I’m not sick. I don’t have relationship/family issues. I’m not living in poverty. I’m not anyone’s subject of ridicule. I don’t have any important responsibilities (pets, children). Things are going well for me. I moved into a fantastic apartment last week after staying with my mum for 5 months (before that I was living with my girlfriend, but it didn’t work out). My job is mind numbing but pays really well, and the atmosphere is very relaxed. I should be studying right now (because I want a better job) but whenever I sit down to, I don’t.
I have lots of ideas for things I want to do, directions I’d like to steer my life in, but I can’t get started because I don’t care enough. I don’t enjoy the company of others so I spend the majority of my time alone. My dating life is dead and buried by choice; my interest in women and what they offer is at zero. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy myself and what I do alone, but I’m not happy. My only joy in life is getting stoned, and now that’s been seriously hindered because the apartment I rented doesn’t allow smoking.
I know in my heart that there’s no reason for me to be studying and trying to better myself because I’m happy living this tiny life. I’m TOO happy living this tiny life. If I suddenly became rich (lottery, inheritance etc.) I wouldn’t travel the world or go on shopping sprees or do anything really. I’d quit my job and sit at home everyday until my body dies. So if I don’t want anything more out of life than what I already have, how can I motivate myself to study?
What is the incentive to work harder when I don’t desire any reward? The only thing that’s pushed me into studying as much as I already have is thinking about retiring as young as possible (28 right now) so that I can spend as much time in front of the TV as I can before I die. I love TV, movies, video games, surfing the internet, and I don’t need to be a better person or gain achievements to have those things. So why am I studying?
I tell people that I’m studying more than I actually do it. My family and friends don’t think that I’m living up to my potential, and I’m not, so when I signed up for this online computer science course, all I wanted to do was tell people and show them that I was finally doing something with my life. But I’m not. It’s a joke. I’m a joke. I don’t have any interest in being smarter and finding a challenging/fulfilling career. I just want to zone out of life, kill time until the bell rings, like I used to do in school.
Every morning I remind myself of what I’m grateful for: planet earth and all the free oxygen, free will, marijuana, meaningless existence i.e. there is no god. I love being alive; I’m so so so thankful that I’m in almost perfect health and able to take part in this cosmic game of Life, but I wish that I cared more about playing. I want to win the game of Life and have a mansion with huge TVs in every room, butlers and cooks and drivers and landscapers, but I don’t want it enough.
It doesn’t make much of a difference if I’m watching TV in my tiny apartment, or in a castle made of gold; I’d still just be killing time, waiting for the grim reaper. I don’t care about having experiences and making memories; life is temporary. Everything that I do and say, who I am, everything I know, will all disappear when I die. My accomplishments will fade over time, and then in 7 billion years, the sun will expand and destroy the Earth, so all record of everything will be gone anyway.
I should just retire right now and put thoughts of being productive out of my mind. I want to study, write novels, get in shape so I can wrestle, build income generating websites, produce music, run for public office, but I have no motivation. These are nothing more than thoughts in my head that I’ll never bring into reality, and I need to accept that. I need to truly give up on my dreams because I’m kidding myself. I’ll never be anything more than a good for nothing pothead who let his potential go to waste.
I think I’ll be a lot happier if I just accept that I’m a loser. I’ll work dead end jobs for the rest of my life, taking public transportation to and from. Then in the evenings I’ll smoke, masturbate and pass out in front of the warm glow of my television set. That’s already my routine, but accepting that I’m a loser will remove the guilt I feel about not being a better person.
I really want to stop caring about my life and just give up, but I can’t. At the beginning I said that I’m not sick, but that’s not completely true as I’m pretty deluded by all the narcissism in my brain. I can’t help but see myself as someone great; my life is a rags to riches story that hasn’t gotten to the riches part yet. Even though I’m filled with apathy and want to lay down and do nothing forever, my crazy brain won’t let me stop thinking about the type of person that it knows I can be. I don’t believe in fate or destiny, but I feel like I could be someone special if I found a way to apply myself. If I had something other than shallow reasons for wanting to be successful, I might find the motivation I need to actually take steps to build myself up.
My brain is constantly telling me that life isn’t right yet, that I need to be better and to do more. The only thing standing in my way is me, so how do I get around myself? I want to realize my manifest destiny, but my body won’t move.
2 comments
Actually if you want to do something (and you do say yourself you want to do tons of things) nothing is stopping you from trying but yourself. It’s understandable if you fear of failing at those things, but almost no one succeeds at first try (a very few do). On the other hand if you want to have that life of killing time you can perfectly live like that and it’s your choice. The thing is, whatever you do, you have to do it for yourself (specially if you don’t care about being around people), and it seems to me like you are doing stuff that you don’t care about only not to dissapoint others.
You are right that everything is futile and that we’re all going to die someday, but if you still want to do things that might make you happy in life (even if you are still going to die) you might give it a shot before giving up, since you wrote “i want to” and then you say “i have no motivation… well… the “i want to” is coming from somewhere. There’s your motivation.
Besides, you won’t lose anything if you try (since everything is futile) and if you don’t succeed you can still take the other road. Now, if you really didn’t want to do any of those things you propose? different story.
thanks a lot for your reply. When you said that “the want” is coming from somewhere, that touched me. You’re right that I’m doing some things only so I won’t disappoint others, and I always thought that I didn’t care about pleasing others. Really, thanks a lot for deconstructing my post. It’s tough to see the logical fallacies in your own thinking so thank you for pointing some of them out.