I feel stupid. My focus and fixation has been permanently workworkwork that I've been failing to connect with anyone on any other topic of conversation. My life has become a blur of constant motion- to work, to drinks, to parties, a consistent motion of advancing towards a destination with no time to stop and smell the proverbial roses. I love the world that I've immersed myself in-my passion for what my work contributes to outweighs the demands of my commitment. Yet my mind is simultaenously existing in two places at once- the present requirements of my ambition, the ever perpetual state of motion battling with my internal need to travel, to learn, to withdraw and collect myself, to understand the world and the people in it. The latter is locked in a losing battle- my ambition currently outweight my curiousity.
Remember when we were little and were the masters of the universe? Our parents, in an effort to keep us occupied and give them some precious moments of peace, like agents of our youth kept us constantly booked or engaged in some activity. Drawing lessons, softball, horseback writing, voice lessons, soccer practice, I was always enroute to the next item on the itinerary, never there.
In some ways, I feel like those days prepared me for the current pace of my life. But I remember, my favorite moments, were when I sat in my room, all alone, reading books, making collages, and writing short stories and horribly trite poetry about feelings that I only saw in movies but had yet to really feel. When I last went home and looked on my old computer, all I saw was unfinished business- stories with a few introductory paragraphs, poems that lacked an editor's touch, songs that were stuck on the last verse. For once, I would love the time and the energy to see something to its completion. I possess the enthusiasm for its inception but neither the will nor the drive towards its culmination.
One last thought...our conversation piqued something to my attention. I feel like my hometown, over the years has been ridden with tragedy. Drug addled mothers abandoning children, classmates killing themselves, cataclysmic adolescent mishaps with alcohol...I can't distinguish if the seedy underbelly of my hometown has always existed and is now showing itself as I grow older or if this underlying layer of misery and catastrophe was hidden from me as a child and slowly is reeling its hideous face. In some ways, I feel deceived- at least Los Angeles bares its flaws unabashedly, not buried clandestinely behind a false facade.
