Find my Ship

I am suffering from that most tedious of maladies, lebensmüde. We somehow come into this world and wend our way through life only to come to a point where it all seems absurd. I have felt this way before and it has passed and I have slipped back into the oblivion of eating, sleeping, working, and engaging with friends and family, but in the back of my mind, it's there, this feeling of the pointlessness of it all. The sheer lack of any purpose to any of this not just for me individually but for any of us. I get that this feeling is childish and should have been overcome in my 20s but somehow it persists. It brings to mind the quote from Melville:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

I need to find a metaphorical "ship" I can jump on to end these blues. Find some satisfaction in this life that doesn't involve consuming anything from pills to new shoes. Time to find something to keep me going: maybe take up the trumpet, learn Portuguese, or start painting again.

A Year of Something

I have been thinking about doing something and writing about it. Or not doing something and writing about the fact I am no longer doing something. But what would I not do that would be particularly interesting to write about or read? And, of course, I can't do anything that in any way threatens my current income. That limits things somewhat. One idea that came to mind is my year of Nietzsche. I would read Nietzsche and try to view the world through his philosophy. The only problem there is that I would not have the brain power to understand or make interesting the philosophy that I was reading. Make interesting is the key because everything is open to interpretation particularly Nietzsche.

My Year of Nietzsche?