WAKING UP IN THE MORNING

THERE’S THIS MOMENT of bliss when you wake up in the morning. It probably lasts a second or two but it can feel like much longer than that. It’s right before everything comes crashing down on you again whether or not there’s something to really worry about, there certainly IS always something to worry about. If you finish one thing in your life then you end up worrying about the next thing that comes along, usually piled up with a whole lot of other things, and everything you felt ashamed about from your childhood thrown in for good measure.

The funny thing is, people don’t know this of you; but they know if of themselves; maybe. It’s funny how nobody else in the world will see you the way you see yourself. To one person you’re a bastard for disagreeing with them about something that ultimately didn’t matter; and to another you’re a saint because you listened to them talk once about their problems. The personalities of yourself are endless in the all the eyes of the world.

I was walking along in the sunshine and saw a guy running around in the street, full backpack on, odd socks, (I mean really odd, one was a football sock that went up to his knee and the other was a dirty old white sock failing at its elasticized purpose and drooping onto his shoe. He was stressed man, he had five books under his arm and a can of MONSTER energy drink in the other. Greasy messed up hair and pimples on top of pimples on his face. It was right on the thoroughfare that led to the university, I wonder what he does now. I wonder if he made it into a job he wanted.

I saw another guy the same day, same kind of disposition sitting at a desk at the dole office trying to sort out his student payments. I mean, half of university is figuring out how to get those damn student payments and the other half is trying to figure out how to actually enroll in a damn subject you have to sit to pass the semester. The rest is just… man, I don’t know what it is. I’ve used up the two halves but there’s a LOT more to it. Sharehouses, failure, debt, misery in general; and after it all you’re left with a sense of imposter syndrome that continues on and on and ends up giving you cancer. Then the next guy comes along and sits in your seat and the process is repeated.

The problem I’ve always found in the jobs that I’ve had in offices is that nobody really tells you what you’re supposed to be doing. After a little while you start doing something and someone yells at you for doing it or thanks you – that’s the basics of it. You just walk around, tired, sick, tired, bored, under pressure from a feeling of unknown purpose. Of course, I suspect it isn’t like this for everyone but it certainly is for me. On a job site, you do get told what to do, and funnily enough, that’s both soothing and insulting.

People are always up in a puff about it. There’s always someone at a party who will talk at length about the problems with WORK and I mean, you can agree with them all you like but hearing about it all night long probably isn’t the best way to spend your time. Reading about it in private sometimes provides some sense of relatability with some other person who was insane and that at least gives you comfort feeling you’re not the only one who does not understand much about anything.

They say the meaning of life is what you give it. And that’s a fine way to look at things when you’ve got a couple of bucks in your back pocket but when you’re skint it’s the last thing you want to hear. What IS the ultimate aim (that’s not really a question). From what I can gather it boils down to nothing more than vanity. You can apply that to the root of every purpose or reason for getting out of bed in the morning in my opinion. And funnily enough, that feels shameful and empty too.

From what I’ve noticed though. It all keeps going. The low points are there and then there’s high points. The high points are usually anticipating something that hasn’t happened yet, but more or less so are the low points. How do you measure human suffering? Is there a maximum amount of psychological pain that can be met and whether you’re in a Siberian prison or just miserable watching some dull television show is the pain more or less than the maximum amount possible when it’s there? The real difference is that if you were in a cold ass prison you’d have something to point at to justify why you felt so miserable but with a television you really ought to be grateful you had one to look at. But the pain, the psychological pain; probably maxes out at a point. I mean, you don’t see so much pressure being exerted on the inside of someone’s head that it explodes.

In my opinion, if you can find something to make that pain go away then my choice is to do that thing. Drink and write and put all the other shit out of your mind until it passes and comes back again if that’s what works for you because whether you’re up or down it’s still going to hit you in any event and what did it matter anyway? Since we’ve been able to write words people have been discussing these human subjects most and while the wise are advertised in bookstore for their clever words and phrases, they’re just representations in print now. How you see any of them is not how they saw themselves, and why would they have written about it if they weren’t severely concerned about it themselves.

The only benefit of reading such material is to maybe bring it up in conversation and claim it as your own when you’ve adjusted it a little to fit the present purpose. And there you are again you vain little thing.