1 July 2005
So tired
This commencement speech by David Foster Wallace made a timely appearance today on Blogdex.
I woke up slightlly hung-over this morning after a fancified dinner out with friends and had the worn-out, world-weariness that often accompanies a draining evening of manic mood. Sometimes I'm tired of feeling as if I'm constantly running. And tired of always trying to shoot a few meters in front of my current position. It's not as if I work too much or achieve too much or even that I'm constantly busy. It's just that every nowandthen the number of spinning plates manifests itself and I think about how many I've broken already and am waiting for the whatever. The inevitable. I suspect that it's a not uncommon feeling that hits everybody when they're at their weakest.
And I thought about what it is like for someone to have their beliefs crushed or at least abandoned. Any beliefs. And those beliefs could be Completely True or Completely False and Ugly, but there's a type of experience where the abandonment doesn't mark a growth but instead a chopping off and the person is never the same. In mourning. Not that I've had my "beliefs crushed," mind you, but it's an interesting psychology and sortof goes hand-in-hand with the spinning plates. As you struggle to achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve, and trying to achieve it because it's part of your belief system or whatever, you could eventually at some point invalidate that belief system. (Coincidentally, I had to re-write a small section of code today after realizing that: it sucked. This was, however, a "growth" type of thing and not one of those "chopping off" types of things.)
Anyway, DFW speaks a little on these subjects and others.
- Oh, will hitman monkey ever find happiness? posted by sstrader on 27 April 2008 at 12:54:20 PM
- Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack! posted by sstrader on 13 April 2008 at 10:14:53 PM
- Weird mortgage ad with spider posted by sstrader on 17 March 2008 at 12:47:38 PM
- Huh? posted by sstrader on 12 July 2005 at 11:04:16 AM
- Intransigence posted by sstrader on 1 July 2005 at 8:47:32 PM