I actually started making notes of things I wanted to write about which is the saddest way to write I know. And yet here we are. I'm leaving for the US next week and I probably won't write what I want to write before then and past experience shows I'll collect a whole basket of new things to write about after. Going off my notes and the top of my head, let's do a little brain dump for 30 minutes. Break in the ol typity fingers.
I want to write about "fear of missing out" or "FOMO" and how I don't have it and how I wonder whether that makes life easier or harder. I want to write about the levels of discomfort I will endure before I realize I am uncomfortable and launch myself at apparently insane speeds towards comfort. How that has to do with FOMO and not. I am afraid of being forgotten or unwanted but that's different. I'm not afraid there's a better party somewhere than the one I'm at.
I've been thinking a little about my arrogance but I'm not sure it's arrogance.
I took a personality test that was interesting in that it was presented like a Likert scale but instead of opposites it was like "On a scale from 0 to 5, would you rather be alone (0) or eat ice cream (5)?" I gotta say the results seemed pretty accurate for me and in a real way, not a horoscope-y way.
There's a thing you do where you answer increasingly personal questions and stare deeply into the other person's eyes and then you're supposed to be in love; I first heard of this 5 years ago and despite my enthusiasm and curiosity nobody's wanted to do it with me which I guess is one way to keep from falling in love, to not even try. I try not to take it personally. Sometimes I take it personally.
What else? I had an idea for a short story that I really liked (the idea) and then I overthought it and overthought it until it was a rough thing I had sanded to fineness and then into nothingness. I have dreams that people are telling me what they really think of it and they don't like it. And I have to keep going back to the idea of it, how much I liked that rough wood.
I asked for some things from one client and I got them so easily that it felt like maybe I should have asked for more (even while I am very happy to have gotten what I asked for; that moment of wondering whether that was the right thing to ask). I asked for some other things from a different client and was ignored and that made me pretty unhappy or if we're being honest angry. I'm glad I am self-employed and can now go forward deciding to work with the people who give me what I want and not with the people who don't, but I wish we could all just agree to do things my way all the time since I'd be happier and so would most of the people who deserve to be.
What's funny is that if you know what I'm talking about you know I'm being completely honest and that I'm also completely right. This is what I mean about the arrogance. I know it comes off like that but it's really not. I know truth is often subjective. I believe there's multiple true ways to look at a blackbird.
I probably spend two hours a week thinking about people I don't know at all and wondering why they behave in ways I don't understand. I spend more than that thinking about people I do know but that seems reasonable. I think that I will never cure cancer or do anything particularly remarkable so figuring out why people do things and trying to fill the part of the world I inhabit with a little more understanding seems like a "leave only footprints" way to be, I mean it doesn't seem like a waste of time. But the people I don't know at all, there's no justification.
Although I love people physically, their bodies and how they move, the curves and angles, the way they smell, I cannot imagine loving someone separate from their mind; I can barely imagine feeling a connection to someone's body without their thoughts being there somehow. It's interesting to me that this is cultural, learned. It feels beyond logic; it feels like instinct.
Good poems. Art painted from joy. Art painted from darkness, reaching towards joy. Days with no or few clouds when it's warm enough to sit on the ground. The perfect drinkable temperature of coffee. How it feels when I remember to take care of my body. Marking things off "to do" lists. Making "to do" lists. The kindness of strangers. There are some people who are so incredibly unreasonably kind to me and I don't thank them enough but when I'm dark and sad and have to count reasons to live they're on my list. That's probably enough for now.