Personal Goals for Improvement

I need to spend a little more time reading classic literature. It has a mysterious quality that helps inspire and invigorate my internal life just a little more. For example, just before going to bed, I read the first chapter of Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert, and the richness of the translation was—how else can I put it?—savory. When I first discovered some of this classic literature in college, my experiences were a bit limited just because I had not yet experienced many of the classic troubles that refines a person's character. While youth has its many advantages, age brings sorrows and sorrows bring wisdom and understanding. (Of course, as no one is omniscient, that particular wisdom and understanding that age brings is necessarily confined to each individual's vision and personal perspective.) As I grow older, my own perspective on the text gains a lot of this depth.

Today, I plan to take care of some personal tasks I have been putting off. I need to mail some letters, and I should make a trip into the larger city to look for clothing. It would probably help me greatly to make a list of the various tasks I need to complete, as well as figure out a weekly plan for achieving my goals. Spring seems like a good season to do this. The trouble for me is that I sometimes get so bogged down in the plans, or making plans for plans, that I never get anything started. It has helped me to have a personal pad of paper that is not a "journal" or some kind of sketch book with refined art in it. I tend to treat those things with too much trepidation, as if they themselves were the final pieces, and not a workbook that ideas should spill onto in a chaotic mess.

To clarify some of my goals for myself, I should read each day to be a better writer. I should draw each day to be a better artist and visual thinker. I should work on mastering wordpress development so I can have more flexibility with my blogging/writing. I should learn more about computers and networking in general, web design and development, and coding in other languages. This is as good a place as any to explore some of my plans for myself.

Trapped inside the Emotions.

It's nearly been a year since I last wrote something here, and the previous post (after having just read it) is something I really could have written yesterday. The feelings, those pent up emotions that stagger around in my head and crash into each other from day to day, are still the same. Nothing has changed. Nothing.

And, that means, I've really haven't made progress. In fact, in some ways, I feel worse now then I did before. (Of course, there is the chance that I can't be objective enough to see the progress. Yet, looking at it from just the surface, I am a little stunned at how much of what I have written then is the same now: I still feel like I need to improve in all of the major and minor ways I mentioned. Even the bit about "motivation following practice" is something I thought the other day, and until this moment, believed it was an idea I had only just discovered.) Reading, I see a foolish person that year ago, whining about needing to be better and not really understanding how much worse it could be. I need to forgive myself, they say. I need to not be so hard on myself. However, looking on all of my internals in a way that those friends and my family cannot, I see the pain and the failures more closely. Worse, I know how much I could have achieved, but through laziness, fear, and ignorance, see how much has escaped me. I will return to a better life (with more challenges) soon, and I will attempt, yet again, to overcome my failures.

Envisioning a Future

I've been thinking that I really need to be a little more serious about writing. Now that several years have passed along and I have had a few years trying my hand at finding my own way in the world, I've discovered that, despite what I may have wanted in the past, what I thought would be the best course of success in life, success isn't going to be found in personal preferences and talent, but instead in improving myself to the point where, even if I don't wind up doing what I would like, I have become a decent person doing whatever I find myself doing in the future.

(It's a bit hard to explain just tapping it out quickly on a keyboard as the thoughts arrive. At points, it appears we live in an information age where the information we receive is incomplete, distorted, or plain wrong. Forgive what may seem like moralizing or solipsism, but working through these personal thoughts is sometimes messy even if I hope to one day transcend them.)

I worry about not being able to pull out from underneath the hidden assumptions that afflict us all. Nevertheless, despite the potential presence of my own assumptions, the people I see around me, according to my particular viewpoint in the world, seem to feel that future regrets are hidden in not achieving the material successes they incessantly desire. Hidden in failing to achieve a life of material comforts that do not extend beyond their too-myopic dreams. But again, to my point of view, most of those same people do not realize that the vision of material success to which they strive is so far out of reach that failure is an inevitability. We admire achievement and success when it happens, but we do not seem to recognize how rare those things are, or the kinds of troubles they will eventually bring. Instead, we burn in the fire of vague personal frustrations, treating each other poorly because our sense of who we are and what we feel we deserve has been distorted. It's as if our failure to build ourselves in a material image that has always been false is a tragic injustice, that the world has somehow wronged us for not providing us the false comforts of a rich and famous lifestyle.

Which is why it seems to me that life is about becoming a better person through trial and errors while struggling to avoid the overwhelming waves of ignorance, contention, and selfish thinking. And of course, it is not easy or pleasant to think about. But, as seems obvious, the happiness people seek in things, achievements, and worldly success is a mirage. Happiness itself is a virtue that is found in aligning oneself to the better qualities that make us all truly human. And in that sense, it can developed and practiced. I only hope that I can develop it as a professional athlete develops muscle so that I may use it confidently and unconsciously and feel, ultimately, all the better for doing so.

Transformations

Not sure how to describe an illness where the main symptom is a dissatisfaction with yourself so intense that it makes you feel ill and puts you slightly out of time with the Universe. Life continues to swirl around you with the same vibrancy and colors it always had, but instead of a warm and satisfying red, or an enjoyable rich blue with a calming coolness, everything is pasted over with a light pastel yellow that, like a sticky film, clings over everything you happen to glance upon.

There is something about my life that feels a bit unsatisfying, perhaps tinged with the portent of doom or trouble ahead, or an anxiety about the course of the future that will not lay flat, and I cannot shake it. I want to. People who I am close to say that is nothing more than common anxiety, or perhaps it is yet another flare up of a lifelong battle with the inane minor demons of depression, but no. It somehow seems more than that. More frightening.

I have been imploring the benevolent forces in the Universe to guide me to a transformative path, a path where I find the calming centers inside myself, the ones I have been seeking and fix my feet firm upon it to walk straight ahead into both joy and sorrow with an equanimity that has still somehow remained elusive. There is an honorable and dignified course of life that feel remains out of my grasp.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I am always seeking the difficulties in life rather than allow myself to be human, to love myself with an impartiality that can acknowledge my failures without berating me for them. Love, not the weird definitions of it that exist in my current culture, seems to be the only proper way to motivate myself to good course in life. Too much sorrow leads to either despondency, or a defeated resignation that permits failures as just another one of life's "horrible" inevitabilities. I need to be able to feel the sorrows, to forgive myself for the pain they cause, and trust that I can endure without succumbing to the worst of them. If I can somehow cultivate the habit of joy, then I will be fortified against the onslaught of sorrows.

