on bubbles

alternatively titled: on life after graduation & meaning-making

also alternatively titled: in which i say a whole lot about meaning, but maybe fail to say anything at all.

i also want to add, as a brief foreword, that i wrote most of this on paper, during the dead moments at work. it took a little bit of time for me to find the motivation to type this up, and in that time, things have gotten better. slightly.

This past December, I graduated, and about two weeks ago, I started working full time as a software engineer. This means that lately I have had a lot of free time, which I fill mostly by considering the meaninglessness of my existence, circling the drain of insanity, and, occasionally, baking.

Partly because of frustratingly relentless network issues and partly to escape the doldrums of working 8 hours in my bedroom followed by resting 16 hours in my bedroom, I’ve started going to my employer’s office in Cambridge. I don’t have an assigned desk there – rather handily, they have a touchdown space dedicated for visiting employees, which I suppose I am. Visiting for 4 months¹.

Unless somebody is taking a call, the area is incredibly silent. The loudest sounds there are usually the thrum of the AC, and the occasional and alternating buzzes of the fridge and various water filtering machines². The silence is, at turns, suffocating and reassuring and intimidating. I find myself too shy to interrupt it.

I take my lunches at work alone, as everybody else on my floor seems to do.

On the days that I pack lunch, I sometimes watch the other employees, who sometimes shyly watch me back, and I wonder if they also feel lonely and curious. Or if, with age, the want to speak and listen fades, and they find peace and contentedness with the silence.

On the days that I had forgotten to pack the night before, I walk outside, and I look at the buildings which gleam with glass and steel, and I listen to the chattering of students and young professionals all around me³. At times, it’s comforting, to feel as though I’m surrounded by people who are like me. At other times, I feel like a ghost or a pretender, moving through the crowd and wondering if they know that I’m out of place here.

At whatever lunch place I chose for the day, I place my order with a lot of deliberation. After the dullness of the office, being able to choose food feels special, and I take my time, considering which option would best suit my cravings for the day. I don’t seek delicious food; instead, what I crave is stimulation, excitement, something that I hope and hope will disrupt my day, will make the hours feel worth it.

I sit by the window to eat, so that I can watch the people walk by and listen to the chattering of the employees behind the counter. I take my time eating. My mind is quieter during this period. I focus on the mechanical actions of chewing, the sounds from the kitchen, the outfits and faces and gaits of the people on the other side of the window, and the taste and texture of the food against my tongue.

One place I go to sits across from a small outdoor ice skating rink, tucked among glinting apartments and faceless offices. At noontime on a weekday, only a handful of people skate. They totter like baby giraffes on uncertain legs, unused to the new feeling of walking on ice. The unfamiliar transforms us.

I take my time on the way back. Sometimes I stop to buy snacks for the rest of the workday, not because I ever feel hungry, but for the pleasure of perusing and purchasing, for the later stimulation of texture and taste, for the sake of having something to do.

When I return to the office, I am once again enveloped by silence; although, it’s really just a different kind of quiet. I speak very little during these days.

I’ve never previously really cared about finding a passion or chasing happiness – my brain chemistry seems ill-suited to either, and sustaining such feelings or states seems unimaginable to me.

Once, in high school, somebody said to me that they read for language, but I read for meaning, and, at the time, I thought that this was patently false – I love beautiful writing and purple prose and words that make your teeth and heart ache. A lot of my own writing, I think, is more about the language than the meaning⁴.

But lately, I’ve been realizing that those words rang true, even in ways that I’m sure he didn’t mean at the time.

I find myself seeking it, chasing it, hungering for it, and I feel frustrated, empty, bowel-less when I fail to find it.

The things that I complain about lately to anybody I believe will patiently listen are the following:

1. novels that, to me, fail to say anything one way or another about the topics that they broach
2. people who equivocate without taking a stance
3. last but definitely not least – in fact, I’d say, most of all: my inability and quest to find meaning and purpose in my own life.

Right now, what I crave, seek, desire, pine for is substance. I want anything that feels real to me. Trying to create a meaningful existence haunts me – mostly, the threat of failure on that front.

There is a lot of time at work when I am simply waiting.

If I’ve grown tired of the other ways to pass my time (which happens often), then I peel off a pastel-colored sticky note, and, in the smallest handwriting I can comfortably manage, I begin to write.

I write the things I’m too embarrassed to say aloud. I write my hopes and dreams and insecurities and my pettiest of grievances. When there’s no more space left on the note or when my thoughts have calmed, I fold the sticky note up, I walk to the recycling bin, and I toss it away.

Against the litter of the recyling bin, the sticky note (and all the sticky secret thoughts it contains) looks tiny, unfamiliar, powerless, insignificant, and, most of all, meaningless.

I am not what you would call a bubbles enjoyer.

I’m not really a soda person, and I’ve never really understood the appeal of sparkling water.

The last few days I’ve spent in the office, though, I occasionally take one of the flavored sparkling waters or ginger ales, just so that I can feel the carbonation against the skin of my mouth. After the soda in particular, my two front teeth feel tender. They’re reminders of my flesh and blood, that I’m not just a ghost passing through the streets, that I’m alive. But I mostly just drink them so that my day feels a little less teeth-rottingly boring.

footnotes