stagnant
losing my way
It's late right now. Far too late at night to be composing a coherent blog post, which I have now missed my self-proclaimed deadline for. Two — no, wait — three, days belated. Forgive the intermission.
I've been thinking a lot about stagnation. I’m currently in-between jobs. It’s been enough months in this state that I question whether or not my hopes have been misplaced. Enough months that I have to pencil in a blurry schedule and find little jaunts here and there to occupy my time spent in a strange purgatory where I reconsider all the choices I've made to get inside this limbo. Too much time on my hands to allocate towards clicking more Apply buttons, cold emailing, DM'ing, blah blah you get the point I'm still looking.
Anyways.
It's amusing to me how when you are bogged down in the murk and mire of routine, when stress confounds your everyday into a dizzying whirlpool of tasks to be checked off, the first thing you desire is sweet, sweet release from it all. You crave the empty inbox, the open calendar. A tabula rasa of a to-do list.
Then miraculously, some (un)fortunate stream of events dominoes into the evaporation of every substantial commitment you've had. Ever. And you're free. Free to do whatever you would like. Your immediate world begins to shine with a fresh, radiant glow. Maybe now you can start that little zine project you've been aiming to finish up in InDesign. The dust-coated guitar in the corner of your room starts to look incredibly enticing. In fact, while you're at it, why don't you get into hobbyist keyboards? Or cut-and-sew clothing? Subpar house music in Logic? But these daily preoccupations only keep you sustained for so long.
I read about a location in the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, which is the furthest spot from any humans on the planet. You are closer to astronauts on the International Space Station than any person on this glorious blue marble. Incredible, nearly horrifying, isolation. Which is kind of how this feels right now. Lots of shooting off words and buttering up webpages nice and sweet and investing egregious levels of thought into people to whom you are merely a short line in an inbox, a disheartening level of human contact. Not as terror-inducing as being 3,000 kilometers in surges and swells from the next oval resembling a face, but you get the idea.
At the very least, I have freedom. Total control over my day. I can go to the gym at a nice hour. When I run errands the streets are less busy since everyone's at work. Sunrise functions as a more pleasant, surrogate alarm. I have more attention span for small moments. But, too much freedom can be paralyzing. When so many things pull upon you, there are a surprising number of instances where you end up stuck doggy-paddling in thick oil, unable to experience a sensation of progression with no more distinct checkpoints to guide your journey. No one guiding you by hand to the next task: we're doing this now! :^)
I've always been the kind of pointlessly-covetous person to benchmark my life against other people my age (a self-immolating habit). With a dangerous lack of shame I keep tabs on what kinds of lives my friends are living, who just got a YC interview, who left the country for grad school, that kind of thing. Then I compare my life against theirs to see if I’m moving at an acceptable pace. I confess, most days I feel okay about what I'm up to in relation to everyone else. For the majority of my life I seemed to be chugging along at a solid rate according to my arbitrary, ill-defined guidelines.
But for once, I feel behind. No longer moving lockstep with the crowd. Not a doom-laden feeling in and of itself, yet for a straight-edge uber-tryhard who has overspent every inch of their being burning out to get ahead at each opportunity that comes their way and is now forced to slow down, it's a strange awareness to come to terms with. That’s the brutal truth, right? You can make every optimal decision to the best of your intuition and still end up somewhere unsatisfying.
It's as if I am lost in a thick of trees unable to find a clearing, a sanctuary of respite in the sprawling wilderness. Everyone, you all, my friends, scatter off like ants, dotted waves dissipating into cracks of new dawns. There I am: in the midst of the wood, baptized under the cold shade cast by enormous leaves, the space that once contained the presence of many, now is occupied by a lone castaway.
Sometimes the map you drew up into your hands melts through your fingers like water. And it's a painstaking — but vital — task to recover your path, like repairing torn spiders' webs with your fingers. Slowly, with time.