Habit, now there is an interesting word. Since the mundane chores and duties of life must be dispatched along with the goal of self-improvement, the best way to handle them is develop good habits. I've wasted too much time thinking that overcoming pain or sorrow or improving myself was an intellectual exercise of the mind more than a life practice that requires regularity in its execution. One of the lessons of the world is, obviously, this: if one wishes to become good at something, one has to practice. Personal transformation of one's inner life can, it seems to me, be encouraged through good habits which help you practice being a decent, good person on a regular basis. As such, the first habit that I need to develop is "discipline." Discipline, as a virtue, is, it appears to me, nothing more than an expression of "Faithfulness." You must be faithful to yourself, your obligations, your spirit, and the larger world around you. Motivation follows practice. Heat produces motion, stillness freezes us in place. This is one of my first tasks in the process of transforming my life: encouraging and practicing the habits of a good character, to becoming a devoted person, morally upright, and always prepared to do the right thing no matter how hard it might first appear to do so.

I think that I am going to have to write more. The only problem that I seem to encounter is that I often do not know what to write about. I think I would like to try to discuss something that is meaningful to me, and I would hope, helps bring meaning into the world. This is not to say that I am some kind of egotist that is seeking to inflict my particular view of knowledge on the world, but rather I am trying to share something with the world that lends itself to a meaning and positive influence for the world itself. I would hope that doing so would help me feel like I have accomplished something good in the world, but I also know (in the depths of my heart) that offering up something that I believe to be good to the world may be personally more difficult for me in the long run. I know that I am being vague about all of this. I apologize. Even if I provided some specificity about what I was talking about, it would still be difficult to express this idea.

It's just . . . it may be that I feel that I have reached an age where some opportunities are closed to me, possibly for the rest of my life. There is a finality to some of these recognitions that is slightly unsettling, a new freedom that it more disturbing than emancipating. Simultaneously, I am also beginning to see that there is still some chance to achieve something that would help the world achieve a greater good. If I can somehow grapple with all these impulses to try and 'do better' or 'be better,' maybe I can achieve my goal. The thought hidden right there in that former statement perhaps expresses my feelings more than any other: "my goals are shifting." No longer do I feel that I can grasp some material life of comfort that always seems just out of reach anyway, a media chimaera designed to ensnare foolishly immature hearts and minds. Yes, even now, I would like to have certain unfulfilled elements of my life fulfilled, but I recognize that this may not ever happen. Therefore, I must refocus my life and change my goals in such a way where I find personal meaning by attaching myself to something bigger and more important than an indolent life comfortably lived for myself and my desires alone.

I feel that I am a reasonably intelligent person who could achieve more in life if I worked harder at it. Every day, it seems, becomes a struggle. I still am constrained by the oppression of lost chances, poor choices, outside forces, and fate. Yet, I am going to try this new journey.

Another Sunday

I awoke this morning rather tired from not having slept very well last night. Sleeping through the night has been one of the more difficult things for me to do lately. I am not sure why I can't; I suspect some aspect of my health is part of it. The older I get, the more my physical health seems to be creeping up as an issue. I feel like it's an unkempt garden, charming early on perhaps, but increasingly a problem later.

Sunday is my day for going out to a study group. I won't say what or why at this point because some things are going to be just for me.

Anyway, I got ready and organized and was out the door by 9:30, time enough to make it to the group if I went straight there, but I decided that I should visit my mom at her shop first. It was a check in. I am concerned about the amount of work and stress that she seems to be constantly under. I don't know how to help alleviate any of that, so I keep checking in. She said that she would like to have an unsweetened iced tea from McDonald's. It is one of her minor indulgences that she allows herself, and I am not going to be an insensitive jerk and discourage it. It is also hard not to see it as a stress reliever. And as a demonstration of care for someone, there isn't anything quite like treating them to food, or in this case, tea.

The wait in the fast food line was really long since they had not made the tea for that day. They were in full-blown breakfast mode, selling their breakfast sandwiches left and right. I indulged myself and ordered one, and later, after having eaten it, wondered how something so remarkably tasty could leave you feeling so unsatisfied. It is one of the oddities about that particular form of fast food.

I delivered the tea back to my mother, all while worrying about how inordinately late I was going to be. I drove in an mild panic thinking about the interruption that I was sure I was going to cause with my late arrival. However, without speeding (a minor point of pride), I was only a few minutes late and relieved to see that they had not yet begun.

As for the group itself, overall I enjoyed it and am already looking forward to next week. I will say that the group dynamic was a little strained during the middle. There are some real gems of knowledge that come out this meeting for me. However, at times, some of the other participants seemed to get bogged down in their own ideas and people start to get frustrated. If I do speak, which I try not to, I only try to point out what I find personally illuminating about what it is we are reading.

Afterwards, everyone decides that they want to attend a buffet lunch downtown, which is where the real heart of the meeting emerges. With ten people, I imagine it to be something like the large feasts you see in period movies where guests try to engage each other with interesting anecdotes about their own lives. The cool avenues of knowledge that are explored during the earlier meeting finally dissolves into the broad paths of warm feeling. I was very worried that the one participant who seemed to be the focal point of the earlier strain during the meeting wasn't eating, and yet to bring up the issue might have caused embarrassment.

After it was done, I made my goodbyes and left. I wandered to the bookstore and made a half-hearted attempt to look for an engaging book on design, but left without a more full exploration. Most of the books there, seemed like ones I had seen there before. I did some more walking downtown before finally getting to my car and calling a former college colleague about a debt I needed to repay.

