Sometimes I get in this rut where I don't feel like consuming any social text at all. It's not that I find the world boring, unhealthy, dangerous, or inadequate in any way. Surely there are texts that have these negative characteristics and more, but the entire library of texts that is the world around me should offer something to consume for every kind of day I would have, no? Lately I've felt like there is absolutely nothing I would like to read. At all. And this bothers me because I usually go out of my way to try new things, meet new people, and consume new media I would otherwise not be exposed to were it not for my attention-deficit tastes. Instead, I have just been interested in things I have already seen before. I keep coming back to the same movies or video games I've already experienced. I'll read news articles, but only of topics that I am familiar with, or only editorials which I already agree with. I don't quite understand my new resistance to the unfamiliar, but I have a few hypotheses. Firstly, I have been working very hard, if I do say so myself, in college. I am learning new things every day, in each class I go to. It's wonderful and I feel my brain expanding more and more, so much so that I feel like I'm in some sort of growth spurt. You know when you're growing as a kid and even walking hurts your legs? Molecules just keep packing themselves in, lengthening bones and muscles to the point that it feels like someone is stretching your limbs with a medieval torture device. Growing is a good feeling, no doubt. But when I get home, all I want to do is...nothing. I just want to sit and pass the time by thinking the same thoughts, listening to my normal music, watching syndicated episodes of TV shows I've seen too many times to count. I wonder if I'm wasting my time or just recharging some resource of sanity only filled by the "usual." But I don't want to have a usual anything. I want to have new texts all the time; I want to be intellectually promiscuous. There's nothing wrong with committment, but I feel like I'm wasting time if I settle for a lesson I've already learned. But maybe I've learned all that one person can. I'm around the age that (supposedly) the brain stops growing, or adjusting or something. I'm no neurologist. There's a real possibility that I am so old that I'm stopping the development process. I am the person who I am going to be. The only food I'll eat must resemble flavors I already enjoy. The only people I will get along with have personalities that I have been exposed to. (Consequently, this may mean the only people I won't get along with have personalities that I have already learned to avoid.) The only technology I will be okay interfacing with can only progress so far past what I have already deemed to be groundbreaking (read: discoveries that have occurred in my generation). Anything else is just too out there for me. Am I turning into.... an old person? I hope not.


I think old people are worthless. Understand me: when I say "old people," I do not mean those who have been around for longer times. I mean people who are set in their ways, so-to-speak. I mean people for whom discussion is an opportunity to regurgitate all their knowledge onto the youth. I mean people for whom the act of listening is equivalent to waiting for an opening to speak. I mean people for whom ethnocentrism is a legitimate ideology. I mean people who need protection against the tyranny and naivete of those who are different. I also mean people who are so "open-minded" that they have no respect for those who are not as adventurous as them. I also mean people who make a religion out of accepting those who are different. I also mean people who believe diversity is more valuable than value itself. 


I hope I am not turning into either of these people, for both know not how to listen, how to read. They have their minds made up about what is comfortable for them, and in both cases there is an area of discomfort. I don't want that. I don't want people to ever make me uncomfortable. I want to make myself uncomfortable by going there first, and that's just what I intend to do for the rest of my life. But I can't do that if I feel like staying home and playing with souvenirs from a trip that's not yet over.


Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I just need a little nap.