Stumbling Toward God?

I never specifically decided to stop blogging, I just lost interest. After this post, it is hard to say when or if I will ever post again, so…

I have been aware for some time that I seem to feel that I deserve absolutely everything that happens to me, good or bad. Consequently, I tend to be extremely ungrateful when people do nice things for me, but on the other hand, I am not very indignant when bad things happen either. I have discussed how few times I have lost my temper in my adult life. In trying to analyze why that happens at all, I eventually concluded that I get angry when I feel that I am not getting the respect that I deserve. Which was an anticlimactic revelation; isn’t that why everyone loses their temper? Yet it does not happen to me very often, because most of the time I simply do not feel that I deserve much respect anyway. In fact, the times when I really get hot seem to not be specifically about me at all, I become incensed over the idea that the person would treat ANYONE that way.

Ultimately though, I have been puzzled by my own attitude for some time, as it implies a certain justice/balance/karma to the universe that I do not subscribe to intellectually. Do I also feel that everyone else deserves everything that happens to them? Not particularly, but them I am quite narcissistic and can not say that I spend much time thinking about other people, especially in those terms.

It was only recently that I dug even further into myself and realized that, if I get exactly what I deserve, yet I want more than I have, then the only way that I know to acquire it is through deceit and trickery.  To try and advance above my station, as it were. Though the details are hazy with the fog of time, I recall a moment many years ago, long before I ever even considered setting foot into a church. In a dark place emotionally, I had, not so much a plan, but a thought, a desire, a whim; to reinvent myself. To fool the Universe itself into giving me… something more than what I had.

And it didn’t work.

The summer concert series for which I set up sound equipment started again this week. This means a few things. First, someone is going to die. Secondly, last year I started the habit of setting up for the event, going home, blogging, then going back to tear down. Even after the concert series was over, I continued blogging roughly once a week for what would have been a year now, except that twice in the just last few weeks, I have not bothered to post anything. Of course, I would be pleasantly surprised if even five of those posts from the last year were actually important reading.

Most significantly, the sound guy was immediately interested in what I had been doing since last summer, and I simply had nothing to say. Yes there have been some memorable incidents and quality time spent with people and so forth. Yet in terms of long term goals and life accomplishments, the past year may just as well have never happened for me. Nor can I say that the next year is likely to be much different. And as I have commented before, no amount of blogging is going to change that, much as I still foolishly wish that it could.

I debated letting my last post stand as THE last post of the blog. It is nice that I have been able to keep up my one post per week average for so long, but the times when I have anything meaningful to say seem to be getting fewer and farther between. I am concerned that even if I were to say anything of value, it would only get lost among the nonsense. I really do not know what I hope to accomplish by maintaining this blog anymore. Whatever goals I may have had in the beginning have long since vanished. I mentioned before that the discipline of writing something every week was more important than whatever I had to say, but it is sad to think that I have so little accountability in my life that that would even count as an accomplishment. And yet here we are still.

I have a friend who is constantly posting religious and political things on FB that drive me crazy. I have to fight not to say anything, and I have unfortunately lost that battle a few times and no good has come of it. I could always unsubscribe, of course, yet I still feel that there is value in being exposed to other points of view. I was thinking one day about why it bothered me so much, and I had the idea to just throw caution to the wind and go through and read and  comment on every single post. Then I thought that might get boring and considered getting a bottle of Jack Daniels (which I also find distasteful) and taking a swig between each post. Last Sunday was April first, which I thought would be the perfect day for this exercise. However, when the day came around, I had not slept well the night before and was not feeling well. Plus I started panicking  when it suddenly hit me that my plan for this year was to finish with the bathroom in January, and then looking for a job in February, and here it was already April and I was nowhere close to accomplishing either of those things.

I did no work at all in March. Neither in the bathroom, nor for my part time job. I have no idea where the time goes. Towards the end of last year, I devised three rules to attempt to increase my productivity. The first was, “No going on the internet between 9:00am and 6:00pm.” The second, “No eating in front of the computer.” The problem is, once I settle in front of the computer, I can not get myself to leave the chair. The third rule was, “Do the dishes before bed.” It was not really related to the other two, but I used to be fanatical about dishes when I had a bunch of roommates, but living on my own, I had gotten quite bad about letting things stack up for days.

