Tag: rambling

  • 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?

  • Lazy Thoughts

    Lazy thoughts are weird. Not only do they suck every last ounce of energy that I have in me, but they’re even more difficult to express. It’s that whole intellectual constipation thing again. That urge to want to say something deep and insightfully meaningful but coming up with a few straggling lazy thoughts instead.

    So I end up reminiscing about days gone by because nostalgia is always best indulged in when I lack energy to deal with today. Not enough energy to care about tomorrow either, so I’ll leave it nagging at the door in the back of my mind waiting to be let in. Tomorrow is an energy sucker just like yesterday. They both demand a level of attention and indulgence that yield no immediate benefit.

    Ugh…blankness becomes me right now. So many blogs, so little inspiration.

  • Writer’s block sucks. So does the feeling of being philosophically constipated. I’m not even sure what that means, but I have this urge to want to write something meaningful about all the changes in my life recently, how it impacts me, and how it’s turned out relative to what I expected, but nothing. I’m anaemic. I sit here at my keyboard waiting to bleed and nothing trickles out. 

    I’m an impatient man. I’m constantly contemplating the consequences of what we’re contemplating now, and instead of accepting that a long term goal is in fact a long term goal, the moment it takes a shape or form in my head, I feel compelled to realise it now against some ridiculous self-imposed deadline.

    At least I can still ramble nonsensically without much effort, so perhaps not all is lost yet. It still sucks though. 

  • Life Lessons from Forest Gump

    I just watched Forest Gump…again. And again, I loved its simplicity. I realised exactly how emotionally far gone I am these days when I found myself choking up on the scene where Jenny shouts out his name and then wades through the water in front of the Washington Memorial, he discards decorum, as he always does, and runs out to meet her. That wasn’t the only scene that choked me up, but anyway, I digress.

    I realised I was even worse off when I suddenly noticed that my thoughts are running through my head in Forest’s thick Alabama accent! But there’s a sincerity in his character that few can relate to, or hope to achieve in real life simply because he was never swayed by public opinion, or negative sentiment. But this was largely because he was never accepted by them either.  

    What I’ve learnt is this. The more we fit in, the less likely we are to be individuals. We’re unique, just like everyone else. We’re all struggling to present our own ‘unique’ interpretation of how life should be lived but always within the bounds and expectations of society, because we need to fit in. Isolation is too painful. So we must conform. Even our creativity is expressed within the parameters of what is acceptable by the same groups that we aspire to belong to. 

    Forest was a born reject, and had no choice in not fitting in. But it seems being mentally challenged, stigmatised or an outcast is a prerequisite to living an amazing life. Otherwise, chances are that we’ll only end up being mediocre. Even if we excel, it will be the upper percentile of mediocrity that we achieve, which will seem amazing to those in the average bands of mediocrity, but nonetheless it will still fall short of amazing. 

    Nothing amazing was ever achieved through conformance, and non-conformance is by its very nature a painful experience. Human nature, through its inherent survival instinct will avoid pain if left to follow its instinct. But we’re a step above animals, because we have superior intellect, reason and choice. If we cower, we reduce ourselves to animals. But if we persevere, we’ll become masters of our state, rather than victims. When we’re in this state of mastery-consciousness, we’re automatically administering the cure for so many spiritual illnesses that plague our society independent of race, religion, culture, social standing or material worth.