Who even is ruinivist? I remember I spent quite a bit of time thinking of this name — the ruined archivist; and while it took me some time to really inculcate the ideas I jotted down that day, over time and slowly, I did start writing, something atleast, even these journal entries count after all, for over 6 months now. I thought there would be great insight in the act but it did not turn out to be that simple — still the texts exist; there were the days where I stayed up for just 15 minutes longer on a 4 am night to make sure I write about it, there were days too where I did not forget to lament in writing when I filled in pages restrospectively the next day.
Those pages were me. Some part of it me atleast.
What else is me though? The only reason I’m writing this today, is perhaps out of an existential crisis. There was an “event” that broke the monotony of the usual work I would’ve done today, perhaps that would’ve been reading continuing the book on towards matrix decompositions. The circumstances of the event are not of significance, and while it brought me quite a bit of discomfort, I know my future self would be grateful to such days of disquiet and realisations.
What do I have to my name? What is worth having to someone’s name? What would I wish to have to my name…
( I notice that my mind drifts so much when I start to think of the above questions, but I must have some answer, even a false one, to those questions today. I don’t want to die without giving these the time they deserve )
The last one seems the easiest to answer, and I feel an easy test to answer this is to ask
“What would I start with, right away, if I had a week to myself?”
( Even the premise of the question makes me wonder what even is the point if I don’t even have a week of time for my dreams; “to ask to live” )
Most often such questions get clouded by “preparations for the next bit of my career” — to learn “x” that “might” help me find a more fulfilling job, an end that would perhaps not be very much different from the present. The necessities of life can mask the truth, give you false trails and I must take care to not be lost.
I know, and truly know, that I would write — there’s so much that I’ve been wanting to write lately but never got the chance to; every day, it’s just thinking about the next day, the next thing, at work, for work ( not necessarily my current job but some job, or working towards that end ).
I lie to myself, to console me; these repeated phrases mean more than just their literal sense to me but I know and must accept that there have been many such phrases that I’ve used so far in life and many have lost their meaning now. I often imagine myself, imagine the day I quit this job, any job ( and I’ve been feeling this more and more strongly lately, now that I’ve saved up a bit of money ), some vagues visions of me saying “I don’t want to die without having made my game”; and that vision comforts, brings to me the consolation that my dreams are close by, that I am the dreamer still, and that someday, some fated day, I would have fulfilled these promises to ally my past selves.
My past selves? All of “me”s who did not give up, when there was no direction, who put in just that one hour, tired and sleepy after work, and yet not willing to give up on an eventual dream. I lie to myself, that I would die for my dreams, and such quaint and contained dreams are they, I do not seek the world, for what I have asked for in life is not much — but maybe I have asked of myself is indeed too much of my meagre talents; the thought dreads me, for I have no one to blame but me, nothing to console but lament on this Tuesday.
I have been circling around the question. Sadly, there is no concrete answer I can justify at this moment, or perhaps ever. Being definite is impossible so I’ll try to outline a silhouette atleast ( now that I think about it, I use this trick so so often in other domains, even dubber it as “properties of the ideal solution” ).
Whatever it may be, it must be in my name, I do not care if no one else acknowledges it, not that it would be unwelcome, but I personally must be able to look back at it fondly and proudly. It’ll hold a special meaning to no one but me, for I know how I had toiled for it, the many sleepless nights, pacing around in my little room. And it must be beautiful too; for there are times when all my effort amounted to something vain, something that I was too lost in the moment to realise ( but I think this is inevitable though the sunk cost fallacy attached to it should be recognised as such ). It must have a degree of uniqueness to it, or maybe not, I think “beauty” is the super qualifier for it; I’m having trouble defining the much too abstract ideas I have here. One more before I get lost would be autonomy, though I guess being in “my name” pretty much comes with it.
So let me also, for the sake of me across time, try to give examples that hold as of this moment. Anything “work” is obviously not in my name, it’s something foreign to me and as the “creator” while I sometimes lose sight of this fact and start to “care” ( which isn’t a bad thing in itself but remember that there are tradeoffs, I will stop here to avoid going on a tangent ). Anything that I don’t have control over is not me, anything that’s not “public” where I can pretend that I have people see this and think favorably of me ( where even I in different tabs pretend to judge my other self ) is not me. A few concrete examples of the what, atleast the ones that are immediate and what I would really like to have would be some game — where I did everything, the art, the music, everything; for I feel strongly about this medium as the combination of senses it touches but that’s not for this page. Another would be my blogs, my songs, some videos or edits that I made, websites as forms of art themselves.
For listing some examples, that’s enough. The more significant point is to be acutely aware, at every moment in time of what is in your name and what is not. For anything that’s not does not DESERVE all of you; one can argue that treating everything with the same care is a way of a perfect life but this is naive and misses tradeoffs. Any moment you spend not working on things in your name is wasted away, anything you go above and beyond for that takes away your time and does not even teach you anything of significance to be used on things in your name is a lie. I understand perfectly that this line of thinking would deem most work are useless ( and would that really be wrong though? ), but the point is to AVOID these scenarios much as possible.
A pursuit of knowledge and ability is graceful, rudimentary application that will never take me to ever greater heights is a sin.
May I have the resolve,
to not betray my past selves,
to justify this day for the food I ate
and the air I breathed,
in repentance for their sin of dreaming.
May I have the will,
to stake myself once again,
for a dream, vague and unpromising,
to sin and forsake the world today and again.
May I have the faith,
to in turn demand and rightfully so,
of my future selves ever after,
to carry on with the sin of dreaming.