lassitudinal inertia

Lately, perhaps because of the lack of sunshine, likely as not due to the lack of gainful employment, I have found myself feeling a bit stymied and blue. From where I'm at, my prospects seem limited and wage slavery looms large in my thoughts and fears. Maybe we'll go back to Korea, maybe I'll be a substitute teacher, maybe I'll live in Sara's mom's basement forever. (that last one is not really an option). Anyway, my thoughts, as ever, extrapolate my personal dilemma in to a general diagnosis of the societal malaise that we are all subject to. I think about the treadmill of the workaday world and how it circumscribes our life choices and stifles our dreams. I think of why it is that there seem to be no viable alternatives, no other system, no other method, no way out. Its damn depressing. Still, for me it helps to depersonalize my situation and realize that I am far from alone. This alienation is pretty much the rule not the exception in this day in age, particularly since the economy went and took a big shit, taking the promises of easy prosperity and comfy plentiful jobs with it. In my attempts to analyze the components of this situation, I find that there are certain personal behavioral patterns, certain external circumstances and persistent emotional colorings that conspire to keep me (and presumably lots of people) down. First of all, TV. Its omnipresent as the source of passive entertainment and, during the winter especially, what else are you going to do with your time. Well, I'm pretty sure that there's plenty to be done, but it all takes effort. Even reading a light book is hard work comparatively. I've been labeled a hater and an uppity ass by multiple people for harping on the time/ambition/brain destroying ways of the dreaded tube, but I shall persist even unto my dying breath, even as I currently watch 3-4 hours a day (making me a hypocrite as well as an uppity ass). Anyway, I read in the NY Times that there was a study that found that people that watch a lot of it are on the whole unhappier than people that watch less of it. That when combined with its particular tendency to make time evaporate lead me to lay some of the blame for my situation on its zombifying pixels. (note: I am particularly susceptible to zoning out completely on even the most retarded and inane crap. Perhaps that's why I hate it all the more; it just sucks me in, almost against my will). A second behavioral pattern that I've noticed in myself is something that spans all media: the phenomenon of skipping about and not sticking anything out. This is a direct result of living in a world flooded with information, entertainment and infotainment, most of which is at our fingertips. I might scan the Times, find out about some new figure in arts/politics/science look them up on Wikipedia for a half hour, see a word on Wikipedia and follow that to a new page on the concept. Then I'll get distracted and pick up a book for twenty minutes, lose interest, search for jobs, email a digital resume not really expecting anything to come of it (I've lost hope it seems), get discouraged, write about being frustrated,play guitar, get bored with that, turn on the TV, eat, urinate, comfort my squalling son, discuss with Sara about how I neglect her and the computer is my real girlfriend, read a different book for a while, go play games on Facebook, ad infinitum, ad nauseaum. And what is the net result? Nothing really gets done, I am awash in media, in interests, often in what I claim are passions of mine without doing justice to a single one of them. The teeming profusion of things can never be attended to; we drown in them every day without any real progress being made. So much for bad personal habits that contribute to my situation. On to the circumstances beyond my control. Apparently, the country is undergoing a bit of a recession or some such. You may have heard about it. Well I guess Ohio, and the Cincinnati area in particular are especially in an economic funk. So that sucks. More than just that though is the general observation, somewhat Marxist I suppose, that 99% of the jobs around are so soul-killing, specialized to the point of disconnected repetitive idiocy, totally mind-numbingly, snore-inducingly boring that the thought of doing them for any length of time frankly scares the bejesuses out of me. My other external circumstances are the duty of being a father. Don't get me wrong, I am happy that Cohen is here, today he gave a smile that lit the room and made me tear up a bit, really. He is my son and I love him. It's just that he takes a lot out of Sara and I. He's an energy sink, especially when he has a growth spurt or crying jag or intestinal distress or worrisome cough or chronic insomnia etc. If its not one thing it's another. Now, lest you think that I had forgotten the big picture and this has just turned into a laundry list of my personal complaints, Cohen to me represents a particular instance of a universal condition of duty toward others in my outline of the general problem under examination. Almost everyone has this towards someone, whether it is their grandma, father, dog, or wife, someone. Someone is relying on you to deliver the goods and you will be a crappy person if you fail them. The character of this duty is similar to the wealth of distractions at your fingertips in that its always there and its boundless. Just as we can never catch up on all the things there are to know and do, so also our duties towards others will never be fulfilled, they are everlasting. Our cups ever need filling and runneth under. Not sure why I'm getting quasi biblical on you, but I think you get my point by now. I am sure that there are more external factors that I am forgetting but those will suffice for now. Lastly, and the most subtle of the three factors that contribute to the condition I am dubbing lassitudinal inertia, is the emotional coloring that is in the background of all this. This could most aptly described as a general feeling of blah-ness. The stultification of day-in day-out routine, the blearyness of time that dulls the ambition of your more optimistic moments, the greyness that abides deep in every crevice of your mundane, quotidian existence, this elusive but palpable feeling-tone is the glue that holds your life in stasis. It is this that precludes radical changes in your life. There's something almost magical about how it operates. I may very well be attacking a straw man here. It's possible that what I have just described is nothing other than life in all its 21st century banality. Perhaps I am wrong to think that there is something else, something more out there. If we never have high expectations its pretty hard to be disappointed. Maybe I am just not counting my blessings, or I'm taking what I have for granted and failing to appreciate the simple joys that are there if I would just look for them. Nonetheless, on the off chance that what I've described isn't just the way it is and has to be, I'd like to search for a cure. I want more, I want the adventure I was told about and sold when I was new to the world. I want more for myself and my family than the prosaic, just getting by, ho-hum American mediocrity. And damn it, I'm gonna get it, or not.