What Now?

A theme of my life has been the continuity of themes, the questions and thoughts that concern me appearing repeatedly. One of those big themes has been what to do next, and specifically what to do now that the basics problems have been sold. Existential question such as this do not occur to people who really have existential problems, if you need to get a job to eat and find shelter then what to do next doesn't have this same flavor, you need to get a job. But once you have proven an ability to find employment and pay your bills other questions arise.

The next level tends to be social, friends and lovers. After food and shelter, removing loneliness is the next step. I am fortunate enough to be married and very glad of that fact (although our relationship enters year seven this spring, year seven is the third most likely year for break-ups after the first and second years). My experience with friendships has been that they appear and then go, and the feelings I get from them are largely replaceable by other people. Repeatedly groups of people who were close friends have gone away. I have found that relying on the consistent friendship of people does not work for me, as friends change and leave. This is certainly connected to me being a difficult person to deal with, but I also think it is largely connected to me changing less than others as I age. My interests and behavior is not substantially different than they were fifteen years ago, just slower, with less stamina. But I don't need more from friends, I don't need to go find more friends rather I should probably spend more time contacting those who would still talk to me.

The last part of what now? looks to the point of life, what interests you and makes life worth living. I feel like I have won the battles of survival, love, comfort, satisfaction. I don't have external motivations, things pushing me to do something. I've been very lucky, but I have more than half of my life to go (statistically) and no real point.

People say to follow your dreams, which is fine if you have the sort of dreams that outline something to do with real life. People don't want me to follow the dreams that consist of random, hallucinogenic nonsense, or the dreams of sudden violence and bizarre sexual imagery. I'm not going to set out to recreate the dreams of last night that strung together old friends and acquaintances in an incoherent plot to steal unspecified sums of money in a summer camp environment, that's just silly. Do people really have dreams that describe something to do and it faithfully describing what would make you happy?

What people mean by following your dreams is thinking about what you like to do, and then organizing how to do that all the time. There are people for whom this would work. But if I look at the things that I have enjoyed over the last week not one of those things wouldn't drive me absolutely batty if I did it for eight hours straight. As I have stated in here before, there is no point to life, you make up your own points, and appreciating what is happening now is the real key. But I still find myself repeating this cycle, the cycle that starts with, "What now?" and ends with "Appreciate now?" before starting over again.