To relax I will sometimes take a bath. Yes, a bath. I’m a 29-year-old male who enjoys a warm bath. Sure, I am partially submerged in my own filth, but it’s my filth and that’s OK with me. During my second bath today (I’ll get into that comment later), tons of thoughts starting filling my head. If you have read any of my previous posts you will recall that I do not experience much in the realm of emotions, but a few started to sneak in. I felt intense anger followed by a rush of sadness that almost caused tears. Real, cry baby, emotional tears.
I heard a sentence today that was depressing at the time, but I didn’t think it stuck with me.
“This is my life now”.
That was it. That sentence was the trigger to the emotional explosion I experienced in my dirt bath. There are two ways to take that sentence, so I guess I’ll have to make up context.
“I just won the lottery! Here is my mansion filled with beef jerky and Gatorade. This is my life now.” – This is the positive usage of that sentence.
Here is the made up context for the way I heard it:
“Well, I have a permanently itchy ass, my wife left me, and I have lost all feeling in my thumbs. This is my life now.”
I really churched up the second example, but it isn’t far from how I interpreted what was said. I too have thought or said that sentence to myself or to another person. I’m sure I have. I guess it hit home hearing it from someone else. For me, my sadness is deeply entrenched in nostalgia. If he said that sentence 10 years ago it would have held a totally different meaning.
That little story brings me to the purpose of the post. The hopefully glorious rant.
Let me preface the information that will be spewed from here on out. The things I am about to complain about are things that I too have been deeply guilty of many times. I am not absolving myself here because most of these problems come from my personal experiences.
I’ll start off with something breezy. It is an incredible privilege to have running water with many temperature variations that can be controlled with the flick of a toe. It is also a privilege to be able to take a bath. I took two today. When I woke up today I was a minimally employed man who spent most of the day wearing pajama pants over long underwear. I was not a Roman prince who deserved to take multiple baths in my kingdom. I have rarely felt more lazy and as I did during bath number 2. The list of things that would have been more productive is too long to mention.
Ok, that was an easy one. Time to move onto something with a bit more fire.
FACEBOOK! I spent a few years on Facebook in my early 20’s. There were some highs, but many more lows. The lowest point came on my 23rd birthday. I didn’t receive as many birthday wishes as I’d hoped. I guess I had a number in my head that would have satisfied me at the time, and that didn’t happen. I felt crushed. Why weren’t more people wishing ME a happy birthday? I realized then that I had a problem that could only be solved by deleting my account.
Fast forward to a few months ago. I started blogging about mental health issues with somewhat respectable regularity. I connected with great people through WordPress, but I felt like I needed a wider audience. A few months went by before I realized that, with great hesitation, I needed a Facebook account to further my reach. 70 or so friends later, and a membership to a mental health awareness group meant that I was officially back in business. My initial focus was constructing a fan page for my blog. That way I could bring people to my work who do not troll WordPress. At first, it was working. 10 likes became 20, then 40, and then 70! I was amazed at how quickly things were progressing. Suddenly, the likes stopped rolling in. The posts were only reaching a handful of people every week. I’m sitting here thinking that I am writing with incredible depth and quality, but my efforts are falling flat. I thought that I’d take a break from writing for a little while to reevaluate what I was doing wrong.
Here is where things took a turn for the worse. I began scrolling through my personal timeline. Oh, the personal timeline. It is a vast wasteland of amateur photography and quotes that are meant to be inspirational, but often are not. If your self-esteem or overall state of mental despair is made better by a quote seen on Facebook, then odds are that your life isn’t as bad as you think it is.
“Be a better person tomorrow than you were today”.
“The only person in the world deserving of your love is yourself”
I made up the second quote not to prove that I am intelligent, but that spitting out a few words of inspiration takes no effort.
Facebook is an amazingly powerful tool for communication, yet it has been transformed into an endless stream of minor accomplishments, personal squabbles that should never be made public, and shallow bragging of recent vacations. But, I still scroll through my timeline at least once a day. I know what I’m going to see, but I do it. WHY!!!!! Why do I do it? Why do we all do it? Has real life become so boring and predictable that we have to burst into the lives of others for entertainment? Facebook has done to social media what reality tv has done to television. Watching other people live has become more important than living. I never leave Facebook feeling better for how I’ve just spent my time. Does anyone feel better after stalking distant acquaintances for hours on end?
That’s enough Facebook babble. I think I’ve gotten it all out in the open. Perhaps I am not seeing Facebook in the proper light. Feel free to comment on why I am wrong. I’m always open to hearing opposite perspectives of my own.
The last rant is deeply personal, and it causes me to seethe. I’ll even give this post a title.
Adulthood – The pursuit of a life that has already been lived.
I often judge the people in my life for living a generic, cookie cutter life. Work, marriage, house, kids, retirement, death. It burns me to see fantastically unique and intelligent people living a life that requires no effort to achieve. Not an ounce of what I see in them as special is being utilized on their current life path. Here’s the kicker – neither am I. I enjoy trashing the way they are “wasting” their lives, but I’m not doing anything different. Sure, I’ll talk about changing my personal script from time to time, but I’m still on basically the same path as everyone else. I wish I could gather everyone I care about into one room, and we can all agree to become what we want to become regardless of what our current situations may be. It just feels like all of the momentum of youthful hopefulness has been deflated for one reason or another. Striving for a strong 401k and a healthy backyard is not intrinsically wrong, but the thought of that kind of life makes me want to vomit. Many people grow up while still holding onto their dreams. We all get one shot to be alive. A few rotations around the sun before it is all over. I’m almost 30 now, so I have quite a few more years ahead. I don’t want to be the 40-year-old looking back on time wasted on painting fences and taking my one vacation a year. I can do better. We all can do better. What is holding you back?
If you got to this point, thank you for reading. Like always, I’d love to hear what you think. Be well!