SELF-OBSESSION AND THE REALLY REAL

I just finished reading this post about someone returning to office 
work after two years working from home:
gopher://uninformativ.de/0/phlog/2022-03/2022-03-15--two-years-working-from-home.txt

Seeing as I woke up so early this morning that I couldn't fill in 
all the time dreaming about women, I figured I might as well use it 
as inspiration to write a similar sort of post that I've had in 
mind myself.

'Uninformativ' talks about slowly, unconsciously, losing touch with 
reality. The funny thing is that I've always felt like being 
amongst people frequently (I almost said constantly, but that's 
sort-of an unimaginable horror for me these days) is what 
disconnects me from reality. I think I'm repeating myself from an 
earlier post (inevitable at this point I suppose, I've been going 
'too long'), but I remember when I finished secondary school the 
extended time away from the constant social interaction (even 
though it was mostly just in proximity to me rather than involving 
me) felt like an escape into the real world. If I was sure of 
anything, it was that I didn't want to go back into the distorted 
reality where experience is shaped by social constructs enforced by 
the interweaved minds around you, weaving you into their fabric by 
the mechanism of ones own human nature.

No it seems clear to me that the world I see is truest when I'm on 
my own, and I like it much better that way than through the lens of 
other people's thoughts and emotions. That truth is perhaps really 
the choice of how to view it, left up to me alone, to love or hate 
anything, to love and hate everything.

This might require a certain degree of self-confidence. One thing 
that I have become vaguely aware of is that over my years of living 
like this, approaching ten, I may have become increasingly 
self-obsessed. Whatever goes wrong in my life is necessarily my own 
fault, and I easily hate myself for those failures. Not even 
silently, I'll easily have prolonged sessions of shouting insults 
at myself in the third person, I even enjoy it to some dregree - 
there's little consequence to letting rip at yourself compared to 
doing it to someone else.

But I also love myself, and perhaps here is the real depth of 
self-obsession. For one thing physically I spend much of my time 
naked, weather and activities permitting. I think people can often 
be in some sort of denial about their bodies - fussing over flaws 
they see compared with others, and indeed seeing themselves through 
the eyes of others. Without sounding too weird I really like my own 
body, simply as being mine, feeling it, controlling it - one 
organism existing alone in the world, playing around in it however 
it wills. That isn't to say I don't wish to improve it sometimes. 
Lately with increased exercise I think I've possibly got it into 
its best shape yet, both in terms of appearance and performance. 
Maybe that's the only reason I feel this way, but still I'm no male 
model, I expect I'm an average fit male in his 20s, and I wouldn't 
want to be anything more. Anything more I'd be doing for other 
people, to stand out to them, and then if it were the other way and 
I was fatter and weaker than most I wouldn't be able to accept 
that, but I think I could. Though part of it is definately the idea 
that I look sexy to women, even though such women only exist in my 
mind and as such are probably unrealistically 'on side'.

I'm certainly not content with my physical female relationships 
being entirely imaginary, but in all other ways I really feel most 
at ease in my self-obsessed reality. It's possibly all a 
consequence of choosing the latter over the former. My ideal would 
be to have a grilfriend who I meet up with for a day or two a 
fortnight, otherwise most days not even communicating, and just 
keep it like that forever. I don't know if that's even a 
possibility in the real world. Most of the time I'm perfectly 
contented on my own, just existing. Driving haphazardly through 
some dodgy little backroads, half-lost and hungry, but excited for 
what new place I might discover. Lying naked outside on the 
verandah in a warm breeze. Typing this nonsese into a computer as 
old as I am, slightly too cold without any clothes on, while 
listening to music cobbled together in trackers 20 years ago by 
people who were mostly a little younger then than I am now.

Another thing I have done for quite a few years now is take a photo 
once a year of me standing naked in the same place in my house. 
These days with digital photography it seems quite easy and natural 
to want to keep a record of how one's own body changes over time, 
yet I'm guessing most people probably don't do this. Anyway it 
usually shows that I haven't changed as much as I think I have, 
which I guess is keeping me in touch with reality in its own way. 
One awkward thing is that somehow I get easily aroused by the idea 
of photographing myself naked, I don't know what that's about but 
it makes it difficult trying not to have an errection - maybe I'm a 
loss to the porn industry :).

Ha 8:54AM, just in time to start work. Certainly none of 
Uninformativ's commute-time meditation for me, though driving in 
the city with all the traffic stresses the hell out of me so I 
struggle to understand what that's about anyway. But I think I've 
finally managed to complete a phlog post within time on a weekday 
morning! A miracle!

 - The Free Thinker.