I am lying in bed and listening to Portishead — The Rip.
The guitar notes are so imperfect that I can imagine the person playing them, something I can't normally do when listening to songs. Beth Gibbons starts singing. The words could have been different. She's singing in English. The language itself could have been different. It's all arbitrary.
I am sick today. I stopped working several hours earlier. I reframed everything I did poorly today as "yeah, it's because of food poisoning, it makes sense to do things poorly during food poisoning".
I am lying in bed and trying to arrive at a feeling: "It's alright to just live". It started from trying to arrive at "If I fail at work, it's alright" and then I went down that road while trying not to fall asleep.
I never thought it was alright to just live — I always thought people had to do something. Several years earlier, my catchphrase was "Man must work until man dies". I actually treated it as a catchphrase, and repeated it all the time.
It is tricky to arrive at a feeling. Thoughts from the past reappear and try to lead me astray. Normally I would have been led astray.
Normally I think about such things with words. This time I am trying not to, because I feel that it's possible to arrive at the feeling without words — just by listening to songs and doing.. something. I thought "If I do it, I would want to explain on Twitter how I did it", and then "No, I won't be able to explain".
There are some things to focus on as I'm drifting to sleep.
I like people. Even boring ones will become alright later. There are 16 hours of life happening to everyone every day. A lot to explore.
Three days later: I should finish this post. Let me lie down and try again. I don't feel like continuing with the part III.
— Artemis, why it's alright to just live?
— Because.
— But why?
— Things matter to you. It is in their nature, and in your nature. Do what you will.
— But what if I don't do what I want?
— Not "do what you want", but "do what you will".
— I only have one life. And I want to do what I want, not what I will.
— Artyom.
— What?
— [holds by the shoulders] It's alright to just live. You know all the reasons for that. The reasons don't matter. You know you want to just live. You can do it just by deciding to.
— I don't want to relapse later.
— You might relapse later. Regardless of what happens later, you can get what you want right now. You'll lose it and maybe regain it. It will all be later. Don't worry about the later. This is the point. Once you have the feeling, it will justify itself. It's the essence of the feeling. And it's alright to lose it later, because changes are alright. You want me to say "you'll deal with it when it happens", but there is nothing to deal with. There is nothing ever to deal with. You can enjoy every crack in a teacup. You can enjoy imperfections. You want to know "how", but you already can, there is no "how". When you decide to do it, you will be doing it.
— I don't want to lose the feeling of "this is better, this is worse".
— When it's alright to just live, it is also alright to fight for anything you want to fight for. You won't change. You will still be afraid of things and will like things. I just don't want you to keep suffering. It is alright to just live because it's alright to just live. It is obvious to me and it is obvious to you too because you can feel the same thing. You have to jump into the feeling. The water is good.
This is a cheaty way. It is cheaty because Artemis already has the feeling and she can show it to me. If you don't have an Artemis: tough, tough luck.