Treading Water

apathy n. lack of interest or feeling; indifference.

I have been staring at my computer screen blankly for nearly an hour now, trying to think of something to write about. Nothing is coming to mind. It's like someone just erased everything interesting out of my head.

Well, not just my head. Today I've just felt...I don't know...just here. Not happy, not sad. Just blank. Like a whitewashed wall. If a shrug was an emotion, that's what I'd be feeling right now. Très comme ci, comme ça.

It's really difficult to make your life sound interesting when nothing interesting is happening. Last night I went to the Warehouse and ran into people I'd not seen in a while. And every one of them offered up the same questions - What's new? What have you been up to?

And in my head, I answered. Nothing. I work, I eat, I post, I sleep. Sometimes I watch TV. Sometimes I go to a friend's house and...do nothing.

stagnant adj. 1. (of liquid) motionless; having no current. 2. (of life, action, the mind, etc.) showing no activity; dull; sluggish.

It's not like I need non-stop excitement in my life. As I have told Roger Mexico whenever he apologizes for not being an entertaining host, the entire world does not need to entertain me 24/7. But something should interest me, right? At this point, the most exciting thing I've done all day is learn the commands for including accents and symbols in my entries. (Check out the cedilla and grave accent a couple of paragraphs ago! Whoo hoo! Madame Jones would be so proud....)

And I really do enjoy doing this webjournal. It gives me a chance to vent, and who knows who might hear me? Could be the same people who usually get the "pleasure" of listening to me whine, could be Joe Schmoe in Des Moines. Hell, it could be no one. It's like standing on top of a skyscraper and bitching and moaning into the wind.

I've also enjoyed picking up a few HTML commands as I go along, but sometimes I feel like I'm taking a graduate level college class and never bothered to complete elementary school. There's still so much basic stuff I don't know how to do on the computer (like the majority of Windows 95), but I can email my brains out and fling around my thimbleful of programming knowledge to sound all impressive. Part of me wants to keep going the way I'm going, learning a command or two here and there, and part of me wants to go take a Basic Computer Skills Class. And part of me says the hell with all of it.

And if I do better myself with self-taught classes in programming and designing websites or learning Irish Gaelic or playing guitar or whatever I decide to teach myself, where will it lead me? Will I be another blogger with a really pretty website and five readers, able to interject phrases like "níl mé ach ag tosú ar an teanga afhoghlaim" whenever I want, strumming Bob Mould songs to my cat at night? (See what happens when I get my hands on a search engine? I should not have this much access to this much information....)

blasé adj. bored; indifferent.

Maybe I'm lacking purpose in my life. (Duh.) Sometimes I feel like everyone I know seems to be going somewhere, or at least have a roadmap, and mine blew out the window a long time ago. I'm driving blind down the Interstate of Life, and for some reason I won't pull over at the cosmic gas station and ask for directions. And not to be a complete crybaby about it, but it makes me feel a bit left out at times. In ten years, will everyone else have accomplished what they're dreaming of, and I'll still be where I am now, working at a job that I'm completely indifferent about, but so unfocused that I don't have the motivation to quit or look for something that actually interests me?

It's not that my life is horrible right now. I have gainful employment, I can afford to pay my bills and keep gas in my car and feed myself most of the time. I have a loving family, wonderful friends. I'm not an alcoholic or a junkie. I'm reasonably intelligent. I'm attractive sometimes (the way I see it). I'm not living in a cardboard box. I have the freedom to say whatever I want to in this format, while I'm listening to a CD of obscure alternative music (Manic Street Preachers at the moment). I have creative outlets in my poetry and fiction writing. I can carry a tune in a bucket, as well as walk and chew gum at the same time. But somehow something feels like it's missing. Like I'm empty inside. And for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is.

I feel like I'm treading water. I'm not getting anywhere, but I'm keeping my head above water. But damn, are my legs getting tired.

This was not the life I saw in the brochure. I think my travel agent lied to me.