False Narratives

Before I begin, I should admit that my mental state is poor. I slept little last night, then I went to work for seven hours, my brain wired to a nonstop task list of decision trees ever since. Now I'm in the sort of still-sleepless mid-afternoon sub-deliria that makes it feel like it might be any time of day and I might be any place, as if my grounding to the present is as thin as a thread.

Maybe my mental state matters, or maybe not. For months now I've been dreaming vividly - just about since I cut significantly back on caffeine. (Is it possible that caffeine systemically muffles - or perhaps garbles - the unconscious?) My dreams have taken a decidedly dark turn in the past week, and the world feels like it is closing in around me. The obvious questions to ask myself, then, are: why these feelings, and why now?

I'm reminded of Ballard fearing the future would be a "vast suburb of the soul," everything having already been experienced. I wonder if my subconscious isn't telling me that I'm stuck in place in some way and that I need to shake off a stasis. It's a suspicion that didn't come from my consciousness. If it had, I could be sure that a dream wouldn't also be telling me, because the unconscious doesn't amplify the imbalances of the conscious, it compensates for them. But I came to the theory of personal stasis only recently, when I realized how much time I spend trying to make my days productive, yet finding, over time, that my life lacks a sense of meaning.

Ever since becoming a father, I've been plagued by a narrative that I can't escape: that I'm trapped. This was probably borne of a prior narrative that was also reductionist: that I would find joy in personal freedom, and particularly the freedom to travel. This prior narrative, I am only now fully realizing, was always a sort of "manifest destiny" fallacy - the belief that, given more degrees of freedom, I would seek, pursue, and capture whatever happiness was waiting for me out in the world.

We *can* find happiness in the world we don't yet know, and freedom to try new things is a fine way to explore the possibility, but it's far from a miracle cure. When I think about the travel I've taken, I can remember moments of happiness, others of frustration, and many of boredom, a distribution that is only moderately different to that of my everyday life at home. My current narrative is probably equally inadequate - first, am I really trapped, or have I made a conscientious decision to be present? And second, should that mean I'm any worse off?

Now that I've written the questions down, I'm satisfied that I know their answers, which I framed in an essentially rhetorical voice, anyway. So if I'm not trapped in a life I don't want, then what is actually going on with me? I suspect it's more likely that I'm trapped in my own false narratives. But in my defense, false narratives persist exactly because they're not obvious. So what are these narratives? Let me list a few, on the off chance that it will help me begin to separate the underlying problems from what the narratives have unjustly added:

1. I have a persistent feeling that "I'm not doing what I want to be doing with my life," though when I stop to ask myself what I want to be doing, the answers don't hold up to scrutiny. e.g., "Traveling." Well, fine. But it won't magically make me happy, it's just a different sort of okay. Nor will it make my life intrinsically meaningful. And yet, either something is missing in my life, or I need to reset my expectations downward, until it lines up to whatever meaning I can find.
2. The same thing, except in the day or even moment. The desire to make the most of my time expresses itself daily in irritation at the trivial and a despair at being helpless against the basic construction of the world. Like, I'm stuck in traffic for the 700th time, what am I doing with my life? Is there a world where that's a satisfactory local maxima? Could it be in this world? What if the way out of that is to be unemployed? What is the tradeoff between being stuck in traffic occasionally and having no income?
3. At home, I relegate myself to menial tasks like cleaning and organization, then find myself defeated that I can't make any decisions without Merry's review and approval. Usually, these same things aren't priorities for her, and I feel bad continually badgering her, so the impediments persist. Should I just stop asking? A clean and organized space is one of a small number of things that are sufficiently under my control to make me happy. Except, even that's not under my control! Can I just reprogram myself to accept a state of constant disarray in my surroundings?
4. I wonder if Merry and I will ever be attracted to each other again. We scarcely seem to notice each other except when we're taking care of Signe, or talking about Signe. Is it because we've suddenly become the two lowest priorities on each other's long lists? Do other couples find their attraction to each other reduced by 99% after having a child? How does anyone ever have a second one? I know I'm new as a father, but "having a child" and "having a romantic relationship" appear to me as opposite ends of a continuum. The closest we come to connection nowadays is our explicit mutual acknowledgement that we're tired every single night (which requires about 15 seconds of interaction), and our desire to spend 100% of our evenings with our phones, and 0% with each other. Are our romantic lives over? Did we make that decision implicitly when we had a child? It feels that way to me. Or is there some other explanation for this? Is age, or toxins in the water, lowering my testosterone levels?
5. I'm eager to meet new people, but I don't know how to. This occurs all the time and everywhere. Merry and I went to a party with her coworkers the other day and I spent about 90% of the party watching Signe. (Because I have to, right? I can't even articulate how impotent I feel not to know the answer to a question like this, or be able to figure out some puzzle as simple as how to watch a two-year old and talk to anyone else, at all, because she requires constant vigilance that she not put herself in a hazardous situation. Or do I trust she won't hurt herself, or that others will parent for me if she starts to do something dangerous? Why wasn't anyone else at the party having these problems? Was this something I ironically failed to observe because I was busy watching her?)
6. I'm worried that, by not having friends with similarly-aged children, nor much of a family or community life, we're depriving Signe of beneficial social experiences. I worry she will grow up disadvantaged by not knowing how to play with others or tolerate sharing. I worry that she won't have many friends. I have dreams where I go to see her at her school and she is always alone on the playground, occupied by something off in the corner while the rest of the children play together. Pregnant in all such dreams is the feeling that I, myself, cannot replace friends she will gain on her own, if for no other reason than that I will die before her, and she will be left alone. 

To this last point, is it common for parents to extrapolate every success and failure out over the rest of their children's lives? What kind of neurosis do I have, and how will it project itself onto Signe? I already fear I am a control freak - but what good does worrying do for someone who is so poorly equipped to deal with problems? When I consider my own life, I have to admit that I have failed at almost everything I've ever done, and that the islands of "success" that I see in my life are profoundly modest accomplishments compared to what others around me achieve. It isn't unusual that I spend many years learning to accomplish something that others can do in almost no time at all. Sometimes it seems to me that one of my defining personality characteristics is my ability to delude myself into thinking that common measures (e.g., competency at some skill) are the "wrong ones" because they don't correlate with a good life, or whatever. Like, that's what I convince myself of. "I don't have to be good at my job to have a good life." "I don't need friends I can talk to if I have a rich internal dialogue." "I don't need to know how to effectively parent my daughter, she'll probably be fine anyway."

I recently listened to Farnam Street's interview with Naval Ravikant, where he talks about teaching himself to live "in the moment." It's obviously an old platitude. But what does it mean to "live in the moment," while simultaneously striving to better yourself? How does a person improve without re-living and contemplating their own past actions? Or is it just something you turn off, like your work brain on the weekends? Like, "today's a 'living in the moment' day, cool, let's go to the beach!"