Monday, October 3, 2011

Motivation?

So I guess I've had writer's block recently. On a blog, of all things.

Lately -- well, for the past several months -- I've been feeling like my two options are either to talk about school -- boring -- or not blog at all -- more boring -- which leads me to wonder why, in some ways, this whole blogging thing was easier in 2009 when I first started. I suppose it wasn't easier, exactly; I put more effort in on a consistent basis and felt more like I had to prove myself, whereas now I'm in a bit of a state of complacency -- I think we all are -- where we know we probably should blog twice a week but if we don't, it's not a big deal, and it will start no feuds or total wars. But I feel that I certainly had more to talk about, in 2009, other than just repeating the same mantra: "I went to school, and everything sucks, and I'm going to sleep now, goodbye."

Maybe it's the addition of a crapton of stress. Maybe being a post-exams second semester senior is a ball of fun, but right now being a senior freaking sucks. It's not just that I have a crapton of work to do or that basically everyone in my school annoys me more and more with every passing day; it's that I have to seriously consider my future... and I don't know how this goes for most other students in my position, but I'm not satisfied with the whole "finish high school and go to college" deal. I've been undergoing some several-month-long crisis of self, of being, where I question not only what I want to do -- wholly undecided -- but why I should do anything at all, and why anyone does anything at all, and feeling like I have to attempt to fit myself into a box of "living in the moment" or "appreciating my time on Earth" or whatever it is that non-religious people tell themselves in order to add meaning to their pragmatically commonplace lives, only trying to live within those perimeters totally does not work for me.

Ahh. There I go again with the complaining. I should probably stop that.

Speaking of audiences, though, it's both a motivator and a -- an opposite-of-a-motivator to know that you will probably appreciate what I am saying to some small degree, even if I am just complaining about my life, because you know me and thus my complaining about my life is marginally more interesting than a total stranger complaining about their life. If another total stranger stumbled into this blog from elsewhere on the internet, would they find my posts very interesting? Probably not, at least not a good portion of them. To a rather large extent, perhaps more so as time goes by, I feel like this blog is a bit of a open letter-writing project between the three of us -- me, Alex, and Rena -- that anyone is welcome to read. On the one hand, it fosters a sort of cozy nook on the internet where I can say pretty much whatever I want, however I want, and somebody will listen and think about it. On the other hand, it provides a bit of a lax standard. Alex, you said that having a built-in (albeit tiny) audience inspires you to put in more effort. I feel that that I've reached the point where it's almost the opposite for me -- I don't feel the need to impress friends, I suppose. I don't say that in a disparaging way -- just that I know that you probably won't hate me if I piece together some bullet-pointed rant about my day and then leave without even checking for spelling. But while I do appreciate the close-knit atmosphere here (god, I sound so cheesy), I do feel bad about not holding myself to a higher standard. I don't feel awful if I miss a few days when I'm meant to post a blog, but I do feel bad when my blog post, once I get around to writing it, is nothing special, nothing worth waiting for. I'm going to change that.

1 comment:

Alex said...

There is such a wealth of things for me to comment on. I think the most important, though, is something a friend wrote to me which is that it's nice to hear about the challenges of other people's lives because it makes us feel alone in our own trials.

Which basically sums up exactly how I feel when I read your "school sucks, life sucks, what am I even doing?" type blogs. I feel like I'm not the only one who is lost and unsure. Obviously, our specific problems are different as I don't have school and homework and that but the existential question of what am I doing and what am I going to do and what's the point of doing anything? Yeah, I feel that, Vita, and when I read your blogs, it's so undeniably comforting.

So I guess I basically wanted to say that even the blogs you write that you don't think worthy of much thought brighten my day. You, my friend, brighten my very existence. And maybe that's the point of this whole human experiment. Maybe we just have to create things and connect with each other and make life better for everyone that we can. Thank you for making my life better, Vita and Rena. Thank you for making me feel exponentially less alone.