A friend of mine told me recently that he didn't know why he existed. What he was put on earth for... I asked him if he was happy. He replied "I am not unhappy." Then he asked me if I was happy. "Happier than most." I said. He looked surprised - "How do you know you're happier than most?" "Can't you tell?" I replied.

There's a Native American saying: "Everything on Earth has a purpose." That satisfies me... it makes sense at a vague cosmic level. Without a purpose, things cease to exist. Our eye blots them out of existence. But my friend is more demanding, he wants to know "What purpose exactly?"

In my lunchbreak today, I happened to put my hand over my eyes and for a moment, everything made sense. The deep tingling warmth of the sunlight on my skin was reason enough for being. I sat there for long time, feeling perfectly content in an otherwise unremarkable day. And I thought of all the other suns out there, each of them billions of light years apart, casting their precious energy into countless galaxys of dead and barren planets. Why do they exist? Why do any of us exist? The fact is, our sun exists, and it is warm. Be like the sun.

It's 1am and I'm listening to one of my favourite songs - Gil Scott-Heron's "Everyday." I must've heard this song 100s of times, but this time I'm actually listening - and thinking "wow! - it's not just me!" The lyrics just seem to echo my thoughts lately, about losing one's ideals and passion for life because of everyday drudgery... And it's true, after awhile, you begin to think you were wrong, because everyone else seems happy to play the game... I guess it's like Gil says - even when we can't make sense of it, the world keeps on turning. You can't stand still, or stop participating in life. You just have to make the most of what you've got.

"I can't seem to find the words to say... I don't have sense to play the games you need to play. Everyday I seem to be running from the truth. I ask myself questions but it just ain't no use. It seems no matter what I try to do, I'm still loving and living, lying and losing everyday. I've got a job and to say the least, it don't mean a thing. It don't begin to compare with the hate and pain that I've seen. Sometimes I know I can't tell wrong from right, I don't seem to know day from night, it's no small wonder that the whole world's uptight."

"It seems that more and more I start to realise - that the truth that I wanted, the love that I needed, has somehow disappeared before my eyes. Everyday you got me running from the truth, and no matter what I try to do, it somehow seems no use. I'm still loving and living, lying and losing, god it's so confusing, loving and living, lying and losing, everyday."

My weekend...

Huan Tzin came around on Saturday and we played hotseat Civ for a few hours instead of going to see Lantana. Went out for Japanese dinner in Neutral Bay with my Dad and his friends. Then came home and played more hotseat Civ til early in the morning.

Sunday started off nicely with a picnic in a local park. I made friends with a $400 cocker spaniel with weepy eyes, then headed to Paddington to check out this 2-bedroom apartment my Dad is interested in... Then drove over to my sister's place but she wasn't there - she was up at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre cooking food for the homeless. She does Food Not Bombs every Saturday and Sunday night. So we walked up and helped her serve soup and bread for an hour or so, then came home and cooked spaghetti... took me hours to wash the stinking dishes because of the damn tomato paste... but it gave me time to reflect, something I now do only once a fortnight, according to the frequency of entries in this blog.

Missing G already... and hating work more and more by the day. Maybe it's because I'm usually on holiday this time of year and for the first time ever, I'm not! Plus I think work is making me a bitter and twisted individual. I felt like such a phoney helping the homeless tonight, dressed in my $90 shirt and campers. It made me realise how fixated on money I've become lately. I can't seem to motivate myself any other way... Forcing myself to do things I don't enjoy has made me so ambivalent about everything! So all night I've been fantasising about quitting my job and going overseas to teach English or start my own business helping other people get rich. Not that I've figured out how to get rich myself yet, but I'm working on it.

Michael sent me a note from London, he's now reading Narcissus and Goldmund and having the same thoughts I wrote below... I guess that book has that effect on people.

Anyway... now chilling out to "Thousands Now Living Will Never Die" and hoping the next five days will be less painful than usual. I've made a resolution to start reflecting more on weeknights... and try to think of a more satisfying way of earning my freedom.

Lately I've been thinking of starting my own business. This process probably started 6 years ago in high school, when I did one of those psychometric tests that plots your personality type and matches it to potential careers. In my case, one of the possibilities that was thrown up was that of a self-starter - a suggestion I found intriguing and appealing, but a little too vague to take seriously. But recent events have amplified this seed of an idea. Specifically, a growing disatisfaction with my salary combined with a lack of opportunities to shine. Work has become routine and unstimulating... I don't feel like I'm growing or going anywhere. I could put my hand up and ask to expand my role, take on more challenging tasks, but in the current dot.com wasteland I know there's no chance of a payrise to accompany this additional responsibility, so why bother?

