I keep my phone on silent because I hate being disturbed. I don’t like being taken out of a moment, and the second I hear a notification I will have to check my phone. Years ago I just decided to silence it. I can see notifications on the screen so if my phone is next to me I won’t miss something, but if my phone is away then I will of course miss it which is the point – if my phone is away it’s because I don’t want to look. Sometimes I write with my phone here on the desk, and every few sentences I look down to my left to see if there’s a little WhatsApp logo or Instagram logo. Another notification that bothers me is the email icon. I love and hate receiving emails, and it has created a pattern of behaviour that annoys me. The thrill of not knowing whether the email is good (a new project) or bad (a rejection from a client) seems to entertain me in an unhealthy way. I wish I could just not be bothered either way, take the good as a nice moment and the bad as just not as nice a moment.
I think this is a problem we all face in one way or another. There are people I can talk to but very few I can really talk to. Ultimately though, what I seem to crave is attention. Why I want it I don’t know, it’s easy enough to blame advertising and social media. I feel like I can’t talk about my feelings or at least I shouldn’t. That’s what most of my introspection has been about in recent months, it’s been building up to this moment where I am finally able to delve into myself to begin the process of understanding my feelings, recognising them, and learning to deal with them and their consequences. The challenges of being with someone you really like, the struggles of growing your business. These are all things I am facing upfront for the first time in my life and it’s really fucking difficult. There’s no guidebook to help, and unlike most things in my life it can’t be cheated. There’s no shortcut and the work is very hard.
I know that at the end of it all I will be a better more complete person. These times are going to forge me, as all the times have in my life so far. Every problem in my life that I thought was life ending turned out to, well, not be. Each one was ‘the worst’ and I never knew how I was going to make it but each time I hit ‘the worst’ I just kept going and it got better over time. Maybe I can rewire my brain to believe that it will keep being this way, keep getting better, and hopefully I can see ‘the worst’ is actually not so bad. Obviously, I need to do this without invalidating my feelings completely but the point remains valid. If you have an honest discussion with someone and they aren’t with you 100% then you get the choice to accept the percentage they’re at or move on. In the past I would have avoided the honest discussion in the first place but as we know that isn’t a great idea. So now I am honest, and I have to learn the next step of accepting the response I am given and making a decision based on it. If I’m true to myself then I need not have regrets, and then I can assess the situation and consider my position. Sure it’s not ideal, we want people to be with us wholly, but life is not black and white, nor is it grey, it’s a giant fucked up rainbow.
Moreso than see the rainbow, I want to accept the rainbow. I want to understand the complexities of it all and navigate them. I think we get one shot at life and it’s a very quick one too. There really isn’t time to waste it on all the usual things people waste their lives on. I’ve devoted mine to finding some sort of peace within myself, not like a monk or anything messianic, just literally finding a way to be calm in the face of all that life throws my way. When someone genuinely wants to know my aim in life it isn’t riches or fame, it’s finding peace.
Life is really tough sometimes. I have found myself wishing for a black hole to just take me away. In the concept of nothingness, I find solace. Maybe that’s why it appears in most of my writings in one way or another (certainly my fiction/short stories). I am drawn to the idea of emptiness because my mind sees it as the ultimate form of peace and peace is what I crave. I hate neverendingly busy people. I always feel a sense of uncertainty in people who are busy, almost as if they need to fill their time to the max just in case they accidentally get a second to think about themselves and their lives. If people paused and looked at their lives, they might end up revolting against the system they live under when they realise how unfair it all is. It comes off preachy and self-righteous but it’s true. I’ve met enough people to know how few of them actually think beyond what’s right in front of them.
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Also I’m now at around 10,000 words in the story I’m writing. It’s a really captivating tale and I’m proud of it. I like having a long term project to work on, and I like that it doesn’t have a reason other than because I want to write it. Sure when it’s done I might want to pursue it but for now I’m enjoying building a world. Sometimes I write it and think, what’s the point? If it won’t get me money or some sort of reward the what’s the reason? I want the reason to be because I want to write it, I have to remain true to that. I want to live my entire life that way.