I bought a space ant farm. Don’t bother re-reading that sentence because it’ll probably sound just as stupid as it did the first time. See, spending money on things that no one needs ever is what unemployed people like myself refer to as, “responsibility.” Other things that qualify include watering plants that are only kind of dying, creating a to-do list entirely dedicated to renewing library books and making smoothies without ice cream.
The thing about responsibility is that I don’t have it. I mean, I do my own laundry and am able to feed myself, but when it comes to getting things done, I’m about as successful as Andy Dick is sober. And it’s incredibly hard for me to admit that. It’s hard to admit that feeding myself is for me, somewhat of a small victory. Because I could make an entire scrapbook out of all of the times I would sit in bed and think, “I need to eat something” but refuse on the basis that it just wasn’t worth the effort. And instead of colorful photos with labels like, “Graduation!” and “Pool Party!” there would be a photo of me looking like a ham in an old Oksana Baiul shirt accompanied by, “Made It to the Couch!” and “Got a Glass of Water!”
I can laugh about it all now and in truth, I laughed about it as it was happening. But it was really just a placeholder for the real laughter that I hoped to have after I was done living my life as a hamster devoid of an exercise wheel. But now I’m faced with a set of atrophied doin’ stuff muscles. Even now, I’m struggling to push through writing about my life as a feather desperately searching for something more than intermittent gusts of wind. The “ugh” part of my brain wants to simply end this with, “Yeah so it’s basically just hard to do shit sometimes because I was like, depressed and shit.”
But there’s more to it than that. Tasks come into my life innocuously and leave as unattainable desires. Want becomes a byproduct of my own avoidance. And I let it happen. I allow something as simple as sending an email go from, “This will only take a minute” to “Well I should probably check Twitter” to “Gotta pee” to “Holy shit Teen Mom is on” to “Okay well I will put ‘write email’ on my to-do list for tomorrow.’” Eventually, tomorrow turns into a week or more and with each passing day, it gets exponentially more embarrassing to complete the task. It’s like talking about this awesome movie you saw called Sixth Sense and it was so wild because holy shit Bruce Willis was dead the whole time sorry that’s kind of a spoiler but seriously you have to see this movie.
However, ants are industrious and, unlike myself, aren’t burdened with credit cards that are all like, “Those 6-inch pink glitter heels aren’t so cute now, are they?” Ants build and forage and create very distinct, pheromone-driven societies. The other cool thing about ants? All of the workers are female. Males in any given colony are used solely for reproduction and die soon after, while queens can live up to 30 years. I get horny just looking at this ant farm.
Here you will see no fucking ants
The only problem is that I can’t find any. I’ve been trying for the past two months and all I’ve got to show for it is a search history that could probably implicate me in a couple of cold cases. Things like, “How to buy an ant queen,” “How to start an ant colony” and “I want ants because they really inspire me and maybe I could even feed them sugar from my mouth like that time on King of the Hill when Bobby was controlled by an ant queen.”
Predictably, most ant-related results usually involve methods for getting rid of them instead of how to cradle them in your nutrient-rich space gel and mimic their habits. But I’m not giving up. In the process of learning how to go all Donald Trump on my life (but in a good way), I’m also getting comfortable with the reality that I’m going to have to turn over a lot of rocks to find what I’m looking for.
But, hopefully not as many as I’ve had to turn over in my quest for ants.
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I’m in a similar place. My purchasing weakness is books. And I don’t have a TV because it’s mostly crap programming and the last thing I need is another thing to eat up my time.