I’m becoming less selfish lately. Wonderful, the things a group of awesome friends will do to a person.

Still self-interested, but I’m realizing the value of having awesome people in my life. And that maintaining those kinds of relationships requires some effort on my part. That friendship (or even family, or even love) is a reciprocal process, and that you must learn to give in order to receive.

I’ve also become less motivated to find a job. It seems like the only people hiring are looking for Eager people, Passionate people. People who really want it. How can I be passionate about sorting files for the government? How can I be passionate about data entry for eight hours a day? How can I be passionate about retail (even those jobs are exceedingly rare)?

So I’ve changed my game plan. Back to basics. What. Do. I. Want.

Well, we can look at this historically. Any bimbo can search through recent posts and figure that out; my end goals haven’t changed. I want to create. I want to make things that are beautiful. I want to perfect them. I thought I could do this through programming, but it’s difficult: I don’t know enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not strong enough to learn enough to truly be free using programming as my weapon of choice. Perhaps, in the future, that will change.

But there are other ways to create. Sophomore year of high school, I began a sci-fi novel. I’ve since lost the most recent drafts in a freak external HD incident, but I could start back at the beginning. Create something new. I’ve always had ideas, I’ve always wanted to share them.

I could draw, paint. Create digitally the images that have been engrained in my mind for years (Kaos, the black-winged angel; a fire dragon blazing through empty space; Avedra the future-city in a purple desert sunset, the architecture perfect and clean). I want to create these because I believe these. Each of these images means something to me (inner strength; independence and passion; the ideal, the goal).

How to Make Money? I don’t know, I really don’t. I signed up for Google AdSense, so perhaps people will click on ads here once I get that set up. I should redesign this site. Or create a new one.

Things are different now. The past six months have moved faster than any other time in my life. More has been gained, more has been lost. But I feel like this is how life should be. An adventure, in which I take the risks I was always afraid to as a child. In which I live more fully, breathe deeper, laugh louder. I can do that all where I am.

Living does not require sacrifice!

I am an observer. A conscious observer, a relevant, engaged observer, but just an observer nonetheless. I observe life; I observe my emotions; I observe the world in which I live and breath and communicate. I’m a staunch atheist, but if I had to give an answer to the question, “What were you put on this Earth to do?” I would say, “To observe. To understand. To see.”

I used to have two names for myself. I’d imagine them as titles, like what might be listed on my emotional resume.

Black Nix: Emotion Collector. Black Nix: Master Escapist.

I am an Emotion Collector. I blogged once about emotional masochism — the tendency to put myself through pain and suffering. Purposefully. And I never understood exactly why I would do such a thing. But I understand it now. See, I have a desire to search down deep, to find the blackest dark, the heaviest weight. I want to understand it all, I do. I don’t know why. But I do. There are two emotions that I feel the most:

1-  Heaviness. Waking up in the morning and having the full pressure of life weighing down on you. Heart falling through your chest like a rock pulled down by gravity. The sense of dread at having to live, constrained by an ephemeral organic shell. The foreignness of the world.

2- The spark of joy and hope when I witness beauty. Dreaming transhumanist dreams. Listening to Mothertongue. Discovering a connection between ideas, which itself is an idea, and the sense of creation and accomplishment. And the beauty of finding patterns, of seeing the world exactly as it is but from a perspective that’s colorful, brilliant, warm.

I’m also a Master Escapist. I have a tendency to separate myself from the world. I think there are many reasons for this. For one, I don’t fit most places, among most people: a gay computer scientist whose brain is constantly hooked on contemporary classical music, philosophy and video games is probably neither going to be the life of the party nor a warm and compassionate friend. But there’s more than just this, I think. It’s harder to see the bigger picture when you’re in the middle of it. It’s harder to observe life from the inside. I’m not alone because I can’t interact with people, I’m alone because I don’t want to.

So it seems that my life so far has been really a patchwork composition of the emotions I’ve collected. Heaviness is the texture, the background, the dark, the brooding. But every now and then, a spark of beauty and hope lights it up with color and fantastic brilliance before dying again, into the blackness. The unbearable weight.

I’ve never understood how people live without seeing, or without trying to see, or without wanting to see. But it seems now that I’ve spent my whole life doing nothing but seeing. Is this merely a 76-year-long film I’ve gotten front-row seats to?  No, I create too. I write, I play cello, I draw, I talk to people. I combine and manipulate ideas. I create beautiful things. But is that enough? Is that all there is to living?

Sometimes I feel like I’m just funneling the world putting it all into myself. I have the world inside of me. But then what am I good for, to others? What place do I have among people? Who befriends the telescope?

Sometimes I feel like I’m never getting anywhere in life. Like I keep trying the same old things, the same old ways, and in the end I’m left with nothing to show for it but debt and a headache. Maybe I try too hard to do things quickly. Life has always been a game of procrastinate, catch up, procrastinate, catch up. I’m usually able to “catch up”, but where does that lead me? To an average life, with an average future. An average income, an average family.

I’m not average. I know this. But then why does it always seem like I’m never able to get what I want?

I need to work harder.
I need to be more patient.

Does it seem weird that I think my laziness stems from a lack of patience? No, listen, really. I can’t work on something wholeheartedly if I can’t envision the end. If I can’t sit down and say “This can really happen, if I work at it, if I wait.” Patience is something I’ve never been good at. But with patience, we can make progress. Real progress. Goal-driven, not emotion-driven.

What do I want in life? Short(er) term, anyway?

• I want a well-paying job, intellectual stimuli and creative freedom.
• I want safety in relationships. Good friends, honest friends.
• I want to be constantly challenged in life, by life. I want to make good decisions.
• I want to learn more. I want to learn everything. But learning, especially on one’s own, takes so much effort and so much patience.

I honestly don’t know what life will grant me. Who’s to say? But I’m confident that I can have the life I want, in time. With effort. With patience.