My head is either chasing or running from something, and I want to figure out what it is.
There's been no greater impact on my perspective than time. Everything you could ever want to believe, when subjected to enough time, comes out the other end very squishy. You never lose aspects of what you believed without gaining something else. When things don't pan out the way you think they're supposed to, it feels considerably less like a “loss” or “wrong” and instead like you've completed some circle or ridden through a kind of divine punishment.
I don't know how else to explain my ability to still talk and grow anxious and cheerlead for the ideas I've had since I was a child, while finding an extremely mild “peace” at the thought of “the grind.” I don't know how vital it is for my unconscious actions to be flavored by my experiences of not getting what I want and when. With my deeply rooted focus on trying to utilize time efficiently, I pack a considerable amount of bitching and fear mongering and angst into what may realistically be a 2 week or 2 month or maybe a year saga. At the same time, I don't know how else it could go.
It's most apparent while I'm getting something I wanted. Well, now there's new things on the horizon that shift as quickly as the money is or isn't available. And then I think about all of the things I don't prioritize that I wish I could. It's hedonism competing with itself at every level. Do I get my bathroom, or my vacation? Do I get my shed paid off, or maybe slightly better car? What I want to be doing is having the kind of community impact that stems from feeling a part of something and contributing an individual take. What my environment provides is a persistent mockery of any potential level feeling fulfilling.
I'm still in basic survival mode. If I was born into a society where it was my job to fetch water and cut down trees, I might find myself with a ton of time to dance and sing and enjoy the sun. But I'm born into a declining empire of psychologically arrested and exhausted laborers. Indulgence just doesn't feel right. Something underneath needs to be addressed before I road trip with reckless abandon. I can't bring myself to praise flitting about existence.
That I wish I could is me trying to be empathetic. I wish I could drag as much happiness out of the little things that go right in my life and feel the same for you. It's not that I don't feel joy. It's not that I don't want you to be happy. But there's more work to be done managing our terrible selves that went awry. That's a kind of new deliberate use of language I'm about lately. We need managers. We need people who manage their emotions, hold people responsible for breaking important rules, and have the wisdom and subtlety to accept things as they are without subverting what they could be. I don't expect to “fix” anything in life, but I can manage.
