it wears me out

Given yesterday's morose post, I wish I could come up with a really upbeat post today, but I'm starting to feel like the title of a certain film.

I don't give the slightest fig about the nonsense that is the State of the Union address. I'm disillusioned, people. I'm disillusioned on many fronts, and that is a feeling that is worse than anything. Really- getting older has never troubled me. I've never been one to worry about the impending gray hairs. The physical aches that come with age will be okay by me. But, well, a very young person could feel very old when disillusionment sinks in its claws. And I am not comfortable with this emotion, just as I am not comfortable with being inured. Feeling angry and frustrated is one thing, feeling defeated is intolerable. Feeling joyful or woefully depressed is part of life, but to feel inured is to lose one's sense of life itself. This is not what I signed up for.

But it's difficult to know what to do. You grow, you learn that the idealistic visions you had in your youth have to be tempered by reality. You lose some big games that make you pause and consider the different ways a hand can be played, force you to follow each play to its inevitable outcome, ingrain in you the sense that there is a trade-off with every move you make. You can't live in a dream forever. But without any dreams, you can't live.

And then I think of the movie Singles:

Janet: Cliff, what are you talking about?
Cliff: I don't know.

I guess you had to be there. Really, my friend W said it best when, one early evening last year, over a few alcoholic beverages, he theorized that you spend your youth talking about a lot of things, coming up with lots of ideas, dreaming the big dreams, but you become a full-fledged adult when you actually start to do it, start to make things happen.

If something doesn't happen soon- no, if I can't make something happen soon, expect a meltdown shortly. Two months tops.