During my video class, I was in a group that needed an actor. So, I asked a friend from the photography class we shared if she would mind helping out. Because the project involved a lot of on location shots and travel, I was seriously worried that I was asking too much. Therefore, I promised her that I could give her a nine by nine sheet of muslin to use as a photographer's backdrop. I knew that she and another friend had already painted one, and that she might like to make another one. However, that video class was one of the last ones of my final term, and then I was out of school when I finally got the muslin. With it finally in hand, it was difficult trying to figure out how to get it to her. She was working overseas for a few months I had it. I knew that she acted in the video as a favor and wasn't at all concerned about getting anything in return, but I was seriously worried about leaving this promise unfulfilled and debt unpaid.

I finally called her up and asked if I could deliver it to her, to which she said yes. I felt relieved it was finally in her hands. We talked for a bit in her driveway before I left.

I made my way to Value Village to look for some blue jeans and possibly a shirt. And it was there among the racks of used clothes that I started to have some trouble. I saw myself in the other patrons of that store and realized just how poor and out-of-shape I was. The financial poverty I have struggled with all my life has left some deep social scars that seem difficult for me to repair. For one, I would like to dress more attractively, but I don't know how and, worse, would feel uncomfortable in anything other than jeans and T-shirts. Under fluorescent lights, I mentally went down the list on how deficient I felt I was in regards to my appearance, a process which ultimately leads me to same unpleasant mental place again and again and again. My imagined solution to the problem of this bad feeling is irrational, somewhat selfish, and unpractical. Intellectually, I know this. And yet, I want it so strongly anyway that it forces that knowledge to the side where I do my best to ignore it. The real solution to problem is not removing the consequence of these bad feeling through distractions, but controlling the conditions that cause the bad feelings to arise. Strike at the root cause and not its effects. Easier said than done.

I went home and took refuge in bed, trying to catch up on that sleep I missed. I was probably a mistake to do so, but it made me feel slightly better. The empty feeling of not accomplishing something more tangible during a day is preferable to the misery of berating oneself for conditions that cannot be alleviated overnight. I awoke, had a chocolate cereal dinner, watched some television before writing this post. As it is more of the proper time for bed, I am going to resolve to do better tomorrow.

Changes

Looks like Google changed the layout of my website somehow. I am not sure that I did anything to change it, but there is the possibility that I did. It has been a long while since I last posted here, it's difficult to know for sure. I do know that there has been many changes on the backend of this program. The whole mobile first movement seems to be at fault for it. My feeling about that is somewhat mixed. Yes, I do know that all things internet seems to be moving towards the mobile market. However, it is my feeling that the mobile form does not allow for the longer essay like posts that I prefer. I will try to hang on to words as long as I can, even though our visual culture marches forward.

Disappointments

Not that I have abandoned this blog, far from it. It's simply that I do not feel the same motivation that I had for writing that I once did. I know that isn't much of an excuse, but at least it is an explanation.

It's somewhat fair to say that I been feeling poorly, but perhaps that is a bit of an understatement too. I've been grappling with a lot of issues related to my self-concept. It feels as if I am falling into a direction in life that I wouldn't have chosen for myself if I could have avoided it. It seems that, for the rest of my life, I will be as poor as ever. I have far too many debts from school, a tremendous burden that will sap the opportunities for a life with simple pleasures: a wife, a home, a family, etc. My naivete was extreme in my college days, but there was no-one to tell me where I was headed. And of course, I might have not listened anyway.

I feel a bit upset when I consider how a future life of poverty was incurred as a result of my striving for something better (a PhD and professorship), and then failing at it because of my ignorance of myself, my difficult and (also failed) romantic experiences, and seeming inability to endure it all. But there it is. It cannot be bargained with or changed. It was real and it happened. Therefore, I must continue on and face consequences of actions that I did not know I had chosen at the time.

I am trying to make the best of it. One of the things I most frequently hear from friends and family is that "life is what you make of it." True enough to provide some hope and thereby small measure of comfort. And yet, while one can try to improve life and circumstances to a degree, no-one seems to acknowledge its severe limitations. Life restricts opportunity as much as it provides it. The difficult life lesson is learning how to accept its restrictions with calm equanimity and be unperturbed in the face of failures.

I wonder how people who experience a persistent and oppressive injustice in their life learn to cope with the outside forces that prevent them from attaining their visions of comforts and happinesses. I should consider myself lucky that I do not experience racism, persecution, hunger, and etc. that many people the world over do. I suspect that the key is to ignore the restrictions imposed from the outside and learn to be content with the life one leads on the inside, but as with everything, knowing something isn't the same as doing it. Or in my case, feeling it.

I hope to continue on my internal path of change, so that I conform my behavior to my vision of a better and happier self. Faced with frustrations, depressions, irritations, and unhappiness it seems hard for me to get there. I will not, and cannot ignore restrictions. Most modern folks I talk with say this is the way to get happy, but really they seem to be advocating blindness and ignorance. There should be a richer path of acknowledging injustice, pain, and disappointment without it sending your emotions careening over the edge into an expanding void. I grasp at the solid iron bar of calm acceptance, but it still seems a little out of reach.

Inflated Pride

On my bed are two balloons: one, blue, and the other green. I bought them a couple of years ago in one of those dollar store packages of balloons you get at the grocery store or Walmart. Most people buy balloons for some party giving occasion, but I bought them because I intended to use them for a photoshoot for a student design project for a book about clowning. In the end, although I took the pictures, I did not use them for the project. Instead, I took a picture of a classmate wearing the clown nose I had bought. She had an anxious, almost sad expression. The balloons came home to rest on the television nook for a year. I took them off about a week ago, intending to use them for a friends party. I was a guest, but even for all of my outward hilarity, I felt out of place. For one, I was among the very few attendees who did not have children. Most of my friends were distracted by their offspring for much of the visit and our conversations only occurred in brief half-minute exchanges that are difficult to piece together into an entire thread. Thought is broken up, and lacking words to fill the spaces between us, emotion fills in the cracks. This time, it was anxiety and embarrassment for having become this old without a clear direction in life, and a certain sadness for being middle-aged and not having a place entirely of my own or a career that marks me as a reasonably successful person who has the means to provide solely for himself and, perhaps, one or two others. The balloons came home in my jacket pocket, and somehow, through a series of small and unremarkable and forgettable daily actions, ended up on my bed next to my evening reading material.