Inherently, being paid a salary is a barrier to growing. You can work harder and kiss arse in the faint hope of a bonus or raise, but it's far easier and profitable to just work less and get paid the same. Naturally bosses are aware of this and make it their business to micro-manage your activities and weed out anyone who doesn't fit the corporate culture. This in turn, creates companies full of ass-kissers or passive-resistant labour.

Karl Marx probably figured all this out centuries ago, but the exploitative relationship between capital and labour is only beginning to dawn on me. If my labours create $450k a year for the company, how come I only get $50k of it? Capital begets Capital, and in order to obtain that initial capital most of us have to sacrifice the better part of our youth to labour. The times we live in are all about money - every decision we make is some kind of transaction, some kind of trade-off. I guess my question is, what price for romance and freedom?

If I had enough money to live off the interest, I'd quit work and go back to school! I want to learn more about art, philosophy, history and architecture. I want to travel, learn foreign languages and cultures, and fill my life with passionate experiences. The only problem is, how do you get that much money? I don't know yet, but I'd much rather be the fat guy that takes the $400k slice than the poor sod who works his ass off for $50k! That's what having your own business is all about! Turning capitalism to your advantage!

Did you know it takes 30 years of work to pay off a mortgage on a 2-bedroom unit? It seems the whole notion of capital, the ridiculous pricing of desirable objects & lifestyles is a great complex system designed to occupy as many people as possible, providing a sense of order, a perverse modern philosophy and meaning of life for the masses. Ignorance is bliss! Knowing this shit invalidates me for the workforce! I feel I'm wasting my life steadily climbing the ladder like everyone else. I can't help feeling our daily struggles are futile and meaningless in the grand sweep of things. Everything that exists today will one day be dust again. As any Civ player knows, great civs rise and fall, and very little is left to show for it. Yet we kill ourselves to generate those invisible numbers called capital. We define our lives with assets and purchasing power.

In the microscopic sliver of time given to me, I want excitement, not drudgery!

On the other hand, I'm just too damn lazy to single-handedly attempt the overthrow of capitalism, especially when much more passionate fellows have failed. I believe you just have to make the most of the era you're born into. If you happen to be an Ancient Egyptian, you just have to build those Pyramids as best you can, or be flogged to death as punishment. Whereas earlier eras were shaped by religious or imperial imperatives, our era was built on industrialisation and capitalism. Who am I to resist the tide of history? I must take the easier path of finding a comfortable place for me within the system - some way of reconciling my values with the prevailing values of the day.

A life outside the capitalistic system seems boring and unlikely... do I want to give up my friends and family and retreat to a hippy commune or a remote PNG hill-tribe? Hell no. Even the artists and writers I venerate had to sell something to stay alive. They just turned themselves into a business, their style into a product, their name into a brandname. I must do the same! "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's!"

Recently I lost a third of my life savings in the stockmarket. This didnt occur in one big hit, but as a result of several very poor decisions and unfortunate circumstances over 2 years. Actually, the sad thing is I worked my butt off for 6 years to make this money, always thinking of it as an indicator of my achievements - a source of pride in my own discipline and a nest egg to give me the security and confidence to embark upon a lowly paid career in the arts.

The strange thing was, like most people, I hated rich people and felt that this cruel blow to my pride, wallet and intelligence, had somehow allied me with all those whinging upper-bracket taxpayers. The more this loss got under my skin, the more ridiculous I felt. In a terribly cliched way, the pain of unnecessarily losing 2 years of savings gave me a glimpse of existential freedom. After the suicidal tendencies had passed, I began to find greater pleasures in the little things in life, realising with a certain perversity that actually, my possessions are insubstantial and I could be deprived of them and still live with myself. I reminded myself how pathetic this loss would sound to anyone eking out a living in the Third World, where the daily struggle to survive makes even the dearest possession of mine seem trivial and impractical.

Whilst I have always looked to the material as a sense of comfort and self-affirmation, now I could also despise my weakness for wealth and contemplate the freedom of being able to walk away... to use philosophy as a tool against depression, as a foil to my own pride and avarice. I daydreamed I was in another country, having left everything behind... and in this daydream, I was happy, because I could concentrate on food and fun rather than success. In this dream world of warmth and light, achievement is just happiness with one's health and the discovery of novelty in the moment. Wealth is discerned in the immaterial and the unquantifiable, stumbled upon in fits of glee, a sudden love for one's surroundings, friends, ideas and above all, imagination.

I haven't written anything in a long time. Work does that to you. Anyhow, this blog craze that is sweeping my friends has tapped into the malingering ziner in me. Combined with fond memories of my fortnightly column in the university paper, blog reading has inspired me to take up the pen and get all self-indulgent again. Ladies and gentleman, I know many of you never even realised I left the building, but I did, and after much wandering and wondering I'm back and I'm ready to blog! So stand back, make room, and please, take off your shoes! This is a Chinese house you know!