There's something outside my window...
Jul. 6th, 2001 04:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsy...and it's called the world.
For so long I have ignored it, and at times renounced it, but it's always been there. Here and there I become aware of it, but in the end I simply turn my head and go back to whatever I was doing. For what brought this bit of inspiration on, I don't know. But it's there, so I might as well roll with it, however late it gets.
So far, I've been without work for almost three months. Three months! It's not easy to start looking now, especially during the peak of summer, when I'd rather be outside doing stuff than looking for ways to kill 8 to 10 hours a day inside a stuffy building with no windows and a crappy radio system that's pumping out some nasty, overplayed trash. If I can get a job someplace that gives me a window and a CD player, that would be simply dandy. Of course, the pay has to be right. It wouldn't make sense for me to take a job that pays less than the unemployment does. But after what I used to do, those two would be nice pluses. Is there anything wrong with wanting fresh air? Sunlight? Y'know, there's something wrong when I would go to work in the morning, and the sun hasn't come up yet, and when I leave, it's already gone down, and in between I spend all that time in a room, bricked on all sides, with stagnant recycled air around me, complete with dust particles containing some sort of chemical that would likely give any potential offspring of mine some horrible, unspeakable deformity, if they live at all. Imagine hearing "Sir, we're not sure if you have twins or triplets..." Perhaps I'm being paranoid. Bleh.
Other than that... It's been kinda slim pickings in life in general. There's a lot that I worry about and probably shouldn't, and stuff that I don't worry about but should. Yeah, I'm concerned about work. Do I panic about it? Nah, because it's not time to panic. I save that for the last minute, which is all I need to begin with. Do I worry about whatever may pass for my social life? Not really. I have friends, which is all I feel I need nowadays. Someone to hang out with at parties and generally fun times.
Once upon a time, I wanted to share my life with someone special. To think that I actually wanted that! Was that wrong? Perhaps back then, no. But now the idea feels weird. To have someone providing anything for me, be it food, money, or even deep emotional support, is an alien feeling to me. I've gotten so used to providing for myself. Yeah, even though I still live at home, I'm doing a lot more for myself than I used to. Things like home cooked meals and laundry, that's stuff I'm accustomed to. It's the things like kindness and compassion, the kind of thing called "love" of the romantic sort, which trips me up. Not the kind of love one would get from family, but the other, more personal kind. In my more imaginative moments, I've wondered what would happen if someone confessed to even liking me. But it's never happened, and the odds of it actually happening are slim to none. How would I handle that? Would I be able to sustain it? Returning emotion is something I'm not mentally prepared to do. So perhaps I'm not ready for that at all, like I thought I once was years ago. Then again, if the odds of it happening are so low, what's the point in preparing at all? To expect something like that only invites pain. It just goes to show how much I'm both an adult and a child. All I do is what I feel like doing for myself, without any limitations. Simply enjoying the freedom I have now. To be free from sickness, one must be sick of their sickness. So I ceased the yearnings, and have thusly ceased the pain.
I look around me, slowly taking in the whole, as though I'm trying to read Engrish. Yes, Engrish. It's the term for what comes out when someone Japanese is trying to speak English. Nonsensical on the surface, but there's meaning in there. It makes me wonder, what have I been doing? Is it for the best? If I have the time to ask myself this, then what? Questions abound. But whether or not I find those answers, is something I may or may not find out. Sometimes I find an answer to an unlikely but nevertheless important question, and when I do, it's something that is profound and changes the way I see everything. But many times I only think I have an answer, something that gets later proven wrong, setting me back to start. It's as though I'm looking for something rare and mythical, and when I think I've found it, I hold it in my hands like the precious speck of light that it is, only to watch it fade to nothing, leaving me only with what I started with. Then the only thing I can do is keep looking.
Tomorrow I'm going to go. Dunno where. Maybe just out for a walk, or the weekend. I just need to go, to get out of the house. I've always found road trips to be relaxing, especially if there is no destination to mind. Just getting as far as I can, and going back only if I see fit. What am I running from? Who knows. I just want to feel the air flow by me, the road unfold in front of me, and see new and strange places. Shortly after my layoff, I wanted to go somewhere, so I did. I just drove down the road in the middle of the night, stopping at various truck stops, and saw people. All sorts of people. Many of them truckers, who were just on the job. But there were also the people that were going someplace for other reasons. Visiting friends and family, or to find a new home, for many of them it was a rare occurence to pass by that point. I would think of that whenever I was driving to work, along the roads I've been on thousands of times, to the point where I could theoretically drive it blindfolded. Yet for someone that I passed by, it was for once in a lifetime. Thinking back to one of my trips to Project Akon, with the odds of me ever driving back there, that would have been just a once in a lifetime event. I drove back home with both sadness and joy, knowing I would possibly never return there for that reason, but I had been with friends I care for. But then, the fact that I might never be there again made that trip all the more special. Is it any big deal for me to drive the same road I used to go to work on? Not anymore. But for somewhere new and rare, it's all unexplored territory. Something to be discovered. That's what I seek on road trips. Someplace new and exciting, but with a familiar home to return to. That's what was beautiful about my first Great Southern Road Trip. It was all new, a week of going nowhere, but if I had to, I could have been back home within a day. Something like that reminds me that this world isn't as small as it feels like it's getting. Even within an hour's travel, there's so much to be found. People that are complete strangers, and yet neighbors at the same time. Places of wonder while undiscovered, may very well be within walking distance. Things I've been looking far and wide for could be in the store just down the street.
