life

A Quiet Courageous Deliberate Distance

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an_excuse_to_do_nothing__by_pascalcampion_ddreaxn-pre.jpg

An Excuse to Do Nothing – Pascal Campion

It’s what I want to say that seems to get caught up in my mouth like feet among vines and brambles. A problem that speaks to my apparent lack of the ability to directly speak about anything with anyone. It’s become so problematic that words seem to drop out of sentences and the examples given are only an abstraction of an abstraction. Language seems to be leaving me in such ways that I lose all semblance of what appears to be reasonable and just. It time to reassess this small moment, this difficulty and give myself the opportunity to grow.

I find myself in a pattern of need. One that speaks to a desire to better myself. In the reflection and expansion into this world, I find it troubling as though it seems that there is so much farther to go. As if I require multiple lifetimes to truly understand a single moment of the infinite and the eternal. What is this truth and am I blinding from this reality? There is always room to grow and change with every passing day and I need to take the opportunity afforded by the morning sun to change the path of the oncoming twilight.

A quiet courageous deliberate distance is what I need. To take the words I so hastily speak and transform them instead into ones that are introspective and meaningful. I fill the air to prevent the discomfort with the silence around me which does me no favor as the words them become just a new type of air I have to breathe to survive. To brave the storm and the stressors and cut through both my anxieties and my barriers to seeking what I want instead of what may be easy. It’s to be deliberate about when I speak. Adding value to them with each utterance or abstaining from them otherwise. It’s finding the purpose of each step taken, the weight and drive forward for each action done. It’s to restrict to doing what is then not a grasp into the ever flowing chaos but a reach for the next string in the reality I seek to bring into existence. It’s the need to move back from myself and my circumstances, to be able to look critically at what is going on and determine what I should go from now on. This distance, for which I speak, one which requires me to step back for a moment instead of pushing my way through. To give my self space to consider what those quiet courageous deliberate distances can bring.

I am learning and realizing that again I have so much farther to go. I am seeing myself and rehashing my history and my behavior I see that there are these things that are buried down deep and are hard to reach. That there are things that I haven’t finished or even attempted to fix. I need to spend time to understand how to become better, to find closure, and settle within myself. If I don’t seek this knowledge and face these harder truths I will become fixed and rigid, unable to grow anymore. It’s difficult and uncomfortable but necessary. It all needs to start with the question “why” and ends with the statement “I can do better”.

Its in these times I spend reflecting, 40 days and 40 nights, to bring myself closer and become a better person at the end. The time is an excuse, one made in the pursuit of bitterness.

Hope, rings, eternal.

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If I haven’t made it perfectly evident by the continued writings of this blog, life gives us a continued opportunity to reflect on our past and thought about how we want to spend our future.

Almost limitless in the sheer amount of time we can turn from the way our life has been going and turn differently toward a new horizon. It is then on us, the responsibility to rectify these moments and memories which we find ourselves in a state of dissatisfaction. What do these moments mean to us? Where is there value other than teach us to live in a way we would not prefer. 

It is our mind that smooths these processes and makes us satiated by the substandard way we continue to pursue the mounting insanity of monotony. It makes us defend the processes we should then so despise as a way to escape a reality that may have been different if we had made other choices. 

We only progress if we allow these systems that have held up so sweetly for those who had time to buy into the system to fall away for a better way to protect and serve more than ourselves at the cost of ourselves.

A selflessness that pervades to lay down the pursuit of personal hedonistic value and private personal precepts to understand that progression calls for us to examine and be ever vigilant of the problems others face. To move away from scarcity and believe that together we can do more and so we protect that togetherness.

Its in my reflection that I have to reaffirm the values and judgments, not because it’s easy or comfortable, but because it’s necessary. I find this process in some ways cathartic, being able to continue to dismantle my beliefs to ensure that I still have all the pieces to put them back together again. Belief is a powerful thing so I will not take it lightly.

With all these moments, seconds ticking away that indifferent to our existence, we afforded many places to make mistakes and to live the life we so choose. We only break the cycle if we allow ourselves to act differently from how we have previously. It’s in this great fight against the forces of our minds desire continue the patterns we have we have become so accustomed that we can truly grow. The perfecting of the self requires an unceasing willingness to adjust and make better.

