{"id":3213,"date":"2025-02-08T13:49:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T13:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/?p=3213"},"modified":"2025-07-18T18:46:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T18:46:45","slug":"the-absurd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/?p=3213","title":{"rendered":"The Absurd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After my divorce, I went through a rough patch. I felt lost, depressed, anxious, and unsure of my purpose. Before that, I had poured all my energy into making my home life amazing. But when everything changed, I was shocked and confused. It was like I was stuck in a dark place, emotionally and mentally. Slowly, I started to realize that I had been neglecting myself. Sure, I had the things we all want &#8211; a partner, a nice home, a new car. But those things don\u2019t make you feel good inside. They just make you feel like you have it all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When a friend passed unexpectedly, I was even at more of a loss for understanding the what and why of life. I had been in weekly therapy sessions for about a year and suddenly the discussions shifted from the topic of the pain of my divorce to the senseless passing on my friend. My \u201cah ha\u201d moment was the realization that trying to control anything in life is a fatalistic exercise. There\u2019s no rhyme or reason in life, things are often just the way they are and you can\u2019t do much about it. To coin a colloquialism, \u201cLife happens!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This video sums it up quite well.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Absurdism: How to Live HAPPILY in a Meaningless World | Albert Camus\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/v-SJqOkk4ZY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After my divorce, I went through a rough patch. I felt lost, depressed, anxious, and unsure of my purpose. Before that, I had poured all my energy into making my home life amazing. But when everything changed, I was shocked and confused. It was like I was stuck in a dark place, emotionally and mentally. Slowly, I started to realize that I had been neglecting myself. Sure, I had the things we all want &#8211; a partner, a nice home, a new car. But those things don\u2019t make you feel good inside. They just make you feel like you have it all together. When a friend passed unexpectedly, I was even at more of a loss for understanding the what and why of life. I had been in weekly therapy sessions for about a year and suddenly the discussions shifted from the topic of the pain of my divorce to the senseless passing on my friend. My \u201cah ha\u201d moment was the realization that trying to control anything in life is a fatalistic exercise. There\u2019s no rhyme or reason in life, things are often just the way they are and you can\u2019t do much about it. To coin a colloquialism, \u201cLife happens!\u201d This video sums it up quite well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3213"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3469,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3213\/revisions\/3469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}