These rules were pretty simple, yet I repeatedly violated all of them, and then at some point, I just gave up entirely. I no longer struggle with personal demons. The demons have won. I just hate the fact that I have to admit defeat again every single day, as if one day I might wake up and suddenly decide NOT to be a complete waste of a human being? I do not even know what such a decision would look like at this point.

So anyway, I did not go through with my April Fool’s plan, because it was already a rather mean-spirited thing to do, and if I could not at least have fun with it, I would just be being nasty for the sake of it. I could still do it another time, but I thought it might minimize potential defriendings if people wrote it off as an April Fool’s prank. As if she somehow knew my intentions, she has been posting a ridiculous amount of stuff in the last week, and I just shake my head thinking, “I would have to post on all of that crap too now?” I do not want to do that.

I have actually been considering starting a new blog specifically about my guitar projects. However, that would obviously require that I actually be doing guitar projects in order to blog about them. There was one night this week when I actually could not sleep because of this mad idea that I had for a guitar. I have thought for a while about modifying cheap guitars into new and strange creations, but I am hardly the first person to have that idea. This idea was for something different. This went beyond typical level of madness into true evil genius. I could say it has a steampunk/post-apocalyptic flair, but even THAT has been done before. This guitar, if I could adequately describe it, you would laugh. Everyone would laugh. But if I could build it, I would show them. I’d show them ALL.

That is not a project to just dive right into though. I would have to work my way up to that, and I already have an overabundance of ideas for other projects. Enough for a whole other blog even. So I actually got excited about that, and this week I was out and about to various craft stores and ended up buying supplies to use toward FIVE different projects. Which, considering my reluctance to complete even one project seems more than a little overambitious in retrospect.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with fixing the bathroom or getting a job.

In a previous post, I set out to list all the reasons that I do not date. By the time I was finished, I had almost talked myself out of it. That is counter-productive. I am so reluctant to make decisions at all,  to question the convictions that I already have simply will not do.

I also went through the archives looking for something. Reading through old post is always depressing. I sometimes dissociate, and think, “This poor guy has been in such pain for so long… I wish that there was something that I could do.” Then I come back and realize that that guy is me, and there is nothing anyone can do. I realized that, I do not think that this was a conscious thought necessarily, but in the past I was hoping that someone would read my blog and understand my struggles and show me what I was missing. Because I was definitely missing something.

Since last summer, I have written a post per week, whether I had anything interesting to say or not. Usually not. I was telling someone recently that I thought the discipline of doing it every week was more valuable than anything I actually had to say. Although, after reading through the older posts, I wonder if the silly stuff I write about now might actually be an improvement.

In the past, I never wanted to talk about my blog in person. I do not remember why, or if I even had a reason. Now I find myself mentioning frequently in conversation, and I feel foolish every time. In the mid ’00s, everyone had a blog and nobody cared. Now we are well into the ’10s and people care even less. In fact, there is a certain comedy website whose articles lately keep slapping me in the face. Talking about your blog is pathetic. Talking about your book that you are never actually going to write is pathetic. Talking about your dream journal is pathetic.

It is almost enough to make me want to throw in the towel. But I am committed to one post a week, and again, it is not wise to rethink that.

I had a thought once that it would be amusing for The Purple Robe to have a self-titled EP with an actual song titled The Purple Robe; another song called Self-Titled EP; a third song called Title Track; and maybe one called Eponymous or something. Hilarious. That is not what this post is about.

I used to subscribe to a certain guitar magazine that always had “clever” article titles that I actually found quite annoying. To make up an example, there might be an article called, “Another Brick in the Wall”, and you get you get all in a Pink Floyd mood, when it turns out to be an interview with some guitarist named Johnny Wall, about whom you could not possibly care. Or whatever. It drove me crazy. Yet years later, I find myself with a blog where I am constantly catching myself wanting to title my posts with the same sort of puns and references. So now it drives me crazy that I want to do that.

