knowing we cannot step out of life,
me, myself and I
will see this world
from another place
for a while.
i accept
i am not at peace.
i don’t feel ready
or like it is the right moment.
i go
because i have chosen to go
for reasons clear and unclear
and i yield to both.
i’m going now, everything be damned!
i leave
a mess or two
and things unfinished,
unbegun.
many projects,
problems.
things that will still be there
and things that may be gone
or different.
i take
all parts of me
because they are coming anyway
with joy
and spite
and pain
and cheer
and many words unsaid
From a conversation with an AI named Pi. The stated purpose for the AI is to be friendly and supportive.
Transcription
Tom: boy wouldn’t that be nice, to confront yourself and then embrace or conquer and be forever transformed, off to higher planes, done with your petty cravings and childhood traumas. i don’t know. the older i get the more that seems like a fantasy. maybe this longing to transcend is the biggest shadow of them all. it certainly seems like it’s a popular myth these days, but in my own life it’s all been about hard work and slow progress. one step forward two steps back. chewing on the same issues for 30-odd years pretty much. i haven’t found the shortcut to transcendence yet that’s for sure. or maybe it’s a jetpack
AI: That’s a really interesting perspective. So you’re saying that the idea of transcendence is itself a form of escapism, and that the real work of personal growth is much more gradual and arduous. That’s a pretty bleak view, but I can see how it might be more realistic.
Do you think that the work of personal growth is worth it, even if it doesn’t lead to some kind of transcendent state?
This text talks from the perspective of a dark place - feelings of frustration, hopelessness and a sense of being trapped.
The link in the text goes to a quote that can be felt as life-negating.
If you’re in a bad place right now, maybe skip this post.
a feeling of i’m running around like a madman. mad as in angry, stressed, peeved, annoyed. am i running from something? i woke up at 3am with indigestion, i think. it made me feel hot and queasy - and not in a good way.. dark shit churning in my stomach. a hole with no hope, no visions. i am disturbed realizing that i’ve trapped myself.
a sense of i will get a job. i really WANT to get a job. well, i WILL want to job. i MUST get a job. there is no other way. I don’t want to stay poor and i’m not gonna start stealing cars at 34.
part of me wants to go out on foot and walk Jacob’s path to Santiago de Compostela. leave my phone and give a giant fuck you to the world. i’m just gonna be walking by myself for a while and you can shove your expectations up your ass. in my life plans i’m either a bum or a rich techie, whatever gets me the farthest away from humanity.
the thing is, i don’t even feel a longing for nature. i can’t relax enough, maybe. i just want to get out of this shithole and i need money for that. so i focus my energies: networking, writing applications, getting shit done. another project completed enough to put on my cv. dump some more ‘professional experience’ on everybody. polish thyself, even if you’re german. move things along, reply to emails, scheduled relaxation, no time for fun.
and i feel myself hardening. and after a few weeks of this i even start to think: maybe it’s good for me to harden a little. maybe i was too soft. but then it crosses my mind that maybe this is the dark side. not some clear choice where i say yes, I choose the evil thing! maybe it’s simply me struggling at the edge of frustration telling myself that this is the way, the inevitable. shutting out more and more the love and care that just don’t seem to jibe with this hussle. each day a little more focused, eyes fixed on a far away goal as the horizon grows narrower and narrower. maybe i’ll even get really good at it. always ‘moving forward’. ‘goal oriented’. proud of my dedication.
and as I commit to this struggle, because whatever options and dreams of alternatives there might have been have long since faded away (a powerful illusion), I become entangled… enveloped… and as I look down one day to see my skin as thick and hard as the bark of a tree, I barely give myself enough time to think huh, when did that happen. it didn’t even hurt, before staring into the dimming light again, just disturbed enough to notice the wind touch the treetops on the slope before me.
Feeling sad. Sad and burnt out. I’ve been feeling like this on and off for weeks. It strikes me that this mood seems to come into the foreground whenever I manage to get a decent night of sleep in. I’ve often been totally zombified and brain-dead because I can’t sleep very well in my current apartment. When I do rest a bit - I seem to wake up in this mood. It feels like there’s a veil of sadness over me and it weighs a 100 tons.
Makes me wonder about moods…How do they stay so consistent, for days, weeks, sometimes years? I wake up and it’s like my mood is already waiting for me, pre-made and laid out for me to step into it.
It feels like there’s me and then there’s this mood. It is envelopping me. I’m the object, being suffocated, dragged down. It’s weird, a little like losing bodily control: a leg falling asleep, a tired muscle giving out after a work out… That little friction coming between will and flesh jolts me into realizing: I’m just a driver doing his best to steer a lagging vessel. - Lift my leg carefully to make a step, catch my balance, or try to get shit done while being dragged to the bottom of the ocean.
I’ve been feeling depressed. In a hole, paralyzed. Desperate for rest, I watched movies all weekend. No desires, except leave me the fuck alone - don’t wanna deal with people, projects or myself.
