone, I could bend the ear of my drinking buddy and spill out all my frustrations with work.

Of course, that also meant that there was a high risk that the Asshole would come out.

Now I don't drink, and I'm happy I don't drink. There is a difference between not allowing oneself to continue a negative behavior pattern, and pursuing a positive behavior pattern. In other words, I now realize that not drinking has left a void that needs to be filled with something else. It's not enough to not do bad things; I need to replace doing bad things with doing good things.

What can I do that I will relish doing, that I will look forward to doing at the end of my workday, a reason to put up with the bullshit, a stress reliever, a promise I make to myself to reward myself for having got through a shitty day?

A Good Little Thing

When I was in high school, my mom bought me a t-shirt that said, “I’d like to be an optimist, but I doubt it would work out.” The irony is, every bit of pessimism in my psyche came from her. She is a bitter, sarcastic woman who fights herself to gain any shred of hope, and usually loses the battle. I don’t know what happened to make my mom that way (her mom? marital disillusionment?), but I do not want to end up like her.

People change. Usually people change by drifting further in whatever direction they’ve already been heading. Some people, however, seize the rudder of change and strive to tack in a different direction.

I would not be comfortable with being an optimist, but I also do not want to be a pessimist. Frankly, both views seem unbalanced. I like balance. I like the middle path.

The other day I realized my utter insignificance, and it comforted me more than anything has in recent years. That may sound weird to some, that my insignificance was comforting. Let me explain. I realized that the universe is incredibly vast. I’m one person among 7 billion currently alive on this planet, orbiting one of billions of stars in one of billions of galaxies in the universe. My life will occupy a few paltry years in a universe already 13.75 billion years old. I’m incredibly insignificant. And that means I cannot really do any damage to the universe. I cannot fuck up so badly that the universe will register any lasting damage. I can’t wreck this planet significantly, much less any other planets, stars or galaxies.

What a fucking relief! I’d been raised by fundamentalists, for whom each action and decision was fraught with eternal, immeasurable consequences. God was breathing down my neck, and Satan whispering in my ear, and even how I ate my dinner or wiped my ass could shatter the world. When you’re raised with such dire consequences hanging over you 24/7, discovering your insignificance is a tremendous relief.

And with that easing of the burden, I can now approach life with a lighter touch, and a much more sanguine outlook. What I do doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. I don’t really matter in the scheme of things. So if I undertake changes or actions, I do so out of what I determine to be beneficial or personally significant. Being relaxed could even lead me to be a better person. Who knows?

So, reveling in my insignificance, I’m adopting a phlegmatic attitude toward life. However good or bad it gets, it is all so very, very limited in scope as not to matter a whole hell of a lot. And that, to me, is a good thing. A good little thing.

Struggle

Yesterday morning, I was pondering again Viktor Frankl's assertion that life's meaning can be found in work, love or suffering. Specifically again, work is not just career, but whatever task or creative exercise one can put his hands and/or mind to at the moment. Love is usually thought of as love for another person, but it can also mean any sort of absorptive experience. Suffering is fairly self-explanatory.

In pondering these I realized that they all three could be summed up in one word: struggle. To make an effort, to focus oneself in the experience of another person or thing, or to endure suffering means to struggle. Through struggle we find meaning.

I think most religions and philosophies worth considering give due place to struggle, but I think the Sufis express it best. They consider the highest form of struggle (jihad) to be the struggle with one's ego (jihad binnafs). That means to tame one's ego in order to move toward wiser and kinder living.

Although I'm agnostic, I do appreciate the work spiritual persons have done in the past to make themselves wiser and kinder. I think I can learn from that dedication, that struggle.

So my task, as I see it is to struggle to grow 'spiritually', adapting wisdom of the past to my agnostic present, and to become wiser and more compassionate.

Preparing to Put Myself Out There

I thought it would be helpful to outline what I’m up against when it comes to posting a profile on a dating site, and furthermore finding someone to date. More specifically, who I am as a person limits my appeal, and the appeal of others to me, and that will make it much more difficult for me to find someone. Here’s a summary:

Agnostic: I’ve tried very hard to make myself believe, but I cannot. I really, really wanted to believe because I think having a faith community makes it easier to find a life partner. Being among people of the same faith gives one a ‘family’ and a pool of persons one can draw closer to, especially if there are a number of lgbt persons in the faith community. But I cannot fake believing in God, particularly the one of the Abrahamic religions. I’ve tried. And I could get along with Buddhists if it weren’t for the fact so many white Buddhists are as bad as Evangelical Christians. Some seem to view carnivory with the same horror Evangelicals view the Folsom Street Fair. I don’t want that judgementalism in my life.

Metro-dependent: I haven’t driven in 18 years. I don’t want to drive. Therefore the exurbs (and all their denizens) are as remote to me as Richmond or Philadelphia is to someone with a car. I’d prefer not to have a long-distance relationship, and that includes the long-distance of DC’s exurbs.

Trying to lose weight: Gay men in DC mostly fall into two camps: the gymbots who’re already fit, and the rest who’ve given up, embraced obesity and even call themselves ‘bears’. I fall into neither camp. I’m trying to lose weight, which means watching what I eat, cutting down on and/or cutting out certain very common foods, and trying to get some exercise in, without turning fitness into a full-time job. It would be nice to meet someone who could support that effort.

Living with a weird cat: Manuel is special, and he doesn’t take kindly to visitors. He sheds like a beast, too, and getting all his dander off me is impossible.

