Insomniatic self disclosure/exploration/manifesto of sorts
This is one of my longest, most valuable posts ever, I belive. At least for myself.
I just got done reading like, all of my old LJ posts. I guess I was just feeling like I'm in a perpetual cycle, and I wanted to confirm that.
I am.
Let's see... other than graduating college, here is the gist; my M.O. if you will:
1.) Meet an interesting girl, fall mutually in love, experience romantic times of bliss, fuck with her head unintentionally, try to salvage a friendship with her when she still loves me.
2.) get a new job I'm all excited about, work my way up, up, and up, only to hit the ceiling of being underpaid for my work, and underappreciated.
3.) Get into a living situation that rocks until it doesn't fulfill certain soulful desires, then long for something else.
4.) Constantly search for new projects to get exicted about, only to attempt them half-assed.
Of course, this perpetual cycle has its benefits;
1.) I've taken so much from every relationship I've ever had, especially with Deb and Kris.
2.) I've racked up amazing experience in the service industry, and have a lot to offer any employer, especially when paired with a private school degree.
3.) While perhaps not the most effective, my living situations have always geared up my responsibility level and added to my already important observation of the power of constructive confrontation.
4.) Any "new project" (writing, music) has always amassed creativity and given me more experience as an artist.
I've read so many comments from my family, school friends, and other associations, I feel like I have a very vivid idea in my head of exactly what each of them means to me, and it's a pretty kickass crew. I guess that, while I write for me, I am also writing to all of those people. I have a hard time seeing myself for what I am, and their subjective criticisms of my thoughts have provided unlooked-for wisdom.
I've had many talks with Kris lately about why I think we can't date right now, and the majority of the reasons lie with us simply being in different areas of our life right now. She seems to feel inadequete, but for growing up how she did, she's proven so much to herself and the few who were smart enough to notice with the actions she's taken and choices she's made. It's also gotten me to feel extremely lucky for all of the things that tenacious fervor or blind fate have landed in my lap. The jobs I've had, the money I've made, the people I've met... Just in culture clashes alone (contrast an Indian restaurant with Spain, a night club after party with a private school teaching session, a hardcore band with a spot at open mic blues night, etc.) I've gotten so many great influences and tastes of what's out there. I'm really very fortunate. For a mistakenly conceived country kid with little means, I've gotten to do things already at 23 that I've never thought I would have been able to do when contemplating my future as a young, shy, bookish boy in hand-me-downs. I credit my family with a lot of it, but also somehow I picked up how to talk to people on my own, and I'm so grateful for that.
Keeping that in mind, I also noticed in my LJ how lonely I was without a girlfriend, and how happy I am while with one. My current belief (which has received many an "amen" from my peers) is that I must seek out a woman who is much more confident and passionate. I can't go for someone who is a "fan" of what I am, but a follower of things I also consider core to my being. This is difficult for me; for one, (and of course this will sound egotistical) I tend to create "fan" dating potentials. I somehow can be inspiring, I guess, and somehow get woman to want me who aren't necessarily as actually attracted to me as they should be (a modesty plug). Another problem, perhaps, is that I'm not exactly sure how to date. I do know that I have been feeling the need to see someone now that I think Kris and I are functional exes. But I'm not exactly sure of what I want. I've come to the irking conclusion that I will go to the bar sometimes only because I am entertaining the idea of meeting women there. That shouldn't be my motivation... it's interesting to me how often in my life I let this distract me.
It seems that I'm never in a homeostasis for long; I am constantly in a flux between jobs, apartments, girlfriends, "party" scenes, and hobbies. While I have benefitted from this, it does steer dangerously close to a cycle that I could let rule my young life for years to come before I realize that I need to stick to somethings more, perhaps.
Oh well, I've always had to learn the hard way, right? It's given me some great stories. I've always been typically non-committal as well, and while this has caused much anguish for my friends and family, I believe at this point most of them have accepted that as the way I am. I credit my flighty nature to many of those fortunate experiences I've had.
Normally, I'd just bitch about the things that are in this ever-present flux online, see who commented with sympathy, and thank them. I suppose my analysis of my recent years via journal entries has put me into a rather existentialist state of not caring to do that. I'm really in a pretty good mood (albeit a little spacy and tired).