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I have had a couple of tormenting dreams. The most memorable of which was not the one in which I experienced the hell of being in a place or among people who I did not wish to be around and responding to their terrible actions. No, the most memorable and meaningful one centered on how my vision of myself, my self-concept, is opposed to reality and is mildly delusional in a mundane manner. However, please do not think that I mean to say "delusional" that I imagine myself as some character like "Napoleon," or think of myself special and unique, apart from every other human on the planet. Other than the experience of being human with human thoughts when we find ourselves by ourselves with moments for reflection, I do not live in a world separate from reality, nor do I have such a disconnection with reality that I cannot operate as a functional member in it.

The delusions that I mean are the ones that the generality of humanity has about itself in our era. We each think of ourselves as the heroic actors struggling in the movie or play of ourselves, and how we are being either shaped by tragedy or accomplishment, we thereby achieve the natural results of our endeavors, endeavors that most of us judge to be good.

And yet, this belief is nothing short of vanity.

As young people, this sort of vain thinking is so extreme in its improbability as to be utterly laughable if it was mentioned aloud. As adults who have mellowed (or tried to) in their years, the struggles we imagine lend to our shaping as beings of pure virtue surrounded by difficulty are much, much more mundane. No longer do we imagine ridiculous success filled with fame and fortune; instead, we find our "heroic" struggles in paying bills, dealing with co-workers or relatives, or some other life event. But, in its way, this sort of thinking is can be no less vain or laughable.

Which leads me to my dream. I cannot say what the images were that played in my head, who the "actors" were in this dream, or what I saw. Frankly, I have forgotten it; perhaps, if I try to recall as accurately as I can, I saw myself. The real meaning of the dream was in its impact. I realized that how I see myself in my daily actions, how I comport myself in my head and the thoughts I have about myself, can be in complete and utter conflict with how things really are. My thoughts, which I believed were a reflection of reality, a pilgrim's path of virtue, were in fact, imaginings that were vain to a such degree that it led me to blindness.

My attachments to how I want my life to go, to how I want to direct myself to this new heroism of virtue, lead me to think of myself as an heroic actor. And yet, to really be a decent man, I have to give up this stupid thought. I am not a mighty hero, standing tall with a sword of nobility against the gales of ungodly daily enemies. Enemies representing everything from my propensity for anger when a driver cuts me off, or my pride of intelligence and creativity I feel I receive an unfair criticism about my work. Yes, I do need to fight against those things, to give up anger and pride. But to imagine myself as the heroic actor in this play of myself? That is too much limited thinking. It makes me the center of a universe that disdains me for silly haughtiness and spits me out towards wretchedness.

I must strive to be a better person who can attain virtuous qualities and do a good deed or two a day, but I should also give up the idea that I am a better person for doing so, because that leads to pride, which causes blindness, and then people fall. And when they fall, the fall horribly hard and damage themselves. There is another thought here about seeing the end in the beginning, about how recognizing how this path of pride and vanity will lead to falls, and therefore, seeing danger ahead, one can avoid it. But I will leave that thought for another time, so that I may better try to hold on to the feeling of being exposed in my dream for my vain thinking which has led me to this wasted day and feelings of remorse for the stupid things I say and do in these occasions. I truly want to be a better person, I want to be virtuous, but life can really show me up sometimes, so I have to guard myself from too much stupidity on my part and recognize that, for how much I think I know, I really don't know anything.

Slight Frustration

I think that I feeling a slight frustration from wanting to be more accomplished than I am at art and design, hearing about more people without training describe themselves as designers, and not knowing how to earn an income from doing what I am doing now. I have been told that I should write a book, but I don't feel the passion for it like I used to. I may think up an idea for a story or two, but really hammering something out does not seem like it is in the cards for me. I fear that I rely to heavily on cliches, don't do enough reading (like everyone else), and wouldn't have something to say.

Although, the creative idea that I have lately center on the nonsense tales of the 19th century. It seems like 21st century could use an update that isn't a mere imitation of the past. There are plenty things in the world that are ripe for parody and satire, and the deft use of metaphor would go a long way of helping certain people be aware of the layers of nonsense that have built up over the years. (If I may digress: maybe they are seeing it? There is a lot of tumult in the news lately in many countries. People are suffering under the burden of not knowing what to do or where to go to solve their problems. Another person reciting those problems to them in a literary way isn't going to put food in their mouths or make them less miserable.)

I guess I am trying not to get too stuck too much in a limbo of despair. Yes, there are a lot of people out in the world who call themselves designers and maybe do not have all of the skills that they need to have for that job. Maybe, the world is too much over-saturated in media anyway and a new designer isn't going to bring real change to the world. But then again, maybe there is still room for me. Maybe I do have something to say or offer to the world in my chosen profession that will set me apart from the rest. I know that I have some talent, but I am frustrated that some people still haven't recognized it yet. I know that I can do this and be great at it. I know that I can achieve this and astonish everyone, but getting to that point without succumbing to my old "friend" of melancholy is going to be the real challenge. I cannot let him chill my heart into inertia or inaction. I must continue to strive to do my best and not allow poverty to keep me back too much.

There is something real here and I have to work even harder in the next few weeks to push myself forward to get it done properly.

Going along

My last post was pretty gloomy, and frankly, I was in a gloomy place. I have done a lot of personal reflection since then, and I feel that I am in the midst of turning over a new leaf. I wish I could say that I had some kind of awakening that was like a jolt, a sudden insight that opened up a new reality, some kind of startling cause to get me to try and turn things around, but the simple fact of the matter was that I was tired. I was miserable and tired and did not want to be like that any more. Years and years of struggling and focusing on all of the bad things in life, things which were as real as the moon above, had chilled my heart to such an extent that I lost a lot of hope. Hope has gotten some bad rap, and I think most of it is deserved. Hope is like that one aunt who listens to all that airy flute music, is concerned about her cat's feelings more than the local homeless people, and thinks that good things happen to people if they think good thoughts. It's pleasant to think so, but if you're going to be able to move out of a lot of pain, you have to acknowledge that there is a lot of pain out there. Life is difficult, plain and simple.

