March 15

So today I wake up in a semistrange bed in the middle of the night and it is only B's two year old, who does not want to sleep alone.

Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I used to like to have someone in the bed every night but I grew accustomed to my own company and now I don't care so much. Sometimes the closeness of another person feels good, but sometimes it's just too hot or I cannot get comfortable or some other thing makes it so that I wish I was in my own bed. B does not in any case like to fall asleep with someone close, and turns her back to me in just the same way Mrs Zen used to, so I suppose she too has trained herself over time not to need it.

Life conspires to remind you, often, that you cannot have everything you want, and that no one can give you all you need, even if they are willing.

Later, I drove back home. The second half of the drive is nice, through Toohey Forest and along Marshall Road, and of course it was sunny, so it was pleasant enough. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing--finding enough things that are pleasant enough that our lives become worth living? It is harder than it sounds though.

I felt the life draining out of me as I worked through the afternoon. The humidity rose and I could feel tiredness creeping in. I feel listless and old: I feel like I have wasted so much of my life pointlessly, and endless walking on the spot has worn me down. But I do not have the energy to make anything more of it.

I wish I could analyse why I can't achieve what I want to. I have studied poker some, but not enough that I'm any better than moderate, and although I can make money, I am short of feeling confident enough to love myself as a poker player. It just hasn't come easy to me, and it is the kind of thing that you can know you fall short, but not exactly how. You are easily confused by seeming to know and by the randomness of it: so that you can't be sure entirely whether you are doing the right thing. I've had coaching, and coaches say yes, you should be winning at this or that level, and the things they suggest I am doing wrong don't seem major enough to get in the way of it. But somehow I'm not there and I doubt I will ever be. I have hardly played this month, and I don't see myself playing a great deal for the rest of it because I have enough money just about.

Neither can I write my book (or books, depending how you look at it). I find it hard to believe anyone will bother, and I hate to do things that no one bothers with. It's like, you cook a great meal--or you feel it is great--and the person you cooked it for eats it but doesn't seem to love it. What is the use of that? I know you should satisfy yourself, please yourself first and then fuck the world, but I am almost entirely incapable of not caring.

Caring will break your heart, and not caring is impossible because you were brought up to have good manners.

Why can't you cast that aside? Others do. Others have no manners at all.

Nor do I work much on my music. It's just so frustrating that it's so uncomplex and boring. I would have liked more than anything to have talent in music. It is potentially such a good outlet for creativity. But I never learned how to make the music in my head work in my DAW. When I was a schoolboy, I had a whole album of music that I could play back in my head as I walked to and from the train station. But I could never render a note of it. Any music I actually made was just so much squalling noise.

It is terrible to feel useless at everything. But the world also conspires to remind you that whenever you feel like you can achieve something, you can't. You do not have the abilities you imagined you did.

Now I am supposed to be cleaning the house. I don't mean anyone supposes I should. Just that that is what I supposed myself to be doing after I had finished work. I did some washing and tidied some things up but no actual cleaning. I only have an hour before I have to pick up Naughtyman from Scouts and here I am, wasting away time writing a blog no one reads. I can't even write about what I want to because I don't want to be misinterpreted.

I already feel like I cannot please anybody, that somehow I am always on trial, always contingent, that I can be sent back to the shop. I don't even know how I feel about it, except that I am torn between wanting just to be myself and wanting to please. As ever, I cannot resolve that. I feel as though I need to be set free from needing to be loved, to be wanted, so that I can satisfy myself. But that is of course impossible just now. Even if it wasn't a Sisyphean task, I am so burdened by loneliness that I don't know how I could stand it if I ended up burning what I have for the sake of loving myself more. The big problem with being yourself, in any case, is knowing who that even is--and fearing that it is someone who cannot please others at all (even though, rationally, you know that must be ridiculous, because others do, and some of them are on the face it quite unpleasant).

After leaving bed, I sat at the back of B's house for a while, throwing her boy in the air and catching him. She loves that I have a relationship with her boys, but I wonder whether she loves me more for what I represent than for anything about me. Does it matter though? Does anything matter but finding enough things that are pleasant enough that our lives become worth living?

posted by Dr Zen @ 7:08 pm