I still haven’t come to any conclusions

This post will most prob­ably be very dis­join­ted, for reas­ons that per­tain to a dread­ful bout of week­end insomnia.

One of the things that I’ve been think­ing about a lot just recently — but, curi­ously enough, haven’t writ­ten about here — is why, as a sup­posedly mature 32-year-old, I am still con­sumed by late twentyso­mething / thirtyso­mething angst. Why am I here? What’s my place in the world? Why don’t I appear to have any dir­ec­tion in life? Will I still be doing whatever I’m doing now (or per­haps not doing now) in another ten years? Why have I been writ­ing inane gib­ber­sih on the net for nearly three and a half years? And why, unfor­tu­nately, is my most com­mon every­day emo­tion one of slightly weary apathy?

Grow up. Or rather, I should have grown up by now. I should be over this ques­tion­ing phase. But no, I’ll barely have come to terms with the bound­ar­ies of life as I know it before there’s more to come. Appar­ently, this may well engulf me again when I turn 40. I need that like a hole in the head. I’m the ques­tion­ing sort. I’ve been ques­tion­ing since I was 18 years old. If it goes on until I’m 40, that’ll be 22 years of solid ques­tion­ing. And no answers. Jesus wept. I’ll be knackered.

Don’t get the wrong idea. This is just an obser­va­tion. I’m begin­ning to mis­un­der­stand myself, so I don’t expect you to fare much bet­ter at com­pre­hend­ing this excess­ive ver­biage. God, I’m tired.

This even­ing, thanks to a long, unex­pec­ted and wide-ranging tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with one of the few people I can hon­estly say seems to under­stand what I’m going on about at least some of the time, and whom I’m lucky enough to call a friend of a num­ber of years stand­ing, I’ve dis­covered that I’m not the only one who thinks like this. By the law of aver­ages, that also means there must be other people who think the same way too.

It’s not Gen­er­a­tion X, though. Heaven for­bid. That’s yesterday’s news, and Gen­er­a­tion X was always rather too self-consciously cool for me. I think we’re more Gen­er­a­tion Y.

You don’t need me to explain the double meaning.

There’s got to be more to, er, any­thing and everything than this, hasn’t there? Yes, there must be. The only prob­lem is that we’re not sure where on Earth to start look­ing, and we’re also feel­ing rather apathetic about the whole pro­ject, if we’re hon­est. Banal Sat­urday even­ing TV will get us first. Run away, run away, it’s Dav­ina McCall come to suck the blood from your last brain cell — and you don’t care.

All the answers that we always thought were the answers to everything, and there­fore hoped would be the answers in days to come, aren’t neces­sar­ily the answers we wanted. You want answers. I want answers. We all want answers. Con­fused? You will be.

Ques­tions, though. We can do ques­tions. Oh yes.

Still ques­tion­ing. Still no con­clu­sions. Fuck. I’m still think­ing. Still think­ing, even when I can’t really be bothered. Other times I’m just (as the song says) pretty vacant.

Sleep? Yes. Prob­ably a good idea.