My Official Quarterly Emotional Honesty Post
This is nobody's business (least of all my own) but I wanted to get it down for posterity's sake. To have a post (suitably generally worded) that I'll be able to look back on in happier times and remember that I really never did give up, even when I really ought to have. (Or, if things go really South, to have some semi-permanent marker that there actually was a time when I was sort-of on the beaten path. Either way.)
I'm deeply, painfully frustrated. Not by work, although I suspect my writer's block is a specific manifestation of my frustration. And it's not sexual frustration, though I've no doubt various chastity-hatas out there will insist that's precisely what it is. I might say it's emotional frustration - and it's certainly true that I'm desperately craving emotional intimacy - I don't think that really covers it.
It's life-frustration, is what it is. It's the frustration of a 24-year old man sitting alone in his boxers and undershirt in an otherwise empty third-floor walk-up, blogging. It's the frustration of a man who's tired of coming home to cook a family dinner for a family of one, and who realizes that, contrary to what I've been telling myself, getting a dishwasher next year isn't actually going to fix things. (Though, at least, it will rinse things.) It's the frustration of a man who's spent two years amassing unspeakable amounts of debt trying to earn the silliest degree in the world, studying a subject that bores and annoys him, preparing for a career that will be at best uninteresting and at worst corrupting. It's the frustration of a man who's justified all that to himself because of the need to provide for a wife and family, but who now looks around and notes, what wife and family? Except that I can now do my own laundry, I'm not notably closer to getting where I want to go than when I left home for boarding school eight and a half years ago. Bowling and poker and trivia night are fun (probably too much so) but please nobody be offended if they don't suffice.
The worst (or at least most painful) part is the way in which my too-clever-by-half mind keeps devising (and convincing itself of) all these implausible but deeply seductive ways of getting out of my predicament. [This was the place in the original post as written where I laid out the various insane ideas I've had over the past two years or so. The whole thing started to have a whiny-teenager tone, so I cut it, and inserted this explanatory note. If you're genuinely curious what they were, though I can't imagine why you would be, you can inquire. I may respond, or not. Don't take it personally either way.] I usually entertain these dumb ideas for a while and give up (thank God He gave me a lazy disposition!). Or I'll make some half-hearted effort, fail, and give up. Or I'll rationally talk myself out of it and give up.
Or, just as I'm about ready to give up, something a tad too coincidental will happen that rekindles my mad hope, and puts me back at square one. Which is exactly where I don't want to be, because as long as I'm chasing after illusory solutions I'll neither go after actual (if partial) solutions nor attempt to accept my situation. Because I think Someone's telling me, "Don't give up," I'm stuck here grasping at smoke, treading water, miserable.
(Ahh, there's that whiny-teenager voice again. Sigh.)
Well, goodnight dears. Perhaps by the morning, this post will somehow have magically fixed everything.
***
As I was writing this post, my Windows Media Player, set to randomize, played four Coldplay songs in a row. This is not helping the mood. Thanks a lot, Microsoft. Bastards.
I'm deeply, painfully frustrated. Not by work, although I suspect my writer's block is a specific manifestation of my frustration. And it's not sexual frustration, though I've no doubt various chastity-hatas out there will insist that's precisely what it is. I might say it's emotional frustration - and it's certainly true that I'm desperately craving emotional intimacy - I don't think that really covers it.
It's life-frustration, is what it is. It's the frustration of a 24-year old man sitting alone in his boxers and undershirt in an otherwise empty third-floor walk-up, blogging. It's the frustration of a man who's tired of coming home to cook a family dinner for a family of one, and who realizes that, contrary to what I've been telling myself, getting a dishwasher next year isn't actually going to fix things. (Though, at least, it will rinse things.) It's the frustration of a man who's spent two years amassing unspeakable amounts of debt trying to earn the silliest degree in the world, studying a subject that bores and annoys him, preparing for a career that will be at best uninteresting and at worst corrupting. It's the frustration of a man who's justified all that to himself because of the need to provide for a wife and family, but who now looks around and notes, what wife and family? Except that I can now do my own laundry, I'm not notably closer to getting where I want to go than when I left home for boarding school eight and a half years ago. Bowling and poker and trivia night are fun (probably too much so) but please nobody be offended if they don't suffice.
The worst (or at least most painful) part is the way in which my too-clever-by-half mind keeps devising (and convincing itself of) all these implausible but deeply seductive ways of getting out of my predicament. [This was the place in the original post as written where I laid out the various insane ideas I've had over the past two years or so. The whole thing started to have a whiny-teenager tone, so I cut it, and inserted this explanatory note. If you're genuinely curious what they were, though I can't imagine why you would be, you can inquire. I may respond, or not. Don't take it personally either way.] I usually entertain these dumb ideas for a while and give up (thank God He gave me a lazy disposition!). Or I'll make some half-hearted effort, fail, and give up. Or I'll rationally talk myself out of it and give up.
Or, just as I'm about ready to give up, something a tad too coincidental will happen that rekindles my mad hope, and puts me back at square one. Which is exactly where I don't want to be, because as long as I'm chasing after illusory solutions I'll neither go after actual (if partial) solutions nor attempt to accept my situation. Because I think Someone's telling me, "Don't give up," I'm stuck here grasping at smoke, treading water, miserable.
(Ahh, there's that whiny-teenager voice again. Sigh.)
Well, goodnight dears. Perhaps by the morning, this post will somehow have magically fixed everything.
***
As I was writing this post, my Windows Media Player, set to randomize, played four Coldplay songs in a row. This is not helping the mood. Thanks a lot, Microsoft. Bastards.
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