author syndrome

main character syndrome's lesser-known cousin

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

Time is nonlinear.

It’s weird. All my life, the deeply embedded subconscious mental image I’ve had of life is that it’s a steady, linear progression, always upwards. If there’s small bumps and dips along the way, they’re fleeting and in service of the larger journey - the temporary dip has to recover and more than make up for itself. I think that’s the fixed map I’ve clung to, and I don’t even know who put it there. Every decision that I make has to have a good case for pushing my personal growth forward, somehow. Every mistake that I make (if I ever allow myself to make any) has to produce a lesson learned that will generate even more growth. Always looking ahead, always seeing what I can do better. I started reading self-improvement books when I was ten, because I needed to know how I was going to level up next. The story of my own life that I’ve constructed in my head is built entirely on focused, linear narratives- timelines, results, causes and effects. Once, when I was in 8th grade, I read a pop psychology book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which sparked my interest in psychology, which led me to read more psychology books, which led me in high school to take a psychology course, which led me in college to major in psychology, which led to me now wanting to go to grad school for underwater basket weaving - I’m kidding. You obviously know for what. It’s a neat domino chain of events with predictable results. A narrative of my life I can package and recite in 5 minutes. That’s what I’m always subconsciously trying to engineer, both retroactively and proactively.

I’m a storyteller at heart, but I worry that the story I’m weaving about my own self is preventing me from experiencing life, really experiencing it. A good story has precise plotting, a neat character arc, a happy ending. I think I’m mentally trying to mold my life into a good story. Sometimes, I feel like I’m in my own choose-your-own-adventure book, especially in my early twenties - I’m trying to make decisions that will have a cascade of ripple effects on the rest of my life, but I have no way of knowing what they are. I’m trying to be the main character and author of my life at the same time, which is simply not possible. I’m constantly trying to optimize and predict my decisions - which one’s going to play out the best over the course of my life? Which one’s going to yield the most profitable returns in my personal growth account? I’m like a character in a play that’s desperately trying to take a peek at the script, so I can see the ending and figure out what I need to do. And that is 1) exhausting and anxiety-inducing, 2) impossible, and 3) renders me incapable of living in the present moment. Life is messy and complex and wholly unpredictable and it doesn’t need to make a conventionally good story to be worth living. I know that. But I’m not sure I really know that.

I’m trying to embrace the idea of life (and time) being nonlinear. Like a donut (EEAAO?) or a square. Or even just a squiggle. I’m giving up the idea of trying to understand my life on a meta-level, of switching back and forth between the godlike plane of existence where I’m inspecting myself from above and plotting my own trajectory, and the mundane plane of existence where I’m boiling pasta and getting through my day. I’ve never played The Sims, but clearly I don’t need to because I’m living out a bizarre psychological inception form of it with myself. I would very much like to just be a happy, stupid little main character stumbling around and making random decisions and not worrying about the consequences. I want to experience my story instead of trying to architect it.

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Writing about mentally writing about your existence is a mindwarp. We’re playing 5D chess over here. Subscribe to join whatever the fuck is happening!