I’m not always sure where I’m going, but I have to trust that I am going somewhere. There are many times, recently it’s been a lot more frequent, when I just want to make these incredibly extreme changes. Just sort of dig my heels into the dirt, or do a 180. I mean, extreme stuff, like:
- Move to a new city, state, country, planet…
- Quit my job and go become a librarian.
- Quit pursuing an artistic career and go become a monk in Nepal.
- Become a mountain climbing monk in Nepal.
- Quit everything and pursue acting and music full time and just rough it!
- Build a tiny house, live in the woods, and write eclectic blogs for weird businesses.
- Get the picture?
The reality:
Most of these things are extreme fear-based reactions to pressure and stress in my own life. I’m an impatient person, and I am very aware of that. When my brain gets fixated on an idea though, whether good or bad, I tend to let every rational thought that I normally have go totally out the window. This sort of seems to be a running theme at this point. I’m not sure if everyone goes through this type of emotional struggle, but, for those that do, I hope it helps to know you’re not the only one.
For instance, if I work a non-stop 12-14 hour day too many days in a row, I’m probably going to start to hate my job and lose sight of why I started doing what I’m doing in the first place. I will forget that I am peddling this bike of life for a reason. I will start to hate all the things surrounding me while I’m peddling the bike. I DEFINITELY won’t look at the immediate details that might be throwing me into such an emotional funk in the first place. Like, working too many 12-14 hour days in a row.
You gotta take a break, even from the things you love. You can’t have your nose to the grindstone all the time, otherwise all you see is the grindstone.
Personally, metaphors aside, I start to fixate on the outcome that I expected to have, and I think of all the ways my current situation don’t align with that expectation. THAT is a dangerous place to be. I just sit their and wade in the negative side of the pool. I fixate on the outcome that I wanted, and I stew in resentment, convincing myself that I will never have what I want given the current things I’m doing. But, fixating on the outcome of the situation, my “impending and unavoidable failure”, or where peddling my bike might take me, never helps because no matter how many plans I make I CANNOT tell the future.
And, furthermore, what’s the alternative? Just stop peddling? Don’t move? The only guarantee I have there is that I won’t go anywhere.
So, for me, I have to remember to trust in the process. I have to just know that the thing that is coming to me is in fact going to come, but I can’t see what it is just yet because it’s still on the way. That is, at least, how a good friend of mine Jarrett King, so eloquently positioned it to me when we were commiserating over life, work, and the pursuit of the awesome lives we know we can have. He actually added in that, it’s like a package in the mail, you can’t see what it is, but you know it’s on the way and that it will be arriving soon.
Side note: Jarrett is performing in TopDog/UnderDog by Suzan Lori-Parks that he co-produced with his new theatre company Viceroys this weekend at Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin, TX. If you have a chance to go, you should see it.