Curious To See

It has been quiet in here for a few days now. Here is the reason why.

I have been dumbing myself down for so long, for so many years and decades, that my brain finally shut down. I dumbed myself down to the point of actually becoming dumb.

I sat down Thursday to write. Had the day off from work. When I have a day off I put a lot of pressure on myself. I want nothing less than to completely redirect my life, to do something or somethings that will erupt me out of the rut, change the path I am on and get me the life that is lurking below the surface. The real life. My life.

I am not kidding.

So I am often disappointed. Very disappointed. I try honestly, I try earnestly, I push myself. This is a relatively new phenomenon. Up until 2010 I would waste my days off. I'd write a little and then justify a whiskey reward which would lead to whisky surrender. That screaming quiet voice in my head told me, and I believed it, that I was wasting my time, that my life was over. I always expected to die young. Apparently I expected to die of disappointment.

Something changed in my brain or my soul, maybe both, and since 2011 I have been pushing hard. I wish I could pinpoint what it was that convinced me I have something to offer but I cannot remember. I am looking for epiphanies. I am an epiphany kind of guy. But I think changes happen more often on a cellular level, a gradual progression. I think even as one voice was telling me to lie down, another voice was saying "Hey Bubba, you are talented, you are intelligent, you can do something with your life."

The lie down voice was louder but the do something voice was persistent.

I spent two hours on Thursday morning writing on two different topics and walked away from the desk screaming inside. I had nothing.

You have to understand. Writing is the one thing I have that flashes lightening from my soul. I feel so alive when I write that nothing else compares to it. For me to have nothing to say or to be unable to say something in a way that makes me proud, is the worst possible reality.

I would rather be dead than to be unable to write.

I jumped on the exercise bike, took a shower, had some lunch. All the while I was thinking. And I realized that I have been shutting my brain down for a long time. A criminally long time.

To escape my reality. As if whiskey wasn't enough, apparently I decided to stop thinking. Lately I have noticed a fog around my brain, a thought fatigue that makes me uncomfortable. I have written a lot of words, put a lot of good stuff out there in my humble opinion, but I was like an athlete running on instinct. At some point, if you haven't built a solid foundation, time catches up with you revealing you for the fraud that you are.

I can do so much better.

After lunch I sat back before the almighty computer, the computer that I see as the instrument for my salvation, and read. I went on line and read stuff by Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Ayn Rand, Baudelaire, William Blake, Bill Maher and William Carlos Williams.

I am not kidding.

Stuff that challenged my brain, that forced me to concentrate. From philosophers and psychiatrists and social activists and poets and a comedian. People who accumulate knowledge and use it to THINK. Brilliant people. The cool thing about that is that one thing leads to another. These people reference other works, other people who inspire them and you end up checking out that stuff and those people. It is a perpetual cycle of thoughts, analysis and ideas and opinions to be drawn from.

For inspiration. I am filling the tank. I am building the foundation.

It was one more revelation that shocked me into realizing that I have let myself down in yet another way. It is amazing how consistently and in how many ways we humans can trivialize our lives, waste them and blind ourselves to our own realities.

Me first on the list.

It was one more revelation from which I can learn. From which I have already learned.

I have been deeply introspective for the last two years. I have honed in, narrowed things down, been surprised by truths and disappointed by false hope.

I am trying to rise to the level of my own potential. It could get messy. It could get painful. I have been hacking away at this for a couple of years now. Bit by bit. Figuring out what the pieces of the puzzle are, figuring out how they fit together.

Some people do this when they are young. I envy them. Some people never do it. I refuse to be one of them.

This is where I am at on October 27, 2012 at the ripe old age of fifty eight.

I am curious to see what is to come.