Which is Broken?

When I first started to grapple with the drop-out existence or the business existence or shut-in existence or cross-country existence and what it could bring, I used to think a lot about what was wrong. I’d think about it so much and write about it too that I got so sick of it and made an effort to never think about it if I can.

But I remember walking around all the apartments I’d live in, and of course I was too rigid in my belief that no one else would want to be bothered — or that, deep down, there’s nothing to bother about if you fan enough through your inner phrasebook — and instead I’d walk to the local convenience store, browse around, buy nothing most of the time. It was a real pleasure, because it was a break from tomorrow. On the way there so some of the tenants were gracious enough to let their porch light decorations glow deep into the night, and some of the complexes had their own string of lights for certain facilities, certain places of ceremony that I’d never attend out of a self-sabotage conclusion that I won’t be here in another year anyway. It didn’t help I was always right.

Sometimes the convenience stores or gas stations had these nice granola bars or some “protein” cookies and out of a vague sense that maybe it wouldn’t make me feel too bad, so I’d at least buy those. Whether it was 11p.m. or 2a.m., but the later walks did feel sketchier depending, and I did have someone come up to me asking if I had any cocaine, or the cars driving by sometimes I’d wonder and wait for when they’d roll down their window and interrogate me since no one is out at 2a.m. other than druggies. In a way I was in my own high already walking around, something from a sleep deprivation or a feeling you were noclipping out of your typical existence. But the sunrise always comes.

After awhile I stopped asking what was wrong. It was better to approach things as “this is how it should be” because of course it is. If you do what you did you get what you got, and for the most part I let everything incinerate right behind me as I trekked onward. As of today, if it was anything different, I think it’d be weird and contrary to how reality works.

When you stop asking, things become pretty simple. You do what you feel you have to, and then you let the day wash over you, and maybe you get enough time to write something somewhere, but you take relief in the fact nothing material would fix anything anyway. It works, it works, and it’s comfortable, even if it means you are no longer a part of society, or you’re letting parts of things rotting.

Some days, like today, so I accidentally ask why is it like this again, or if I should be seeking a solution. Because most of the time it does feel vaguely right to me. Yet sometimes, on occasion, I browse three subreddits, and one of them is nosurf, and one suggested to create an accountability group, even if I find the whole nosurf thing something a little tongue-in-cheek I entertain, the same as the luddites, or the innocent unknowingly stumbling into the ascetic, vastly underestimating the effort required to be the disconnected. It’s an interesting question of our time, seeing as everyone is an internet addict, but nevertheless, I sometimes surf this place, and I see this suggestion, and a flush of dread comes right after.

Why? Why would one dread interacting? Probably because it feels so absurd and it’s been so long that I’d entertain such things; it’s foreign. Nevertheless, in my certainty of how the world works and everything else seems delusional, nevertheless when I start asking why it is like this, I have to ask: which is broken? Am I the one that’s broken, or is something out there broken? Which is it?

I don’t feel broken, and I’m sure you don’t either. Some would assuage and say that anyone would dread having messages from essential strangers; but I also dread any instant messages. Maybe you log onto your computer with the comfort that your instant messages are waiting, emails or snap streaks or whatever else; I do not have any notifications because it gives too much anxiety and dread and a little anger because it’s all a role play and these people are not real nor in your life and yet they take your time while living a separate reality. The beauty, at least here, is that I can leave for a month and it’s fine.

And the reason I find it so preferable to not think about these things is because I would rather wonder what to do and there’s not that much you can do with other people so I don’t like thinking about it. But sometimes I will admit, well, how else do you think they made cathedrals? It took hundreds of years and passed through the communities and it was a team effort so I wonder, well, I guess the more amusing and beautiful things are made through a team effort, though maybe the bonds are so frayed that such things are impossible to contemplate.

