“There's a hardness I'm seeing in modern people. Those little moments of goofiness that used to make the day pass seem to have gone. Life's so serious now. Maybe it's just because I'm with an older gang now. I mean, nobody even has hobbies these days. Not that I can see. Husbands and wives both work. Kids are farmed out to schools and video games. Nobody seems to be able to endure simply being by themselves, either – but at the same time they're isolated. People work much more, only to go home and surf the Internet and send e-mail rather than calling or writing a note or visiting each other. They work, watch TV, and sleep. I see these things. The whole world is only about work: work work work get get get ...racing ahead ... getting sacked from work ... going online ... knowing computer languages ... winning contracts. I mean, it's just not what I would have imagined the world might be if you'd asked me seventeen years ago. People are frazzled and angry, desperate about money, and, at best, indifferent to the future.”
That's a quote from Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, a book which I recently finished. And it was that part that somehow made me think about my life – and I with some sadness, I have to say that I can see myself as one of this kind.
Everyday it's the same routine, study, internet, sleep, study, internet, sleep. Oh and sometimes a night out. But it doesn't fulfill me. It's what I can do best, but I don't like it. It's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I thought about it for weeks, but I came to the conclusion that right now, there's absolutely nothing for me worth living for, working for. This may sound harsh to my friends, but there's this emptyness in me, the feeling that something's missing. Most of the time I'm alone, I don't have a girlfriend, only a few friends, and most of the time it's the Internet I'm “talking” to. Although I don't admit it that much, I guess in someway I'm a typical nerd which has nothing else to do besides doing something that relates to computers. And everytime I'm asking myself, is it worth it? Shouldn't I be somewhere outside, living my life the way I really want it to be?
Also, most of the time I'm not interested in the pretty things in life; I early began to be more fascinated by the deepest abysm's of the human being – and most of the time, I'm trying to find those abysm's in all the people I interact with, instead of looking at their pretty sides. I'm not a complete misanthrope, but it takes a long time before I let others be a part of my life. It will take time to change that.
The other problem is that I don't know what exactly it is that's missing in my life. I can't point my finger at it, there are just some vague assumptions about it. But I guess that's normal; if we all would know exactly what we want to achieve or be like, then we all would be happy right? For one thing, I stopped smoking after twelve years and recently began jogging to get a better health, but that's only the physical part of me. As for the mind, I don't know if there will be something better in the near future.
