Top 50 Things I Learned About Life at an Unremarkable Age
[14.11.2023; 16.11.2023]
[M]
Today is Tuesday.
I’ve been living in kinda solitary confinement for the past six and a half days, and while it has been an easy time with relatively little battles-with-my-own-psyche… it did get me thinking.
It started last Wednesday, where from lunchtime onward I was feeling like I’m for-sure getting sick. A cold. So I left work and couldn’t come in for the rest of the week. This week (one after getting sick) I just didn’t get any shifts.
But I’ve been cherishing the alone-time. I’m happy I live with the kind of freedoms I do have, at 26. Very little to take care of, little to spend financial and emotional resources on. I’ve been relishing in the free time. I have a lot to do, writing-wise; the year’s coming to an end so I gotta prepare for writing reviews for my top 50 new albums circa 2023… and there’s tons of other things. Which leads me to a thought. A thought about how late in the year we are. I am only gonna be 26 years old for one more month and nine days. This might just be the last introspective grand revelation that I reach in this year. (Not saying I plan to stop them, but it just might because not a lotta time).
That thought bore the name “No more interviews“. No more interviews is the name of today’s revelation. What that means is, my main goals in life have changed. I remember the first time I ever in my life recognized a personal dream (that I long to be achieved). It was in 2014 and I was sure that what I want to do – work towards – is writing something that becomes a movie. That was the dream. A bit later that changed, and I’m pretty sure in 2019 I changed the dream into wanting to be interviewed about my creative affairs. Okay, coming back to present day then… I’ve been thinking a lot lately – obsessin’ ’n’ fixatin’ – about people who have higher educations than me. A kind of jealousy, about how those people are able to get paid for the things they hold natural talents and inclinations toward. Meanwhile I work a factory-job and have to spend my lunch-breaks listening to chuds talk about ice hockey and gas-prices. Everybody I snap with is in school right now – university, or other higher education.
This has been such an anonymous jealousy too, because I don’t wanna go to school myself. I don’t even know that I necessarily want the kind of life they have. I make way more money than any of them, and I live the kind of existence where I can for-sure take at least one day a week for creative exploration. And I don’t have to think about anything while standing on a production-line, so even work is a form of meditation. I don’t know. Everything about my life and the way I live it, works for me. I have chosen it and I don’t regret it. Still I keep thinking about people who are more peer-tested in their fields of specialty, than I am. People who are in academic circles, where it’s probably easy to talk about something other than work and cars and sports.
I’m actually having quite a good time right now, and when it comes to the extra-free-time that this week has provided, I do not feel myself drifting into isolation or depression or any other far end of the mind. I’m actually having a good time, with lots to do and catching up on movies that I’ve been meaning to watch. There’s enough money for a few weeks and I structure my day well.
Started playing San Andreas again.
But something about today… about doing the dishes and consuming the fifth new piece of audio-media of the day. Something about it–
–what No More Interviews means to me, as a resolution, is that I wanna start combating my own vanity.
I feel like this tendency of my mind to constantly drift into people and situations which feel unfamiliar but in my face but difficult to reach for… is out of vanity. I feel like all jealousy – even this silent kind – is about vanity. I don’t really know anything about how hard higher education is, as I’ve never had any. I’m just being vein and seeing something that would make me look more like the kind of person I want to be, to myself. It’s very similar to not longing for a relationship, but the idea of one.
The song I’m listening right now, by the way, is Consequence by The Notwist. I’m kinda coming up with this entry as I write it. Great song, from an album I heard for the first time today; the more I listen to this song, the more it is about letting go of a vein sort of seeking. Realizing that you have lost. You just can’t get these things that you desire at the moment. …Or something in that area.
So what No More Interviews means for my hobby, is I wanna start treating it as what it is instead of talking about it so much. I know I know how to do it. I’ve been working on (26) for a year, and realize now that the things I say in here aren’t that worth documenting. Or, scratch that, they are, but not something I wanna commodify into book-sales.
I’m also not the person to speak – in any public context – about any bigger social/political matter. I’m just like every other factory-worker in that I have my opinions and beliefs and am fine with them and don’t have anything to prove, to anybody, about how my ideas of how the world should be, are superior. They are not. Hence they never were the main motivation of (26) either; the main motivation of this book was always that I just wanna save myself from my mind. Because while it has all this destructive self-talk to it, it also has a great peaceful resolve and ability to pack big turbulent thoughts into tight sentences. Learning to express one’s self through any art is a bigger blessing for an autistic person than anybody could ever fucking even imagine. But do I need to be public about that fact? Not really. Hence No More Interviews.
I know what I want out of writing. I want to tell my stories, keep moving forward in life, always have a big project going on which I can pour my imagination and creativity into.
Something about No More Interviews is paradoxical, a little, or at least it feels that way. Today’s grand revelation made me realize I’m not as important as I think, but at the same time I’m not as insignificant as I think. I think I have found my place. I think now, at almost 27 years old, I wanna be grounded in knowing myself and (like it has been for the past few years) I want my life-experience to guide me more than passion. Because that way I go to sleep at night happier.
And so that concludes Tuesday’s ponderings.
It’s Thursday now.
Y’know, ever since coming up with the idea for this book I was sure this thing gets published. Letting the world see the top 50 things that a guy at an unremarkable age, learns about life? A book like that hasn’t been made! It would change the face of the market!
But then I realized that these main goals – past maingoals and future mangos – have been about an overall change in priorities. Or, at least… that’s what I want it all to represent.
I wanna let go of my vanity.
(26) will not become a published book. A blog-series? Yes. A book I’ll get printed for myself? You better believe it.
(26) was meant to help me all along; it was never trying to be anything that says something more profound about life and the world than anybody else could say. It didn’t answer that question about storytelling, that old proverbial ”why does this story NEED TO be told?” (26) did not answer that. It did answer a lot of questions – questions that FOR ME are MORE important than that folk-wisdom about the virtue of writing for a purpose.
That’s why I want this book to be for me. And not for profit. The general public will get to read it, but for free as a blog.
On November 16th, 2023 (one month and 7 days before turning 27) I decided (26) will not come out into book-stores as a book.
That is the lesson.
pic from huggingface.co
janiojala 