I joined the regattas swim team on January 12, 2015 about nine months ago and since then, I’ve swam around 480 hours. It took me a while to realize that I hated swimming, not because of the countless unbearable hours spent going back and forth in a pool or because of the insufferable smell a wet towel emanates after being inside a bag for hours, but because of something I like to call the “Tyler Durden” effect. (Named after Fight Club, and because Groundhog effect doesn’t have the same ring to it.)
In Fight Club, we follow the story of an unnamed protagonist and narrator. Initially, the character is going through a tough time because he works at dead end job. Because of this, he feels as if, apart from minor details, were figuratively living the same day over and over again, and would probably live his life that way until he died. As a consequence, he goes crazy and subconsciously creates an alter ego called Tyler Durden, who then establishes a cult and blows up a city. Aside from going utterly insane, I experienced the same situation as the narrator. Every summer day I would wake up at 6:30 am, swim, take a nap, eat lunch, take another nap, swim again, eat dinner, and finally go to sleep in order to freshen up for next day. I found myself trapped in a cycle of repetition; in a sense, I was living on autopilot, doing the motions necessary to get the day over with. It was an odd state in which I didn’t feel like myself; I could feel nothing but numbness, all emotions were omitted for the sake of relieving stress. I kept asking myself “How many times can I live the same day without becoming a sociopath who’s forgotten how to feel anything?”. I was being consumed by the never-ending machine that is society, however, I didn’t notice. Not all was lost, once I was able to notice that I was stuck in a vicious, unproductive phase, I became aware, more attuned to my emotions. I began feeling grief, happiness, fear, not the types of emotions that come and go without a trace, but the kind that is felt deep within your heart and stays with you forever. I might be sounding as a cliche (and possibly incredibly cheesy) but the only reason why it sounds this way is because it’s true. “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t alive.” (The Good Dinosaur), even though this quote specifically talks about fear, it’s true for every single emotion.
2 Comments
Bon
23/10/2015 07:02:05 pm
Cristobal, you had me hooked with this post. The emotions, you're experiencing are a bit of a 21st century malaise where life goes so quickly, it starts to numb us. I really loved the voice you used; stylistically speaking, this is your best work. But it has kept me wanting more: you talk as if you came to some great realizations, but then what? Did it just end there? While I love your conclusion, I'm still left wondering if you're still stuck in the routine or if you've managed to mix things up. As the reader, you have me rooting for you; I just want to know the final score.
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Leonardo Jimenez
28/10/2015 08:00:32 pm
Cristobal, I really like the way you started this blog post. By saying an exact date and a number of hours, you really engage the audience by demonstrating from the start that this matters enough to you, for you to know these numbers. You make a clear and concise connection to the movie Fight Club, which I definitely think helps you get your point across. However, what wasn't so clear was the part that followed in your fourth paragraph. I understood that you found a solution to your issue but it wasn't 100% clear what this was and how this connected to emotions and society. Other than that, really nice writing style and grammar!
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