A New Year

I just went over my previous entry. Still listening to that same song (as well as a lot of others) except I found the lyrics version and it’s even better.

I can’t believe I still have this diary. I’m kicking myself a bit for deleting my previous account. Granted, nobody reads this anymore – and given the irregularity of my posts that’s no surprise – but its interesting to think that I’ve been writing here since I was so young. I’ve changed in many ways superficially, though still dramatically, and so had the world in which I live. Soon the internet will fade into obsolescence! Then despite my immersion in the communication age, I’ll be without my handy little echo chamber. Maybe to compound the irony I can start a pen-and-paper journal instead.

My birthday is barely over a month away. Then it’s one more year until the big 3-0. Not sure if I actually care, or if I’ve just been conditioned to care. I guess its the danger thing though.

So. Some superficial things first to set the tone for this coming year. In 2012 I battled depression and social anxiety. I struggled time and again to get back into shape and failed time after time. I’m a stubborn fucker though, and finally everything stuck. My life gradually developed some rudimentary sense of order and my success boosted my confidence dramatically. I’ve never been more social, more sexually active, or in better shape than I am now. On top of that, I’ve reignited my thirst for literature – first with books on astronomy and cosmology, then the cognitive sciences and neuro-physiology, and now with history, politics, economics, and other more esoteric fields. That’s a great victory and I can and WILL do even better this year.

Unfortunately I’ve been struggling with some philosophical quandaries. I’m an introspective, cerebral individual. I cannot accept things at face value. So in my transformation I find myself asking with ever-increasing frequency, “why?” and, “who am I really?” Questions that are only complicated by my hobbyists interest in neuroscience.

I’m changing. But into who? And why? I find myself in a struggle wherein I try to maintain the status quo while also retaining those qualities that make me unique – qualities that are at odds with the status quo. So where then do I go? Should I accept that to improve my mass appeal I need to become more like everybody else and perhaps sacrifice my “weirder” qualities/mannerisms/etc? Why am I so attached to this concept of “self” anyway? Who we are, if there could even be said to be such a thing, is a fluid concept under continual evolution. Perhaps this is just a part of my own evolution? Maybe in order to grow as a person, I need to be able to shed my past identity.

I’ve never become particularly attached to physical things but this is obviously different. One of my fears in shedding my identity is that by becoming more like everybody else, I’ll no longer be noticed. Selfish perhaps, but we all want to be noticed, want attention, want love. That’s how the brain is wired and has been for hundreds of thousands of years – before mankind every walked the earth. What can I rely on to display my uniqueness? Why do I even care?

I’m starting to think this may be a crisis of identity. I need to decide what I want people to think when they think of me – no no scratch that.

I need to decide whose opinion I want to care about, what I want their opinion to be, and then become that. But I’m not sure I have those answers just yet, so until then I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing. It hasn’t been perfect, but its worked pretty damn well.