Reality Strikes

I have comeback from Japan twice now, and left my job in Sydney once. And each time I played the numbers game.
What I mean is that I collected as many contact details from as many people as possible, saved them, and when I got back Home, I try to contact as many people as I can.
Sometimes I don't contact everyone.
Usually, most people don't contact me.
The reasons for this are simple: People's lives get so small and involved that they forget about the world outside their field of vision. Right now, most of the people whose contacts I got (about 100 people) back in Japan are busy with their job, their family, some kind of travel, their laundry, their car, riding a train, or any other kind of daily activity. And in their lives, each of them has deemed, perhaps subconsciously, that whatever they are doing is more important than contacting Tom.
I should not take it as an insult. SO many people are like this.
There is, however, one person who I do take is as an insult from - my ex-girlfriend. We were still somewhat enamoured when we broke up, but now, as I expected, her job is far more important in her mind than communication with me. And I have no way of talking to her now, because she works 23 hours a day, and won't answer her phone while she is working! -- but that is another story that I am not sharing on this blog.

So now we know who our friends are, I suppose. This is one way of looking at it.

I will say that I feel sorry for the bullshit my friends suffer in Japan:
"Why didn't you plan out your life when you were in High School??"
"Why aren't you married??"
These are all questions that a COMMON Japanese person will ask you, I am sure.
Whe I left my job at AEON, how many people asked me "What will you do in Australia??"
Everyone.
How many had a surprised look on their face when I said "I don't know."
Everyone.
This is because it is common, apparently, for Japanese people to p[lan out their entire lives when they are 16 years old.
I tell you that when I was 16, I was a very, very unhappy Tom. And if I were living a life that I had planned out then, I would be living an unhappy life now, too.
I am by no means living the high life now, by the way. I had a year and a half of genuine, good and educational experiences while I was in Japan, and now I am living like I am still in High School. This is incredibly depressing. But I am not writing this to depress you.
The question I often find myself asking is this:
"Do you have a time machine???"
Do I have a magical machine that will let me travel back in time, into the past, and do things all over again?
The answer, of course, is NO!
So I should not live as though I "could have, should have, would have" done this or that.
Re-doing things in the past cannot be done, so I should not wish I could do them.
Do you follow me?

So, my problem then, is to live in the Present. Essentially, I think, I should live in the present, hope for the future, and learn from the past. I do believe that most people, including myself more often than not, live in the past, eke through the present, and stumble into the future.

If I live for the future, it means that I have grand expectations, plans, a life-map that I made when I was 16. LIFE is not obliged to follow my plans. Why should it? I am one of 7 billion people in the world, why should the Universe do as I, one person, Tom, instructs it to do?????
Be careful, though.
Thinking like this can quickly lead to more depression, based on the feeling of: "Whaaaaaa! I don't matter at all in this world. Whaaaa! I should just die, should never have been born."
This is stupid thinking.
Why?
Firstly, I am one of 7 billion people in this world. The Universe does not cares with equal, in equal amounts, whether I live or die. Since I am alive now, and that line of 'reasoning' presents no reason at all to end my life, I am forced to default directly to something akin to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." ie nothing needs to be done.
I know, I know. This presents a LOT of rational thinking. So sue me. Rational thought has embedded itself in my though processes over the last few years, and I am not going to get rid of it, because it can provide me with Certainty when Irrationality would send me into the drink.

Secondly, the idea "I don't matter in this world" is wrong. "This world" as I choose to define it now, is MY world.
The ONLY world I know is the one that I see between waking up in the morning and falling asleep at night. My World can get damn small sometimes, but other times, like my trip across Japan, it can get really, really big! Sometimes too big.
And who is the most important person in this world of mine? It is ME! It's MY world, after all.
And your world is YOUR World. We happen to share a lot of the same things in our separate worlds. We share the planet, the air, the water, all the food and petrol, and we also have the ability to communicate with each other.

THAT is where is gets interesting.

