How long does this keep you interested for...

I would like to know how long this keeps you interested for. Read the following until you feel too bored to continue, then post a comment saying where you got up to. If you can be bothered.1

Thoughts of my character:2

I don’t feel like a thirteen year old. I don’t know what I feel like. I look in the mirror some nights, and I am sacred by what I see. It isn’t me staring back, not the ‘me’ that everyone else sees. Those ancient, all-knowing, yet sorrow filled eyes that stare back at me, as though they can read into the depths of my soul – even though – technically – the depths of my soul are the depths of their soul as well – don’t belong to the outer me, the person that everyone else sees. But they don’t belong to the inner me either. The part of me that it writing this now sure as hell doesn’t recognize them anyway, or their expression, so alone, so baleful, so… different. But they are there. 3

Most of my world is taken up with thinking. I spend more time contemplating why I’m thinking what I’m thinking, and then I do surveying the world around me. The world around me bores me. The trivial matters that everyone else indulges in bore me. Hell – everything bores me. I’ve gotten used to it.4

Maybe, by now, these rantings sound the depressed thoughts of a suicidal teenager – but rest assured, I don’t feel suicidal. Bored as I often am, I’d rather not end my life right now, thank you very much. I’m quite happy being bored, and I cannot fathom the thought of simply not having this consciousness any more – this will, this frustrating interest in trying to analyze anything that my pitifully small mind can grasp. And trying to muddle through the things it can’t grasp, until I get them. And besides – even if I did have the inclination to die, and I shudder at the very thought of even typing it, I simply can’t be bothered, and I’d be to cowardly anyway. The truth is – I’m lazy, and I am most likely cowardly too, though I really can’t say, having never been faced with a situation requiring any sort of particular courage. So maybe I’ll have to wait until I’m required to save the world from some heinous fate before I judge myself on that one. Or not.5

In any case, being lazy, probably un-courageous, and a little too prideful for my own good really doesn’t bother me. There used to be a time, maybe when I was nine or ten, when I would think about the stories I’d read, and about the characteristics of the ‘good guys’ in the story, and think that, much as I’d like to save the world, I probably had more in common with the bystanders on the street – the people who weren’t involved in the story – but were depending on the outcome as much as anyone else. I never saw myself as a hero in a story. I’m too selfish for that.6

I’m often selfish. But, then again, I’m much more fickle than I am prideful and selfish, so ah – where does that leave me? The prideful, selfish, probably cowardly but even more ‘fickle’ teenager who is currently wondering what the point of typing all this blabbering nonsense right now is. 7

There usually doesn’t seem to be a point to anything. 8

I mean – come on. We wander around the streets, amusing ourselves with shopping, and writing, and dancing, and working. Money rules our lives. We buy things – we sell things. We live. And we die. And when we die – it turns out that nothing actually matters when you’re dead. So I often wonder, what is the point of doing anything anyway, when it is only going to be worthless in the end? But then – that is too much for even my overly imaginative and incessantly working mind to try to comprehend – so I try to steer away from that thought. And any other thoughts like it. I’d advise you to do the same actually – they tend to leave you feeling disappointed with everything. Not that everything doesn’t deserve to be disappointed in, that is. It depends at how you look at it.9

So, where was I? Ah –yes, that’s right. Me being fickle and selfish and all… well, the thing is, I never stay the same for too long. My heart is like the shifting tide – it changes back and forth more often than I change my socks, except I don’t wear socks… not often.
Often, I feel selfish, and I know I’m selfish, and I couldn’t care less what others think or feel. More than often, I can’t even sympathize or empathize with people. Most of the time, I don’t seem to have the capacity to empathize. But then, in some situations, I actually feel the pain of others. It only happens when someone is in real pain – agony even – either emotional or physical – and it sure as hell hurts. It’s like I’m feeling what they’re feeling – only in a different way. It’s like a great, overwhelming tide that’s washing over me, drowning me, hurting me. It rises up inside of me, drowning me from the inside out, and the only thing I can do is to hold my breath until it ebbs and then gasp in some more air before it tries to drown me again.10

But I always know that it will fade again at some point. It will, inevitably recede, like the fading tide, and I will be free again. 11

The only over way I can think of to describe it is like a bottle of fizzy drink that’s all shaken up, and then the lid pops off, and it explodes – messily. And it keeps on exploding until the bottles empty. And then the bottle fills up again – like a pus filled pimple. Waiting, waiting… patient…12

The other thing that predominantly shows that I’m fickle is that, whilst being selfish and knowing that I’m selfish – I like to give. I like to give material things, money, food, books, etc. – things that I find no interest in. If someone asks for something, and they genuinely need it, then I will go out of my way to find it for them. But I will never offer my own, physical help for something that doesn’t interest me. 13

Things that interest me have a lot to do with my life. 14

Right now – that doesn’t include much. Story-writing seems to be taking centre stage right now, although that will undoubtedly end in tears, because it will, eventually, occur to me once again, that the whole matter of putting that much effort into anything material is pointless. At first I wanted to write because I wanted to prove to my teachers that I knew what I was doing, so they’d leave me alone or give me something more interesting – which pretty much meant me wanting to write was a by product of boredom. Then I realised that the teachers wouldn’t care if I wrote like Shakespeare – they’d give me boring stuff anyway. It was their job. 15

That dulled the whole idea of writing for me, for a while…16

Now, my second excuse for writing – or trying to – is the fact that I have some inner need to make other people feel the same way that I feel when I read a book. I want to share that experience… which must be a good thing, since, in hindsight; it is the only non-material thing that I’m willing to offer to others… 17

But then – my dilemma over that idea is, quite simply, that that emotion will only last for a few days – a week if I’m lucky, before my faithful and doting readers are off reading something else and the book I trove so hard to write is now lying on a shelf, wasted. Which means that all my effort was wasted. Which means it was pointless. Which brings me back to the whole ‘what’s the point dilemma’. 18

But I can’t not write either. No matter how hard I try to avoid it, I have a need to write that eventually prevails. It is indescribable. Now that should mean something to you if you’ve even attempted to read any of the junk I posted above. I seem t be quite good at describing things on paper.19

Sometimes, I wonder if this is what it would be like to be immortal – never dying, unable to die – ever, slowly growing bored with the world but with no way out… it’s an interesting thought.20

Another interesting thought I mean.21

My head seems to be full of them.22

You know, one day I made up a rhyme that went like this:23

Have you never wondered, what it’s like, to be, truly free?
For I have wondered, and I have seen, so tell me now,
What does ‘free’ really mean?24

I still haven’t answered it yet. Do you have any ideas? It’s beyond me…25

Another interesting thought is – if there is heaven, with an eternal soul, then wouldn’t it get boring after a while- being saintly and good for ages and ages. Wouldn’t it get boring just existing eternally? It would be enough to drive most people mad, I think. Not that that means much in this society we live in, where a piece of paper with $ printed on it, or a little zip lock bag of white powder can do the same thing. Perhaps it would just finish the job.26

But then again… if you have an eternal soul, would you have an eternal mind too? A forever thinking consciousness? I might buy into that idea… if I got to keep on thinking forever… 27

Perhaps that why only ‘good’ people are supposed to get into heaven – because if you’re going to have to keep on thinking forever, unable to stop, then you sure as hell don’t want to be taking a lot of regrets with you…