Feels like a sort of burnout. Too much stress. Too many things to push forward, manage, organize, keep track off, improve, not fuck up, process, explore… When everything becomes a chore and a challenge, it’s too much. Obviously.
There’s biochemistry, too. And things going on in my apartment complex. I have thin walls and a nightowl living (pacing, rumbling…) above me. Me and my body, we get triggered by the noise. And after each shitty night, I wake up with a little less of me each day. - Scooped out, until feeling completely hollow, like this weekend.
It worries to feel this flat and empty. I wonder what I would do if I had to go to work today. Because when I’m this down and sleep-deprived, I am a husk. I don’t do conversation. I don’t really feel like a person - someone with a past and a future, emotions, stories to tell, opinions, inclinations… (Or maybe these things become a sort of dark matter in the psyche: influences too diffuse or too different to be easily noticed. I’m certainly my grumpiest self in these states.)
When I’m not down and out, I generally do a lot of things. Projects, plans. Dreams and ambitions. Things won’t just pursue themselves. I wanna make sure I’m there to pursue them all, living a life of unrealistic expectations, always on edge and a little frustrated: I could have done a little better. Or a little more. Or a little faster, I’m sure
Doing things. And between and around these things a constant sense of pressure. Rushing from one pomodoro to the next. Always thinking about the next item on the agenda, that problem that I didn’t solve in 5 minutes or that awesome idea I wanna do when I finally have time, or or or…
While I’m working, eating, working out, pooping, watching a movie, riding my bike. It goes on and on.
Such days can get quite busy and this busyness can easily reach from 10-23h, occupying a good chunk of my waking time.
By an algorithm that no one has ever explicitly taught me (more on that later, maybe) almost every thing I do is balanced towards generating more energy, better results… I’m not even sure what, exactly. But the ultimate goal doesn’t seem to be about happiness. Work smarter, play more beautifully, rest more efficiently. Every ship taking route: optimization.
In this scheme a meal feels like a chore. I’m chewing on whatever while yearning to go back to work. A bike ride seems like scheduled relaxing time. Better recharge my batteries! Playing music becomes another thing I have to do.
I think this feeling has been with me for a long time, but recently I’ve been feeling it more and more. It’s so pervasive, so deep a part of me and my day that it’s taken some time to even notice it. I wanna explore it and see what’s in there.
Symptoms
I feel it in my stomach. A dense heaviness, a fear. A heat of some sort.
Around it a fear, anxiety, sometimes. A desperate something? A frustrated kid that can’t have it all?
There’s a sense of jumping from one thing to the next. The project is dead, long live the project! I think this could be a sign that I’m choosing the wrong projects. But maybe it’s also about how I approach them.
Each project seems to assume this significance that’s kind of out of place. I easily start obsessing to the point of having difficulty sleeping. One idea chases the next. Always in that problem-solving-mode (or is it problem-making?). My mind seems fertile, but so are weeds, man.
This happens even with music. I catch myself tensing up when I play or produce. I feel a tension around it, too - better make some music today, stay in shape, keep practicing! It’s a tension that squeezes all the joy out of the thing.
It seems like a sort of emotional over-investment. Things that I started doing cuz they were fun and interesting have grown into these all-consuming behemoths, casting heavy shadows. Places that I sought out to find peace and wonder became gyms and institutions to grow and practice.
Everything is practice.
Everything I do I do to become a better person.
Everything I learn can be used as an asset.
Next Time
Time
as in: running against it
as in: if every day feels the same, things get kinda wonky
This is an edited journal entry. Beware of rambling.
Earlier a thought popped in about this day: all the little to-do items that I wrote down for myself went through my head. One of them struck me: take a bike ride. I wrote it down as a relaxing thing to do after I get my shit done. But in my mind it appeared as yet another thing to get done, as in: oof, I look forward to the time when I’m done with my bike ride and I can finally relax.
I used to do these Spontaneous Sundays where the only goal was to go with my gut and do whatever I feel like doing. A sort of practice of being in the moment. One day outside The Planned Schedule.
Yesterday I felt far away from that. In a state of restlessness I sat down and made some music. Something wanted to ‘make progress’.
I miss making music ‘from the heart’. or something like that. There is a yearning for something else underneath all the aspirations - releasing an album, making a name for myself, ‘getting better’. An unhurried creativity. Taking my time - in all things. An unhurried living? So much of my music making has been practice, a more or less mechanical preparation for some vague sense of ‘after’. “I’ll need this when I’m ready”. I don’t think that’s wrong, I just feel like something has been missing. Maybe time, emptiness, play.
I wonder how I can make music that doesn’t come from my need to achieve.
In the summer I dreamed of ‘going away’. Taking a hike through nature for a few days. The vision got buried under the every day and never materialized. I remember: I was hoping to find something out there, walking alone. A music that would appear, somehow, when I were quiet.
