When I get bummed, I like to watch interviews with David Foster Wallace. It doesn’t make me feel better. Earlier tonight I watched an interview with him back in 1997 when he was on Charlie Rose’s show and I kept thinking, A decade from now you are going to kill yourself. I kept wondering if somehow he knew that, even then, if he could predict that this would all end with a noose.

I have never read David Foster Wallace’s fiction, so I can’t claim to be fan of his written work, but I do like what he has to say sometimes. I enjoy listening to him talk about David Lynch. I enjoy the face he makes after he answers a question and it’s so clear he found what he said sorta pretentious. Like every other white male, I do own Infinite Jest. I will maybe one day read it, but probably not. I’ll read Pynchon first. His writing seems more interesting. However, I can’t watch interviews with Pynchon, because it’s difficult to talk with a brown paper bag over your face.

Early on in my shift at the hotel I tweeted something about how the planet was on fire and the sun was going to explode and our leaders wanted to murder us all, so it was bullshit to wait for anyone’s permission to work on creative projects, that we should do the thing we want to do because our time is finite and we shouldn’t allow it to go to waste so easily. For a brief five minutes, I was so goddamn pumped up with motivation, then…five hours later, I’m still at the hotel, and I’ve gotten exactly nothing done. Instead of being productive on editing or writing projects, I chose to watch interviews with dead people, I chose to go through old email chains that started with optimism and ended in what should have been predictable misery. I listened to a podcast about political grifters.

I spent almost an hour, in between helping hotel guests, researching local therapists, then decided (based on their website listings) that they were all ultra religious and would be a waste of my time.

I’ve never been to a therapist and sometimes, late at night when no one is around, I start thinking maybe it’s a good idea. But I also live in Texas, where everybody’s solution to the blues is “God”. That doesn’t sit well with me. I am not a religious person. I am not a believer. I do not want to be. I am okay without god in my life.

For a brief hour I thought I needed a therapist but now I think maybe I just need to stay the fuck off social media, and if I still feel compelled to make my stupid thoughts public, this blog is the right way to go.

I deleted Facebook from my phone but I kept Messenger and Twitter and I do not know how to rid them from my existence and I do not know if I can. Maybe therapists are good because you can complain about bullshit like what I’ve talked about in this blog and there’s no risk of embarrassing yourself by exposing your privilege. It is so hard to articulate my thoughts and fears and anxieties without feeling like the living embodiment of First World Problems. But also, I barely have time to update a blog, how the fuck do you find time for therapy?

So I don’t know. If therapy is the answer then it will be an answer I ignore.

I guess it’s just hilarious how quickly someone can go from “Oozing Motivation” to “Existential Crisis”.

The one thing on my side is I still find everything very, very funny–even the truly terrible things–and I suppose once that is gone, then I really have a reason to worry.

But until then I’m gonna keep watching these interviews with David Foster Wallace and wonder: When did you know? A decade before? A year before? Five minutes before? Did you know the moment you were born? Or was it a split-second decision that you would have not done if literally anything distracted you for another couple minutes?

And, shit, who knows, maybe I’ll fucking read Infinite Jest after all.