Month: November 2019

A Degree of Discordant Disorganization

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You know the celebration and recognition of having written this blog consistently for the last 5 years should be a joyous one. One that comes with a sense of accomplishment to it, as that would mean for the last 260 weeks I have posted at least once a week. It’s though a bit bittersweet, as I am happy about the accomplishment but saddened by the inability to write the last week. This perfect streak of Saturdays was broken because of a lack of time and energy to write for such an integral thing in my life. My life has been getting busier but not in a good way, one that I know will pay off in the end, but I am finding the difficulty with the amount of work I have to do now, but that’s what I signed up for, and that’s what I will see through to the end. I can’t blame that for all of it though, part of me can’t keep it all together, all the things I need to do.  I am doing so much more work than I need to for the sake of moving forward. My life feels messy and undisciplined, disorderly, to say the least, so it’s time to start picking up the pieces once again.

It’s the pieces, broken and scatted like the shards of window from my car on that fateful night. One of those things I lost were the habits and discipline that I had built up for many years. One I learned and built up through the fires of frustration. Without that pilot light and the time to build that spark, all I am left are smoldering coals of once was that raging fire.

I want it to return, with me going through those all those motions trying to maintain that streak I previously had. It’s that tire that stands between me and it, that need to keep pushing forward through these unsettled months haven’t allowed me to catch my breath, and find that part of my soul I feel like I am missing.

The work keeps stacking, and I will get through it, but the difficulty I have with it directly relates to my ability to build those habits into this trying time. I may not have the moments, but I have the will to change. A will built into knowing if I can accomplish this, then I can continue stepping towards that dream I so dearly want, but without it, I will flounder and fall short of what my heart sets me out to do.

A Tense Stretch

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There are sometimes when you can’t catch a break. That the world requires much from you, and you just can’t seem to give it all it needs.  I’ve found myself here, looking at the horizon both with for tomorrow to come but also dreading the loss of today. Here where my body tenses up with stress, not knowing where I should go.

I intend to keep this post short, having broken my streak in writing because of work and a conference, I need to return to the other tasks laid out for me.  I just find it so hard to do anything, the list of things to do has grown so large that each subsequent item makes my whole body feel as if it’s pushing hard against gravity. A feeling as if the world itself is turning in on me and attempting to make me implode. It’s then that I stall, feel like I can’t do it all, and that is when I know I must act. Must beat these feelings back.

This list has been made worse by life, needing me to take moments away from work. Though it’s my lack of strength to blame, I can’t help feeling like comfort has genuinely become my enemy.  I enjoy it, those moments away, but they make looking back at the multitude that lays before me all the worse. So there I sit, basking in that comfort, ruminating in that stress, building it up to this vicious monster it doesn’t need to be. It’s as large as my fears and as tough as my imagination, how can I defeat something like that? Piece by piece.

I just need to keep moving forward, keep working towards my goal, working to outrun these feelings because soon enough, I will get to a point where I can manage. If not now, I will grow strong enough eventually to make it, but for now, I have to keep moving. Whittling away at it until there is nothing more but rock and rubble. Even the mountains become rocks and rubble when coming in contact with the wind and the sea.

My tense body needs some stretching, my mind needs a break, but I have to keep on working to make it to the end of where I want to be. This tension will end, and I will be stronger for it, but to get there will be harder than I would hope. For now, I will end, knowing that with this, I have done one more thing that I had hoped to do. Good luck out there, we all have our monsters to fight, but as long as we are resilient and accept help, no beast can beat us.

 

 

In Beautiful Discordant Colors

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Regardless of much introspection we do, we will always miss things, things when made obvious make everything start to make sense.

It was a small observation a visiting professor made, a question about the words that I use, which made me think about my life here. It’s a simple us and them problem, words delineating those lines which I feel in my hearts. Their use can be so deliberate and at the same time, sub-conscious that your ticks and mannerisms become tells for something greater. It might not seem substantial when referring to a building on campus as “their” building, but when you know a little bit more about the way we use our words, it can mean a whole lot.

The second lab I was ever apart of was back in my undergrad did just that. They studied words in the context of relationships. How couples speaking to each other became the basis for determining the quality and connection those two people had. It was based on a long literature about word use and how depending on the circumstance can be a good indicator of your feelings. You might think this is obvious, of course, words would be a good indicator for how we are doing, what other way can we so easily express ourselves to another human being other than words.

Then my question is to you, what words are the most telling?

Are they the ones that are positively covered in emotional content, words like love, heartache, sadness, and misery. Sure these words are telling, but they never give you the full picture because by the time you get to them it’s already become clear something may be amiss. No, it’s theses simple words we use on a regular basis that expose us. Us and Them, Ours and Theirs, Me and We.

It’s simple then, among the things I am struggling with is the identity as a student here at this school.  My school. I don’t yet feel like it’s mine. It’s this feeling of being apart as if this place is a collage of many colors, and in adding my own, it becomes discordant. That my piece just doesn’t fit as I don’t know where it is to fit.  It’s being surrounded by people and coated in a kind of personal silence.

I’m trying, I really am. It’s hard not to miss my friends and that place I felt like I belonged. These places haven’t come to me easily, and so maybe I am feeling the burden of being away from it. What price do I have to pay to take place need from me to feel like my own?  What piece of me do I need to give it to save myself from this isolation?  It would be so much easier I didn’t need other people, need that substantial connection. That’s not how we work though, all my wishing will get me nothing except a painful absence in my chest.

It’s a slow and arduous process, so different than what I knew before. I think about this, deliberate as to where my role is in the lives of those people around me. Do I forsake myself to fit in, or do I endure and hope tomorrow shines anew? Is it I who am the strange one?

Things will get better as long as we work for it. I have to believe that or else I would lose hope and give into that despair that waits for me to fall at any given moment.