‘We are islands, William, we are islands’

What can I tell you?

Been helping a lot of people. Usually in exchange of money, sometimes not.

You know, money, that thing this whole human world is sadly centered around, even if some will deny it.

I have added Ukrainian to the stuff am learning. Every week I have a lesson with Ruslan.

I can read it without much effort, but can’t speak it.

Ruslan doesn’t understand how it’s possible I can understand it, but it’s really no magic trick. It’s a language that’s like a mix of Slovak and Russian to me. And when I don’t know a word I can often guess what it means just because it’s a Slavic language.

Only being able to read Ukrainian is totally useless though, I want to speak it as well.

One of the students whom I have been helping the most has called this: ‘just an ego project’.

Probably true.

Been reading a lot.

Reading is probably only something for people who can’t get their kicks from the rather dull menu the world has to offer.

I’ve read The Case for Trump by a classisist called Victor Hanson. I found it to be insightful and fair, but somewhat overly tolerant of Trump’s pathological lies. Maybe the means always justify the end in Hanson’s mind.

Where I agreed is that lots of Americans have problems that were not addressed by the Democrats and were handled too cautiously and delicately by Republicans.

Am talking about Hillary’s ‘deplorables’.

The dominant discourse in America has been highjacked by a small elite of people who went to college and would feel rather uncomfortable talking to a plumber, a car mechanic or someone who picks the fruit that goes into their smoothies.

Sanders tried to speak for the same class of people, but found more of an ear with college kids who despite having a college degree didn’t get into the world of the privileged liberal elite.

A New York Times columnist was cushy and established enough to root for Hillary and hate on Sanders and Trump, but a guy with a college degree stuck in some dead end job somewhere was more attracted to Sanders.

The US is not just split in Democrats and Republians, whites and blacks, it’s simple split in ‘comfy life’ and many degrees of ‘not comfy lives’.

It’s the ones with the comfy lives that can read the mainstream media and feel like they are doing something intelligent.

Those that have fallen to the wayside and feel ignored are more eager to jump on the bandwagon of someone who is screaming something that goes against the dominant narrative spewed by those more familiar with a college campus than with a shipyard or factory floor.

Am I boring you?

I read some books about Putin, the war in Ukraine, even a few novels… I read ‘The Beach’ in Slovak. One of my lazy ways to improve my Slovak.

Bruno is growing like coal. He’s a lot of fun, always active, has his own routines, his own likes and preferences. He is for sure my light in the darkness.

I often wonder I if would be an even better father to him if my light in this world came from more than sources than just from him. I am supposed to be the sun to him, not he the sun to me.

Generally people only contact me when they think I can fix some of their problems or when they are at the brink of pouring lighter fluid into their eyes and lighting it on fire out of sheer boredom.

Luckily I have my clients, because otherwise I’d forget how to form words.

As an only child I am a pro at entertaining myself and I have so many sessions with clients every week and Bruno is so active that there really isn’t that much time to do anything anyway.

I shouldn’t even complain, because I still manage to play some boardgames with people every week.

I don’t even know where all this frustration is coming from.

I’d like to live in a different world, but Amazon isn’t selling nor shipping any new one.

So I live in my own world as much as economically possible. Maybe that’s everyone’s strategy…

I get invited to things, but it’s rarely something am up for.

Am not the kinda guy who wants to fly to Ibiza, go to a hockey match or just get wasted with shots.

When it comes to sports my knee is still too ruined. I can only work out my upper body, and not even that without feeling my knee act up.

So books… And clients… Thanks God for interesting clients.

I have started reading the books by Republican candidate Ramaswamy as well. Which is a bit painful, cause he’s kinda my age, and what the fuck have I done with my life?

This hardly makes me unique, because am sure most people think they are not enough, haven’t done enough and haven’t even come close to ‘realizing their full potential’.

So then am torn between being grateful for what I have and calming the fuck down VERSUS going all David Goggins nuts and working my ass off some more to reach I don’t know what ‘big’ goal.

But David Goggins has way worse knee problems than me, so maybe that’s not the perfect example to follow either.

I could also just try to accept that I will never be satisfied and that for me to be satisfied impossible things would have to happen.

So I lead my life unhappy, but active, malcontent, but fairly efficient, still allowing the possibility that maybe, if I make enough good decisions every day for a long period of time, some day I will feel like I got the things and the people I so missed and lacked.

You can be unhappy and be a decent person and accomplish stuff.

Abraham Lincoln was miserable most of his life.

There’s even a whole book devoted to his less than optimal state of mind.

It’s called ‘Lincoln’s melancholy.’

The benefit of being unhappy is that you don’t fear death.

Death becomes the taxi that is taking you home from a criminally boring party.

I should also mention I am manifesting and soaking myself in positivity every day. SYSTEMATICALLY.

I have proof, but it would be too embarrassing.

You wouldn’t say so based on what you have just read, but I have become a much more optimistic and positive person.

Am not joking.

I just need to puke on the page from time to time.

Channel what cannot be channeled elsewhere.

Better write a few sentences in frustration than take out an axe and chop a few offending heads off.

Like a student said the other day: ‘We are islands, you and I, islands. We find it very hard to connect to this world.’

I felt that.

There have been people able to throw up a bridge from their island to mine and boom, fireworks, so in my new found positivity am sure that will soon happen again.

I have given the keys to the parts of me that are ‘normal’ in order to build up a stabile home and in the process my wild parts have rotted and are stinking up the stabile home in its dark corners.

Am extremely good at listening to people, way better than most people, my listening talent is the basis of my income, but am extremely bad at articulating what is really going on inside me. Too much happening at the same time and a lot of it in opposition.

Am a Confederation of people constantly deciding which representative they will send out in the world to appear to be one clearly defined person.

Who would have the time in this insta age to even begin to listen to that?

There is a word for giving up trying to explain a feeling, because nobody gets it, but I forgot what it was.