Recently, off and on, I have had this mobid fascination with what life would be like when I am dead. Today, though, that thought above passed through my mind. I visited New Orleans twice last year. I assume that it exists, because I plan on revisiting it next month. I can probably find ‘current’ images of the city somewhere on teh Interwebs. Yet, do I really know it exists? Do I even know my car exists, parked out on the street. Or that even the street exists? I can look out the window and see it. But, when I turn away, is it still there? Life is part perception, part memory, part experience, part education, and a whole lot of assumption. We assume a ton about our own existence, and the existence of others. As a collective, we probably can vouch for most of what we remember we perceive. We have a level of unchecked trust that what we perceived, or what we are told to expect to perceive, can be perceived again. Yet, what happens when perception ends?

I have never been concerned with an ‘after life’, since I believe one’s legacy, what imparts on other, the perception others have, is the after life. This planet exists only in the microcosm of my own perception. Can it exist without me perceiving it. One can only assume it will, based on what we perceive during life.

Maybe, this all comes about because I have a difficult time envisioning the future. that is a different conversation for a different day.

This routine, I believe, has resulted in weekends that are, at best semi-dull. I cannot just go to the shore, go to the casino, make a day trip into Philadelphia, or a weekend trip into NYC. This is about equal parts lack of incentive to really do anything fun, ‘considering’ the schedule for things I will be doing or need to do, and whether the money and time spent in maing fun happen is spent well. [i.e. will I really have fun?] I have no place to just ‘hang out’ for an afternoon or evening, just to be social and sociable in real life, to meet people for real, to meet real people. While, I will admit, I am seeking more order at work, I have come to the conclusion that I have too much order, obligation, regimentation, schedule and/or plan in my life. Now that I feel I am getting my social legs under me, really for the first time in my life, I have less incentive to have fun. As I lose the fear of doing things ‘because I will not be socially accepted while doing them,’ I feel a loss of incentive to do them because either ‘its time is past’ or, worse yet, ‘my time is past.’ More and more, I am getting bored trying to have fun, and that is because, I feel, I am no longer feel the spontaneity which allowed me to get over my fears and have fun. Things are just too well planned for me, and I do not like it.

This weekend, though, I came to the conclusion, thinking back at all the places I visited, all the neighborhoods I was in, all the culture, the shopping, the nightlife, et al, that, maybe, just maybe, I would be just as bored living in those other cities as I am here. Why? I always suspected that I get bored easily, and have a difficult time trying to entertain myself. I am a person who needs stimulus. I get bored at work if I intellect or curiosity is not engaged. I am bored at the nightclub if by I have no one with whom to chat and no one who ‘interests’ me. I have been bored on vacation when I ran out of things I knew I wanted to do. TV and movies that invoke emotion over intellect disinterest me. Reading is much too passive for me. I cannot drive to the mall anymore to ‘shop’ and be entertained. Even the Interwebs, the WWWs, which you do not have to use, sometimes lacks the engagement stimulus I need, yet offers a boatload of unneccesary distraction. The gym, thankfully, has been physically engaging, as well as visually entertaining.

I always knew it was simple, but not easy, to entertain me. I always hoped against hope that I could overcome that, somehow. I am now resigned, in my advancing years, to ‘bear this cross’ myself. Without a strong social network in real life, and with only a fleeting one on the Interwebs, I have little choice. I must entertain myself as best as I can.