Stagnation Unto Death

Nighttime is when my brain is most likely to reflect actively on things. Politics, the universe, society, history, science-without-the-maths. All very interesting. Worthy stuff. Except that I'm being quite disingenuous, as most of my nocturnal reflections (when they happen at all) are concerned with myself: the passing of my life, my lack of participation in sport, a general worsening of health, approaching demise, my appearance (the ruthlessness of ageing, nighttime overeating and its natural consequences, my fading and questionable good looks, etc, ad nauseam), anxiety, autism, family relationships (Australian and British), friendships (the lack of them here in Australia and the missing of them back in the UK) and the fact that my self-obsessed, anxiety-ridden and insecure minute-to-minute living has, throughout my adult life, obstructed so much creative design. And this last phenomenon has only worsened as I've aged.
Not only do I no longer act (to be fair, this is circumstantial given my move to a small city without opportunities for professional thesps, although to be equally fair my intention to bring together a group of like-minded creatives to make short films in the tropics has remained a really good idea), but my poetry output has slowed to treacle-pace. This also may be a result of life changes: Getting married and living with actual, breathing human beings. However, I can't with good faith invoke the old adage of the pram in the hallway being the enemy of art, for two reasons: My stepsons were not babies when I moved here; and I've hardly experienced a sudden drought following years of creative monsoon.
I write a fresh poem once or twice a year. There has been no middle years renaissance. In my 20s, I might have spewed out a couple of poems every month, although most of them have decidedly not passed the test of time. Output in my 30s was slower but the substance was much-improved. Since turning 40, and then 50, bar the very rare burst of activity, the muse has bought an RV and become a Grey Nomad. Those intense experiences of inspiration, usually taking place during the stillness of night or in the din of a coffee shop, and varying in length and satisfaction, are painfully rare. It is often assumed that a drying up of the creative wellspring will be offset by an increase in consumption: of films, books, art, theatre, etc. Well, yes, about that...
I suffer from that peculiarly developed world affliction: decision paralysis. The sheer number of TV channels, video and audio streaming services, eBook providers, internet shopping opportunities and generally unfettered consumption is, on paper, a tremendous thing (or, perhaps, a disgraceful paean to the Me! Here! Now! growth-fetish extremes of late capitalism, depending on which way you dress). This democratisation of data has only intensified my stagnation. I have never previously owned or had access to so many readable, watchable or listenable commodities, and yet my shelves bow with unread books and unwatched DVDs, and my Spotify Library and Netflix To Watch list expand perpetually. For sure, lack of time on a daily basis is sometimes the issue (with the corollary that so much is now being produced, often of high quality, that another century would be insufficient to consume it all), but this is not the main concern. It is that I frequently cannot decide what to consume, and will revert to the easy, the familiar, the short and the sweet. So YouTube clips have replaced Netflix shows, which in turn had replaced art-house films or difficult theatre. I have succumbed to Idiocracy.
Now, I'm sure many of you who've made it this far will reasonably be thinking: 'What makes you so special? We're all in the same boat here with the superabundance shit!' And of course, many intelligent, discerning people are also beset by this. However, as Homer Simpson once splendidly said when repeating Marge's point back to her: "Yeah, but this is me talking!" This is my account of travelling down the slide to Dumbtown; you write your own.
I don't act anymore so I can't call myself an actor. I write so rarely that calling myself a poet would be a misnomer (and very probably a pompous thing anyway). I'm surrounded by books I don't read and films I don't watch. I peruse articles, but only the easily digestible ones. YouTube is my mistress, with short films and prank clips my dates of choice. It might actually be merciful that I shan't live another hundred years (and there's more grist to the nighttime thought mill): I won't have to catch myself in the mirror, watching 24-hour prank channels on my 80" holographic TV, sitting in my toilet armchair, grunting and mumbling between bites of Centenarian Pizza™ (Soft-baked for Your Toothless Convenience).
There was naturally a lot more I intended to talk about in this post (my first for aeons, appropriately), but Q.E.D.
See you back here in a year or two.