To be or not to be

Well today I feel like shit.

The cedar pollen is very high today, and my allergies are going crazy. I was awake all night with a sore throat, and it's still there, along with an ache like flu.

So I've been feeling sorry for myself, and depressed.

But it's funny, thinking about how and why I write, or why anyone writes, for that matter, on these blogs and diaries. Do we all want to be writers, and have an audience hanging on our every word, or know that our words and thought might be reaching and influencing millions?

Do we write to seek connection? If so, is it with ourselves, or with others?

I mean, here I am, pouring out my guts online to who knows how many people, and so what? Who gives a flying fuck? Would I want anyone to, anyway?

I realise that much of the reason I've ever written anywhere - certainly to be published - is to be seen and recognised by someone else. I know, in my heart of hearts, that I yearn to be famous for something. To be seen and heard by an awful lot of total strangers as someone who has something important to say, do, or be for them.

Wouldn't life be so much easier if I didn't?

But bizarrely, it seems that needing to "be someone" actually does the opposite. It actually pushes people away. And rightly so. After all, how can anyone have anything to say if what they have to say is governed by a selfish need rather than the quest for some deeper truth?

I dunno. I see stuff in the media nowadays which to me is such utter drivel that it depresses me beyond belief. I don't think "the masses" will have any interest in what I have to say. "The masses" don't want to think; they want their minds numbed - just as much as I do, sometimes.

Which leads me back the the utter pointlessness of it all. I feel I've lost my passion for The Arts, because I think so much baloney is talked about them.

And even as I write this, I'm thinking what utter baloney that is, too.

See, one of my biggest problems is that there are about 2,000 people inside my head, all fighting for control of Me. When one of Me says something, another Me (who has total contempt for the first Me) just sighs and criticises anything I have to say. Another Me might scream; another might be looking out the window and wishing he was somewhere else. Another Me might be just wanting everyone to get on, whilst another wants to be a crazed nutcase, and go loopy on a freeway with an AK47.

I've been my own worst enemies, and I don't know what to do about it.

A little while ago, in the intermission of the film "X Men 2", I pictured myself hanging by the neck from a rope from the balcony of my patio. I could feel the peace inside from making a decision like that - how tremendously clear headed one must feel making the decision to commit suicide. I've heard that people who have killed themselves have very often seemed really clear and level headed before doing it. I can understand that. I can see that the decision, once made, must make the person feel that they've let go of such a huge burden.

And then it occurred to me: what is that burden, anyway? Isn't it just something like shame, or self consciousness or something? It is with me. My feelings of shame and failure are so huge that they're perhaps the biggest reasons for my depression and thoughts of suicide.

So why don't I just let go of them, instead of my whole life?

I heard that a large group of failed suicides, when asked, admitted that the moment they did the deed they realised what a mistake they'd made, and that all they really wanted to do was let go of their egos.

Perhaps that's what I've tried to do on this blog: perhaps it's what everyone tries to do on their blogs and public diaries. It's a surrender of the ego, and admittance that we aren't the illusion of our personality or possessions or success or anything else.

I dunno.

It could just mean that we're all just wankers who failed at life...

Ho hum.

I'm going to read "The Once and Future King" by T.H.White

Maybe