When I was Seventeen..
   Wow, it's finally happened, I'm finally 17. My birthday this year, has passed (so far) without incident, or well, without crippling incident involving myself. I took this opportunity to commemorate the first ever National Teen Angst Day and so refrained from going to school, but it was a boring birthday. I'm used to stuff happening on my birthday that would make it memorable. The gifts this year have been plentiful, and they've all been quality and good, which, sucks because.. ... They haven't been interesting, well, interesting isn't the right word, they haven't been, insulting. I guess the birthday isn't even over, and I'm yet to see what Dave has got in store, I'm sure it'll be plenty insulting, but all the same, it amazes me how few people have given me expired HMV vouchers this year. Maybe this is my sub-conscious refusing to be pleased with the world I don't want to have faith in.. Like, whenever something good happens, maybe my mind tells me it's bad because it's not interesting or deadly.. Maybe this is just another manifestation of how bored I am with life. .. oh what a thought.. 

   Indeed, 17 years and I ask myself, is there anything left for me to do? This world is made out to be so wonderful, and life itself, it's one of the greatest gifts God has ever given us, with so many amazing things, but as far as experiences go, have I already eaten the icing off the cake of existence? So I've experienced being loved, is there a greater feeling than to know you are loved? I've experienced loving others, is that all there is to life? The movies I've seen and the music I've heard, the books I've read and the paintings I've lived, are they the greatest things in life? Seventeen entire years, and I don't know whether anything is left for me to do. I'm sufficiently bored with life right now. Every day is the same. I get on the bus in the morning, talk to Dave on the bus, pay out Jacyleen when she refuses to sit with us, have a quick hello to everyone at the station, walk down the other end at 8:15 and get on the train at 8:19.. We get to Caringbah and we meander across to school, and the day starts. In maths I sit there, having pen fights with Jasmine and talking to Dave, in English I ask why they reduce texts to the understanding of self-obsessed teenagers and sometimes I cry, in Modern History I argue with people around me feel insecure.. I take down notes, and none of it goes in.. sometimes, if I'm lucky, I draw. Society and Culture is a joke.. At recess we talk, at lunch we talk, and it's always about the same things. About that guy with the frullet, about who is tuning who, about the parties that are on this weekend, or the parties we went to last.. About drunken escapades, about movies everybody should've seen, but nobody has.. Occasionally the conversation might include some amazing feat of wow, but what does that change? Nothing.

   Life can't be about experiences, because there's not much to experience in life. Emotion, art, people, places, things.. do these things enrich our lives at all? We've been taught to believe that they do. That when we're 'happy', it's a good thing, and when we 'love', our lives are supplemented. Why are we here then? How do we make the best of our life if not via experience? I like to think that heaven exists, and Heaven is meant to be a place where we can have a relationship with God, a perfect relationship. This is meant to be the ultimate experience. "You haven't lived, till you've lived with Christ" is the kinda thing I like to believe. Why is heaven the ultimate experience though? Is it the joy and completion we will feel? Then ask, why is joy considered a great thing? I want to understand this universe and our existence. I want to know why I wake up every morning and what I'm doing this all for. Is The Glory of God reason enough for me to stay alive? Now I question every emotion I feel, wondering if it's real or synthetic, wondering if the I was taught to think what I think, and conditioned to ... of course I was. Is there a right amount of conditioning though? Is a certain amount of 'conditioned ignorance' bliss? 

   I've been taught to think that human life is precious, and that generally, killing people is wrong. What if killing someone is the ultimate experience then, and we've been conditioned to believe in the existence of things like guilt and personal rights for the benefit of social order? .. Chances are though, I'm just paranoid and trying to make sense of the whole thing.. .. trying to make my life interesting. I was talking to a friend last night who said she was sick of her boyfriend - don't worry, it's nobody you know, and if it is, you still don't know them. The two have been going out for a while, and she just felt that she wanted someone to love her passionately and well, someone she could be in love with. It's easy to get bored with things. We get a 'new toy' and we immerse ourselves in it, then we get bored of it, and we throw it out in the trash. It doesn't matter how much you love something, you'll eventually lose interest. When I buy a new CD, I don't listen to it as much as I want to, I (try to) ration it out so I don't get bored with it, well I still will, but not as quickly. It's one of those cheap human qualities we have, that we can get bored with anything because we have so much to entertain us. We live in a reality of excess, where we have more than we need of nearly everything, so it's so easy to get bored, it's so easy to think "when I get rid of this, there'll be another" and sometimes we even lump our friends into that category. The point is, we can't ration out life so we don't get bored with it. I can't say, okay, I'm only going to live every 3rd day, and I'll only live for 2 hours a day, although I have a feeling I'd be a lot more appreciative if I knew I had like a year to live. .. .. if you were her, and you wanted things to change, what would you change?

   So how can you keep life interesting after 17 years? My great grandmother is like 90-ish and she's not bored with life. She still lives every day looking forward to it and the next, the same with my mid-forties parents, and my grandparents. How do they keep themselves from getting bored with life? How do they keep going? I don't really hate life, I mean, there are a few things in it that make me happy, but when I can't answer the question "what's so good about happiness?" there's something very wrong with me, or with this thing we call life.

I want my life to change somehow, constantly, rapidly, incoherently, enormously, eternally, or I want to learn to appreciate what I have, and not to get bored with it. Look at this picture, is that the photo of someone who looks bored with life? It's easy to pretend.  To smile through it and pretend you're having a good time, sometimes I think I don't do it enough though. Oh, I don't know. It's all so confusing. I don't know what I want to change though. Get a girlfriend? No. Smoke pot? No. Get some new friends? No. I try to change myself, and I so often fail, because it's so hard, but that's the only thing I can think of.. Would that even make my life all that much more interesting? I want to change something in my life.. something as well as who I am. Maybe I could join a band, drop out of school, I know, how about I bring a video camera to school.. ? I don't know, honestly. I don't see what I can do to suffice my need for new stuff. I guess all I can do is lose the attitude.

   So what's left? Nothing.

+Hing--->Out

Hey Mr Tamborine Man, play a song for me.. ..