Still there is an element of choice in how you feel about life being difficult. If you choose, or more likely, simply don't choose, life's ugly side will present itself to you with growing volume and intensity. It's like the absence of light, you can invite it in, or it can sneak up on you. However, if you allow yourself to think good things on occasion and do good things for other people (and not be so focused on your selfish needs and wants), then real hope, quiet hope for the honest small things in life, can begin to grow. And that quiet hope is like a rock, a visionary individual protected with the armor of faith from all of the poison arrows of doubts and sorrows.

I have chosen not to feel bad for the mean things in life, the sorrows, and the pains it holds. Yes, I still feel some sadness and confusion for some it, but I will really try much harder to not be overwhelmed by it. I will not allow myself to let its darkened arms wrap themselves around me and freeze my heart in its place.

All of that having been said, today was a little bit of a difficult day. It was a kind of day which, if I hadn't just spent a couple of months trying to recover and reconnect to better myself, I would have spent a few miserable weeks in bed. My artwork was rejected publicly for reasons that cannot or will not be made clear to me. I had more than one instance of someone making the wrong inference about me and my life. An instructor, without consciously meaning to, even teased me about my handwriting on an assignment. The sum total of those events made me feel, for the thousandth time in my life, like I was truly out of place. I feel as if no one really understands me or where I come from. If I could count for you all of the times that I have been called weird, unusual, or something similar, you would be astonished the number.

And yet, I will try and choose to see this as my particular path in life. There is nothing that I could do differently to change this day. It has already happened. I will try to remember the silver linings to these clouds and hope that tomorrow will go smoother. If life itself is an educational experience, then I can learn from it, and if I can learn from it, maybe I can get better at it as I go along.

Anguish

It is hard not to hate myself for my lack of success with most things I try my hand at. I feel like a reverse King Midas at times; everything I touch turns to rust. If there is something beautiful and golden about life, you can be sure that I am going to ruin it somehow. Usually, it is through my desire to preserve it, or capture it, or even, sometimes, just witness it. And, of course, when I touch something beautiful or golden, innocently at first, then with the desire to possess, it crumbles before my eyes in that dirty rust pile. You would think that I could be used to that as often as it has happened to me, but each time it happens, I am so distressed and distraught about it, that I can barely function.

I feel monstrous, like there is an inherent flaw within me that causes this to happen despite my best intentions. And this monstrosity creates a pain that burns into a searing white hot blast of hatred for myself. I eat the fire of hate and it boils in my stomach, a toxic crucible of molten pain. And in that crucible, the devouring snake of nihilism, grief, anguish, and tortuous cruelty winds itself upward to my heart and swallows it slowly in the grotesque opera of self-destructive hatred. My brain tries to speak to my heart, to soothe it, to prevent the snake from completing it missions, but it can't be heard above the heart's screams.

And then, the snake, having eaten its fill whispers its forked narrative of hatred. I become the monster of hate for myself. My snake heart convinces the brain that I am the most hateful person on the planet, that god has decided to hate me, that it is my destiny in life to be isolated, alone, and ugly. My brain, struggling to pull logic out of a locked or hidden closet, says that there are things I can do to prevent this from happening. But the snake heart is more convincing; its words have more sting. "You will not be successful," in one venomed filled word. In another, "you will always be alone," and "women do not like you," in another. My brain cannot make reply because these words seem to be couched in the deepest truth.

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I am in utter anguish about my failures. I want so much to connect to a special person, but it is not for me. I have prayed, pleaded, bargained, and struggled until I cannot sleep anymore, but it is no use. I am monster. Hated, ugly, and alone.

The Accident

I'm still searching for still waters and trying to keep an even keel. The period directly after my graduate school career (and breakup with my then girlfriend) was the biggest upheaval in my life so far. I truly hope with a visceral feeling that there isn't anything in the future that comes even close to that. It was a trauma, pure and simple. It has been a handful of years since that event; I can vividly remember those handful of days at the end, and remember the extraneous details that most would have forgotten. The first several years was struggling to cope with the reality of what happened, the loss of everything (including very nearly myself), and new realities it had created. Recently, it seems that I am beginning to see how the dust has finally settled just a year or so ago. And Now, I am in another period of great change, but this time it is my own choosing.

I was riding along in the car "of life," and hit a tree. At first, I was unconscious, and then I was recovering from the immediate injuries of that for the longest time. The pain was excruciating and forced me into difficult positions and hideous thoughts while I recovered. I do feel like I can start working towards goals again. This period is akin to physical therapy. I do have my scars and, so while the injury no longer hurts like it once did, I am a little tender in those spots and am more likely to react when I wouldn't have otherwise. I need to learn how to control that reaction.

To that end, I think I am going to try to recenter myself. Instead of looking outward for solutions, instead of analyzing inward for new insights and answers, I am going to try and forget all of that and work on developing an inner calm. During the healing process, I may have tried a a few things that I thought would be the shortcut to recovery. I realize that there are no shortcuts, and so, maybe meditation, thoughtfulness, and calm is the new way to go. If I have the self-discipline and the courage to face the horrors that life sometimes contain, I really do think it can help me.

Turning Invisible

So, yeah. I'm pathetic. And no, I am not pathetic in the hipsterish, too cool for his own good way. I'm simply pathetic in the aging, not really that important to notice anymore way. It's like I am slowly turning invisible against my will. I'd like to fight it. Hell, I am trying to fight it, but some fights are lost even before they get started.

I'm not sure how I could describe the multitude of thoughts that lead me to the above conclusion, probably because any amount of detail would reveal too much about myself and other people. As for myself, I seem to care less and less these days about how many people perceive me, which is mostly as an epic (but nice enough) loser. But even losers can be noble about wanting to protect other people's privacies, so I keep my damned mouth shut.

The basic problem I seem to have at this exact moment is "wanting" and not "having." And, being who I am, I think about how I could have what I want if I worked really hard for the next several years. Scratch that. There is no guarantee that I could have what I wanted if I worked hard. I guess I mean to say, I could have the chance to get what I wanted. Time will not wait for me to catch up.