Anyway, one could say there’s no prize for being adjusted to an ill society, but I imagine you could carve your own world in the larger scheme. You aren’t this thing stuck here and you have to let everything happen to you and you can’t do anything. No, you can change things. You do influence the world and you’re here so what are you waiting for? Neocities did not exist ~13 years ago, what are you waiting for? Even though whether neocities actually improves anything or did something I don’t know, but that’s another topic entirely.

But I don’t know what to do: I always find the answer to ignore it mostly. Sometimes I dream up project ideas but then I start also building this extreme self-hatred about it because inevitably I am reminded that, well, part of the problems one could hope to “solve” can’t be solved through more technology, and eventually one would have to come to terms with the inertness of just existing amongst others and why are you thinking about these things when you fundamentally disagree on any aspect beyond that inertness anyway, especially the mirage online could be? When you fundamentally disagree that there’s no software product that could really alleviate it much of anything — if anything, accelerate the desperate odor of the productivity gurus. I’m getting nauseous and feeling stupid thinking about it. That even now there are many sites on here that offer an email to extend a conversation, but it just seems like an unfathomable possibility that an email could be anything other than a distraction, which I guess slots me as something bitter and unfun and whatever. I am so disillusioned from online correspondence in any long capacity, or connection writ large if you do not have a clear economic contract. I feel like I have it all figured out, but what is this nagging feeling?

I don’t crave connection, because connection is as vague as God. Well, honestly, in my humble opinion, those who say they crave connection probably want something divine, but what do I know, though I would at least remark no other person will probably make you feel that much better. In any case, I know I will still feel the same malaise if we share a fire pit for an evening. Whether because we’re all mostly consumers in the global market, or because nothing in this world sates and the conversations feel mostly the same, I don’t know, but the fact is, I am objectively failing on some level by avoiding all of this and ignoring it and doing more work or reading. Yet it’s hard to see the upsides to the alternatives.

It’s so easy to feel content on one’s own, but something happens and then these questions come. Everything is so wonderful when you stop thinking about these things, but then you’re reminded and then I feel a little self-conscious about how bitter it could all seem, but it’s only bitter as long as we’re discussing a “solution” to what seems to be a “problem” in this… world of broken communities. But honestly, it feels like communities were always broken, and now you can excuse yourself. But still.

For example, of course today, so I finished watching a YouTube video of an elderly Hong Kong woman without family or friends surviving the last of her days in New York. She was content, and I won’t pity anything about it, especially because I’ll be the same most likely. But a deep primordial feeling I find is that there’s something extremely broken here. And I’m not sure what it is.

We could talk more about it, but then I start feeling so self aware and cringe about it too; I don’t agree with any gooey emotions left. It just strikes me as aesthetically unpleasing, fundamentally wrong the same as any other vice. And yet one can only dread the alternatives.

So sometimes I stare at this screen and dream up ways to “fix” this or “change” things or just do anything even slightly more amusing than being another consumer or neurotic poster, even though I don’t have the faintest clue as to how, and you’ll invest some of your time and you just feel like a shmuck that you aren’t selling more things or retiring to a monastery, that you could ever consider anything other than those two activities to be anything else other than a waste of time.

I look at these broken things, and I come to the same conclusions: I cannot fix them, or myself, but I can at least learn to live with it and take solace in the fact that, again, connection is just another vague term people use to explain their malaise when their malaise really stems from their persona and their constant thought process.

And when you stop thinking about these things that you can’t solve, well, at least you can start thinking about more businesses. It is in this vein that one could feel justified in creating a neocities alternative: not because I believe in anything, but precisely because I believe in nothing, and others can take it and put beliefs in it, the same as the many starry-eyed Y2K enthusiasts fashioning neocities as some sort of mecca for such things, which could be derived from its name as a homage to geocities and yet it grew on its own, I would argue.

In any case, I get bothered sometimes because I have the wherewithal to do things and create things and perhaps make the world a better place vaguely and as best as I can but the inability to believe my projects will make a difference, other than lining my pockets. But I guess that’s good enough.