daydream
i told myself i'd be happy after i
was offered a place in my dream school. graduated. worked my dream job. read X number of books. made X number of friends. blogged. traveled. volunteered my time. egregiously overconsumed. got enough rest. ate healthily. exercised.
but here i am unhappy as ever.
i never exist in the present. i cease to exist on this plane.
my daydreams torture me. for the past twenty years i have existed in alternate universes.
in the alternate universe of 2014 i am a rhythm guitarist in a band. i not dressed in worn hand-me-downs. my alternate universe guitar is a gibson les paul. i am not the nerdy otaku kid during lunch break.
in the autumn of 2024 i found a bassist and a guitarist my age. i owned, and still own, an epiphone les paul. we jammed to nirvana in the guitarist's bedroom for 6 months.
there are many such examples of "making my dreams come true", yet...
... yet i'm still unhappy.
i need to snap out of this.
this dissatisfaction is strongest when i'm most active on social media. rather consumerist element to this as well: tech giants grab the opportunity to exploit my woes of inadequacy. highly specific shit i don't need advertised so i purchase it and become superficially sated, only for a short while.
i have been taking the steps to reduce my digital overconsumption. but i still visit the platforms when i first wake up. i inundate myself with not only robot slop, but influencers trying to sell me their latest "dark academia aesthetic". with their sponsored posts. and stacks on stacks of books with pretty covers, gifted to them for reviews to generate the authors and their works more publicity.
have you watched the social dilemma?
i'll stay informed without social media. i have a list of news websites to visit. i'm on various mailing lists. i'll survive. and maybe i'll stop being unhappy.
there isn't a point to this post i think. just a reminder for me to wake up and make a conscious decision to flip open the ereader instead.
i need to sleep... tomorrow will be yet another long day.
halfway through bullshit jobs by david graeber... here are some commonplace book notes (aka i am challenging myself to think more critically and also write in my notebook more often):
is every job a bullshit job? even jobs i have always thought would provide meaning to society are actually meaningless. but how does a society function without employment of workers?
as in, if bullshit jobs were entirely eliminated, many people would be unemployed. but is that such a bad thing? if society followed "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", there would be reasonable distribution of labour and resources. everyone works less than forty hours a week, and contributes to the needs of themselves and their immediate community.
the bold text is an example of a "first thought", before the "second thought" took over the rest of the paragraph.
to quote a tumblr post, "... the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. what you think next defines who you are."