Day 21: 'By Myself'

January 16, 2010

I spend much of my time by myself. Not that I don't have friends or anything like that. I actually have a lot of friends, more than I ever thought I would have to tell you the truth. What I mean by "By myself", is that I never have a plus one. I don't have relationships and I don't go on dates. I've just never been the sort of person to want any sort of companionship, well, for the most part that is. The only reason I am bringing this up is because I just came from seeing the film "Up in the air" with George Clooney. It is beyond fantastic in pretty much every sense of the word. It is such an accurate depiction of what we are as a 'country', going through right now.

Now I'm not the first person to say this, in fact it is pretty much the only description that people seem to be using for this movie. The reason for that is because it's true. I can't really think of anything else to describe it with, past the usual movie review stuff that is. Seeing this movie got me to thinking though. We have been going through some rough times over the past decade. Some major changes have been giving this country an almost complete overall that will alter our path for a long time. It's times like these that are remembered in text books and history classes. Stuff that people fifty years from now will be making documentaries and talking about like they talk about the Industrial Revolution or the Great Depression. Everything has changed so quickly over the past decade that it is possible for someone my age to feel like they are being passed up. Generations are no longer something to be measured in decades, but in single years.

I can only imagine what it must feel like to be even twenty years older then me right now. It has to be terrifying to see everything evolve so quickly. I know it scares the hell out of me. It's all just going by so fast and it feels like nobody seems to care anymore. Are there not more people out there that wish everything would just slow down for a minute. I never wanted to live in a time like this. Living in a time that will be remembered as a "Time of great change" is not something that I ever wanted to be a part of. I don't mean to come off as a complainer, someone who wants no part of the generation that he come from. It's just that sometimes it makes me so sad to think about everything that we are leaving behind.

Which brings me back to my original statement. During a time like this, is it really wise to always be by myself? It this really something that I want to go through alone? Maybe the only things that really matter during a person's life are the relationships that they have with other people. Is it possible that the reason relationships play such a huge part in our lives, is because they are the one thing that we can all count on? It's the one thing that keeps us all on an even keel. I don't know if I just answered my own questions or just posed brand new ones, but it is something that I will continue to ponder.

I know that at age twenty nine, I am probably still too young to be thinking about the long term effects of such things. I still have a couple good years of mindless hooks up in my future if I do things right, right? I guess I really don't know what to think. It's why I have so many questions about everything. I suppose that is what those relationships we have are for, to discuss all this stuff that we do not understand. Maybe that's the point to it all, not really finding the answers, but having other people to go through the questions with.