Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

I need to get myself a cook, both metaphorically and in reality.

[LastThursday]

Lately I've been doing a lot of retrospection. It seems to just bubble up at times. The sensation is somewhat like looking through binoculars. What I see seems so close and very familiar, but the view is constricted to a small circle of light. I remember and re-feel stuff clearly, but I can't fully re-enter that old reality again, so much is lost. And, when I stop looking through the binoculars I'm suddenly sucked back to where I am, and I realise how far away things were and how irrelevant all that stuff is to me now - and yet all that stuff is just there should I wish to look again.

What I feel is that a lot of what makes "me" originated back then and also got left behind then. I got to re-invent myself along the way both consciously and unconsciously; there's a lot to like about my new self and my new circumstances. But I'm feeling untethered. Back then I was tethered to my family and my surroundings in a deep way and I didn't question it: I felt I was part of the fabric of my lived-in experience. Along the way that sense of being integrated got exploded, mostly because the family I belonged to was dysfunctional and eventually crumbled. It was a painful awakening for me, I felt lonely, more and more disconnected and betrayed by the people who were supposed to love me. I was cast out at sea with no life support. And nobody came to help. The 80's wasn't a soft time, not a time of support groups and mental health help and space for neurodiversity: you dealt with the roughness alone. It's made me hard and defensive at times, I know how to survive. But my nature should be/is a soft loving joyful optimistic person.

I haven't been the same since. Repeatedly, I feel like I lost a big part of myself back then. I'm mostly just winging life like a kite being buffeted by the wind of circumstance, I'm not in control of it. I'm living my life in reverse, I had to become an adult early and take on responsibilities I didn't ask for. Now I don't wish to take on any more responsibilities, I want to take back that lost time and be the teenager I should have been. Unfortunately and ridiculously, I'm 51 in a couple of days, and I can't live a topsy-turvy existence; I can't both be a responsible adult and unresponsible child. But my aversion to taking control and the pain that goes along with it is strong. I'm just doing the bare minimum required to keep on flying. 

I want to resolve the conflict and the melancholy and resentment. I want to flourish and stop floundering. I want to re-connect to the fabric of my existence. But all that old connection is gone forever and I can't re-connect to it again, I have to try a different way and as a different person. I have to re-learn to be an adult, but the right way this time.

Winter blues? Drama? Possibly. 

[LastThursday]

For the first time in many months I started playing piano (electric) again. I've been wanting to learn how to play a version of Autumn in New York, basically this one:

Thing is there is no sheet music for it. I've tried to work things out by ear, but the bass notes elude me. But yesterday I found a way to turn the music directly into Midi format:

https://piano-scribe.glitch.me/

And amazingly it was actually ok. Not a fast service by any means, but it works. There's a couple of missing or too many notes (I think), but it's good enough for me.

The next thing is, do I actually have the skill to play it? Just about, with lots of practice, the end of the piece sounds tricky though. I also think my hands are not big enough to do some of the chords spanning over an octave, so I'll have to make do. The hardest bits will be the accentuation, smooth playing and getting the general "jaunty" feel of the rhythm.

I always think it would be so cool just to casually sit at a piano somewhere and knock out a few jazz numbers and impress my audience. I've done this before, but I only really know classical pieces which is not to everyone's taste. Although I do know a few of the more popular ragtime pieces.

 

[LastThursday]

Before I even knew this forum existed, I used to religiously watch Leo's videos. At some point I just stopped, mainly because the topics didn't seem relevant to me or it didn't feel like anything new was being said. But I decided to watch Leo's latest video for the first time:

Some of the things Leo covered in this video touched a nerve and I have to admit to myself that I am immature is a number of ways. Without going into it too much, a lot of the malaise and lack of purchase on my life I feel is due to aspects of my immaturity. So I'm immature? What to do about it? It's all a bit chicken and egg. I need to do in order to mature, but I need maturity in order to do. This seems to be a general rule in life and probably why people can be immature, they simply never learn to mature because... they're not mature. Personally it hurts, because I've always striven to be as mature and as "good" a person I can be. But at least I have an inkling of what needs to happen.

