It began as an idea. To throw a few swear words into discussions about things usually spoken about in technical terms. I wanted to break down those technical terms into simpler explanations. Individual dialects, subject-specific languages, ‘correct’ use of words are merely a trick used to disguise a topic from a public ignorant of it. It is very useful to those ‘within’ but is a wall of impenetrability to those without. It is both clouding fog and sturdy wall.
I’ve never been afraid to bash my head against those walls. I have never been afraid to be the battering ram showing his ignorance, bleeding ignorance, scarred by ignorance as he tries to fracture the impenetrable.
My hope was that others would join, be inspired my acts and see the value in it. Instead I find that those inside the walls often point and laugh at me, and those like me outside of them wonder why I’m so ‘above my station’ I’d try to break them down in the first place.
Perhaps I should be careful what I say. I am in an emotional turmoil right now. I recently had the opportunity to, for the first time in around a decade, obtain gainful employment and I failed. It might not seem like a big deal for some of you but this is a combination of ‘Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria’ and the very real recognition that chances like this come to me once every 5-10 years. I’m unemployable.
The reasons for my failure, as far as I can tell, are those self-same scars I wear on my head, from bashing it against those impenetrable walls and trying to make the inside visible to everyone. Knowledge might be valuable, but that does not make it profitable.
I am tired. Most people who work as I do get some benefit from it. A wage, some letters after their name that let them move up the ranks, some recognition.
Me I’m busy rambling away in the gutter, handing out pamphlets on street corners that people fail to grasp out of my hands and let flitter away on the wind, before they walk to the nearest stand and grab a copy of The Metro or The Evening Standard.
I’m at a crossroads. Had I the option I’d sell my soul to the Devil to get the success I want, to complete my mission, but me and the devil have walked side by side in the past and he’s made it quite clear he wants nothing to do with me.
On the one hand I want to keep doing what I am doing, but I know more than anyone else that “Hard work pays off!” is a lie. It’s a big lie, at that. It is a lie that keeps us all chasing rewards that don’t exist, whose recipients have been pre-determined by luck of birth.
On the other hand if I give up I lose another opportunity for better, for change, for me to take a life ripped to shreds by an autistic burnout a decade ago and turn it around.
But I’ve been here before, and found both roads can lead to failure, and the more intense the effort the more dramatic the failure. Me and my ego, we have no safety net. When we fall, we land hard. It hurts. It breaks. This cycle of breaking-and-piecing-together-again has been my adult life.
The only thing I really want to break, besides those impenetrable walls blocking knowledge, is that fucking cycle.
Apologies if I have not been around as much on social media, though I highly doubt I have been missed. Apologies if my content has not been of the high standards I set myself, though few read it.
But I am feeling lost, alone, and very, very tired.
We Lack Discipline 