I’m F****ing done!
I’m fucking done with the world and everyone in it. This all comes from a place of information overload. I’m getting bombarded with polarised bullshit about vaccines, genders, climate, entertainment, celebrities, social justice, race, and a myriad of other cool shit made uncool by a bunch of activists with cognitive biases. Not to mention news about wars, destruction, and human darkness.
I love vaccines, genders, climate, entertainment, celebrities, social justice, race, and a myriad of other things but the way a correct view of each subject is being virtue signalled and shoved down my throat is down right obnoxious. Wars, destruction, and human darkness don’t even need a compounding effect to sicken me. It’s all making me fall out of love with life and the world. It’s making me lose my will to live. It’s making me wish for a clean slate, in the very least for myself but hopefully for my immediate family as well, or even my community. All of our communities.
The deluge of information (together with misinformation, disinformation, piss information, and suppression of information) is robbing us from the here and now, and especially from our own thoughts and ideas. Even if we were able to stay in the moment, the torrent of stimuli is so overwhelming we can’t turn away from it.
We can’t even walk down the street without screens, posters, stands, face-to-face-marketers, cars, flyers, and even bypassers smearing our faces with involuntary news, marketing, communications, and other forms of information invasions. Then we actually tether ourselves to all kinds of feeds to be force-feed ourselves even more information, whether correct or useful or not. And even when we put away that demonic phone of ours, we leave the headphones on to fill our ears with podcasts, audiobooks, music, and messages. And finally — with so much FOMO on things to buy, see, hear, experience, know, and share on social media — we waste half our lives in jobs we hate to afford all the indifferent fillers.
If we’re constantly carpet-bombed with too much information to handle, how are we supposed to pay attention to what actually matters? Like ourselves, our loved ones, and the world around us? (I mean the immediate and visible world literally around us, not the metaverse behind our screens and the observations of our favourite media personalities.)
I have a habit of speed-consuming books and podcasts on interesting subjects until it starts repeating itself or I start yearning for peace, quiet, and simplicity. Then I take a break until I feel like I’m missing out on the wonders of life and want to learn something new.
Other than that, I’m pretty good with moderation. Sometimes I go for days without a glance at entertainment or social media, but then I have a peek, see what’s out there, and want to quit living. In the very least, I want to quit society. We’re all just fighting over the smallest of things without a shred of humanity or empathy for anything but our own biases. This is the religious instinct let loose. We need a great story to live by, but now we’re free or obligated to make it up ourselves. It’s a battle royale of ideologies. Or we drone on like sheep, buying “things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” (Chuck Palahniuk)
I love life. I love putting myself through the wringer in the gym and for my family. I love coffee and sex and great movies. I love the suck of cold, hot, and difficult. I love work and nature. I love writing. I love a lot of things. But all that goes away when I pay attention to the news, and worse, the news feed with all its ideologies, consumerism, and fragilities.
I need another fast from information. And when I come back, I need better curation. Nothing good comes from taking in all that’s out there.
I’m fucking done with the world and everyone in it. This all comes from a place of marital frustration. I, a recovering Nice Guy™, have been giving into the whims of my wife, a fragile millennial, for close to a decade now, and now I’m running out of fucks to give.
I’ve been giving so many fucks over the years because of my nice guy syndrome that there are very few left, yet a decade-long relationship with the mother of ones children is so strong it’s nigh impossible to stop giving fucks. I’m simultaneously forging myself into a spartan beast of a man who takes charge of his life and holding on to my people-pleasing simp habits. I’m holding on to my principles and virtuous aspirations with white knuckles while crying after all the pleasures and indifferences my marriage is robbing me. One moment I happily accept my wife as she is, next moment I throw my ((passive) aggressive) anti-fragility coaching at her in a desperate effort to turn her into something more like me.
I need another wife. Or another me.
I’m fucking done with the world and everyone in it. This comes from a place of safety. I’m working in a safe job, keeping my mouth shut about flammable subjects so I wouldn’t hurt anyone, holding on to stuff I don’t need so others wouldn’t need to lose them, sacrificing my pleasures so that others would feel safer and more secure. What can I let go of without failing in my responsibilities? What can I go for without sidelining my family or my principles?
All I can think of is the stoic maxim: virtues are good, vices are bad, everything else is indifferent. I’ll do what is virtuous, I’ll refrain from vices, and I’ll disregard everything else. Let’s see what happens.
