There are times when I want my mind to work … and it won’t. That’s been happening more often lately than I’d like to admit.
Then other times like now when I want my mind to stop, be quiet and let me rest.
It’s one of those nights when I can’t just slip into the abyss of dreams.
No, tonight my mind is alive with thoughts and memories and sensations all at once. It’s like having the cacophony of the construction zone outside my back window, right behind my eyes.
The half dreamed, the regrets that pile up, the trips you wish you’d taken, the opportunities missed, the sexual escapades you denied yourself, the loves unrequited, in short the life that could have been… if only…
All of these things screaming at me at once saying, “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!”
Then I’m awake. Fully awake and I know I’m not going to sleep for hours. I wonder if I’m amped about something in particular or is it just “normal” occasional insomnia.
Was killing another social media account really the right thing to do? What does that say about me? Am I becoming anti-social, or just rejecting the impersonal words on a computer screen for real presence? Am I losing my mind?
Is the antibiotic I’m on, the one that was causing me to be dizzy also causing this angst? I hope it is the problem but can’t help wondering if the drug is inducing the angst or is it simply ripping away the barrier that prevents me from looking at my life in an objective way.
If I’m looking at my life in an objective way, how would I change things? What does it say about me that I’m apparently so very capable of deluding myself into numbness?
I think of the friend who’s just come back to the states after having lived in China for almost two years. He had guts and chose his freedom over convention. He saw an opportunity and he took it. I want to go see him to hear what he’s done and yet I’m in pretty much the same place I was when he left. Only now I don’t even have a job to show for my time spent… doing what… being predictable? I feel ashamed.
I pop out to Craigs list and wonder how close I am to being a broken sad person like so many people in the personals on that site. Briefly I wonder if it’s as simple as giving up.
Fuck it! I’m going to have a drink!
The anesthetic of whiskey helps a little.
Still my mind is a whirling vortex of thoughts.
Time ticks by.
A theme I seem to come to again and again is the question, “Have I built my own silk lined cage?” Having built that cage why am I not happy in it? What more do I want? If I can’t define it, does it mean the proverbial “It” doesn’t exist and I’m in fact tilting at windmills?
Time ticks by
Why has it become so very difficult for me to seize the day? Perhaps a better question is, “When did it become so difficult?”
Is this being old?
I’ve loved a few times in my life. I mean truly loved, that heart rending crazy with desire kind of love that drove me to the brink of insanity. The love that makes it a joyous relief to get out of your clothes and just touch skin to skin.
Some of those loves are no longer in this world.
Other people that I’ve cared very deeply about as friends are no longer around either.
Is getting old not actually a function of time passing, but instead a function of losses adding up around us until we have so little in common with the people surrounding us that we prefer to be with those who’ve gone on before us?
Does a familiar voice, or the smell of someones skin, or the way they looked in the morning, become so desired by us that we long for the dirt nap?
Time ticks by
My drink is sweating on the desk. The water droplets following the same inexorable tug of gravity as the inexplicable tears running down my cheek.
I miss those I’ve lost. I know I’m going to lose more people that I care about in due time. Are my tears for them, or for me?
Time ticks by
How do I go about moving forward again when I’ve misplaced all my forward momentum? The same four walls are most certainly not the answer. I’ve realized that trying to reignite my passion for a new career, job, or whatever can’t be done in a vacuum.
I’m not ready to be old yet.
And yet… I’m tired.
I understand my Grandfathers comment about “Routine Changes”.
I always thought he was talking about politics “Politicians are all liars and crooks”. I see now he was talking about the “NEW” that was really the “old”. Its just the “Old” dressed up in a new Sunday hat.
Over time I guess I’ve become jaded. Politicians are still crooks & liars. Young people still think that they know everything. Their new whats-it, system, whatever is the best, and original, and no-one has ever tried it before.
I’ve seen repetitive patterns in business for years. Software development methodologies spring to mind. You can also see it in education.
Core competencies? (New Sunday hat name for reading writing and arithmetic.) You know the stuff they taught all us “over 50s” with a paddle hanging in the principals office and a sharp crack of a ruler across our knuckles.
Those incentives coupled with the terror you faced at the prospect of being held back a grade meant that you worked your ass off to pass your exams. Back in the day Teachers weren’t really all that concerned with your insignificant feelings about education. They were concerned about you actually being educated.
Grandpa was right, it cycles at least once in your lifetime.
This is one of those posts that I usually delete.
Apparently it was the antibiotic. As I read this I think “Wow who is this?” I acknowledge it’s me, but it’s me without filters.
What the hell? I’ll post it. Probably pop right up on the NSA screen
Hi NSA!