Again, Who Am I Kidding?

I have respect for your time so I’ll make it quick.

It’s strange. The more I create and try to follow my dreams the more I sense this imaginary person sitting next to me giving me the side eye. What is that about? Oh great – it’s not enough that folks who physically exist give me the side eye, but now my hyperactive imagination wants a piece of the pie too – son of a b****. I wake up, get the courage to do and grow, and each bold step I take somehow only comes off as this risky, stupid, ugly business that is only ruining my reputation as a competent human being.  I love it.

Is it just me or does walking this nonlinear line we call life everyday sometimes have you feeling like you want to brush your face and wash your teeth in the morning instead? Oh it does? Good! That’s right – we’re all f***** up. However, I have a solution to this. After all, “I’ve observed that life never presents us with an unsolvable problem. The solution may humble us or require us to do things that we’ve never done before, but there is always a solution.” – Psychology of Wealth

All of the ups and downs and ins and outs I have should be charged to the game. I’m going to charge each and every hour to the damn game – my hours of mastery that is. I read that it takes 10,000 hours to master something (go look it up lazy pants!) So for me it doesn’t matter; a book read, a word spoken, a sentence written, or a conversation had – I’m charging it. As I jam Kendrick Lamar, hoist my little sails, eat my oreos, and start moving forward through these turbulent, uncharted territories I will try to remember these words:

“You don’t have to be afraid to take a risk. You just have to be prepared to do the work.” – Psychology of Wealth

“You have to just march into your fear. Oh-well, everyday just march on in there.” – The War of Art

“There are no accidents; there is only some purpose that we haven’t yet understood.” – The Psychology of Wealth

“Your work will inevitably be the timeless communicating to the time bound” – The War of Art. It is fundamental that you continue to be authentic, vulnerable, and courageous for this reason because the cycle must redeem itself and continue.

…And now I’m just writing a bunch of quotes. I should have started a quote blog not a blog for creative thoughts. Nonetheless, consciously invest in yourself no matter how you are perceived by others, no matter how bleak it may seem, no matter what look the imaginary bum is giving you, and no matter the circumstances. 70 % or more of our thoughts are negative and redundant. Be audacious for change. Start mastering.  

Insanity

She darts to the bathroom knocking everything down in her way. By everything it’s meant – she knocks down pictures, guests that happen to stop by for her good friend for a brief moment and anything that can’t withstand the inertia of high velocity wind or the trembling and rumbling effect of a heavy foot. The bathroom is right around the corner from the room that she is in and she leaps into it like the ground she is dashing on is covered with lava, “FINALLY, the bathroom!” She gets to the bathroom, annoyingly flips the light switch on, unapologetically swings the door wide open, and leaves it open - no time to close it. She violently tosses the magazine full of cannabis that is lying on top of the toilet seat cover on the floor, rushes to get her belt off, and panics to get her pants down. Her right hand is in charge of making sure she gets her pants all the way down while her left hand cares more about making sure the toilet seat cover is up. Her whole body is aching and squirming at this point. There is even a little bit of urine starting to slowly streamline down her thigh like a tear you finally have to let go after fighting it back for so long. She hesitates no longer, swivels around, deeply exhales, and plops down on the toilet – using time and space breaking speeds. She lets out a long and alleviating sigh and the tension in her shoulders abates. Her entire body relaxes – from her posture to her toes; she slumps over in satisfaction, “Ahhhhhhhhh, yeeesss.”

She finishes pissing and looks around for some toilet paper. She looks and looks and looks…and looks, “Wow, there's no toilet paper, again." She smacks her lips with disgust and tries to find the next best thing to use. Her eyes scour the bathroom for something, anything. She comes across the trash can. She looks in the trash, inhales, and sinks into what almost feels like defeat, “this can’t be my last option, please, no.” She takes a beat and then grabs what looks like tissue that someone definitely tried to get every last bit of their nose on. She looks at herself in the mirror, scrunches her nose grotesquely, chuckles at her life in the moment, and proceeds. She stares at the piece of tissue, shakes her head very slowly, closes her eyes in shame, and wipes herself with this thing she found out of the trash. Too proud to drip dry – she’d rather trash dig. She sticks her tongue out, cringes, gets dry, throws it back in the trash, flushes the toilet, and washes her hands. While washing her hands she glances at herself one more time in the mirror, feeling somewhat proud because it's over and she made a way for herself, but weird because that just happened, and thinks, “They’re going to know I couldn’t have wiped myself. They’re going to wonder how I did or if I did. They’re going to know and wonder because they never have tissue here.”

And it repeats.

Additional 2 cents

Uninspired to write lately and I’m not really sure why. Going back and forth between thinking I’m running out of instinct, I’m running out of writing juice, or maybe this is just not for me. The more I go out and really live and take life by the horns so to speak the more I come up empty handed on paper. Funny thing is, the exact opposite should happen - according to, you know, what “people” say. Captivating sights and sounds, having fun, practically forcing, no, giving myself an excuse to have a reason to write. Recent experiences have been one in a million. Recent memory recall is, should be worthy of some sort of revelation, or some sort of spark to get the flame going, the wheels turning, the deep thoughts brewing. To no avail; I wonder why.  I wondered why and then the funniest word ran across the lens of my very closed, very shut, eye lids one night. Guess that was my intuition finally clocking back in for its shift.

The word I see is acceptance.

It doesn’t make sense to me at first so I disregard it only to feel  aware of one main principle that I promised myself to never ignore: respect your urges (in this case the urge is to pay attention to what my gut is trying to tell me)

I keep thinking about this word. It interests me now.

Acceptance? Hmmmm (my eyes keep shifting while squinting from one point of the room to the next) I see - feeling stuck, dull, or truly uninspired is okay! It doesn’t really matter! I realized I need to accept that about this time and this space right now and that when it is time to be filled with what I need to speak or write it will come. It will be there. Growing to learn that staying an open vessel for the good and the bad things in life is the best thing you could ever do because it opens you up and teaches you who you are. I have to be susceptible to things that I don’t like, the things that I do, the things that I don’t condone, the things that I do, dark feelings, happy feelings, feelings of regret, feelings of no regret, remorse, confusion, guilt, defeat, joy, happiness, hope, any of that, and all of that I have to be susceptible to as a writer because it gives me that voice. My truth in that moment, if I accept it instead of fight it, will help me understand it, which will entice me to write on it, thus enabling me to speak to someone else’s heart or situation. It’s sort of my duty to go through it and then try to accept it. One must have a third eye maybe even a forth when going through things and having to make certain decisions – I can’t say “oh I shouldn’t have made that decision” because I will be subjecting myself to shutting a part of me down that should be wide open. Now that I have made that decision there will be this urge to capture it on paper. It is my duty as writer. I have to go with it.  

Something else heavily dawns on me after figuring this much out, and that is that this word doesn’t just apply to your self assessment it applies to those around you as well. All most people want is for you to see what they see in themselves, for you to hear what they hear when they are talking, for you to get what they mean the first time, for you to accept them. The disappointing nature they may have accidentally or on purpose, the fact that they’re always late, or they’re nature to tell you up to just about everything but not everything. Whether they’re always asking questions, or always upbeat, whether they’re super optimistic or super pessimistic or always have to be the life of the party. Let them be them, why can’t we just accept? Accept, love, encourage more of themselves, and ungrudgingly, without judgment, watch them live their lives and smile. How beautiful they are. How happy we are that they’re alive, that they exist. Here, whether people will ever see or not, for a significant reason.

One can only hope you will at least accept that.