I make that promise, like a ring worn upon a finger, that life is a choice made continually and should be lived as such. Each failure a place to learn, each missed opportunity a building block towards understanding the value of life. We are who we think ourselves to be, and our mark is left not by the scars on our bodies but the ability to help the world through action. Our memory can only be maintained by the voice of others and not one spoken by ourselves. Life finds a way, and so shall we.

Road To Recovery: A Reflection On Broken Streets and Highways

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It seems as I get older, I have more anniversaries filling up the calendar. More days that have taken on some sort of meaning or symbolism. Deaths, birthdays, marriages, and breakups. All these things begin to fill these seemingly arbitrary dates of the year with represent a life lived.

The reason I think about this is that I’ve been acutely aware of the anniversary of the day I found my self laid out on the concrete. Of the moment I ended up learning more than I wanted to about the processes of our medical system and what it means to be hurt. It’s been almost a year since those moments carved scars onto my body and brain, placed metal on my bones, and began the process of making memories of pain and resilience.

This is what an anniversary means to me, a quiet time to reflect the advancement of a moment in my life that shines out like a beacon on a dark night. A way to categorize and quantify change and progress.  It’s unfortunate that most of these anniversaries are ultimately painted in dark and moody colors. Though that’s what makes the reflection of a spring renewed so stark in its differences.

I learned a lot from all of this. I’ve grown and changed from the experience that no one would readily ask for. My body is healed and moving better than before. My mind has recovered slowly but surely.  It’s through all of the pain that I sitting here, directing my life a new and different way. I now know something that most I hope would never get the chance to know. I was lucky to learn it in a way that didn’t leave me more broken. I find myself thankful for the moments that came after that accident, as they reaffirmed and reformed some fundamental beliefs I had and would have carried with me through all of my days.

It’s in this recollection, this moment in silent thought, that I can appreciate the moments that I now have and experiences that have come from it. It’s been a year away from twisted metal, smells of prosperous, glass, metal, and concrete. I am thankful to have the opportunity to have an anniversary because it ended up not being the end but just the beginning.

A Partially Quantified Life: (Hawthorne) Effecting Myself

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The journey of self-improvement leads me to this, a task is given then expanded, accountability beyond refutability, what I have begun to do is track, and quantify as many moments of my life as possible.

In the 20th century, with psychology in its infancy so much wanted to be learned about the world and the workforce. Factories and manual labor were at an all-time high and factory owners and managers wanted to boost the efficiency of their workers to maximize the bottom line. Thus began a series of studies to monitor and record how much time it took for workers to complete certain tasks in telephone equipment production facilities. A strange thing occurred though, as the workers were being recorded by these new researchers their productivity went up. Initially thought to be the result of changes in the lighting conditions but when the researchers left so did this new boost in productivity. By simply recording what the workers were doing they become more productive. This was phenomenon was eventually named the Hawthorne Effect.

XXX years late I found myself speaking with my mentor about productivity. The conversation started as he wanted me to start tracking how much time a week I spend working on research as a mechanism to ramp up the productivity in the lab. Now through my struggles as of late it donned on me that I could even take this a step further.  I could track my whole life and how I spend my time to see where my inefficiencies are and why it seems that I can spend hours at work but never get done as much as I would like. Where were these distractions coming from, what was keeping me from fulfilling my purpose? Was I really doing as much as I thought I was doing in the first place?

Information is my tool, my mechanism for work and play but without data, I have no place to start and nothing to learn. I think we all feel that way, we seek out patterns in ourselves and others to understand our world and figure out what makes us happy (or at least figure out what keeps us from hurting). It’s in the investigation of those patterns that we come to a certain truth of which way to live optimally.  I’ve heard about life tracking before but never took the step to actually step into the void and allow myself to see the potentially uncomfortable truth about my life. I’ve been told doing this is akin to eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that I will become aware myself and the unsettling prospect of hours of my life I’ve been wasting. Of course, that is a bit hyperbolic but imagine the insight about these ugly moments of our lives we spend letting us by, making ourselves accountable to them. Those moments we spend scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter knowing full well that we shouldn’t be. Taking all those moments we take to watch, read, work, and play and putting them on a calendar for everyone to see.

