I should probably get around to reading 1984.

I spent the weekend staring at my computer. I’m now sitting at my computer in the hopes that I will write something to make my life worth living for and it occurs to me that this is what is making me so miserable.

I don’t care what is on this screen. I don’t care what anyone thinks of what is on this screen. None of it feels real. Sure, it is real. I’m really writing and you would be really reading if you actually existed. (Mind you, I’m not doubting your specific existence but rather doubting the existence of any present or future readers of this blog.) Why should I care anyway?

What is in the newspaper matters so much, but then we throw it away and start again tomorrow anyway. What we eat matters so much, but then we shit it out and flush it away. What I write matters so much to me, but then I publish it and insult myself for not writing again the next day. What is the point of this drudgery?

We have found a way to make perfectly delightful parts of life absolutely miserable. Eating now is both a moral crisis (I’m bad because I want cookies), an ethical crisis (I destroyed the environment because my sandwich meat was shipped from another state), and a personal crisis (no one will love me if I gain weight). We do this all the time.

If you sleep a lot, then you are lazy because you allegedly will have enough sleep when are dead (though you will not because you will be dead). If you sleep too little, you could become disoriented and crash a car. So, now we have sleep trackers? That’s our answer. Let’s buy technology that tracks how much we sleep so that when we can’t fall into slumber, we lie in bed fretting that our weekly REM average will be too low. Just me?

I can’t keep tracking and analyzing anymore. Frankly, I don’t care enough. What is the optimal macronutrient breakdown. Don’t remember. Don’t care. Thousands of ancestors of mine were probably happy to have a slice of bread at the end of the day, but I’m expected to torment myself about fat to carb to protein ratios. Been there and done that. It’s a hard pass for me.

Then, there are credit scores. Criticizing credit scores probably gives the impression that mine is low, but I actually have a very high credit score. That’s exactly why I think it is a joke. My credit score is so high because I hardly use credit. Oh, no, no, no, Bambi, you’re chuckling to yourself now, that’s simply not how credit scores work. You see, there is a complex algorithm that takes into account your credit utilization and age of credit and types of credit lines and even more factors that we cannot get into because you’re too dense, Bambi, and all of that informs your credit score in a very complicated mathematical equation that is changing all the time based on science. Believing your credit score is a reflection of personal responsibility is like believing the free drinks at the casino are for the winning gamblers. A credit score means you are a loyal debtor.

You can track anything nowadays. That’s useful to an extent, but it also becomes burdensome and random. Like, do I really need to know what I ate for lunch yesterday? Do I really need to know how many minutes I was in the fat-burning zone when I jogged today? I should get a writing award for using fat-burning zone in a sentence. And, for your information, I missed lunch yesterday because I wasn’t feeling (emotionally) well and I certainly did not jog today though I did walk.

Anyway, I’m in this weird situation where I cannot stand all the tracking and the micromanaging, but I’m also guilty of this in writing. I wrote here one week ago. I noticed that when I logged in. Well, I looked at that when I logged in. It’s not like that fact was aggressively thrown in my face. So, why am I tracking myself when I write?

Who cares? I don’t even care who is on the bestseller list or winning pulitzers. (Yes, I lowercased that on purpose because it doesn’t have to matter.) I worry that people like that matter more than me, but I’m also bored with all the worrying. Even the people who sit in those fancy rooms probably wonder if they are adequate or if this was their peak and everything is going downhill after this one or who the hell invited John M. to this party? He’s going to ruin my big moment!

Truthfully - as though that’s what I lack - I’m having a blast writing this. I like writing about contradictions and nonsense. It’s a lot more fun for me than useful factoids and neat descriptions of how sunshine falls on someone’s face. I have never noticed how sunshine falls on someone’s face except if that someone is squinting because it is either (A) too damn bright; or (B) not that bright, but just bright in their line of vision. I would argue that (B) is surprisingly the more frustrating of the two scenarios because no one realizes why you are flinching for a while and when they do, there is the awkward series of offers to switch seats, but I don’t want to switch seats - just give me a minute and the sun will go down.

Anyway, let’s revel in the pointlessness. Who needs another succinct blog post about the best ways to organize a junk drawer? Franky, do we even need the ones we already have? Why can’t we meander for a while? Write pointless blogs, read pointless blogs, forget the bestseller list ever existed.

I’m sometimes against the obsession of excellence. It gives me pause to write that, but it becomes such a burden. Even the idea of trying your best can gnaw at me. Maybe, trying is an act that takes a lot of practice. Trying your best might be something that happens over time, but I no longer think it is something you can just do on the spot. We can try to try. Then, we will get better at trying. So, that’s what I did today. I tried to try.

I would let you be the judge of that, Wishbone, but I don’t care enough to ask.

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