I suppose the next obvious step would be to explore this writing and use it to tell me what I need to do. Things are so different now that school is over; I didn't think it would be sinking in still, but it is. I'm thinking of health plans and the very real possibility of moving wherever I desired; these are things I have been unable to fully "compute" until now. I feel like I've been plucked from the bowels of an eighties sitcom, where life is so metered and laughable, into some HBO series, where any episode could harbor completely mind-bending side plots and unpredictable twists. Will I meet some punk-rock girl and relocate to Denver, where I become a bar owner? Will I sell insurance and own a house in eight years? Will I get sick of bouncing around in the service industry and go to Eastern to get a teaching degree, and marry a co-worker? Will I get caught up in bad living/work situations and have to move in with my father so I can pay him back? Life is much more of an adventure now, for better or for worse.
To say I am scared of the future would be inaccurate; I am quick to realize when I am being motivated by fear, and just as quick to confront that fear and conquer it. I suppose my shaken ponderence is more the result of having so many choices and yearns; what do I really want? Fuck, I have a hard enough time deciding what to eat for lunch off of the menu. How can I stick to one path? Will I spread myself too thin, as I almost did in my last full-time semester at college, and basically go bonkers? Or will this all-embracing outlook take me to doors I didn't know could open? I'm not worried about my path, I just wish that for once I could fucking see it. I love the adventure of life, but when I'm worried about getting my wisdom teeth removed and paying back my school loans, some stability would grant me some serenity.
With my will and my lust to share and learn from people, I can do anything. I know I could be a benefit to any woman that decided to love me, any company that decided to hire me, etc. Yet this doesn't do any guiding for me. Perhaps that is why, sometimes, I lack the motivation to get up early and have a productive day. I lack guidance, and to step in one direction would be to do something other than let fate decide my future. I've never been a fatalist, but perhaps my past experiences have really just been curses in disguise, fantastic illusions that in reality hindered my ability to now feel like I can manifest my own destiny with any certainty. Being a likeable goofball gets people to want to take you by the hand and drag you to places they would have you see. Much like the Darling family in Peter Pan, or Oliver in Oliver Twist, or even Forrest Gump, I fear I may perhaps be a rather boring protagonist that simply has amazing things happen to him. Does this make me weak and uninteresting? I'm willing to believe that there is something special about me that creates these events, but can I really say that I "chose" to go to Concordia, or work at an Indian restaurant when I was 16, or that I chose to date any of the women who have strayed into my life that I happened to find interesting and attractive? Perhaps it is my fate to be a storyteller more than a mover of great deeds.
I don't desire credit for who I am, but in order to know where I'm going, I need to know what I can do with what I have. I'm not sure I can do it alone. I'm still excited about the future, I'm just a little more helpless than I prefer to be. I'm not concerned, only slightly vexed and strangly uncertain. These feelings are not unpleasant... but perhaps only because I've yet to learn the hard lessons that I will in the future associate these feelings with.
I know that the moments I feel most alive are when I'm at the bar playing pool with friends, or serving a table at work when I am slow and can talk to them about their cuisine and drinks. When I go out to eat, or get a chance to make someone laugh. When I am (gasp) making love, or listening to records and playing poker. Yet these are not shape-shifters of destiny in and of themselves; they are means to exploit passion. Can these things alone move me to where I want to be in life?
Some days I wake up with a punk, chaotic, summer-vacation attitude, and end with a checkbook balancing adult-like evaluation of where I want to be financially in a year, followed by a good book. Both are great parts of my being, both bring me satisfaction, yet they seem to present a dichomoty, like the old antithesis of play vs. work. I know I can balance them to further extremes than most, but is this a refusal to grow up? I hate to sound predictably trite, but perhaps where I might deviate from the norm with respect to this dichotomy is that I honestly find as much joy and comfort in each. I am as much like my old nieghbor Dave as I am like my studious college mentor, professor Campbell. Perhaps my desire to twist these diametrically opposed lifestyles into an amazing twine that is Kenny is absurd. But I'm not ready to embrace nor forsake either, not ready to accept that perhaps such a twine is an invalid entity.
If anyone actually read this garbled nocturnal emission of the mind, please respond as you see fit; if with no advice, please at least tell me if it was cohesive and contained enough to be pallatable, if not interesting or inspiring. It is pleasing to be able to be learning so much about myself after a long drought. I would be especially curious to see who could associate with this free-writing, and how. As for what I take from these thoughts manifested in writing, I suppose fate will determine whether this post was utile, or yet another scheme from my subconscious to avoid sleep
I just got done reading like, all of my old LJ posts. I guess I was just feeling like I'm in a perpetual cycle, and I wanted to confirm that.