I could exist in my world forever, the only person, the only thing that matters. This would be achievable with a lobotmy, zeroing in and remiving the parts of my brain that function and desire communication in all forms on all levels.
But I also have an ability to communicate with others, and I want to do it more often than not. I think this is part of being a Human Being, (and maybe you should ask your nearest neurosurgeon, but I think that lobotmy would remove too much of my brain, and leave me in a state mediacally and commonly referred to as a "vegetable".)

It is also the beginning of the Difficulty.
To date, I cannot find a way to make my communications with other people's worlds work to my advantage.

I exist in a time where MONEY is more important than GOD ever was, and I don't have any money to speak of. Why is it important? Because I have to BUY my food, BUY my clothes, BUY my petrol. If I ever move out from my parents' house, I will need MONEY to PAY RENT on my apartment, BUY electricity, water, gas, etc. At some point eventually I will have the unbridled privilege of paying a mortgage! Handing over half my yearly income to a bank, and the other half to the tax man. I will never reach a tax-bracket that will allow me to claim exemption from paying taxes. Never, at any point in regular life, will I be free of some kind of thought regarding MONEY.

In fact, the only time in life (in general) that I do not have think about money is when I write things, similar to this. I guess it is philosophising, or something like that.
To date, and at least for the last 5 years or so, I have done a lot of philosophising. A lot of thinking. A lot of wondering, pondering, and making grand assessments about my world. I have had what I thought were noble ideas about what is right and wrong, presented my views on good and evil sides of things (because "good" and "evil" are only viewpoints, after all), and said grandiose stuff and tried to make WHOEVER WOULD LISTEN think more than they would.

But in the modern world, that kind of activity is useless. I could only offer the kind of thing that busy, money-making people would see and think: "I have a little extra money, a boring life, and some time on Saturday. I think I will go to that philosophising guy's lesson." at which point they will pay me, and for 30-50 glorious minutes I will be the most important thing in not only My world, but that money-making person's world, too! This is in fact the nature of my existence at the AEON job in Mito. For 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

And look at me now, I am so desperate to tell and talk to people that I am giving away my best product for FREE! And yes, that IS the sad reality: I have to refer to it as a 'product', and put a monetary value on it.

So, I realise this post is too long.
I don't want you to get the wrong idea from what I say, because it is very easy to do that.
In the last page or so of crap that I have just written and posted, I have been coming to grips with reality. For someone like me, who has ambitions that are more Dream than Reality, the conversion of Dreams into Reality is a very difficult process. I do not even know where to begin.

I have a friend, he is studying to be a psychologist. He will make more money than I ever will, and he will be more successful than I ever will. He said to me that I need to tone my presumptions about life down a bit, and seek just a stepping-stone. He is right, because I constantly feel that I will someday make some giant, unsupported leap from anonymity to fame and fortune, despite Reality.

That is what I will try to do. I have no direction now, so I will start with that, and I suppose I will have to build a path from scratch, unless I can numb my delusions of grandeur away, and one day focus on doing a job or living a life that may not be grand or important, but it will let me pay the bills.

A few days ago I began the process, in my mind, of relinquishing all delusions of grandeur, so that one day I may be able to accept the life-role of becoming some kind of suburban serviceman, perhaps a tradesman like a carpenter or plumber. In such a life I will have to be satisfied with working physically demanding jobs, then screwing my customers (monetarily speaking) for all they are worth, confident in the fact that I can do something that they cannot. I will probably wish I would have been a lawyer, doctor, or investment banker, because then the work wouldn't be so physical, but I could still screw my customers.

(I'll put a little disclaimer in here: I know some doctors, and might meet a banker or lawyer or two one day, and I am sure that they are not all bastards. To those people, I will dose this Reality: your colleagues are making a bad name for it. I'd say sorry, but I am not liable, and have no control over it. Ask your lawyer colleagues why that last sentence sounded so fucking pansied.)

I'm starting to wish that the milkman's job was still an option, then at least I could screw my customers the right way.


What is my ultimate message in this post? I think it is:
Life is not going to go your way without good and solid reason,
And also:
Confronting reality is the first step. One cannot walk a path if one does not know where the first stepping-stone will bear the foot.


From Tom.