I don't know what to write,

but I know I want to. So fuck it. Here goes.

Looking back at my old poetry is always a trip. Reading the things I wrote a long time ago wakes up parts of me that were asleep. Seeing my reflection in the paper is like seeing a ghost. I had a certain style, then. It was Stephen King's style, to be fair, but it was something.

I feel I have made it through a crisis in my life, and I see in it the roots of the inevitable crisis to follow: I have finally succeeded in casting off the urge to do with my life what others expect. I am resigned to and comfortable with the prospect of living an unremarkable, uneventful life, provided it is fairly comfortable. I think that some part of me, maybe the greater part, wants to "do something" with my life, and if that is so, it may be able to emerge now without being channeled through others' expectations. I won't make it come, though. I am relaxing. I think it may have taken several months for my subconscious or what have you to realize it, but I am finally relaxing. It is the contentment that comes not from knowing all of your obligations are fulfilled, but from having no obligations, and wanting none. I don't want to do this or do that. I don't want a career, I don't want a family, I don't want a degree (at least not right now). I don't want to go down in history, I don't want to change the world, I don't want to make a difference. I just want to chill the fuck out, listen to music, eat good food, and have a few good friends. That doesn't mean I can't have long-term goals and aspirations; just that I don't need them. I was raised with the impression that it was my destiny to help mankind in some enormous way, and that's a big shadow to live under; the shadow of your potential. Bigger for me than for most, not to be an arrogant dick. My life was a vehicle built to take me from the present to that world-shaking future, but I had only the vaguest notion of that future, and each time I felt it should have come closer, like a mirage it was just as far away. I reject utterly the notion that I must be "productive" in the way that proves my worth to society, and I will produce as little as possible until I feel I have established the sincerity of my belief to myself. I hope that once I have reached utter relaxation and unconcern, my innate interests and desires will become clear. I have always had poor emotional intelligence and have for a long time flat emotionally; it makes sense, then, that I need a sort of emotional quiet to be able to understand how I feel. All I have to do is chill out.