I am.
Let's see... other than graduating college, here is the gist; my M.O. if you will:
1.) Meet an interesting girl, fall mutually in love, experience romantic times of bliss, fuck with her head unintentionally, try to salvage a friendship with her when she still loves me.
2.) get a new job I'm all excited about, work my way up, up, and up, only to hit the ceiling of being underpaid for my work, and underappreciated.
3.) Get into a living situation that rocks until it doesn't fulfill certain soulful desires, then long for something else.
4.) Constantly search for new projects to get exicted about, only to attempt them half-assed.
Of course, this perpetual cycle has its benefits;
1.) I've taken so much from every relationship I've ever had, especially with Deb and Kris.
2.) I've racked up amazing experience in the service industry, and have a lot to offer any employer, especially when paired with a private school degree.
3.) While perhaps not the most effective, my living situations have always geared up my responsibility level and added to my already important observation of the power of constructive confrontation.
4.) Any "new project" (writing, music) has always amassed creativity and given me more experience as an artist.
I've read so many comments from my family, school friends, and other associations, I feel like I have a very vivid idea in my head of exactly what each of them means to me, and it's a pretty kickass crew. I guess that, while I write for me, I am also writing to all of those people. I have a hard time seeing myself for what I am, and their subjective criticisms of my thoughts have provided unlooked-for wisdom.
I've had many talks with Kris lately about why I think we can't date right now, and the majority of the reasons lie with us simply being in different areas of our life right now. She seems to feel inadequete, but for growing up how she did, she's proven so much to herself and the few who were smart enough to notice with the actions she's taken and choices she's made. It's also gotten me to feel extremely lucky for all of the things that tenacious fervor or blind fate have landed in my lap. The jobs I've had, the money I've made, the people I've met... Just in culture clashes alone (contrast an Indian restaurant with Spain, a night club after party with a private school teaching session, a hardcore band with a spot at open mic blues night, etc.) I've gotten so many great influences and tastes of what's out there. I'm really very fortunate. For a mistakenly conceived country kid with little means, I've gotten to do things already at 23 that I've never thought I would have been able to do when contemplating my future as a young, shy, bookish boy in hand-me-downs. I credit my family with a lot of it, but also somehow I picked up how to talk to people on my own, and I'm so grateful for that.
Keeping that in mind, I also noticed in my LJ how lonely I was without a girlfriend, and how happy I am while with one. My current belief (which has received many an "amen" from my peers) is that I must seek out a woman who is much more confident and passionate. I can't go for someone who is a "fan" of what I am, but a follower of things I also consider core to my being. This is difficult for me; for one, (and of course this will sound egotistical) I tend to create "fan" dating potentials. I somehow can be inspiring, I guess, and somehow get woman to want me who aren't necessarily as actually attracted to me as they should be (a modesty plug). Another problem, perhaps, is that I'm not exactly sure how to date. I do know that I have been feeling the need to see someone now that I think Kris and I are functional exes. But I'm not exactly sure of what I want. I've come to the irking conclusion that I will go to the bar sometimes only because I am entertaining the idea of meeting women there. That shouldn't be my motivation... it's interesting to me how often in my life I let this distract me.
It seems that I'm never in a homeostasis for long; I am constantly in a flux between jobs, apartments, girlfriends, "party" scenes, and hobbies. While I have benefitted from this, it does steer dangerously close to a cycle that I could let rule my young life for years to come before I realize that I need to stick to somethings more, perhaps.
Oh well, I've always had to learn the hard way, right? It's given me some great stories. I've always been typically non-committal as well, and while this has caused much anguish for my friends and family, I believe at this point most of them have accepted that as the way I am. I credit my flighty nature to many of those fortunate experiences I've had.
Normally, I'd just bitch about the things that are in this ever-present flux online, see who commented with sympathy, and thank them. I suppose my analysis of my recent years via journal entries has put me into a rather existentialist state of not caring to do that. I'm really in a pretty good mood (albeit a little spacy and tired).
