(no subject)
Let's see if this entry can get finished.
I'm going to try to look back a bit on the year past for me, but it's going to go badly because time slips through my mind pretty readily these days.
It was, honestly, a pretty lacklustre year for me. It was sort of basically OK, but I couldn't call it "good" by any honest measurement. It seemed to be largely a term of slow debilitation and degradation towards complicit silence at best and free-floating hostility at worst (or is that the other way 'round? can't tell anymore). I worked for about half of it and was left unsure of whether or not that was better than not working; I continued to neglect any of my interests that took much in the way of effort out of simple expedience; most of all, I observed passively as things drifted away from me. This might all sound a bit dire, but that's probably just due to the way I write. I'm told that it can sometimes be somewhat on the stark side as far as any attempt at honest assessment goes.
So. What actually happened this year?
Globally (in the sense of "something involving several nations and affecting others): Nothing much worth celebrating. Rich and I tried to think of what good had come of the year past in a global sense and came up pretty much empty. The world seems to be really getting into character for the grand and boring drama of the coming years. The sabre-rattling is virtually ubiquitous and the ideologues seem to have settled comfortably into the idea that every issue, political, religious, scientific, or otherwise, is essentially just something on which one can take a side and build an image. It's the age of the hard sell.
Nationally (in the sense of "things that happened nation by nation"): Ireland took concrete steps towards peace, didn't they? I seem to remember that the heads of two big groups called a truce and formed a party together. If so, that's likely good. I won't pretend to know enough about it to say anything more.
Our country didn't do so well. I hate our current political situation due to the aforementioned hard sell ideologies so popular both with us and our neighbours to the south (and northwest). Identity is at stake in the endless culture wars, and politics is largely about individual identity. A party is a brand, rather than just being a bunch of people who have accepted a common label out of convenience, and the group one publicly holds with, however vaguely defined, is as much a part of one as the consumer electronics one uses and the entertainment to which one ties one's social cachet. I'm of the opinion that this has pretty much always been the case, but it seems especially bald now. Might as well open up the whole deal to open corporate sponsorship and see how comical oldish rich people act trying to look hip surrounded by Pepsi.
Also: since when are Tasers so damn popular? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't shocking somebody above the chest with a significant jolt (such as, say, the 50,000 volts delivered by your average Taser blast) expose them to serious risk of sudden death by way of their heart stopping? What the hell happened to pepper spray?
Personally: You heard it all earlier. I spend most of my time nowadays trying to cram in more sleep when I can. I barely catch any daylight right now. Take that, involvement with the world.
I don't post in this journal much anymore. I don't know if that's going to change. At some point in the past, I lost the sense that I could (or wanted to) just speak honestly in this forum. Maybe it's because looking back over my old chatty and semi-communicative posts is acutely embarrassing, maybe it's because I have unconsciously and unintentionally developed the ability to bore or offend inside a scant few minutes of conversation simply by talking "normally" (I've tried being myself, I've tried not being myself - I just don't get it. Was I always this abrasive?, most likely it's because I have virtually nothing to say and I practice more self-censorship presently. When I think about what I could be saying, it's mostly just "I hate school" or "I must think of a way out of this debt" or, well, nothing at all. There's not much to say about a life that consists mostly of delaying tactics.
(If it's any consolation to the people I only know online, I'm about this gnomic in physical conversation as well. This medium just means that you don't have to look at me or hear the way that I both mangle words and speak so quietly that I have to yell regular conversations at times.)
In conclusion, this isn't much, but it might be the biggest thing I write here for a while, so here you go.
I'm going to try to look back a bit on the year past for me, but it's going to go badly because time slips through my mind pretty readily these days.
It was, honestly, a pretty lacklustre year for me. It was sort of basically OK, but I couldn't call it "good" by any honest measurement. It seemed to be largely a term of slow debilitation and degradation towards complicit silence at best and free-floating hostility at worst (or is that the other way 'round? can't tell anymore). I worked for about half of it and was left unsure of whether or not that was better than not working; I continued to neglect any of my interests that took much in the way of effort out of simple expedience; most of all, I observed passively as things drifted away from me. This might all sound a bit dire, but that's probably just due to the way I write. I'm told that it can sometimes be somewhat on the stark side as far as any attempt at honest assessment goes.
So. What actually happened this year?
Globally (in the sense of "something involving several nations and affecting others): Nothing much worth celebrating. Rich and I tried to think of what good had come of the year past in a global sense and came up pretty much empty. The world seems to be really getting into character for the grand and boring drama of the coming years. The sabre-rattling is virtually ubiquitous and the ideologues seem to have settled comfortably into the idea that every issue, political, religious, scientific, or otherwise, is essentially just something on which one can take a side and build an image. It's the age of the hard sell.
Nationally (in the sense of "things that happened nation by nation"): Ireland took concrete steps towards peace, didn't they? I seem to remember that the heads of two big groups called a truce and formed a party together. If so, that's likely good. I won't pretend to know enough about it to say anything more.
Our country didn't do so well. I hate our current political situation due to the aforementioned hard sell ideologies so popular both with us and our neighbours to the south (and northwest). Identity is at stake in the endless culture wars, and politics is largely about individual identity. A party is a brand, rather than just being a bunch of people who have accepted a common label out of convenience, and the group one publicly holds with, however vaguely defined, is as much a part of one as the consumer electronics one uses and the entertainment to which one ties one's social cachet. I'm of the opinion that this has pretty much always been the case, but it seems especially bald now. Might as well open up the whole deal to open corporate sponsorship and see how comical oldish rich people act trying to look hip surrounded by Pepsi.
Also: since when are Tasers so damn popular? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't shocking somebody above the chest with a significant jolt (such as, say, the 50,000 volts delivered by your average Taser blast) expose them to serious risk of sudden death by way of their heart stopping? What the hell happened to pepper spray?
Personally: You heard it all earlier. I spend most of my time nowadays trying to cram in more sleep when I can. I barely catch any daylight right now. Take that, involvement with the world.
I don't post in this journal much anymore. I don't know if that's going to change. At some point in the past, I lost the sense that I could (or wanted to) just speak honestly in this forum. Maybe it's because looking back over my old chatty and semi-communicative posts is acutely embarrassing, maybe it's because I have unconsciously and unintentionally developed the ability to bore or offend inside a scant few minutes of conversation simply by talking "normally" (I've tried being myself, I've tried not being myself - I just don't get it. Was I always this abrasive?, most likely it's because I have virtually nothing to say and I practice more self-censorship presently. When I think about what I could be saying, it's mostly just "I hate school" or "I must think of a way out of this debt" or, well, nothing at all. There's not much to say about a life that consists mostly of delaying tactics.
(If it's any consolation to the people I only know online, I'm about this gnomic in physical conversation as well. This medium just means that you don't have to look at me or hear the way that I both mangle words and speak so quietly that I have to yell regular conversations at times.)
In conclusion, this isn't much, but it might be the biggest thing I write here for a while, so here you go.