Man's Search For Meaning

A little more than 9 months ago, I took up a job. It was nice and safe, and relatively comfortable: in line with what I studied in University (which was mostly a waste of time - I was unprepared for University life, I don't enjoy programming, and I didn't learn much that was useful in life; yes, I should've just taken a bloody year off and travelled, but the mindset I inherited then didn't permit myself such a 'luxury'), pays well, and is very near my own home.

I took it up because I was sick of being broke. I took it up because I was sick of my mother pressuring me to follow the herd. I took it up because I wanted the worry of my financial quagmire off of my dying father's shoulders.

Now, not even a year later, I realise what a cost I have paid. Re-realised, really, as I realised it some years back working at Prudential Services Asia. I have sold my soul at slightly above RM20 an hour. And that's even before the cunts at BN take my money to fund their lifestyles and spout shit from their mouths. Before defenestrating people and/or blowing them up with C4.

So 9-10 hours a day I'm doing busy-work: chasing people for work that's poorly defined, creating systems that get changed a month later, updating documents that become irrelevant that month later, struggling to understand those poor definitions, fighting for sense and meaning. After that it's too dark to walk my dog, I'm too drained to do much else.

Weekends, the little time I have to myself, I try to keep my room and my mind uncluttered. After that it's running around trying to maintain some semblance of living - chores, meeting with friends, loving people. Semi-regularly, it's back to the office.

I hate myself for being so weak, so unflexible, so fat, so unhealthy. And so, I spend money to make myself feel better, thus fully closing the trap. Stuck in a place I can't get out of, and I no longer have the heart to. I no longer have the heart to consider driving at 120km off of a flyover, or banging my head or my fist into something hard to feel that pain, or going skydiving without a parachute.

I recently dreamt that I was cycling on the wrong side of a highway to a very distant place, and how accurate that is. What the fuck am I doing with my life?

Right. Rant over. Long overdue update to the blog, but so little has been going on in my life that that's all I can say. It's just work and keeping up with the fucked up politics in the country run by goddamn cunts.

Is there a point...

... if it's never good enough?

... if you can never get it right?

... if your best efforts are seen as the complete opposite?

... if who you are is just a waste of space?

... if you're a fuck up?

... to any of it, at all?

Hopelessness and Resignation

[composed on my PDA-phone at 1.30am, 1st Nov 2007]

It is 1.30am and we're running Scene 3, possibly the most rehearsed scene in the play. I am resigned to the possibility that we will run past 3am today, with a ridiculous call time tomorrow morning.

What is the point? We started with a 9am call time and ended up properly rehearsing at 11.30am. We've been in this god-forsaken hall since NINE A.M. with 1 hour 45 minutes break for lunch and dinner. In total. There has been no structure to the day, with the singular exception of ONE full technical run. That creates an environment of tension, where your best is required the instant your scene is on but you don't know when that is.

What is the point? Will we remember all these changes tomorrow? Will we be yelled at again tomorrow? Will we stay in robust health at the end of the week? Will we stay injury-free at the end of the week?

What is the point? Will we start 2 hours AFTER call time again tomorrow? Will we have an insufficient break again tomorrow?

What is the point? The insults. The rudeness. The unreasonableness.

So many tears. So much frustration. So much negative emotion, pent-up, bottled. Is it all necessary?


What is the point??

Abyss

I've spent the last half-hour attempting to wrestle the right word out of my brain-dead head, and the best I could settle for was "Abyss". There's a beautiful, succinct and pithy word that means "nothingness" and bloody hell that's exactly what I got when I tried to remember it.

I don't know why I'm so compelled to blog this entry. I am stuck in some kind of purgatory: my brain's barely working, my eyes don't wanna stay open, my shoulders and back ache. I'm not feeling anything.

I don't want to sleep. I don't want to do anything: read, surf, play a game, look for porn, listen to music, watch a movie, study my fish (that's literally a fish, not an obtuse reference to my private part), whatever. I want to have a smoke but I'm not letting me.

So somehow, blogging it is. And as much as I'd love to transcribe all the above in some eloquent, sexy, ass-kicking poem, man none of my systems have any hope of accomplishing it.


What a strange state it is. I'm tired, possibly exhausted; and yet I don't want to sleep. Mind you, this isn't the first time I've been here - but it's been a long time since the last one. I've had a lousy day - Randy Gage was so spot on when he spoke about putting positive inputs into the system and how negative inputs just fuck you up, and I started the day with one super-negative conversation. I couldn't get that conversation out of my head the whole day. So, for some reason I don't want a blah day to end.

Maybe I'm scared. Today's the day I felt the least certain about my current path all year. Maybe I'm scared that if I go to sleep with this feeling, it'll grow overnight into some giant kudzu that'll swamp my mind body soul and I'll end up as some wannabe-consultant at Accenture or something. Heh no offense dudes, but as time passes by I lose more and more of the awe and reverence I used to have for your company and think less and less of working there. Be a "Resource" that the company shuffles around to satisfy the whims and fancies of its clients. Yikes. Fuck me lord but I pray to make so fucking much money that I never need to contemplate such blasphemy to my soul ever again.

And that's the truth, isn't it. I'm scared shitless. An eighth into the year and I'm having doubts. Every day passes so slowly with so much to be done, but the days are passing by so quickly that I sometimes wonder what I'm doing. The Year of the Roasted Pig is almost here and I don't know where my fucking afflictions are! Save me Ah Too!!


Just thought of the word I've been looking for: nadir. It appears NOT to mean "nothingness", but "the lowest point; point of greatest adversity or despair." Scary shit man, that's exactly it. The soul has a way of communicating what it needs to. Or some funky shit like that.

Another side-note: isn't that picture fucking gorgeous?!? Chanced upon it looking for "abyss" images. It's a bloody jellyfish in an aquarium, believe it or not. I have to go diving again.


Yes. Steel my soul. Sharpen the sword called Belief. Burnish the shield called Perseverance. Ride the stallion called Destiny.

But ultimately have faith. In me.




I ask myself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous and fucking rich?

Actually, who are you not to be motherfucker?!?