I think about how my life got to this point. (Like I always seem to do. This entire blog is nothing but several years of me sifting through the momentary grains of sand that make up my life.) I think about the many, many mistakes I seemed to have made without realizing, of course, they were mistakes at the time they were happening. For example, I should not have ever tried to go to graduate school as English major. It is not for poor kids who don't already have money to burn or powerful connections to exploit. Poor kids with aspirations can usually only hope to be middle class providing they learn a sale-able skill. Not going to graduate school really wouldn't have prevented the mountain of debt I accumulated during my first pass through college, but it might have lessened its overall mountainous size. I also should have realized what was happening in that earlier relationship I was so committed to. I should have simply "let go" years earlier.

And many other thoughts like these about past events. But, then again, like I said, I didn't realize these were mistakes while they were happening. There was no warning bells clearly delineating any of the consequences of making those seemingly small and daily choices. I believed that, if you really want to make something of yourself, to improve your lot in life, you go to college and try to go as far as your brain will take you. I did not know that you could ruin your future with a lifetime of debt. I really did not know that by hanging on a relationship that had long since ended, that was draining me of self-esteem, I would be condemning myself to middle-aged regret and loneliness, and that I would be compounding and reinforcing that condemnation by preventing myself from exploring other, perhaps healthier, relationship opportunities. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was being faithful, noble, pure in heart, and well-intentioned.

Now, looking back, I try to untangle the Gordian knot with rather old and stiff fingers, tracing each ropey path back to its source, usually discovering another source behind that other source. And slowly, the choices I made begin to look a lot like fate. If I did not know that choice A would lead to consequence B, then how could I have prevented B from happening? If my problem now is that I do not have the means to provide for the people I love, can I trace that back to generations of poverty, systematic economic oppression? Can't anyone in the history of the world can? If yes, then why not also me?

Many of peers have said that I have always had full control over circumstances. And I do recognize that one can have an impact on own's fate. I do feel that one can work to improve their lot in life and try and make the best of things as they are. But, I cannot agree that you can fully choose your own fate. This is not a popular idea in our modern world, where independence and choice is an ultimate virtue. You say things like this and people react emotionally. The truth of the matter is that there have been, and will always be, forces beyond our control that will shape our lives as much (and in some cases, more than) our own choices.

And, for me, this where the frustration has crept in. I do not know how, among all those past mistakes, all those past choices, I could have prevented becoming a lonely middle-aged man in the depths of extreme poverty. Conventional wisdom is that one can control their own fate, and they implicitly mean that one can "fully" control one's own fate. I wish I could agree. I can't. Experience has taught me different.

Trooping through the Grass

I am not sure why I have been so tired lately, or why I have needed to take a nap in the middle of the day. Perhaps sleeping is my reaction to stress. I've been feeling the sort of existential disconnect that make great novels, and of course, it is all connected to considering my place in the world and the state of affairs it (and I) am currently in.

It seems that my biggest challenge during this stage of my life is learning to be happy in the face of everything that seems to be headed in the wrong direction. I wish society was nicer, more concerned about the true and beneficial growth of the individual, less concerned with the material selfishness of getting ahead, less focused on contention and pain, and committed to taking care of those who are less fortunate. When I say all of that though, I realize how far away that I am from fulfilling those conditions personally. Evidence of the disconnect I mentioned earlier perhaps. But enough of being vague.

---

During my afternoon nap, I had a dream that I was at Woodstock '69 listening to a concert being given by a lesser known musician. She was on stage playing her guitar. She was very beautiful, but did not seem especially connected to the crowd. She had some sort of weird face jewelery that I could not make out entirely, but it was interesting and stylish. Eventually though, as the crowd surged and morphed around the stage, I found myself wandering out into the nearby fields of tall and sunlit grasses.

As I stood looking out toward the horizon, I noticed a small troop of hippie children walking down the sloping hill in front of me. They had long hair and happy faces. They were playing a sort of game. I sat upon the ground and watched as they walked almost single file through the tall grasses, laughing and talking. They seemed to have a single minded purpose to their play, but what that was, I did not have a clue. I watched as they filed passed me. I considered taking a photograph of the stripling in front and the older children behind him. The kid in front was a happy-enough child leader who had a long and wild tumble of curly hair falling about his shoulders. They did not take much notice of me. I turned to watch them go and edge themselves along the garden behind me. The afternoon sun was warm and friendly.

And then I woke up. I really don't know what the dream symbolized if anything, but I remember a sort of wistfulness about it that stuck with me for an hour or two. I think part of me felt like I was being "passed by" in life in general, that I was missing something. But I did not (and do not) know what.

For most of my life, I think I have felt like an outsider looking in on things. An observer who can see how some of the puzzle pieces fit together, come to an insightful conclusion that others can be impressed with, but the price of having knowledge that others do not is the isolation that it imposes. It is a shame. I am trying to participate more in my own life, be an active leader of it and directing it to where I want it to go. But I do not think that I am having much luck with that. I go between wanting to steer my life in satisfying direction and figuring out how to cope with the things one must face in life that can not be changed, or live up to the serious consequences of decisions that seemed frivolous at the time. (One of my greatest frustrations is how a seemingly innocent and inconsequential choice that I believe will lead to some small measure of happiness turns out to have serious long term and unhappy consequences for the future. If only I had the ability to predict this better, maybe I would not feel so trapped in the future.)

The Sting of Pain

Just this afternoon, I got a call from a sad friend who is having a bad time lately. And I offered as much hope and support as I could for anyone in a difficult circumstance. I think I did a pretty good job, but perhaps that is because my struggles with depression has given me some hard won experience about how to comfort a sad person. I tried to say all of kinds of things I wished someone would say to me when I am feeling down.

But at the end of the conversation, when my friend was feeling slightly better, I began to experience a kind of malaise or emotional slump. I had all of this work that I wanted to do, but instead, I was side-tracked into thinking what was wrong about me. Why, for example, I am nearly a forty-year-old man with no decent prospects of a comfortable job, nice house, family, etc? Have I ruined my life already? Did I have a string of bad luck? Did I ever really have a decent chance? I think I just want the classic American dream sort of stuff. I am not a teenager, so the fantasies about being rich and famous have mellowed down into a comfortable life with people who I love in a place that is secure enough from financial disaster that I won't have to worry about losing my job or a place to live. Security is my biggest dream, and I dread losing it. Maybe the American dream is dead, and now exists as some sort of phantom haunting people who still believe in it, or maybe being exploited by people with power and money to keep the masses pliant and full of hope for a better life while being ripped off by people with power and money.

