bound to push my rock
Monday, Oct. 04, 2004 @ 4:30 p.m.

there is no good that can come from waking up before the sun to serve danishes. and doing so consecutively, every weekday for more than three weeks, is exhausting. worse than exhausing, it's frustrating. and worse than frustrating, useless.

i reach my creative peak by five thirty, it's quelched by the arrival of the first customer at six, and disappears completely--along with my will to live--when alberto comes in at seven forty-five. that's twenty minutes after even the most perfect tangerine sunrise. my workday renders it a gigantic orange-coloured waste of inspiration.

one of the co-op students said i don't look like someone who works full time in a banquet hall. i told her i do it to pass the time, and she said that sounded nice. i reminded her that it would pass in any case, and it was the second time i talked about godot this week. the second time i counted my days wasted in hopeless, timeshredding antics.

i couldn't put down 'crime and punishment', except to pick up 'the myth of sisyphus'. it is possible that the sims aren't to blame for the distraction they create, but rather that i have a compulsion to fill my time with just-one-thing...until i've done all i can do with it. now, that thing is reading. although i think about the sims while i read camus.

he writes "there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. all the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. these are games; one must first answer." and he may be talking about my life or (more likely) the absurdity of living. looking past extraneous factors to suicide, past faith and imagination and hope, beyond and above purpose and meaning and assuming all of the whys that run to drive us mad will never have answers: is life still valuable enough to live? i could say it's all i have, but that's not my meaning.

so i get home from work, exhausted, frustrated, feeling useless and in need of serious distraction. i turn on the computer and realise i've used cheat codes to get my sims everything they want...and the game--for all it's quirky adventuristic sidenotes like alien abductions, hauntings, zombies, theives and bears that hunt through trash--is eventually shallow and dull. and i think, "when i finally have all i really want, when i've found a fulfilling career, after living all my life experiences and meeting everyone interesting i could spare to know...will i ever really be happy?"

is that what makes life worth living?

a frustrating unanswerable. echoing in my firsthand account of the absurdity of existence.