In any case, lately I have been thinking about titles. A lot of that is due to the fact that I have actually been changing titles after posting recently. Last month I posted one of my [not even a little] famous movie reviews, except that I inadvertently titled it as a “Music Review…” As it happens, the prior post along with the following two were actually about music, and “music” and “movie” are kind of similar words, so it was perhaps an understandable mistake. It was up for a week or two before I noticed and corrected the error, so I suppose my most diligent readers had already noticed. If not, I left the permalink unaltered as a reminder of my foolishness.

I usually have a title in mind for a post when I come up with the topic, before I even start writing. However, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote the whole post, and then sat for some time trying to think what to call it. It was another post about dreams, and the first thing I happened to think of was “Bird Singing in the Sycamore Tree”, which (assuming that you are exactly as cultured as I am) you should recognize as a reference to dreams. Yet it just was not quite my style. So I decided instead on, “Who Am I to Disagree?”, which is another similar reference, if perhaps more cryptic. I was not totally satisfied with that, but I published it anyway. However, with that finished, I still had sycamore trees on my mind, so I went back to the source for that reference and discovered the “While I’m Alone and Blue as Can Be” line (again assuming that you are exactly as cultured as I am – you did not know about either) which was definitely my style. Unfortunately, I initially misquoted it as “[When] I’m Alone…” and thus, within minutes of initially posting, I changed the title and resulting link TWICE, but I figured that no one would have seen it yet.

Last week I went overboard on the geekiness. In some programming/engineering/logic contexts, “!” means “NOT [whatever comes afterward]”. For example, if X is TRUE then !X would be FALSE. So for that particular title, You have to ask yourself, “What is Sparta?” Then more specifically, “What is NOT Sparta?” That was a lot of work, no? [What do you think of THAT, Guitar World?]

As you may have noticed, I am quite fond of titles that start “In Which the Author…”, but I try to limit those so as not to lose the novelty. Other times I get stuck on a theme. I had no initial intention of having three “([Whatever] Edition!)” music posts, or three posts related to racism, or how for a while last summer two out of every three post titles inexplicably started with the letter ‘F’. I still do not know what that was about. It got to the point where I would come up with a post and title and have to tell myself, “I don’t care how perfect that title is, it starts with ‘F’ again. Change it.”

On the topic of what to call things, sometimes I come up with story ideas. (I never, you know, write them down, or anything like that, of course.) Yet, in my head, I have to call the characters something, and I find it tricky to come up with names, because invariably I think of someone that I know or have known with that name, and I generally do not want that character to remind me of that person.

Last week, I had plenty of time to think as I was digging holes, and I came up with a new story (which is unlikely to go anywhere), and for some reason I settled on the name “Clara” for one of the characters. Then I immediately thought, What‽ No one has been named “Clara” in a hundred years. Which is obviously good for the someone-that-I-know issue, but not so great on the a-name-that-someone-would-actually-have criteria. However, this is the internet, and I discovered that after a dramatic fall off, “Clara” has actually been gaining in popularity over the last ten years. Which really left me wondering how exactly did I know that? (Incidentally, it seems that “Aiden” is among the top ten name for boys these days. Why would you name your kid that? That name screams, “Entitled punk who desperately needs to be slapped.”)

Lastly, back to the topic of post titles, how are you guys doing on this one? I even thought of another level since then that made me really wish I had attached it to a more meaningful post, but c’est la vie. Would it help if I mentioned that I had this song in my head when I first came up with it? Probably not.

I had several topics in mind to talk about this week, but I also had a busy week and I am pushing all of those ideas aside in the 11tth hour in favor of this one.

For some reason, at some point within the last few days I remembered that I once had a post entitled Swallow. I could not remember what the post itself was about, I only recalled that the title was essentially a random word completely unrelated to the topic that I never-the-less thought created an appropriate mood for what I was discussing.

“Swallow” can mean many things. Most commonly, after you chew, you swallow. It could also be a perhaps involuntary reaction when one suddenly becomes nervous. Metaphorically, it can mean to “suck it up”; your pride for instance. Unfortunately, I can not ignore that it also has a certain sexual connotation. Or maybe it refers to a kind of bird.