And to think, all I have to do to find this world is to simply go outside.
For so long I have ignored it, and at times renounced it, but it's always been there. Here and there I become aware of it, but in the end I simply turn my head and go back to whatever I was doing. For what brought this bit of inspiration on, I don't know. But it's there, so I might as well roll with it, however late it gets.
So far, I've been without work for almost three months. Three months! It's not easy to start looking now, especially during the peak of summer, when I'd rather be outside doing stuff than looking for ways to kill 8 to 10 hours a day inside a stuffy building with no windows and a crappy radio system that's pumping out some nasty, overplayed trash. If I can get a job someplace that gives me a window and a CD player, that would be simply dandy. Of course, the pay has to be right. It wouldn't make sense for me to take a job that pays less than the unemployment does. But after what I used to do, those two would be nice pluses. Is there anything wrong with wanting fresh air? Sunlight? Y'know, there's something wrong when I would go to work in the morning, and the sun hasn't come up yet, and when I leave, it's already gone down, and in between I spend all that time in a room, bricked on all sides, with stagnant recycled air around me, complete with dust particles containing some sort of chemical that would likely give any potential offspring of mine some horrible, unspeakable deformity, if they live at all. Imagine hearing "Sir, we're not sure if you have twins or triplets..." Perhaps I'm being paranoid. Bleh.
Other than that... It's been kinda slim pickings in life in general. There's a lot that I worry about and probably shouldn't, and stuff that I don't worry about but should. Yeah, I'm concerned about work. Do I panic about it? Nah, because it's not time to panic. I save that for the last minute, which is all I need to begin with. Do I worry about whatever may pass for my social life? Not really. I have friends, which is all I feel I need nowadays. Someone to hang out with at parties and generally fun times.
Once upon a time, I wanted to share my life with someone special. To think that I actually wanted that! Was that wrong? Perhaps back then, no. But now the idea feels weird. To have someone providing anything for me, be it food, money, or even deep emotional support, is an alien feeling to me. I've gotten so used to providing for myself. Yeah, even though I still live at home, I'm doing a lot more for myself than I used to. Things like home cooked meals and laundry, that's stuff I'm accustomed to. It's the things like kindness and compassion, the kind of thing called "love" of the romantic sort, which trips me up. Not the kind of love one would get from family, but the other, more personal kind. In my more imaginative moments, I've wondered what would happen if someone confessed to even liking me. But it's never happened, and the odds of it actually happening are slim to none. How would I handle that? Would I be able to sustain it? Returning emotion is something I'm not mentally prepared to do. So perhaps I'm not ready for that at all, like I thought I once was years ago. Then again, if the odds of it happening are so low, what's the point in preparing at all? To expect something like that only invites pain. It just goes to show how much I'm both an adult and a child. All I do is what I feel like doing for myself, without any limitations. Simply enjoying the freedom I have now. To be free from sickness, one must be sick of their sickness. So I ceased the yearnings, and have thusly ceased the pain.
I look around me, slowly taking in the whole, as though I'm trying to read Engrish. Yes, Engrish. It's the term for what comes out when someone Japanese is trying to speak English. Nonsensical on the surface, but there's meaning in there. It makes me wonder, what have I been doing? Is it for the best? If I have the time to ask myself this, then what? Questions abound. But whether or not I find those answers, is something I may or may not find out. Sometimes I find an answer to an unlikely but nevertheless important question, and when I do, it's something that is profound and changes the way I see everything. But many times I only think I have an answer, something that gets later proven wrong, setting me back to start. It's as though I'm looking for something rare and mythical, and when I think I've found it, I hold it in my hands like the precious speck of light that it is, only to watch it fade to nothing, leaving me only with what I started with. Then the only thing I can do is keep looking.
Tomorrow I'm going to go. Dunno where. Maybe just out for a walk, or the weekend. I just need to go, to get out of the house. I've always found road trips to be relaxing, especially if there is no destination to mind. Just getting as far as I can, and going back only if I see fit. What am I running from? Who knows. I just want to feel the air flow by me, the road unfold in front of me, and see new and strange places. Shortly after my layoff, I wanted to go somewhere, so I did. I just drove down the road in the middle of the night, stopping at various truck stops, and saw people. All sorts of people. Many of them truckers, who were just on the job. But there were also the people that were going someplace for other reasons. Visiting friends and family, or to find a new home, for many of them it was a rare occurence to pass by that point. I would think of that whenever I was driving to work, along the roads I've been on thousands of times, to the point where I could theoretically drive it blindfolded. Yet for someone that I passed by, it was for once in a lifetime. Thinking back to one of my trips to Project Akon, with the odds of me ever driving back there, that would have been just a once in a lifetime event. I drove back home with both sadness and joy, knowing I would possibly never return there for that reason, but I had been with friends I care for. But then, the fact that I might never be there again made that trip all the more special. Is it any big deal for me to drive the same road I used to go to work on? Not anymore. But for somewhere new and rare, it's all unexplored territory. Something to be discovered. That's what I seek on road trips. Someplace new and exciting, but with a familiar home to return to. That's what was beautiful about my first Great Southern Road Trip. It was all new, a week of going nowhere, but if I had to, I could have been back home within a day. Something like that reminds me that this world isn't as small as it feels like it's getting. Even within an hour's travel, there's so much to be found. People that are complete strangers, and yet neighbors at the same time. Places of wonder while undiscovered, may very well be within walking distance. Things I've been looking far and wide for could be in the store just down the street.
And to think, all I have to do to find this world is to simply go outside.
