I have a flair for dramatics. Nothing can be simple. Nothing can be enjoyed.
Nothing can live as long as I feel passionately about it. Like a good song I've got to repeat what I love until it's meaningless and bland. Submerging myself in what interests me until I'm numb to everything around me, blocking out any shred of reason, and creating delusions of grandeur so pure I nearly believe them. It can take me months to come up for air if I'm fixated hard enough. The squirrel gets loose, and the hamster races on its wheel. Whatever rodent you prefer to imagine running hot laps of ruminating torture through the wilds of my mind, I assure you it's there. Running mach-10. Like a hypersonic voice of evil encouraging me to burn it all down.
This is a pattern I've only come to notice recently but has been with me since my youth. Hours spent skateboarding by myself, in the rain, in the dark, thinking if I could do tricks without being able to see I could do them easier during the day. I tried any and all options and methods. Moving my feet millimeters at a time, countless attempts, well surpassing my ten thousand hours without ever nearing mastery. Concussions, broken bones, torn ligaments, and twisted intestines. Blind ambition as a definition, means to ends unjustified.
Whether it's hours spent in the darkroom, in my garage fixing and wrecking motorcycles, or on water devoid of any sign of life but my own, endlessly hacking away with a fly rod trying to force fish into existence. All, equally pure and unfounded. I have boxes of flies tied by hand and hunched back that will never see sunlight gleaming off the river. Stacks of journals written in various states of sobriety, short stories never to be shared. No focus, only drive. Something within me forces me to produce. A hustle mindset from the pre hustle era.
I find humour in watching my behavior, catching myself in the act. I've recently found a new yoga studio after spending the last two years practicing daily on my own. In my mind I've already started working on branding for a yoga studio that is yet to exist, one that I'll open after I've finished my teacher training. Yoga is good, it's great. It helped me through a rough patch in my life and I sincerely believe it kept me alive. Something to do a few nights a week as a person struggling in early sobriety, accountability to those I shared the studio with, space and time to force myself to sit with the thoughts that would usually force me to use. Can yoga not exist as it is? Can I not go to class and go home, back to the life I'm currently enjoying? No, I've got to quit my job change it up, burn down my current life and prepare to kill everything before me. Yoga must die if I'm to participate.
Things are good. But I've got to watch myself, I'm not sure if it's because I'm an addict or if I'm an addict because of my pursuit of fulfillment. Anything that feels good I will submerse myself in. This blog included, read widely by 15- 95 people every time I post. I love the interaction I get whether it's a DM on Instagram, an email or text, being able to share my thoughts and have them resonate with people whom I haven't seen or spoken to in years is incredible. My initial urge from the response I get from writing is to follow Thoreau into the woods. But alas, I need to stay in my lane and keep grinding towards those Gucci loafers for my Birkenstock life.
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