This blog is so scantly read that I can actually write about this without raising an alarm among my loved ones. It's no secret that my desire to exist wasn't particularly strong at any point. My relationship to life and its various manifestations has been tenuous for well over a decade (as discussed in length here). Ironically, those are also the years that could be categorized as my best/productive/happy years (except the last 3). I described life 12 years ago like this: "[i]t's like a good movie that I want to keep watching....[And] all movies come to an end, but some bad movies are so bad that
we cannot stand it. So we get up and leave the theatre in between.
That's how I see life. If life gets really bad, regardless of what
follows, you end the nonsense."
That's kind of what happened in July 2015. I underwent a relatively complex surgery in my arm and came out of it with a nasty side effect (edited the details on this out). It had a severe impact on my day to day life and it started nudging me out of the seat bit by bit. To add to that, I had another accident recently and was diagnosed with a bulging disc in my L4-5. So now on top of the existing issue and associated symptoms I have to deal with persistent back ache and the occasional tingle down my legs.
I have been trying to fix the old issue the last 3 years with not a lot of success and I'm going to try to fix the new one too. But in all honesty, I'm only going through the motions: see doctor, see physio, do stretches, try to keep busy etc. My ideological position and my disenchantment with everyday life are likely to meet sooner than later. The wobbly nihilist is becoming steadier by the day.
I figured I'll start the process of shutting down, close a few lose ends. Consider this post as my announcement, the real life equivalent of the 'System Will Shut Down in the next 15 minutes'. The timeline I have in mind is around July 2019. I think I have enough 'courage' and pain tolerance to carry through until then but I'm not completely sure. It's also quite possible that things change and I get back in the seat. I'll be faced with many moments of irony, contradiction and absurdity [1] in the meantime, no doubt, and I might even address a few of them here.
Notes:
1. For a nihilist who's decided to end it, an announcement like this is as pointless as it gets. In fact, this only makes things difficult -- not in a direct sense because now I have to fend off the usual voices of concern and panic. But whenever I'm not a nihilist I think about what my role should be in bringing about social change. I had many aspirations on that front in my younger days and many have died out with ideological clarity and aging. Few remain. One among those is the de-stigmatization of suicide. Few philosophers have written openly in favour of it and I'd like to highlight their views in the coming months. Not just as abstract ideas but my personal engagement with them and divorce it from the usual narratives of depression and mental illness. This is a question the modern society will be faced with a lot and at some point they'll have to embrace them as everyday occurrences that are sad and devastating, commonplace nevertheless. Maybe even take it out of the simplistic prism of something that needs to be 'prevented', all the problematic dimensions of suicide notwithstanding.
____________________________________________________________
Update (May 02, 2019):
In spite of my reasoned pessimism (?) I have actually managed to heal my a back quite a bit over the last several months. As I mentioned to some of my friends, my mental state was directly correlated to my state of physical being. It's still fragile and far from perfect (or the pre-2015 level), but this will do for now. So yeah, consider the the July 2019 'deadline' nullified.
That's kind of what happened in July 2015. I underwent a relatively complex surgery in my arm and came out of it with a nasty side effect (edited the details on this out). It had a severe impact on my day to day life and it started nudging me out of the seat bit by bit. To add to that, I had another accident recently and was diagnosed with a bulging disc in my L4-5. So now on top of the existing issue and associated symptoms I have to deal with persistent back ache and the occasional tingle down my legs.
I have been trying to fix the old issue the last 3 years with not a lot of success and I'm going to try to fix the new one too. But in all honesty, I'm only going through the motions: see doctor, see physio, do stretches, try to keep busy etc. My ideological position and my disenchantment with everyday life are likely to meet sooner than later. The wobbly nihilist is becoming steadier by the day.
I figured I'll start the process of shutting down, close a few lose ends. Consider this post as my announcement, the real life equivalent of the 'System Will Shut Down in the next 15 minutes'. The timeline I have in mind is around July 2019. I think I have enough 'courage' and pain tolerance to carry through until then but I'm not completely sure. It's also quite possible that things change and I get back in the seat. I'll be faced with many moments of irony, contradiction and absurdity [1] in the meantime, no doubt, and I might even address a few of them here.
Notes:
1. For a nihilist who's decided to end it, an announcement like this is as pointless as it gets. In fact, this only makes things difficult -- not in a direct sense because now I have to fend off the usual voices of concern and panic. But whenever I'm not a nihilist I think about what my role should be in bringing about social change. I had many aspirations on that front in my younger days and many have died out with ideological clarity and aging. Few remain. One among those is the de-stigmatization of suicide. Few philosophers have written openly in favour of it and I'd like to highlight their views in the coming months. Not just as abstract ideas but my personal engagement with them and divorce it from the usual narratives of depression and mental illness. This is a question the modern society will be faced with a lot and at some point they'll have to embrace them as everyday occurrences that are sad and devastating, commonplace nevertheless. Maybe even take it out of the simplistic prism of something that needs to be 'prevented', all the problematic dimensions of suicide notwithstanding.
____________________________________________________________
Update (May 02, 2019):
In spite of my reasoned pessimism (?) I have actually managed to heal my a back quite a bit over the last several months. As I mentioned to some of my friends, my mental state was directly correlated to my state of physical being. It's still fragile and far from perfect (or the pre-2015 level), but this will do for now. So yeah, consider the the July 2019 'deadline' nullified.
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