viewfromthecurb

I’m not big on people these days. We’re all caught up in our own little daily dramas. We all walk a different path. Not all of us feel the same way as you do. No all of us are happy.

I can’t think right now. Totally exhausted. I’m struggling to maintain consciousness.

Anger and violence permeates our culture. It’s something that we all (now) have to work to avoid. The previous societal norms tend to abhor any sort of violent response in any situation. This feeds the happy side of most people’s normally functioning brain. (…if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…)

Lately, people like this have struck me as a mile wide and an inch deep – the converse of the dark and angry side of society. The same, but opposite. Black versus white. Light versus dark.

People – not a fan.

Lately, I have been feeling more exhausted after dealing with clowns like this…more so than usual. It has me worried. I am very sleepy and sluggish…I am thinking I need to see my doctor…

That did NO GOOD whatsoever.

I’m becoming more and more lost as a travel through the outside world. It’s a much darker place than I remember. My attitude is running out of power, running out of light, running out of air, running out of hope…

I want to close my eyes and drift away.

I am alone in the world.

What will it take for all of this to fucking STOP?

Everyone needs to know that all of us might not make it to the top of the mountain.

Consumed by the fires of “civil” discourse.

I’m exhausted – it’s 8 a.m. on a Thursday.

It seems like it takes way more effort to get my brain functioning each day.

I have such dialogues going in my head – it is so frustrating that I can’t find peace in my own mind. I repeatedly question my own ability to withstand listening to any more inner diatribe, in all of it’s vitriol.

How has our society plummeted to such depths?

Forget it.

I don’t want to understand. I’m tired of putting up with it.

I want it FIXED.

Right NOW.

I can’t take much more of this bullshit.

It’s so bright outside

I can’t get excited about it

I have no feelings

No peace

I feel so tired

My energy is gone

Sadness permeates my being

I feel empty inside

only questions that will never be answered

Am I looking for something that never existed in the first place?

reaching for something – anything – to stop the slide into darkness

What do I want out of life?

Am I expecting too much?

Do I even know what I want?

Questions

Questions

Questions

Questions

Questions

I’M SICK OF THE DAMNED QUESTIONS!

I want peace…

…and light…

I’m afraid

I’m tired of the pain

I feel so alone

…here we go…hang on…

It’s difficult to think these days.

I mean real, focused, contemplative consideration of anything your mind creates.

The act of consideration of any thought for any significant length of time probably doesn’t exist any more – not with all of the distractions and background noise.

Is it only me? Am I the only one that senses this?

Questions that come up in our own minds are treated as itches that need scratched, rather than gateways to the evolution of an idea. Thanks to the immediate access we have to the collective knowledge base of the internet, and the growing societal need for immediate gratification, the act of contemplation is a lost function to the human mind.

That, and being able to carry on a face-to-face conversation with a fellow human being. (Don’t believe me? Look it up…)

Maybe – just maybe – that is why the quality of our ideas and creativity has dropped over the years…in my humble opinion.

The notion of our creativity being cold and lacking of human warmth is something I’ve taken more notice of.

50 years ago, we decided to go to the moon. We figured out how to do it, and we did it.

It was an idea that spread, a vision that was shared…a challenge that was accepted. The resulting effort that was created has been unmatched, even to this day. And I’m not confident that it will happen again.

Why, you ask?

Because, the fertility of thought has been involuntarily bred out of us, by the “connectivity” we’ve been led to believe is so great. Our minds have gotten lazy and out of shape, tempted by the mindless droning of a video screen under the guise of feeding us a seemingly endless flow of the world’s collective information as an antidote for any painful “questions” that you might be afflicted with.

Curiosity is on life support.

Am I the only one that feels this way???

Hello?

Is anyone listening…?

My mind is a noisy place

it’s hard to find a base of inner peace

there is so much that I want to do

so many thoughts fly through my mind with such depth and meaning

I have the strongest urge to stop the world so I can snatch one flying by

capturing it, if only for a brief time

to study it

to explore it

to investigate the gifts of insight and enlightenment it brings

to capture it’s essence

harvest it’s gems

and share those with the rest of humanity

all of that happening in the split second of the “now”

and I am saddened

to be caught up in the swift currents of daily life

dragged along

through all of life’s offerings

to the exclusion of my own spirit

it costs me a little of my soul each time

and I feel it deeply

the emptiness is painful

the loneliness tears at my heart

the darkness descends to envelope my world

a place I am all too familiar with

a life, if you can call it that

to exist is to feel the energy being drained out of me

I stop existing

I am grist for the wheel of life

all I can ask is…

“How do I make it stop?”

and my soul dies a little more.

Since I know nobody is reading this, I’m going to go a little “off the rails”…

This country is fucked.

Too many of the younger people are a large part of the reason I feel this way. Oh, some will surprise you with little demonstrations of “humanity” or “caring” or even “intelligence” – but that seems to more of the exception rather than the rule.

This participation-trophy generation lacks the basic brain chemistry to carry on a face-to-face conversation with another human being. They live in their own vacuum-packed world where they don’t have to deal with real emotions until they bite them in the ass. And then, all they can do is cry and wet themselves.