I am trapped by my desires for both security and a ridiculously romantic and deeply emotional relationship from an attentive and attractive woman. The first is something that eludes my grasp, and the second, as ugly as it is to say, is sort of dependent on the first. Most of the women in our society are not going to want to have a romantic relationship with a man who has no money, no job, and no prospects of climbing out of the staggering debts he accumulated at University. Universities may have once been avenues for getting ahead and attaining that sort of social mobility that would make me happy, but now it seems they are shells of what they once were. They have become enablers of foolish hope. They will earnestly feed you lines about how they will make you life better, get you a job where you earn a middle class pay, and charge you exorbitant fees in the mean-time. When you graduate, and those things do not materialize, you feel cheated. You see many, many others bitter and depressed about their college experience, and you slowly begin to feel like a giant chump.

I would write more about my own frustrations about this life and the things that once seemed possible but no longer are. But at the moment, I find myself in a position to where my most immediate desire is to figure out a way to remove the sting of pain from the heart of someone else. I am not sure that I can, but I really wish I could.

The Monster

Life has been more painful than usual lately. I could elaborate on the details, but then that would only cause more pain to others and wisdom is more often found in silence. So, the breath of speech is held, and the invisible fingers of mist wind slowly around my neck. Clasped over my throat, those fingers massage the pain into an increasing strangle. I will not share that with anyone more than is absolutely necessary for me to try and get rid of it. So, you won't know what it is that is bothering me, or the confused mess I feel myself in.

Details aside, I will say that my depression is in full form. I have personified in the past as a hulking monster, yet seemingly-affable, that sits beside you on a low stool and whispers in your ear from behind how much it loves you. This is the monster that eats your horrified shadow while you watch, powerless to resist. And once having had your shadow eaten, you become part monster yourself, inured to the good feelings the same way you were before, emotionally numb with only the hints of a dull cold shock of pain glazing over your eyes to indicate that anything might be really wrong. You are zombie. You are ghost.

I have wrestled with this monster before. I wish him on no one because he is truly an evil that has no hope of redemption. Even the hands of compassion are withered and decayed when they reach out to it in the hopes of soothing him. But, his is a nature that cannot be soothed, a devouring fire that burns and sears mens' hearts. The villagers of happy life have selected me, the warrior against the monster of depression, to venture into the dark and chilly bogs of pain and prevent him invading their town. They trust that I can do it, even if they do not see the scars of horror that gets branded on my own soul. My shield is nearly broken and my sword is chipped from a million constant skirmishes, but it is my duty to face it. I have been selected. And it is much my fate to be banished from the town and fight this monster in order that others will not have to face him on their own. I will not share him. The monster, part my own creation anyway, is solely my responsibility. As a traveler, hunter of this frigid beast, I can see the outskirts of the town of happiness, peer at the huts, watch the men hold their children and express love for their wives and the people they care about. But, I know they will also never see me. I am hidden in a thicket of brambles, lost in an envelope of a million shadows. I venture further into to the shadows to face him again. He will never see the town as I have. I know I can stop him from that, but it won't be easy. The mortal dangers of the battle are frighteningly real so it is imperative that I do not lose to him.

Abstractions

Just going to note here how long it has been since I last posted on my blog, but I am not going to say too much more about it. I was pretty busy last term, and thinking about topics for blogging that don't reveal too much personal things about myself or other people is hard. I can see how the really "honest" writers, as they would depict themselves, wind up making a lot of enemies because of their willingness to mine their personal lives and interactions with other people as source of material for their writing. I am not the sort of person to do that. I'm much more private, which probably means that I don't take as many risks as I should or is necessary for improvement of my writing, but I am not willing to potentially upset many people.

It turns out, as far as I can see, that most people live somewhat complicated lives that are filled with partial secrets. What do I mean by that? Okay, well -- just for a minute think about how multi-faceted people and their interactions with others are. I behave one way with my friends at school, and their perception of me is shaped by this behavior and the collection of previous experiences with me when we interact. I make "claims," stated and unstated (as we all do), about my life. And so, they wind up with a "perception" of me. I, in turn, interact with my friends at school based on my "perception" of them, as well as the "perception" of myself when we're interacting together. However, I behave in a slightly different way with my sisters based on a similar process of interaction and the collection of experiences they have had with me in the past. All of which might lead them to see me in a way that appears contradictory to the way my friends see me.

It is a differential kind of definition of one self. These perceptions of me and the way they modulate together together are all true, and yet, never complete. So, I am not defined as a person in the absolute, but in they ways my temporal interactions are perceived by myself and other people. No one can ever say with 100% certitude that I am "quiet guy," because sometimes I am and sometimes I am not. That definition also depends on your experience and interaction with me, which because no-one is with anyone except themselves all of the time, is only part of the picture.

Why am I bringing all of this up at the moment and being so vague about talking about other people. I suppose the real reason is that I am frustrated by my own lack of close interactions with the people I currently have some daily experience with. I want to be emotionally closer to certain people, but the collection of traits and attributes that define me to those people (perhaps true insofar as any statement about people can be true) seem to prevent that. They might say to themselves, "oh, that zhaf, he's a real card!" Or they might say "zhaf is a pretty quiet guy." Or they might say, "I like zhaf, but he kind of weirds me out." Or they might say, "what is that guy's deal?"

As I walked into campus the other day, I passed by the bus stop. I am nearly a forty year old man with and unconventional (but not inappropriate) manner of dress. I would say that I look a little like an old hippie. I was raised by hippies, so this isn't all that unusual to me. Since the bus is just about to arrive to pick people up and drop them off, thirty people are standing there. Some are sitting in the bus shelter alcove on the bench, most are standing in a loose group together with lots of personal space between them. They each have their own personality quirks. I particularly note the one guy with the unusually large beard. Almost without exception, they stare at me as I walk by. Each seems to be noticing my unusual appearance, probably especially the two long braids hanging along the side of my face. I feel like an outsider even though, to my mind, I am expressing who I am. My hair is the one area of personal expression to the outside world that is totally in my control. Maybe I would be a snappier dresser if I had the money for nice clothes and a stylist or fashion consultant.

