It's been a while again since I wrote anything. This time well over a month. Given the state of the world that isn't probably all that surprising.

Reading the news puts a pit in my stomach now. Who knows what the future holds now or if I'll be around to see any of it. I've always been a pretty pessimistic person and rarely expect things to go my way. About the time I was 20 years old I expected that I'd die in some war feeling cold, alone and scared. It's a feeling that I wasn't fixated on, but it always lingered at the edge of my conscious that this grim destiny awaited me. I chalked it up to it being just something everyone feels but expresses in a different way: the fear of death. I remember reading a quote, I think by Nabokov that said: "You can only create a fetish of death, for the human mind can't imagine a world where it does not exist". I think this is why people begin to be wrapped up in things like the end of the world or thinking about creating a legacy, or whatever. Like the grim feeling I've felt, all this things can be focused on, thought about, handled in a human way. The way I see it, the question of death can only really be handled in two ways: you either distract yourself and not think about it or you spend every waking moment worshipping its proxy.

Well that was a whole lot grimmer than I was intending. I was really just going to reinforce my commitment to not reading the news anymore and share this article about Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News. I'm more and more coming to the opinion that getting worked up about what's happening in the world isn't going to do me any good. If I get upset about something I have no control over and focus on it more and more, what is it going to do? How will it make my life and the decisions I make any beter? It sounds reckless to live with your head in the sand but whatever. I'm just a mote of dust waiting for the end.

There is more to my life than just exhausted resignation. I've been keeping busy writting small programs, reading up on things, trying to keep my mind focused. I thought I'd compliment my grim and dour mood by reading a short story by Nabokov called Signs and Symbols. I've also started watching the series Millenium which I got all 3 seasons as DVD boxes for Christmas. (<3 Thanks Sanna! <3) Staring into the Abyss or something I dunno. There really isn't much more to do than cope by consuming grim entertainment and remain paralyzed in my daily routines as long as possible until something unexpected and horrible breaks me out.