unending sophistry

Do you know what sophistry is? It is being paid to represent a position and argue it as if it were the truth. It's like being a lobbyist, but it has more philosophical connotations. Sometimes I feel like a sophist, because I represent myself as an intellectual without being well read, and sometimes I feel like a sophist because I know that simply reading enough to parrot the positions of others is a false education. What turns you into an intellectual is new thought, yet the influence of others on your own position is sort of intellectually castrating. Sometimes I worry that there's no education which is truly enlightening but of course that's the case. The moment of true education is the termination of the narrative of one's life, when there is no more to be learned because there will be no more problems to examine. Only then is one enlightened. I think that's the Buddhist idea of satori, when the mind which naturally wishes to examine and analyze situations has been fully silenced and everything is rendered irrelevant.
I am coming to grips with the fact that I am not the rational being I wish I was. I have lengthy periods of moodiness, anxiety, fear that my early 20s will be entirely wasted (alternatingly by not having enough fun by partying or by not being serious enough because I abuse substances too much), and complete laziness which causes intense guilt. The reason I've come to realize that I'm more emotional than I had assumed is suddenly feeling something I'd supressed since I was very young, too young to understand its implications. In the melancholy romantic intellectual idiom this post seems to be in, I will say no more. Maybe that's not romanticism. I don't know shit about movements in art (see: sophistry). Moving on- the stoic fights the romantic.
I played music with some dudes I met through craigslist the other night. It was pretty bad-ass, and now I need to get my cymbals shipped up here. I played on Jesses cymbals, and its just scary as fuck playing on some dinky little jazz cymbals. I couldn't hit as hard as I like because I feared to break them. Of course, that meant I didn't have nasty blood blisters and tendonitis the next day, either. They were on this whole noisy heavy riff thing but got a killer Bolt Thrower-esque groove going on later on in the jam session. I'm going to introduce them to the real HEAVY shit and get things moving that-aways. I think this project could rip, and the guys involved are real nice and professional (except get more pedals and heavier amps, dudes!)
Well, that's all the brainsterbation I feel like doing tonight. Hopefully everything works out for the best, which I don't even know what that would be.