I know – I’m old. But when I see this demonstrated right in front of my face on a daily basis, it wears thin…real fast. Like now, where I had a young “colleague” tell me that one of the tasks I’ve been working on over the past month was “taking too long” and “dragging out” – when over that past month he’d been saying that it wasn’t a priority and we have plenty of time and kept pushing the due date out. When I reminded this idiot of that, all he could say is “sorry…my bad…” and walk away.

I have a lot on my plate – everyone knows that. But I would have finished this shit up three weeks ago if I’d have known about this kid’s secret schedule. But this is what I get, especially being the old guy in the group.

Maybe I’m trying to be too nice.  Maybe I have to be more of an asshole to get things done. This world will always be full of assholes and jerks – why not go over to the “dark side?” Who cares? Who gives a fuck?

The world is a polluted place.

Made worse by the complete lack of compassion.

I’ve run out of compassion. I’ve run out of a lot of things – heart, patience, understanding…you name it.

Human interaction is dead – killed by “social” media, instant messaging, texts and other digital curses. Nobody cares. Nobody feels. If you don’t fit their narrow little “reality,” there is always DELETE…

You don’t count any more. I don’t count any more.

People don’t count any more. Clicks count.

We’ve become superfluous.

And the next person that tells me to “stop taking things so personally,” or to “smile,” or to “relax,” I am going to punch them right in the face. To minimize my feelings that way is disrespectful and not the thing you want to do to me right now.

I’m sure nobody is reading this – I’ve stopped hoping months ago. I’ve stopped caring even before that. Because of the failure of our society to use one iota of intelligence in the rearing of a generation of children, we’ve likely fed the machine that will bring about the failure of our society as we knew it.

Maybe I’ll live to see it – maybe…

Who cares…

On this day before Independence Day, I find myself still questioning the Universe on a wide variety of topics. It frustrates me to no end that my mind seems to have all of the energy to fly in 100 different directions at once, and I can’t avoid the levels of pain that I must endure just to walk over and refill my coffee cup.

I know…I am making my own reality by bringing up (my wife might say “complaining about”) my health issues. Some might say that – on some level – by giving them voice, I am making them real,

Maybe so. But talk about being in this world all alone. Nobody wants to listen to anyone blather on about that.

But that’s an easy cop-out when you are not experiencing that level of pain. In this society, it is now the societal norm to “swipe left” on anything that upsets our delicate balance of our perceived life control.

Sympathy is dead.

Long live convenience.

We are all ceasing to be humans. Or, at the very least, losing our humanity at an alarming rate. Our society is devolving and we’re doing nothing about it. It has degraded from “We The People” to “We The Special Interest Group”…or, “We The Insulted”…or “We The Righteous”..and so on.

Humanity is no longer one. And – to me – that is extremely sad. On this 50th anniversary of the time when the world came together as one to witness and participate in the first journey of man to another celestial body, we can surely say that we have failed in our stewardship of this precious blue oasis.

Are we going to let ignorace and intolerance succeed? Time has almost run out.

What are you going to do? When will you draw the line and declare “NO MORE!”

What are you prepared to do?

What is it about life that makes us doubt ourselves?

My opinion: exhaustion.

It was hard to keep awake when I got home last night – very hard. It was equally as difficult to get up this morning. I’m finding less enthusiasm in my heart.

If there is ANYONE out there reading this, I am sorry…

• sorry for the state our country is in;
• sorry for the people we’ve become;
• sorry that I wasn’t able to have a positive impact on your life;
• sorry that people are suffering;
• sorry for not being there when you needed me;
• sorry for my outbursts of frustration;
• sorry for being in the way;
• sorry to dissappoint you;
• sorry that these posts are so dark and negative

We are all detached from regular and meaningful human interaction. (I suppose its hypocritical of me to say that while I’m “talking” to my blog page.) It’s clear that there is no way to rekindle a desire to interact with real human beings without a total revolution in the digital age. We’re all guilty of it, and I’ll take full responsibility for my part.

There is a question that asks “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” I have to ask ” If a person cries out in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does that make their pain any less?”

Peace.

I always say that dealing with life (for me) is like carrying a tray of marbles upstairs. The biggest challenge for me is not losing too many of them along the way.

So, understanding why my mood and emotions seem to look for ways to join the running dialog in my brain angers me. Well…makes me angry at myself, for not being able to control it. And that doesn’t even begin to include dealing with other people…

I was almost killed three times on the commute to work this morning. Twice, I was almost merged into by working vehicles (contractor’s van and a semi truck) because the drives were too stupid to check their mirrors, and once by a woman in a Mercedes SUV who – while merging on to I-5 – stabbed her brakes (causing me and two other vehicles behind her to swerve at the last second to keep from hitting her) because she just had to check that text message on her cell phone (she had it held up in front of her while she was driving – we all saw it as we swerved around her.) The last one was very, very close…

I was angry at the moment it happened, I used my horn, gave each driver a half of a peace symbol and some choice swearing and continued on my way to work. I was blessed to arrive unscathed and safe, but I started to wonder why it didn’t affect me as it might affect some people – racing pulse, shock, the jitters, fears about driving home, etc. I was feeling…

Nothing.

Zero.

I’m still here.

Not so sure about my marbles, though.

How are you doing?

I’m feeling lost.

I can’t describe exactly what I am feeling right now.

Low.

Tired.

Mentally slowed.

I can barely muster up enough strength or mental energy write this.

Today, my outlook feels like the weather outside –

…depressing.

What is the matter with me?