woozy

I'm getting sick. I feel bad. My stomach constricts in agony and my head is floating in pain. I have just taken my breakfast so it’s not hunger and I have just woken up, so its not lack of sleep either. Actually, I think its stress and guilt manifesting itself physically. I hate myself (it’s an on and off thing, I’m used to it) and it seems like my body is punishing me to retaliate.

There is this minutely reliable personality question in would choose which to prioritize in a list of almost mundane everyday things and tasks, each subconsciously representing a facet of your life. Which would you pick: a crying baby, a ringing phone, someone at the door or getting the dry clothes? These represent your personal needs, career, friends or family respectively. Out of impulse (and without actually knowing what each stands for) I chose to pick up the phone first. Hey! I prioritize career!

However, I can’t actually agree not to mean I disagree completely. I may prioritize work but it doesn’t seem more important to me than anything else. Yes, some would argue that I do spend majority of my time at work but it is because of lack of anything else to do. I probably would also choose to go to work rather than skip it and party with friends or go to a family outing or even sleep… but something is still amiss.

Work is important to me because it brings that semblance to normalcy and routine in my pointless everyday. It gives me sufficient reason to escape the prison of my room and the suffocating atmosphere of solitude that is second nature to me. It fills the emptiness in a life admittedly just waiting to end. And of course there’s that comfort of earning something that is your own and the occasional satisfaction of having accomplished something that may not mean anything to the world but is still a victory in itself. The problem is that I don’t care about my work, what I do and where I am mean nothing to me. It is and has always been just this filler I happen to be lucky at.

When I was young, I wanted to be a workaholic. As Kahlil Gibran said in The Prophet, ‘When you work you are a flute whose heart the whispering of the hours turn to music’. I wanted to be one of those people whose passion for what they do makes everything else almost unimportant in comparison: time, sleep, hunger... I never really made up my mind as to what I am supposed to be obsessing on when I grow up but it doesn’t change that I want to be obsessed about something. I wanted something to mean the world to me. I still don’t know what I want to pour my life for but whatever it is, I haven’t found it yet.

I seem to wallow in immaturity and drift day by day afraid to take hold of my life. It’s high time to take things seriously and leave of excuses for inadequacy rather than take the challenge. Yet I can’t stop feeling like a lost child not knowing where to go, what to do or where to turn to. The answer always seems too obvious but too scary and uncertain to risk everything for. Yes, I am a coward.

Carpe diem, the old mantra from one of my favorite movies and high school motto (coincidentally both is DPS), make your lives extraordinary… mine is currently extraordinarily unexciting.