Saturday, November 27, 2010

Existential War In Me

This is an experimental musical blog-comic.  Yes, I am taking my three favorite forms of Web 2.0 entertainment and combining them into one mind blowing experience.  (Hopefully)

Turn your sound up, and click the link here and let the music video play while you read.  The song is "Halo" by Porcupine Tree, one of my favorite bands of all time.  The idea for this musical blog-comic came to me while running, thinking about where I want to go in life, and listening to this song.

I hope you enjoy it.


Some people have mood swings, and I kind of envy them because I get lifestyle-swings.

One day I will be an ultra charitable vegan, motivated by an insatiable desire to make the world a better place and to make myself a better person.  The only money I will spend is on other people and every action I take is thoroughly analyzed for ethical integrity

The next day I will want to be mindlessly self-indulgent with an endless appetite for instant gratification.  I will only spend money on stuff I don't really need just because I think having it will make me happy...and I won't do any background checks to see if it's fair-trade, environmentally friendly or anything of that nature!  (Gasp!)

During the transitional period between these phases I will find myself heinously conflicted about my goals in life, and to some degree who I am as a person.



I know that deep down inside of me that fat and angry teenager still exists, and boy does he want to kick my ass for being such an insufferable perfectionist.

This is about the time that I will drive 40 miles to the nearest shopping mall and buy crap I don't really need.  Novelty hats, fart machines, gourmet snack food...pretty much whatever looks awesome, feels good or tastes amazing gets brought home and marveled over it for a few hours.

Things seem pretty awesome at this point.  With my belly full of over priced treats and fresh kicks on my feet, I will strut around with more self-content than Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray" and Kanye West combined.

It is good to be bad...sometimes.


This phase will last a week at most, and only be borderline obscene for about an afternoon.

Then the guilt sets in and I become aware of how insufferably shallow I've been lately.

I'll start to think about how the cash I spent should have been used to buy food for the animal shelter, or how my energy should be spent on charity and not on working out or running just so I can look good.

I'll get paranoid about karma (and I don't really subscribe to that belief, though I sometimes suspect there is truth to it).  I'll scrub the floors to make even for strutting my shit all over the house.  I'll pick up trash along the roads while running to put those nice new kicks to good use.  ...Then I will stare at the Peace Corp. website and contemplate doing it until I realize that means no internet and lots spiders and/or snakes.

I don't care how good I want to be (or can be), poisonous snakes and gigantic spiders are where I draw the line.


 When I'm in full-blown saint mode, I very nearly shit rainbows and radiate sunshine...but after a while this behavior starts to annoy even myself.

Then I start to shift back to being a bit more self-centered.


As I start to transition back to being increasingly focused on myself, I start kicking myself in the face and brooding over how utterly pathetic it is that I can't just stick to one lifestyle.

Does it always have to be one extreme or the other?  Can't I buy myself something stupid (yet cool) and do something nice for others for no reason?

Can't I run for charity and write an obscenely detailed blog that focuses mostly on myself?

...Shit.  [Cycle of shame]

5 comments:

Zack Peterson said...

Isn't this the PERFECT time to have an existential crisis? Most people don't care about who they truly are until they're almost dead.

Matt said...

I guess you're right, better now than later. I figured I would have that all sorted out by now, it seems like sort of a teenager thing to do.

Anonymous said...

Maybe if you weren't such an anime-loving, veggie-eating pussy, you wouldn't hate yourself every other week. ;) Lol. Jk.

Matt said...

Yay! More trolls! I feel that this is turning into a legitimate blog already :D

Anonymous said...

I think what you should do, rather than battling and fighting with the self is learn to accept the self. There is a dichotomy of all things and the self is no different. I've been struggling with this for years. Accept that there are equal parts contradiction and reconcile that one is no better than the other. As evident in your squishy mega awesome blog, each side has its pros and cons. Fight toward acceptance, not toward personality domination. Multiple personas is where its at man. Monopersona = totally boring and mega lame anyway.

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Matt
I got my English degree and mountain of student loan debt from the University of Iowa. I like boo berry cereal, martial arts, running and cats.
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