The Not Happy Thread

Sounds more like apathy.

 

Except that this state of bored-apathy irritates me. And is it really a pure state of apathy if I care about being apathetic?

 

If you're agitated in regards to your apathy, then I don't know what to call your state of mind as a whole. I think you could consider it in regards to specific situations. Are you apathetic about a specific task, and agitated in a more general sense?

 

Think of it this way.

You open the cupboard. There's lots of things in there. Buuut, nothing sounds good.

You go to the fridge. Nothing appetizing there either, although yesterday you might have felt completely differently.

You go to the store. Yet, nothing really interests you. So you head home.

You lay down. Look at your phone for a bit. Then you go check the cupboards and the fridge again, just in case you switched timelines. Alas, you did not, no matter how badly you wish that you could.

Now re-read this and metaphorically replace hunger with boredom.

This happens to me maybe once a week, maybe several times a week, maybe all week. I could work on my WIP just like I could learn to cook, but nah. I could play video games just like I could eat a bunch of bullshit junk-food, but nothing sounds good right now.

And eventually I force myself to do things like going to work a few times a week, but that's no different than eventually eating something because otherwise I would starve to death. It obfuscates the issue, merely pushing it back another 24 hours. And you wonder if maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just not eat ever again.

I've been told that I'm depressed because the entire world often feels like the cupboard and the fridge. My entire life, even.

The question is, what am I hungry for? I don't know, so I go on starving. The prospect of starving for the rest of my life in a kitchen full of food doesn't sound particularly inviting.

I don't understand why my WIPs are constantly on my mind, and why I even have a creative urge, if I can't be assed to do anything with it 90% of the time.

Similarly, I do not know why I need to eat to go on living, if I never want to make any food in the first place. Seems like a bug, not a feature.

The world is but a jam experiment. Buy our product; it's the best, even though that's what everybody else says. Check out this video. Watch this livestream. 300 hours of new YouTube content every single day. Listen to this new album. Find time for your 20 friends. Salvage some for your 20 family. Your job bought some of your life too by the way, and don't forget to have some leftover for sleep. Here's 6 different video games you could play, and look, it's summer, ten-thousand new ones are on sale and a few of them even look like they might be good. Oh, you must live under a rock if you haven't been following the three hurricanes, the global pandemic, who married who, the upcoming presidential election, and the rest of the news cycle that happened in the past 24 hours, which can be found in just a few places, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, word-of-mouth, and on TV. Speaking of TV, have you watched all 8 seasons of Game of Thrones, the new Rick and Morty, The Witcher, and Black Mirror?

I. Don't. Fucking. Care. So, time to close the cupboard and the fridge and go lay down to die until my survival instinct kicks in and I am temporarily taken-over by biological code until I can be trusted to my own devices again. Half the time it seems like that's the only thing still functioning. That and the inflatable things inside the dick that make it erect.

But it's a rather hellish existence, being alive but not living. So you strangely come to wish that your Biological Survival Instinct . exe would crash.

 

Is it ennui? My brother suffers from it too. If you are married you can push buttons of your spouse. That enliven me up!

 

Lol. No word feels as if it fully captures it, but ennui is one of the closest, and might've saved me from writing that essay above.

 

It sounds like what I call an aversion. Sometimes I just can't make myself draw for months. I think it's in those periods when I don't have a particular idea or project that spurs any interest and I'm just trying to force myself to do exercises.

It's more than apathy, it's an active turning-away or pushing-away, like if I try to force it I get agitated.

 

I know that feeling. Listlessness is what I use to describe it to myself.

 

Agitapathy.

 

I can say amen to that.

 

I am an atheist. I am going to die one day. I hope it is painless but whatever. Death is not just about the physical body though. I have hopes and dreams and I wish to see them materialize in reality. I am determined to work for them, see them take shape, and succeed or fail in the process. If I die sooner than I accomplish what I have set out to achieve then I will be deeply disappointed at the moment of my death. Death matters. And not just because we are on a clock. It is something bigger than that. You cannot just rationalize death and do away with the fear and a 100 other concerns associated with it. Death matters as much as life does. It cannot be as depersonalized as you say. Religion/god is not the only thing that makes death personal.

