On Thu, 24 Aug 1995, Fluffy wrote:
> significant other(s), without doing the dump-truck routine (ie. Q:"Hi, how
> are you?" A:"boohoohoo the world sucks and i want to kill myself..."), and
> actually sit and listen and get involved in other people's lives / other
> people's perspectives - and talk about all sorts of stuff, maybe touch
Yer right, 'course. I hate that. (Yer being right? No, cuz I usually
agree w/you. I hate the way intense self-absorbed pain sort of...
dissolves as soon as u start listening to someoen /else/'s problems. I
suppose it bugs me cuz it means I don't get to take myself mearly so
seriously.
> but so do the rewards. At some point it just seems that ya gotta say fuck
> it - i'm not playing that game - deal with me or take a jump. Of cause you
> need a lot of self confidence to do that for a start, - or a sneaky facade.
Hm, well, that's what my intro post was sort of supposed to be... not
what I do, but what I'm /like/.
> bootstraps process. Actually i decided i was an anarchist before i became a
> punk, and it sort of lead me that way - rather than the converse, which
[shallow comment coming up] God I love the punk-anarchist look. Best
thing, stylistically, that ever happened to the revolution. All those
political patches, the parrot-bright hair, the boys in big boots with
pro-choice decals on their studded leather jackets... I love that.
> seemed to be true for many of the punks i've known, in that the experience
> of being a punk politicised them, and to an exent much of their politics
> originated as one of identification.... but i'm digressing...
>
Hm, funny, being an anarchist is punking me. [punking?]
> makes sense to anyone else, but after having defined and structured so much
> of my life in terms of resistant political activity that hasn't really
> achieved anything tangible ... i feel like i've reached some sort of dead
> end. I don't have the energy to carry something myself, and i've got
> totally intolerant of the bullshit
> i really feel that i've totally lost focus and meaning in my life.
unhackneyed deep yet not maudlin expression of sympathy here] Radical
burnout. Not very good at offering comfort, me, uh, how about something
like... Let's All define ourselves by what we /do/ believe in rather than
what we're fighting... that way, if you win, you still have something
to do, not wandering around lost going "isn't there even one more
developer out there for me to disrupt?"
and then I'll add some of the typical stuff about living your politics,
etc., like uh "Setting a good example is the most radical thing you can
do". And "The only thing you can do, ultimately, is live as wella s you
can and then tell people about it." or something.
I've never really had the particular crisis you describe; so far
it's been enuff for me to know I'm acting the way the person I'd like to
be would act. [What would superlaura do?] But then I'm young... :> The
crisis I usually have is lack of enuff energy to do all the things I
think I oughta do... shouldshouldshould eh?
Laura, bravelytryingtofinishabottleofsoymilk.