Sunday afternoons.

I had a comment, the other afternoon, from a blogreader who felt that I was sad. I have to question sad. I’m not sure that I am. Pensive, pending, pissed off I may be, but not sad. It’s that time of life again folks. As the ‘folks’ reading this don’t know me all that well I guess I’d better explain…
Every so often things have to change. Part of my persona, part of my stupidity and laziness, is that I don’t do soft, gradual change. I do climactic, explosive change. It all changes or nothing changes. It’s something to do with the plans and the actualities of my life. I’m not terrifically good at turning the one into the other. I am terribly lazy. I will sweep this aside until the last moment and let it blow up in my face. I’m still fairly young so I can’t be sure but I think this is going to be the recurrent theme of my life. And if, as a friend or family member, you think it sucks for you – try being me. I can feel this coming and it’s overwhelming. I’m torn between terror and anticipation. I’m so tense I could burst. My tension is so palpable it infects other people. [Oh it’s fun to watch them run.] I live a very chaptered life and am very good at shutting shop and moving on. Chapter, time, place closed and over with occasional visits in the form of, sometimes physical, nostalgia. I usually don’t miss what I leave - the situations, I hasten to add, not the people. I do not wish to portray myself as entirely heartless. Not entirely heartless. I guess I’m saying that my life lacks a certain amount of flow. Things do not naturally lead from one to the other. I choose, quite consciously, to end things and start again. If I don’t, ah well, then this happens - the terrific build up, the crash, the rebuild when all is shit before me. I’m so lazy that this is often the best way to motivate me. Unfortunately, this last chapter has been built on shit. It was all I had to hand, you see, and I was tired, sick, and so very emotional. [Whine, whine, whine.] It could just be that I wasn’t really aiming very high and was too ready to compromise. Now I’m bored. Boredom is a dangerous and oddly unmotivated state for me. I can feel my brain atrophy but you don’t see me doing anything about it. Oh but the choices. I could, if I wanted, stay in this rut. It is my life and I don’t really have to do anything with it, despite the continuous nagging certain parties deem essential. I could, if I wanted, stay in the same job, doing the same shit for the next decade or so. That’s the easy option really. I’m pretty bad at the easy option as well. Whenever I cop out, I cop out. Nothing goes right and I have to do over. Somewhere, somehow, I have to come back and make right. Bloody irritating. It’s so definitely time to move on.
The problem, in part I’m sure, is the 27 year itch. Don’t all the greats die at 27, if not sooner? Live hard, die young, beautiful corpse and all that. The 27 is approaching and I have little to show for it. A hell of a lot of debt which does little more than depress me. I certainly haven’t lived the way I’d intended. I’ve done almost nothing that I really want. Even what I have done seems rather shallow, pointless, and uninspired by comparison. One should never compare one’s self to other people. Oh but the need to compare is ever present… I feel entirely and totally trapped – trapped, I might add, by a level of materiality that I find abhorrent and unnecessary and yet is the stuff of day to day living. I am trapped by a banality that I fail to rise above, a banality that I sink deeper into every day. I am sinking ever deeper and am becoming increasingly contemptuous of myself and all that crosses my path. Trapped by contempt bought on by such a banal existence and the horror and dismay of trying to understand how this can be enough for others when it drives me to despair. I am absolutely horrified by the vanity that allows me to expect and demand something extra when this is enough for so many others.
There is more to this, I can feel it coming.