 

That would only bother you before death, not when you're dead. So that would come under the heading of the pain and suffering leading up to it.

For an atheist, death is absolutely depersonalizing, in the sense that you are no longer a person. You're dead. There is no you anymore to care about or fear anything. I say again, the suffering, fear etc is for the living, not for the dead. They suffer nothing, they feel nothing. If you believe otherwise, then you might want to reconsider calling yourself an atheist.

 

I think you are confusing a nihilist for an atheist. My works will continue to exist beyond me. There is nothing religious about my works, you can trust me on that. Believing in that legacy, believing that my works will bring comfort, joy and inspiration to people beyond my death has nothing to do with believing in a deity. An atheist can still believe in magic in the universe. There is no need for a god for that.

And who knows if there is time travel or eternal recurrence? What happens to death in that case? You die and then experience it all over again, and again, and again and again, over and over. Would you still call that only pain and suffering? Or would you transcend it? And what if you try and fail to transcend. Would that pain and suffering be the same as pain and suffering before you tried and failed?

The experience of writing has been like an experience of life and death for me these past few weeks. What happens prior to death is sufficiently powerful for all my concerns. I do not even want to approach the moment of death. Even the vicinity of it is invigorating. How you can talk about death in this depersonalized manner is beyond me. Maybe you are fervently religious. I don't want to offend your beliefs in case you are. The vicinity of death interests me. Death itself is too great for me to address it.

 

What I meant when I said 'an atheist' is someone who subscribes to the common materialist scientific belief that when a person dies their consciousness simply ceases to exist. By definition that means the dead person can't suffer after dying. If you believe a person can suffer after they're dead, then you aren't a true materialist. Also, you seem to be conflating what I said for my own beliefs. I said nothing about my beliefs and they're not on the table for discussion. I spoke only about a particular belief system. Please don't mistake a comment I made on a message board for anything more meaningful than it was. It was admittedly a stupid comment.

 

I think it's good to indulge in 'lazyness' or procrastination sometimes. I am a believer that in these times of 'nothingness' eventually a new purpose or drive will emerge. It's a sign that the way we have been doing things before wasn't right.

I write in my diary every day, but besides that I don't force myself to do anything. I just wait until some compulsion comes strongly enough to get me to do something. If it doesn't, I accept I just don't want to do it enough and that's that.

There is a book called 'the war of art' about how we have to overcome psychological resistance, and I think there is a lot of truth in that. However, there is usually something going on in times when we are not actively working on anything that has benefits when we find a project that inspires us. Try to do nothing and follow a natural inclination rather than force yourself to work on something just for the sake of it.

I think now times are just so damn weird though. The present discomfort is bad mixed in with this utter hopelessness for the future and this gnawing suspicion that our entire generation is being manipulated and is just utterly fucked, which should be inspiring but it's all so damn muddled now I think there might not be a way out for a few generations. Yeah. Optimistic.

 

Follow the money.

 

Coworker: so like, do you go out to bars and stuff?
Me: like now or in general.
Coworker: in general.
Me: no. I mean i WOULD if -this is going to sound pathetic - i had any friends. Ive lived here for 3 years and have not made a friend outside of work.
Coworker:............

...why is making friends as an adult so hard.....

 

Besides all of that (yes making friends outside of work is difficult,
though if you join a group or meetup (not work related) it is a bit
easier, but not much),drinking at home is safer and cheaper in the
long run.
Besides weirdos hang out at bars.

 

Im not so bold

 

That is cute, you think I have a basement.
Also I wear reg. Tee shirt and jeans just like
everybody else.

 

I'd ask you out, to go to a bar and drink ourselves silly, just because of the honesty. I'd be intrigued, really. Honesty works both ways. Why don't you make the first move though? See what reactions you'll create. Plant a seed.