Dec. 6th, 2004

Disfocus

Dec. 6th, 2004 08:27 am
jakebe: (Default)
For some reason or another, I just have not been able to get focused at all for the past two weeks. Perhaps it's a general malaise or ennui or some vague dissatisfaction I haven't been able to recognize yet, but if I need to some pressing bit of work, or write down an idea that's come to me, or send an e-mail that has been on the backburner for years...forget it. I'd rather watch bright colors move across my screen when I click on them (I've been addicted to this Yahoo! game called "Collapse"...I've gotten fairly good at it, too.)

There are a few things on my mind that have been noodling around for that particular length of time: given my initial "I'm sick of hearing "Good is dumb!"" outburst a few posts ago, I've stopped to sit back and process the information that I've been given by various people since then. It seems that most people, more than anything, don't like the self-assuredness and standards-driven attitude that most typically 'lawful good' people display. All right, I could see that. What strikes me as interesting though, is the question of whether there would be the same reaction if you took the general attitude and stuck it to another ideal. Would people be nearly as chapped if a 'lawful good' character strove for...money? Fame? Imagination? Part of me wants to be bitter and cynical and say no, any other ideal in our society is perfectly acceptable as long as it doesn't fly under the banner of "The Greater Good". But I'm not so sure. I think mainly people react the way they do because they've seen and experienced so many horrible things that have been for 'the greater good,' and when they see another person who takes that up as their cause -- earnest or no -- they want nothing to do with them.

Still, I would venture out to say that Mother Teresa could be considered 'lawful good'. She followed all the rules, devoted herself to altruistic behavior. Martin Luther King, Jr...Gandhi...the Dalai Lama...all abide by a set of rules designed for the good of humanity. And they're respected (mostly). Are they viewed as exceptions to the rule through their actions and demeanor, or are they simply not thought of in that paradigm? What makes good 'acceptable'? Time and distance? Did people think King or Gandhi as big a fool as most altruistic people while they were still alive? Our culture has a knack for revering folks after they've bitten it, no matter how hated and ridiculed they were in life. Take a look at Arafat and you'll see what I mean.

News from Mom: My sister, just a mother again with the birth of her second child, is suing my mom for custody of Taeshawn, my nephew. Apparently, this just came out of nowhere; some guy came up, said he was representing my sister, and served up court papers. I don't know what this is all about; I guess Teneka figured that if she could take care of one baby, she could take care of them both. She dropped out of nursing school when she became pregnant with the second one, and right now as far as I know she's just playing housewife for some fellow on the other side of Baltimore. My mother, of course, is going to fight for custody of the baby, and I didn't really have the heart to tell her it might just be best for everyone involved if she let Taeshawn go. He's a huge drain on her resources, and the hole she's in has been getting steadily deeper all year. I'm almost certain that if she lived on her own and got her finances together, money would stop hemorrhaging out of her checking account.

But I know my mother, and I know why she's going to fight for Taeshawn. She likes to feel needed. Truth be told, she's incredibly lonely, and she always has been...she's a lot more social and dependent on other people than she's ready to admit to herself. Her cure for the empty nest syndrome when Charles (her biological son) married and moved out was adopting us, and starting a home day care center. When we had our falling out, and Teneka moved out, Taeshawn and an elderly boarder or two filled the gap. Now she's down to Taeshawn, and my sister is threatening to take that away. If she succeeds, no one will *need* her any more. She won't be able to handle that.

I'm going to talk to her sometime soon and see what the chances would be that one or two of my aunts couldn't move in with her. She won't be...needed, but they'll definitely rely on each other to make life better. And since my aunts have their own funds, it would go a long way towards helping her out financially. Like most good ideas, though, I don't expect my mother will cotton to it very well.

I suspect that my focuslessness and my low-level funk is stemming from a few things, large and small; for starters I've given up on the idea of going to Australia this summer. There's no way I could save up money in time, and with winter approaching my mom is going to need help more than ever. I'll try for summer 2006, but the last half of this year has thrown off so many plans. I guess there's a lingering sense of failure associated with that, even though I'm not sure there's much more I could have done to make things different.

Second, I sorely need to clean and organize my room a bit. I was offered a computer desk by Silver and Delphi that I will probably take them up on; I need to get over my packrattishness and start throwing away trinkets and other things I've collected. That's going to be the hardest part, but the most worthwhile; there's tons of stuff I just bother to look at whenever I'm moving it. I should just suck it up and throw it out.

Third, Christmas is rapidly approaching and I *need* to buy presents for folks. I haven't even made up a list, but I've bought a couple presents off-the-cuff for folks i've deemed them perfect for. There's a lot of mixed CDs to make, though, poetry and stories to write, and stuff to procure, and I haven't started on any of it. It's only serving to enhance the feeling of failure and unaccomplishment.

The simple solution, of course, is to *do something*. But the depression makes me unmotivated, which means I don't do anything, and I feel worse about it. Ah, well, I have to get off sometime.

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