These might be extreme measures in some regard as it requires a lot of extra effort to continue to plug away the activities in my life as they are happening but for the potential results I can put up with the extra unease and effort. My hope is that I can be both the researcher and worker in this situation, watching over myself so that I too can increase my productivity. See where I have time and where I don’t.  It will be a learning process but it’s the step I need to take to understand where I can be better. It’s another gaze into the mirror but one I hope will do me some good.

In A Search For Optimal.

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I keep searching for this imaginary space where all work will get done, and distraction won’t follow. I look for this place, but as most fantasy, it lives in my mind away from any tangible space or time to fall back on. Knowing it’s ephemeral nature doesn’t prevent me from superstitiously try to align the stars to make miracles happen and work to get done. The thing about miracles is that most of the time, they require a lot of work and dedication for them to happen. Most of the time they don’t wait for the opportune moment, we work, and then they happen. The problem is, I waiting for a miracle to work.

It’s not a lack of tools or instruments. I have all the technology I need to run an army, truth be told, even if given the network of people I still wouldn’t get work done as I would like.  There is something to it, a piece I am missing, or at least that’s what I tell myself to keep validating the distractions I experience.  There is a simplicity to staying on task, a quiet I can’t seem to find. As I ease myself into doing one thing, a myriad of different tasks pop into my mind like a sea of red notifications on my phone.

It’s just to easy to avoid or be distracted. Too easy to take myself away from what I am doing because what I am doing is hard and distraction is easy. It’s easy to just pick up my phone an run away to some far off place where there is a lot less work and a lot fewer things to worry about.

It might be a crisis on decision, the ambiguity of what I should accomplish first as the tidal wave of ToDo’s crash down over my head and wash over me like hail on a cold winter’s day. It’s this threat of indecisions that drives the desire not to do anything at all. To continue to meander about, unable to accomplish the things I want to accomplish because I don’t have a plan or a means to understand the problem to begin with.

I need those quiet spaces for my mind to process all of which is going on. Problem being is that my mind continues to wander endlessly, intent on capturing all it can and never let it go. Like a net full of water and fish, one unable to distinguish between the two.

I know these are small problems in the grand scheme of things, but it plagues me because my body and mind are not working in the way I would like, disregarding my needs to favor of what is easy. It’s back to basics. Do the simple thing and maintain it. Cut down my problem into manageable bites.  I know how to recover from this, it’s just that it’s taken so long to realize it has been happening in the first place.

Progress sometimes is two steps forward and one step back. As long as I keep moving forward everything should turn out okay in the end.

 

My Ugly and Beautiful Daughter

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mononoke

Princess Mononoke – Hayao Miyazaki

I have these moments, these wonderfully terrible and beautiful moments being crushed by the humility of my weaknesses. It’s when I am tired that it becomes more apparent, when everything taught simply refuses to be retained. These fantastically tragic thoughts lead to one amazingly cataclysmic conclusion, one I come to often. I am simply human.

I’ve talked about this before, this empowerment of being human. It’s the knowledge of the human legacy that gives us strength. We stand on the shoulders of giants but we ourselves all have the makings of a human colossus. This time though, I can see the amazingness of those around me, feeling the strain of their strength against my inability and weakness. It’s bittersweet but motivating as part of me needs to do tough things, things no one thinks possible, all so I know anyone can. I’m not special in design or function. I am a bit strange in operation, but outside of my experiences, I really am like anyone else.  That’s why the power I give in the words of advice is not talking in any way to distance myself or make it seems that I stand above. No, it’s the simple fact that I want people realize too that this idiotic smart person managed to stumble his way through life and found an answer on the other side. An answer which given may at the allow you to struggle much less than I have.

