Vainglorious Vicissitudes

Tempting. Very tempting. But really, it's a totally unjustifiable expenditure. I wouldn't want it even this much if it weren't being dangled in front of me.

Ah well. If any of you-all wanted a permanent account and didn't already know where to get one, now you do.

Someone asked me last week how my BayCon experience had been. My reply, or most of it: "I did have a good weekend, though I don't seem to have the kind of energy for these things that I once did. (I appear to be growing prematurely old. Bad: less energy to Do Stuff. Good: less burning need to Do Stuff. Bad: the niggling fear that this will make me a less interesting person with a less entertaining life. Sigh.) "

More specifically, I found myself crashing surprisingly early in the evening, but I also found that, compared to previous years, there were fewer things I Really Wanted To Do, and most of those things, when I went and did them, I found I didn't really feel the need to keep doing for very long. In retrospect, I've been noticing this tendency in other situations as well; rather than throw myself bodily into fun activities the way I did as little as a year or two ago, I find myself content to dip a toe in the metaphorical water and then amble away again, satisfied that the water's fine but just as happy to leave it at that as to jump in and start a rousing game of Marco Polo.

I still can't figure out if this is good or bad. I mean, supposedly this is the kind of thing that comes with increasing maturity, and I do think it correlates with my diminishing desires to do things like eat when I'm not really hungry and buy books that are only sort of interesting. And it is nice to know that I can get the flavor of enjoyable things and enjoy them just as much without needing to engage myself in them fully--but is it worth the knowledge that that degree of enjoyment isn't nearly as great as full engagement used to bring? It's like I used to be able to enjoy myself X amount if I threw myself into things and zero amount if I didn't, and now instead I enjoy myself Y amount just by being vaguely involved in fun things, with little difference whether or not I throw myself into them, but Y is noticeably less than X. Or at least it's of a different quality.

Now that I think about it, there are still some activities I can throw myself into and enjoy in that giddy sort of way...but for how much longer will that be true? If this keeps up, will I see any reason to ever leave the house when I'm thirty, or will I be content to sit at home until someone drags me somewhere, and will I never meet people to drag me places because I never go out?

Okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating. I think I may be like a person in a relationship who feels their NRE being replaced by a mellower and more long-term kind of love, and doesn't know what to do with it, and may not even recognize it as love. I do feel myself enjoying life, but it's hard to believe that my overall happiness can be sustained on this quieter sort of enjoyment, and that I don't need more excitement to feel like I'm really having fun. And having been depressed for so long makes me, I suspect, especially scared of becoming Less Happy, in any way, ever.