Disequilibrium

May 15th 2007

Here I am again...

My recent boredom has caused me to stumble upon four old blogs I used to have, dating back to even my high school days.
It's interesting to see where my mind was at that time, sometimes I forget. At the same time it's also somewhat discerning, when evaluating the subject matter of any given post. The oldest blog I found was a Xanga page...filled mostly with details of superficial and mindless activities. Not that I am debating the value of mindless activities, writing about seemlingly nothing is one of my favorite past times. But I feel like my approach has changed. Whereas now I have notebooks filled with details of common, brief encounters, which would appear meaningless to most- but I write about them and keep them to myself because I enjoy evaluating the subtle interactions in my life...doing philosophically what Einstein spent his life trying to do scientifically- tying together the miscroscopic and meaningless with the large scale and profound. But these early writings of mundane activity didn't seem to serve the same purpose they do now, rather than recording what is often overlooked as common for the sake of evaluation, I had conformed to the common teenage need to 'sell myself'.
Eventually I abandoned my Xanga page in exchange for blogspot, which I had two over a period of two years. Reading back on these blogs I find that they center around a quintessential sadness, anxiety, and overall sense of despair. A large part of this may have been a reflection of a mixture of just common teenage anxiety but also freedom from superficiality and a return to my pre-teen manic state.
The last page I found was from two years ago...and the aura of it had changed from sorrowful to peaceful, headlined with the Edgar Allen Poe quote "Convinced myself, I seek not to convince." Finally attaining exactly what it was I needed all along, which was a sense of balance. It seems that I thought I had finally had myself figured out, and was in control of my emotions and direction. I turned my focus outward and began to write about mostly politics and pop culture. During this time I was involved in an unconventional long distance relationship. A relationship that did a lot of justice for me personally, but looking back on it I see it as more of an idea, that manifested itself in my mind. Whether it is fair to say that I began to crave a trivial enviroment of bars, strangers, alcohol, and drugs- and this is the reason for the end of my relationship- or if it were vice versa, I'll never know. But either way, over the course of last summer I wrote barely anything, I quit drawing, painting, reading, practicing music, and spent most of my days and nights out and usually intoxicated. This continued beyond the summer and over the course of the entire school year. I began to resuscitate my sense of creativity not because I began to feel it again, but only because of the people and lifestyle I had surrounded myself with. I knew that the old me could identify with them, and through their influence I tried to reclaim myself. This worked to an extent, but my progression was lackluster.

Recently I have been left with little influence, my once thriving enviroment has dried up. This is the cause of my recent boredom but also the spark of passion I've began to regain. Finally, I find myself interested again in more than the common activities of a 21 year old college student. I'm somewhat dismayed at the time I've wasted, now that I wish that I had even more to read and write and draw and just generally observe. But at the same time there is a lot of learning that has come from my reckless lifestyle of the past year. The sense of indifference I have embraced has finally brought back my passion.

So I'm happy that I reclaimed all the qualities that have always made me me. But I'm wonder...how difficult will it be to go back to my old days when I used to abandon everyone and everything for what Liz refered to as "artistic seclusion". A lot of my current and recent friends I've made really don't know what the core of me is. That isn't their fault, it's mine, but now I feel like I'm going to have to completely dismantle their current view of me if I want to survive. But changing ones view and breaking through stereotypes has never been traditionally easy for people. S
omeone refered to me as a nihilist the other day. I didnt know whether I wanted to be angry or laugh. I find it comical, people who enjoy analyzing others, that they begin to do it unintentionally, almost automatically. But we as human beings- with the combination of the human mind, soul, and spirit are complex, we contain multitudes within ourseles. We are far from one dimensional. The essense of a person can be analyzed for maybe a brief moment before it has all ready begun to change. We, like all things, are in a constant state of evolution.
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." I love this quote, especially the end. I try to remember it not only as applicable to myself, but more so as applicable to human attempts to rationalize the behavior of others and categorize people as one dimensional beings. I hate to be analyzed, I hate it because the presumption that I am only one way not only alludes from my mystery, but it has essentially killed me off, to that person I am now dead.

But here I am analyzing me anyway, but not for the purpose of electing a permanent state, and not because I will come to any conclusions about myself. I enjoy being a spectator of the process of becoming. I'm not a nihilist...I'm more existential than most would think, sometimes to the point of my own annoyance.
So I guess what began as a random journey through old virtual memories has brought me more in touch with myself. I still don't know who I am, what I want, or where I'm going. But I do know a few things from my little life experiences.

"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are"
Jean-Paul Sartre