taking it back

over the last 6 months since my previous entry, much has changed, much is the same, and yet from the outside looking in, all seems identical, plus some extra pounds, and minus some outward negativity.

It has been tumultuous to say the least, and in order to accurately log the wavering, multitudinous ebbs and flows, one must refer to a great general hindsight entry of longing, satisfaction, teetering regret mixed with a natural order of things, humility, indignation, and what can I say, a series of many more intense, contrived emotions.

From the equally emotionally tumultuous nature of my childhood, I had built myself up .. pulled myself up by my bootstraps, have you, over a period a decade.  A laborious, painful, sullied decade.  But a decade nonetheless that had resulted in an imminently increasing self awareness, insight not only to my flawed schemas, perceptions, reactions and behavior, but to that of others, a fascinating career which even at its fledgling state appears at least average with hope in sight, a lengthy support network of equally if not more so successful and insightful, well-adjusted peers, and healthily healing, but far from perfect family relationships.

That was the moment I apparently decided that I was grown up enough, mature enough, healed enough to embark on a supposedly eternal relationship.  I say supposed here because I am not sure how I feel about eternal.  Tangent:  Eternal to me, in the past has always had spiritual connotations, and increasingly I feel atheist.  Or maybe a severely pessimistic agnostic.  Something about this new phenomenon that has been coined the "quarter life crisis" has me in a place I'd tried at all costs to avoid.  Unnervingly skeptical, headed towards complacent, with only hopelessness to look forward to.  Am hoping to find my way out of this rabbit hole soon enough folks.

There are times when I feel that everything I've achieved and worked towards will soon be behind me and I will no longer be on this side of things.  Let me further explain.  Now I am jogging up a hill, (for lack of a better metaphor, here is a cliche for you).  I have slowed into this jog from a substantial sprint before which I had to teach myself to walk, and then to run.  This jog has left me with the top of the hill in sight.  But as I look around, I notice that this is not the hill I had intended to be on.  Unfortunately I can tell you exactly how I got here, and am satisfied with the reasons as to how I got here.  For example, I met with rain and avoided some puddles.  Ran into some seemingly impassable trees, went around them.  Helped another being find their own path, led them to their hill.  And here I stand, content with my decisions, however the little light inside of me is slowly betraying me, as I it.

In an effort to regain my footing on the path that is and was mine, I have rerouted myself, mid hill.  I can't see the top of the hill on my hill anymore, but I will get there.  The impassable trees will be conquered this time, and the puddles plundered.  In this effort, the top of the hill does not seem so foreboding, but a challenge beckoning and fanning that inner light inside of me, coaxing with breezes of comfort and encouragement.

The more I acknowledge myself, the more I think for myself, the more I am myself.  Cogito Ergo Sum.

I guess Descartes and I have more in common than I thought.
Long gone are the philosophical days of chain-smoking and arguing that a chair is a chair, and whether the sun will rise tomorrow based simply on the fact that it has always since we can remember.  Long gone are the days of sitting on the floor with cheap wine and debating the existence of an all-good god and ethical absolutes.  All of that has been resolved or agreed to be disagreed or debated beyond debate or simply is and no longer requires my reverie.

And long gone, or so I thought, were the days of doubting everything about myself and constantly questioning who I was and who I wanted to be.  They are here again, in a form quite different that when I had once encountered long ago.  This time I know exactly where to begin, and how to get where I'm going.

Existential Crisis number 4879q5079, let's see what you are packing.

Midnight in Paris ...

Paris looks better in the rain

Walks in the streets through flea markets, bistros, cafes and museums

The golden age is relative

To thine ownself ... Be true

Can't wait to cross this one off my list

June is ending

As June ends and July begins I am standing on the brink of a landmark time in the life of my family of origin. 

Family of origin in laymen terms means the family I grew up in.

Anyhow .. on this landmark .. I look back to so many past historical and significant moments .. how we perceive these moments and how we adapt these memories into our psyche is an important component of the way we shape memories in our lives ..

We cannot go back, only forward .. what a morbid thought .. and as I live each crucial, historical moment in my life ... It is as if I can barely feel it pass me by ... What I can feel .. what i do feel is everyday glory, everyday misery, everyday intensity, everyday awe ... Every wretched emotion of the dailies of daily life .. and it is the moment I stop encountering these sometimes fleeting, sometimes flowing emotions when I have to worry that I might be shutting out the best parts of me ..

I crave more humble experiences in my life and I feel Tue older I get .. the less I resemble a pure and ideal intent and the more I encounter naysayers and sabatours .. the less i feel like myself .. the less i am like myself .. the less i can be hurt by them.  Therein lies my dilemma.  I am weakened by them in an effort not to be weakened by them.  How I wish I could more intricately control the role environment plays in my life.

is love enough

in so many movies and books I always hear/read this question and most often the answer depends upon the genre of the film/book.  in those deep, gritty books, love is never enough (well, rarely), and in those light, fun books, love is always enough and saves the day every time.

i've often thought about what type of book my life would be if it were a book, would be a horror book, a suspense thriller ... would it be a humorous book or a tragedy .. I guess time will tell and there may be chapters that are humorous and chapters that are tragic .. but the whole of it .. well i guess the easy way out for me is to say it remains to be seen ..

i don't buy that though .. i've realized i am more of a proactive person .. versus reactive .. i don't like to sit around and wait for things to happen to me .. if i want something .. my instinct is to devise a plan to get it .. and then execute that plan ..

