The Artifice

When I accepted that I was unemployable and incapable of maintaining a relationship, that left, to say the least, a tremendous void in my life. Having a big empty life isn't a sustainable proposition. If you're going to decline offing yourself and go on living, you've got to fill your life with something. Just about everything I've done lately involves attempting to fill that void. Personal training six days a week was already there and so was smoking cigars at the local cigar shop, but everything else I do lately is ultimately about building an artifice of an actual full life. That includes going to therapy three days a week, making medical appointments for ailments that I have traditionally ignored or endured, stepping up the baking and pastry arts experimentation (as with the confectionary gauntlet that was last Christmas), and planning things for which to look forward like event cakes, vacations, renovations, and the purchase of my next new vehicle.

One of the practical reasons to create all of this artifice is to, as my mother put it, have a reason to get up in the morning. Personal training starts most of my days, with the exception of Sunday, at 11:30 A.M., meaning that I usually have to be out of bed by 10:00 A.M. in order to shower, pursue general hygiene, take my meds, and get dressed. That makes sure I'm at least up and around before noon. From there, I must attend appointments like therapy or doctor's visits, and run documents to my trustee, accountant, and attorney. Once the day's errands are run, I may retire to the cigar shop, where I'll write articles like this, make bitstrips comics, and do research or other related work towards various things for which I am planning. Baking and pastry arts experimentation takes place once I get home from the cigar shop. All of that daily routine makes up the artifice with which I have filled my life. Playing on the Internet with my phone fills in any gaps in my routine.

The central question all this artifice raises for me is whether or not it constitutes a mere simulacrum of a life or an actual one under construction. Although I have not been able to come up with a useful answer on my own, a friend noted that this might be a case of, "fake it until you make it." If this is the case, it would follow that what truly matters about all this artifice isn't whether or not it constitutes the construction of a real life, but rather that its construction constitutes an effort to build a real life. In the course of living with my disability and fending off depression, I am somehow finding the will to press on and build artifice in the first place. As long as I care enough to put forth the effort to build artifice that also means that I am in a mental state conducive to progressing towards something. What fruit that may or may not yield doesn't matter because the act of building the artifice is good and healthy in its own right. Predicated upon this, the lesson would be to keep on doing what I can, come what may.

-Frank