so i went east...

i'm fighting things i cannot see

i think it's called my destiny

that i am changing

i'm not sure i would classify it as a rough spot, what i am going through right now. if it were, then by definition pretty much my whole life would be a rough spot. maybe that's the case.

i don't think i am ever totally at ease, but sometimes i feel like there are points that i am and that i should strive for those. other parts of me think that being at ease is at best a bad idea, and at worst a myth.

i suppose that lately i just find myself in a grind that is largely made up of something i don't want to do, which is work where i work, doing what i do. at the same time, i suffer, as i always have, from a critical lack of ambition. i don't think i'm lazy, i don't think i'm slack...but then, maybe i am. you've heard this all before in this space. i question it all the time. it can be neatly summarized in a two-part question: is there something wrong with me? and if so, what the fuck is it?

on top of that, i occasionally(and by occasionally i mean a whole lot of the time) feel as if i am locked in a life-or-death struggle with my head, with the old devils, as john vanderslice calls them, so appropriately. and i am so tired of it. i am so tired of the repetitive loop of self-loathing nonsense that never seems to leave me. i cannot help but despair at times that i will never rid myself of it. that it will eventually become my defining characteristic. that it would be already if i weren't so good at disguising it for the company.

i want to write, but every time i even start thinking about it, before i even get close to sitting down in front of the screen, my ideas have already been dissected by invisible critics, handing out book-jacket length blurbs in my head. why can't i just get fucking started, at least write a paragraph or two before the reviews come in? why must my head be so full of nonsense all the time?

i know, i know...i sound as if i should be roaming around a subway platform muttering to myself. not quite yet, but maybe soon.

and if you swear that there's no truth, and who cares, then how come you say it like you're right?

perhaps this is just the aftermath of an incredibly up-ended year where i have had little time to actually sit here and sort through the contents of my head, to analyze my actions and their origins, and now that the dust is settling, it is, well, unsettling...

i want to be the best version of me that i can be, if for no other reason than that life has, unexpectedly, handed me happiness in a form i did not see coming, and would have never counted on. and the frustration lies in trying to get all those points to line up at the same time for once. and in trying to keep myself on a keel that is even. or at least something close to even, so that i don't pedal backwards while my every intention is to go forward.

sorry, i had to balance out the extreme lightheartedness of the thanksgiving post with something dark from the depths of the lb head. someone should invent a head vacation. and no, i don't mean a cocktail of prescription anti-psychotics. i mean, you should be allowed to check your head, a la the beastie boys, for a few days at a time. and let yourself fucking breathe! for goodness sake.