I am sitting here alone, once again, through my own choice, but it is not a good way to begin a new year. I chose not to participate in the all-night drink fest yesterday, and today, when the prospect was to go and sit in the house at LaSalle for an hour or more feeling like a fifth wheel, I again said no. I am anti-social, and it is a problem in my current situation.
There are many things I don’t find amusing. I have been told I take things too seriously (by those who take almost nothing seriously, and often invade my private space), and this is unlikely to change. As the years go on, more and more situations seem pointless to me.
I do laugh occasionally, but at present those things that amuse me are not popular with the others around me. What can I make of that? I’m in need of a sea-change, I guess, if I am to remain here.
I have been looking forward to the changes in methodology to be used if I continue at the Tec for another semester, however, all else looks bleak. During this hiatus, I have been trying to decide if that implementation is enough to keep me here. There is little or nothing calling me back to New York, and thus, I feel like a man without a home. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to travel very widely for too long. I have already spent a great deal of money just to maintain this lately unsatisfying existence.
The only time I experience a modicum of happiness is when I am alone, and that too quickly fades. Am I in need of therapy, or am I simply fated to suffer ennui where others are satisfied?
Movies have provided escape. For two hours at a time, I have been drawn in and left my sullen, passionless life outside the theater. In the last three years, I have seen more films than I did in the previous ten, but now, even they are becoming predictable.
This place seems to have given me about all it has to give. I feel as if I want or need more, but am clueless as to what that might be. My friend went away for two days with his family. We both had a good time—he experiencing new social activities, and I, sitting here alone with no one intruding. I went to the cinema one evening by myself, and bought a book. At the end of that day, I experienced a feeling of satisfaction, but it was short-lived. The next day, the “vacation” ended, and all the familiar trappings fell back into place. I went with my friend to see the same film again, so even that experience was revised in my mind and placed in the category of familiar! I still have the book, of course, a collection of Jaime Sabines’s poetry, but I have not again delved into it as I did on the day of purchase. Many of the pieces I was already familiar with.
I have done quite a bit of work in preparation for the next semester, but there is so much more to do. As I sit pondering a decision in that regard, time is slipping away. Do I invest more effort in this, only to throw it up at the last minute? Or do I effectuate and prepare for something new?
Why, oh why, when busy and bored, do I see myself lounging in a hammock on a beach somewhere with even less to do?
I believe I was born too early for this life. If I were twenty years old now, I’d be in a perfect position to go through these head-trips, come to realizations, then go on with so much time ahead of me. Unfortunately, when I was twenty, I was too busy being distracted by the traumas of others to take care of my own.
Perhaps it is lost time for which I despair or perhaps it is the milieu in which I have settled. So many young people around me, too much of the time, reminding me of all my mistakes and lost opportunities. I need to reboot, but I’m working with old equipment.
