Deviant Rambling

Happiness, as a concept, is a baffling one. It’s a state that exists solely in the imagination but we make it a life’s work to try and attain it. As with many of the greatest things in life, recognizing how much of it you already possess will instantly grant you more of it.

So that makes me consider my sources of this elusive term. In a swift departure from the doom and gloom of earlier today in my consideration of the state of the country in which I live, now I’ll focus on the world in which I live, however local it may be.

All things being equal I have my health, though it has been in disrepair in the past, it has been good as of late. This is a great source of happiness. The alternative is pain, acute and chronic, and I haven’t been having much of that at all. Chalk this one up as a victory.

The home which I live is palatial by global standards and I find a sense of peace and comfort being here. Huge source of happiness that I do my best to contribute to and not take for granted.

My interpersonal relationships are all cherished ones and this may be my greatest source of happiness. It is with and through these relationships I collect experiences and memories, the real fodder of life. My material possessions may be few in number but my experiential database is growing larger by the day, thanks in no small part to the people I am so grateful to have. I realize the fleeting nature of this life and the people in it and go out of my way to show my gratitude for this.

There is lack, of course, and there are concerns, as with any life. But my sources of happiness are obvious and numerous. When I compare my life to what it could be anywhere else in the world, literally just by a factor of geography, I would almost always choose the life I have. That is a tremendous realization. It serves to bring me to the present more often and revel in all of my good fortunes, humble as they may be.

It isn’t often that the state of things in the outside world warrants any sort of response but I feel compelled to say that things are getting truly unsustainable in real terms.

We are basically indoctrinated to rely on automobiles and therefore are reliably slave to the fossil fuel industry. The same industry that has seldom missed a record profit year, drains the world of vitality, and laughs all the way to the bank.

Gas is now as expensive as it has ever been and the meteoric rise shows zero signs of stopping. As a matter of fact for context, it has raised an entire dollar in a month to an eye-watering average hovering around 5.00. Locally it is 5.25 on average. This has moved from being something of a moderate annoyance to life-altering insanity. I have relatively low consumption needs for fuel so I am not feeling this one too acutely but it is a sign of a larger problem.

A wave that has been fast rising since 2020 still has yet to crest. When this wave in particular crashes, the drownings will be immeasurable. If I sound like an alarmist, it is because there is one within me that is screaming to be heard. The signs are everywhere that we are in the midst of a financial disaster in the making:

– The housing boom made affordable housing nigh impossible and essentially out of reach for a huge swath of the population.
– Inflation has hit every single thing now and the pain and suffering is real. Regular people are now choosing between whether or not they are eating or waiting for things to improve. (This is fucking insane in our country.)
– The aforementioned average, real world cost of fuel is staggering.
– Student loans taken out to perpetuate the old bait and switch American Dream are about to be a source of incredible suffering for millions.

We are still being told all of the same old fictions that everything will be fine because our economy is based on sound foundations. Cool story. What happens when the foundations fail? A shit load of people get crushed to death by the faulty structure they built their lives upon.

There is a word for the lover of words: logophile.

I number myself proudly among the ranks of humans, thus obsessed. A well constructed sentence is basically porn to me, and it doesn’t need to reach for the top shelf for content either. Loving words means that I even love the simple ones used to great effect.

For every dalliance with complexity, there are equal simplicities. The English language is a veritable treasure trove of delights. As the culture shifts, so too, does the language. I try my best to recognize this as necessary but it does puzzle me what is accepted as canon. Cutting edge doesn’t always mean something is sharp. Perhaps this is just the way of the world.

My two cents on a trivial matter.

I’ve been occupying my hands and therefore my mind lately with work refinishing doors. This has allowed me to figuratively paint myself into some corners and wrestle with my place in the world.

It’s a given but I’ll say it anyway, this conflict happens entirely within the confines of my headspace. But this can come out in the way I interact with the people I am around every day. It is more often than not in a less than desirable fashion. Frustration presents itself as silence but I’m already a fairly quiet person so this gives zero clues to onlookers.

Contentment evades me but it might be because I am so dead set on attaining it. In an attempt at objective observation of my surroundings, I see there is much to be content about. Still I get the feeling that some one thing will flip this switch that I rationally understand doesn’t exist. That’s a feeling which is nearly impossible to let go of. Subsequent attempts to extricate myself from this feeling have been futile.

I remain an optimist, smothered by the reality of a world I don’t really fit into.

In an attempt to define who I am and want to be, a problem of vocabulary arises.

Rather than just settle on a word, two or dozens, I lose myself in the idea of being any single thing. This isn’t who I am.

I am amorphous.
I am idiosyncratic.
I am iconoclastic.
I refuse to surrender to convention and will suffer the consequences for having done so.
I am resilient so I am never down for long.
I am a bastion for some and a bane to others;
I conduct myself the same for either audience.
I am nothing.
I am the dust.
I am the stars.

I am. I am. I am.

And for the things I am not, there is no room for ambiguity.

2022 started with a hefty dose of tragedy in February with the passing of my father. Ever since then I have been completely occupied cleaning up and closing down a business that I have been a part of since I left high school over 20 years ago.

Now that much of that work has been done, I’ve been allowing my inner creative to come out. There really is no time like the present to evaluate what I really want from life. What I learned from my recently past life is that I don’t have to compromise on what I want. What I couldn’t get from that life was a real sense of satisfaction and purpose. Now I will not settle until I get both of those things.

Evaluating who I am and want to be tells me there is incredible head room from where I currently stand as a person. All of these trains of thoughts come here to find rails. If they go rogue and fly off the rails, then it hurts nothing, it’s implied in the title.

Relationships have taken center stage in my life, chief among them my closest family and friends. Death makes priorities abundantly clear and I have never felt clearer on my motivations surrounding the people that I love.

It is an absolute priority for me to be of service to these humans in the ways that they need me. There is truly no better use of my time and in my estimation, anyone’s time, than to serve loved ones. The number of these people in my life is relatively low. This makes the proposition a true no-brainer!

It has been in keeping with who I am and have always been to keep this number low. I would prefer a few life long friends over a huge circle of acquaintances and the few I have chosen are exactly the same way.

I confess that almost everyone in the circle is firmly in my own echo chamber. We share worlds of common ground ideologically speaking. Fundamentally we are kin. That makes the service to one another as natural as though we were blood relatives. It is one area of life where I am almost embarrassed by my abundance. My luck is truly immeasurable to know these people.

This gives me pause to reflect on what life would be like should they all be taken away through some unforeseen circumstances. *poof* they’re all gone. Then comes the doubts that I would ever happen to run into these kinds of people again organically. It instantly makes me appreciative that I have all of them. It is at this moment I will give my time to them to remind them. Nothing is more important.

When absence is a possibility, we must address our abundances and give them proper thanks.

It occurs to me that my uncategorized writing has started to bleed over into my topic-specific websites. Most of my philosophical and creative writing endeavors need their own space and this is that space. I owned and operated this domain years ago and decided to check and see if it was still a thing and I was able to scoop it back up. (Probably because it was my idea and no one landed on the same idea.)

This will be my place for stream of consciousness. When it occurs and seems applicable, I’ll post it on here. In some since it will be a glimpse inside the chaos of one mind, the one who typed this message.

Hope to share something meaningful and make an impact in the one life I have to live.