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1:16am September 14, 2013

Sometimes I just don’t know.

This isn’t about something bad that needs to be fixed. Well it sort of is but it sort of is not. The part about finding all these bad things and trying like hell to figure out how to get rid of them and not knowing how, that part doesn’t need to be fixed, it’s a good thing, possibly the best thing I can be doing. So I don’t need to be told that I’m too hard on myself.

I just…

I’m in this phase of my life where I am looking at all of my motivations, for everything I do. All of them. Including things that have mixed motivations, some bad, some good. Including the reasons I post things on tumblr or anywhere else. The reasons are often bad ones, and when there are good ones, it is good mixed with bad. And the bad often twists the good into shapes that are far less useful and more destructive.

But right now I’m too tired to figure out my motivations for posting this one. The obvious one is I want my friends to know what is up with me. But there’s always more than that. Always.

So many things that I do post about, I either shouldn’t post about, or shouldn’t post about in the manner that I do post about them.

The simplest one my friend mentioned, that happens to everyone. The scenario is someone is wrong on the Internet. They’re wrong in a way that could actually hurt people. So you compose a reply to correct them and all is well. Except…

The fact their wrong ideas can hurt people is never the only motivation and usually not even the primary motivation. There’s almost always that “I want to prove I know something you don’t know, I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m smarter than you.” Thing. Or she decribed an inverse version where someone responds to a very accurate and reasonable post by becoming the victim and trying to make everyone feel bad for them that this person attacked them when no attack happened. She said both the I’m smarter than you and I’m the victim of you things… They’re two sides of a coin, neither one is good.

But the point is when we do things we rarely have pristine motivations. And when you have more than one motivation, the worse motivations start contaminating what you’re doing. Which doesn’t mean people should stop doing anything ever until they’re perfect. It just means things are complicated and it’s possible to do better. It’s possible to stop yourself from having the bad motivation at that point in time, and then your action will be very different from if you still had the bad motivation and were trying to do the same general thing.

So anyway I feel like I’m on the top of a mountain of bullshit and I’m trying to dig into it with a spoon. And I can’t stop because I see the bad effects of not digging. But I sometimes feel like ever getting rid of it is hopeless. But there is no way to stop.

And everyone has that mountain of bullshit whether they notice or not. And lots of people barely notice. And I keep looking at it and it is why do I do all these stupid awful things why do I keep doing them when I know they’re wrong, why is my identity tied up in bad things, why can’t I just stop? And other times I’m just overcome by how horrible it is, and how horrible it is that everyone is walking around with these mountains of shit guiding our actions.

But I can’t pretend to numb myself in a world that barely exists. And I can’t stand to see these horrible things about myself and not do anything. So I look further at my motivations for doing just about anything I can think of. And I’m finding out, if the motivations look blurry or I can’t seem to pin them down, they’re ones I don’t want to see. So I have to look at them harder.

And then once I really spot the ones that are bad (even if they make me think I feel good in the short term) I have to pin them down when they happen and throw them out of my mind and do it every single time they pop up. And then I have half a chance at doing something a quarter of the way right. But there’s always more.

I’m told after awhile if you spoon long enough the mountain of shit collapses in on itself. I live for that hope sometimes. Other times it scares me.

Good appears scary. Bad appears comforting. This is a messed up world.

And be aware that things may change or be weird or not change at all, depending on how well I do at this. But given that one of my main activities is posting on tumblr, one of my main areas of examination is, what is my motivation for posting about this thing, about that thing, in this way, in that way, in the other way. And what I find often surprises the hell out of me. And then makes me cry. Unexpectedly and out of nowhere. And then the fog descends and I forget why anything until I remember again.

But I know that overall what I’m doing, I should be doing. It just sometimes turns difficult, and that is the understatement of the century.