everything except himself

The locks on the two doors to my room are upside down. That is to say, what you would normally consider locked is, to me, unlocked, and what I consider unlocked would seem quite closed to you. It was an accident installing them wrong, but it serves a point, I suppose. You see, I personally feel like I’m a very open guy, but I’ve been told I’m mostly closed off to people. Most people don’t try doors, though. Sit near a closed door before a class or seminar. Even if it’s unlocked, most people will blindly wait outside, assuming that you found the door closed and locked. My demeanor is the door, so take your eyes and unlock the expression — the door’s been open for as long as I can remember.

I get accused a lot of smoking pot or doing drugs for always seeming so relaxed, but, really, what should I seem worried or serious about when everything is as it should be: sun is warm… grass is green. I will live for a while, and then I will go. Maybe I have trouble assigning value to things? On a whole, I do what I feel ought to be done. I’ve lost a lot of myself to time over the years, though, and I have come to find I lack the ability to motivate myself to do things sometimes. It really falls in line with me doing what I feel I should do, as opposed to writing it off as something I must do then going perfunctorily through the motions. I admit that there can be a very deep sense of purpose to doing something over and over again, like gardening. In gardening, you plant seeds, water the ground, pull weeds, and repeat until things grow to fruition. If I were a gardener, I would probably also pick up cooking. I, unfortunately, hate vegetables.

My mother has said time and time again that I have a lot to offer people and that people rarely have much to offer me. Honestly, I want more than just your ears when I talk because I give more than that. I developed this habit of analyzing people a long time ago, and it’s stuck with me. I think my middle school counselor is to blame for that. She was this excessively happy woman who pronounced the word “mature” as MAH-tour. I found it funny every time she said it, and it was one of her favorite words. She always spoke to us as classes, and we had to do this thing about resolving conflicts. Basically, understand where the other person is coming from, and then you’ll probably think fighting with that person is stupid. It’s a lot like defensive driving.

So, where do I escape to after deciding that fighting with the world is stupid? Music and all sorts of it. I feel at home just listening to music. Mind you, I probably define music differently than you do. I hate the “Pop” genre because most songs aren’t written by the person singing and the music isn’t being played by the people who wrote it. That just seems fake and wrong to me. When you reach the point where you’re just releasing things because people expect it of you (and you’re getting lots of money because of that) where do you draw the line? I guess as long as someone else gives you words to sing you’ll continue, and they’ll keep giving you words as long as the public bought the ones you sang before. With that said, there’s not a lot of mainstream music that I like.

I wonder if there’s a job for philosophers these days? Maybe I’ll do something like that with my life.