Talking About Stagnation (Part 1)

I’ve had this feeling of fullness.

Not a fullness of satiation, or of content; I mean a fullness like pressure, like something that’s overinflated, and grown too large for its container.

For whatever reason, I am a night person, and most of what I am, feel, or do—good or bad—comes out at night. During the day, I feel like I’m biding time, doing errands, going to class, working out, whatever; when the sun sets, that’s what I was waiting for. I don’t necessarily do anything at that point, but that’s when I feel I’m alive, and at home. Maybe I have some vampire blood.

In any case, late nights (turning into early mornings) often serve as good weathervanes for my emotions, especially, such as recently, when I’m not doing much during them. It’s my month-long Winter Break, there’s few people available that I care to see, and while I can vegetate with passive activities like television and reading for a while, there’s still… not a lot going on. Hence, I find myself in moments like this one. It’s 2:00 AM. I’m dressed fairly well, pretty vim and energetic, and sitting in front of the computer; I woke up late today and did very little, so the path from the day’s beginning to this, approaching its end, was not long. It’s quiet and dark, and I feel empty.

I just said that it’s about fullness, but remember what that means; it’s not filled with anything, it’s inflation, large and taut but hollow. Two years ago, living at home toward the end of high school—and to some extent for a long stretch before that—I felt similar, just bored and empty and lusterless and pining to get out of here, do something new, change my life that had been so similar for 18 years. Standard stuff, I imagine, for the age. I would go for drives to nowhere in particular, just to feel a sense of motion and control; I would find myself wandering the house, as if looking for something, pausing in various places as if to begin an activity but then continuing moments later. And so forth.

This is similar, but not the same. At that time, I was just looking for difference—literally my primary and explicitly stated goal was to find change, whatever the hell it might be qualitatively, so long as it wasn’t what I knew. When I hauled off to college in Santa Cruz, I got that in moderate measure; it was a passel of new experiences, a new city, new people, some new activities. But it wasn’t that new, and I was aware of it at the time. Santa Cruz is Berkeley Alternative, and my lifestyle was hardly changing in any immense ways. It was enough, and most of all, it was my only real option, since no other schools had accepted me. Call it a stopgap. Now that stopgap may be expiring.

If I was laying it out concretely, I might break the causes of the problem into three factors, with the above being one; the other two, what you might call loneliness and existential crisis, are complex in their own right and deserve their own space. I’ll write about them later.

Right now, though, I’m mostly just interested and a little unnerved—a little worried—by this feeling. As I’ve said, it shows up mainly in slow hours late at night, and as well as behind my lids before I fall asleep, but I’ve learned to trust those times; they’re a kind of meditative empty slate, open for whatever’s really going on, bypassing the filters and shields of the bright, active daylight, full of attention-consuming activities and time-filling input. And this isn’t quite like before, which was more of a passive ennui; this has an active, itching fire to it.

I say that it feels like I’m full because that’s the image that seems to fit it best. It’s not just change, like last time. If I hauled up tomorrow and made the same kind of shift, went to a similarly-different city at a similarly-different school doing similarly-different things—or even if the difference was much greater this time—I don’t think I’d be satisfied, though it might serve as another stopgap. I want larger, I need to expand, I need to find a chink or a portal and blast out of it, adding volume, multiplying my domain. Marc MacYoung uses a similar metaphor, talking about the difference between merely “rearranging furniture”—that is to say, the fridge is over there, the chairs are in the living room now, but it’s all still the same stuff, or at least it’s equivalent—and “getting bigger,” adding more rooms, making more space so you can expand rather than just swirling around.

I need that. I need to plant my feet on the blocks and shove. I’ve been sort of chugging along for a while, and that’s been fine. And for the last year or so, especially, I’ve been doing a great deal to just “work on myself”; examining the various facets of my self and existence, figuring out what I want to change, and honing them. That’s all great, and in an ideal world I’d like to keep doing that; to some extent, I don’t feel like I’m ready. I could use another year or two, really top off the tanks, hit a strong threshold of intelligence, maturity, physical ability, life competence, and so on, then take on the world. After all, if you don’t have the resources, it doesn’t matter how strong your motivation is; you’ll usually just tilt at windmills until you run out of energy.

That’s all ongoing, but the trouble is, I think I may have run out of time. I don’t think I have what it takes to stay in on this hamster wheel for very much longer, making my devotions and putting in my time. I’m not a big fan of walking on glass today for a projected terrific tomorrow, but I don’t necessarily mind it in the short term; I’m just saying that whether or not I can play that game much longer may be out of my hands.

Seems melodramatic, and a touch arrogant. And I may be wrong; this is, after all, mostly based on a feeling that may also conceivably be a side effect of allergy meds and a high-protein diet.

I’m looking seriously at taking a year abroad, next year, probably in Europe. I can make it until then for sure, unless the floor altogether disappears from under me, and going to another continent should do well enough at giving me new horizons. At the very least, it’ll serve as a very good stopgap, and honestly, I can’t swear that my entire life won’t be a series of delaying actions to stave off boredom.

Who the hell knows?