an effortful existence
the sisyphean struggle of faking it
Lately, I’ve been feeling the urge to say things aren’t working. I can’t avoid the pervasive feeling that I’m faking it, and not faking it well. Instinctual passivity is comforting. Comfortable. ‘I’m not excited anymore, so I’ll move on to the next thing.’ The sheen and glow of my new toy has worn off, I’ll chuck it into the bin, pawn it off to someone else. I’m not super into the whole wabi-sabi thing, but I’d like to be the kind of romantic person who believes there’s beauty and uniqueness and nostalgia and comfort in aged things; in wear and tear. My grandmother would often tell me, that like her, I had a penchant for nice things. Maybe I just like new things, rather than nice things.
I fear the same truth exists in my interpersonal relationships too. Is it alright that I don’t really have any childhood friends? Is that proof of society’s atomization, or my incompatibility with my quintessential upper-middle-class suburban upbringing? Or rather is this itch to flee and give up something more sinister? Am I possessed by my laziness, my antisocial qualities, and my indifference to humanity? Is it normal? Depressing? Something we all do?
I look back at a life unfinished. Possessing a life full of all the times I picked something up, attempting to cultivate an identity, a sense of self, that was interesting, alluring, engaging, intellectual, and impressive. I’m up to my knees in half-assed hobbies, crafts, attempts at art. The persistent feeling that I am but a paper máché version of an interesting person haunts me, thickly infecting the back of my spine. I look back at an overflowing handful of things that ‘just didn’t work for me,’ and I’m starting to realize maybe I just wouldn’t work for it.
I’m no longer a student and no longer a teacher, just an adult with no structure, no due dates, no deadlines. So, why bother to learn at all? If it’s not easy, it’s not inherent, then it must not be the real me. The gruel and dread and grit of research and writing can no longer be validated by a grade-book entry or an encouraging comment on Canvas. Instead, I could slip into becoming an undeveloped adult, an overwatered teenager. Addicted to dopamine and scrolling and ordering conveniently delivered food and goods and working a desk job I don’t really care about, finishing the night with a streaming conglomerate sponsored TV show, telling my friends “I mean, it’s not great per se, but it’s something to watch!”
But god, that’s so lame, isn’t it? Being a young adult, an adolescent, I resented that so-called grown-ups had ‘bought in,’ to a monotonous life. No hobbies, just undeveloped. How boring! An unavoidable wince infects my face when upon hearing, “I haven’t read a book outside of school since I was like, a kid.” That sort of resignation is infectious, though not inevitable. A modern psalm (a tweet), which has sort of become a grounding phrase to myself, a thought exercise, a mantra, reminds me,
“If you were only interesting ages 18-23 you were never that interesting in the first place.”
I want to try and find something to say, to stay interesting, stay creating, stay writing, get better, improve, engage in that sort of self-help bullshit. Even if it feels like faking it. I don’t want my artistic or intellectual pursuits to become phases or temporary obsessions. Yearning to reach for a simple quick fix to spite myself, deep down I know that my time on Earth is too long and too agonizing for momentary satisfaction to bring me anywhere worth going. I’ll need to stay put, feel it, work through it in order to get closer to accomplishing the Sisyphean task of becoming a real person. A good friend told me recently, “I fear it is a very effortful existence.” Jaw and temples aching from a prolonged and unnoticed clenching of my facial muscles, staring into my MacBook, I desperately try to weave together flowery and ornate—yet also substantial—sentences onto a tapestry of LCDs and OLEDs.
There is an iron ball in my gut, shifting and rolling around knowing it’s time to move on from ‘striking gold.’ Get over the idea of ‘capturing lightning in a bottle,’ and find a new metaphor. Now, I’ll say I’m ‘making diamonds from coal.’ That’s probably a more productive line of thinking, right? It’s probably what I need to hear right now, for sure. I need to resign, not to myself and not to laziness and 21st-century consumptive passivity. But to resign to the intrinsic truth that being myself, the best version of myself, whatever that means, is something I need to work for. Resign myself to the understanding that it feels better when you work for it. I’ll have to learn how to be frustrated, dissatisfied, how to try. How to start over, start again, start up. While I gaze into the abyss of the green eyed girl who inhabits my mirror, I scold her indolence, ‘doing anything is better than nothing.’