You could always just eat until you have to throw up. It makes you glad to feel better, eventhough you're just back where you started.

"The price of getting what you want is having what you once wanted" -- Neil Gaiman

Perhaps things in your life are TOO good right now, eh? Just enjoy it for now, nothing lasts forever.....

Uh oh...Jesse run! She's gonna want a baby!

Just kidding :-) You're probably burned out and unaware of it. We North Americans don't vacation enough. There's something to be said about getting completely away from things for a week or two to revitalize ourselves. A lot of people who are burned out don't even know it. They're not terribly busy with work and have time to socialize. But their brain's had it. They may be physically at work, but they're not being productive. They may be physically out with friends, but they're just there out of habit. When was the last time you went on vacation? A real vacation...not some weekend getaway deal.

Maybe it's got something to do with being thirty-one. Part of growing up. I'm the same age as you, Jane, and every now and again I feel disconnected from life—you know, a few frames out of sync. It's almost as if a thick, greasy, waxy something is coating the inside of my lungs preventing me from breathing those ribcage-stretching deep breaths that pump the blood full of oxygen and reinvigorate the soul. (Assuming a soul needs blood, of course.) And, left this way too long, I am left very confused and wondering how I can reengage myself back into life.

For me, I think it has something to do with the growing awareness that what I want to do with my life is merging pretty fucking quick with this is my life. And that is a crapload of pressure to put on a guy who only this year managed to quit smoking and still occasionally jumps on walls to see if he’ll stick to it like Spiderman.

When you're a kid (you know, under 25), life is lived abstractly—as if your life were being viewed through a telescope from the wrong end. And don’t get me wrong. This kind of dipshit living is a marvelous thing. So much wonder. So many possibilities. So much fun! But ultimately, young people are such a fucking idiots, it ain’t even funny.

Somewhere around your thirty-first year you really grow up and that telescope you were looking through gets whipped around so that you can look through it properly. Through the wonderful power of magnification, you are able to see what lies at the end of your journey. And, no, it is not death, it’s not old age. It is a mirror. One of those parabolic mirrors they have in convenience stores to watch for shoplifters around corners. And the mirror reflects back not just the image of you bent forward at the waste peering through a telescope, but the whole of your life with you at its center. And it’s right there—Right! Fucking! There!—that you say, “My god. This...this...all of this! I was...I was my life. They were never separate. We were the same thing!” And once that understanding is achieved the telescope is quickly taken away. And you are left standing there—numb and disbelieving like Bruce Willis was in The Sixth Sense when he realized—wah ha!—that he was a ghost too!—facing the direction of the mirror, now invisible under the impossibly far distance, wondering where you are to go and how you are to get there. Then, for the first time in a long time, you, start speaking French, demanding your mother fucking raison d’être!

But I have no clue what that is.

Ennui? Or anomie?

aw, I think you got it right with the video game idea. Your dream the other night was trying to get that message across: the opera represented Final Fantasy VI, and the ornate telescope was supposed to remind you of the study from Eternal Darkness.

Good video games are excellent projects in and of themselves, and can be more than enough to tide you over until the next big, life-focusing event.

Meh, ennui happens. I think it's endemic to certain personalities. You radiate, and you collect. You pour out, and soak up. In between ebb and flow is blah.

Which is no excuse for sitting around staring at walls all day. My personal antidote is to get out, get away, walk the land and feel myself connected to the thrum. If I had that Stormbringer of yours, I might take it to the top of a cliff out at Point Reyes and endeavor to become the vessel through which elemental forces might speak. (Tilden is also acceptable if communing with the road isn't part of the package deal.) A few posts ago you were opining about the music bursting to be free, so no time like the now, hmm? Create. I think it's the best antidote to spiritual malaise. Or go volunteer at a free clinic downtown for a few days, which will also snap your perspective back into place right quick...

"This must be Thursday", said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Douglas Adams, 1979
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy

cure for doldrums: start the motor. as i soon as i make this display of impatient human hubris in response to lack of favor from the wind gods, they reward me with much breeze. as if to say...now that you've gone to the bother of starting your engine of volition, we will somewhat mockingly remind you again of the power we hold. my suggestion: get a honda four stroke. much quieter, efficient, and powerful than any two stroke out there, and a genuine display to the powers that be that you are not fucking around. or, i suppose if the doldrums are to be shooed away with through gaming, get splinter cell: pandora tomorrow. it rawkz. much action, little thinking.

What you need is for Dealership to tour across the country. Come to Pittsburgh! There's some great places and you'd definitely draw a crowd. so that's what you need, a rockin out tour. get the show on the road.

don't want to make you feel crappy, but my very good friend is going through hodgkin's for the 2nd time in 5 years, has not a hair on his tiny, pale 23 year old body, and is at this moment wearing a t-shirt that says "one stoked motherfucker". snap out of it jane, life is good.

well, when i was 31, and feeling like i needed to find something to feel passionate about (besides my man) ,i got pregnant.. he's almost twelve now... if i were you i would go to graduate school or something to find your reason for living....:)

Hmmm.... I'm not 31, and have felt like that many times. Perhaps you just need something new in your life, rather than relying on something tried and true (games, music, etc). Make a list of things you've always thought of doing but haven't gotten around to them, and then just pick one. You'd be surprised how hard that part will be, and how energized even just making that list will make you feel. =P

When everything's perfect...it's time to get bored with it, destroy it, and start over again.

;)

Tom Clancy Pandorra Tomorrow. Will make you forget all about life.

jane, you need a new york injection! any way you and jesse can stop in NYC on your way to/from france?! would love to have you here. i can guarantee walking the concrete jungle will help get your wits back. that or the fresh scent of manure on a french farm.

jane...
i can't seem to get into the "talkback" section of your last log.

can I ask you to please stop telling yourself that you don't have the right to feel things?

when the world feels grey and dead to me, sometimes I do the same thing

but, there is no good reason to deny yourself the right to feel bad, and then feel bad for feeling bad.

three "bads" in one sentence
now that's bad writing.

anyway, its better to leave it at simple blues than combine them with the whole overlay of "but I'm so lucky, so I must just be a jerk, and now i can feel bad about that too" routine.

maybe this makes no sense?

I have lost most of the vision in my left eye. It suddenly went for shit last week and the loss is permanent due to a very bad bacterial infection in my retina. Although I spent many years working to get accepted to vet med school, my dreams are dashed now. I may be allowed to attend, but it's been made clear that I won't ever be able to practice. Hard to study, impossible to perform surgery.... etc, etc...

How I wish I could trade the horror of semi-blindness for a little bit of melancholy. Your pain is real -- I'm not trying to get in a pissing contest with you. I just wanted to give you some perspective. Good luck.

i have a doctor's appointment at 2:00 today to have a biopsy of a lump in my right breast. at least i know why i'm blue i guess..

you don't see comments, jo, because i turned them off.

too much noise in my head.