Thoughts of mortality are never too far out of mind. Not for yours truly. Been that way longer than it hasn’t.

Though, truth be told, my own mortal coil was not always greatly considered, despite it being quite provable with scientific certainty. Hell, there have been epochs and eras in my own existence where I questioned the possibility of it, no matter the evidence to the contrary. See peak college years, etc.

Such recollections might just be the result of the façade nostalgia cast upon that former me. In truth, I know the awareness was there then, as well. How could it not be?

But three decades and change of living, combined with the reminders my profession grants on endings (and the occasional beginning) informs me to take notice of the finite nature of the sensation humans call life. Might be called something else somewhere else, I’m not sure. Never been out of this cosmic neighborhood, nor knowingly conversated with any others from that far out of town.

You may already know this, but it is not in fact Monday. Seemed harmless enough as far as false advertising goes, especially considering all other ones about. And this was a move I used to pull with regularity when this experiment was conducted on Sundays. Or so it was formerly labeled. But yesterday (Monday) was a holiday, and as often happens with those, I was at my place of employment, conducting controlled damage to my sleep cycle. The thought occurred to scrounge something up with the downtime I could forage then, but I thought it ill-advised on the ingenuity with which it might have then been conceived. Better now, when my attention only wavers in ways more inexcusable.

I cling now to the dried sweat and filth of the day now setting. The urge to shower arose, but I felt the words might benefit from the untidy conditions of my current outsides. We may never know if that decision was right or wrong, as the timeline seems to be set on conducting itself in this singular direction.

It was a fine enough day- granted you were me operating on the part of the rock I reside. That was certainly not the case on other portions of our spaceship Earth. If reports are to be believed, which I certainly seem to believe, it was hell in a few places elsewhere. I wasn’t there, so I can only say based upon secondhand accounts and I like to think that there is at least some credibility in the mechanism of an informed global society. For however long that is going to last. Opinions differ on that, both among the well-informed and the otherwise ignorant. The latter often being the louder.

There are grim predictions, of course. And you don’t have to look very far to find them. And I’ll be damned, but you can even find polar arguments each with their own persuasion on almost every occurrence and situation. We love our thoughts on end times. All throughout our documented history up until this here modern day. Us apes and our doom fetishes, all newfangled with the computer and consumer curation.

But I confess, I care only for such conundrums as far as they serve me as nemeses. Something for me to fight against, whether that be an expression of fortitude or folly. Sitting, or standing, idly by, instead of raging against has only served to grant fortitude to the more depressive trends in my thoughts and behavior. Something I actively attempt to wipe from existence, knowing full well that I may never truly do so. But as there is something to be admired about Sisyphus, I have characters I aim to emulate more. Some of which are well documented beings, making the legends created more appealing in their own actuality. Those who have delighted in the adversarial relationship with the what is’s and are’s of their places and times, locked in combat with the empirical demises of themselves and their worlds.

Of course, I falter. I fear, and shake with adrenaline from time to time when the living gets real enough to see fantasy of what might be begin to fade away. But bravery is not an absence of fear. That would be insanity. And although I believe that no being should be blissfully unaware with the breaks in our own perception of reality- I firmly believe that succumbing to such minds and ideologies both within and outside ourselves is a course leading directly towards the failure of our purpose and potential. Remember you are never so far from going mad as you think, so do your best to be empathetic to those who have gone that way to a point that holds reason, though exhausting it may be.

There is much, still, that I wish to do with this singular existence. And I understand that may be teetering on greed or something more hysterical, but I feel it all the same. I try not to undersell what I have done thus far. Plenty, according to the lifestyles of a great horde of others. The dream, as it were. But I seem to keep dreaming further. And as long as I never diminish what was done and what I am still doing, I see no issue in striving for more to be, and see, and hear, and feel, and so on and so forth, etc.

It might be part of my death sentence, but I still don’t seem to think so. I think its opposite more likely aligned with doom. To no longer strive. To no longer wish to make more of what you have, for both one’s own self as well as regarding the state of others. In reasonably healthy amounts, of course. To not lose the fight itself, but far more damning, to lose the fight within yourself. I don’t aim to hang up my gloves anytime soon. And if I play my cosmic, biological and societal cards correct, I should have decades of fight left in me.

If not centuries. Who knows?   

So onward so, I fight and strive and reach for more to be and feel. Because if not, what then?