Am I Deeply Unhappy?

Someone I spoke to yesterday made a remark about my being 'deeply unhappy' - not as a slight, but apparently as an observation. I pointed out to her that it was Mother's Day after all, and my 'unhappiness' was probably better diagnosed as 'seriousness'. Mother's Day isn't my favorite day on the calendar, because my mother isn't around, and her exit out of this world elicits a lot of deeply disturbing and apparently unresolvable questions. What happened to my parents is the worst case scenario from a kids point of view. Someone I spoke to earlier in the day made a suggestion which rang eerily true - not about me, but about those wind-chill days in October 1989.

In a more general sense, the answer is yes and no. I am deeply unhappy and probably more accurately, very very frustrated, with both my own personal life, and the macrocosm that I find myself in. While some people might enjoy the average Saturday afternoon on a chemical, magic mushroom high, I find it difficult and even suicidal to be intoxicated given our global and local circumstances. I am not saying we need to dress black and go into mourning, but at the very least we need to stop delusional living on a collective scale. Exercise is good. Informing ourselves. Get busy gardeing, commune with nature. But let's just start emerging from the collective reverie we're in.

The situations we face are pretty dire wherever you look. We're seeing high levels of corruption and dysfunction now in every sector in South Africa: Eskom, SABC, Education, Health, Security, Food, Water... A woman is raped every 23 seconds in SA. Our President and the country's leadership have exposed their true nature's, just as Mugabe has. There is no sense of conscience, no sense of 'the people', only how to serve number 1, and defend that behaviour with the appropriate struggle/racism and New South Africa soundbites. To be blunt: they don't give a shit about the South African community, AIDS, crime and everything else are non-issues, distractions. We're living in a country with double the world's average for alcohol consumption, so plenty of people are pissed out of their skulls and not even aware that we're getting seriously off the tracks. Anyway I am not going to bore myself running through all these things. But while we [thought we] could sort of expect to just idle on by through these less than ideal converging sets of kak, that's not nearly going to be the case. The kak is catching up to us in terms of crime,in terms of service failure, in terms of simply being overtaken by national breakdowns.

In terms of the world situation, $120 (we're a few dollars above that) oil will start to break our (and the world's) financial system down. If you want to know what that means, it means whole countries will have to choose between meeting their external debt obligations, and importing oil to keep their economies going. They won't be able to do both.

And personally I am frustrated on a number of levels - a girlfriend that lives 400km away, a work situation that employs me but not to write (but do go so far as actively dissauding me from writing and blogging) and a number of family issues that appear unresolvable.
This does make me unhappy, though as I say, the more appropriate word is 'frustrated'.

One of the reasons I write, less face it, is to earn money. I bought my car last year, and so have more pressure than usual to service my debt. I have a handle on it, but naturally it's a lot of what seems like spiteful needling in the ribs to be interfered with in terms of my private freelance work (conducted on weekends and on 'holidays). As such I get very little rest and free time, and almost no time is set aside for relaxation and enjoyment. I sometimes go out, and I believe in a balance, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Once again I find it staggering that certain individuals go out of their way to sabotage one's attempts to achieve something. There seems some ego setup going on, where your success (simply publishing something to help pay off your credit cards) gets perceived, I'm guessing, as in some way making them look like non-talented underachievering no-shows. I don't know what it is, but I can't think of a single person who I jealousy regard for their achievements, and then go out of my way to frustrate, to make their lives difficult, finding ways to constrict and strangle what they are doing. I simply don't understand it, but I accept it is very much part of my reality. It's stupid, but it's real.

I am happy in the sense that I am feeling quite actualised; I have another article right now in Leisure Wheels (part 2), I will shortly see an article published in Financial Mail,and some even bigger and hotter irons in the fire which I won't discuss right here, right now. In terms of cycling I had a great period of getting stronger over the past few weeks. Unfortunately I was very sick and suffering from exhaustion over the past 10 days or so - and am still not quite recovered - but I remain inspired to perform physically and get into decent shape.

My strategy to deal with the barriers I am faced with is not to push against them, but to find alternative passages,and also completely different buildings and environments. I ought to have a trunk on my nose, because while I may be focused right now on looking at alternatives, I remain very aware of despicable behaviour, and I don't forget or forgive easily. If you are one of those person's stalking this blog (with nothing better to do apparently) with your agenda to mine useful information - to find things I can say about myself that you can use to further your twisted purposes against me (as you have already done in the last few weeks) - go ahead, but this serves as a direct warning to you. Carry on, but I have a light that I can shine on you too, and that light is growing stronger by the day.

The last thing to say is that if I was fundamentally unhappy I would be depressed, unable to get up in the morning, gray and unmotivated. I'm very motivated, full of ideas, very activated and actually in love with someone I really care about. There is a part of me, believe it or not, that enjoys this sort of pressure, this sort of constant gnawing pushing. Not being able to achieve and those people who put concrete blocks in one's path - they frustrate the process, but it also crystalises one's sense of purpose and intent. What do I really want? What can I do? I suppose it's because I know all this is helping me to operate at a higher,more intelligent and strategic level despite the donkey tactics. In terms of my abilities as a writer, and a person, I'm living confirmation of what was always true: I can endure anything, and as such, it's a matter of fighting fire with faith and resolve.