WEEK THOUGHTS

I've gone a bit quiet here lately. I did try to write a post last 
weekend but it was swallowed up by a power outage. Oh yeah, for 
pity's sake learn from your mistake and save this now man! Right, 
now I've given the auto-save somewhere to park the file I should be 
safe this time.

Really I've been a bit off people again. Well more than usual, 
which is an extreme state already by many standards. But I've been 
quite chatty in my head, mainly on self-reflective philosphical 
stuff, and I thought maybe I'd try summarising some of my thoughts 
in something shorter tham my usual excessive ramble.

WHO TO TALK TO

Observation one:
I haven't felt like writing here much.

Observation two:
I'm thinking to myself a lot.

Observation three:
I haven't been talking to people much, but I don't really want to 
talk to anyone I know more either.

I've rarely been able to talk to people about things that I write 
about here without a frequent tension of diengagement. I'm as often 
as diengaged from what they're talking about as they are of what 
I'm trying to blabber away. I'd rather not talk at all to people 
who aren't interested, so I usually don't bother. Yet this phlog is 
an outlet for volumes of stuff I don't talk about, and surely 
there's equally little chance of people being interested here. So 
why do I bother? Surely what I fundamentally want is what I get 
sitting on my couch at night in silence deep in my own thought. 
What exactly to I crave in addition to that, and should I find some 
better substitute for it than wasting my time typing stuff like 
this into the black hole of cyberspace?

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Ob. 1:
If I'm spending a noticable amount of money, it's either on my 
business or my car. The rest mainly accumulates in the bank where 
it sits basically to make me more comfortable with the idea of not 
making as much money in the future. Though I still don't feel 
comfortable with that (if I had debt I'd probably go crazy).

Ob. 2:
Most recently (this week) the big spending's been on my business, 
as I buy a whole new round of things to further the development of 
a product that I've been developing agonisingly slowly.

Ob. 3:
This shouldn't be a great concern because overall the return on 
investment (ROI) for my business expenditure has been good over the 
last few years.

Ob. 4:
By that measure if I spent lots more money, I'd make a whole lot 
more instead of leaving it in the bank.

Ob. 5:
Trouble is that, as on this project, I'm always hopelessly slow to 
turn that investment into a return, and my capacity is very 
limited. So more investment would just be wasted because the 
turn-around time would increase into infinity.

The obvious answer is to invest in other people to do work. That, 
however, takes massively more money than I have because normal 
people in this country earn incredibly more money from even basic 
jobs than I ever make myself. The answer to which is borrowing 
money, which as I said before would drive me crazy. My own job 
would then become much about dealing with other people - employees 
and whoever I get the money from - which I would absolutely hate. 
Plus they likely wouldn't like me much either, given how little 
common understanding I can usually find with randomly-selected 
members of the general workforce.

This is really why the only real hope I have is something like a 
website that can scale up somewhat disproportionately with the 
amount of time that needs to be spent on running it (support emails 
aside - which is surely why so few popular websites seem to have a 
findable email address). Then if it does get big enough that I need 
a workforce, I can hopefully sell it all off and put an amount of 
money in the bank that I actually feel truely comfortable with.

But if I'm saving money, and have been for years, and ought to 
inherit some more before I reach old-age, as an only-child of my 
parents, why exactly _am_ I uncomfortable with the money I've got 
already? What's to say that there is an amount of money that I'd 
consider 'enough'? Is it in fact the trap that there's always some 
way you could conceive of needing more money than you've got, 
especially in the face of an entire society devoted to convicing 
you of that idea?

One major societal upset and it all becomes meaningless anyway. But 
then I start thinking I should hoard supplies in an underground 
bunker instead...

PAID OBSESSION

People who get really into a hobby (collecting, transpotting, 
computers, etc.) are often considered at least a little weird. 
People like me who get into a lot of hobbies are definitely weird, 
prone to obsession over needless topics. But really getting into a 
hobby usually involves, either directly or indirectly, accumulating 
a excessive amount of knowledge on a particular field. Very often 
large components of this set of knowledge is required in a 
particular related occupation. In this context some peripheral 
knowledge may be accumulated through obsessive study of the field 
in which one is employed, yet this knowledge is respected and 
benefits one's standing, compared to the hobbiest who's unwarranted 
posession of such knowledge is generally treated with suspicion or 
concern.

I conclude that society has a very narrow acceptance of obsession, 
permitted in an individual's one paid and valued occupation and no 
other. Within this restriction, obsessive tendencies are encouraged 
and rewarded. But instead of one's obsessive tendencies being 
spread out over the full width of human experience, they are caged 
within this one field of excellence, restricting the individual as 
a whole. 

SUBSTITUTES

From the bedside notebook that I sometime write my sleepy thoughts 
within:

I read books and watch movies to substitute for living an exciting 
life. I read things on the internet to substitute for living a 
social life. I wank every morning to substitute for having a sex 
life. I exercise in the evening to substitute for living a physical 
life. And I write this to substitute for having someone to complain 
to about it.

Yet put all those substitutes together and somehow it kind-a works 
out alright.

DIRTY OLD MEN

I spend so much time dreaming about women. It seems a waste, yet I 
suspect the extra concerns which would be brought upon me were I to 
actually find a woman to love would only sacrifice more of my 
thinking time. I wonder often if a lesser sex drive would be to my 
benefit. In theory it decreases with age, though I'm not old enough 
yet to have reached such an age (I searched the web about it). On 
the other hand I have long noted the evidence of old men who are 
still excited by women, and they seem to be numerous. I rather 
suspect that I'll become one, and with rather more likelihood than 
of meeting an actual woman who I really like in the mean time. I 
don't watch porn, I just stare at pretty women a little too much 
and enjoy sleezy movies. I'm a bit of a dirty old man already in my 
late twenties, distanced not by age but by a dislike of 
socialisation and frankly the bullshit that everyone is so wrapped 
up in.

CONCLUSION

Oh, I realise now that these tend to fall onto the same end note of 
me being frustrated about not really getting on with people. I'm 
not actually scared away by social situations these days nearly as 
much as I have been in the past, I just don't really enjoy them all 
that much. People annoy me too much, and beyond a certain volume of 
interaction, which comparatively isn't much, I'm just not 
interested. I like to think this isn't much of a limit on my life, 
but I guess it is. Or are other people's lives limited by the 
fulfillment of their social desires? Yes, they wouldn't live out 
here in the middle of farmland for starters - who would they have 
to talk to?

Maybe that's it then. All these influences are coming in via text, 
TV, and the few people I know, and they preach a certain way of 
living that fits the balance of most people's desires. I have an 
odd set of desires, yet at some level I sense a need to fit in with 
this model of living that's presented to me so relentlessly. I 
won't, and I shouldn't, yet I feel I should.

Or it could all just be rooted in sexual frustration. With my 
evening runs and push-ups, not to mention all the big DIY jobs and 
long walks I've been doing, my fitness has improved and I think 
that increases my libido too. Either way it's nothing really that 
serious to get concerned over, maybe I just have't got enough to 
worry about? Maybe I actually spend far too long sitting silently 
on my couch thinking to myself?

 - The Free Thinker