Nothing

Very important to note: Jonathan had just started taking the medication Lurasidone/Latuda about a month before this was written which is a mood-stabilizer as prescribed by the psychatrist he met with only ever over the phone and only for 10-minute appointments except for the first phone consultation. 

He believes it was a big mistake for the psychiatrist to prescribe him this medication and to follow through with it as it dulled all his emotions, leading to not be able to express them more and leading into going deeper into nihilistic thinking and living. 

He was also prescribed Lithium by a different psychiatrist when he was only 17 years old in December 2014 despite only having symptoms of social anxiety and depression at the time - another huge mistake by a psychiatrist as he was on this for five years and routinely had to take blood work to monitor the potentially serious side effects.

Seinfeld: “the show about nothing.”

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is going to be raving about and analyzing this classic and influential sitcom from the 1990s now that it’s available on Netflix as of Friday. 

Since I didn’t grow up with a lot of exposure to mainstream TV and other entertainment media other than what was available on basic cable package and VHS/DVD/cassette/CDs we owned, I have only felt it possible to be in the loop about phenomena like this since Netflix became a thing and I convinced my parents to subscribe to it a few years ago. 

The Kitchener Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays, the main sources of entertainment for me growing up among other sports and sports-related pastimes, lost their status on my personal Maslow’s hierarchy of needs chart (or at least have moved down the hierarchy). Netflix, Spotify, and other internet-based media streaming services have allowed people like me who were behind the game which can be in adapting to modern technologies and cultural entertainment and recreational norms, to do some catching up. 

Seinfeld is one show my dad has watched keenly and openly for years though, and I got into watching on my own because we had a DVD of the first two seasons, so I feel I’m a bit ahead of this one.

Seinfeld is dubbed “the show about nothing” because the premise of the show is simply the everyday lives and interactions of Jerry Seinfeld, his friend George and friend/ex-girlfriend Elaine and friend/neighbour Cosmo Kraemer. 

Sitting in Jerry’s apartment chatting, going to coffee shops and eating lunch, analyzing gender norms, complaining about jobs or lack of jobs, noticing peculiar things about casual acquaintances or strangers appearance or character, dating and analyzing date partners - all of this is supposed to be “nothing”. 

But obviously it’s not nothing, it’s entertaining, it’s funny to watch, and lots of crazy events and interactions actually happen in the show or else it wouldn’t be a show, it wouldn’t be entertainment.

Jerry and George actually create the show “Seinfeld” for NBC within the show with George coming up with the tagline “the show about nothing” and that is a whole few episodes of entertainment in itself.

Seinfeld, I understand was basically the inventor of the genre of sitcom - comedy about people sitting around doing nothing (even though it’s not nothing).

What could more accurately be described as “the show about nothing” is my life right now. I’ve been doing basically the same things day after day, week after week for the past couple months. 

My day is a bit different each day of the week so you could break it down into one season of seven episodes but really it’s so predictable every week is just one episode that keeps replaying and replaying with a more depressed main character every run through. 

Go to gym at 10:30 on weekdays, follow routine set out by personal trainer 2 days with him, 2 or 3 on my own, go to work for 4:30 Tuesday-Friday and Saturday morning where all I do is transfer boxes into different places, then the rest of my week is basically just eating (following strict schedule to go along with workouts so the nutrients productively shaping my muscles and body fat into a more attractive figure), sleeping, and lying on the couch watching Netflix or baseball, or browsing the internet, or reading books. 

The fact that watching “the show about nothing” is one of the most exciting part of my life is a testament to how much more my life is a show about nothing right now. I get excited to go to sleep because my dreams are more exciting than my life right now.

But I guess the this writing in itself is adding some excitement and variety and maybe I should just be thankful I am able to do and experience what I am. Would I like to live in New York and have a more exciting nothing-life like Jerry and George or at least have the kind of fun conversations and interactions while still living at home here in my family home in Kitchener? Of course.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (whoever that is) put it in the prelude quote in Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs that I just started reading a couple days ago: “…more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a full and richer life. They mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only quest as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.”

So I guess I just have to keep working with what I have, accept and make the most of what I have, keep going to therapy to see what’s holding me back from wanting more life.

I feel I am a “misguided ghost”, a ghost being a being without any essence, a nothing-being but the fact that I’m feeling, and thinking and writing, and listening to music and watching TV and analyzing TV shows means my life is actually still a show right now and it’s not really about nothing.