It’s in this constant contradiction of wanting to both eviscerate myself and all that I am and desiring unrefutable immortality that life’s absurdity and our place within it become perfectly crystal clear. The looking for purpose but living in an uncaring universe, divining of our own lives but being tied inexplicably to the forces beyond our control. The culmination of all things and thoughts up to this point have happened before and are purely original. When accepting these things that I find peace within our humanity. The struggle of those who are much greater than I could ever be fighting against this constant onslaught of unknown chaos, edging out a sense of peace and order in this crazy world we live. It’s these unceremonious baby steps that allow us to make large leaps. These conversations that only a few experience that send waves through history. It’s the quiet moments that pass by that resonate within our soul, allowing for the cacophony of spirit to arise.

It’s the existence of the duality of man, the ability to be capable of all things that drives me. We are peace and destruction. We are savior and sinner. Within all of us lies that history of all things and a blank slate to begin anew.  We can be anything, darkness, and light. It’s then our choice as to which side of the coin, which hand to extend. Our lives are long, and millions of choices are made, each one with the opportunity for any answer. We are all human, and there is nothing simple about it, but there can be simplicity within it. This brings me peace as it means all of us are capable of anything and nothing at all.

Home (Bitter)Sweet Home

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3 weeks, I was given 3 weeks to make good all on all the things I left behind. So for those few precious weeks, I haven’t stopped, not even for a moment, trying to jam in all that I can so that by the time I return home to DC, I feel full enough to make it those next several months without all their presence. From the moment I touched down, I have kept moving, to the point of tire, to the point that my eyes burn and my head’s gone fuzzy, sprinting, trying reach, touch, and hold onto anything and everything I have so longingly missed in my days across this vast land. It’s my days, counting them down like the New Years’ clock, moving desperately to try to hold off that zero-hour tic before the clock resets and, I start again.

I only have a limited time left here, cobbling together all that I can do, filling days with people, and unfortunately not a lot of work. Each day moving so quickly that it feels as if days are racing to the end along with me. A feeling emerged that this trip is both too long and too short.  That I am always counting down the moments, knowing that there is not enough time to settle myself, especially with no room to return to or a familiar place to lay my head. It’s been trying, both emotionally and physically, though I hope to find solace and closure within it. Ending the strife and getting the answers regardless of how hard it might be to hear them.

All in all, I am happy to be home but I just never realized how hard it could be to return. I’m battling time and emotions, but it’s a learning process, doing something that I have never done before. Never time will be easier as progress is made, and routine is established.

Soon I will go back to my home in DC. Reiterating that I have no problems with where I live now, in some ways I rather do like the space. It’s been hard, though, transition, as leaving the familiar, is no easy task.  Even then, I recognize that part of me was left here, under the grey and clouded sky of Los Angeles, a part left unresolved and wanting.  That’s what I am here to clear up so that when I go back I feel like it will be different, easier. The space will be more familiar as more who I am transitions with me. I am not starting from scratch anymore, I have friends and spaces I know to belong. More of me will go, and less will stay, but that’s life, and it keeps moving along with me.

For now, I will keep racing the clock, filling my time and making the most of the moments I have while I’m here no matter how hard they may become.

Happy New Year.

 

 

 

 

At The Sight Of A Familiar Face

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I… didn’t know how all this change would affect me, living so far from home, in a new place that, though it is growing on me, can be hard at times.  I think that’s why Thanksgiving was such a catalytic moment, both for my past and for my future.  It highlighted what could be and wasn’t, what should be, and what isn’t, how I am and who I thought I was.

Writing about this reminds me of a lesson I had long ago, one about the brain. You see, human beings are born with a special area in our brain devoted exclusively to identifying other faces. Lighting up beautifully when we see someone who is familiar, familiar eyes, nose, and mouth. Just as with anything we have been conditioned to, seeing a face can bring all these emotions to the forefront of our minds.  An inescapable subconscious reaction built upon years of experience and circumstance, so that when seeing it, emotions bloom into beasts and flowers beyond our control.

