Monday, October 22, 2012

sense and sensibilities


I haven't written freely for a while now, for many reasons - most of which boil down to fear. Sometimes I succumb to the fear that I've run out of useful or interesting things to say; sometimes the only thing in my heart is hurt and I fear that expressing this may upset, bore or frustrate anyone who comes to read it. Other times I simply have nothing to say; then there are days when I just can't seem to find the words - because I fear I'm not intelligent-experienced-important enough to put a title and a label on a paragraph that measly ol' me made up. On the extensive play list that is the jukebox of my internal monologue "who am I?" and "what am I doing?" are on frequent rotation, and I pretty much always come up blank. I suppose this means I'm at a point where I need to reexamine why I started in the first place. Like Anne Frank, I just wanted to get the inside stuff onto the outside, let it fall into a protected place where I might learn to examine it from a safe distance - to understand it, and maybe as a bonus along the way, be understood.

The longer I ponder on these things, the more I realise no one can really understand you better than yourself. I guess that's why all those people have written that airy-fairy crap about 'being your own best friend' and 'learning to love yourself'. It's sentimental and dripping with self-help ejaculations, but I suspect it's also kind of true. I'm not very good at this.

I thought recently about giving away the writers' group - I can't seem to connect to it the way I had hoped. I want to write about real stuff, or learn real things - but these people just want to write about smashed fucking vases, clowns in car parks and cats. But maybe that's just me, trying to arrive at the destination before even really starting the journey.

I admit it, completely and wholeheartedly, I'm about as lost as they come. I'm alone in the desert - I've broken down without any preparation, I abandoned my vehicle days ago and am now wandering aimlessly in circles, chasing mirages and my own footprints.

Spending all this time at home, feeling ugly and petty and removed from life has made me think more about the kind of things I wish for. Like an occupation that absorbs me, that takes all that I am but pushes me forward still to achieve something special - something completely and totally me. I'm not just talking about a paid gig - but a real life-long pursuit. I don't know what this could be; strangely seek.com are all out of jobs of the 'inspiring' variety. Sometimes I get so scared that I will never find anything that makes my heart soar - that I missed my chance somewhere along the way. I figure I was probably hiding my head beneath a cushion at the time my car drove past that sign post - either that, or I was too absorbed looking behind me, missing that fateful junction.

I suppose it doesn't help that I have seemingly adopted vampire habits. Sleep eludes me while the remainder of the world is resting and dreaming - instead during the day, as the sun climbs higher in the sky, my eyes grow heavy and I all but crash my body to the nearest soft spot.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I hope to begin to figure it out really soon. If a time comes when I don't have the minutes, or inclination to write here anymore, I hope it will mean that I have moved on to a comfortable place where self-reflection and therapeutic rants are no longer necessary for the sustainability of my mental health. Until then, I'm here, maybe alone - perhaps delusional - documenting the journey. 

Peace. Out.

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