I can safely say that none of these were what I had in mind when I wrote it. To be perfectly honest, I believe that I was thinking of the Bush song Swallowed, which I also happen to have no idea of what it is about, because that dude simply does not enunciate well. However, it does have an overall bleak tone to it, which is really all that I was interested in at the time.

The important thing to remember is that it was a random word unrelated to the post topic. Also, thinking about it reminded me of a certain person, but I did not know why. It turns out that I actually mentioned that person in that post, though cryptically as always. So on some level, I guess I did remember what that post was about.

In what I was almost about to write when I sat down at my computer tonight, I was going to refer to the board game “Loaded Questions”, which I know that I have mentioned in the past. I searched the blog to find exactly where and what I had said previously, and surprisingly, that very post was the only result. (Although, I feel that I must have talked about the game elsewhere, but perhaps did not specifically mention by name.)

Curiously, earlier today I was thinking about how I never had an actual email signature, as in something that gets automatically appended to the end of each email sent, but I did used to have a certain sign off technique where I would end with some phrase with all the words run together with no spaces.  I do not remember how or why I started that, but I must have kept it up for a good ten years or so before one day I simply decided, “You know what, I don’t want to do that anymore.” However, I thought it might be a fun throwback to end a blog post like that one of these days, you know, for the fans. Yet it turns out, I did that exact thing in that same damn post.

So it is either a massive multi-level coincidence, or there is something about that particular post that is weighing heavily on my subconscious. So I thought, what the heck, why don’t we all give it a read?

Speaking of post titles and coincidences, anyone else notice how many of my recent entries all begin with the letter ‘F’? Totally unintentional. I had already titled this post before I noticed. Weird.

Today is the seventh anniversary of my blog. An awful lot has changed in seven years. Some things have not.

It also happens to be Easter today, or “Resurrection Sunday”, if you prefer. Somewhat appropriate to “resurrect” my blog from its longest hiatus yet. Stumbling Toward God… I was talking with someone a little while ago about how that title was not really appropriate. I have not been blogging this year because I honestly do not have anything more to say on that topic. I am no closer to God than when I started seven years ago. I almost went to church one Sunday several weeks ago just because I was feeling so alone, but then I had to ask, “How exactly would that make me feel any LESS alone?” So I did not.

It has been a rotten year so far. I was tempted to call it the worst year that I have had in a while, but then I had to ask myself, “Really? Who died?” Well, no one that I know. So, generally speaking, that would make it a better year than 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, and oh, while we are at it, 2008? Jesus… Well okay, but this has been a bad year for *me*… nevermind.

Blogger has discontinued support for externally hosted blogs such as mine, and is requiring everyone to switch to their server. So I switched… to WordPress. It was not quite as smooth a transition as I had hoped for as I wanted the new blog to be installed into the same location as the previous one, and I also wanted all of the posts to have the same names as before, since I do a fair amount of back linking. (WordPress and Blogger use different conventions to generate Permalinks.) I believe I have that all sorted out now. Another problem is that most of the old comments did not make the transition. The importer actually stated, “60/247 comments imported”, without any explanation as to why it could not be bothered with the other 187, so I do not know what, if anything, to do about that yet. I am not totally happy with this current layout and “theme” either, but I did not want to spend all day on that.

Long time fans might recall that this is actually the THIRD implementation of this blog, and I have joined all of the posts from both prior versions into a single archive. What fun. I also started to categorize the old posts, which actually was a feature that Blogger added after I had already been blogging for awhile and I never bothered to implement. I did not get terribly far in that effort, because reading through the archives made really me want a stiff drink. And a gun. Whatever else might be said, my search for God has… not been rewarding.

I was thinking about how I have been blogging pretty much since the day I first heard the word “blog” six years ago. Most of that time I have been bothered by the feeling that I was not posting quite often enough, but I actually did the math and it averages out to about one post every ten days, which I know is hardly awarding-winning , but I am still rather impressed with myself. Not that it matters. I read not long ago about how the kids are really into the “social media” these days, but it is mostly only people over 30 who blog anymore. Which sadly, is about the only instance that I can come up with of me actually acting my age. I really do not know if “mommy blogging” is still popular, as that simply is not my scene.

In any case, here we are, with a blog rebuilt from the ground up, ready to stumble on.