August 4, 2007, 12:37 am (or, My attempt to blog like John Hodgeman: Thoughts from cleaning the downstairs room.)

Once upon a time, in a past life, I opined about some of the issues I took with writing about personal affairs on one's own blog. Having lived through several years of an emo-ish phase of my blogging, and having taken inspiration from people like the (in)famous P.Z. Myers, I resolved to turn over a new leaf, as it were. However, with almost Hodgmanian resignation and acceptance of what must inevitably come to pass, I have decided to write, "that most loathesome and wretched thing": a personal blog post.

I've spent most of my time alone lately. In fact, I don't remember spending this much time alone since what happened to dad, but even then I was surrounded by people, in class. Many of the faces weren't so familiar, but the places were, so even if I didn't know the people, I knew the places and positions they were in, which was almost as good as knowing them, since in many cases you never really did separate who you were from what it was you did.

For example: I will present as fact that the average University of Toronto undergraduate life sciences student will spend at least 80% of his or her waking life thinking about school, in some capacity or another - 19.5% of that remaining time will be dedicated to the consumption of nutrition, either food-based or alcoholic in origin, and the remaining .05% is conscious effort required to remember to engage in specific activities such as breathing.

I will also present as fact that their very identities are defined by the fact that they are average University of Toronto undergraduate life sciences students, and are little else in terms of the niche they fill in contemporary society. They do not, and verily, cannot limit their personas as pursuers of knowledge within the confines of the 9-to-5 work day. They are what they do.

Going back on topic, I was surrounded by such people, and they melded with the places they were in that knowing where they were was almost to know the people who inhabited them. Walking down St. George St. on a busy day, you may not know the hundreds of students who you will pass you by, but you do know of the cavernous grey-matter factory that is Convocation Hall, or the musky aroma of Ringer's Solution and Formaldehyde of the Ramsay Wright building, or the sizzling of sausage weiners on rows upon rows of hot-dog vendors. That is where these people make their living, to take a snapshot of that would be to know volumes of who they are, and what they do, from their eating habits to their study habits, to their personal hygene habits (and on that note, such knowledge is a double-edged sword in that gives one insights they may wish they never had). It is who they are. It is what they are.

Several months from the point at which I decided to make my life here, I am still finding myself in a conspicuous absence. I know no one here, but I also know not the character and pulse of the buildings they inhabit. This still all seems alien to me. I find myself avoiding social gatherings, removing myself from the personal lives of others, partly out of guilt over sins committed, both real and perceived, and partly out of the feeling that such interactions require a level of energy that I am either unwilling or unable to generate, an energy that all of the coffee in the world could never either supply or induce.

And so I am here, alone, not so much complaining, but pondering on the chain of events which led me to this particular state and time of place, and if, in the grand scheme of things, there is some meaning to this, asides from giving me an object lesson in the rapid pest consumption of artificially raised greenhouse plants.

Sweeping up in the growth chamber room downstairs, I realized that the short and small sense of pleasure I got from it was that I was making progress at something. Ultimately, that progress is swamped against the tide of entropy, but it is visible progress, progress I can point to and say, "Yes, I did this, and because of this, this world, my world is a better place than it was before."

When an attempt at friendship is met with indifference or mock appreciation, or some feeble try at reaching out received with a look askance, I ask myself if such gestures are as futile as my attempt to keep the growth chamber room clean. I feel invisible, like, as I said to another friend in Ontario, I could simply evaporate away and no one would notice I was gone. I feel more and more like parts of my emotional core are withering away and dying, and as I try harder to keep them alive, I wonder if perhaps it would be best to let things die, as they do in their natural course. If everyone is so concerned for themselves (and are so deluded in themselves to even be aware of that), then there is little incentive present to be concerned for others.

The weather has been classic August and June these past few days - but it already feels like November inside.