Bookish, but with a certain pop culture streak: I love reading, but I also love watching Teen Wolf and listening to Pierce the Veil. I actually have a fairly low tolerance for art films, having seen more than my fair share during one particular relationship several years ago. That carries over into going to the theater, which to me is usually nothing more than an excessively expensive live-action art film. When it comes to “art”, I’ve paid my dues.

Into tattoos and piercings, and wanting more: this is definitely not mainstream in DC.

Not drinking (alcohol nor doing drugs): In DC this is even more non-mainstream than being tatted and pierced. Usually those who aren’t drinking in DC are going to meetings. I don’t go to meetings; I’ve simply decided I don’t like who I am when alcohol disinhibits me (i.e., I become even more of an asshole!). And since I want to avoid for the time being venues that remind me of drinking (and consequently tempt me to drink), there is quite a list of places I do not go to. Not only that, but I’ve just started building a list of places I can go to that I don’t associate with alcohol. It’s almost like I’m straightedge, without the bullshit obnoxious attitude.

Introverted: I like people, but dealing with people takes energy away from me. Usually at the end of a workday, I’ve a very small fund of energy to draw from.

Five Assertions

1. Music is my boyfriend.
2. My body is the house of my mind, so I keep it clean.
3. I have human freedom, and I practice human responsibility.
4. I read daily.
5. Everyone struggles with life, so I struggle to be patient with them.

New

Every morning, I wake up a new person. I have a new opportunity to do things differently. That’s the best thing about the passage of time. I don’t have to be stuck in the same mode of being if I do not want to.

I do not want to.

I won’t let myself be consumed by regret over the past, but I also do not want the past to be my template for today. I will not let only my mistakes define who I am.

I have the knowledge I need to do better. I will act on that knowledge.

It is time to be someone new.

Shift

I took a four day weekend to celebrate being on my own for five years. And while I was out and about, I noticed all the parents, kids and college students stocking up on supplies and clothes for the school year. The beginning of the school year always felt like a renewal of sorts to me (although I wouldn’t have called it such when I was a child). So I ended up using the weekend to turn a psychological corner. I’m calling it the end of summer, but I’m really looking to rein in the hedonism of the past several months.

I don’t want to go into details that are too personal for a public blog. Let me just say that in a final push to exorcise the demons of the relationship I escaped 5 years ago, I let myself be lax on curtailing my pleasures. My weight, among other things, suffered. I’m not the bloated thing I was a year ago, but I was inching back toward that thing.

I have stuff to do. I can’t let my evenings and weekends be totally wasted on shopping, television, etc. I can’t let my brain or my soul go to waste.

I need to be healthy all around.

This comes back to the meaning-making theme I’ve written about. I found out that those who said Frankl said meaning was to be found in work, love or suffering were being too reductive. What Frankl meant was that meaning could be found in creativity-activity, in experience (including but not limited to love) or in suffering (provided the suffering was involuntary and inescapable).

I like this better. I don’t have to try to make my job intrinsically meaningful (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t), nor do I have to luck out and find the right person to love. I can turn activity, creativity or experience into meaning-making happenings.

Still, in reading Frankl, I do tend to react to some of his, shall I say, less than ideal turns of phrase. When he says, for instance, that instead of focusing on what we ask from life, we should focus on what life asks from us, I want to say that life doesn’t have the right to ask that question. If I answer it, I answer it for myself.

Freaky

First I’d like to apologize to any of my readers who may have been concerned about me based on my recent blog posts. I can get very negative when I’m writing online; and blogging (as well as tweeting, etc.) tends to open up the floodgates of my psyche, similar to having a beer or two at the bar. I think it’s all part of exorcising (exercising?) my demons. And being a queer kid raised by religious fundamentalists, I can assure you they are Legion. Nevertheless, like the Tao, my personality has ebbs and flows, and I never stay in bout of downer-ness for very long.

Thankfully, I’m able to get the appropriate kicks in the ass from various sources. Last night, it was watching the movie Chronicle (finally) and an episode of CSI called “Freaks and Geeks” that slapped some sense into me.

I’d forgotten my core values, especially valuing my own inherent weirdness. I’d taken getting older as a command to settle down and embrace blandness. I’d let being irritated by a few freaks over the years convince me I was inherently bourgeois, when the truth is that not only do a few freaks irritate me now and again: everybody irritates me sooner or later, so there’s no call for me to dismiss any set of people categorically, nor force myself to conform to one set based on the dismissal of another. Along the way I lost the sense of my own beautiful weirdness, my own call to be different, unique.

My calling is to solidify, then transcend my Self. My calling is to finally learn the compassion for others I did not learn as a child.

The Best of 2011

I think positive thinking, so long as it is realistic, is a better way. So I want to list the positives of 2011, before I start laying out my plans/dreams for 2012.

• My reading this year was excellent. Not only did I get a lot of good books read in several of my particular interest areas (e.g., indigenous studies, philosophy, history, etc.), but I also finished four books I'd been putting off for years, in some cases more than a decade.
• I asked for, and got a promotion and a raise. This is significant not only for my comfort level as a human being, but in that this was the first time I'd ever asked for a raise.
• I got my lobe holes stretched to 0 gauge. New body modifications are planned.
• I began a workable, effective diet and weight loss program, and lost 18 pounds. I have 30 pounds to go, but I believe I can make it.
• Most important—in my humble opinion—I started dating again. After living reclusively since the destruction of my last relationship, going on some dates with a good person really boosted my confidence; while the dating relationship didn't last to the end of the year, my confidence did.

What I'd Like to Inform You of for Now

I am a mutt. I am cosmopolitan in my outlook. I identify as panerotic/pansexual. I love books, ideas, movies, television, cats, coffee, and long walks.