there are many reactive people in this world, and fate happens to drop them in my lap time and time again .. and of course the nature of a proactive person is to do something and the nature of the reactive person is to not .. therein lies the root of a major frustration in my life .. i find that they are everywhere .. some in my personal life, in my family, my friends, some at work in my subordinates, colleagues etc ..

i think maybe i don't understand the reasoning behind a reactive approach to life .. well that's a lie .. i do understand it is a lot easier to just sit and bump along and wait for things to happen, but i wonder if people get what they want out of life that way .. i wonder if people get what they want out of life being proactive ..

on a recent house episode it was discussed whether someone is born with the hardwiring to be happy versus unhappy .. for example a happy person who wins the lottery will still be happy, but an unhappy person who wins the lottery will still be ultimately unhappy, even if they think this might answer all their prayers ..

interesting concept ..and of course upon self reflection .. i might just be one of those people who is unhappy .. but when i reflect even further .. i dont know if i was always that person .. i mean there were many years that i was just happy go lucky .. not sure when the turn happened .. and not unhappy in a sad way .. but unhappy in a needing something more kinda way ..

after watching mamma mia a couple of nights ago (the musical) .. i did ponder .. that maybe my life should be a musical, and that way no matter how sad or happy or funny it might turn out to be .. i'd be singing through it .. even when i feel sad .. turning on a sad song makes my sadness sort of valid and sort of beautiful ..

i have no closing for this blog and will just end abruptly

Silence

The silence is deafening.
I hear nothing, feel nothing, sense nothing but the failing silence surrounding my fragile self.

To hope for the end
is it to hope for what end. End of silence, end of days, end of the end.

When the washing comes it soothes but momentarily, calms but briefly, gives hope but takes it right back.

When the roaring powers that be can shake up the once strikingly open existence, I ponder and question those powers. I look around at the masses that have relinquished their powers and I see strength. I look at myself without them and I see weakness, loss, mourning, a staggering feeling of incomplete ... everything.

When it ends, as all good and bad things do, the silence should take with it the glory it denies me this evening. The pretension that surrounds my ego and the pride that fuels my confidence and ambition.

Thoughts

As I sit here in the middle of the night, it occurs to me how people slide down this slippery slope ... How they become hollow shells of themselves .... How eventually their lives become unrecognizable and intolerable. It's not sudden but subtle and each decision made beginning from the smallest decision made unhappily will lead to a little bigger one, then another one, then another and each one bigger than the last and eventually you wake up a stranger to yourself and the life you'd set out to live.

Having said that, it also is an important fact that happiness can often come from peace and goodwill with those you love, those who love you and those who surround you ( as they are not always one in the same ).

I've come to realize that the compromises I make begrudgingly are not truly compromises because I hold that resentment and negativity in me which as we all know can manifest itself in different ways in different people.

In order to truly compromise I must make a decision to do so, act accordingly, and let go of any expectation of that somehow everything will change again in my favor. Acceptance. That is a great fault of mine to have difficulty accepting. And hope ... Well hope is a deterrent of that fault hope that things will change towards the better ( or sometimes just my selfish way ) is something that I cannot so willingly let go of.

But I do sit in the dark hours as such and ponder a better way to do so.

life or something like it

lately with every passing day I have had moments where I've needed to blog .. with such a gut wrenching stab of disdainful unhappiness .. intermingled with more gut wrenching stabs of adjustment .. this is what it must feel like to 'be broken in'

there was a time in my life where i mused many things, and with every passing day i receive the answers to the long ago rhetorical idiosyncrasies of life ..

sometimes i do believe that everything must change and all change is necessary and afterall only change is constant in the world and blah blah blah

then i begin to change .. for the worse .. and then all of a sudden my breath stops, maybe not literally, but definitely figuratively .. the breath that feeds my soul, the oxygen that keeps my inner being from completely evaporating into a rat race junkie that merely maintains status quo of that ..

sometimes i look at my ironed button downs, my travel mug and my weather ridden face, and think, this is it .. if this is it, can i be happy ..

happiness is also relative, also subjective, and also a state of mind .. but our stomach has a direct link to our psyche and our gauge of happiness ..

lately my stomach has been sort of giving me the finger .. i've been changing for the worse .. and all of those little spiritual instances in the past few weeks have been giving me pretty insightful windows into this ..

succumbing to that which we do not want, in order to maintain peace, harmony and happiness for those around us .. and that i'm sure can be linked to those old ethical vignettes .. is the greater good a valid precedent over one good .. should 30 people be allowed to be happy if one person's happiness is sacrificed .. .should 30 people's lives be worth more than one person's life ?

it is dramatic, and it's true, maybe dramatic people such as myself experience less quantity days in life as happy, however with honest process of emotion and a centered self, i feel like i might experience more quality in my happiness when it does come my way ..

thus is my dilema in other things as well .. loving less means hurting less.. loving more deeply often means when the hurt comes, it falls quite deep to settle in you ..

there are lesser evils than these, and sometimes those deep perils completely erase the euphoric moments in life ..

there are times when i feel like im not really a happy person .. maybe this is why i strive to lighten moods, or to make everything into an inappropriate joke .. maybe this is why i constantly focus on the negative, and how my perfectionist personality sort of propagates this .. don't focus on the 25 good things, but the 12 bad things and try to fix those ...

for someone who really genuinely and consciously tries to live in the grey .. the polarization that perfectionism imposes is really dichotomous to the general schema of actions, thoughts, behaviors, attitudes etc that I emit ..

unfortunately the only method that i feel may work here is a slow, periodic increase in awareness of these dysfunctional propagations and the heart breaking adaptation of who I was into who I will be .. the only person that gets lost in all of this is who I am right now ..