Words & Such

Am I doing what I want to do? Am I pursuing the path I wish to pursue? Have I made a wrong turn? Do I even want to do the things I claim I want to do?

Have I begun repeating the same mistakes made before me?

Obligation. Do what's right. Do what should be done.

Have I set myself up for a fall or am I already falling?

Is the path I have chosen and the desires I have laid claim to even my path or my desires? Am I simply choosing to do things because something, someone, or some group has at some time made me feel as though they are the right things to do? The things that people like me do?

Everything is wrong. Nothing is right. Nothing I am doing is what I want to do.

Or is it?

Do I truly enjoy the things I have chosen to pursue? Are there other things, dormant things that have recently resurfaced, that are more suited to my personality? Things I obviously enjoy more than the things I think I should be doing?

Who said I should be doing these things? Who sat me down and told me, "Do this, it's the right thing to do. It's what you should do." Am I swimming against the current simply to prove a point? And to whom am I trying to prove this point?

Did I really find direction in the past six years? Or did I simply choose my direction because I felt like it would make certain people within a certain group happy? Has my path become more about image than about what I truly want to do?

Am I truly doing ANYTHING for myself, or am I simply trying my best to make everyone around me happy?

What happens if I step outside of my own declarations and publicly stated goals and choose to walk a completely different path? Am I still a man of his word? Does that make me a flake?

Has anything I said or done over the past six years been me? Have I become so good at fooling everyone that I have managed to fool myself? 

I have answers. Answers that others may not want to hear. Answers that I am not sure I want to hear.

The answers I have could potentially take me down a completely different path than the one I am on now and I am ok with that. It's everyone else I am worried about.

Therein lies the problem. I'm not doing any of this for myself.

Or am I.

I just don't know anymore.

Writer's block.

Again.

I haven't had the motivation to write anything for weeks. Where my mind is usually full of stuff to write, it is now just kind of blank. Well, maybe not so much blank, but just kind of lacking coherence.

It may be that I need to go back to that idea of inspiration and simply grab ahold of the first thing that inspires me no matter how mundane it may seem. I know that I have a tendency to pick and choose the headiest topics simply because they make for good writing. Maybe I just need to spend a few weeks writing about simple things.

What I had for breakfast.

The weather.

The fact that my cat doesn't listen to me and continues to try and sit on my lap while I'm typing this, even though I've picked her up and sat her down on the floor at least three times.

The drunk guy sleeping in the middle of a back country road at two in the morning this past Saturday.

The panic attack I almost had at work Saturday night.

The unbelievably uplifting letter I received from someone whom I was almost certain was a lost cause.

Yeah, I guess I've got a lot to write about. Maybe it helps to at least try and write, even when I don't particularly feel inspired to do so. Sometimes I lose focus, my perspective gets all wonky, and I find myself thinking that I don't have a lot happening. I guess the truth is, I've really got a lot of stuff worth writing about, it just doesn't always seem inspiring until I start to dig into it.

It's kind of like drawing. You really have to focus on something to draw it well. Sometimes the most mundane objects can reveal the most amazing details when you take the time to study them closely. Apples. An egg. Flowers. A hand. A back. All very simple things that we see and take for granted every single day of our lives. Yet they are all amazingly detailed and individually unique.

I need to give up on the idea of grandiose inspiration. It's a stifling notion.

My life is a comic reel.

It's a good thing I have a sense of humor. 

Is waiting on inspiration truly waiting on inspiration?

Or is it really just picking and choosing which inspiring moments to recognize?

I know that, for me, I am inspired daily by things I see, sounds I hear, and people I meet. More often than not, unfortunately, I let the moment pass without making a single record of my thoughts, ideas, or feelings which come out of that inspiration. I'm then left playing catch up at the end of the day and eventually find myself giving it up to a lost moment.

Think of the things we could accomplish if we actually moved on the majority of our inspirations, instead of letting them pass into the fog of our often faulty memory.

So lately I've been feeling kind of braindead. It could be school, but it's only the third week of class. There's absolutely no reason I should be feeling this way this soon.

It could be the fact that I worked three jobs this summer and jumped right back into school without a break in between. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've been stressed about finances all summer long and am even more so now.

I'm sure it has something to do with at least one of these circumstances. This, however, compounds my concern for one big reason.

Circumstances have NEVER bothered me.

Things get tough, money gets tight, and work gets hard, but I always just keep going, unbothered. Call it peace, optimism, naivety, or whatever you want to call it. Regardless of the definition, I have lost that sense of security.

It's not that I have become unsure of myself. On the contrary, I am probably more confident and sure of myself than I have ever been. I have, however, lost that vision. That forward thinking, horizon seeking, progressive thought that keeps me in a perpetual forward motion seems to have turned into a very fluid, ever changing sea of thoughts and ideas about everything that is going on around me. They keep me up late when I should be asleep, out when I should be in, and conversationally superfluous when I should be contemplatively listening.

Perhaps it has something to do with the way my future seems to be changing right before my eyes. Rather than a lost vision, maybe the realization that I am not a psychic, soothsayer, or shaman, and that my future is not as vivid and set in stone as I like to believe, has rattled the world inside my stable little, climate controlled bubble. Whether that bubble is about to burst, I can't really say, but for someone who often speaks about stepping, thinking, and living outside of the box, a bubble is an even less fitting place to live.

That's not to say that a little bit of close-quarters thinking is a bad thing. Likewise, a bit of forward-thinking vision in one's life never hurts. However, I think the keys all lie in whether or not you use those things to move you forward, or let them paralyze you. Instead of letting my thoughts keep me up late, I should recognize that they are simply circumstances out of my control and that by letting them keep me up late, they are affecting tomorrow. Instead of going out tonight, I should recognize that there are things that need to be done for tomorrow which require me to stay in. Rather than speak out of turn, speak over, or just simply say too much, maybe I should keep my mouth shut and hear what the other person is saying and, just maybe, I may see or hear from them again. If money is tight, then perhaps some restructuring, or even outright elimination of what may be my most important expenditures needs to occur.

In short: I need balance. I need to recognize that my circumstances are nothing more than tools I can use, or misuse, to move me closer or further away from my perceived goals. Yet, I also need to recognize that my goals and vision are not written in stone, and that my circumstances and choices will almost always change right along with them.

In even shorter short: Things change, and I think too much.