A lack of sleep.

It's 2.30am.

I was awake, in bed, in the dark, warm, cozy, all the trimmings. I couldn't sleep again. I wrote in my journal, which usually allows me to get everything buzzing around my head late at night out. I spoke to a few friends. I wound down with some quiet music. I mused that my lack of sleep was typically symptomatic of the illness of the person who catalysed this slight insomnia in the first place. I'm thinking about him again. This is completely aggravating. Stress is a bitch, worry for another totally sucks a dick. It will fade. I know this stress will fade. None of this is logical. It doesn't change the frustration of the moment. Ugh. I want to stop fucking thinking about random things I can do nothing about at 2.30 in the morning already and just go. to. sleep. O_O ... So I don't waste the day tomorrow being asleep and then repeat again the next night. Blah.

There is more than that. There is so much going on right now. My job just finished up. After working with the same people for a year and a half, I was made redundant. It mightn't seem long to some people, but I have a few issues with "workplace monogamy". I never seem to stay in a place more than six months before I decide to leave usually. This time I got comfortable. Now it has all changed again. I've spent the past few weeks, in the times I have been thinking about my career, trying to decide where to head next. I love design, I love art, but I'm over it too. There are few things I love more than appreciating some new creation, whether it be drinking in a song I completely connect with, strolling though a gallery, anything really. Why do I love it? It is a foray into another's mind. When I look at a painting, what is on the canvas might be something completely new to me. Something I could never have thought up. But someone else could....it's weird. It's like being offered a personal piece of someone's emotional snapshot of the world. Then I think about it more. Every person who sees this artwork will take it in differently, right? We will all take different things away from it, see different meanings, experience it slightly differently.

Then I take that and think about music. People connect emotionally to songs in similar ways. I have talked at length about experiences taken from songs with other people. There is a point of convergence, a common ground in places. Perhaps it is the same with a painting for some? Perhaps we aren't all that different. Perhaps there are a certain amount of typical responses to one work of art that are likely, a human common ground. Does this apply to everything else in the world as well? I think about the stupidest, vaguest things when I'm stressed, alone and trying to sleep.

I've stumbled off track on some tangent of thought again. Career. As I was saying, I appreciate many forms of art - but - I don't want to be a designer anymore. I don't want to edit anymore. It is too much about the individual. It feels superficial and gluttonous to me now. It doesn't give anything back, other than itself. it is still just an imprint on the wall at the end of the day. Someone got annoyed at me a few weeks back, Gir, because I had likened art to science in it's creativity, or some shit. It was a few weeks ago, it was a facebook update, I'm not inclined to try and remember it all right now. He got me thinking. I was annoyed because in many ways he was right and I was being idealistic. Nothing new there.

I want to do something bigger with my life. More than anything, I want to get to sleep and stop thinking all of this random bullshit that could honestly wait until tomorrow, or, you know, never. I'm beyond wishing to be happy now at least, I know I need to make that for myself. I know that most of happiness is perspective anyway. I could look at today and go "Oh, gosh, I know this guy I like was out tonight and omg what might have happened and people are so mad at me and what am I going to do *panic*". I could do that. Good things happened today as well. "I hung out with a few friends today, I saw my brother, who I have kinda missed lately, and we just had fun without having to divulge all the shit going on in our lives. Simple fun. I started to get my computer going. I got a few things done and finalised those couple of bills that I had been putting off for too long. Today was a good day." I should be saying this. Where is the balance between staying aware enough of the negatives not to become naïve and easily abusively or selfishly utilised by others, and being positive enough that you feel fulfilled in life and simply happy to be?

I have so much to learn. I have seriously, fucktons to learn. I'm 25 in a few months. I'm aware I'm 1/4 of the way through at best. I have so far left no mark on this world in my own eyes to do anything good in the long-term. Is life about personal achievement? No. Is there worth in becoming a hugely famous artist purely for the sake of art? No. What matters? What is left when I am gone, NOT so that I am recognised and not forgotten? What is left when I am gone to make things better? What is my "butterfly effect" of positivity as a tiny little dot in a vast civilisation that is itself a dot in a vast universe, for what we know? The only thing that matters is being good to others.The only thing that matters is helping others and giving others a sense of wellbeing and a sense that they can do something and make something good in this life for others and so on and so forth. To keep goodwill and happiness alive, pass on some symbolic baton of everything that embodies good - love, happiness, faith, loyalty, belief, accomplishment, kinship, hope. I have to do something better with this life than just draw pictures and experience emotions and talk about them loudly. That is self-indulgent. Even this random 2.30am rambling is pure-self indulgence without following it up with a good, selfless and catalystic action.

I hate when I think at a million-miles-an-hour in the early hours of the morning. I feel my mind is just firing off wildly in no concentrated direction. It's a pain in the arse. I need to learn self-control. I am so monumentally FAIL at it. I need to learn when to shut up. I need to learn when to talk. I should know better than posting stupid ramblings in the middle of the night by now. I still have that curiosity around anyone else - the possibility of them feeling this way, even so. Fuck it. It's done. Perhaps I'm done with wondering on random philosophy of life for the night now. Perhaps that phone call I have to make or that paperwork I have to follow up in the morning will get out of my head now. Fuck it, I'm going to try and go to sleep again.

If you think I'm nuts now, I'm going to go ahead and blame this whole note on the 2am rule. Goodnight. Have a good sleep.