Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Questions

I just finished watching Choke, a weird indie movie starring Sam Rockwell. It's one of those movies that asks more questions than it answers, but at least this one has a nice bow on it. It's intriguing and bizarre in so many ways that I was enthralled, gripped by its insanity and the calm, cool way the outlandish was accepted as is, as normal.

I ask myself many questions all the time. What am I doing here? Where do I belong? Why do I do these things to myself? When will I break free from this cycle? Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions. As yet, it's pretty clear I have no answers for these questions. No shining light or discovery or epiphany has managed to rock me from this state, move me. In many ways I feel trapped, whether it be by my modest success or my many inabilities to find escape velocity.

But maybe I've been approaching this all wrong. That's not to say I know the right way or have any single notion of what a right way might be, but I know that my current "way" isn't it.

Sometimes I wonder - is this it? Is this what life is like for everyone? You find some niche, carve it out for yourself and settle in? Get married, have some kids, work to put food on the table and provide for your family and, in the meantime, that's life? Has everyone around me bought into this? (And secretly I ask myself: Why can't I? Why can't I be settled and follow this path? What's wrong with me?)

And there it is. The questions I can never answer and the one I always ask. I stay up until late hours of the night. I am frozen in inaction when I should not. I am lost, at sea as it were, even when surrounded by things that entertained me not hours earlier. And I combat these feelings by inaction, by waiting for them to pass and Monday to come and work to resume and the boredom to take hold again when I am otherwise not paying attention.

I think a part of me rejects the underpinnings. I don't know why or how to battle it or whether to fully give in - I just know what it feels like and that I feel helpless when I know I am not.

Perhaps this is too much truth, too much honesty in a place where I strive to be as guarded as ever, but I'll let it stay, to be reread and rehashed and rethought. Maybe the question isn't how to break out of my current cycle, but how to start a new one. How do I start a new life?

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

2009: Looking Back On A Year

2009. The Ignoble Year? The Year That Wasn't? What Did I Do Again?

What are titles that I tossed out for this post? Correct! You have control of the board.

I tried to recall what happened in 2009. What did I do? Where did I go? Years from now, if someone asked me what happened in my life in 2009 how would I answer? Truthfully, and I will speak the truth from time to time, not much. Not much at all.

I did very little. Of note, I went to NY ComiCon. I went to WBC in Lancaster, PA. I played board games, I bought board games and DVDs and Blu-rays and CDs and a Tauntaun sleeping bag (MR. Tauntaun to you!) and things I didn't need and things I enjoyed. I played computer games, I played World of Warcraft (WoW), I didn't play WoW, I spoke to some friends, I ignored others, I went to work, I watched other people lose their jobs and I was afraid to lose mine. I learned about the dark side of our dog groomer, I learned to trust people and old friends who I once trusted. I learned things and forgot things and remembered things and dreamed things. I found a dream and I never pursued it. I complained incessantly about my odious job and my inability to do anything but complain and I totally failed to find my way.

And that's what I regret most. I never even tried to dig myself out from under this cloud. I didn't even try to pick myself up. I don't know, maybe part of me is waiting for the life-altering incident that will never come. Or maybe part of me thinks myself incapable of extraditing myself. Or maybe, and this one's the really scary one, part of me doesn't *want* to pull myself up. I don't know and I never even tried to figure it out.

I look at my posts for 2009 and see fear, hope and then.. nothing. Maybe 2010 is "the year"? Maybe then? I don't know. I wish I did, I really do, but I just don't know. I hope it is, though. I still hope.

2009: A Year Of Regrets (And Hope).