the lines & the moodswings

This new chapter is continually making me aware of how awfully pretentious I used to be, and even worse, how much more of it I craved to become. 

I read some of my old journals last night, and they were awkwardly pompous; or maybe thats just my current perception of them since I’m well aware of the (possibly lofty) purpose with which I wrote those things- still, I couldn’t help but cringe at the sort of eager desire to please and be noticed evident in the undercurrents of my words, and it just made it sound altogether arrogant yet desperate. 

Yikes.

I guess it helps my leaving these naive 20’s be a whole lot less painful. Hopefully the 30-year-old me improves at getting to the point.

(end)

There’s something intimate I love about walking around a city that hasn’t quite put itself together for the day yet.

You can’t let people who don’t fully understand you as a person make you, your abilities, and your vision feel insignificant. You’re responsible for the person you were designed to be. 

As is always the case: whenever I’m out for a run, or on my bike, or on the bus, or at my desk at work, or on a walk during my lunch-break, or on a drive headed somewhere, my mind opens up to a flood of ideas rushing through my internal conversations, most of which pertain to the bigger life thoughts I want to keep figuring out, so I dig and hack and question and orate to myself these exciting moments, hoping to remember them well enough to write down once I get the chance. 

Then I finally get out to a set-aside place, during a set-aside time, to giddily re-hash these thoughts and… nothing.

FREAKING NOTHING.

—-

I know I am way too accustomed to having had my own schedule for the past 6-7 years, writing and doodling and thinking at will, exploring tangents when they came up, digging for more at my whim… great discoveries have been made in such ways, but unfortunately those ways are no longer luxuries that are available to me during this recent chapter of working under someone else, and the methodology that I’ve been spoiled with until now is so frustratingly out of reach. I miss my freedom of exploration, and I’m not liking this structured version of me. 

I can’t even string together sentences naturally, it’s all become so unfamiliar. Writing a short blurb about not knowing how to write anymore shouldn’t take an hour, but that’s where I’m at. 

I’ve sold my creative strengths for a salary. 

—-

Seriously Muse, cut me some slack and quit showing up when I least need you. Evenings are not a bad time to come and visit, you know…

(end)

This is an exercise to teach myself how to love writing again. 

—-

This quote ran into me the other day:

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.

Even my typically thought-desensitized self had to pause and consider the joy I felt from reading and empathizing exactly what those words were saying to me: writing is the tangible expression of the swirling mess of conversations between my head and my soul, those fervent arguments between my body and my spirit; the distracted soliloquies of my past, the despondently resigned questions of my present, the arrogant and flourishing rhetoric of my future- all of this din, rising from the commons of my inner self, somehow coalescing into coherent and sometimes nearly beautiful words… that is the miracle of writing.

—-

I had a seemingly unassuming and casual conversation with my lovely girlfriend a couple of days ago, and I had no idea it was a breakthrough of sorts- which I find, personally speaking, is the most freeing sort of conversation of all: the ones that don’t assert an agenda, yet by virtue of lacking pretense it reveals to you more than what you thought you were looking for. Our conversation began over coffee, about nothing important, and meandered past doors that I didn’t know had become unlocked. It is a lovely surprise to be discovered by love when you’ve convinced yourself that love had stopped looking. 

—-

Essentially, through our conversations, I had unwittingly admitted out loud to myself that I’d given up on thinking, that I’d shrugged off the value of thoughts, of questions, of words, that I’d surrendered them in exchange for the weightlessness of inconsequence, because not giving a shit is indeed a therapeutic drug, yet all for the wrong reasons… it relieves you of the questions you really should be asking, and pampers you with the thoughts that aren’t giving you anything substantial in return. I had quit caring, and I didn’t even really know it. 

What seemed to be just a prolonged mood-swing revealed itself to instead be malicious indifference.

I guess those conversations were my diagnoses, and these posts are now my rehabilitation. 

—-

Writing and thinking; it’s time to put in the hard work again. 

(end)