Projects

Three birthdays ago, I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish with my life. I turned 22 and the idea of numerology stepped into my brain, making me believe that the number 22 was special because it consisted of two twos and because I was born on a day designated the 22nd of a month by ancient people.

That superstitious part of my brain likes clinging onto crap like that; it's somewhat comforting to cope with living when you're safe in the knowledge that the arbitrary positions of stars in the sky have some influence. It's nice pretending that magpies and black cats can bring changes in an individual's luck by their mere presence to that person. And it's fairly satisfying to hold the belief that those who have wronged you in some way will, at some point, be wronged themselves in some act of universal karmic retribution. It's nice to have that because the only other alternative is the reality - the reality of cold, harsh chaos.

Initially, the idea with the list (oh yeah, I'm back to the list now, sorry for the lack of seamless transition) was that once I'd actually gotten around to accomplishing something, I'd use it as the basis of one of these little waffles. The fact that I never actually finished a single one (including the last one, which was to finish dragging the list out to 22 items if I remember correctly) proves one of two things.

a) I've been extremely unlucky in getting personally set projects finished

or b) I've been extremely lazy in not getting personally set projects started

Because it's nice to live in a world of pixies, clovers and eyelash wishes, I'm adamant to believe that the first statement is true. Sadly, reality, in all its infinite chaotic shitstorm, tends to point me in the direction of the latter statement being more accurate. Despite possessing the knowledge, the believing and accepting portions of my brainspace still refuse this and have caused me to become conflicted - forever arguing with myself, trapped inside half a skull-ful of bone matter.

Ultimately, this has led me to a third-life crisis (assuming I'll make it to 75 and strictly not a moment sooner or later) in which I'm realising that all of my time up to this point has been wasted on thinking about doing things. Now that my youth has found the escape hatch and left the rest of me to sink with the submarine made of chaos and lifestuff, I feel as though I've been doing everything up until now completely wrong, and that the time for getting things back on track is long gone since I derailed years ago. Also I find myself inadvertently mixing metaphors. Apparently life's a train now, not a sub. Sorry for the prior confusion.

As time flows ever-onwards and the numbers of days and years I've accumulated keeps growing pointlessly larger, I somehow have to find a way to pick up the withered and fractured pieces of myself whilst watching every other bugger on the planet skip merrily on. Perhaps I could set myself a list of life goals, only to completely neglect it and spout off some more text-based self-pity and crap a few years later.

Until then, I'll just keep sitting here, in an upturned submarine, miles away from the nearest train track.