Today, I Don’t Give a Crap

Hey there, ledge walkers. How are you all today?

I hope you’re having a better day than I am.

I wasn’t sure whether I was going to post this. Part of me thought maybe I should just keep it to myself, let the mood pass, and come back when I had something more constructive to say.

But that isn’t really what Standing on the Ledge is supposed to be.

So here it is.

Today is a don’t give a crap day.

I look around my home. I look around the property. I look at everything that needs doing, everything that could be better, everything I have spent years trying to hold together, and quite frankly, I think I’m done.

Maybe I’ve been done for a while and just haven’t realized it yet.

Maybe mentally I’ve hit another rock bottom.

Maybe this is emotional burnout.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that right now, I have stopped caring.

There Comes a Point Where Effort Has to Come From Somewhere Else

For three years I tried to build a business.

I put everything I had into it. Time. Money. Energy. Sleep. Probably pieces of myself that I didn’t realize I was spending at the time.

I purchased this home, in part, so people could continue to have a home. I tried to create some stability. I tried to keep things moving forward.

Then the business collapsed. I’ve spent the months since trying to sort through that mess, rebuild my finances, deal with lawyers, deal with taxes, keep working, keep the house going, keep learning, keep writing and generally keep moving.

And I look around sometimes and wonder:

Where is everybody else’s effort?

Because I’m tired of being the person who notices what needs to be done.

I’m tired of being the person who worries about what happens next.

I’m tired of trying to improve things while watching other people apparently accept whatever condition things happen to be in.

I want somebody else to get off their behind and do something.

Not because I told them to.

Not because I finally got angry enough.

Not because there is some immediate crisis.

Just because they looked around and thought, Hey, maybe I should contribute here.

Show me a sign that you frickin’ care.

That’s it.

Maybe “I Don’t Care” Isn’t Quite the Right Phrase

There is something I’ve learned from writing this blog and from everything I’ve been studying over the past year.

Sometimes the words we use for what we’re feeling aren’t quite accurate.

Maybe I haven’t actually stopped caring.

Maybe I’ve run out of energy to keep demonstrating that I care.

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Emotional exhaustion can look a lot like indifference from the inside. Eventually you stop reacting. You stop pushing. You stop arguing. You stop reminding people. You stop making plans.

Not because everything suddenly became acceptable.

Because producing another reaction requires energy you no longer have.

Maybe that is where I am.

I’m not declaring that as some psychological diagnosis. I’m sitting in front of a computer trying to make sense of my own behaviour, same as I have been doing since this whole thing began.

And lately my behaviour has been pretty simple.

I sit here.

I play online games.

I scroll Facebook.

I watch movies.

I watch television.

I go to work when I have work.

Then I come back here.

There isn’t much real-world human interaction involved.

I’ve basically tuned out.

Lots of People, Nobody to Talk To

That’s probably the part that bothers me more than I like admitting.

I know lots of people.

I have acquaintances.

I have people I talk to online. People I know through work. People I know from different parts of my life. People who read what I write.

But if we use the ordinary social definition of a close friend, somebody you can actually sit down with when life is falling apart and say, “I need to talk,” how many do I have?

I don’t know that I have one.

Do I have a best friend?

No.

The last person I considered a best friend died years ago.

And even that relationship ended with unfinished business. We had an argument before their death that never got resolved.

That argument itself grew out of another death, the suicide of a friend that affected me considerably more than I cared to admit at the time.

There are some things you apparently carry around for years without realizing how much room they’re taking up.

So now I find myself doing something slightly absurd.

I bare my soul publicly.

I write about collapse, grief, rebuilding, money, work, mistakes, anger, fear and all the ugly little pieces people usually clean up before presenting themselves to the world.

I can see that people are reading it. I can see that at least some people appear to be finding something useful in it.

But there is a strange loneliness in sending all of that outward and hearing almost nothing come back.

No conversation.

No “Hey, this helped me.”

No “I’ve been there too.”

And maybe I’m asking too much.

People read things silently. People don’t always know what to say. Page views aren’t the same thing as relationships.

I understand that intellectually.

Emotionally, though?

Sometimes it would be nice to know there is actually another human being on the other side of the screen.

And Yes, I Know What I’m “Supposed” to Do

I can already hear some of the answers.

Get out more.

Meet people.

Join something.

Go somewhere.

Talk to a counsellor.

Make an effort.

And the frustrating part is that none of those suggestions are necessarily wrong.

I probably should get counselling.

Do I want to put forth the effort required to do that right now?

Not really.

Because there is another question sitting underneath all of this that isn’t nearly as comfortable.

Heal myself for what?

So I can become stronger, healthier and more capable of carrying everybody else again?

So I can rebuild myself and eventually run myself into the ground one more time for somebody else’s benefit?

That’s not exactly an inspiring sales pitch.

Maybe that’s something I need to think about.

Because perhaps rebuilding can’t mean becoming the person I was before.

Maybe the version of me who endlessly took responsibility, fixed things, carried things and kept pushing isn’t actually the person I’m supposed to rebuild.

Maybe some of that needs to stay in the rubble.

So What Is the Next Move?

Usually this is the point in a Standing on the Ledge post where I find some tool, some lesson or some small practical movement forward.

Today I’m not going to manufacture one just so the story has a tidy ending.

I’m tired.

I’m angry.

I’m lonely.

And today I don’t give a crap.

Maybe the realistic next move isn’t fixing that.

Maybe the next move is simply recognizing it.

I don’t have to fix the property today.

I don’t have to fix everybody else’s behaviour.

I don’t have to figure out the rest of my life this afternoon.

I don’t have to pretend I suddenly feel optimistic because I reached the bottom of a blog post.

But I also don’t have to make permanent decisions from a temporary place of complete exhaustion.

For today, maybe that’s enough.

I’ve spent a long time asking myself how I can keep everything going.

Perhaps I need to start asking a different question:

What am I willing to keep carrying, and what belongs to somebody else?

I don’t know the answer yet.

And I’m not particularly interested in forcing one tonight.

This is just where I am.

No inspirational ending.

No heroic comeback.

No five-point plan for turning your life around before breakfast.

Just one ledge walker sitting in front of his computer admitting that his give-a-crap tank appears to be empty.

Maybe tomorrow it won’t be.

Maybe this feeling is telling me something I actually need to listen to instead of immediately trying to overcome it.

We’ll see.

For now, that’s it.

That’s all.

I hope you’re having a better day than I am, ledge walkers.

Godspeed.