Personal Journal

Inward Looking

There are a couple of things that if I were given the choice of, I wonder whether I would betray my own character. If I were offered the opportunity to go through life in a vicodin drugged haze, would I. Hell, right now I think I would. I love that drug. It’s too bad I can’t get it illegally. There’s of course the terrible catch-22 that one builds tolerance to it very fast, as I know first hand. It’s really a great headrush, smooth, accentuating positive emotion, enabling one to drift far away to whatever desired mental destination you wish to sail.
I’m almost out. I don’t really need any more, my back’s back into line, and if I exercised properly, it’d be fine most of the time. And I’m finding myself looking at my nearly empty bottle, damn… Call for a refill? No, not this time. I might need it for real again some day, and I’d hate to raise suspicion. And anyway, some little depravity says in my ear, this will give you time to let it out of your liver, and next time you need it, it’ll be like the first time.
No, nothing’s as good as the first time.
God, I remember when I got my muscle relaxers mixed with my Vicodin one day at work, and I took two vicodin instead of one each. I was flying so warm and comfy. We walked to seven-eleven and got drinks, and I couldn’t peel the smile off of my face.
I’d go through life that way if I could. I think I would, at least.
I guess I have to say that it’s easier to say such when I know the reality doesn’t exist. I cannot…
I’m an escapist. It’s the thing I’m addicted to, being in some tangential existence that people can’t relate to, being in my own world. I liked drugs because I could go there any time. I used to get stoned and go to the mall just to people watch. Surrounded by people, I could separate myself completely from them, observe, and be invisible. I use video games now, and I have a job where I fall in between several dozen sets of tracks and get lost. When I step out and do something, people think I’m gifted, smart… Just don’t read over my shoulder while I’m surfing game websites, k? Which is like, every day except Tuesday from 9:45 to 11:10…
I have a good life, and most of the time I’m happy right now. I turned my life around from where it was a couple of years ago when every day was like breathing in smoke, living with Renee, whom I didn’t love. Nothing wrong with Renee, particularly (I could list some beefs, but they’d be petty).
I still want to escape, though. It’s a habit, I’m like a rabbit out of Watership Down. When they find you, they will kill you. I just don’t want to be myself in front of anyone, I want to live out in the sticks and be alone all the time. I want to be removed from responsibility.
Well, this journal entry is really rambling, and I don’t remember if I had anything pertinent to write down. See, somewhere inside of us all, is the part of us that bought into the notion that we have to be productive, responsible, contribute. Frankly, that’s a good thing. It’s just that as a society, we’ve greated something that is quite oppulent if you examine history. I mean, in this society, things are good. Material abundance is not the norm. Over-abundance is.
And we have a human nature that is timeless, the same in 20,000 BC as 2003 AD. If, back then, our needs were this easily met, we’d have never developed away from that culture. I think we’re at a stage where perhaps regression is something we have to struggle with.
Nature has her ironies. Think of this: It took a great deal of evolution to produce fat-cell storage systems in animals. Now, we humans, we don’t struggle through lean periods where that fat has to be converted. We struggle with an all new experience. We actually maintain too much fat in our systems over the span of our lifetime. It’s not simply a matter of vanity – it’s an actual problem, and our evolution is such that having this fat causes us physical health problems, heart problems, stroke problems, circulatory problems, diebetes… And so on. Isn’t it powerful? It’s got us looking at our evolutional history – Hey, we actually need to invent ways to stress our systems into thinking they’re struggling to survive – we exercise, to keep the whole thing running like it would have if we hadn’t moved “in the right direction” (not to sound like the unabomber, but you had to admire him, his consistency and genius).
So I’m dealing with this problem that my general animal nature wants me to relax, conserve energy, find peace in silence and sedentary pursuits. But there is the godly part, noting that sloth is sinful, and the measure of my soul is defined in a great many complicated ways, one of which is to contribute directly to the world around me.
I want to please god, and I want to be a good man. Jean tells me, a couple of times a week, “I love you, you’re a good person,” and it makes me uncomfortable, because here I am making a decent salary, and I’m writing in my journal instead of doing work (well, there’s no work really for me to do right now, nor is there often).
I can’t even say that I’m doing the best I can. I could do better, but I’m just lazy…
Well, I have to be careful or I’ll get ashamed of myself. It’s a matter of perception and rationalization. It’s not like I haven’t said to my boss on 3 different occasions, I can do more work, don’t hire more people, give me more work. But we hire more people, and I sit here and work on my writing skills, and learn more about how to beat my favorite video games.
I don’t think god has active control of the universe. It’s an abstract concept of mine, very hard to convey to anyone, but it’s like this:
If you’re the only omnipotent being in all of creation, why would you create the world and then tinker with it. It’s more likely that when you created it, you invested into it all of the mechanisms necessary for it to be precisely what you wished it to be.
My point there, isn’t much of anything. My point is that I think god does put us where we are. We were supposed to be here, now. I like the Augustinian concept of Providence (or was it Boethius?). Ours is only to find a way to find the good in any given situation. To be good in them.
Boethius, what was his book called? Read it. Well, that’s more note for me than any readers still with me here.
Am I doing enough good?
Do I have a right to be proud of who and what I am?
What small measure of myself should I push just a little, to be better than I may be now?

I’m not driven, dammit. I’m mostly un-ambitious, and where I am ambitious, my laziness can take the better of me…


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn