SUCCESS

Feeling good.  Why?  Especialy since about six hours ago, this day represented pretty much the core of what has troubled me... maybe all my life.

I spent the first five hours of today joylessly playing a *retarded* surfing video game.  Don't believe?  Think that's impossible?  Well, I have the finger tendon pain to prove it.  (Just for you: http://www.youriding.com/surf).

Okay, so you played video games.  Maybe that's just who you are, as Maverick puts it so well and depressingly / reassuringly.  You're not Tarek.

Well, obviously.  Tarek is awesome.  But I'm also not that guy: since I play it JOYLESSLY.  That makes me a better person right?  I mean, if you feel bad about you fucking up that it DOESN'T REALLY COUNT, right?  Then God (actual God or just the grown-ups in your life) will forgive you and support you and help you turn it around, give you an extension, give you money, etc.

There is no God.  And every joyless moment is one lost. Forever.  And you get nothing for it beyond what you did in that moment.  And since I was playing video games, I basically got nothing.  EXCEPT, and this is key, further confirmation (for as I said about five, let me change that to six, hours) that you are a failure - for procrastinating joylessly.

So at four in the afternoon I finally bring myself to look at the "problem set" for the class I have not spent more than an hour reading/studying for during the month its been in session.  (Note the pride I have in not studying.  I joylessly note it.) 

Not only is it due at midnight, but there is a show starting at 8pm (but I'm guessing 9:30ish?) at a local bar with one of my actual favorite bands.  Like one of my top 10 indie bands. 

But even THAT is not enough for me to GET MY SHIT DONE.  Instead, I let it fester.  I avoid.  I ignore.  I think aboiut dropping the class.  I eat - lots of cookies and cheese.  I don't exercise.  I play surfing video games.  As if I need more confirmation of my teenage tendencies. 

[Okay, just played that game for another 20 minutes.  Need to think about that.]

But here I am, eight hours later and stoked.  Why?

1) I finished the problem set.
2) I went to the concert
3) I made new friends at the concert
4) YES YES YES

So what the hell?  I am happy when a) I do my shit b) I go out and meet people.

The two VERY THINGS that I am avoiding studiously.  Through joylessly playing video games.  This cannot be the path.

But to be honest, the feeling I have right now, sitting here happy (or with the leftover feelings, anyway) is towards positivity.  I remember I used to think if you ever ask yourself "who AM I?", the question is the problem - not the fact you don't have an answer.  No one has an answer.  It's the fact you're asking it that demonstrates something's wrong, out of kilter.

So I *almost* have the same feeling, right now, about perhaps 99% of the things I'm thinking about right now.  If these are the things on my mind, then something is out of whack.  The answers are not to be had - the fact you're asking them, finding them important or metaphysical in the first is.

Victory.  That's how I feel right now.  Yet most of the day was actual the same sort of failure I've been experiencing almost everyday for the last two years.  It will end, I know.  But when and how?  Perhaps I'll just start asking new questions. 

More fiction books, at least.

Did I mention I like meeting girls?  I like meeting girls.
-29