A Mid-June Journal

Day One:

About three months ago, I injured my wrists at work. It’s a long and strangely complicated story, but the essence boils down to this: I haven’t been working for three months. I did try to return to work twice: once for two weeks, and once for four days, and both times the pain became so much that I had to stop going again. I’ve been seeing a physiotherapist twice a week this whole time, but we haven’t made any progress. It’s very possible that it’s carpal tunnel syndrome, in which case I definitely shouldn’t be typing as much as I am, but I can’t help it, because if I couldn’t write then I would be the most wretched and miserable man on this Earth.

I stopped writing about myself online at some point. I still write “personal essays” sometimes, but it’s just a character. Since I think I have a good life, I figure I should only talk about the good parts. But no matter how good my life gets, some things just don’t change…

I talk with my parents every few weeks. Yesterday, my dad asked me what I’m doing with all this free time. During our call several weeks ago, he suggested that I start learning CAD in order to progress my career and be a project manager someday. Here I am, turning thirty at the end of the month, and I still feel like my dad is trying to police each day of my life from sunrise to sunset.

What am I doing with my days? I’m reading books that I love, I’m watching movies, I’m lying around, I’m thinking, I’m walking around the neighbourhood, and I’m writing! That thing I’ve been saying is the only thing I ever want to do, and the only thing I care about, since I was nineteen years old. I’m doing that, because I don’t want to be a project manager, and I don’t want to progress my career, in the same way that I didn’t even want to start this career to begin with. I know I have to make money; guess what, I make enough as it is, and I’m getting paid 90% of my salary by the provincial government to sit around at home because I injured myself at work trying way too hard for no reason at all, so I’m going to take this time to live the “life that’s been welling up inside me” this whole time, just like every time I find myself unemployed, because being employed is stupid and sitting around letting myself go is, in fact, a far superior use of my time.

For most of my life, I considered my dad the smartest person in the world, and in a certain sense, he might be. He is one of the most practical people in existence. He’s funny, good-natured, and he is never mean. When I was younger, I thought he gave great advice, even though I could never figure out how to get myself to follow it. This perception started to change when my problems stopped being material, and started being emotional. I’ve spent the last decade of my life coming to the slow realization that, in this field, he is utterly useless, and in fact detrimental. And for so so so long I blamed myself for everything.

But it’s the same with my siblings: no matter what you do, no matter how happy you are, no matter how mis-aligned your goals are with his worldview, he will never stop giving advice. When you want comfort, you get advice. When you want to relax, you get advice. When you want acknowledgement, you get advice. When you want to share a success, you get advice. Nothing is ever good enough. There’s always the next thing you could — and ought — to do.

And obviously, if he was just some guy, I could say, whatever. But his voice is my voice; his worldview is implanted inside of my head, even though I don’t agree with it. There’s a part of me that is him, doing his job when he’s not around, telling myself what I could be doing, what I should be doing, and why what I do now is just not enough.

I thought that one day it would get through to him. I wrote essay after essay, explaining my worldview as clearly as I could. He read them all. I wrote a novel. I said, this is what I want to do. It didn't work. It’s all frivolous. It’s a hobby. It’s not real, in the way that a career is. The fact that someone pays me money to nail wood together and throw garbage into a bin elevates that far above anything I’ve been able to achieve in my decade-plus of writing as if my life depended on it.

(Obviously, that’s not good enough either. I shouldn’t be nailing wood together; the first time I told him the satisfaction I felt at how well I was doing as an apprentice, and how much I enjoy the physical aspect of my job, he told me that I better start working toward becoming a supervisor before my body fell apart…)

I watched the movie Perfect Days the other week. I watched it after Starsailor, one of my life’s anti-heroes, wrote about it on his website. The movie Perfect Days is about a middle-aged man who works as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. When he’s not at work, he reads books and listens to music. During breaks, he takes photographs. He lives alone, and has a set routine, which includes bathing at the local onsen, eating noodles and drinking a beer at a local shop, and visiting a hole-in-the-wall bar run by a friendly woman on the weekend.

He’s not a sage, and he’s not perfect. He’s not always happy. He doesn’t always make the right decision. He doesn’t talk much, and it’s hard to tell whether this a choice, or a result of fear. If he’s anything like me, it’s probably a mix of both, in a way where cause-and-effect has become so tangled as to be inscrutable.

Later in the movie, his niece appears, and after his niece, his sister. We learn, from a brief conversation, that he is estranged from his family, particularly his father. And when we extrapolate from this information, we become once again entangled in our web of cause-and-effect, the final result of which is this: he’s living a life that his father does not approve of.

Is there anything wrong with this life? I mean, I don’t know, can there be anything wrong with any life? But here this man is, working enough to keep himself going, in a field of work that is beneficial to society, and in his leisure time enjoying the things he loves, and yet there’s a person out there in the world — and maybe many others besides — who look at it with a disapproving glare.

I’m reminded of this quote from No Longer Human I wrote down almost exactly ten years ago.

What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society?” I had spent my whole life thinking that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh, and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words, “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue… Society won’t stand for it. It’s not society; you’re the one who won’t stand for it, right? If you do such a thing, society will make you suffer for it. It’s not society; it’s you, isn’t it? Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society. It’s not society; you’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?

I was so depressed back then that I almost died, and my mom told me I had to stop reading such depressing novels, which is exactly the kind of good/bad advice my parents were always giving me, because if you look at it from outside, it’s easy to say: well, if you read sad books, you’re going to keep having sad thoughts, completely ignoring any speculation as to why such a person was drawn to depressing books in the first place, and why they feel they can see themselves inside of them — why that is, in fact, the only place where they can see themselves.

For a long time, I conceptualized my dad’s advice as The World. The World expects me to do this; The World expects me to do that. The World won’t allow me to live the life spontaneously welling up inside me. But it’s not The World; it’s you, isn’t it? No one else out there seems to care one way or the other. My friends don’t mind; my wife doesn’t mind; my siblings don’t mind; my aunt and my cousins don’t mind; my boss doesn’t mind; the Prime Minister doesn’t mind — no one minds at all. It’s just you! It’s not The World; you're going to do the ostracizing, aren't you?

Should I keep constraining myself, keep trying to be an adult, keep trying to be a “real person”, just for your sake, when I know that even if I were to personify the ideal of adulthood, you still wouldn’t be satisfied? And is it childish of me to be sick and tired of this whole thing?