It was the happiness then of when I saw my family and friend who had all descended upon this weird stateless place for a visit. One connected to a weird set of circumstances where we all had reason to be at the same place at the same time. To see each other, to see the city, and refresh ourselves with something warm and familiar. A relief in this place that has had me going non-stop since I touched down, relief at the sight of a face, and all those worries melted away. Change is inevitable, and as the moments’ tick by fate plays it’s hand, after which it falls upon us to cope with there changes, adapt to this new world we find ourselves, sometimes surrounded by people and in others devoid of them. Either way, as circumstances presented themselves we ended up here together, and I can say that life would be a lot harder if that wasn’t true. It made me happy to see them, it made me remember who I am, and how this place sometimes makes me forget that. I was only a couple short days, but I appreciated them with all my heart. Though it marked a change in my life for my favorite holiday, it doesn’t mean that the change was bad, it just means that it’s something new.

We hold these new moments with the old which come together with a create a life.

Now as to why I might be mentioning this now of all times since it’s a lot closer to Christmas than Thanksgiving. This is because, in the last several weeks, I have been counting the days until I get to my home again, the one I left several months ago and seen since. A place filled to the plethora of familiar faces that I am excited to see. The relief of the return, even if just for a short while, will heal those wounds and worried faces, so when I come back, I can be strong once again.

I know it will be hard all around, but I’m ready. I am getting to understand the value of it all, piece by piece. I might be a fool because sometimes I have to go through hell to learn lessons, but I’m growing wiser with each passing day.

Words, My Eternal Struggle With Language: Revisited 4

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image

It’s been 4 years since I started this blog, a blog meant in a lot of ways not just for words but for thoughts, feelings, and ideas. A blog representative of who I am and my progress as both a writer and a person. It’s so strange to think of who I am compared to the person I was 4 years ago. How much has changed each time I sit down to write this post, a post about the progress and the frustration I have with writing. Things are so different, and yet so very much of the same. If I were to look through time and see myself right there on the keys, would I recognize him?  Are we different people now, through things not just beholden to experience but through, in a way linguistic transformation. Have I come to another place beyond which I could foresee back then. Even in the matter of words, I can not tell you if I have achieved anything. Though try as I might to shorten the distance between them and me, there is one thing I have yet to achieve, the one thing I see as the ultimate goal, total synchrony. This being the 5th time I’ve come to this, where exactly am I?

It’s hard to gauge whether I’ve gotten better or worse at writing up til now, progress is hard to measure without a tool of measurement. Do my words come more fluidly? In a lot of ways, yes, though at times too quickly for my hand or lips to keep track of. Am I any more intelligible than I was then? I’m unsure, though I’m a lot more honest and open.  Why is it that continue then? Knowledge, knowledge of that it does help, that I am a better person because of this writing that I’ve been doing.

Here in this place, who I am is always called into question. Not in a way that is strictly adverse, but in a way that world I currently live in is not filled will constant reminders what pushed me forward in the first place. New spaces can be places for significant growth and triumph but not so far from the cradle of despair as the paths set out before us are not ones that have been tread. No, they are the ones waiting to be walked and built with tireless conviction to keep pushing forward and find the right path. I, at times, lose my way. Opting still to continue walking when I don’t even know the destination. Maybe it’s wisdom from above or just perpetual foolishness, those motivations long gone leaving me with a pattern and mold to fill in my own way until I find myself again.

Maybe in some ways these words are descending into ether, trying in some strange way to fill this void empty spaces with a cacophony of letters and prose.  Who knows how many are required before it is full,  but the task itself, though on the surface fruitless, is never wasted as one day, maybe far in the future, I will get there.

It is then to reflect upon my year, the year of unyielding trials and broken triumphs. I can honestly say that it was unexpected, though grow was not measured I am certain that growth was achieved. I feel as though I am starting to understand the world a little bit better, though in saying this I am almost assured to be proven wrong by the world soon enough. I have more scars, more memories, and more metal in me than I had before but the doesn’t change the fact that I am still a firm believer in the beauty beholden to this world and my desire to be someone important within it.

In looking to the future now, what is it that I want? Comprehension I would say. To ease both myself and other’s effort in trying to understand my thoughts and words.  Part of that comes from slowing down a bit and thinking a bit more before I speak. It’s in this though that I am grateful to have this mechanism to self reflect so that the me in the future can know where all this change may have begun.

I hope you all have a great next year, thank you all for reading, there is still much more to come.

Year One | Year Two | Year Three | Year Four

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.