Tag: pointless post

  • The Odd One

    One of the problems of assuming familiarity with people too easily, especially online, is that I tend to volunteer my opinion on very personal and sensitive issues without realising that I’m probably still a stranger to them, or at best, an acquaintance. My ability to sometimes grasp the essence of people’s current state, especially emotionally, often leads to me feeling more deeply concerned for their well being than would ever be considered normal. As a result, I tend to freak people out when I formulate an opinion about what they’re experiencing and how they should deal with it, despite them hardly having discussed the details with me. 

    I feel like a weirdo at times. Perhaps I am. But it seems to work for me, most of the time anyway. Perhaps I’ve just grown comfortable with being the odd one out, and as a result, I’ve had enough time and a really good vantage point to see the tediousness of being normal and fitting in. Conformance has rarely appealed to me, and given that conformance most often leads to complacency, I tend to loathe it, quite visibly at times as well. But it’s not just loathing it to be difficult, but because I see how lethargic people become about life when they grow complacent and try so hard to fit in and be accepted. They give up everything that makes them beautifully unique and only hold onto that which is overtly celebrated by others. 

    Ramblings of a madman indeed. 

  • To Blog or Reblog?

    I think I’ve figured it out. The reason why so many people are rebloggers more than they are bloggers. They lack inspiration, the same way I do this morning. Hence my inclination to reblog so many things, although my restraint has been keeping me in check. So, like the rebloggers, I’m tempted to borrow inspiration as if I’m licensed to be a curator of what may inspire others, all the while parading my reblogs as my inspiration to share with the world.

    I’m feeling somewhat deflated, I found myself trawling some of the tags that I follow in the hope of finding something that may be worth sharing. It was partly due to a need to want to share something meaningful, as well as wanting to fill that gaping void on my dashboard that taunts me if I don’t bleed out some thoughts at least once every other day.

    But I’m tired. Too tired to note all the beauty in the insanity around me, apart from the way the sun shone through the leafless tree this morning while the clouds literally raced across a crystal clear blue sky. The icy winds drove me to retract into a self-embrace trying to fight off the cold, while sitting at the entrance to the smoker’s balcony at work provides me with regular gusts of ice cold misery each time some nihilist steps out to rape a cigarette.

    I feel obligated to write out these rambling posts while I rarely read. That feels somewhat hypocritical. I have barely enough attention span to read through the dosage directions of aspirin these days.

    Nothing like the sound of a massive diesel generator grunting in the background to support my efforts to procrastinate on Tumblr during yet another unplanned power outage in this miserably cold part of Johannesburg today. This is the kind of post that gets deleted the morning after the night before. I keep wondering when is someone going to notice that the venom that I spit in my posts is actually a reflection of my own self-image?

  • A few random thoughts

    The ‘anything goes’ mentality is far more extremist than those that stand by moderation. It requires an extremist to allow anything to pass as acceptable without restraint, whereas it requires conscious thought, conviction, and balance to apply one’s mind to moderation. Yet the duplicity of society would incline you to believe that those that seek moderation are extremists, whilst the liberals are the free thinkers. Free thinking is often a phrase brandished about by those that seek affirmation and acceptance rather than those that are willing to stand for what they believe in without fear of ridicule or earning the ire of those they admire. 

    What’s worse is when this same thinking of supposed extremism is passed down to each following generation, resulting in ever more wayward teenagers with misguided passions. At some point, a generation dropped the baton. What should have been passed down as ageless wisdom was abandoned in the name of liberalism and social freedom, and none of the subsequent generations have been willing to stop the rot. For this reason, we find ourselves amongst teenage sages and pubescent gurus, neither of which have had sufficient life experiences to become the authorities they pretend to be on life, love, and philosophy. Such misguidance cannot be blamed on the students, but rather on the absence of teachers. 

    In the absence of role models and leaders, the youth are left to fend for themselves under the delusion of guidance from adults who are often too self-absorbed to realise that they are failing in their duty to raise adults, not children. Adults are often so insecure about their own worth, that they’re more focused on earning the social acceptance of their children by trying to be ‘cool’ parents, while the kids are distracted by their ‘cool-ness’ only to realise that they are ill prepared for life. 

    The inevitable result is the proliferation of labels that abdicate responsibility for our state of mind, and result in people living out the expectations of society based on the label attached to the specific permutation of their insecurity, rather than just realising that it is nothing more than an insecurity due to lack of knowledge or guidance that leaves us with so many troubled souls. Before we try to label the mindset of others that act out their insecurities in cryptic ways, we should make a simple but sincere effort to understand the source of insecurity that pretends to be bipolar, borderline, or any other contemporary term used to appease the conscience of absent parents. 

  • My life is not a linear process. I live not in a box, nor in a pigeon hole. And I most certainly don’t base my self-worth on how well I appease those around me. I was born rebellious, but resolute. At times my resolve has earned me affection, but most times it has earned me scorn. Nonetheless, it is my resolve and I resolve to always be true to my principles, even though I may have betrayed them in the past. It was an emotionally expensive experience I needed to acquire, because in its absence I was misled to believe that people are worth the sacrifice of principles. They’re not. One sacrifice of such gravity will always beget another. There is no appeasing the egos of others, and only those that are self-obsessed will stand idly by watching you compromise that which you hold dear with their only interest being your fulfilment of their fancies. So I resolve not to succumb to such dictates, because it has only ever left me wanting, and never fulfilled. Standing true to my principles may have left me standing alone, but it has never left me stirring in search of peace.