Aside from that, I'd like to make a case for the general genius in Leo's videos. What eventually switched me off from Leo's videos is in fact what makes them good. Just simply having a talking head with no other distractions such music and a whirlwind of graphics and cut scenes, makes you pay attention. Leo's also very good at just enumerating all the different facets of a particular topic: his videos really are just primers on each of the subjects he covers. But a primer is very useful just like a reference book is useful, it's the bare facts without the fluff. But also, that makes his content direct and often there's no hiding from some of the repercussions of what he's saying for your own view of yourself, and some of it sticks and irritates enough that you take action to "fix" the problem. His videos raise your level of awareness and that can only be a good thing. He is also comprehensive and has covered a huge range of topics, there is bound to be one that resonates and affects you personally.

More than anything else Leo's done, I'd say that his videos are what most people would identify as his brand. It's understandable that he has a life and wants to try other things out and life changes. But if I were to give him advice (from my super mature self) then it would be that he should maintain his brand even if it's at a subsistence level. Obviously this is good from a business point of view, but it's also good from an altruistic point of view and simply just spreading his god given genius for this sort of thing. I might even watch a new video if it were to come out....

[LastThursday]

When is enough, enough? 

I read an article in New Scientist recently about a phenomenon called languishing. The top result on Google says:

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/languishing#what-are-the-signs

This fits me to a T. In retrospect the rot set in around 2009 or so although at the time I didn't realise what was happening. I'd come out of a relationship of three years, which I was definitely sad about at the time, but it wasn't overwhelming and I moved on. But even at that point I began to realise something major had or was about to change. 

In those intervening three years, I felt like the bonds and social capital that I had with my close network of friends had evaporated. One of those friends had been an ex who I had been with for 11 years. There was (and still remains) an awkwardness between us that we never really worked through. She married and had a kid - I feel genuinely happy for her, there's no resentment or envy on my side. The result of all this was that I began to feel unanchored and I didn't really to know how to resolve those feelings. During that time I had met up again with some old school friends through Facebook and interacting with them regularly kept me sane. I fell in love with one of them. 

I desperately needed (at the time) to feel anchored in something again and over time my feelings intensified and I thought naively that the person I had fallen in love with was the answer. We had a very on-off relationship, and in the end it just wasn't going to work. I felt frustrated I couldn't get what I wanted, lonely and increasingly frustrated with myself for not being able to resolve my situation. This resulted in a kind of prolonged mid-life crisis (which I've written about extensively here) and I went to some dark places.

I decided to move away from where I had lived and the network of friends I'd had, it just wasn't working for me any more. Originally, I wanted to move closer to the person I'd fallen in love with - before it fell apart - and I'm still here all these years later. But more than anything I just wanted to escape myself and my mid-life crisis. Very slowly over time I came out of all that funk. But fundamentally I never regained what I'd had before, that dark place I'd been in for years had turned into the grey place I'm in now, languishing.

What to do? Instead of looking back for an explanation in the hope that somehow that's where the answer lies, I need to look forwards. Somehow I need to wrangle the unwieldy beast of my psyche so that I move towards a happier place. I would say at the moment I could continue with the set up of my life indefinitely, I'm neither sad nor particularly happy, I have enough money to live on and do what I want, I have a handful of friends that I see semi-regularly and family that I interact with semi-regularly. 

I think someone looking into my situation might say things like "what do you want?" and "you need to take action" and maybe "get therapy". In terms of taking action, the very obvious things that come to mind are; change jobs, change house, find a girlfriend. But I'm old enough to realise that doing more of the same is not going to resolve my situation, i.e. I've already done those things and it didn't help - I've done a lot of things in my life so far. What I'm after is an emotion or sensation, literally to wake up every day and to feel excited about it instead of dread. I'm also after that warm fuzzy feeling of being connected to people and working together for a common purpose.

And therein lies my problem. What I want are emotions, but I have no sense of how to get there, no concrete physical plan of action. I'm motivated by the things that excite me (emotion) not by the things I think about (reason). Any physical action I take towards the emotions I want to feel, will involve me having to move away from the homeostasis I find myself in, i.e. it will involve emotional and physical labour to move my setpoint and there's no joy in this process. I may even be less happy in the interim whilst I reconfigure my life and all the while I get ever older.

But, enough is enough.