#99 Together, Alone.
The other day, when I woke up, my first thought upon checking the clock was “I have to kill ten hours, at least, until I can go back to sleep.” As soon as I had this thought, I felt bad for thinking it, because one of the lessons I’m supposed to have learned from my near-death car accident experience is that every moment of life is precious.
Apparently, my intuition regarding the sanctity of life does not mean that I can now easily operate my life based on this concept alone. Apparently, if I am to make the most of my life, I’m going to actually have to remind myself that I need to work, in order to make something out of my life.
But the more I think about things, the more it makes sense that sometimes I feel more motivated to sleep than to work. After all, sleep is not like life; sleep does not require hard work, determination, goal orienting, working with others, or follow through. And these components of success are the basic building blocks of life that I have been trying to skip over since I…um, all my life.
But regardless of my personal near death experience, I’ve always thought that waking up and wishing to sleep away the day is a bad sign, because I don’t think it’s healthy to want to sleep your life away. But I’m also realistic, and I therefore understand that throughout my life, I’m bound to have some periods wherein I feel like I’m in a rut, and all I want to do is sleep. No matter how hard I push myself and “go for the gold,” I’m positive that life can always wind up seeming to be monotonous, and the only way to escape this is to make some changes, or to adjust your expectations. I’m convinced that here on Earth, your attitude is everything when it comes to enjoying your time.
Thankfully, I’d classify myself as not only an optimist, but also as a “happy camper.” For the most part, I’m an amicable and affable person who enjoys the company of friends. But I have my days, just like I’m sure you all do, and these days sometimes frighten me, because there is always that impending threat of: “What if this is how I’m going to feel for the rest of my life—good god!”
I usually feel like my life is a total waste when I find myself spending too much time alone, without doing anything productive. These mornings usually follow DVD marathons in which I consume a few hours of some HBO drama, along with a couple of vodka martinis, and then I wake up feeling like LIFE IS SHIT.
And these sorts of nights usually occur because I find it difficult to be productive when I’m alone, and no one is watching me. I think this is human nature, and a good friend of mine recently told me that there are plenty of psychology experiments that back up this notion of mine. Namely, people tend to work harder, and better, when they think that someone will notice their work or when they think that someone is watching them.
This is why I am going back to school to become better trained at the art of writing. At the very least, the next two years of my life will be spent in the company of other writers, as well as professors who have to invest an interest in the progress of my writing career. And I need this. I need it bad.
But someday, I will have to learn how to motivate myself, by myself. This is why whenever I meet someone who seems interesting to me, I usually open up to them and try to pick their brain, because interesting people seem to be self motivated, and that’s what makes them interesting; they have “strayed from the herd.”
One of the questions I always want to ask interesting people, but I usually don’t, is: “What do you do when you are alone?” The main reason I don’t ask this is that regardless of a person’s comfort level, this is an unusually jarring and dramatic question, and some people can be put off by it. You kind of sound like a stalker-wierdo-psycho if you ask a stranger “what they do when they are alone.”
In my defense, I don’t think that this question is actually creepy. When I want to ask, or actually ask someone this question, I’m not looking to find out about their masturbation habits. What I want to know is what passionate, successful, intelligent and interesting people do when they have hours of time, with no one to share it with?
Personally, being a self proclaimed member of the “passionate, intelligent, and interesting people club,” (read: elitist, and also take note that I removed the word successful), I constantly vacillate between craving time alone, and fearing time alone, and I wonder how many other people are like me. They say that “no man is an island,” and despite my years of trying to prove this wrong, I’m finally beginning to come around to this philosophy.
But “Lord knows” how hard I’ve tried to prove this aphorism wrong. I’ve lived in studio apartments for years of my life, I have moved to the middle of Iowa in an attempt to surround myself with gravel roads and the isolation that can only come about from living in a toxic cloud of pig shit, I have refused to date perfectly datable women in order to remain independent, and I even, once, turned my cell phone off for three days (side note: This last example of my attempt at isolation is the most pathetically honest and telling anecdote for just how attached I am to my cell phone and communication.).
Throughout my life, no matter how hard I have tried to become an isolated island, apart from humanity, I always come around to a nagging longing for friendship and conversation, and lately, I’ve been exploring the merits of my dependency for personal relationships with other humans.
The most important thing that I have learned about what satiates me has come about from my most recent move back to Portland. What I have learned is that good times are absolutely contingent on good relations with good people. I have met and made amazing friends all over this nation, but only in Portland, Oregon do I have an army of friends who opt to live a life wherein work comes second to hanging out and enjoying the company of others. For this reason alone, Portland is a “magical” place for me.
And don’t get me wrong, people all over the country enjoy hanging out more than working; it’s just that you can’t actually afford to hang out in most of the other cities in this nation, because our inflationary depression is kicking most people’s asses.
The last two days, thankfully, I’ve woken up feeling excited about facing a full day of work and play, and I haven’t had one moment wherein I’ve wished for the bliss that is sleeping my life away. I am, however, quite sure that I will have more of these blasé days at some point in my future, and I have no choice but to accept this. What really irks me is the fact that I want to know everything about this human life I am living, yet I’m fairly sure that I’ll never know if my personal feelings regarding work, success, and the meaning of life would actually exist if I didn’t have role models and a social pecking order to drive me away from my lifelong urge to “slack off.”
If I didn’t come from a community of achievers who attend good colleges and then find good jobs and pretty wives, and then sign mortgages and have babies, would I ever feel like I’m “behind” in life? If I really was ON an island, and I lived alone, with unfettered access to food and water, would I ever feel lonely, despondent, and out of touch with humanity? Or do I only get to feeling this way because I’ve experienced good times, good relationships, and the burning blush that comes about whenever I’m complimented for something I actually take pride in?
No one can answer these questions. And I’m not expecting anyone to. I’m just curious as to how many other people even have these questions. Sometimes I worry that I worry too much about worrying, and this is my manifesto to that cause. If you’re out there, and you’re reading this, and you have ever felt the same loneliness, there’s some quality irony for you; you’re not alone. Yes, together, you and I, we’re alone, but this notion always puts a smile on my face, because it’s only human to enjoy dramatic irony.
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