jem on jém

[JOURNAL-ENTRY-024]

terminal\user\jem\journal

And why would you believe you could control how you're perceived
When at your best, you're intermediately versed in your own feelings?
Keep on putting off conceiving
It's only you that you're deceiving
Oh, don't have a child, don't cramp your style, I'll leave it

There is a new weird feeling in feeling completely undisturbed, in complete comfort and with seemingly no strings attached.

For the past two weeks, I’ve felt the most productive in the work I’ve done – partly due to shifting to a project which has been significantly more creatively fulfilling – and been content with making small changes in my day to day life, even if it’s walking a few thousand more steps. I’ve become more conscious of what I eat, but in pursuit of understanding how my body works, realising how many small choices I can make with a positive impact rather than inventing new ways to systematically punish myself.

In other words I truly have nothing to complain about. Genuine peace on my earth at least as far as things trying to kill me (me) are concerned.

But a week from now I truly have no idea. Likely more of the same, perchance a steady decline, or a complete drop in quality, I have no idea. I wouldn’t be buying much stock at this point. Or maybe I should. I don't really know.

This entry is so difficult to write.

I'm staring at a brick wall and thinking how much more interesting, or just easier, it is to write when my state of mind isn’t the most optimised for performance or bombarded with demons at my door. Throughout the week, I kept running into thoughts of how much a different perspective I could offer this week, from feeling better than usual, just more upbeat or positive.

I’ve come up near empty.

Short distraction aside: I have The 1975 Madison Square Garden Live Show on YouTube while I write in the background, and I’m reminded of how gorgeous and theatrical the two-storied stage design for their tour was – highly, highly recommended if you have two hours.

In a way, the dense fog of dread I used to experience when the times were seemingly too good to be true seems to seep in less these days. It’s nothing more than a polite acknowledgement from a safe distance, as if peering down my periscope from precarious rocky shores or some less abstract visual.

In a way, I’m optimistic that more weeks in the future will feel like the way they have been in the past two. I’m just the tiniest collected sample of anxious foreign contanimant at the fact that some things are going away soon. I’ve finished the aforementioned editing project that’s fulfilled me so, soon to be handed off in a few days, before I’m shipped back to my old stomping ground of editing a documentary of a guy running for eight fucking months. Honestly, that’s really it, now that I think of it.

I’d say I’m blanking on some things, gingerly holding the rip cord on others, but I count zero registered immediate blips on my ‘oh fuck kill me kill me now oh god oh god’ radar. Good.

Not long ago, I’d find some way to bring myself down a peg by this point in a piece of writing so positive. I remember all the way back to high school, someone telling me, 'Everyone needs to be brought down a peg every now and then,' spoken in such a matter-of-fact way I could hear the lived experience of those words in his voice. I doubt he's ever thought of such a throwaway line ever again, but in passing, I believed this with my whole heart for ages. Except now I feel differently about it, eliminating the 'need' entirely, so everyone just... is brought down a peg every now and then.

I don’t know, man. I relish in believing I have more to look forward to in life right now than I feel being enveloped in unknown, amorphous dread. Maybe I can thank Superman for that, I’m not even joking.