3.125%. At 45 minutes a night on average, it can be estimated that I spent approximately 3.125% of 2016 writing on this blog everyday. Considering all of the other shit I had to fit into the other 96.875% of the time, sleeping, eating, shitting, fucking, going to university, going to work, doing chores, reading, mourning, playing video games, riding public transport, laying in the fetal position due to mental anguish, socialising, dancing at gigs, listening to music, daydreaming, staring absentmindedly into my fridge, being horrified by the reality tv show known as american politics, moving house, redecorating, gardening, gazing upon art, and a billion other things, I’m so proud that I managed to dedicate that precious 3.125% into appreciating and documenting the world as I perceived it.
That’s why I started this blog. On the morning of the first of January 2016 I was crying in a car alone, hungover, unable to move. suffering from the strongest bout of existentialism I had ever faced. In that moment I decided that to keep going I had to make changes. No matter how small I am compared to the ever expanding nothingness, regardless of the fact I am a victim to the never ending flow of time dragging me and everything I’ve ever known and loved into the unknown, despite how meaningless this will all be once we’re all forgotten, I have a life and I need to live it. Suffering doesn’t prevent these problems, it merely steals happiness and invades sanity.
So I tried to take my happiness back, and protect the sanity still intact. I forced my perspective of the world to change by writing about something amazing every single day. That’s 366 posts including this one. There were a few poems, a few raps, a few short stories, a few one liners, but mostly it was just abstract descriptions of particular incredible aspects of life. From live music to avocados to evolution to rugs to language, I’ve broken down and admired the building blocks of my everyday life. I have literally trained myself to become happier, and I’m fucking bipolar, so that’s not the easiest of tasks. All it took was 3.125%. A little number compared to the big 100, but considering that’s almost one thirtieth of my existence for the entirety of this planet’s circle around the sun, it is pretty significant. And what would I have spent that time doing anyway? Whatever it was, I doubt it was more beneficial than the reprogramming of my own brain.Â
Now somehow, this year is finished, and I have decided that I no longer need this blog. I may post occasionally when I’m so inspired I can’t help but record my thoughts, but I have no need to continue writing here everyday. The goal of this blog has been achieved after all. I have learnt to walk in the rain and actually feel it, I’ve learnt to lie in darkness and be calmed by it, I’ve learnt to love my sickness, and my body and my mind and art. I’ve learnt to live within my mortality, not live despite of it. I’ve managed to be amazed daily.Â