Again, I’ve been distracting myself instead of typing in here. So many times I feel a guilt, hanging over my head every time I choose to ignore my blogs, in the rather vain attempts of leveling a character, or advancing in a quest on Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, or perhaps watching Mighty Boosh episodes instead of sorting out press contacts for the upcoming SHELVES album. There are things to be done, are they are all hanging over me.
Perhaps what I’d like to address, is the first world problem of working part time, even having the time to do things that interest me, yet, distracting myself from it all, by playing video games. I suppose this is growing up, when you lose that streak of reckless abandon, and you fully realise the consequence of every action, even if you don’t comprehend the magnitude of each one.
I’m not saying that I’ve only been playing video games in my spare time, but when the things I love also constitute as “work”, there’s a part of my brain that seems to enter a block, and shuts it out as “non-fun”, which is childish. Here I am, given an opportunity to run with something, with the people and places to support such endeavours, and yet, I’m quite afraid of failure because it might be seen as the squandering of an opportunity.
I wonder if that’s why people choose mediocrity, because society seems to have a low tolerance for failure. Which is sad, of course, since we’re humans, swayed by emotions, taught to give up our humanity in the grand, efficient system of capitalism.
But back to my own childish desires. Yes, it would be prudent to recognise that I haven’t always been the most mature of adults, I don’t know if I desire the change to become more mature, I wonder if it will turn my entire perspective out of proportion. I mean, could you imagine knowing a Brian who was serious all the time, who couldn’t make a joke, who’d do everything for the sake of profit, who would only talk passionately about the next thing you could own, rather than the next thing you could do?
I’ll admit it’s all questions right now, and I have also lost my train of thought because I’m typing this out while I’m on shift at The Pigeonhole. I can’t really peer into the future, but I am thinking about it, worrying about it, because while I tend to live the moment, I do think that preparing for a future and supporting the family unit as basic responsibility in either age we’re living in, but I’ll be damned if I turned into a money grubbing hoarder of materialistic useless things. Call it a basic frustration that we’re not the things we own.
So even know, the future, opportunities, ruts, successes and failures are all hanging over my head. It’s a fear of the unknown, but when you’ve done everything you could, and still can’t predict the future, I suppose it’s time to let it go.. and live in the moment once more, and not let life pass you by.
I think I made it home about an hour ago, and I’d been out of the house for nearly sixteen hours. Frankly, I’m really tired, but I wanted to type in here because I’m feeling a certain way about something, and perhaps it’s best to commit it to a post, as a testament of some sort.
To understand, one has to understand that it’s been about a month since I left the teaching service. I’m currently employed part time at The Pigeonhole, where I service the counter and customers, make coffee, pour beers, and clean up after patrons and collect their dosh. Then, I’m supposed to get a music label off the ground, when I don’t even have a label name yet, and juggling gig commitments with various music projects.
All these things don’t make me a lot of money, but they’re things I love doing, or love the idea of. There’s probably enough passion in these activities, to make me want to embark on a sort of working vacation to cut my teeth deeper into my interests, yet, there’s a lot of doubt as to whether this is a most responsible thing to do or not.
But y’know what? There’s something about helping to open a shop space at 9AM, mopping the floors, serving customers, brewing coffees, pouring beers, chatting with them, then when your shift is over, you switch to email answering mode, and organise various other projects and relationships into order, then helping to set up a gig space, do your sound check, play your show, hanging out to talk with friends, talking with other bands and artists, making thirty dollars in total and then spending all thirty dollars on drinks and CDs, and even making a loss if you count buying lunch and dinner.. there’s something about doing all that which beats being stuck in an office, or a situation that aids you in a responsible way, but plays no bearing on how you would really like to contribute to society, or even the world and culture in general.
I realise I’m terribly blessed to be afforded the chance to things of my interest, even if its at the expense of well, my expenses, but today is offering me some perspective of what it really means to live.
Living but not really living, might be catering to all societal pressures and doing something that is financially beneficial, and you get to spend and improve on oneself, be it internally or externally. But even with working at a loss today, and if I were to be optimistic, breaking even one day, the benefits to my life, and perhaps whom we’ve touched today, and have been touched in return, they’re all rather intangible. To me, it just shows how little, money is valued, and only through society, how much money is valued. This mathematical construct, numbers.. attach value to human worth, human experience, tries to make the intangible, tangible.
Call me naive, idealistic and even a dreamer.. but until the day we (individually or society as a whole) are free of the value we impose on money and currency, I don’t think we’ll be any closer to finding happiness and contentment.
