Metablog

Apathy means that when you sit down and you have this feeling that there’s something that needs to be done, something you want to do, and then you try to start doing it, to figure out what you need to do, that your mind can stare at that problem, and the problem stares right back, and your mind simply whimpers a little bit. Normally, when you look at a problem, you get a sense of its shape and boundries, and a will to take that problem head on, to work through it and find its weaknesses and explode whatever apparent dilemma is facing you, or at least to discover what it is that you don’t know yet.

But when you’re apathetic, that doesn’t happen. It’s not because you’re scared of the problem. It’s not because you’re not interested in the problem. It’s because your mind is too still, just not willing enough, just not able to get started. Sure, there are some issues that will be pressing enough to get your mind going. Mainly when there are things that people want you to do right then. People to give you pressure, and move your mind for you.

And there are a couple other things that can do it. Problems that happen to be especially interesting, for one. Those are fun to solve. Other problems are simply fun to work on, whether or not you actually solve them. (Videogames would be something like that. Who cares if you beat the game? It’s the game itself that makes it fun to play.) Other problems might be those that make you mad, or excited, or sexually aroused.

But when you’re apathetic, there is one thing that absolutely cannot give you an incentive to act: your own mind. You can’t decide that something is interesting enough to grab your attention. It just is or isn’t. If you think you want to do this or that, but it’s not inherently interesting, no amount of will can overcome that disconnect between your higher brain functions and your lower ones. without something external and unconscious and uncontrollable giving your mind an incentive to act, it’ll simply never do anything.

Even this essay I’m writing isn’t a product of my will. It’s a product of my depression of the last two weeks, while this problem has become gradually both more clear and more aggravating. Annoyance at myself, once it becomes strong enough, is enough to motivate me. But there are a dozen other things I’d like to be doing right now (in the abstract) that my mind will simply refuse to wrap itself around. Every day there are two different tasks that I can sit and stare at, and not find the will to actually work on at all.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s not that my mind has absolutely no ability at all to direct my attention. It’s more that the ability is so weak that the slightest draw can disturb it and distract me from the other things I’d like to be doing. And this is quite troublesome for me, because it means that there are some days where I can manage to avoid those distractions and be moderately productive (though not as much as I could be otherwise). And so it makes me feel as if my bad days are more my fault—a failure of will. And that is a destructive attitude. Destrutive attitudes suck.

It presents a further problem, too. There are weeks and even months in which I become interested in certain problems, not of my own will, but simple because I happened upon the issue, and I become interested and can give my attention to it. And these are issues I would even direct my own attention to, were I able to. These are times where I feel much better. Healthy, even. So it makes it much harder to understand those times where I don’t feel healthy. But I think I understand now. It’s not my fault when those times end. It’s simply when my interest happens to be distracted once again by some other object, or even when it simply wanes away from all objects.

I think I’ve come to accept my own state over the years. I’ve come to acknowledge that I’m not the kind of person that can complete projects—not the kind of person to make a lasting contribution to any significant field, even if I think my talents and ideas are good enough to qualify me for that sort of accomplishment. So I don’t expect any sort of consistency of attention out of myself anymore, and I’ve become much less depressed as a result. But still not happy. And I still have one major problem.

Fortunately, there have been few times in my life where I didn’t have at least some things that I could give my attention to, even if those things weren’t even close to the ones I would have chosen. Unfortunately, the things that distract me the most nowadays are on the internet. And the internet happens to be a vital part of my job. And so I’m not really getting anything done at my job, which is much more important than other times. It puts my livlihood in jeopardy. Since the net is necessary for my job, it’s not like I can avoid it entirely. Sure, I could install filters on my work computer to whitelist only those sites I need to do my job. But any feasible solution would still require a lot of will on my part to go along with the filtering. I’ve already tried that sort of thing, and it doesn’t make the problem any easier. It’s not the way to solve it.

And even if I were to start being able to be consistently productive, my personal relationships are still suffering. I don’t have the attention necessary to have good, enriching conversations. My conversations end up being very slow-paced, lifeless, scattered, and somewhat inane, even where they can be (and have been) engaging, invigorating, thorough, and inspiring.

I’ve thought about calling a psychiatrist. But I can’t find the desire to go through with it.

I think that, clinically, my condition would be classified as ADD. But the apathy is the worst part of it, and I think the word better describes the subjective experience of my condition.

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