FIGHT!

August 21st, 2023

I look like an idiot.

I haven’t been on my usual bullshit lately, writing about my messy emotions or mental health, or about politics or the climate or philosophy or grief or sobriety. It’s not that I don’t think about these things anymore; they’re all I think about, the things that keep me up at night, the things that make me, well, me.

The condition I’m in right now is a very real state of burn out; the dark, sticky, cloud-covered kind, where the furniture and walls are covered in a heavy sheet of hot ash as black as the absence of light.

I’m not having a lot of fun, generally; the overall absence of joy is undeniable when I do feel an actual burst of it. Like many people, I find myself going through the motions, frustrated, feeling those gears wobble and snarl and fail to reject the seemingly singular forward motion being mindlessly pushed through them.

We have to, right? Being the 99% in a late capitalistic society, we are expected to do the least-worst things we can find, eat that shit heartily, and then ask for more.

It’s a voice in my ear that sounds like my own but meaner: “You have to do this. If you don’t, you will be broke, unpopular, and you will die.”

It’s not untrue.

I haven’t written about this because, generally, I try to write from a place where I can see a way out. Sure, some of these entries can end with us still sitting in a dark cardboard box, wiping each other’s tears, but most of them have their lids punctuated with holes for both air and light. Hope poking through, if you will.

I don’t have any tasty treats to offer you today.

My writing and art is a solace for me, but I can feel all this [gestures wildly inside of me] spilling out into it like wild oil. I don’t want to turn that magical forest toxic.

So I’ve been trying out other things.

Which is why I look like an idiot today.

I’ve been reading more. I’ve been playing the bass, specifically, learning everything I can about just one instrument and not worrying about doing anything more with it. Just playing. Connecting to words and music in the deepest ways I can.

And I’ve taken up karate. It definitely sprung from my pop culture love of Ninja Turtles and Cobra Kai and Jedi, but I’m trying to find new ways to find myself, find the kind of balance I’ve been desperately seeking since the day I started existing, an actual place of peace.

I believe in being proactive; we can’t change or grow until we decide to change and grow. But the helplessness of this brand of burn out, the kind dictated by the world we live in, lends itself to a hopelessness that I don’t need help nurturing.

No, it’s a hopelessness that I hope to karate chop in the face.

Sparring partners welcome.