Nihilism: The Teenager's Escape from Reality

3.27.18  - 5004 Cody Street ~ 9:10 AM MT

            I’m starting to write at 9 today, which is a step in the right direction.  Once I spend a few minutes or hours sucking at the teat of mindless information it’s difficult for my mind to focus and get back on track.  When I first wake up my mind may be groggy but it’s the most clear that it will be all day. 

            Yesterday I helped a friend, let’s call him Mark, paint a room and we talked about everything from nostalgic video games (Link’s Awakening for Gameboy) to what animal we’d want to be reincarnated as (some type of bird).  He talked about that he doesn’t have much time to do anything and the time that he does have he enjoys being by himself and gaming, proclaiming that he has “no responsibilities to anyone but himself.”  At the time it seemed very appealing, carrying an air of total freedom, but I can’t help but think that it’s ironically one of the reasons he’s depressed.  He often uses it as a rationalization for sleeping in until noon and he never applies himself.

            I remember when I used to sleep in that late and I’d feel crummy.  It was tough to feel good about myself when I wasn’t leaving the stamp of my uniqueness on anything on any given day.  Floating through life is fine and all, but at some point I thought, “this is how you wake up middle aged never really doing anything.”  Pleasure and leisure can only get you so far but fulfillment lies in a putting in a concerted effort at something that you don’t mind doing over and over again, improving upon it every time.  When you sleep through the morning and coast through the afternoon, the only thing you get in exchange is whatever you’re dreaming about. 

            Heather helps me by pulling my productivity towards her end of the spectrum because that’s her default.  It’s also why we’re good together: because we bring each other towards a happy equilibrium.  Too much of anything is detrimental, just take either Mark or Heather by themselves—unhappy and caught in a cyclical pattern of what they know and what they feel comfortable doing.  I could definitely use some work getting pulled to the side of productivity but I tend to think I hover more around the center than either of them. 

            Mark also lets his cynicism paralyze his action in the form of anti-capitalistic nihilism.  He’s not wrong—it’s just too much for a human mind to carry with it, especially if you’re going to exist within the capitalistic structure and enjoy some of the luxuries it provides.  Perhaps I’m too cut and dry or I’ve bought into the system as well, but when you hold beliefs as strong as him I think that you have to either separate entirely, removing yourself from participation in the system as much as possible; or you come to grips with the futility of overthrowing it, accept the benefits it awards you, and you try to combat it in the most productive way that you can as an unique individual.  I don’t think he believes in some widespread Marxist revolution to overthrow the owners of the means of production (I used to) but I don’t see any value in nihilism.  It’s like a teenagers way out of the existential crisis of capitalism.

            My argument against nihilism is also the same one why I don’t harbor negative feelings towards people most of the time—because they don’t provide anything useful to me.  When you do things in life that have no positive purpose you are essentially keeping your needle close to neutral, perhaps even tilting towards the negative side of things, and I believe life is more than that.  You don’t have to achieve greatness, you don’t have to get a PHD or discover something new; all you have to do is try to leave the unique imprint of yourself somewhere everyday (with exception to intentionally hurting others), and try to err on the side of positivity. 

The Existential Tug-of-War

3.21.18 - Various Locations ~ 1:41 PM -9:10 PM MT

            I just got out of TIPS training and despite the fact that the trainer was nice, I still think that the whole thing is a racket.  That being said, it was nice to clarify the accepted Colorado truths of hospitality: that you CAN serve someone without an ID and that the police CAN lie to you to entrap you.  The process was pretty painless on the whole.

            I followed it up with fries and a beer at Fate Brewing (highly recommend!) and proceeded to run five miles and climb for an hour at Earth Treks—my stomach felt somewhere between a washing machine and a college party—nonetheless, I powered through and managed to enjoy my calorie-burning.    

            I came home to eat the leftover Blue Pan Detroit-style-pizza (I say goddamn!) and watched a leaked video of Buffalo Bills wide receiver Zay Jones who was naked, trying to jump out of a 30th floor window.  

            Here comes the cliché, “athletes and celebrities are people too” that everyone says in unison when things like his happen. It’s sad that things have to come to this for us to remember the humanity of eachother.  I think the core takeaway of what happened with Zay is that mental health is not to be taken lightly, and that we have to be careful choosing the lens in which we see the world.  Who knows the way Zay has been looking through the glass but it’s clear that he’s hit a critical breaking point.  This is just a reminder that our mental health should always come first because the human mind is too powerful to be taken lightly.

            We don’t even know the extent of the capability of our brains yet we press forward with technology as if we can handle the perilous unknown that we are creating.  There will always be nostalgia for a simpler time but the time we find ourselves in is scarily precarious.  Our psyches are bombarded with information, temptation, and subversion almost every second of every day and we’re supposed to stay sane, confident, and working towards a worthy goal in life.  Not to mention that the information we’re being fed is intelligently crafted to manipulate or affect our very sensitive psyches.  Thus, it’s not a mystery when public figures meltdowns like this—the pressure for the average 21st century individual is enough—without the eyes of the world judging you 24/7.

            For most of us in the western world we lead relatively simple lives even though we long for more. Part of it is our culture of rampant consumerism and entertainment, but the other is that the human mind seems to long for acceptance, notoriety, and accolade.  We go to school, we find a job, and we hopefully find a partner and start a family and in between all of it time passes us by.  We wind up climbing into our death beds wondering where the time went watching the reel of our regrets on repeat.  I think that the human mind is confused, caught somewhere between the comfort of the simple and the ambition for innovation, getting yanked back and forth day-in-and-day-out in some sort of existential tug-of-war. 

                                              At least that’s how I feel sometimes.