I suppose the next obvious step would be to explore this writing and use it to tell me what I need to do. Things are so different now that school is over; I didn't think it would be sinking in still, but it is. I'm thinking of health plans and the very real possibility of moving wherever I desired; these are things I have been unable to fully "compute" until now. I feel like I've been plucked from the bowels of an eighties sitcom, where life is so metered and laughable, into some HBO series, where any episode could harbor completely mind-bending side plots and unpredictable twists. Will I meet some punk-rock girl and relocate to Denver, where I become a bar owner? Will I sell insurance and own a house in eight years? Will I get sick of bouncing around in the service industry and go to Eastern to get a teaching degree, and marry a co-worker? Will I get caught up in bad living/work situations and have to move in with my father so I can pay him back? Life is much more of an adventure now, for better or for worse.
To say I am scared of the future would be inaccurate; I am quick to realize when I am being motivated by fear, and just as quick to confront that fear and conquer it. I suppose my shaken ponderence is more the result of having so many choices and yearns; what do I really want? Fuck, I have a hard enough time deciding what to eat for lunch off of the menu. How can I stick to one path? Will I spread myself too thin, as I almost did in my last full-time semester at college, and basically go bonkers? Or will this all-embracing outlook take me to doors I didn't know could open? I'm not worried about my path, I just wish that for once I could fucking see it. I love the adventure of life, but when I'm worried about getting my wisdom teeth removed and paying back my school loans, some stability would grant me some serenity.
With my will and my lust to share and learn from people, I can do anything. I know I could be a benefit to any woman that decided to love me, any company that decided to hire me, etc. Yet this doesn't do any guiding for me. Perhaps that is why, sometimes, I lack the motivation to get up early and have a productive day. I lack guidance, and to step in one direction would be to do something other than let fate decide my future. I've never been a fatalist, but perhaps my past experiences have really just been curses in disguise, fantastic illusions that in reality hindered my ability to now feel like I can manifest my own destiny with any certainty. Being a likeable goofball gets people to want to take you by the hand and drag you to places they would have you see. Much like the Darling family in Peter Pan, or Oliver in Oliver Twist, or even Forrest Gump, I fear I may perhaps be a rather boring protagonist that simply has amazing things happen to him. Does this make me weak and uninteresting? I'm willing to believe that there is something special about me that creates these events, but can I really say that I "chose" to go to Concordia, or work at an Indian restaurant when I was 16, or that I chose to date any of the women who have strayed into my life that I happened to find interesting and attractive? Perhaps it is my fate to be a storyteller more than a mover of great deeds.
I don't desire credit for who I am, but in order to know where I'm going, I need to know what I can do with what I have. I'm not sure I can do it alone. I'm still excited about the future, I'm just a little more helpless than I prefer to be. I'm not concerned, only slightly vexed and strangly uncertain. These feelings are not unpleasant... but perhaps only because I've yet to learn the hard lessons that I will in the future associate these feelings with.
I know that the moments I feel most alive are when I'm at the bar playing pool with friends, or serving a table at work when I am slow and can talk to them about their cuisine and drinks. When I go out to eat, or get a chance to make someone laugh. When I am (gasp) making love, or listening to records and playing poker. Yet these are not shape-shifters of destiny in and of themselves; they are means to exploit passion. Can these things alone move me to where I want to be in life?
Some days I wake up with a punk, chaotic, summer-vacation attitude, and end with a checkbook balancing adult-like evaluation of where I want to be financially in a year, followed by a good book. Both are great parts of my being, both bring me satisfaction, yet they seem to present a dichomoty, like the old antithesis of play vs. work. I know I can balance them to further extremes than most, but is this a refusal to grow up? I hate to sound predictably trite, but perhaps where I might deviate from the norm with respect to this dichotomy is that I honestly find as much joy and comfort in each. I am as much like my old nieghbor Dave as I am like my studious college mentor, professor Campbell. Perhaps my desire to twist these diametrically opposed lifestyles into an amazing twine that is Kenny is absurd. But I'm not ready to embrace nor forsake either, not ready to accept that perhaps such a twine is an invalid entity.
If anyone actually read this garbled nocturnal emission of the mind, please respond as you see fit; if with no advice, please at least tell me if it was cohesive and contained enough to be pallatable, if not interesting or inspiring. It is pleasing to be able to be learning so much about myself after a long drought. I would be especially curious to see who could associate with this free-writing, and how. As for what I take from these thoughts manifested in writing, I suppose fate will determine whether this post was utile, or yet another scheme from my subconscious to avoid sleep