The Whole Point of Me

(Source)

ARTHUR: Oh, come on, Douglas! It’ll be fun! We’ll make a game of it! Like, one of us could put something metal in our pocket and see if the X-ray machine can tell which one of us it is!
DOUGLAS: I think the machine can tell that. That is the whole point of the machine.
ARTHUR: Yeah, well, let’s see. There’s lots of things that are the whole point of me that I don’t do.
DOUGLAS: Like what?
ARTHUR: Floss. Don’t tell Mum.

Cabin Pressure - Uskerty 

After a killer day of Sunday blues that led to me spending most of Sunday afternoon crying in bed, I woke up on Monday morning feeling sad. This isn't news. I wake up most weekday mornings feeling sad. Sometimes weekends too. Lately, I've been feeling like the whole point of me... isn't anything, really.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I've been sad for a while. Between a fairly recent break up and a fairly soul destroying job, it's hard to tell which one is making me sad at any given time. I won't talk much about the break up, because obviously I'm not the only person involved. But a few weeks down the line, I'm getting slowly better, and I have Kelly and Taylor and Katy and Little Mix to tell me I'm fine on my own and One Direction to tell I'm beautiful (and that casual sex is fun?). So while I'm listening to music that would have made my goth teenage ears bleed, it's keeping me going.

Deal with it, disapproving 17-year-old Ali.

But this is not a post for unrelenting misery, because I've been doing some of that and now it needs to do some relenting.

So when I woke up on Monday morning feeling sad about another week at my meaningless job, I thought, "Well, then you'll have to make it meaningful, won't you?"

And I went, "Oh."

And then I was talking to myself, so I stopped. But it was a good conversation nevertheless.

I don't have a lot of patience with all that "think positive!", "choose to be happy!!" stuff. Much too often, I feel like it's just another way to shame people who don't have the will or the spoons to just decide to be fine. But over the last few days, I feel like I've finally reached the threshold above which I do have the energy to make a choice about my happiness. So that was what I did.

OK, job. Let's pretend it's love.

All right, loving my job is a stretch. But I've decided to do at least three things each day that make me feel like myself, or like the person I want to be. To be honest, I just don't particularly like myself at the moment, and I think it's been a while since I really did.

But there are things that make me feel like me and things that make me feel more worthwhile, despite the fact that the world would very much keep turning without my 7.30 - 4 job. Over the last few days, those things have been painting my nails teal, wearing my favourite colours,* solving the Sunday Puzzle,** reading, messaging old friends, going outside, and doing kakuro in my lunch breaks. I haven't done an awful lot to make the world a better place, but I'm working on it. I would like to bring down the kyriarchy, but in the mean time I will make small donations to Rape Crisis, hand out apples to people at traffic lights, and do what I can to look after friends who are sad. It's not much, but I hope it counts for something.

My teal fingernails are outside. Tick and tick.

Essentially, I want to be kinder and have more fun. I don't think there's any great metanarrative for my life. I don't have any faith in gods or fate or destiny. So I don't think there really is a "whole point of me" - but being kind and having fun looks like a pretty good place to start.

Part of doing things that make me feel like me is getting back to writing. I used to write a lot - some of it good, some bad, some very bad. So it goes. But the point is that I used to do it. Then, during NaNo 2011, I lost all my confidence and I haven't really written since. Not fiction, anyway. I've blogged and essayed and dissertationed, but I haven't so much as written a fanfic in nearly two years. And that makes me sad, because it used to be something I prided myself on. I don't expect to make a living out of it, but I would like writing to be part of my life again.

Relatedly, blog! I want to get back to posting more regularly - which of course means I need to work out what I'm going to write about here. It was much easier when I was having adventures and/or deep thoughts. These days, I don't have a lot of either. So that's something I'll have to think about, because I like you, internet, and I would like to not bore you too much.

I like you this much.

In lieu of adventures or deep thoughts, I can definitely offer you pictures of adorable things. Like this dorky baby sloth with a toy giraffe.

BERBER SLERTH!

It may not be the whole point of me, but it is basically the whole point of the internet, and that's close enough for now.

*This actually makes me feel like Hannah, but I'm fine with that.
**This actually makes me feel like Bri, but I'm fine with that.