            That’s why I focus on happiness in the now, assuring that Heather and I hash out our inner workings to the best of our abilities.  Our minds can be scary places and talking to others makes our own feel less alone.  Sharing intimate stories and thoughts reveals to the world that we are alike even though our insecurities tell us that we aren't.  Sometimes we need to silence the thoughts in our heads to let the words come from our lips to make us remember that we all suffer and that misery loves company. 

            Pain is inevitable in life, but the way we process and react to it, whether we share it or lock it up can make all the difference.  The lens in which we choose to view the world determines the reality before our eyes; let it be tinted with the courage to share the pain that stirs inside you: first for the benefit of yourself; and second for the benefit of mankind. 

Diversifying Your Set of Skills

2.23.18
            I don’t know if the fort will ever come down at this point, it’s getting cozier by the day. Aside from that, I’ve been running around the past couple days, attending interviews, sending out resumes and trying to stay disciplined to a minimum amount of words per day.
My newly found ambition all stemmed from a conversation I had with Heather the first day I
decided to start this glorified journal.

            For the past few months, I have been chasing full-time jobs like a drug addict chasing a high and each time I have gotten excited, thinking, “I’m going to get this one,” the job is pulled a little further, just out of reach. Heather has helped me see that this focus on one full-time job is too singular and because of that, the other things I devote my time to, i.e. writing, local politics, seem even more laborious. Rather than focusing on getting part-time work in all three fields I care about, I’ve been putting all my eggs in one basket, dividing my mind into a competition of my interests rather than developing each of them individually.

             Diversifying your career path is a skill that comes easy to Heather as she has been doing it since she was a teenager. For her, it made a lot of sense to develop photography alongside her equestrian training because she couldn’t see herself risking her body day-in- and-day-out for an entire career. Thus, she came across photography, which is now the main source of income—but she kindly reminds me that it wasn’t always this way

             At the beginning of Heather’s photography career, she was willing to work for free or for peanuts and accepted jobs that others in the industry did not want to take. It was difficult because she still needed to make a living wage, but she was willing to do what she had to do to in order to gain experience. Jim Carrey has a quote something along the lines of, “you can fail at something you don’t like, so why not try and fail at something you do like?” It would’ve been easier for Heather to stay as an equestrian, but she thought about her life 20 years from then and had deduced that while it may’ve been easier in the short term, it would’ve been crippling in the long run to rely on one source of income.  Ironically, failure for Heather meant limiting herself to one full-time position.

              Now as I chase several jobs in each of my respective fields I feel more whole, engaging in conversations that cover an array of my interests rather than constraining myself to one. As I commit further to the development of my writing, political, and hospitality careers I also envision it all under one unifying umbrella in the future that Heather had the foresight to see at a much younger age. Framing my future in the context of an attaining elusive single goal has been a paralyzing approach of mine for years, but thanks to Heather, I may just be breaking free. Instead of looking at what I need, I’ve begun to look at how I can develop my interests in the diversification of my time, personality, and ideally, the stability of my financial future.

Unplugged Times

            When I opened up my eyes in the fort (yes, it’s still up) this morning, the sun scorched my retinas like a prolonged flash from a disposable camera.  It made me think of how far I’ve come from my hatred for the stream of sunlight that would find its way through the drawn curtains of my teenage years.  In those days, the only things that were worthwhile before noon were McDonalds’s breakfast and The Price is Right with Bob Barker (remember to spay and neuter your pets).

             After some reading in bed I took a stroll through the melting snow with Rumor, our Doberman pinscher who we rescued from a sandwich shop.  It always amuses me how other dog walkers switch to the other side of the road to pass because of her breed’s reputation—little do they know that Rumor is scared of cardboard boxes, paper towels, washing machines and anything that’s loud; not to mention that she lets our paraplegic Jack Russell, Riddle, maintain the alpha role in our house (I must admit that I do enjoy this misplaced, stereotype-induced appearance of intimidation because my tendency to smile at strangers doesn’t exactly strike fear into people’s hearts).  Taking walks like these, unplugged from the constant chatter of the Internet allows me to hone in on the trickle of the stream of mountain runoff, the honks of the distant geese, and the massive puddles that turn every sidewalk’s corner into mini ballets of pedestrian pirouettes. 

            Yet it’s still a struggle for me to leave the comfort of my couch, where I could be scrolling through the sea of infinite information and entertainment that lives in my phone, waiting, beckoning me to fall into yet another black hole of YouTube where after starting with one silly video I suddenly find myself, hours later, watching a clip of a cat putting on a bunny hat, leaving me wondering, “how the fuck did I get here?”  It’s nuts how easy it is to be captured by these cheap, goldfish-attention-span videos that sate our lazy, passive curiosities, but that’s a real 21st century, first-world problem—anything I want, including all day McDonalds breakfast and all of the old episodes of The Price is Right are just a couple of convenient clicks away.

            It’s unplugged times like walking through the snow with my dopey, intimidating Dobie that make me grateful for remembering the sound of a dialup modem coming through the receiver of our rotary phone as I try to hang up immediately, hoping not to inconvenience one of my older brothers by kicking them off one of their “super important” sessions on AIM in the basement.  Perhaps it’s just my version of “back in my day,” but I can’t help but think that this evolution of technology invading our psyches is a bit more intrusive and worrisome than watching Elvis thrust his hips on a television set or the 60’s movement being reduced to a brand of countercultural consumerism.  Perhaps we all want to be strong and intimidating but beneath it all we’re all just scared of paper towels and cardboard boxes like Rumor—either way, I’m just happy and grateful I can still muster the strength to shirk the comforts of convenience and enjoy the trickle of a creek once in awhile.