Ghosts Appear and Fade Away

23 December 2006

Arsenal 6 - 2 Rovers

I've started writing this entry more times than I care to admit. I'm not sure why it has been so difficult; there aren't any topics that I am dreading approaching, I am not carrying some magnificent weight of a topic within my soul. Okay, I suppose I do know why it has been so difficult: I fear I have been struck with writer's block. Every time I sit down to write, I get a couple paragraphs in and lose any heart or desire to press on. I have found that, unless you're writing fiction and you've already got a roadmap laid out, forcing yourself to write when you have no drive to do so, leads to worthless writing. It might be good, but there's no ideological goal in sight, and you are in essence writing to be done with the writing. Almost as if the writing has become homework for a class you hate. Since this is not for a class, it is for myself and my "career" (carefully placed in quotation marks so as not to get carried away), I should not be in nose-to-the-grindstone gear. My life has settled back into the rhythm that was established before Michelle came along; I work dutifully Monday through Friday, and when 5pm on Friday rolls around I drink a lot and have a blast with my friends. I enjoy doing all this. I find my job reasonably rewarding, and hanging out with friends while you're all at various levels of impairment is hilarious and fun. I realized this weekend that I cannot lead a lifestyle of being antisocial. Rather, I can, but I shouldn't. That kind of lifestyle is wildly depressing. The unfortunate part is, settling into that rut can strike you by surprise, but I have found it must be avoided at all costs. I am so much happier hanging out with five to ten friends, doing whatever-the-fuck. It removes me from my paralyzing neuroses, puts to rest any worries I have about my life. I've mentioned in the past that my dad has fallen into the lifestyle of pretty much being a loner. I imagine it alternately keeps him happy but also depresses him, but at the age of 51 he may have no other recourse. In order to keep friends, you have to show them that the friendship is worth having, that it's not an empty relationship held together by quick phone calls and brief chatting on the internet. It's much like a romantic relationship, but with larger boundaries. You have to make that effort however, and if you don't, the friendship will evaporate. Slowly, both of you will stop talking, and a couple years later you'll pretty much have forgotten about each other. You'll change phone numbers, move to a different house, get a new email, and it is more often than not permanently lost. In my efforts to not let that happen to me, I have made a silent but conscious decision to do more things with my friends. I'm sure it sounds silly, and it feels sort of embarrassing to discuss, but I think it is an important point. So: I will attend more parties, I will hang out with people after work. I will simply see my friends more often, in order to keep those connections alive. The role model I should adopt is my mother. Unlike my father, she actively participates in events with a wide variety of friends. This is why, close to thirty years after high school, she is still friends with a lot of people from that time in her life. It is impressive, compared to my dad, and that is the route I choose for my life. An example is, tonight my mother and I got food with one of her old friends, and they talked about a number of people they still know and the goings-on in their lives and so forth. She does not do things with this old friend every week; maybe every couple of weeks, or once a month. But through this, she has a vibrant social life, and is a much more complete person as a result. None of this is to insult my father's lifestyle. I think that some people understand themselves much more thoroughly, and do not need the supplements that other people provide (via interaction). It is a stoic image, to be sure. I am not one of these people, and I do not believe my mother is, either. I can see this trait in a lot of her family actually; my grandfather (her dad) was extremely social. This was demonstrated at his funeral: the church was literally packed. I want that kind of turnout when I die. I don't think my dad is even going to have a funeral. He's not religious, and he wants to be cremated. So there are no memorial ceremonies involved. Now that I think about it, his entire family is like that. His sister only has a few close friends, that I know of, and his mom has little to none. All the people that are (or were) close to him in his life have been much more closed off, very individual and anonymous people. The juxtaposition is startling. I am like my father in a lot of ways but this is not one of them. It is strange, when you make discoveries like this about yourself. Other aspects of your life become clearer. While my mother has dinner parties, my dad goes to a bar to drink beer while being surrounded by strangers. I think back to high school, when I did not hang out with my friends nearly as much as I do now, and I suffered from a lot more depression. I have often thought that if I had done things with my friends, I would have enjoyed that time of my life more: but I did not realize that it is because my personality feeds off social interaction. I understand myself through other people; I think this is natural of a writer. I spend so much of my time empathizing with other people, seeing through their eyes, that it is understandable I would see myself through their eyes as well. In some strange way, hanging out with other people lets me hang out with myself. In the same way that listening to music or reading a book shows me new aspects of my self, talking with people lets me talk to my self. It is a two step process. First I must read the book or listen to the song, and then I filter my impressions by discussing it. I want to go to bed, guys, but my writer's block has temporarily left me, so I will accept the fatigue tomorrow morning and finish all this up right now. I am this way, I figure, because I grew up with my mother. I think I would have grown up in a similar fashion if my parents had stayed together, but I feel like it would be a less intense... need. I need to be around people. My mother raised me by herself, and since her husband left her, she reached out to other people for the structure and life that had been removed. She turned to her friends, and they became a big part of her life. I grew up in a house that had dinner parties every other week; social evenings were a defining characteristic of my youth. I can no longer turn a blind eye to this fundamental aspect of my self. It is easy to just rest on the weekends, tell your friends you're too tired to do anything and that you just want to call it an early night. But I end up going to bed late anyhow, and depressed, lonely, and aching to talk about things (anything, I swear, I will talk about window blinds and carpet cleaner). Spending some time by yourself is always necessary, to relax and so on, but I have figured out that most of my time should not be spent in that way. The upshot of all this is: I went to a party last night, and it was wonderful. While I thought about how happy I was last night, and compared it to the larger situtions scattered across my life, I came to these realizations. Now let's see where this can take me.