It’s been a hot minute, as kids these days like to say, since I have laid at the sacrificial altar even a single syllable to the universe of words. This has been by design.
My last entry, a wrap-up of a 13-week series, left me feeling ambivalent about future work, burned out and exhausted, and not the least bit inspired by the closure I gained from finishing the enterprise.
I bought the latest upgrade to a video game I have been playing in some version or another for the better part of 25 years and settled in to what became a month of isolation, distraction, self-reflection (you know the one… “What do I want to be when I grow up”) and simply and quietly tapped out of the human race.
By the time I realized I had long become bored with my distraction, recognizing that I was hiding behind a meaningless endeavor, I dug in my heels and doubled down, convincing myself to ignore the voices in my head as I barked back at them, insisting that I was almost done… I’ve almost got this beat… I’ll be done soon.
Those of you familiar with addiction and substance abuse (and I’ve known many, including some of you, dear readers, understand this insidious self-destruction unfortunately all too well.
That last paragraph, grammar and spell check finalized two weeks ago, was immediately followed by news that I had lost yet another 25-year-long best friendship, the second in 3 months, who had died way too early (and long before he should have) to a heart attack that nobody saw coming. I had just finished fixing a website problem for him only a few days earlier, and then he was gone.
When the time is right, I will eulogize him and do his memory Justice, but for now… Still struggling to wrap my head around it… I would like to believe that both Peter and Vassar(who had met each other in person and knew each other quite well over the last 25 years) would tell me, if they were here, but this entry should go live first.
When I started this entry two weeks ago, I had intended it to convey my conundrum at the time about having lost my mojo, as it were, arguing with myself about which direction I wanted to go in pursuit of new writing Adventures. Did I want to resurrect Alice Diaries? My father’s poetry? Politics, Society, and Culture? Continue channeling my inner Thoreau, observing and reflecting (and internalizing) my relationship with the natural world?
As the title of this entry suggests, I was straddling the fence… A terribly uncomfortable position metaphorically, and rather painful to do physically… And struggling to decide kept sending me back to the video game to avoid forcing myself to “answer the fucking question” (as the character Steven famously said in Braveheart).
Indecision, it turns out, is a damnable thing; on the one hand, it’s quite easy to put off committing yourself under the auspices of protecting yourself from choosing poorly, while, on the other, making no decision at all brings you no closer to moving forward. A very dear friend of mine, listening patiently to me for the last several weeks as I have jumped through hoops rationalizing my lack of productivity, routinely reminds me – letting me think I came up with this on my own – that sometimes in life it is far better to choose the wrong path forward, and travel it long enough to realize that’s not what you had in mind when you first set out on your journey, before you realize you made the wrong turn and need to change course.
While I might be a bit long in the tooth at this age in my life, there’s no shame in admitting that the older you get, the more likely you will find that knowing what you want to be when you grow up can’t be known because we never stop growing up. Let this entry, after a 2-month hiatus – give or take – be the first step in a random direction to get off the fence and start walking. Our paths forward in life were never meant to be straight lines.
