A smattering of years...
I now have seen two decades of my life come and then go. A scary realization, looking back on things.
I find it hard enough to deal with the things I have failed to accomplish over the course of this summer, let alone the list of things I've failed to accomplish with my entire life.
I have not: Written anything of consequence. In fact, what little I have written over this past year has succeeded only in making me more confused than ever about what I want to do with my life. I swear that with each page I produce, it becomes more difficult to continue. Every time I turn something in, or put something in a journal or whatever may be the format, it becomes that much harder to wrangle my ridiculous thoughts into any semblance of order. And it becomes that much more difficult to figure out what I'm feeling or thinking in my own goddamned head. I am becoming ever more wrapped up in my mind and at the same time, the contents of my mind are becoming more of a mystery to me. My mind is essentially burying itself in itself. I have yet to figure out exactly how to get myself out.
Everything becomes more confusing as time passes. I'm supposed to be figuring things out at this point in my life. Instead, all I've managed to do by this point is confuse the living shit out of myself. And it just keeps becoming more and more convoluted. I keep thinking that each new thought or idea that I DO figure out will help me unravel the tangled mess of strings and threads that are amassing in my brain, but they just turn into another tangle or knot that leads me nowhere but to a bigger tangled mess.
Things are progressing in my life. I am working my way towards a degree from a highly respectable university. I have love and a relationship that I never dreamed possible in all my mental flights of fancy. But somehow, though I am ridiculously happy for those things, they make things even more complicated. I suppose I should have figured out the rest of the strings before I let more strings get tied in. I have good, optimistic feelings about things in a very broad sense. In a very unfocused, exceptionally far-off and in the future sense. I could be deluding myself... but I sure hope I'm not.
I think my biggest problem is that, as time goes by, I sort-of find myself getting slightly left behind. It must be that somewhere along the line I got caught up in a small snarl, and maybe instead of untangling it and then catching up with the world, I picked it up and thought it would be smart to unwind it along the way. And then perhaps I tripped on the string I was supposed to be following, and got that section bound up with the small snarl I had been working on. And then as life progresses, new strings and lines and cords get worked in, and eventually it becomes what it has become. I still can't really definitively say what that is. But whatever it is, it is amazingly confusing and befuddling and it adds to itself. It builds on itself.
So what does somebody do in this situation? I've tried ignoring it and walking on like there are no tangles. I wind back at the tangles eventually. I've tried untangling it... but I've been over that, haven't I? Results only in bigger tangles and more lagging behind on the timeline.
Bottom line: Life moves on, whether you are with it or not. And whether you are willing or not, the knots will be there as you go, at whatever pace you go (or don't go). So, I suppose the only thing that CAN be done is to try to keep up. With something...
Conclusion: I have lived only a smattering of years and have done very little that I thought I would have done. But I've done more than I thought I would have as well. In different areas of my life, of course. I have no idea what I'm doing, and I have no idea where I'm going, and I definitely have less than no idea of how to get there.
And in no way, shape, form, or figure do I know anything better or more clearly now than when I began writing this.
And I guess that's just the way it goes...
I find it hard enough to deal with the things I have failed to accomplish over the course of this summer, let alone the list of things I've failed to accomplish with my entire life.
I have not: Written anything of consequence. In fact, what little I have written over this past year has succeeded only in making me more confused than ever about what I want to do with my life. I swear that with each page I produce, it becomes more difficult to continue. Every time I turn something in, or put something in a journal or whatever may be the format, it becomes that much harder to wrangle my ridiculous thoughts into any semblance of order. And it becomes that much more difficult to figure out what I'm feeling or thinking in my own goddamned head. I am becoming ever more wrapped up in my mind and at the same time, the contents of my mind are becoming more of a mystery to me. My mind is essentially burying itself in itself. I have yet to figure out exactly how to get myself out.
Everything becomes more confusing as time passes. I'm supposed to be figuring things out at this point in my life. Instead, all I've managed to do by this point is confuse the living shit out of myself. And it just keeps becoming more and more convoluted. I keep thinking that each new thought or idea that I DO figure out will help me unravel the tangled mess of strings and threads that are amassing in my brain, but they just turn into another tangle or knot that leads me nowhere but to a bigger tangled mess.
Things are progressing in my life. I am working my way towards a degree from a highly respectable university. I have love and a relationship that I never dreamed possible in all my mental flights of fancy. But somehow, though I am ridiculously happy for those things, they make things even more complicated. I suppose I should have figured out the rest of the strings before I let more strings get tied in. I have good, optimistic feelings about things in a very broad sense. In a very unfocused, exceptionally far-off and in the future sense. I could be deluding myself... but I sure hope I'm not.
I think my biggest problem is that, as time goes by, I sort-of find myself getting slightly left behind. It must be that somewhere along the line I got caught up in a small snarl, and maybe instead of untangling it and then catching up with the world, I picked it up and thought it would be smart to unwind it along the way. And then perhaps I tripped on the string I was supposed to be following, and got that section bound up with the small snarl I had been working on. And then as life progresses, new strings and lines and cords get worked in, and eventually it becomes what it has become. I still can't really definitively say what that is. But whatever it is, it is amazingly confusing and befuddling and it adds to itself. It builds on itself.
So what does somebody do in this situation? I've tried ignoring it and walking on like there are no tangles. I wind back at the tangles eventually. I've tried untangling it... but I've been over that, haven't I? Results only in bigger tangles and more lagging behind on the timeline.
Bottom line: Life moves on, whether you are with it or not. And whether you are willing or not, the knots will be there as you go, at whatever pace you go (or don't go). So, I suppose the only thing that CAN be done is to try to keep up. With something...
Conclusion: I have lived only a smattering of years and have done very little that I thought I would have done. But I've done more than I thought I would have as well. In different areas of my life, of course. I have no idea what I'm doing, and I have no idea where I'm going, and I definitely have less than no idea of how to get there.
And in no way, shape, form, or figure do I know anything better or more clearly now than when I began writing this.
And I guess that's just the way it goes...