Another thing that I am realizing as time goes on is that poverty, and the daily experience of it, especially as an adult, has shaped me and my thoughts more than I would really care for it to. I am less likely to feel that life is going to be fair than I was when I was younger. So, yes. I know. I know. The old cliche, right? The one that says "life isn't fair." I always knew that, and so did you. But the stronger belief in our culture is one that says the opposite, but not explicitly so. This other belief is that if you want something, and work hard for it, it will eventually happen for you. This is the counterpoint to the "life isn't fair" cliche: "hard work will be rewarded." Perhaps one reason that it is not explicitly stated in a similar cliche is that when it is explicitly expressed, most people will realize that it isn't true. So, it does it work underneath the surface of yourself. And in my case, I am realizing that in the war between the poverty experience of "life isn't fair," and the middle class value of "hard work pays off with rewards," the "life isn't fair" side is winning.

I am trying to improve my lot in life with school, with self-improvement, with minor (outward) image adjustments, and the occasional realization or two. And yet, the whole process can be a frustrating experience, maybe because I am at the middle of my life and I still don't have a lot to show for work I have done. I feel like sometimes I am condemned to be trapped by difficult circumstances, and when I finally work my way out of them, it will be too late to achieve the kinds of things I would have wanted to achieve. It's complicated, and sometimes, it feels like a fresh disappointment is waiting around the corner. For example, the new one is a regret about not being more social in high school. Yes, I had other issues going on at that time that helped prevent that, but I think - what if? Anyway, enough of this kind of self-analysis for now.

The Cat and the Colecovision

School has been really busy lately. There are a million little things that I could be doing at any one moment, but for the last two days, I think I ran out of steam. I am definitely going to be picking back up tonight, and then of course, for the rest of the week. The plus side of everything is that I have not yet fallen behind on my major projects, but then again, it's only a beginning so far. I have to print out some things and consult with my instructors about the progress of the projects that I have been working on.

One of the projects is for a phony catalog for a fake company that we make up on our own. I chose a classic videogame company as my company because I happened to have a lot of the items left over from my past. It did not reuqire me going out and spending a bunch of money, although, truth be told. I did manage to spend a chunk of change on the center piece of the catalog, a working classic atari game system with several cartridges. The colecovision that I have left over is my own, but years of neglect and poor care have made it a little ugly. I spent more time cleaning these silly things than I did photographing them. Another issue that I will need to address at some point is my lighting. I need about another light, maybe some white gauze for a phony soft box and a reflector. Unfortunately, I only have two hands, so I can't hold four things at once while I click the shutter button and hope everything comes out right. The cat picture above is a representation of what I have been working on, minus the cat of course. I think I need to work on having more confidence with my vision for this thing. I know have an interesting idea; I just wish I could feel better about my ability to execute it. Also for this project, I drew a bunch of gophers, for the company logo.

Overall, I think things have been going well. I am on a better schedule, school is going pretty good so far (even as busy as I have been), and for social life stuff, I decided to really jump on board with the whole facebook thing. Not the quizzes and games as much as the ability to reconnect with old friends. I know that some people are already sick of it, but I am not sure if I am going to give it up as easily. I jumped on the whole personal blog bandwagon when it was popular many years ago, and even though the blog fad has worn off to a large degree, I am still plugging away at it. I feel like I should post more, but if I manage a post at least once a month, I think I am doing good.

My Break

School has started once again, and Monday will be the beginning of the second week. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this term is how I am already very busy. There are a million little things that need to be done just about each day, and it is hard not to get too overwhelmed by them. Fortunately, I think I am still on top of it. I have not turned in anything late so far, and that is always a good thing.

On the downside, I knew last term was going to be a bit of a bear because I was playing catch up from a terrible last year, but I thought I had one class nailed down well enough to get an A. It turns out I did not. The last two major projects did not meet the instructor's expectations, and that might be a result of my not consulting with her frequently about it. And that, my friends, is a hard thing for me to do, for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I feel like I am almost always am bothering someone with my issues if I end up talking to them about myself for more than two minutes. I know that there are some students who would have no problem parking themselves in the instructors office for a half hour or more monopolizing their time, but I am not that student. I guess I am the exact opposite: the student who the instructor never hears from unless there is a problem that needs to be worked out, but even then only for a minute and a half.

It will be an interesting tomorrow. I hope I have managed my time well enough to where I will not be too overburdened with work during the middle of the week.

So, catching up on personal news for a moment, I spent most of the winter break housebound. I seriously did not get out of the house except on maybe two or three occasions. I sat in my room and played games or watched television. I even took to standing outside in the cold sunlight just to feel air on my skin again. And, I suppose it goes without saying that I spent a lot of time on the internet. I did manage to draw one or two things, but I did not feel like I had the energy to work hard on my art like I thought I was going to. Fortunately, a day before school started, my sister loaned me her car for several months so I at least can finish this term with transportation. The term after that might be slightly more problematic. Getting out of the house has been nice too. (The drawback to being out and about though is spending money, something which I try very hard not to do since I hardly have any.)

One bad habit that I got on winter break was that I stayed up until 2 or 3 am in the morning and woke up at 10 am or later. This meant that my first week of school has been difficult to adjust to because my schedule has been off. It's my own fault for making that mistake of course, but I am hoping to change that soon. Today, I took a nap in the middle of the afternoon, and tonight I will go to bed at a decent hour. This, I hope, will reset my internal clock a little bit so that getting up at 6 or 7 am on Tuesdays will not present as much of a struggle as it did last week.

I did read more like I wanted to during the break, but I did not finish the book I started. I also intend on buying a notebook so I can write more often offline when the mood strikes. My overarching goal is try to be more creative and artistically accomplished with my art and various school assignments. I have two more terms to really knock this stuff out, and then it is on to finding real work at an actual job. We shall see how it goes in the next few weeks.