Free Will and Limited Knowledge

Originally Posted Thursday, September 25, 2013

I've been doing what I want to do with my free time for a long while now (if I were truly doing what I want to do, I wouldn't be going to the factory).  I've known what I wanted to do with those "spare" hours, and I committed myself to that.  I have a lot to show for it, I think, good or ill.  My question now, though, is what the fuck did I do/have I done?  Do I want to continue down that path? 

The hardest thing to know, they say, is what you want. 

Maybe the hardest thing to live with is having done what you want.

Free will and limited knowledge.  That's a hell of a combination.  I understand why people take refuge in "the rules."  It is a way of taking no responsibility for what happens.

"I just did what they told me to do.  I don't know.  This is just how it turned out." 

A group of us were talking about the paint-by-the-numbers sets they used to sell.  My parents bought a set and painted them.  As a kid, I was amazed.  I still am, really, at how well they come out.  It is amazing.  Why keep trying to invent things when you can paint by numbers? 

I am a deviant, I know, and the devil drives.  When I have to paint by the numbers, I put in different colors thinking I'll make something cooler.  Most often, it turns out shit.  I had a very difficult time coloring within the lines as a child.  My coloring books didn't look as good as other kids.  I was always trying to work too quickly and left lots of white spaces between the crayon marks.  Those other kids just seemed to have it down.  I assume they did well in life. 

My college roommate wrote me this morning about retirement.  Neither of us prepared for it, though he prepared a bit more than I.  For people without savings, retirement is a daunting thing.  You want to, but it won't be like other people's retirement, you fear.  I'm already beginning to worry and it is years off.  I could give up the studio and put that money into one of those four oh things.  And five years from now, I might have twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars.  And I ask myself what difference that would make.  Would I rather have a studio or $25,000 in five years. 

Fuck me.  You know which I prefer.  I know what I want.  It is just that I am stupid and have free will. I will live with the results of whatever decision I make. 

Either way, I will be at the factory instead of driving around the country making pictures and stories.  All I will have is my free time and the decision of what to do with those little hours.  I've given over the rest to the paradigm, the grid. . . the rules.