idea2develop
Wow. If this is me on vacation, I think I am about to go crazy. Vacation used to be when I was at my top, and that meant being carefree. That meant playing with my cousins, joking, climbing, jumping, diving, with no one saying anything other than nice things about me.
This is history now that I am older, and not a student anymore. Now I have shorter vacations and people passing judgments if they see you too carefree for your age. You can't be too cheerful or carefree: you're supposed to be an adult, to be serious, married and worried about your children. If you don't have all that, then there's something wrong with you. This is pretty much how my distant aunt feels about me.
Furthermore, even without guests or relatives bothering me, two weeks is not enough to reach happiness or even just relaxation.
So, yeah, still obsessing about the relatives, and their comments.
Systems lost about 500 dollars.
Actually more like 600 dollars.
There is one spot left, a place where there is two people at the most, and it's here:
Yeah. When I go there, like I did today, there's no lifeguard talking to me about the bible for an hour, there's no distant aunt judging me for not being married yet, there's no aunt recommending to me to wear sandals... there's no one there. I am alone, with whoever else i bring along, and i have to fear no one, no judgments, no one staring. That's my new favorite place, now that i've become self-conscious.
Yeah, but it's not about age. It's about getting acquainted with this place.
This is a small place, and with this comes people knowing you, and with this comes less freedom to be how you want to be. Or rather you can be however you want, but you can't expect the people who know you to agree with you, can't expect their approval.
It happened ten years ago, just the same way.
You get here, and you're new, and no one knows you and no one cares about you. Then the relatives start recognizing you, saying "hi", and talking about you, and talking to you, and pretty soon you become a "local" again, especially if you're not distracted by having guests who are often foreigners, which adds to your being an outsider. And when you become a "local", you're both perceived as a local and you perceive yourself to be one, and then you start caring about their opinions.
Ten years ago, I remember the same questions from this aunt: how old is he? What is he doing here in september? You're not supposed to be on vacation when others aren't. Jesus. You have to hear questions or be called crazy if you're not conforming to the norm, which is being on vacation when there's thousands of people here rather than just a few dozens.
Doesn't matter that she's older than me and that she may have achieved nothing in her life: if she perceives me as a failure, a misfit, or similar, I am going to care. The only way I can be free and not care, is if I don't meet her, and the way to achieve that is to avoid the beach in front of the house and go to the rocks, the little hideouts i know. And in the middle of september, you're pretty much guaranteed that you'll be alone.
But other than this, it's hard to not care, given that she's related to you, and that you meet her often. She might be a retarded bitch, but she's lived here all her life, and her father left us in his will this property where we built these houses, so we are all grateful to her father and her family in general. I could never decide to ignore her. I am living on a land that was hers.
How sad, everything. Aging, losing freedom. At 10 you can do certain things, at 20 others... almost everything at 20, then you start losing your freedoms, one by one. You're supposed to be in college at this age. Oh, at this age you're supposed to be in graduate school or working. Oh, and at this age, you're supposed to be married or at least with a woman, and if you're not, then something is wrong with you. That's how she thinks. What if instead I have planned on living forever or at least deciding my own schedule? Nope, can't do it: she's going to look down on you. And she is like most of the world, i guess, except she speaks openly about her thoughts.
There, I've almost completely forgotten the home sapiens issues, and I am now focusing on this other worry, existential problem I would even call it. There are no enemies: there's just things that my mind focuses on, and decides to call them "problems": then I start obsessing about them and keep at it for weeks. My mind has been processing hundreds of these problems, sometimes the same ones, over and over again, periodically, and other times new ones, like with homo sapiens, all the guests who came here, on and on... this journal has witnessed at least dozens of these problems being described in detail, over and over again, in these posts. These problems don't affect others just because they don't think about them: they don't have the problems because they don't think about them, but they do have the same problems, only they don't bother to think about them. Not that I can solve anything anyway, but I like to think.
These damn people... from your birth till your death, you're supposed to follow their schedule. You've got to walk when others do, marry when it's time, then even die when you're old. Anything other than following the schedule is going to disappoint quite a few people, and at the very least they will talk and criticize you, even for not dying.
The only way out that I can think of is avoiding these people. And that's why this map is so important:
There's a spot in the map, marked by the red arrow, where all these rules do not apply, where there's no schedule nor expectations.
Although... i don't know if i should give in to these relatives and expectations and schedules either. Why can't i live in a way... in such a way that I am special and that no rules apply to me? Why can't I bend the rules. I am not saying I am demanding to be like a millionaire who marries a 18 year-old barbie girl. I am saying all I desire is to be able to not marry, to be able to swim here in the ocean, regardless of my age. To be like Burt Lancaster in the movie The Swimmer, which I always liked:
Who says that living in his fantasy world is worse than living in the real world, where you start a family, and embark on a journey full of endless trivial worries... I don't want to be a regular person, but also, i don't want regular people to be able to even judge me. They must not even see me. On the other hand, I want to be able to make friends with the good people who live immersed in society, such as the lifeguard I wrote about, the one who sees chemtrails all day long, and just wrote me an email about today's chemtrails, that I also saw. Today they really sprayed us here.
All in all, with all this thinking, with the trading that went so well, with the homo sapiens experience, with all the other reflections and experiences... this vacation was far better than the one i had last year with my highschool friends. The greatest common divisor last year was drinking beer.
I didn't relax, i worried for everyone, i paid for everyone, for the most expensive things.
This year was better. I liked it better. And probably i would have liked it better had i come alone to begin with, but I can't prove it. I would have been far more paranoid about the locals. So I am not sure if the guests weren't actually a positive influence, despite all the problems we've had.
Overall, I have pretty much decided that i won't invite anyone anymore. I owe it to the guests from this year and to the way we parted, and i owe it to my argument with the guests from last year. I owe it to the arguments with all the other friends i hosted the years before.
Until I'll decide that being with people is more important than having everything done perfectly, I should not subject any more people to psychological and verbal abuse. I don't want to hurt any more people until i'll be so intolerant and so unneedy of social interaction.
Then, whoever is desperate enough to seek my company (except homo sapiens) or interested enough in me to come all the way to meet me and put up with me, then I might make an exception. Other than that, I am taking a vow of solitude.